Job 14:20

14:20 You overpower him once for all, ¹ 

and he departs;

you change ²  his appearance

and send him away.

Job 21:11

21:11 They allow their children to run ³  like a flock;

their little ones dance about.

Job 22:9

22:9 you sent widows away empty-handed,

and the arms ⁴  of the orphans you crushed. ⁵ 

Job 28:9

28:9 On the flinty rock man has set to work ⁶  with his hand;

he has overturned mountains at their bases. ⁷ 

Job 38:35

38:35 Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go?

Will they say to you, ‘Here we are’?

Job 39:3

39:3 They crouch, they bear ⁸  their young,

they bring forth the offspring they have carried. ⁹ 

[14:20]  ¹ tn D. W. Thomas took נֵצַח (netsakh) here to have a superlative meaning: “You prevail utterly against him” (“Use of netsach as a superlative in Hebrew,” JSS 1 [1956]: 107). Death would be God’s complete victory over him.

[14:20]  ² tn The subject of the participle is most likely God in this context. Some take it to be man, saying “his face changes.” Others emend the text to read an imperfect verb, but this is not necessary.

[21:11]  ³ tn The verb שָׁלַח (shalakh) means “to send forth,” but in the Piel “to release; to allow to run free.” The picture of children frolicking in the fields and singing and dancing is symbolic of peaceful, prosperous times.

[22:9]  ⁵ tn The “arms of the orphans” are their helps or rights on which they depended for support.

[22:9]  ⁶ tn The verb in the text is Pual: יְדֻכָּא (yÿdukka’, “was [were] crushed”). GKC 388 §121.b would explain “arms” as the complement of a passive imperfect. But if that is too difficult, then a change to Piel imperfect, second person, will solve the difficulty. In its favor is the parallelism, the use of the second person all throughout the section, and the reading in all the versions. The versions may have simply assumed the easier reading, however.

[28:9]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew verb is simply “to stretch out; to send” (שָׁלח, shalakh). With יָדוֹ (yado, “his hand”) the idea is that of laying one’s hand on the rock, i.e., getting to work on the hardest of rocks.

[28:9]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew מִשֹּׁרֶשׁ (mishoresh) means “from/at [their] root [or base].” In mining, people have gone below ground, under the mountains, and overturned rock and dirt. It is also interesting that here in a small way humans do what God does – overturn mountains (cf. 9:5).

[39:3]  ⁹ tc The Hebrew verb used here means “to cleave,” and this would not have the object “their young.” Olshausen and others after him change the ח (khet) to ט (tet) and get a verb “to drop,” meaning “drop [= give birth to] young” as used in Job 21:10. G. R. Driver holds out for the MT, arguing it is an idiom, “to breach the womb” (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 92-93).

[39:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “they cast forth their labor pains.” This word usually means “birth pangs” but here can mean what caused the pains (metonymy of effect). This fits better with the parallelism, and the verb (“cast forth”). The words “their offspring” are supplied in the translation for clarity; direct objects were often omitted when clear from the context, although English expects them to be included.