Job 15:28

15:28 he lived in ruined towns ¹ 

and in houses where ²  no one lives,

where they are ready to crumble into heaps. ³ 

Isaiah 5:8

Disaster is Coming

5:8 Those who accumulate houses are as good as dead, ⁴ 

those who also accumulate landed property ⁵ 

until there is no land left, ⁶ 

and you are the only landowners remaining within the land. ⁷ 

Ezekiel 26:20

26:20 then I will bring you down to bygone people, ⁸  to be with those who descend to the pit. I will make you live in the lower parts of the earth, among ⁹  the primeval ruins, with those who descend to the pit, so that you will not be inhabited or stand ¹⁰  in the land of the living.

[15:28]  ¹ sn K&D 11:266 rightly explains that these are not cities that he, the wicked, has destroyed, but that were destroyed by a judgment on wickedness. Accordingly, Eliphaz is saying that the wicked man is willing to risk such a curse in his confidence in his prosperity (see further H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 113).

[15:28]  ² tn The verbal idea serves here to modify “houses” as a relative clause; so a relative pronoun is added.

[15:28]  ³ tn The Hebrew has simply “they are made ready for heaps.” The LXX translates it, “what they have prepared, let others carry away.” This would involve a complete change of the last word.

[5:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “Woe [to] those who make a house touch a house.” The exclamation הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments (see 1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18; 34:5) and carries the connotation of death.

[5:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “[who] bring a field near a field.”

[5:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “until the end of the place”; NASB “until there is no more room.”

[5:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.”

[26:20]  ⁸ tn Heb “to the people of antiquity.”

[26:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “like.” The translation assumes an emendation of the preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like”), to בְּ (bÿ, “in, among”).

[26:20]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and I will place beauty.” This reading makes little sense; many, following the lead of the LXX, emend the text to read “nor will you stand” with the negative particle before the preceding verb understood by ellipsis; see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:73. D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 2:47) offers another alternative, taking the apparent first person verb form as an archaic second feminine form and translating “nor radiate splendor.”