Job 12:12

12:12 Is not wisdom found among the aged? ¹ 

Does not long life bring understanding?

Job 42:17

42:17 And so Job died, old and full of days.

Job 14:1

The Brevity of Life

14:1 “Man, born of woman, ² 

lives but a few days, ³  and they are full of trouble. ⁴ 

Job 15:10

15:10 The gray-haired ⁵  and the aged are on our side, ⁶ 

men far older than your father. ⁷ 

Job 29:18

Job’s Confidence

29:18 “Then I thought, ‘I will die in my own home, ⁸ 

my days as numerous as the grains of sand. ⁹ 

Job 32:7

32:7 I said to myself, ‘Age ¹⁰  should speak, ¹¹ 

and length of years ¹²  should make wisdom known.’

Job 6:3

6:3 But because it is heavier ¹³  than the sand ¹⁴  of the sea,

that is why my words have been wild. ¹⁵ 

Job 2:13

2:13 Then they sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, yet no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain ¹⁶  was very great. ¹⁷ 

[12:12]  ¹ tn The statement in the Hebrew Bible simply has “among the aged – wisdom.” Since this seems to be more the idea of the friends than of Job, scholars have variously tried to rearrange it. Some have proposed that Job is citing his friends: “With the old men, you say, is wisdom” (Budde, Gray, Hitzig). Others have simply made it a question (Weiser). But others take לֹא (lo’) from the previous verse and make it the negative here, to say, “wisdom is not….” But Job will draw on the wisdom of the aged, only with discernment, for ultimately all wisdom is with God.

[14:1]  ² 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]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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.

[15:10]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn Heb “with us.”

[15:10]  ⁵ 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.

[29:18]  ⁴ tc The expression in the MT is “with my nest.” The figure is satisfactory for the context – a home with all the young together, a picture of unity and safety. In Isa 16:2 the word can mean “nestlings,” and with the preposition “with” that might be the meaning here, except that his children had grown up and lived in their own homes. The figure cannot be pushed too far. But the verse apparently has caused enormous problems, because the versions offer a variety of readings and free paraphrases. The LXX has “My age shall grow old as the stem of a palm tree, I shall live a long time.” The Vulgate has, “In my nest I shall die and like the palm tree increase my days.” G. R. Driver found an Egyptian word meaning “strength” (“Birds in the Old Testament,” PEQ 87 [1955]: 138-39). Several read “in a ripe old age” instead of “in my nest” (Pope, Dhorme; see P. P. Saydon, “Philological and Textual Notes to the Maltese Translation of the Old Testament,” CBQ 23 [1961]: 252). This requires the verb זָקַן (zaqan, “be old”), i.e., בִּזְקוּנַי (bizqunay, “in my old age”) instead of קִנִּי (qinni, “my nest”). It has support from the LXX.

[29:18]  ⁵ tc For חוֹל (khol, “sand”) the LXX has a word that is “like the palm tree,” but which could also be translated “like the phoenix” (cf. NAB, NRSV). This latter idea was developed further in rabbinical teaching (see R. Gordis, Job, 321). See also M. Dahood, “Nest and phoenix in Job 29:18,” Bib 48 (1967): 542-44. But the MT yields an acceptable sense here.

[32:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “days.”

[32:7]  ⁶ tn The imperfect here is to be classified as an obligatory imperfect.

[32:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “abundance of years.”

[6:3]  ⁶ tn E. Dhorme (Job, 76) notes that כִּי־עַתָּה (ki ’attah) has no more force than “but”; and that the construction is the same as in 17:4; 20:19-21; 23:14-15. The initial clause is causative, and the second half of the verse gives the consequence (“because”…“that is why”). Others take 3a as the apodosis of v. 2, and translate it “for now it would be heavier…” (see A. B. Davidson, Job, 43).

[6:3]  ⁷ sn The point of the comparison with the sand of the sea is that the sand is immeasurable. So the grief of Job cannot be measured.

[6:3]  ⁸ tn The verb לָעוּ (la’u) is traced by E. Dhorme (Job, 76) to a root לָעָה (la’ah), cognate to an Arabic root meaning “to chatter.” He shows how modern Hebrew has a meaning for the word “to stammer out.” But that does not really fit Job’s outbursts. The idea in the context is rather that of speaking wildly, rashly, or charged with grief. This would trace the word to a hollow or geminate word and link it to Arabic “talk wildly” (see D. J. A. Clines, Job [WBC], 158). In the older works the verb was taken from a geminate root meaning “to suck” or “to swallow” (cf. KJV), but that yields a very difficult sense to the line.

[2:13]  ⁷ tn The word כְּאֵב (kÿ’ev) means “pain” – both mental and physical pain. The translation of “grief” captures only part of its emphasis.

[2:13]  ⁸ sn The three friends went into a more severe form of mourning, one that is usually reserved for a death. E. Dhorme says it is a display of grief in its most intense form (Job, 23); for one of them to speak before the sufferer spoke would have been wrong.