Job 30:17-19

30:17 Night pierces ¹  my bones; ² 

my gnawing pains ³  never cease.

30:18 With great power God ⁴  grasps my clothing; ⁵ 

he binds me like the collar ⁶  of my tunic.

30:19 He has flung me into the mud,

and I have come to resemble dust and ashes.

Job 30:29-30

30:29 I have become a brother to jackals

and a companion of ostriches. ⁷ 

30:30 My skin has turned dark on me; ⁸ 

my body ⁹  is hot with fever. ¹⁰ 

Numbers 12:12

12:12 Do not let her be like a baby born dead, whose flesh is half-consumed when it comes out of its ¹¹  mother’s womb!”

[30:17]  ¹ tn The subject of the verb “pierces” can be the night (personified), or it could be God (understood), leaving “night” to be an adverbial accusative of time – “at night he pierces.”

[30:17]  ² tc The MT concludes this half-verse with “upon me.” That phrase is not in the LXX, and so many commentators delete it as making the line too long.

[30:17]  ³ tn Heb “my gnawers,” which is open to several interpretations. The NASB and NIV take it as “gnawing pains”; cf. NRSV “the pain that gnaws me.” Some suggest worms in the sores (7:5). The LXX has “my nerves,” a view accepted by many commentators.

[30:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[30:18]  ⁵ tc This whole verse is difficult. The first problem is that this verb in the MT means “is disguised [or disfigured],” indicating that Job’s clothes hang loose on him. But many take the view that the verb is a phonetic variant of חָבַשׁ (khavash, “to bind; to seize”) and that the Hitpael form is a conflation of the third and second person because of the interchange between them in the passage (R. Gordis, Job, 335). The commentaries list a number of conjectural emendations, but the image in the verse is probably that God seizes Job by the garment and throws him down.

[30:18]  ⁶ tn The phrase “like the collar” is difficult, primarily because their tunics did not have collars. A translation of “neck” would suit better. Some change the preposition to בּ (bet), getting a translation “by the neck of my tunic.”

[30:29]  ⁷ sn The point of this figure is that Job’s cries of lament are like the howls and screeches of these animals, not that he lives with them. In Job 39:13 the female ostrich is called “the wailer.”

[30:30]  ⁸ tn The MT has “become dark from upon me,” prompting some editions to supply the verb “falls from me” (RSV, NRSV), or “peels” (NIV).

[30:30]  ⁹ tn The word “my bones” may be taken as a metonymy of subject, the bony framework indicating the whole body.

[30:30]  ¹⁰ tn The word חֹרֶב (khorev) also means “heat.” The heat in this line is not that of the sun, but obviously a fever.

[12:12]  ¹¹ tc The words “its mother” and “its flesh” are among the so-called tiqqune sopherim, or “emendations of the scribes.” According to this tradition the text originally had here “our mother” and “our flesh,” but the ancient scribes changed these pronouns from the first person to the third person. Apparently they were concerned that the image of Moses’ mother giving birth to a baby with physical defects of the sort described here was somehow inappropriate, given the stature and importance of Moses.