15:28 he lived in ruined towns 1
and in houses where 2 no one lives,
where they are ready to crumble into heaps. 3
5:8 Those who accumulate houses are as good as dead, 4
those who also accumulate landed property 5
until there is no land left, 6
and you are the only landowners remaining within the land. 7
1 sn K&D 11:266 rightly explains that these are not cities that he, the wicked, has destroyed, but that were destroyed by a judgment on wickedness. Accordingly, Eliphaz is saying that the wicked man is willing to risk such a curse in his confidence in his prosperity (see further H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 113).
2 tn The verbal idea serves here to modify “houses” as a relative clause; so a relative pronoun is added.
3 tn The Hebrew has simply “they are made ready for heaps.” The LXX translates it, “what they have prepared, let others carry away.” This would involve a complete change of the last word.
4 tn Heb “Woe [to] those who make a house touch a house.” The exclamation הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death.
5 tn Heb “[who] bring a field near a field.”
6 tn Heb “until the end of the place”; NASB “until there is no more room.”
7 tn Heb “and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.”
8 tn Heb “to the people of antiquity.”
9 tn Heb “like.” The translation assumes an emendation of the preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like”), to בְּ (bÿ, “in, among”).
10 tn Heb “and I will place beauty.” This reading makes little sense; many, following the lead of the LXX, emend the text to read “nor will you stand” with the negative particle before the preceding verb understood by ellipsis; see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:73. D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 2:47) offers another alternative, taking the apparent first person verb form as an archaic second feminine form and translating “nor radiate splendor.”