2:6 So the Lord said to Satan, “All right, 1 he is 2 in your power; 3 only preserve 4 his life.”
6:11 What is my strength, that I should wait? 5
and what is my end, 6
that I should prolong my life?
7:11 “Therefore, 7 I will not refrain my mouth; 8
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain 9 in the bitterness of my soul.
11:20 But the eyes of the wicked fail, 10
and escape 11 eludes them;
their one hope 12 is to breathe their last.” 13
12:10 in whose hand 14 is the life 15 of every creature
and the breath of all the human race. 16
18:4 You who tear yourself 17 to pieces in your anger,
will the earth be abandoned 18 for your sake?
Or will a rock be moved from its place? 19
24:12 From the city the dying 20 groan,
and the wounded 21 cry out for help,
but God charges no one with wrongdoing. 22
27:8 For what hope does the godless have when he is cut off, 23
when God takes away his life? 24
1 tn The particle הִנּוֹ (hinno) is literally, “here he is!” God presents Job to Satan, with the restriction on preserving Job’s life.
2 tn The LXX has “I deliver him up to you.”
3 tn Heb “hand.”
4 sn The irony of the passage comes through with this choice of words. The verb שָׁמַר (shamar) means “to keep; to guard; to preserve.” The exceptive clause casts Satan in the role of a savior – he cannot destroy this life but must protect it.
5 sn Now, in vv. 11-13, Job proceeds to describe his hopeless condition. In so doing, he is continuing his defense of his despair and lament. The section begins with these rhetorical questions in which Job affirms that he does not have the strength to wait for the blessings that Eliphaz is talking about.
6 tn The word translated “my end” is קִצִּי (qitsi). It refers to the termination of his life. In Ps 39:5 it is parallel to “the measure of my days.” In a sense, Job is asking what future he has. To him, the “end” of his affliction can only be death.
9 tn “Also I” has been rendered frequently as “therefore,” introducing a conclusion. BDB 168-69 s.v. גַמּ lists Ps 52:7 [5] as a parallel, but it also could be explained as an adversative.
10 sn “Mouth” here is metonymical for what he says – he will not withhold his complaints. Peake notes that in this section Job comes very close to doing what Satan said he would do. If he does not curse God to his face, he certainly does cast off restraints to his lament. But here Job excuses himself in advance of the lament.
11 tn The verb is not limited to mental musing; it is used for pouring out a complaint or a lament (see S. Mowinckel, “The Verb siah and the Nouns siah, siha,” ST 15 [1961]: 1-10).
13 tn The verb כָּלָה (kalah) means “to fail, cease, fade away.” The fading of the eyes, i.e., loss of sight, loss of life’s vitality, indicates imminent death.
14 tn Heb a “place of escape” (with this noun pattern). There is no place to escape to because they all perish.
15 tn The word is to be interpreted as a metonymy; it represents what is hoped for.
16 tn Heb “the breathing out of the soul”; cf. KJV, ASV “the giving up of the ghost.” The line is simply saying that the brightest hope that the wicked have is death.
17 tn The construction with the relative clause includes a resumptive pronoun referring to God: “who in his hand” = “in whose hand.”
18 tn The two words נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) and רוּחַ (ruakh) are synonymous in general. They could be translated “soul” and “spirit,” but “soul” is not precise for נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh), and so “life” is to be preferred. Since that is the case for the first half of the verse, “breath” will be preferable in the second part.
19 tn Human life is made of “flesh” and “spirit.” So here the line reads “and the spirit of all flesh of man.” If the text had simply said “all flesh,” that would have applied to all flesh in which there is the breath of life (see Gen 6:17; 7:15). But to limit this to human beings requires the qualification with “man.”
21 tn The construction uses the participle and then 3rd person suffixes: “O tearer of himself in his anger.” But it is clearly referring to Job, and so the direct second person pronouns should be used to make that clear. The LXX is an approximation or paraphrase here: “Anger has possessed you, for what if you should die – would under heaven be desolate, or shall the mountains be overthrown from their foundations?”
22 tn There is a good deal of study on this word in this passage, and in Job in general. M. Dahood suggested a root עָזַב (’azav) meaning “to arrange; to rearrange” (“The Root ’zb II in Job,” JBL 78 [1959]: 303-9). But this is refuted by H. G. M. Williamson, “A Reconsideration of ’zb II in Biblical Hebrew,” ZAW 97 (1985): 74-85.
23 sn Bildad is asking if Job thinks the whole moral order of the world should be interrupted for his sake, that he may escape the punishment for wickedness.
25 tc The MT as pointed reads “from the city of men they groan.” Most commentators change one vowel in מְתִים (mÿtim) to get מֵתִים (metim) to get the active participle, “the dying.” This certainly fits the parallelism better, although sense could be made out of the MT.
26 tn Heb “the souls of the wounded,” which here refers to the wounded themselves.
27 tc The MT has the noun תִּפְלָה (tiflah) which means “folly; tastelessness” (cf. 1:22). The verb, which normally means “to place; to put,” would then be rendered “to impute; to charge.” This is certainly a workable translation in the context. Many commentators have emended the text, changing the noun to תְּפִלָּה (tÿfillah, “prayer”), and so then also the verb יָשִׂים (yasim, here “charges”) to יִשְׁמַע (yishma’, “hears”). It reads: “But God does not hear the prayer” – referring to the groans.
29 tn The verb יִבְצָע (yivtsa’) means “to cut off.” It could be translated transitively or intransitively – the latter is better here (“when he is cut off”). Since the next line speaks of prayer, some have thought this verse should be about prayer. Mandelkern, in his concordance (p. 228b), suggested the verb should be “when he prays” (reading יִפְגַּע [yifga’] in place of יִבְצָע [yivtsa’]).
30 tn The verb יֵשֶׁל (yeshel) is found only here. It has been related spoils [or sheaves]”); שָׁאַל (sha’al, “to ask”); נָשָׂא (nasa’, “to lift up” [i.e., pray]); and a host of others.