Job 3:15

3:15 or with princes who possessed gold, ¹ 

who filled their palaces ²  with silver.

Job 7:10

7:10 He returns no more to his house,

nor does his place of residence ³  know him ⁴  any more.

Job 8:17

8:17 It wraps its roots around a heap ⁵  of stones ⁶ 

and it looks ⁷  for a place among stones. ⁸ 

Job 17:13

17:13 If ⁹  I hope for the grave to be my home,

if I spread out my bed in darkness,

Job 19:15

19:15 My guests ¹⁰  and my servant girls

consider ¹¹  me a stranger;

I am a foreigner ¹²  in their eyes.

Job 20:19

20:19 For he has oppressed the poor and abandoned them; ¹³ 

he has seized a house which he did not build. ¹⁴ 

Job 21:9

21:9 Their houses are safe ¹⁵  and without fear; ¹⁶ 

and no rod of punishment ¹⁷  from God is upon them. ¹⁸ 

Job 21:21

21:21 For what is his interest ¹⁹  in his home

after his death, ²⁰ 

when the number of his months

has been broken off? ²¹ 

Job 22:18

22:18 But it was he ²²  who filled their houses

with good things –

yet the counsel of the wicked ²³ 

was far from me. ²⁴ 

Job 30:23

30:23 I know that you are bringing ²⁵  me to death,

to the meeting place for all the living.

Job 38:20

38:20 that you may take them to their borders

and perceive the pathways to their homes? ²⁶ 

[3:15]  ¹ tn The expression simply has “or with princes gold to them.” The noun is defined by the noun clause serving as a relative clause (GKC 486 §155.e).

[3:15]  ² tn Heb “filled their houses.” There is no reason here to take “houses” to mean tombs; the “houses” refer to the places the princes lived (i.e., palaces). The reference is not to the practice of burying treasures with the dead. It is simply saying that if Job had died he would have been with the rich and famous in death.

[7:10]  ³ tn M. Dahood suggests the meaning is the same as “his abode” (“Hebrew-Ugaritic Lexicography V,” Bib 48 [1967]: 421-38).

[7:10]  ⁴ tn The verb means “to recognize” by seeing. “His place,” the place where he was living, is the subject of the verb. This personification is intended simply to say that the place where he lived will not have him any more. The line is very similar to Ps 103:16b – when the wind blows the flower away, its place knows it no more.

[8:17]  ⁵ tn Cheyne reads “spring” or “well” rather than “heap.” However, this does not fit the parallelism very well, and so he emends the second half as well. Nevertheless the Hebrew text needs no emending here.

[8:17]  ⁶ tn The expression “of stones” is added for clarification of what the heap would be. It refers to the object around which the roots would grow. The parallelism with “house of stones” makes this reading highly probable.

[8:17]  ⁷ tn The idea is that the plant grows, looking for a place to grow among the stones. Some trees grow so tightly around the rocks and stones that they are impossible to uproot. The rocky ground where it grows forms “a house of stones.” The LXX supports an emendation from יְחֱזֶה (yÿkhezeh, “it looks”) to יִחְיֶה (yikhyeh, “it lives”). Others have tried to emend the text in a variety of ways: “pushes” (Budde), “cleave” (Gordis), “was opposite” (Driver), or “run against” (NEB, probably based on G. R. Driver). If one were to make a change, the reading with the LXX would be the easiest to defend, but there is no substantial reason to do that. The meaning is about the same without such a change.

[8:17]  ⁸ sn The idea seems to be that the stones around which the roots of the tree wrap themselves suggest strength and security for the tree, but uprooting comes to it nevertheless (v. 18). The point is that the wicked may appear to be living in security and flourishing, yet can be quickly destroyed (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 74).

[17:13]  ⁷ 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]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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.

[20:19]  ¹¹ tc The verb indicates that after he oppressed the poor he abandoned them to their fate. But there have been several attempts to improve on the text. Several have repointed the text to get a word parallel to “house.” Ehrlich came up with עֹזֵב (’ozev, “mud hut”), Kissane had “hovel” (similar to Neh 3:8). M. Dahood did the same (“The Root ’zb II in Job,” JBL 78 [1959]: 306-7). J. Reider came up with עֶזֶב (’ezev, the “leavings”), what the rich were to leave for the poor (“Contributions to the Scriptural text,” HUCA 24 [1952/53]: 103-6). But an additional root עָזַב (’azav) is questionable. And while the text as it stands is general and not very striking, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Dhorme reverses the letters to gain בְּעֹז (bÿ’oz, “with force [or violence]”).

[20:19]  ¹² tn The last clause says, “and he did not build it.” This can be understood in an adverbial sense, supplying the relative pronoun to the translation.

[21:9]  ¹³ tn The word שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace, safety”) is here a substantive after a plural subject (see GKC 452 §141.c, n. 3).

[21:9]  ¹⁴ tn The form מִפָּחַד (mippakhad) is translated “without fear,” literally “from fear”; the preposition is similar to the alpha privative in Greek. The word “fear, dread” means nothing that causes fear or dread – they are peaceful, secure. See GKC 382 §119.w.

[21:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “no rod of God.” The words “punishment from” have been supplied in the translation to make the metaphor understandable for the modern reader by stating the purpose of the rod.

[21:9]  ¹⁶ sn In 9:34 Job was complaining that there was no umpire to remove God’s rod from him, but here he observes no such rod is on the wicked.

[21:21]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “his desire.” The meaning is that after he is gone he does not care about what happens to his household (“house” meaning “family” here).

[21:21]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “after him,” but clearly the meaning is “after he is gone.”

[21:21]  ¹⁷ tc The rare word חֻצָּצוּ (khutsatsu) is probably a cognate of hassa in Arabic, meaning “to cut off.” There is also an Akkadian word “to cut in two” and “to break.” These fit the context here rather well. The other Hebrew words that are connected to the root חָצַצ (khatsats) do not offer any help.

[22:18]  ¹⁷ tn The pronoun is added for this emphasis; it has “but he” before the verb.

[22:18]  ¹⁸ tn See Job 10:3.

[22:18]  ¹⁹ tc The LXX has “from him,” and this is followed by several commentators. But the MT is to be retained, for Eliphaz is recalling the words of Job. Verses 17 and 18 are deleted by a number of commentators as a gloss because they have many similarities to 21:14-16. But Eliphaz is recalling what Job said, in order to say that the prosperity to which Job alluded was only the prelude to a disaster he denied (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 156).

[30:23]  ¹⁹ tn The imperfect verb would be a progressive imperfect, it is future, but it is also already underway.

[38:20]  ²¹ tn The suffixes are singular (“that you may take it to its border…to its home”), referring to either the light or the darkness. Because either is referred to, the translation has employed plurals, since singulars would imply that only the second item, “darkness,” was the referent. Plurals are also employed by NAB and NIV.