20:7 he will perish forever, like his own excrement; 1
those who used to see him will say, ‘Where is he?’
20:8 Like a dream he flies away, never again to be found, 2
and like a vision of the night he is put to flight.
20:9 People 3 who had seen him will not see him again,
and the place where he was
will recognize him no longer.
37:35 I have seen ruthless evil men 4
growing in influence, like a green tree grows in its native soil. 5
37:36 But then one passes by, and suddenly they have disappeared! 6
I looked for them, but they could not be found.
1 tn There have been attempts to change the word here to “like a whirlwind,” or something similar. But many argue that there is no reason to remove a coarse expression from Zophar.
2 tn Heb “and they do not find him.” The verb has no expressed subject, and so here is equivalent to a passive. The clause itself is taken adverbially in the sentence.
3 tn Heb “the eye that had seen him.” Here a part of the person (the eye, the instrument of vision) is put by metonymy for the entire person.
4 tn The Hebrew uses the representative singular again here.
5 tn Heb “being exposed [?] like a native, luxuriant.” The Hebrew form מִתְעָרֶה (mit’areh) appears to be a Hitpael participle from עָרָה (’arah, “be exposed”), but this makes no sense in this context. Perhaps the form is a dialectal variant of מִתְעָלָה (“giving oneself an air of importance”; see Jer 51:3), from עָלָה (’alah, “go up”; see P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 [WBC], 296). The noun אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh, “native, full citizen”) refers elsewhere to people, but here, where it is collocated with “luxuriant, green,” it probably refers to a tree growing in native soil.
6 tn Heb “and he passes by and, look, he is not [there].” The subject of the verb “passes by” is probably indefinite, referring to any passerby. Some prefer to change the form to first person, “and I passed by” (cf. NEB; note the first person verbal forms in preceding verse and in the following line).