Job 3:26

3:26 I have no ease, ¹  I have no quietness;

I cannot rest; ²  turmoil has come upon me.” ³ 

Job 6:11

6:11 What is my strength, that I should wait? ⁴ 

and what is my end, ⁵ 

that I should prolong my life?

Job 8:19

8:19 Indeed, this is the joy of his way, ⁶ 

and out of the earth ⁷  others spring up. ⁸ 

Job 9:28

9:28 I dread ⁹  all my sufferings, ¹⁰ 

for ¹¹  I know that you do not hold me blameless. ¹² 

Job 14:9

14:9 at the scent ¹³  of water it will flourish ¹⁴ 

and put forth ¹⁵  shoots like a new plant.

Job 15:32

15:32 Before his time ¹⁶  he will be paid in full, ¹⁷ 

and his branches will not flourish. ¹⁸ 

Job 17:9

17:9 But the righteous man holds to his way,

and the one with clean hands grows stronger. ¹⁹ 

Job 23:14

23:14 For he fulfills his decree against me, ²⁰ 

and many such things are his plans. ²¹ 

Job 24:10

24:10 They go about naked, without clothing,

and go hungry while they carry the sheaves. ²² 

Job 27:15

27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, ²³ 

and their ²⁴  widows do not mourn for them.

Job 34:6

34:6 Concerning my right, should I lie? ²⁵ 

My wound ²⁶  is incurable,

although I am without transgression.’ ²⁷ 

Job 34:23

34:23 For he does not still consider a person, ²⁸ 

that he should come before God in judgment.

Job 40:2

40:2 “Will the one who contends ²⁹  with the Almighty correct him? ³⁰ 

Let the person who accuses God give him an answer!”

[3:26]  ¹ tn The LXX “peace” bases its rendering on שָׁלַם (shalam) and not שָׁלָה (shalah), which retains the original vav (ו). The verb means “to be quiet, to be at ease.”

[3:26]  ² tn The verb is literally “and I do/can not rest.” A potential perfect nuance fits this passage well. The word נוּחַ (nuakh, “rest”) implies “rest” in every sense, especially in contrast to רֹגֶז (rogez, “turmoil, agitation” [vv. 26 and 17]).

[3:26]  ³ tn The last clause simply has “and trouble came.” Job is essentially saying that since the trouble has come upon him there is not a moment of rest and relief.

[6:11]  ⁴ sn Now, in vv. 11-13, Job proceeds to describe his hopeless condition. In so doing, he is continuing his defense of his despair and lament. The section begins with these rhetorical questions in which Job affirms that he does not have the strength to wait for the blessings that Eliphaz is talking about.

[6:11]  ⁵ tn The word translated “my end” is קִצִּי (qitsi). It refers to the termination of his life. In Ps 39:5 it is parallel to “the measure of my days.” In a sense, Job is asking what future he has. To him, the “end” of his affliction can only be death.

[8:19]  ⁷ tn This line is difficult. If the MT stands as it is, the expression must be ironic. It would be saying that the joy (all the security and prosperity) of its way (its life) is short-lived – that is the way its joy goes. Most commentators are not satisfied with this. Dhorme, for one, changes מְשׂוֹשׂ (mÿsos, “joy”) to מְסוֹס (mÿsos, “rotting”), and gets “behold him lie rotting on the path.” The sibilants can interchange this way. But Dhorme thinks the MT was written the way it was because the word was thought to be “joy,” when it should have been the other way. The word “way” then becomes an accusative of place. The suggestion is rather compelling and would certainly fit the context. The difficulty is that a root סוּס (sus, “to rot”) has to be proposed. E. Dhorme does this by drawing on Arabic sas, “to be eaten by moths or worms,” thus “worm-eaten; decaying; rotting.” Cf. NIV “its life withers away”; also NAB “there he lies rotting beside the road.”

[8:19]  ⁸ tn Heb “dust.”

[8:19]  ⁹ sn As with the tree, so with the godless man – his place will soon be taken by another.

