31:26 if I looked at the sun 14 when it was shining,
and the moon advancing as a precious thing,
31:27 so that my heart was secretly enticed,
and my hand threw them a kiss from my mouth, 15
31:28 then this 16 also would be iniquity to be judged, 17
for I would have been false 18 to God above.
1 tn Heb “lest you lift up your eyes.” In the Hebrew text vv. 16-19 are subordinated to “Be careful” in v. 15, but this makes for an unduly long sentence in English.
2 tn Or “heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven(s)” or “sky” depending on the context.
3 tn Heb “all the host of heaven.”
4 tn In the Hebrew text the verbal sequence in v. 19 is “lest you look up…and see…and be seduced…and worship them…and serve them.” However, the first two actions are not prohibited in and of themselves. The prohibition pertains to the final three actions. The first two verbs describe actions that are logically subordinate to the following actions and can be treated as temporal or circumstantial: “lest, looking up…and seeing…, you are seduced.” See Joüon 2:635 §168.h.
5 tn Or “allotted.”
6 tn Or “nations.”
7 tn Heb “under all the heaven.”
8 tc The MT reads “and to the sun,” thus including the sun, the moon, and other heavenly spheres among the gods. However, Theodotion and Lucian read “or to the sun,” suggesting perhaps that the sun and the other heavenly bodies are not in the category of actual deities.
9 tn Heb “which I have not commanded you.” The words “to worship” are supplied in the translation for clarification.
10 tn Heb “gates.”
11 tn Heb “does the evil in the eyes of the
12 tn Heb “the
13 tn The verb אָהַב (’ahav, “love”) here and commonly elsewhere in the Book of Deuteronomy speaks of God’s elective grace toward Israel. See note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.
14 tn Heb “light”; but parallel to the moon it is the sun. This section speaks of false worship of the sun and the moon.
15 tn Heb “and my hand kissed my mouth.” The idea should be that of “my mouth kissed my hand.” H. H. Rowley suggests that the hand was important in waving or throwing the kisses of homage to the sun and the moon, and so it receives the focus. This is the only place in the OT that refers to such a custom. Outside the Bible it was known, however.
16 tn Heb “it.”
17 tn See v. 11 for the construction. In Deut 17:2ff. false worship of heavenly bodies is a capital offense. In this passage, Job is talking about just a momentary glance at the sun or moon and the brief lapse into a pagan thought. But it is still sin.
18 tn The verb כָּחַשׁ (kakhash) in the Piel means “to deny.” The root meaning is “to deceive; to disappoint; to grow lean.” Here it means that he would have failed or proven unfaithful because his act would have been a denial of God.
19 tn Heb “that went out of our mouth.” I.e., everything we said, promised, or vowed.
20 tn Heb “sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.” The expressions have been combined to simplify and shorten the sentence. The same combination also occurs in vv. 18, 19.
21 tn Heb “saw [or experienced] no disaster/trouble/harm.”
22 sn The expression and gave them over suggests similarities to the judgment on the nations described by Paul in Rom 1:18-32.
23 tn Or “stars.”
24 tn The two terms for sacrifices “semantically reinforce one another and are here combined essentially for emphasis” (L&N 53.20).
25 tn The Greek construction anticipates a negative reply which is indicated in the translation by the ‘tag’ question, “was it?”
26 tn Or “tent.”
27 sn Moloch was a Canaanite deity who was believed to be the god of the sky and the sun.
28 tc ‡ Most
29 sn Rephan (῾Ραιφάν, RJaifan) was a pagan deity. The term was a name for Saturn. It was variously spelled in the
30 tn Or “I will make you move.”
31 sn A quotation from Amos 5:25-27. This constituted a prediction of the exile.