14:3 Do you fix your eye 1 on such a one? 2
And do you bring me 3 before you for judgment?
14:1 “Man, born of woman, 4
lives but a few days, 5 and they are full of trouble. 6
24:14 Before daybreak 7 the murderer rises up;
he kills the poor and the needy;
in the night he is 8 like a thief. 9
17:13 Though these people make an uproar as loud as the roaring of powerful waves, 10
when he shouts at 11 them, they will flee to a distant land,
driven before the wind like dead weeds on the hills,
or like dead thistles 12 before a strong gale.
12:20 He will not break a bruised reed or extinguish a smoldering wick,
until he brings justice to victory.
1 tn Heb “open the eye on,” an idiom meaning to prepare to judge someone.
2 tn The verse opens with אַף־עַל־זֶה (’af-’al-zeh), meaning “even on such a one!” It is an exclamation of surprise.
3 tn The text clearly has “me” as the accusative; but many wish to emend it to say “him” (אֹתוֹ, ’oto). But D. J. A. Clines rightly rejects this in view of the way Job is written, often moving back and forth from his own tragedy and others’ tragedies (Job [WBC], 283).
4 tn The first of the threefold apposition for אָדָם (’adam, “man”) is “born of a woman.” The genitive (“woman”) after a passive participle denotes the agent of the action (see GKC 359 §116.l).
5 tn The second description is simply “[is] short of days.” The meaning here is that his life is short (“days” being put as the understatement for “years”).
6 tn The third expression is “consumed/full/sated – with/of – trouble/restlessness.” The latter word, רֹגֶז (rogez), occurred in Job 3:17; see also the idea in 10:15.
7 tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.
8 tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).
9 sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.
10 tn Heb “the peoples are in an uproar like the uproar of mighty waters.”
11 tn Or “rebukes.” The verb and related noun are used in theophanies of God’s battle cry which terrifies his enemies. See, for example, Pss 18:15; 76:7; 106:9; Isa 50:2; Nah 1:4, and A. Caquot, TDOT 3:49-53.
12 tn Or perhaps “tumbleweed” (NAB, NIV, CEV); KJV “like a rolling thing.”