Job 18:12

18:12 Calamity is ¹  hungry for him, ² 

and misfortune is ready at his side. ³ 

Job 27:7

The Condition of the Wicked

27:7 “May my enemy be like the wicked, ⁴ 

my adversary ⁵  like the unrighteous. ⁶ 

Job 16:18

An Appeal to God as Witness

16:18 “O earth, do not cover my blood, ⁷ 

nor let there be a secret ⁸  place for my cry.

Job 3:4

3:4 That day ⁹  – let it be darkness; ¹⁰ 

let not God on high regard ¹¹  it,

nor let light shine ¹²  on it!

Job 3:7

3:7 Indeed, ¹³  let that night be barren; ¹⁴ 

let no shout of joy ¹⁵  penetrate ¹⁶  it!

Job 20:23

20:23 “While he is ¹⁷  filling his belly,

God ¹⁸  sends his burning anger ¹⁹  against him,

and rains down his blows upon him. ²⁰ 

Job 24:14

24:14 Before daybreak ²¹  the murderer rises up;

he kills the poor and the needy;

in the night he is ²²  like a thief. ²³ 

Job 1:21

1:21 He said, “Naked ²⁴  I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. ²⁵  The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. ²⁶  May the name of the Lord ²⁷  be blessed!”

[18:12]  ¹ tn The jussive is occasionally used without its normal sense and only as an imperfect (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[18:12]  ² tn There are a number of suggestions for אֹנוֹ (’ono). Some take it as “vigor”: thus “his strength is hungry.” Others take it as “iniquity”: thus “his iniquity/trouble is hungry.”

[18:12]  ³ tn The expression means that misfortune is right there to destroy him whenever there is the opportunity.

[27:7]  ⁴ sn Of course, he means like his enemy when he is judged, not when he is thriving in prosperity and luxury.

[27:7]  ⁵ tn The form is the Hitpolel participle from קוּם (qum): “those who are rising up against me,” or “my adversary.”

[27:7]  ⁶ tc The LXX made a free paraphrase: “No, but let my enemies be as the overthrow of the ungodly, and they that rise up against me as the destruction of transgressors.”

[16:18]  ⁷ sn Job knows that he will die, and that his death, signified here by blood on the ground, will cry out for vindication.

[16:18]  ⁸ tn The word is simply “a place,” but in the context it surely means a hidden place, a secret place that would never be discovered (see 18:21).

[3:4]  ¹⁰ tn The first two words should be treated as a casus pendens (see D. J. A. Clines, Job [WBC], 69), referred to as an extraposition in recent grammarians.

[3:4]  ¹¹ sn This expression by Job is the negation of the divine decree at creation – “Let there be light,” and that was the first day. Job wishes that his first day be darkness: “As for that day, let there be darkness.” Since only God has this prerogative, Job adds the wish that God on high would not regard that day.

[3:4]  ¹² tn The verb דָּרַשׁ (darash) means “to seek, inquire,” and “to address someone, be concerned about something” (cf. Deut 11:12; Jer 30:14,17). Job wants the day to perish from the mind of God.

[3:4]  ¹³ tn The verb is the Hiphil of יָפַע (yafa’), which means here “cause to shine.” The subject is the term נְהָרָה (nÿharah,“light”), a hapax legomenon which is from the verb נָהַר (nahar, “to gleam” [see Isa 60:5]).

[3:7]  ¹³ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “behold”) in this sentence focuses the reader’s attention on the statement to follow.

[3:7]  ¹⁴ tn The word גַּלְמוּד (galmud) probably has here the idea of “barren” rather than “solitary.” See the parallelism in Isa 49:21. In Job it seems to carry the idea of “barren” in 15:34, and “gloomy” in 30:3. Barrenness can lead to gloom.

[3:7]  ¹⁵ tn The word is from רָנַן (ranan, “to give a ringing cry” or “shout of joy”). The sound is loud and shrill.

[3:7]  ¹⁶ tn The verb is simply בּוֹא (bo’, “to enter”). The NIV translates interpretively “be heard in it.” A shout of joy, such as at a birth, that “enters” a day is certainly heard on that day.

[20:23]  ¹⁶ tn D. J. A. Clines observes that to do justice to the three jussives in the verse, one would have to translate “May it be, to fill his belly to the full, that God should send…and rain” (Job [WBC], 477). The jussive form of the verb at the beginning of the verse could also simply introduce a protasis of a conditional clause (see GKC 323 §109.h, i). This would mean, “if he [God] is about to fill his [the wicked’s] belly to the full, he will send….” The NIV reads “when he has filled his belly.” These fit better, because the context is talking about the wicked in his evil pursuit being cut down.

[20:23]  ¹⁷ tn “God” is understood as the subject of the judgment.

[20:23]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “the anger of his wrath.”

[20:23]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “rain down upon him, on his flesh.” Dhorme changes עָלֵימוֹ (’alemo, “upon him”) to “his arrows”; he translates the line as “he rains his arrows upon his flesh.” The word בִּלְחוּמוֹ (bilkhumo,“his flesh”) has been given a wide variety of translations: “as his food,” “on his flesh,” “upon him, his anger,” or “missiles or weapons of war.”

[24:14]  ¹⁹ tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.

[24:14]  ²⁰ tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[24:14]  ²¹ sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.

[1:21]  ²² tn The adjective “naked” is functioning here as an adverbial accusative of state, explicative of the state of the subject. While it does include the literal sense of nakedness at birth, Job is also using it symbolically to mean “without possessions.”

[1:21]  ²³ sn While the first half of the couplet is to be taken literally as referring to his coming into this life, this second part must be interpreted only generally to refer to his departure from this life. It is parallel to 1 Tim 6:7, “For we have brought nothing into this world and so we cannot take a single thing out either.”

[1:21]  ²⁴ tn The two verbs are simple perfects. (1) They can be given the nuance of gnomic imperfect, expressing what the sovereign God always does. This is the approach taken in the present translation. Alternatively (2) they could be referring specifically to Job’s own experience: “Yahweh gave [definite past, referring to his coming into this good life] and Yahweh has taken away” [present perfect, referring to his great losses]. Many English versions follow the second alternative.

[1:21]  ²⁵ sn Some commentators are troubled by the appearance of the word “Yahweh” on the lips of Job, assuming that the narrator inserted his own name for God into the story-telling. Such thinking is based on the assumption that Yahweh was only a national god of Israel, unknown to anyone else in the ancient world. But here is a clear indication that a non-Israelite, Job, knew and believed in Yahweh.