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!
31:32 But 5 no stranger had to spend the night outside,
for I opened my doors to the traveler 6 –
41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? 7
Its teeth all around are fearsome.
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 This verse forms another parenthesis. Job stops almost at every point now in the conditional clauses to affirm his purity and integrity.
6 tn The word in the MT, אֹרחַ (’orakh, “way”), is a contraction from אֹרֵחַ (’oreakh, “wayfarer”); thus, “traveler.” The same parallelism is found in Jer 14:8. The reading here “on/to the road” is meaningless otherwise.
9 tn Heb “his face.”