Text -- Job 13:1-3 (NET)

Job Pleads His Cause to God

13:1 “Indeed, my eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it. 13:2 What you know, I know also; I am not inferior to you! 13:3 But I wish to speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 13:1

¹ sn Chapter 13 records Job’s charges against his friends for the way they used their knowledge (1-5), his warning that God would find out their insincerity (6-12), and his pleading of his cause to God in which he begs for God to remove his hand from him and that he would not terrify him with his majesty and that he would reveal the sins that caused such great suffering (13-28).

² tn Hebrew has כֹּל (kol, “all”); there is no reason to add anything to the text to gain a meaning “all this.”

NET Notes: Job 13:2

¹ tn Heb “Like your knowledge”; in other words Job is saying that his knowledge is like their knowledge.

² tn The pronoun makes the subject emphatic and stresses the contrast: “I know – I also.”

³ tn The verb “fall” is used here as it was in Job 4:13 to express becoming lower than someone, i.e., inferior.

NET Notes: Job 13:3

¹ tn The verb is simply the Piel imperfect אֲדַבֵּר (’adabber, “I speak”). It should be classified as a desiderative imperfect, saying, “I desire to speak.” This is reinforced with the verb “to wish, desire” in the second half of the verse.

² tn The Hebrew title for God here is אֶל־שַׁדַּי (’el shadday, “El Shaddai”).

³ tn The infinitive absolute functions here as the direct object of the verb “desire” (see GKC 340 §113.b).

⁴ tn The infinitive הוֹכֵחַ (hokheakh) is from the verb יָכַח (yakhakh), which means “to argue, plead, debate.” It has the legal sense here of arguing a case (cf. 5:17).