This is a fine example of a Masoretic Bible. “Masorah” means “tradition,” in this case the tradition of how the biblical text is pointed (with vowels) and therefore read. During the manuscript age, copying errors from one text to its copy were quite common, and students of the text lived with this fact. But the books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) were considered to be divine communication, and so such errors—which might change the meaning of the text—were intolerable. To “freeze” the text in its correct form, attention was paid to the rarer words and forms in the biblical text, with the assumption that careful attention would preserve the text in its correct form. The notations surrounding the biblical text—in the margins, at the top of the page and at its bottom—provide the record of these rare forms and where else in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) they might be found. 

In addition to its Masoretic notes, this Tanakh illustrates the glories of a characteristically Jewish scribal art form—micrography (miniature writing). In micrography, the scribe uses Hebrew texts—typically scriptural verses—and very fine writing to create decorative patterns and often images. 

In this case, the scribe depicts a hunting scene, with two hounds on the right engaged in the chase of the stag on the left. This image has nothing to do with the biblical text at hand (the opening of the Book of Job), but such scenes are not uncommon in Hebrew manuscripts, where they express the comfort of their creators in their local environment (in this case, Germany ca. 1300).