Job 17:6

17:6 He has made me ¹  a byword ²  to people,

I am the one in whose face they spit. ³ 

Job 34:30

34:30 so that the godless man should not rule,

and not lay snares for the people. ⁴ 

Job 36:20

36:20 Do not long for the cover of night

to drag people away from their homes. ⁵ 

Job 12:2

12:2 “Without a doubt you are the people, ⁶ 

and wisdom will die with you. ⁷ 

Job 36:31

36:31 It is by these that he judges ⁸  the nations

and supplies food in abundance.

Job 12:24

12:24 He deprives the leaders of the earth ⁹ 

of their understanding; ¹⁰ 

he makes them wander

in a trackless desert waste. ¹¹ 

Job 18:19

18:19 He has neither children nor descendants ¹²  among his people,

no survivor in those places he once stayed. ¹³ 

Job 34:20

34:20 In a moment they die, in the middle of the night, ¹⁴ 

people ¹⁵  are shaken ¹⁶  and they pass away.

The mighty are removed effortlessly. ¹⁷ 

[17:6]  ¹ tn The verb is the third person, and so God is likely the subject. The LXX has “you have made me.” So most commentators clarify the verb in some such way. However, without an expressed subject it can also be taken as a passive.

[17:6]  ² tn The word “byword” is related to the word translated “proverb” in the Bible (מָשָׁל, mashal). Job’s case is so well known that he is synonymous with afflictions and with abuse by people.

[17:6]  ³ tn The word תֹפֶת (tofet) is a hapax legomenon. The expression is “and a spitting in/to the face I have become,” i.e., “I have become one in whose face people spit.” Various suggestions have been made, including a link to Tophet, but they are weak. The verse as it exists in the MT is fine, and fits the context well.

[34:30]  ⁴ tn This last verse is difficult because it is unbalanced and cryptic. Some have joined the third line of v. 29 with this entire verse to make a couplet. But the same result is achieved by simply regarding this verse as the purpose of v. 29. But there still are some words that must be added. In the first colon, “[he is over the nations]…preventing from ruling.” And in the second colon, “laying” has to be supplied before “snares.”

[36:20]  ⁷ tn The meaning of this line is difficult. There are numerous suggestions for emending the text. Kissane takes the first verb in the sense of “oppress,” and for “the night” he has “belonging to you,” meaning “your people.” This reads: “Oppress not them that belong not to you, that your kinsmen may mount up in their place.”

[12:2]  ¹⁰ tn The expression “you are the people” is a way of saying that the friends hold the popular opinion – they represent it. The line is sarcastic. Commentators do not think the parallelism is served well by this, and so offer changes for “people.” Some have suggested “you are complete” (based on Arabic), “you are the strong one” (based on Ugaritic), etc. J. A. Davies tried to solve the difficulty by making the second clause in the verse a paratactic relative clause: “you are the people with whom wisdom will die” (“Note on Job 12:2,” VT 25 [1975]: 670-71).

[12:2]  ¹¹ sn The sarcasm of Job admits their claim to wisdom, as if no one has it besides them. But the rest of his speech will show that they do not have a monopoly on it.

[36:31]  ¹³ tn The verb is יָדִין (yadin, “he judges”). Houbigant proposedיָזוּן (yazun, “he nourishes”). This has found wide acceptance among commentators (cf. NAB). G. R. Driver retained the MT but gave a meaning “enriches” to the verb (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 88ff.).

[12:24]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the heads of the people of the earth.”

[12:24]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “heart.”

[12:24]  ¹⁸ tn The text has בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ (bÿtohu lo’ darekh): “in waste – no way,” or “in a wasteland [where there is] no way,” thus, “trackless” (see the discussion of negative attributes using לֹא [lo’] in GKC 482 §152.u).

[18:19]  ¹⁹ tn The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: Moffatt had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the NIV “offspring or descendants.”

[18:19]  ²⁰ tn Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.

[34:20]  ²² tn Dhorme transposes “in the middle of the night” with “they pass away” to get a smoother reading. But the MT emphasizes the suddenness by putting both temporal ideas first. E. F. Sutcliffe leaves the order as it stands in the text, but adds a verb “they expire” after “in the middle of the night” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 79ff.).

[34:20]  ²³ tn R. Gordis (Job, 389) thinks “people” here mean the people who count, the upper class.

[34:20]  ²⁴ tn The verb means “to be violently agitated.” There is no problem with the word in this context, but commentators have made suggestions for improving the idea. The proposal that has the most to commend it, if one were inclined to choose a new word, is the change to יִגְוָעוּ (yigva’u, “they expire”; so Ball, Holscher, Fohrer, and others).

[34:20]  ²⁵ tn Heb “not by hand.” This means without having to use force.