Job 20:7-9

20:7 he will perish forever, like his own excrement; ¹ 

those who used to see him will say, ‘Where is he?’

20:8 Like a dream he flies away, never again to be found, ² 

and like a vision of the night he is put to flight.

20:9 People ³  who had seen him will not see him again,

and the place where he was

will recognize him no longer.

Psalms 37:35-36

37:35 I have seen ruthless evil men ⁴ 

growing in influence, like a green tree grows in its native soil. ⁵ 

37:36 But then one passes by, and suddenly they have disappeared! ⁶ 

I looked for them, but they could not be found.

[20:7]  ¹ tn There have been attempts to change the word here to “like a whirlwind,” or something similar. But many argue that there is no reason to remove a coarse expression from Zophar.

[20:8]  ² tn Heb “and they do not find him.” The verb has no expressed subject, and so here is equivalent to a passive. The clause itself is taken adverbially in the sentence.

[20:9]  ³ tn Heb “the eye that had seen him.” Here a part of the person (the eye, the instrument of vision) is put by metonymy for the entire person.

[37:35]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew uses the representative singular again here.

[37:35]  ⁵ tn Heb “being exposed [?] like a native, luxuriant.” The Hebrew form מִתְעָרֶה (mit’areh) appears to be a Hitpael participle from עָרָה (’arah, “be exposed”), but this makes no sense in this context. Perhaps the form is a dialectal variant of מִתְעָלָה (“giving oneself an air of importance”; see Jer 51:3), from עָלָה (’alah, “go up”; see P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 [WBC], 296). The noun אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh, “native, full citizen”) refers elsewhere to people, but here, where it is collocated with “luxuriant, green,” it probably refers to a tree growing in native soil.

[37:36]  ⁶ tn Heb “and he passes by and, look, he is not [there].” The subject of the verb “passes by” is probably indefinite, referring to any passerby. Some prefer to change the form to first person, “and I passed by” (cf. NEB; note the first person verbal forms in preceding verse and in the following line).