34:10 “Therefore, listen to me, you men of understanding. 1
Far be it from 2 God to do wickedness,
from the Almighty to do evil.
34:11 For he repays a person for his work, 3
and according to the conduct of a person,
he causes the consequences to find him. 4
34:12 Indeed, in truth, God does not act wickedly,
and the Almighty does not pervert justice.
34:13 Who entrusted 5 to him the earth?
And who put him over 6 the whole world?
34:14 If God 7 were to set his heart on it, 8
and gather in his spirit and his breath,
34:15 all flesh would perish together
and human beings would return to dust.
34:16 “If you have 9 understanding, listen to this,
hear what I have to say. 10
34:17 Do you really think 11
that one who hates justice can govern? 12
And will you declare guilty
the supremely righteous 13 One,
1 tn Heb “men of heart.” The “heart” is used for the capacity to understand and make the proper choice. It is often translated “mind.”
2 tn For this construction, see Job 27:5.
3 tn Heb “for the work of man, he [= God] repays him.”
4 tn Heb “he causes it to find him.” The text means that God will cause a man to find (or receive) the consequences of his actions.
5 tn The verb פָּקַד (paqad) means “to visit; to appoint; to number.” Here it means “to entrust” for care and governing. The implication would be that there would be someone higher than God – which is what Elihu is repudiating by the rhetorical question. No one entrusted God with this.
6 tn The preposition is implied from the first half of the verse.
7 tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
8 tc This is the reading following the Qere. The Kethib and the Syriac and the LXX suggest a reading יָשִׂים (yasim, “if he [God] recalls”). But this would require leaving out “his heart,” and would also require redividing the verse to make “his spirit” the object. It makes better parallelism, but may require too many changes.
9 tn The phrase “you have” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.
10 tn Heb “the sound of my words.”
11 tn The force of הַאַף (ha’af) is “Is it truly the case?” The point is being made that if Job were right God could not be judging the world.
12 tn The verb חָבַשׁ (khavash) has the basic idea of “to bind,” as in binding on the yoke, and then in the sense of subduing people under authority (cf. Assyrian absanu). The imperfect verb here is best expressed with the potential nuance.
13 tn The two words could be taken separately, but they seem to form a fine nominal hendiadys, because the issue is God’s justice. So the word for power becomes the modifier.