Job 18:18

18:18 He is driven ¹  from light into darkness

and is banished from the world.

Job 34:13

34:13 Who entrusted ²  to him the earth?

And who put him over ³  the whole world?

Job 37:12

37:12 The clouds ⁴  go round in circles,

wheeling about according to his plans,

to carry out ⁵  all that he commands them

over the face of the whole inhabited world.

Job 40:13

40:13 Hide them in the dust ⁶  together,

imprison ⁷  them ⁸  in the grave. ⁹ 

Job 12:2

12:2 “Without a doubt you are the people, ¹⁰ 

and wisdom will die with you. ¹¹ 

Job 27:16

27:16 If he piles up silver like dust

and stores up clothing like mounds of clay,

Job 3:3

3:3 “Let the day on which ¹²  I was born ¹³  perish,

and the night that said, ¹⁴ 

‘A man ¹⁵  has been conceived!’ ¹⁶ 

Job 15:7

15:7 “Were you the first man ever born?

Were you brought forth before the hills?

Job 27:8

27:8 For what hope does the godless have when he is cut off, ¹⁷ 

when God takes away his life? ¹⁸ 

Job 27:12

27:12 If you yourselves have all seen this,

Why in the world ¹⁹  do you continue this meaningless talk? ²⁰ 

Job 37:13

37:13 Whether it is for punishment ²¹  for his land,

or whether it is for mercy,

he causes it to find its mark. ²² 

Job 40:10

40:10 Adorn yourself, then, with majesty and excellency,

and clothe yourself with glory and honor!

Job 1:21

1:21 He said, “Naked ²³  I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. ²⁴  The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. ²⁵  May the name of the Lord ²⁶  be blessed!”

[18:18]  ¹ tn The verbs in this verse are plural; without the expressed subject they should be taken in the passive sense.

[34:13]  ² tn The verb פָּקַד (paqad) means “to visit; to appoint; to number.” Here it means “to entrust” for care and governing. The implication would be that there would be someone higher than God – which is what Elihu is repudiating by the rhetorical question. No one entrusted God with this.

[34:13]  ³ tn The preposition is implied from the first half of the verse.

[37:12]  ³ tn The words “the clouds” are supplied from v. 11; the sentence itself actually starts: “and it goes round,” referring to the cloud.

[37:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “that it may do.”

[40:13]  ⁴ tn The word “dust” can mean “ground” here, or more likely, “grave.”

[40:13]  ⁵ tn The verb חָבַשׁ (khavash) means “to bind.” In Arabic the word means “to bind” in the sense of “to imprison,” and that fits here.

[40:13]  ⁶ tn Heb “their faces.”

[40:13]  ⁷ tn The word is “secret place,” the place where he is to hide them, i.e., the grave. The text uses the word “secret place” as a metonymy for the grave.

[12:2]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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.

[3:3]  ⁶ tn The relative clause is carried by the preposition with the resumptive pronoun: “the day [which] I was born in it” meaning “the day on which I was born” (see GKC 486-88 §155.f, i).

[3:3]  ⁷ tn The verb is the Niphal imperfect. It may be interpreted in this dependent clause (1) as representing a future event from some point of time in the past – “the day on which I was born” or “would be born” (see GKC 316 §107.k). Or (2) it may simply serve as a preterite indicating action that is in the past.

[3:3]  ⁸ tn The MT simply has “and the night – it said….” By simple juxtaposition with the parallel construction (“on which I was born”) the verb “it said” must be a relative clause explaining “the night.” Rather than supply “in which” and make the verb passive (which is possible since no specific subject is provided, but leaves open the question of who said it), it is preferable to take the verse as a personification. First Job cursed the day; now he cursed the night that spoke about what it witnessed. See A. Ehrman, “A Note on the Verb ‘amar,” JQR 55 (1964/65): 166-67.

[3:3]  ⁹ tn The word is גֶּבֶר (gever, “a man”). The word usually distinguishes a man as strong, distinct from children and women. Translations which render this as “boy” (to remove the apparent contradiction of an adult being “conceived” in the womb) miss this point.

[3:3]  ¹⁰ sn The announcement at birth is to the fact that a male was conceived. The same parallelism between “brought forth/born” and “conceived” may be found in Ps 51:7 HT (51:5 ET). The motifs of the night of conception and the day of birth will be developed by Job. For the entire verse, which is more a wish or malediction than a curse, see S. H. Blank, “‘Perish the Day!’ A Misdirected Curse (Job 3:3),” Prophetic Thought, 61-63.

[27:8]  ⁷ tn The verb יִבְצָע (yivtsa’) means “to cut off.” It could be translated transitively or intransitively – the latter is better here (“when he is cut off”). Since the next line speaks of prayer, some have thought this verse should be about prayer. Mandelkern, in his concordance (p. 228b), suggested the verb should be “when he prays” (reading יִפְגַּע [yifga’] in place of יִבְצָע [yivtsa’]).

[27:8]  ⁸ tn The verb יֵשֶׁל (yeshel) is found only here. It has been related spoils [or sheaves]”); שָׁאַל (sha’al, “to ask”); נָשָׂא (nasa’, “to lift up” [i.e., pray]); and a host of others.

[27:12]  ⁸ tn The interrogative uses the demonstrative pronoun in its emphatic position: “Why in the world…?” (IBHS 312-13 §17.4.3c).

[27:12]  ⁹ tn The text has the noun “vain thing; breath; vapor,” and then a denominative verb from the same root: “to become vain with a vain thing,” or “to do in vain a vain thing.” This is an example of the internal object, or a cognate accusative (see GKC 367 §117.q). The LXX has “you all know that you are adding vanity to vanity.”

[37:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “rod,” i.e., a rod used for punishment.

[37:13]  ¹⁰ tn This is interpretive; Heb “he makes find it.” The lightning could be what is intended here, for it finds its mark. But R. Gordis (Job, 429) suggests man is the subject – let him find what it is for, i.e., the fate appropriate for him.

[1:21]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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.