7:17 “What is mankind 1 that you make so much of them, 2
and that you pay attention 3 to them?
14:13 “O that 4 you would hide me in Sheol, 5
and conceal me till your anger has passed! 6
O that you would set me a time 7
and then remember me! 8
1 tn The verse is a rhetorical question; it is intended to mean that man is too little for God to be making so much over him in all this.
2 tn The Piel verb is a factitive meaning “to magnify.” The English word “magnify” might not be the best translation here, for God, according to Job, is focusing inordinately on him. It means to magnify in thought, appreciate, think highly of. God, Job argues, is making too much of mankind by devoting so much bad attention on them.
3 tn The expression “set your heart on” means “concentrate your mind on” or “pay attention to.”
4 tn The optative mood is introduced here again with מִי יִתֵּן (mi yitten), literally, “who will give?”
5 sn Sheol in the Bible refers to the place where the dead go. But it can have different categories of meaning: death in general, the grave, or the realm of the departed spirits [hell]. A. Heidel shows that in the Bible when hell is in view the righteous are not there – it is the realm of the departed spirits of the wicked. When the righteous go to Sheol, the meaning is usually the grave or death. See chapter 3 in A. Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and the Old Testament Parallels.
6 tn The construction used here is the preposition followed by the infinitive construct followed by the subjective genitive, forming an adverbial clause of time.
7 tn This is the same word used in v. 5 for “limit.”
8 tn The verb זָכַר (zakhar) means more than simply “to remember.” In many cases, including this one, it means “to act on what is remembered,” i.e., deliver or rescue (see Gen 8:1, “and God remembered Noah”). In this sense, a prayer “remember me” is a prayer for God to act upon his covenant promises.