Text -- Job 29:1-2 (NET)

IV. Job’s Concluding Soliloquy (29:1-31:40)

Job Recalls His Former Condition

29:1 Then Job continued his speech: 29:2 “O that I could be as I was in the months now gone, in the days when God watched over me,

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 29:1

¹ sn Now that the debate with his friends is over, Job concludes with a soliloquy, just as he had begun with one. Here he does not take into account his friends or their arguments. The speech has three main sections: Job’s review of his former circumstances (29:1-25); Job’s present misery (30:1-31); and Job’s vindication of his life (31:1-40).

² tn The verse uses a verbal hendiadys: “and he added (וַיֹּסֶף, vayyosef)…to raise (שְׂאֵת, sÿ’et) his speech.” The expression means that he continued, or he spoke again.

NET Notes: Job 29:2

¹ tn The optative is here expressed with מִי־יִתְּנֵנִי (mi-yittÿneni, “who will give me”), meaning, “O that I [could be]…” (see GKC 477 §151.b).

² tn The preposition כּ (kaf) is used here in an expression describing the state desired, especially in the former time (see GKC 376 §118.u).

³ tn The expression is literally “months of before [or of old; or past].” The word קֶדֶם (qedem) is intended here to be temporal and not spatial; it means days that preceded the present.

⁴ tn The construct state (“days of”) governs the independent sentence that follows (see GKC 422 §130.d): “as the days of […] God used to watch over me.”

⁵ tn The imperfect verb here has a customary nuance – “when God would watch over me” (back then), or “when God used to watch over me.”