Job 17:1

17:1 My spirit is broken, ¹ 

my days have faded out, ² 

the grave ³  awaits me.

Job 21:32

21:32 And when he is carried to the tombs,

and watch is kept ⁴  over the funeral mound, ⁵ 

Job 3:22

3:22 who rejoice ⁶  even to jubilation, ⁷ 

and are exultant ⁸  when ⁹  they find the grave? ¹⁰ 

Job 5:26

5:26 You will come to your grave in a full age, ¹¹ 

As stacks of grain are harvested in their season.

Job 10:19

10:19 I should have been as though I had never existed; ¹² 

I should have been carried

right from the womb to the grave!

[17:1]  ¹ tn The verb חָבַל (khaval, “to act badly”) in the Piel means “to ruin.” The Pual translation with “my spirit” as the subject means “broken” in the sense of finished (not in the sense of humbled as in Ps 51).

[17:1]  ² tn The verb זָעַךְ (za’aq, equivalent of Aramaic דָעַק [da’aq]) means “to be extinguished.” It only occurs here in the Hebrew.

[17:1]  ³ tn The plural “graves” could be simply an intensification, a plural of extension (see GKC 397 §124.c), or a reference to the graveyard. Coverdale had: “I am harde at deathes dore.” The Hebrew expression simply reads “graves for me.” It probably means that graves await him.

[21:32]  ⁴ tn The verb says “he will watch.” The subject is unspecified, so the translation is passive.

[21:32]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew word refers to the tumulus, the burial mound that is erected on the spot where the person is buried.

[3:22]  ⁷ tn Here too the form is the participle in apposition “to him who is in misery” in v. 20. It continues the description of those who are destitute and would be delighted to die.

[3:22]  ⁸ tn The Syriac has “and gather themselves together,” possibly reading גִּיל (gil, “rejoicing”) as גַּל (gal, “heap”). Some have tried to emend the text to make the word mean “heap” or “mound,” as in a funerary mound. While one could argue for a heap of stones as a funerary mound, the passage has already spoken of digging a grave, which would be quite different. And while such a change would make a neater parallelism in the verse, there is no reason to force such; the idea of “jubilation” fits the tenor of the whole verse easily enough and there is no reason to change it. A similar expression is found in Hos 9:1, which says, “rejoice not, O Israel, with jubilation.” Here the idea then is that these sufferers would rejoice “to the point of jubilation” at death.

[3:22]  ⁹ tn This sentence also parallels an imperfect verb with the substantival participle of the first colon. It is translated as an English present tense.

[3:22]  ¹⁰ tn The particle could be “when” or “because” in this verse.

[3:22]  ¹¹ sn The expression “when they find a grave” means when they finally die. The verse describes the relief and rest that the sufferer will obtain when the long-awaited death is reached.

[5:26]  ¹⁰ tn The word translated “in a full age” has been given an array of meanings: “health; integrity”; “like a new blade of corn”; “in your strength [or vigor].” The numerical value of the letters in the word בְכֶלָח (bÿkhelakh, “in old age”) was 2, 20, 30, and 8, or 60. This led some of the commentators to say that at 60 one would enter the ripe old age (E. Dhorme, Job, 73).

[10:19]  ¹³ sn This means “If only I had never come into existence.”