Isaiah 16:14

16:14 Now the Lord makes this announcement: “Within exactly three years ¹  Moab’s splendor will disappear, along with all her many people; there will be just a few, insignificant survivors left.” ² 

Job 7:1

The Brevity of Life

7:1 “Does not humanity have hard service ³  on earth?

Are not their days also

like the days of a hired man? ⁴ 

[16:14]  ¹ tn Heb “in three years, like the years of a hired worker.” The three years must be reckoned exactly, just as a hired worker would carefully keep track of the time he had agreed to work for an employer in exchange for a predetermined wage.

[16:14]  ² tn Heb “and the splendor of Moab will be disgraced with all the great multitude, and a small little remnant will not be strong.”

[7:1]  ³ tn The word צָבָא (tsava’) is actually “army”; it can be used for the hard service of military service as well as other toil. As a military term it would include the fixed period of duty (the time) and the hard work (toil). Job here is considering the lot of all humans, not just himself.

[7:1]  ⁴ tn The שָׂכִיר (sakhir) is a hired man, either a man who works for wages, or a mercenary soldier (Jer 46:21). The latter sense may be what is intended here in view of the parallelism, although the next verse seems much broader.