Job 15:3

15:3 Does he argue ¹  with useless ²  talk,

with words that have no value in them?

Job 15:15

15:15 If God places no trust in his holy ones, ³ 

if even the heavens ⁴  are not pure in his eyes,

Job 20:20

20:20 For he knows no satisfaction in his appetite; ⁵ 

he does not let anything he desires ⁶  escape. ⁷ 

Job 24:21

24:21 He preys on ⁸  the barren and childless woman, ⁹ 

and does not treat the widow well.

Job 28:8

28:8 Proud beasts ¹⁰  have not set foot on it,

and no lion has passed along it.

Job 28:19

28:19 The topaz of Cush ¹¹  cannot be compared with it;

it cannot be purchased with pure gold.

Job 29:24

29:24 If I smiled at them, they hardly believed it; ¹² 

and they did not cause the light of my face to darken. ¹³ 

Job 33:7

33:7 Therefore no fear of me should terrify you,

nor should my pressure ¹⁴  be heavy on you. ¹⁵ 

Job 34:35

34:35 that ¹⁶  Job speaks without knowledge

and his words are without understanding. ¹⁷ 

Job 35:13

35:13 Surely it is an empty cry ¹⁸  – God does not hear it;

the Almighty does not take notice of it.

[15:3]  ¹ tn The infinitive absolute in this place is functioning either as an explanatory adverb or as a finite verb.

[15:3]  ² tn The verb סָכַן (sakhan) means “to be useful, profitable.” It is found 5 times in the book with this meaning. The Hiphil of יָעַל (ya’al) has the same connotation. E. LipinÃski offers a new meaning on a second root, “incur danger” or “run risks” with words, but this does not fit the parallelism (FO 21 [1980]: 65-82).

[15:15]  ³ tn Eliphaz here reiterates the point made in Job 4:18.

[15:15]  ⁴ 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.

[20:20]  ⁵ tn Heb “belly,” which represents his cravings, his desires and appetites. The “satisfaction” is actually the word for “quiet; peace; calmness; ease.” He was driven by greedy desires, or he felt and displayed an insatiable greed.

[20:20]  ⁶ tn The verb is the passive participle of the verb חָמַד (khamad) which is one of the words for “covet; desire.” This person is controlled by his desires; there is no escape. He is a slave.

[20:20]  ⁷ tn The verb is difficult to translate in this line. It basically means “to cause to escape; to rescue.” Some translate this verb as “it is impossible to escape”; this may work, but is uncertain. Others translate the verb in the sense of saving something else: N. Sarna says, “Of his most cherished possessions he shall save nothing” (“The Interchange of the Preposition bet and min in Biblical Hebrew,” JBL 78 [1959]: 315-16). The RSV has “he will save nothing in which he delights”; NIV has “he cannot save himself by his treasure.”

[24:21]  ⁷ tc The form in the text is the active participle, “feed; graze; shepherd.” The idea of “prey” is not natural to it. R. Gordis (Job, 270) argues that third he (ה) verbs are often by-forms of geminate verbs, and so the meaning here is more akin to רָעַע (ra’a’, “to crush”). The LXX seems to have read something like הֵרַע (hera’, “oppressed”).

[24:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “the childless [woman], she does not give birth.” The verbal clause is intended to serve as a modifier here for the woman. See on subordinate verbal clauses GKC 490 §156.d, f.

[28:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “the sons of pride.” In Job 41:26 the expression refers to carnivorous wild beasts.

[28:19]  ¹¹ tn Or “Ethiopia.” In ancient times this referred to the region of the upper Nile, rather than modern Ethiopia (formerly known as Abyssinia).

[29:24]  ¹³ tn The connection of this clause with the verse is difficult. The line simply reads: “[if] I would smile at them, they would not believe.” Obviously something has to be supplied to make sense out of this. The view adopted here makes the most sense, namely, that when he smiled at people, they could hardly believe their good fortune. Other interpretations are strained, such as Kissane’s, “If I laughed at them, they believed not,” meaning, people rejected the views that Job laughed at.

[29:24]  ¹⁴ tn The meaning, according to Gordis, is that they did nothing to provoke Job’s displeasure.

[33:7]  ¹⁵ tc The noun means “my pressure; my burden” in the light of the verb אָכֲף (’akhaf, “to press on; to grip tightly”). In the parallel passages the text used “hand” and “rod” in the hand to terrify. The LXX has “hand” here for this word. But simply changing it to “hand” is ruled out because the verb is masculine.

[33:7]  ¹⁶ tn See Job 9:34 and 13:21.

[34:35]  ¹⁷ tn Adding “that” in the translation clarifies Elihu’s indirect citation of the wise individuals’ words.

[34:35]  ¹⁸ tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is here functioning as a substantive. The word means “prudence; understanding.”

[35:13]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “surely – vanity, he does not hear.” The cry is an empty cry, not a prayer to God. Dhorme translates it, “It is a pure waste of words.”