Text -- Job 35:6-16 (NET)

35:6 If you sin, how does it affect God? If your transgressions are many, what does it do to him? 35:7 If you are righteous, what do you give to God, or what does he receive from your hand? 35:8 Your wickedness affects only a person like yourself, and your righteousness only other people. 35:9 “People cry out because of the excess of oppression; they cry out for help because of the power of the mighty. 35:10 But no one says, ‘Where is God, my Creator, who gives songs in the night, 35:11 who teaches us more than the wild animals of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’ 35:12 Then they cry out– but he does not answer– because of the arrogance of the wicked. 35:13 Surely it is an empty cry– God does not hear it; the Almighty does not take notice of it. 35:14 How much less, then, when you say that you do not perceive him, that the case is before him and you are waiting for him! 35:15 And further, when you say that his anger does not punish, and that he does not know transgression! 35:16 So Job opens his mouth to no purpose; without knowledge he multiplies words.”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 35:6

¹ tn Heb “him” (also in v. 7); the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn See Job 7:20.

NET Notes: Job 35:8

¹ tn The phrase “affects only” is supplied in the translation of this nominal sentence.

sn According to Strahan, “Elihu exalts God’s greatness at the cost of His grace, His transcendence at the expense of His immanence. He sets up a material instead of a spiritual stand of profit and loss. He does not realize that God does gain what He desires most by the goodness of men, and loses what He most loves by their evil.”

² tn Heb “and to [or for] a son of man, your righteousness.”

NET Notes: Job 35:9

¹ tn The word “people” is supplied, because the sentence only has the masculine plural verb.

² tn The final noun is an abstract plural, “oppression.” There is no reason to change it to “oppressors” to fit the early versions. The expression is literally “multitude of oppression.”

³ tn Heb “the arm,” a metaphor for strength or power.

⁴ tn Or “of the many” (see HALOT 1172 s.v. I רַב 6.a).

NET Notes: Job 35:10

¹ tn There have been several attempts to emend the line, none of which are particularly helpful or interesting. H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 225) says, “It is a pity to rob Elihu of a poetic line when he creates one.”

NET Notes: Job 35:11

¹ tn The form in the text, the Piel participle from אָלַף (’alaf, “teach”) is written in a contracted form; the full form is מְאַלְּפֵנוּ (mÿ’allÿfenu).

² tn Some would render this “teaches us by the beasts.” But Elihu is stressing the unique privilege humans have.

NET Notes: Job 35:12

¹ tn The adverb שָׁם (sham, “there”) connects this verse to v. 11. “There” can be locative or temporal – and here it is temporal (= “then”).

NET Notes: Job 35:13

¹ tn Heb “surely – vanity, he does not hear.” The cry is an empty cry, not a prayer to God. Dhorme translates it, “It is a pure waste of words.”

NET Notes: Job 35:14

¹ sn The point is that if God does not listen to those who do not turn to him, how much less likely is he to turn to one who complains against him.

NET Notes: Job 35:15

¹ tn The expression “and now” introduces a new complaint of Elihu – in addition to the preceding. Here the verb of v. 14, “you say,” is understood after the temporal ki (כִּי).

² tn The verb פָקַד (paqad) means “to visit” (also “to appoint; to muster; to number”). When God visits, it means that he intervenes in one’s life for blessing or cursing (punishing, destroying).

³ tn The word פַּשׁ (pash) is a hapax legomenon. K&D 12:275 derived it from an Arabic word meaning “belch,” leading to the idea of “overflow.” BDB 832 s.v. defines it as “folly.” Several define it as “transgression” on the basis of the versions (Theodotion, Symmachus, Vulgate). The RSV took it as “greatly heed,” but that is not exactly “greatly know,” when the text beyond that requires “not know at all.” The NIV has “he does not take the least notice of wickedness.”

NET Notes: Job 35:16

¹ tn The word הֶבֶל (hevel) means “vanity; futility; to no purpose.”