20:29 The glory 1 of young men is their strength,
and the splendor 2 of old men is gray hair. 3
32:6 So Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite spoke up: 4
“I am young, 5 but you are elderly;
that is why I was fearful, 6
and afraid to explain 7 to you what I know.
32:7 I said to myself, ‘Age 8 should speak, 9
and length of years 10 should make wisdom known.’
1 tn The Hebrew term תִּפְאֶרֶת (tif’eret) means “beauty; glory”; in a context like this it means “honor” in the sense of glorying or boasting (BDB 802 s.v. 3.b).
2 tn The Hebrew term הֲדַר (hadar), the noun in construct, means “splendor; honor; ornament.” The latter sense is used here, since grey hair is like a crown on the head.
3 sn “Grey hair” is a metonymy of adjunct; it represents everything valuable about old age – dignity, wisdom, honor, experience, as well as worry and suffering of life. At the very least, since they survived, they must know something. At the most, they were the sages and elders of the people.
4 tn Heb “answered and said.”
5 tn The text has “small in days.”
6 tn The verb זָחַלְתִּי (zakhalti) is found only here in the OT, but it is found in a ninth century Aramaic inscription as well as in Biblical Aramaic. It has the meaning “to be timid” (see H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 208).
7 tn The Piel infinitive with the preposition (מֵחַוֹּת, mekhavvot) means “from explaining.” The phrase is the complement: “explain” what Elihu feared.
8 tn Heb “days.”
9 tn The imperfect here is to be classified as an obligatory imperfect.
10 tn Heb “abundance of years.”