[9:28]  ¹⁰ tn The word was used in Job 3:25; it has the idea of “dread, fear, tremble at.” The point here is that even if Job changes his appearance, he still dreads the sufferings, because he knows that God is treating him as a criminal.

[9:28]  ¹¹ sn See Job 7:15; see also the translation by G. Perles, “I tremble in every nerve” (“The Fourteenth Edition of Gesenius-Buhl’s Dictionary,” JQR 18 [1905/06]: 383-90).

[9:28]  ¹² tn The conjunction “for” is supplied in the translation.

[9:28]  ¹³ sn A. B. Davidson (Job, 73) appropriately notes that Job’s afflictions were the proof of his guilt in the estimation of God. If God held him innocent, he would remove the afflictions.

[14:9]  ¹³ tn The personification adds to the comparison with people – the tree is credited with the sense of smell to detect the water.

[14:9]  ¹⁴ tn The sense of “flourish” for this verb is found in Ps 92:12,13[13,14], and Prov 14:11. It makes an appropriate parallel with “bring forth boughs” in the second half.

[14:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and will make.”

[15:32]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “before his day.”

[15:32]  ¹⁷ tn Those who put the last colon of v. 31 with v. 32 also have to change the verb תִּמָּלֵא (timmale’, “will be fulfilled”). E. Dhorme (Job, 225) says, “a mere glance at the use of yimmal…abundantly proves that the original text had timmal (G, Syr., Vulg), which became timmale’ through the accidental transposition of the ‘alep of bÿsi’o…in verse 31….” This, of course, is possible, if all the other changes up to now are granted. But the meaning of a word elsewhere in no way assures it should be the word here. The LXX has “his harvest shall perish before the time,” which could translate any number of words that might have been in the underlying Hebrew text. A commercial metaphor is not out of place here, since parallelism does not demand that the same metaphor appear in both lines.

[15:32]  ¹⁸ tn Now, in the second half of the verse, the metaphor of a tree with branches begins.

[17:9]  ¹⁹ tn The last two words are the imperfect verb יֹסִיף (yosif) which means “he adds,” and the abstract noun “energy, strength.” This noun is not found elsewhere; its Piel verb occurs in Job 4:4 and 16:5. “he increases strength.”

[23:14]  ²² tn The text has “my decree,” which means “the decree [plan] for/against me.” The suffix is objective, equivalent to a dative of disadvantage. The Syriac and the Vulgate actually have “his decree.” R. Gordis (Job, 262) suggests taking it in the same sense as in Job 14:5: “my limit.”.

[23:14]  ²³ tn Heb “and many such [things] are with him.”

[24:10]  ²⁵ sn The point should not be missed – amidst abundant harvests, carrying sheaves about, they are still going hungry.

[27:15]  ²⁸ 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]  ²⁹ tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.

[34:6]  ³¹ 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]  ³² 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]  ³³ tn Heb “without transgression”; but this is parallel to the first part where the claim is innocence.

[34:23]  ³⁴ tn Heb “for he does not put upon man yet.” This has been given a wide variety of interpretations, all of which involve a lot of additional thoughts. The word עוֹד (’od, “yet, still”) has been replaced with מוֹעֵד (mo’ed, “an appointed time,” Reiske and Wright), with the ם (mem) having dropped out by haplography. This makes good sense. If the MT is retained, the best interpretation would be that God does not any more consider (from “place upon the heart”) man, that he might appear in judgment.

[40:2]  ³⁷ tn The form רֹב (rov) is the infinitive absolute from the verb רִיב (riv, “contend”). Dhorme wishes to repoint it to make it the active participle, the “one who argues with the Almighty.”

[40:2]  ³⁸ tn The verb יִסּוֹר (yissor) is found only here, but comes from a common root meaning “to correct; to reprove.” Several suggestions have been made to improve on the MT. Dhorme read it יָסוּר (yasur) in the sense of “to turn aside; to yield.” Ehrlich read this emendation as “to come to an end.” But the MT could be read as “to correct; to instruct.”