2:7 The Lord impoverishes and makes wealthy;
he humbles and he exalts.
2:8 He lifts the weak 1 from the dust;
he raises 2 the poor from the ash heap
to seat them with princes
and to bestow on them an honored position. 3
The foundations of the earth belong to the Lord,
and he has placed the world on them.
36:6 He does not allow the wicked to live, 15
but he gives justice to the poor.
36:7 He does not take his eyes 16 off the righteous;
but with kings on the throne
he seats the righteous 17 and exalts them forever. 18
1 tn Or “lowly”; Heb “insignificant.”
2 tn The imperfect verbal form, which is parallel to the participle in the preceding line, is best understood here as indicating what typically happens.
3 tn Heb “a seat of honor.”
4 tn Heb “to search [for].”
5 tn Heb “upon the face of.”
6 tn Or “the region of the Rocks of the Mountain Goats,” if this expression is understood as a place name (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV, TEV, CEV).
7 tn Heb “don’t stop.”
8 tc The LXX reads “your God” rather than the MT’s “our God.”
9 tn After the negated jussive, the prefixed verbal form with the prefixed conjunction indicates purpose/result.
10 tn Heb “a lamb of milk”; NAB “an unweaned lamb”; NIV “a suckling lamb”; NCV “a baby lamb.”
11 tn The verb גָּרַד (garad) is a hapax legomenon (only occurring here). Modern Hebrew has retained a meaning “to scrape,” which is what the cognate Syriac and Arabic indicate. In the Hitpael it would mean “scrape himself.”
12 sn The disease required constant attention. The infection and pus had to be scraped away with a piece of broken pottery in order to prevent the spread of the infection. The skin was so disfigured that even his friends did not recognize him (2:12). The book will add that the disease afflicted him inwardly, giving him a foul breath and a loathsome smell (19:17, 20). The sores bred worms; they opened and ran, and closed and tightened (16:8). He was tormented with dreams (7:14). He felt like he was choking (7:14). His bones were racked with burning pain (30:30). And he was not able to rise from his place (19:18). The disease was incurable; but it would last for years, leaving the patient longing for death.
13 tn The construction uses the disjunctive vav (ו) with the independent pronoun with the active participle. The construction connects this clause with what has just been said, making this a circumstantial clause.
14 sn Among the ashes. It is likely that the “ashes” refers to the place outside the city where the rubbish was collected and burnt, i.e., the ash-heap (cf. CEV). This is the understanding of the LXX, which reads “dung-hill outside the city.”
15 tn Or “he does not keep the wicked alive.”
16 tc Many commentators accept the change of “his eyes” to “his right” (reading דִּינוֹ [dino] for עֵינָיו [’enayv]). There is no compelling reason for the change; it makes the line commonplace.
17 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the righteous) has been repeated from the first part of the verse for clarity.
18 tn Heb “he seats them forever and exalts them.” The last verb can be understood as expressing a logical consequence of the preceding action (cf. GKC 328 §111.l = “he seats them forever so that he exalts them”). Or the two verbs can be taken as an adverbial hendiadys whereby the first modifies the second adverbially: “he exalts them by seating them forever” or “when he seats them forever” (cf. GKC 326 §111.d). Some interpret this verse to say that God seats kings on the throne, making a change in subject in the middle of the verse. But it makes better sense to see the righteous as the subject matter throughout – they are not only protected, but are exalted.