Job 15:8-10

15:8 Do you listen in on God’s secret council? ¹ 

Do you limit ²  wisdom to yourself?

15:9 What do you know that we don’t know?

What do you understand that we don’t understand? ³ 

15:10 The gray-haired ⁴  and the aged are on our side, ⁵ 

men far older than your father. ⁶ 

Job 15:15

15:15 If God places no trust in his holy ones, ⁷ 

if even the heavens ⁸  are not pure in his eyes,

Isaiah 41:1

The Lord Challenges the Nations

41:1 “Listen to me in silence, you coastlands! ⁹ 

Let the nations find renewed strength!

Let them approach and then speak;

let us come together for debate! ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 41:21-23

The Lord Challenges the Pagan Gods

41:21 “Present your argument,” says the Lord.

“Produce your evidence,” ¹¹  says Jacob’s king. ¹² 

41:22 “Let them produce evidence! Let them tell us what will happen!

Tell us about your earlier predictive oracles, ¹³ 

so we may examine them ¹⁴  and see how they were fulfilled. ¹⁵ 

Or decree for us some future events!

41:23 Predict how future events will turn out, ¹⁶ 

so we might know you are gods.

Yes, do something good or bad,

so we might be frightened and in awe. ¹⁷ 

Hebrews 12:1

The Lord’s Discipline

12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, ¹⁸  we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us,

[15:8]  ¹ tn The meaning of סוֹד (sod) is “confidence.” In the context the implication is “secret counsel” of the Lord God (see Jer 23:18). It is a question of confidence on the part of God, that only wisdom can know (see Prov 8:30,31). Job seemed to them to claim to have access to the mind of God.

[15:8]  ² tn In v. 4 the word meant “limit”; here it has a slightly different sense, namely, “to reserve for oneself.”

[15:9]  ³ tn The last clause simply has “and it is not with us.” It means that one possesses something through knowledge. Note the parallelism of “know” and “with me” in Ps 50:11.

[15:10]  ⁴ tn The participle שָׂב (sav), from שִׂיב (siv, “to have white hair”; 1 Sam 12:2), only occurs elsewhere in the Bible in the Aramaic sections of Ezra. The word יָשִׁישׁ (yashish, “aged”) occurred in 12:12.

[15:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “with us.”

[15:10]  ⁶ tn The line reads: “[men] greater than your father [in] days.” The expression “in days” underscores their age – they were older than Job’s father, and therefore wiser.

[15:15]  ⁷ tn Eliphaz here reiterates the point made in Job 4:18.

[15:15]  ⁸ sn The question here is whether the reference is to material “heavens” (as in Exod 24:10 and Job 25:5), or to heavenly beings. The latter seems preferable in this context.

[41:1]  ⁹ tn Or “islands” (KJV, NIV, CEV); TEV “distant lands”; NLT “lands beyond the sea.”

[41:1]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew term מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat) could be translated “judgment,” but here it seems to refer to the dispute or debate between the Lord and the nations.

[41:21]  ¹¹ tn Heb “strong [words],” see HALOT 870 s.v. *עֲצֻמוֹת.

[41:21]  ¹² sn Apparently this challenge is addressed to the pagan idol gods, see vv. 23-24.

[41:22]  ¹³ tn Heb “As for the former things, tell us what they are!”

[41:22]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “so we might set [them to] our heart.”

[41:22]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and might know their outcome.”

[41:23]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Declare the coming things, with respect to the end.”

[41:23]  ¹⁷ tc The translation assumes the Qere (וְנִרְאֶה [vÿnir’eh], from יָרֵא [yare’], “be afraid”).

[12:1]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “having such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us.”