Job 27:12-23

27:12 If you yourselves have all seen this,

Why in the world ¹  do you continue this meaningless talk? ² 

27:13 This is the portion of the wicked man

allotted by God, ³ 

the inheritance that evildoers receive

from the Almighty.

27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! ⁴ 

His offspring never have enough to eat. ⁵ 

27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, ⁶ 

and their ⁷  widows do not mourn for them.

27:16 If he piles up silver like dust

and stores up clothing like mounds of clay,

27:17 what he stores up ⁸  a righteous man will wear,

and an innocent man will inherit his silver.

27:18 The house he builds is as fragile as a moth’s cocoon, ⁹ 

like a hut ¹⁰  that a watchman has made.

27:19 He goes to bed wealthy, but will do so no more. ¹¹ 

When he opens his eyes, it is all gone. ¹² 

27:20 Terrors overwhelm him like a flood; ¹³ 

at night a whirlwind carries him off.

27:21 The east wind carries him away, and he is gone;

it sweeps him out of his place.

27:22 It hurls itself against him without pity ¹⁴ 

as he flees headlong from its power.

27:23 It claps ¹⁵  its hands at him in derision

and hisses him away from his place. ¹⁶ 

[27:12]  ¹ tn The interrogative uses the demonstrative pronoun in its emphatic position: “Why in the world…?” (IBHS 312-13 §17.4.3c).

[27:12]  ² tn The text has the noun “vain thing; breath; vapor,” and then a denominative verb from the same root: “to become vain with a vain thing,” or “to do in vain a vain thing.” This is an example of the internal object, or a cognate accusative (see GKC 367 §117.q). The LXX has “you all know that you are adding vanity to vanity.”

[27:13]  ³ tn The expression “allotted by God” interprets the simple prepositional phrase in the text: “with/from God.”

[27:14]  ⁴ tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.

[27:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”

[27:15]  ⁶ tn The text says “will be buried in/by death.” A number of passages in the Bible use “death” to mean the plague that kills (see Jer 15:2; Isa 28:3; and BDB 89 s.v. בְּ 2.a). In this sense it is like the English expression for the plague, “the Black Death.”

[27:15]  ⁷ tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.

[27:17]  ⁸ tn The text simply repeats the verb from the last clause. It could be treated as a separate short clause: “He may store it up, but the righteous will wear it. But it also could be understood as the object of the following verb, “[what] he stores up the righteous will wear.” The LXX simply has, “All these things shall the righteous gain.”

[27:18]  ⁹ tn Heb כָעָשׁ (kha’ash, “like a moth”), but this leaves room for clarification. Some commentators wanted to change it to “bird’s nest” or just “nest” (cf. NRSV) to make the parallelism; see Job 4:14. But the word is not found. The LXX has a double expression, “as moths, as a spider.” So several take it as the spider’s web, which is certainly unsubstantial (cf. NAB, NASB, NLT; see Job 8:14).

[27:18]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew word is the word for “booth,” as in the Feast of Booths. The word describes something that is flimsy; it is not substantial at all.

[27:19]  ¹¹ tc The verb is the Niphal יֵאָסֵף (ye’asef), from אָסַף (’asaf, “to gather”). So, “he lies down rich, but he is not gathered.” This does not make much sense. It would mean “he will not be gathered for burial,” but that does not belong here. Many commentators accept the variant יֹאסִף (yo’sif) stood for יוֹסִיף (yosif, “will [not] add”). This is what the LXX and the Syriac have. This leads to the interpretive translation that “he will do so no longer.”

[27:19]  ¹² tn Heb “and he is not.” One view is that this must mean that he dies, not that his wealth is gone. R. Gordis (Job, 295) says the first part should be made impersonal: “when one opens one’s eyes, the wicked is no longer there.” E. Dhorme (Job, 396) has it more simply: “He has opened his eyes, and it is for the last time.” But the other view is that the wealth goes overnight. In support of this is the introduction into the verse of the wealthy. The RSV, NRSV, ESV, and NLT take it that “wealth is gone.”

[27:20]  ¹³ tn Many commentators want a word parallel to “in the night.” And so we are offered בַּיּוֹם (bayyom, “in the day”) for כַמַּיִם (khammayim, “like waters”) as well as a number of others. But “waters” sometimes stand for major calamities, and so may be retained here. Besides, not all parallel structures are synonymous.

[27:22]  ¹⁴ tn The verb is once again functioning in an adverbial sense. The text has “it hurls itself against him and shows no mercy.”

[27:23]  ¹⁵ tn If the same subject is to be carried through here, it is the wind. That would make this a bold personification, perhaps suggesting the force of the wind. Others argue that it is unlikely that the wind claps its hands. They suggest taking the verb with an indefinite subject: “he claps” means “one claps. The idea is that of people rejoicing when the wicked are gone. But the parallelism is against this unless the second line is changed as well. R. Gordis (Job, 296) has “men will clap their hands…men will whistle upon him.”

[27:23]  ¹⁶ tn Or “hisses at him from its place” (ESV).