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!”
16:11 God abandons me to evil 9 men, 10
and throws 11 me into the hands of wicked men.
16:2 “I have heard many things like these before.
What miserable comforters 12 are you all!
24:2 Men 13 move boundary stones;
they seize the flock and pasture them. 14
10:6 I sent him 15 against a godless 16 nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, 17
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down 18 like dirt in the streets.
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 word עֲוִיל (’avil) means “child,” and this cannot be right here. If it is read as עַוָּל (’avval) as in Job 27:7 it would be the unrighteous.
10 sn Job does not refer here to his friends, but more likely to the wicked men who set about to destroy him and his possessions, or to the rabble in ch. 30.
11 tn The word יִרְטֵנִי (yirteni) does not derive from the root רָטָה (ratah) as would fit the pointing in the MT, but from יָרַט (yarat), cognate to Arabic warrata, “to throw; to hurl.” E. Dhorme (Job, 236) thinks that since the normal form would have been יִירְטֵנִי (yirÿteni), it is probable that one of the yods (י) would have affected the word עֲוִיל (’avil) – but that does not make much sense.
12 tn The expression uses the Piel participle in construct: מְנַחֲמֵי עָמָל (mÿnahame ’amal, “comforters of trouble”), i.e., comforters who increase trouble instead of relieving it. D. W. Thomas translates this “breathers out of trouble” (“A Note on the Hebrew Root naham,” ExpTim 44 [1932/33]: 192).
13 tn The line is short: “they move boundary stones.” So some commentators have supplied a subject, such as “wicked men.” The reason for its being wicked men is that to move the boundary stone was to encroach dishonestly on the lands of others (Deut 19:14; 27:17).
14 tc The LXX reads “and their shepherd.” Many commentators accept this reading. But the MT says that they graze the flocks that they have stolen. The difficulty with the MT reading is that there is no suffix on the final verb – but that is not an insurmountable difference.
15 sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
16 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
17 tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
18 tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”