1:17 While this one was still speaking another messenger arrived and said, “The Chaldeans 6 formed three bands and made a raid 7 on the camels and carried them all away, and they killed the servants with the sword! 8 And I – only I alone – escaped to tell you!”
12:6 But 9 the tents of robbers are peaceful,
and those who provoke God are confident 10 –
who carry their god in their hands. 11
18:9 A trap 12 seizes him by the heel;
a snare 13 grips him.
8:7 They sow the wind,
and so they will reap the whirlwind!
The stalk does not have any standing grain;
it will not produce any flour.
Even if it were to yield grain,
foreigners would swallow it all up.
1 tn The LXX has “the spoilers spoiled them” instead of “the Sabeans swooped down.” The translators might have connected the word to שְָׁבָה (shavah, “to take captive”) rather than שְׁבָא (shÿva’, “Sabeans”), or they may have understood the name as general reference to all types of Bedouin invaders from southern Arabia (HALOT 1381 s.v. שְׁבָא 2.c).
2 tn The Hebrew is simply “fell” (from נָפַל, nafal). To “fall upon” something in war means to attack quickly and suddenly.
3 sn Job’s servants were probably armed and gave resistance, which would be the normal case in that time. This was probably why they were “killed with the sword.”
4 tn Heb “the edge/mouth of the sword”; see T. J. Meek, “Archaeology and a Point of Hebrew Syntax,” BASOR 122 (1951): 31-33.
5 tn The pleonasms in the verse emphasize the emotional excitement of the messenger.
6 sn The name may have been given to the tribes that roamed between the Euphrates and the lands east of the Jordan. These are possibly the nomadic Kaldu who are part of the ethnic Aramaeans. The LXX simply has “horsemen.”
7 tn The verb פָּשַׁט (pashat) means “to hurl themselves” upon something (see Judg 9:33, 41). It was a quick, plundering raid to carry off the camels.
8 tn Heb “with the edge/mouth of the sword.”
9 tn The verse gives the other side of the coin now, the fact that the wicked prosper.
10 tn The plural is used to suggest the supreme degree of arrogant confidence (E. Dhorme, Job, 171).
11 sn The line is perhaps best understood as describing one who thinks he is invested with the power of God.
12 tn This word פָּח (pakh) specifically refers to the snare of the fowler – thus a bird trap. But its plural seems to refer to nets in general (see Job 22:10).
13 tn This word does not occur elsewhere. But another word from the same root means “plait of hair,” and so this term has something to do with a net like a trellis or lattice.