3:10 because it 1 did not shut the doors 2 of my mother’s womb on me, 3
nor did it hide trouble 4 from my eyes!
16:11 God abandons me to evil 5 men, 6
and throws 7 me into the hands of wicked men.
41:15 Its back 8 has rows of shields,
shut up closely 9 together as with a seal;
1 tn The subject is still “that night.” Here, at the end of this first section, Job finally expresses the crime of that night – it did not hinder his birth.
2 sn This use of doors for the womb forms an implied comparison; the night should have hindered conception (see Gen 20:18 and 1 Sam 1:5).
3 tn The Hebrew has simply “my belly [= womb].” The suffix on the noun must be objective – it was the womb of Job’s mother in which he lay before his birth. See however N. C. Habel, “The Dative Suffix in Job 33:13,” Bib 63 (1982): 258-59, who thinks it is deliberately ambiguous.
4 tn The word עָמָל (’amal) means “work, heavy labor, agonizing labor, struggle” with the idea of fatigue and pain.
5 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.
6 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.
7 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.
9 tc The MT has גַּאֲוָה (ga’avah, “his pride”), but the LXX, Aquila, and the Vulgate all read גַּוּוֹ (gavvo, “his back”). Almost all the modern English versions follow the variant reading, speaking about “his [or its] back.”
10 tn Instead of צָר (tsar, “closely”) the LXX has צֹר (tsor, “stone”) to say that the seal was rock hard.