daz'-man (yakhach, "to argue, decide, convince," the Revised Version (British and American) UMPIRE): The use of this word appears to have been more common in the 16th century than at the later date of the translation of the King James Version, when its adoption was infrequent. The oldest instance of the term given in the Oxford English Dictionary is Plumpton Corresp. (1489), p. 82: "Sir, the dayesmen cannot agre us." It appears also in the 1551 edition of the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 2:25, where the English Versions of the Bible "judge" is translated "dayes-man." Tyndale's translation has for Exodus 21:22, "He shall paye as the dayesmen appoynte him" (EV as the "judges determine"). See also Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, ii, c. 8, published in 1590. As used in the King James Version (Job 9:33) the word means an arbitrator, umpire, referee; one who stands in a judicial capacity between two parties, and decides upon the merits of their arguments or case at law. "Neither is there-any daysman (the Revised Version (British and American) "umpire") betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both" (compare Genesis 31:37). It was the eastern custom for a judge to lay his hands upon the heads of the two parties in disagreement, thus emphasizing his adjudicatory capacity and his desire to render an unbiased verdict. Job might consider a human judge as capable of acting as an umpire upon his own claims, but no man was worthy to question the purposes of Yahweh, or metaphorically, to "lay his hands upon" Him.

In the New Testament (1 Corinthians 4:3, anthropine, hemera) "man's judgment" is literally, "man's day," in the sense of a day fixed for the trial of a case. Both Tyndale and Coverdale so translate. See also 1 Timothy 2:5, where the Saviour is termed the "one mediator .... between God and men." Here the word understands a pleader, an advocate before an umpire, rather than the adjudicator himself (see Job 19:25-27).

Arthur Walwyn Evans

From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Are you a good person? Try the good person test.