39:29 From there it spots 1 its prey, 2
its eyes gaze intently from a distance.
9:26 They glide by 3 like reed 4 boats,
like an eagle that swoops 5 down on its prey. 6
12:11 Does not the ear test words,
as 7 the tongue 8 tastes food? 9
21:25 And another man 10 dies in bitterness of soul, 11
never having tasted 12 anything good.
31:17 If I ate my morsel of bread myself,
and did not share any of it with orphans 13 –
36:31 It is by these that he judges 14 the nations
and supplies food in abundance.
38:41 Who prepares prey for the raven,
when its young cry out to God
and wander about 15 for lack of food?
1 tn The word means “search,” but can be used for a wide range of matters, including spying.
2 tn Heb “food.”
3 tn Heb “they flee.”
4 tn The word אֵבֶה (’eveh) means “reed, papyrus,” but it is a different word than was in 8:11. What is in view here is a light boat made from bundles of papyrus that glides swiftly along the Nile (cf. Isa 18:2 where papyrus vessels and swiftness are associated).
5 tn The verb יָטוּשׂ (yatus) is also a hapax legomenon; the Aramaic cognate means “to soar; to hover in flight.” The sentence here requires the idea of swooping down while in flight.
6 tn Heb “food.”
5 tn The ו (vav) introduces the comparison here (see 5:7; 11:12); see GKC 499 §161.a.
6 tn Heb “the palate.”
7 tn The final preposition with its suffix is to be understood as a pleonastic dativus ethicus and not translated (see GKC 439 §135.i).
7 tn The expression “this (v. 23)…and this” (v. 25) means “one…the other.”
8 tn The text literally has “and this [man] dies in soul of bitterness.” Some simply reverse it and translate “in the bitterness of soul.” The genitive “bitterness” may be an attribute adjective, “with a bitter soul.”
9 tn Heb “eaten what is good.” It means he died without having enjoyed the good life.
9 tn Heb “and an orphan did not eat from it.”
11 tn The verb is יָדִין (yadin, “he judges”). Houbigant proposedיָזוּן (yazun, “he nourishes”). This has found wide acceptance among commentators (cf. NAB). G. R. Driver retained the MT but gave a meaning “enriches” to the verb (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 88ff.).
13 tn The verse is difficult, making some suspect that a line has dropped out. The little birds in the nest hardly go wandering about looking for food. Dhorme suggest “and stagger for lack of food.”