Genesis 3:9

3:9 But the Lord God called to ¹  the man and said to him, “Where are you?” ² 

Genesis 3:17-19

3:17 But to Adam ³  he said,

“Because you obeyed ⁴  your wife

and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,

‘You must not eat from it,’

cursed is the ground ⁵  thanks to you; ⁶ 

in painful toil you will eat ⁷  of it all the days of your life.

3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

but you will eat the grain ⁸  of the field.

3:19 By the sweat of your brow ⁹  you will eat food

until you return to the ground, ¹⁰ 

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust, and to dust you will return.” ¹¹ 

Job 14:1-4

The Brevity of Life

14:1 “Man, born of woman, ¹² 

lives but a few days, ¹³  and they are full of trouble. ¹⁴ 

14:2 He grows up ¹⁵  like a flower and then withers away; ¹⁶ 

he flees like a shadow, and does not remain. ¹⁷ 

14:3 Do you fix your eye ¹⁸  on such a one? ¹⁹ 

And do you bring me ²⁰  before you for judgment?

14:4 Who can make ²¹  a clean thing come from an unclean? ²² 

No one!

Psalms 39:6

39:6 Surely people go through life as mere ghosts. ²³ 

Surely they accumulate worthless wealth

without knowing who will eventually haul it away.” ²⁴ 

Psalms 82:6-7

82:6 I thought, ²⁵  ‘You are gods;

all of you are sons of the Most High.’ ²⁶ 

82:7 Yet you will die like mortals; ²⁷ 

you will fall like all the other rulers.” ²⁸ 

Psalms 103:15

103:15 A person’s life is like grass. ²⁹ 

Like a flower in the field it flourishes,

[3:9]  ¹ tn The Hebrew verb קָרָא (qara’, “to call”) followed by the preposition אֶל־ or לְ (’el- or lÿ, “to, unto”) often carries the connotation of “summon.”

[3:9]  ² sn Where are you? The question is probably rhetorical (a figure of speech called erotesis) rather than literal, because it was spoken to the man, who answers it with an explanation of why he was hiding rather than a location. The question has more the force of “Why are you hiding?”

[3:17]  ³ tn Since there is no article on the word, the personal name is used, rather than the generic “the man” (cf. NRSV).

[3:17]  ⁴ tn The idiom “listen to the voice of” often means “obey.” The man “obeyed” his wife and in the process disobeyed God.

[3:17]  ⁵ sn For the ground to be cursed means that it will no longer yield its bounty as the blessing from God had promised. The whole creation, Paul writes in Rom 8:22, is still groaning under this curse, waiting for the day of redemption.

[3:17]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew phrase בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ (ba’avurekha) is more literally translated “on your account” or “because of you.” The idiomatic “thanks to you” in the translation tries to capture the point of this expression.

[3:17]  ⁷ sn In painful toil you will eat. The theme of eating is prominent throughout Gen 3. The prohibition was against eating from the tree of knowledge. The sin was in eating. The interrogation concerned the eating from the tree of knowledge. The serpent is condemned to eat the dust of the ground. The curse focuses on eating in a “measure for measure” justice. Because the man and the woman sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, God will forbid the ground to cooperate, and so it will be through painful toil that they will eat.

[3:18]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew term עֵשֶׂב (’esev), when referring to human food, excludes grass (eaten by cattle) and woody plants like vines.

[3:19]  ⁹ tn The expression “the sweat of your brow” is a metonymy, the sweat being the result of painful toil in the fields.

[3:19]  ¹⁰ sn Until you return to the ground. The theme of humankind’s mortality is critical here in view of the temptation to be like God. Man will labor painfully to provide food, obviously not enjoying the bounty that creation promised. In place of the abundance of the orchard’s fruit trees, thorns and thistles will grow. Man will have to work the soil so that it will produce the grain to make bread. This will continue until he returns to the soil from which he was taken (recalling the creation in 2:7 with the wordplay on Adam and ground). In spite of the dreams of immortality and divinity, man is but dust (2:7), and will return to dust. So much for his pride.

[3:19]  ¹¹ sn In general, the themes of the curse oracles are important in the NT teaching that Jesus became the cursed one hanging on the tree. In his suffering and death, all the motifs are drawn together: the tree, the sweat, the thorns, and the dust of death (see Ps 22:15). Jesus experienced it all, to have victory over it through the resurrection.

