Job 27:21

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

it sweeps him out of his place.

Job 27:23

27:23 It claps ¹  its hands at him in derision

and hisses him away from his place. ² 

Job 14:18

14:18 But as ³  a mountain falls away and crumbles, ⁴ 

and as a rock will be removed from its place,

Job 18:4

18:4 You who tear yourself ⁵  to pieces in your anger,

will the earth be abandoned ⁶  for your sake?

Or will a rock be moved from its place? ⁷ 

Job 2:11

The Visit of Job’s Friends ⁸ 

2:11 When Job’s three friends heard about all this calamity that had happened to him, each of them came from his own country ⁹  – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. ¹⁰  They met together ¹¹  to come to show sympathy ¹²  for him and to console ¹³  him.

[27:23]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Or “hisses at him from its place” (ESV).

[14:18]  ¹ tn The indication that this is a simile is to be obtained from the conjunction beginning 19c (see GKC 499 §161.a).

[14:18]  ² tn The word יִבּוֹל (yibbol) usually refers to a flower fading and so seems strange here. The LXX and the Syriac translate “and will fall”; most commentators accept this and repoint the preceding word to get “and will surely fall.” Duhm retains the MT and applies the image of the flower to the falling mountain. The verb is used of the earth in Isa 24:4, and so NIV, RSV, and NJPS all have the idea of “crumble away.”

[18:4]  ¹ tn The construction uses the participle and then 3rd person suffixes: “O tearer of himself in his anger.” But it is clearly referring to Job, and so the direct second person pronouns should be used to make that clear. The LXX is an approximation or paraphrase here: “Anger has possessed you, for what if you should die – would under heaven be desolate, or shall the mountains be overthrown from their foundations?”

[18:4]  ² tn There is a good deal of study on this word in this passage, and in Job in general. M. Dahood suggested a root עָזַב (’azav) meaning “to arrange; to rearrange” (“The Root ’zb II in Job,” JBL 78 [1959]: 303-9). But this is refuted by H. G. M. Williamson, “A Reconsideration of ’zb II in Biblical Hebrew,” ZAW 97 (1985): 74-85.

[18:4]  ³ sn Bildad is asking if Job thinks the whole moral order of the world should be interrupted for his sake, that he may escape the punishment for wickedness.

[2:11]  ¹ sn See N. C. Habel, “‘Only the Jackal is My Friend,’ On Friends and Redeemers in Job,” Int 31 (1977): 227-36.

[2:11]  ² tn Heb “a man from his place”; this is the distributive use, meaning “each man came from his place.”

[2:11]  ³ sn Commentators have tried to analyze the meanings of the names of the friends and their locations. Not only has this proven to be difficult (Teman is the only place that is known), it is not necessary for the study of the book. The names are probably not symbolic of the things they say.

[2:11]  ⁴ tn The verb can mean that they “agreed together”; but it also (and more likely) means that they came together at a meeting point to go visit Job together.

[2:11]  ⁵ tn The verb “to show grief” is נוּד (nud), and literally signifies “to shake the head.” It may be that his friends came to show the proper sympathy and express the appropriate feelings. They were not ready for what they found.

[2:11]  ⁶ tn The second infinitive is from נָחָם (nakham, “to comfort, console” in the Piel). This word may be derived from a word with a meaning of sighing deeply.