4:16 It stands still, 1
but I cannot recognize 2 its appearance;
an image is before my eyes,
and I hear a murmuring voice: 3
11:20 But the eyes of the wicked fail, 4
and escape 5 eludes them;
their one hope 6 is to breathe their last.” 7
30:1 “But now they mock me, those who are younger 8 than I,
whose fathers I disdained too much 9
to put with my sheep dogs. 10
1 tc The LXX has the first person of the verb: “I arose and perceived it not, I looked and there was no form before my eyes; but I only heard a breath and a voice.”
2 tn The imperfect verb is to be classified as potential imperfect. Eliphaz is unable to recognize the figure standing before him.
3 sn The colon reads “a silence and a voice I hear.” Some have rendered it “there is a silence, and then I hear.” The verb דָּמַם (damam) does mean “remain silent” (Job 29:21; 31:34) and then also “cease.” The noun דְּמָמָה (dÿmamah, “calm”) refers to the calm after the storm in Ps 107:29. Joined with the true object of the verb, “voice,” it probably means something like stillness or murmuring or whispering here. It is joined to “voice” with a conjunction, indicating that it is a hendiadys, “murmur and a voice” or a “murmuring voice.”
4 tn The verb כָּלָה (kalah) means “to fail, cease, fade away.” The fading of the eyes, i.e., loss of sight, loss of life’s vitality, indicates imminent death.
5 tn Heb a “place of escape” (with this noun pattern). There is no place to escape to because they all perish.
6 tn The word is to be interpreted as a metonymy; it represents what is hoped for.
7 tn Heb “the breathing out of the soul”; cf. KJV, ASV “the giving up of the ghost.” The line is simply saying that the brightest hope that the wicked have is death.
7 tn Heb “smaller than I for days.”
8 tn Heb “who I disdained their fathers to set…,” meaning “whose fathers I disdained to set.” The relative clause modifies the young fellows who mock; it explains that Job did not think highly enough of them to put them with the dogs. The next verse will explain why.
9 sn Job is mocked by young fellows who come from low extraction. They mocked their elders and their betters. The scorn is strong here – dogs were despised as scavengers.