16:10 People 1 have opened their mouths against me,
they have struck my cheek in scorn; 2
they unite 3 together against me.
26:8 He locks the waters in his clouds,
and the clouds do not burst with the weight of them.
29:19 My roots reach the water,
and the dew lies on my branches all night long.
31:32 But 4 no stranger had to spend the night outside,
for I opened my doors to the traveler 5 –
1 tn “People” is supplied; the Hebrew verb is third plural. The colon reads, “they have opened against me with [the preposition is instrumental] their mouth.” The gestures here follow the animal imagery; they reflect destructive opposition and attack (see Ps 22:13 among others).
2 tn This is an “insult” or a “reproach.”
3 tn The verb יִתְמַלָּאוּן (yitmalla’un) is taken from מָלֵא (male’), “to be full,” and in this stem, “to pile up; to press together.” The term has a military connotation, such as “to mobilize” (see D. W. Thomas, “ml'w in Jeremiah 4:5 : a military term,” JJS 3 [1952]: 47-52). Job sees himself surrounded by enemies who persecute him and mock him.
4 tn This verse forms another parenthesis. Job stops almost at every point now in the conditional clauses to affirm his purity and integrity.
5 tn The word in the MT, אֹרחַ (’orakh, “way”), is a contraction from אֹרֵחַ (’oreakh, “wayfarer”); thus, “traveler.” The same parallelism is found in Jer 14:8. The reading here “on/to the road” is meaningless otherwise.