In urging the women of Bethlehem to call her “Mara” (“Bitter”) “because the Almighty [Shaddai] has made my life very bitter [hemar],”82 there is an interesting parallel in one of Job’s speeches in which he states: As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty [Shadday], who has made my life bitter [hemar]. (Job 27:2) In addition, Naomi’s feeling that Yahweh is making her a target for his arrows is also paralleled by a feeling that Job expresses: The arrows of the Almighty [Shadday] are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me. (Job 6:4)
