21:32 And when he is carried to the tombs,
and watch is kept 1 over the funeral mound, 2
29:2 “O that I could be 3 as 4 I was
in the months now gone, 5
in the days 6 when God watched 7 over me,
1 tn The verb says “he will watch.” The subject is unspecified, so the translation is passive.
2 tn The Hebrew word refers to the tumulus, the burial mound that is erected on the spot where the person is buried.
3 tn The optative is here expressed with מִי־יִתְּנֵנִי (mi-yittÿneni, “who will give me”), meaning, “O that I [could be]…” (see GKC 477 §151.b).
4 tn The preposition כּ (kaf) is used here in an expression describing the state desired, especially in the former time (see GKC 376 §118.u).
5 tn The expression is literally “months of before [or of old; or past].” The word קֶדֶם (qedem) is intended here to be temporal and not spatial; it means days that preceded the present.
6 tn The construct state (“days of”) governs the independent sentence that follows (see GKC 422 §130.d): “as the days of […] God used to watch over me.”
7 tn The imperfect verb here has a customary nuance – “when God would watch over me” (back then), or “when God used to watch over me.”