Text -- Job 17:3 (NET)

17:3 Make then my pledge with you. Who else will put up security for me?

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 17:3

¹ tn The MT has two imperatives: “Lay down, pledge me, with me.” Most commentators think that the second imperative should be a noun, and take it to say, “Lay my pledge with/beside you.” A. B. Davidson (Job, 126) suggests that the first verb means “give a pledge,” and so the two similar verbs would be emphatic: “Give a pledge, be my surety.” Other than such a change (which would involve changing the vowels) one would have to interpret similarly by seeing the imperatives as a kind of hendiadys, with the main emphasis being on the second imperative, “make a pledge.”

² sn The idiom is “to strike the hand.” Here the wording is a little different, “Who is he that will strike himself into my hand?”