Job 3:21

3:21 to ¹  those who wait ²  for death that ³  does not come,

and search for it ⁴ 

more than for hidden treasures,

Job 5:20

5:20 In time of famine ⁵  he will redeem you from death,

and in time of war from the power of the sword. ⁶ 

Job 7:15

7:15 so that I ⁷  would prefer ⁸  strangling, ⁹ 

and ¹⁰  death ¹¹  more ¹²  than life. ¹³ 

Job 27:15

27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, ¹⁴ 

and their ¹⁵  widows do not mourn for them.

Job 28:22

28:22 Destruction ¹⁶  and Death say,

‘With our ears we have heard a rumor about where it can be found.’ ¹⁷ 

Job 18:13

18:13 It eats away parts of his skin; ¹⁸ 

the most terrible death ¹⁹  devours his limbs.

Job 30:23

30:23 I know that you are bringing ²⁰  me to death,

to the meeting place for all the living.

Job 38:17

38:17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you? ²¹ 

Have you seen the gates of deepest darkness? ²² 

[3:21]  ¹ tn The verse simply begins with the participle in apposition to the expressions in the previous verse describing those who are bitter. The preposition is added from the context.

[3:21]  ² tn The verb is the Piel participle of חָכָה (khakhah, “to wait for” someone; Yahweh is the object in Isa 8:17; 64:3; Ps 33:20). Here death is the supreme hope of the miserable and the suffering.

[3:21]  ³ tn The verse simply has the form אֵין (’en, “there is not”) with a pronominal suffix and a conjunction – “and there is not it” or “and it is not.” The LXX and the Vulgate add a verb to explain this form: “and obtain it not.”

[3:21]  ⁴ tn The parallel verb is now a preterite with a vav (ו) consecutive; it therefore has the nuance of a characteristic perfect or gnomic perfect – the English present tense.

[5:20]  ⁵ sn Targum Job here sees an allusion to the famine of Egypt and the war with Amalek.

[5:20]  ⁶ tn Heb “from the hand of the sword.” This is idiomatic for “the power of the sword.” The expression is also metonymical, meaning from the effect of the sword, which is death.

[7:15]  ⁹ tn The word נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) is often translated “soul.” But since Hebrew thought does not make such a distinction between body and soul, it is usually better to translate it with “person.” When a suffix is added to the word, then that pronoun would serve as the better translation, as here with “my soul” = “I” (meaning with every fiber of my being).

[7:15]  ¹⁰ tn The verb בָּחַר (bakhar, “choose”) followed by the preposition בּ (bet) can have the sense of “prefer.”

[7:15]  ¹¹ tn The meaning of the term מַחֲנָק (makhanaq, “strangling”), a hapax legomenon, is clear enough; the verb חָנַק (khanaq) in the Piel means “to strangle” (Nah 2:13), and in the Niphal “to strangle oneself” (2 Sam 17:23). This word has tempted some commentators to take נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) in a very restricted sense of “throat.”

[7:15]  ¹² tn The conjunction “and” is supplied in the translation. “Death” could also be taken in apposition to “strangling,” providing the outcome of the strangling.

[7:15]  ¹³ tn This is one of the few words recognizable in the LXX: “You will separate life from my spirit, and yet keep my bones from death.”

[7:15]  ¹⁴ tn The comparative min (מִן) after the verb “choose” will here have the idea of preferring something before another (see GKC 429-30 §133.b).

[7:15]  ¹⁵ tn The word מֵעַצְמוֹתָי (me’atsmotay) means “more than my bones” (= life or being). The line is poetic; “bones” is often used in scripture metonymically for the whole living person, so there is no need here for conjectural emendation. Nevertheless, there have been several suggestions made. The simplest and most appealing for those who desire a change is the repointing to מֵעַצְּבוֹתָי (me’atsÿvotay, “my sufferings,” adopted by NAB, JB, Moffatt, Driver-Gray, E. Dhorme, H. H. Rowley, and others). Driver obtains this idea by positing a new word based on Arabic without changing the letters; it means “great” – but he has to supply the word “sufferings.”

[27:15]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.

[28:22]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Abaddon.”

[28:22]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “heard a report of it,” which means a report of its location, thus “where it can be found.”

[18:13]  ²¹ tn The expression “the limbs of his skin” makes no sense, unless a poetic meaning of “parts” (or perhaps “layers”) is taken. The parallelism has “his skin” in the first colon, and “his limbs” in the second. One plausible suggestion is to take בַּדֵּי (badde, “limbs of”) in the first part to be בִּדְוָי (bidvay, “by a disease”; Dhorme, Wright, RSV). The verb has to be made passive, however. The versions have different things: The LXX has “let the branches of his feet be eaten”; the Syriac has “his cities will be swallowed up by force”; the Vulgate reads “let it devour the beauty of his skin”; and Targum Job has “it will devour the linen garments that cover his skin.”

[18:13]  ²² tn The “firstborn of death” is the strongest child of death (Gen 49:3), or the deadliest death (like the “firstborn of the poor, the poorest). The phrase means the most terrible death (A. B. Davidson, Job, 134).

[30:23]  ²⁵ tn The imperfect verb would be a progressive imperfect, it is future, but it is also already underway.

[38:17]  ²⁹ tn Heb “uncovered to you.”

[38:17]  ³⁰ tn Some still retain the traditional phrase “shadow of death” in the English translation (cf. NIV). The reference is to the entrance to Sheol (see Job 10:21).