Job 3:10

3:10 because it ¹  did not shut the doors ²  of my mother’s womb on me, ³ 

nor did it hide trouble ⁴  from my eyes!

Job 16:8

16:8 You have seized me, ⁵ 

and it ⁶  has become a witness;

my leanness ⁷  has risen up against me

and testifies against me.

Job 16:19

16:19 Even now my witness ⁸  is in heaven;

my advocate ⁹  is on high.

Job 17:13

17:13 If ¹⁰  I hope for the grave to be my home,

if I spread out my bed in darkness,

Job 19:15-16

19:15 My guests ¹¹  and my servant girls

consider ¹²  me a stranger;

I am a foreigner ¹³  in their eyes.

19:16 I summon ¹⁴  my servant, but he does not respond,

even though I implore ¹⁵  him with my own mouth.

Job 34:6

34:6 Concerning my right, should I lie? ¹⁶ 

My wound ¹⁷  is incurable,

although I am without transgression.’ ¹⁸ 

[3:10]  ¹ tn The subject is still “that night.” Here, at the end of this first section, Job finally expresses the crime of that night – it did not hinder his birth.

[3:10]  ² sn This use of doors for the womb forms an implied comparison; the night should have hindered conception (see Gen 20:18 and 1 Sam 1:5).

[3:10]  ³ tn The Hebrew has simply “my belly [= womb].” The suffix on the noun must be objective – it was the womb of Job’s mother in which he lay before his birth. See however N. C. Habel, “The Dative Suffix in Job 33:13,” Bib 63 (1982): 258-59, who thinks it is deliberately ambiguous.

[3:10]  ⁴ tn The word עָמָל (’amal) means “work, heavy labor, agonizing labor, struggle” with the idea of fatigue and pain.

[16:8]  ⁵ tn The verb is קָמַט (qamat) which is used only here and in 22:16; it means “to seize; to grasp.” By God’s seizing him, Job means his afflictions.

[16:8]  ⁶ tn The subject is “my calamity.”

[16:8]  ⁷ tn The verb is used in Ps 109:24 to mean “to be lean”; and so “leanness” is accepted here for the noun by most. Otherwise the word is “lie, deceit.” Accordingly, some take it here as “my slanderer” or “my liar” (gives evidence against me).

[16:19]  ⁹ sn The witness in heaven must be God, to whom the cries and prayers come. Job’s dilemma is serious, but common to the human experience: the hostility of God toward him is baffling, but he is conscious of his innocence and can call on God to be his witness.

[16:19]  ¹⁰ tn The parallelism now uses the Aramaic word “my advocate” – the one who testifies on my behalf. The word again appears in Gen 31:47 for Laban’s naming of the “heap of witness” in Aramaic – “Sahadutha.”

[17:13]  ¹³ tn The clause begins with אִם (’im) which here has more of the sense of “since.” E. Dhorme (Job, 253) takes a rather rare use of the word to get “Can I hope again” (see also GKC 475 §150.f for the caveat).

[19:15]  ¹⁷ tn The Hebrew גָּרֵי בֵיתִי (gare beti, “the guests of my house”) refers to those who sojourned in my house – not residents, but guests.

[19:15]  ¹⁸ tn The form of the verb is a feminine plural, which would seem to lend support to the proposed change of the lines (see last note to v. 14). But the form may be feminine primarily because of the immediate reference. On the other side, the suffix of “their eyes” is a masculine plural. So the evidence lies on both sides.

[19:15]  ¹⁹ tn This word נָכְרִי (nokhri) is the person from another race, from a strange land, the foreigner. The previous word, גֵּר (ger), is a more general word for someone who is staying in the land but is not a citizen, a sojourner.

[19:16]  ²¹ tn The verb קָרָא (qara’) followed by the ל (lamed) preposition means “to summon.” Contrast Ps 123:2.

[19:16]  ²² tn Heb “plead for grace” or “plead for mercy” (ESV).

[34:6]  ²⁵ tn The verb is the Piel imperfect of כָּזַב (kazav), meaning “to lie.” It could be a question: “Should I lie [against my right?] – when I am innocent. If it is repointed to the Pual, then it can be “I am made to lie,” or “I am deceived.” Taking it as a question makes good sense here, and so emendations are unnecessary.

[34:6]  ²⁶ tn The Hebrew text has only “my arrow.” Some commentators emend that word slightly to get “my wound.” But the idea could be derived from “arrows” as well, the wounds caused by the arrows. The arrows are symbolic of God’s affliction.

[34:6]  ²⁷ tn Heb “without transgression”; but this is parallel to the first part where the claim is innocence.