Job 21:32

21:32 And when he is carried to the tombs,

and watch is kept ¹  over the funeral mound, ² 

Job 29:2

29:2 “O that I could be ³  as ⁴  I was

in the months now gone, ⁵ 

in the days ⁶  when God watched ⁷  over me,

[21:32]  ¹ tn The verb says “he will watch.” The subject is unspecified, so the translation is passive.

[21:32]  ² tn The Hebrew word refers to the tumulus, the burial mound that is erected on the spot where the person is buried.

[29:2]  ³ tn The optative is here expressed with מִי־יִתְּנֵנִי (mi-yittÿneni, “who will give me”), meaning, “O that I [could be]…” (see GKC 477 §151.b).

[29:2]  ⁴ tn The preposition כּ (kaf) is used here in an expression describing the state desired, especially in the former time (see GKC 376 §118.u).

[29:2]  ⁵ tn The expression is literally “months of before [or of old; or past].” The word קֶדֶם (qedem) is intended here to be temporal and not spatial; it means days that preceded the present.

[29:2]  ⁶ tn The construct state (“days of”) governs the independent sentence that follows (see GKC 422 §130.d): “as the days of […] God used to watch over me.”

[29:2]  ⁷ tn The imperfect verb here has a customary nuance – “when God would watch over me” (back then), or “when God used to watch over me.”