Job 12:24

12:24 He deprives the leaders of the earth ¹ 

of their understanding; ² 

he makes them wander

in a trackless desert waste. ³ 

Job 18:19

18:19 He has neither children nor descendants ⁴  among his people,

no survivor in those places he once stayed. ⁵ 

Job 34:20

34:20 In a moment they die, in the middle of the night, ⁶ 

people ⁷  are shaken ⁸  and they pass away.

The mighty are removed effortlessly. ⁹ 

[12:24]  ¹ tn Heb “the heads of the people of the earth.”

[12:24]  ² tn Heb “heart.”

[12:24]  ³ tn The text has בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ (bÿtohu lo’ darekh): “in waste – no way,” or “in a wasteland [where there is] no way,” thus, “trackless” (see the discussion of negative attributes using לֹא [lo’] in GKC 482 §152.u).

[18:19]  ⁴ tn The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: Moffatt had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the NIV “offspring or descendants.”

[18:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.

[34:20]  ⁷ tn Dhorme transposes “in the middle of the night” with “they pass away” to get a smoother reading. But the MT emphasizes the suddenness by putting both temporal ideas first. E. F. Sutcliffe leaves the order as it stands in the text, but adds a verb “they expire” after “in the middle of the night” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 79ff.).

[34:20]  ⁸ tn R. Gordis (Job, 389) thinks “people” here mean the people who count, the upper class.

[34:20]  ⁹ tn The verb means “to be violently agitated.” There is no problem with the word in this context, but commentators have made suggestions for improving the idea. The proposal that has the most to commend it, if one were inclined to choose a new word, is the change to יִגְוָעוּ (yigva’u, “they expire”; so Ball, Holscher, Fohrer, and others).

[34:20]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “not by hand.” This means without having to use force.