[14:1]  ¹² tn The first of the threefold apposition for אָדָם (’adam, “man”) is “born of a woman.” The genitive (“woman”) after a passive participle denotes the agent of the action (see GKC 359 §116.l).

[14:1]  ¹³ tn The second description is simply “[is] short of days.” The meaning here is that his life is short (“days” being put as the understatement for “years”).

[14:1]  ¹⁴ tn The third expression is “consumed/full/sated – with/of – trouble/restlessness.” The latter word, רֹגֶז (rogez), occurred in Job 3:17; see also the idea in 10:15.

[14:2]  ¹⁵ tn Heb יָצָא (yatsa’, “comes forth”). The perfect verb expresses characteristic action and so is translated by the present tense (see GKC 329 §111.s).

[14:2]  ¹⁶ tn The verb וַיִּמָּל (vayyimmal) is from the root מָלַל (malal, “to languish; to wither”) and not from a different root מָלַל (malal, “to cut off”).

[14:2]  ¹⁷ tn The verb is “and he does not stand.” Here the verb means “to stay fixed; to abide.” The shadow does not stay fixed, but continues to advance toward darkness.

[14:3]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “open the eye on,” an idiom meaning to prepare to judge someone.

[14:3]  ¹⁹ tn The verse opens with אַף־עַל־זֶה (’af-’al-zeh), meaning “even on such a one!” It is an exclamation of surprise.

[14:3]  ²⁰ tn The text clearly has “me” as the accusative; but many wish to emend it to say “him” (אֹתוֹ, ’oto). But D. J. A. Clines rightly rejects this in view of the way Job is written, often moving back and forth from his own tragedy and others’ tragedies (Job [WBC], 283).

[14:4]  ²¹ tn The expression is מִי־יִתֵּן (mi-yitten, “who will give”; see GKC 477 §151.b). Some commentators (H. H. Rowley and A. B. Davidson) wish to take this as the optative formula: “O that a clean might come out of an unclean!” But that does not fit the verse very well, and still requires the addition of a verb. The exclamation here simply implies something impossible – man is unable to attain purity.

[14:4]  ²² sn The point being made is that the entire human race is contaminated by sin, and therefore cannot produce something pure. In this context, since man is born of woman, it is saying that the woman and the man who is brought forth from her are impure. See Ps 51:5; Isa 6:5; and Gen 6:5.

[39:6]  ²³ tn Heb “surely, as an image man walks about.” The preposition prefixed to “image” indicates identity here.

[39:6]  ²⁴ tc Heb “Surely [in] vain they strive, he accumulates and does not know who gathers them.” The MT as it stands is syntactically awkward. The verb forms switch from singular (“walks about”) to plural (“they strive”) and then back to singular (“accumulates and does not know”), even though the subject (generic “man”) remains the same. Furthermore there is no object for the verb “accumulates” and no plural antecedent for the plural pronoun (“them”) attached to “gathers.” These problems can be removed if one emends the text from הֶבֶל יֶהֱמָיוּן (hevel yehemaun, “[in] vain they strive”) to הֶבְלֵי הָמוֹן (hevley hamon, “vain things of wealth”). This assumes a misdivision in the MT and a virtual dittography of vav (ו) between the mem and nun of המון. The present translation follows this emendation.

[82:6]  ²⁵ tn Heb “said.”

[82:6]  ²⁶ sn Normally in the OT the title Most High belongs to the God of Israel, but in this context, where the mythological overtones are so strong, it probably refers to the Canaanite high god El (see v. 1, as well as Isa 14:13).

[82:7]  ²⁷ tn Heb “men.” The point in the context is mortality, however, not maleness.

[82:7]  ²⁸ tn Heb “like one of the rulers.” The comparison does not necessarily imply that they are not rulers. The expression “like one of” can sometimes mean “as one of” (Gen 49:16; Obad 11) or “as any other of” (Judg 16:7, 11).

[103:15]  ²⁹ tn Heb “[as for] mankind, like grass [are] his days.” The Hebrew noun אֱנוֹשׁ (’enosh) is used here generically of human beings. What is said is true of all mankind.