Job 19:19

19:19 All my closest friends ¹  detest me;

and those whom ²  I love have turned against me. ³ 

Job 22:15

22:15 Will you keep to the old path ⁴ 

that evil men have walked –

Job 7:4

7:4 If I lie down, I say, ⁵  ‘When will I arise?’,

and the night stretches on ⁶ 

and I toss and turn restlessly ⁷ 

until the day dawns.

Job 11:11

11:11 For he ⁸  knows deceitful ⁹  men;

when he sees evil, will he not ¹⁰  consider it? ¹¹ 

Job 31:31

31:31 if ¹²  the members of my household ¹³  have never said, ¹⁴ 

‘If only there were ¹⁵  someone

who has not been satisfied from Job’s ¹⁶  meat!’ –

[19:19]  ¹ tn Heb “men of my confidence,” or “men of my council,” i.e., intimate friends, confidants.

[19:19]  ² tn The pronoun זֶה (zeh) functions here in the place of a nominative (see GKC 447 §138.h).

[19:19]  ³ tn T. Penar translates this “turn away from me” (“Job 19,19 in the Light of Ben Sira 6,11,” Bib 48 [1967]: 293-95).

[22:15]  ⁴ tn The “old path” here is the way of defiance to God. The text in these two verses is no doubt making reference to the flood in Genesis, one of the perennial examples of divine judgment.

[7:4]  ⁷ tn This is the main clause, and not part of the previous conditional clause; it is introduced by the conjunction אִם (’im) (see GKC 336 §112.gg).

[7:4]  ⁸ tn The verb מָדַד (madad) normally means “to measure,” and here in the Piel it has been given the sense of “to extend.” But this is not well attested and not widely accepted. There are many conjectural emendations. Of the most plausible one might mention the view of Gray, who changes מִדַּד (middad, Piel of מָדַּד) to מִדֵּי (midde, comprising the preposition מִן [min] plus the noun דַּי [day], meaning “as often as”): “as often as evening comes.” Dhorme, following the LXX to some extent, adds the word “day” after “when/if” and replaces מִדַּד (middad) with מָתַי (matay, “when”) to read “If I lie down, I say, ‘When comes the morning?’ If I rise up, I say, ‘How long till evening?’” The LXX, however, may be based more on a recollection of Deut 28:67. One can make just as strong a case for the reading adopted here, that the night seems to drag on (so also NIV).

[7:4]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew term נְדֻדִים (nÿdudim, “tossing”) refers to the restless tossing and turning of the sick man at night on his bed. The word is a hapax legomenon derived from the verb נָדַד (nadad, “to flee; to wander; to be restless”). The plural form here sums up the several parts of the actions (GKC 460 §144.f). E. Dhorme (Job, 99) argues that because it applies to both his waking hours and his sleepless nights, it may have more of the sense of wanderings of the mind. There is no doubt truth to the fact that the mind wanders in all this suffering; but there is no need to go beyond the contextually clear idea of the restlessness of the night.

[11:11]  ¹⁰ tn The pronoun is emphatic implying that Zophar indicates that God indeed knows Job’s sin even if Job does not.

[11:11]  ¹¹ tn The expression is literally “men of emptiness” (see Ps 26:4). These are false men, for שָׁוְא (shavÿ’) can mean “vain, empty, or false, deceitful.”

[11:11]  ¹² tn E. Dhorme (Job, 162) reads the prepositional phrase “to him” rather than the negative; he translates the line as “he sees iniquity and observes it closely.”

[11:11]  ¹³ tn Some commentators do not take this last clause as a question, but simply as a statement, namely, that when God sees evil he does not need to ponder or consider it – he knows it instantly. In that case it would be a circumstantial clause: “without considering it.” D. J. A. Clines lists quite an array of other interpretations for the line (Job [WBC], 255); for example, “and he is himself unobserved”; taking the word לֹא (lo’) as an emphatic; taking the negative as a noun, “considering them as nothing”; and others that change the verb to “they do not understand it.” But none of these are compelling; they offer no major improvement.

[31:31]  ¹³ tn Now Job picks up the series of clauses serving as the protasis.

[31:31]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the men of my tent.” In context this refers to members of Job’s household.

[31:31]  ¹⁵ sn The line is difficult to sort out. Job is saying it is sinful “if his men have never said, ‘O that there was one who has not been satisfied from his food.’” If they never said that, it would mean there were people out there who needed to be satisfied with his food.

[31:31]  ¹⁶ tn The optative is again expressed with “who will give?”

[31:31]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Job) has been specified in the translation for clarity.