15:8 Do you listen in on God’s secret council? 1
Do you limit 2 wisdom to yourself?
15:4 But you even break off 3 piety, 4
and hinder 5 meditation 6 before God.
36:27 He draws up drops of water;
they distill 7 the rain into its mist, 8
1 tn The meaning of סוֹד (sod) is “confidence.” In the context the implication is “secret counsel” of the
2 tn In v. 4 the word meant “limit”; here it has a slightly different sense, namely, “to reserve for oneself.”
3 tn The word פָּרַר (parar) in the Hiphil means “to annul; to frustrate; to destroy; to break,” and this fits the line quite well. The NEB reflects G. R. Driver’s suggestion of an Arabic cognate meaning “to expel; to banish” (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 77).
4 tn Heb “fear,” “reverence.”
5 tn The word גָּרַע (gara’) means “to diminish,” regard as insignificant, occasionally with the sense of “pull down” (Deut 4:2; 13:1). It is here that Eliphaz is portraying Job as a menace to the religion of society because they dissuade people from seeking God.
6 tn The word שִׂיחָה (sikhah) is “complaint; cry; meditation.” Job would be influencing people to challenge God and not to meditate before or pray to him.
5 tn The verb means “to filter; to refine,” and so a plural subject with the drops of water as the subject will not work. So many read the singular, “he distills.”
6 tn This word עֵד (’ed) occurs also in Gen 2:6. The suggestion has been that instead of a mist it represents an underground watercourse that wells up to water the ground.