Job 27:16-18

27:16 If he piles up silver like dust

and stores up clothing like mounds of clay,

27:17 what he stores up ¹  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, ² 

like a hut ³  that a watchman has made.

[27:17]  ¹ 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]  ¹ 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]  ² 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.