16:11 God abandons me to evil 1 men, 2
and throws 3 me into the hands of wicked men.
10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead, 4
a cudgel with which I angrily punish. 5
10:6 I sent him 6 against a godless 7 nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, 8
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down 9 like dirt in the streets.
51:23 I will put it into the hand of your tormentors 10
who said to you, ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you.’
You made your back like the ground,
and like the street for those who walked over you.”
1 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.
2 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.
3 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.
4 tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.
5 tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (bÿyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
6 sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
7 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
8 tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
9 tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”
10 tn That is, to make them drink it.