[16:19] 1 sn The witness in heaven must be God, to whom the cries and prayers come. Job’s dilemma is serious, but common to the human experience: the hostility of God toward him is baffling, but he is conscious of his innocence and can call on God to be his witness.
[16:19] 2 tn The parallelism now uses the Aramaic word “my advocate” – the one who testifies on my behalf. The word again appears in Gen 31:47 for Laban’s naming of the “heap of witness” in Aramaic – “Sahadutha.”
[20:5] 3 tn The expression in the text is “quite near.” This indicates that it is easily attained, and that its end is near.
[20:5] 4 tn For the discussion of חָנֵף (khanef, “godless”) see Job 8:13.
[20:5] 5 tn The phrase is “until a moment,” meaning it is short-lived. But see J. Barr, “Hebrew ’ad, especially at Job 1:18 and Neh 7:3,” JSS 27 (1982): 177-88.
