Job 19:12

19:12 His troops ¹  advance together;

they throw up ²  a siege ramp against me,

and they camp around my tent.

Job 33:17

33:17 to turn a person from his sin, ³ 

and to cover a person’s pride. ⁴ 

Job 36:9

36:9 then he reveals ⁵  to them what they have done, ⁶ 

and their transgressions,

that they were behaving proudly.

Job 37:15

37:15 Do you know how God commands them, ⁷ 

how he makes lightning flash in his storm cloud? ⁸ 

[19:12]  ¹ sn Now the metaphor changes again. Since God thinks of Job as an enemy, he attacks with his troops, builds the siege ramp, and camps around him to besiege him. All the power and all the forces are at God’s disposal in his attack of Job.

[19:12]  ² tn Heb “they throw up their way against me.” The verb סָלַל (salal) means “to build a siege ramp” or “to throw up a ramp”; here the object is “their way.” The latter could be taken as an adverbial accusative, “as their way.” But as the object it fits just as well. Some delete the middle clause; the LXX has “Together his troops fell upon me, they beset my ways with an ambush.”

[33:17]  ³ tc The MT simply has מַעֲשֶׂה (ma’aseh, “deed”). The LXX has “from his iniquity” which would have been מֵעַוְלָה (me’avlah). The two letters may have dropped out by haplography. The MT is workable, but would have to mean “[evil] deeds.”

[33:17]  ⁴ tc Here too the sense of the MT is difficult to recover. Some translations took it to mean that God hides pride from man. Many commentators changed יְכַסֶּה (yÿkhasseh, “covers”) to יְכַסֵּחַ (yÿkhasseakh, “he cuts away”), or יְכַלֶּה (yÿkhalleh, “he puts an end to”). The various emendations are not all that convincing.

[36:9]  ⁵ tn The verb נָגַד (nagad) means “to declare; to tell.” Here it is clear that God is making known the sins that caused the enslavement or captivity, so “reveal” makes a good interpretive translation.

[36:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “their work.”

[37:15]  ⁷ tn The verb is בְּשׂוּם (bÿsum, from שִׂים [sim, “set”]), so the idea is how God lays [or sets] [a command] for them. The suffix is proleptic, to be clarified in the second colon.

[37:15]  ⁸ tn Dhorme reads this “and how his stormcloud makes lightning to flash forth?”