Job 26:12

26:12 By his power he stills ¹  the sea;

by his wisdom he cut Rahab the great sea monster ²  to pieces. ³ 

Job 7:5

7:5 My body ⁴  is clothed ⁵  with worms ⁶  and dirty scabs; ⁷ 

my skin is broken ⁸  and festering.

Job 20:5

20:5 that the elation of the wicked is brief, ⁹ 

the joy of the godless ¹⁰  lasts but a moment. ¹¹ 

Job 34:20

34:20 In a moment they die, in the middle of the night, ¹² 

people ¹³  are shaken ¹⁴  and they pass away.

The mighty are removed effortlessly. ¹⁵ 

[26:12]  ¹ tn The verb רָגַע (raga’) has developed a Semitic polarity, i.e., having totally opposite meanings. It can mean “to disturb; to stir up” or “to calm; to still.” Gordis thinks both meanings have been invoked here. But it seems more likely that “calm” fits the context better.

[26:12]  ² tn Heb “Rahab” (רָהַב), the mythical sea monster that represents the forces of chaos in ancient Near Eastern literature. In the translation the words “the great sea monster” have been supplied appositionally in order to clarify “Rahab.”

[26:12]  ³ sn Here again there are possible mythological allusions or polemics. The god Yam, “Sea,” was important in Ugaritic as a god of chaos. And Rahab is another name for the monster of the deep (see Job 9:13).

[7:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “my flesh.”

[7:5]  ⁵ tn The implied comparison is vivid: the dirty scabs cover his entire body like a garment – so he is clothed with them.

[7:5]  ⁶ sn The word for “worms” (רִמָּה, rimmah, a collective noun), is usually connected with rotten food (Exod 16:24), or the grave (Isa 14:11). Job’s disease is a malignant ulcer of some kind that causes the rotting of the flesh. One may recall that both Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Macc 9:9) and Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:23) were devoured by such worms in their diseases.

[7:5]  ⁷ tn The text has “clods of dust.” The word גִּישׁ (gish, “dirty scabs”) is a hapax legomenon from גּוּשׁ (gush, “clod”). Driver suggests the word has a medical sense, like “pustules” (G. R. Driver, “Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 73) or “scabs” (JB, NEB, NAB, NIV). Driver thinks “clods of dust” is wrong; he repoints “dust” to make a new verb “to cover,” cognate to Arabic, and reads “my flesh is clothed with worms, and scab covers my skin.” This refers to the dirty scabs that crusted over the sores all over his body. The LXX links this with the second half of the verse: “And my body has been covered with loathsome worms, and I waste away, scraping off clods of dirt from my eruption.”

[7:5]  ⁸ tn The meaning of רָגַע (raga’) is also debated here. D. J. A. Clines (Job [WBC], 163) does not think the word can mean “cracked” because scabs show evidence of the sores healing. But E. Dhorme (Job, 100) argues that the usage of the word shows the idea of “splitting, separating, making a break,” or the like. Here then it would mean “my skin splits” and as a result festers. This need not be a reference to the scabs, but to new places. Or it could mean that the scabbing never heals, but is always splitting open.

[20:5]  ⁷ tn The expression in the text is “quite near.” This indicates that it is easily attained, and that its end is near.

[20:5]  ⁸ tn For the discussion of חָנֵף (khanef, “godless”) see Job 8:13.

[20:5]  ⁹ tn The phrase is “until a moment,” meaning it is short-lived. But see J. Barr, “Hebrew ’ad, especially at Job 1:18 and Neh 7:3,” JSS 27 (1982): 177-88.

[34:20]  ¹⁰ tn Dhorme transposes “in the middle of the night” with “they pass away” to get a smoother reading. But the MT emphasizes the suddenness by putting both temporal ideas first. E. F. Sutcliffe leaves the order as it stands in the text, but adds a verb “they expire” after “in the middle of the night” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 79ff.).

[34:20]  ¹¹ tn R. Gordis (Job, 389) thinks “people” here mean the people who count, the upper class.

[34:20]  ¹² tn The verb means “to be violently agitated.” There is no problem with the word in this context, but commentators have made suggestions for improving the idea. The proposal that has the most to commend it, if one were inclined to choose a new word, is the change to יִגְוָעוּ (yigva’u, “they expire”; so Ball, Holscher, Fohrer, and others).

[34:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “not by hand.” This means without having to use force.