Job 34:14-15

34:14 If God ¹  were to set his heart on it, ² 

and gather in his spirit and his breath,

34:15 all flesh would perish together

and human beings would return to dust.

Job 34:19-24

34:19 who shows no partiality to princes,

and does not take note of ³  the rich more than the poor,

because all of them are the work of his hands?

34:20 In a moment they die, in the middle of the night, ⁴ 

people ⁵  are shaken ⁶  and they pass away.

The mighty are removed effortlessly. ⁷ 

34:21 For his eyes are on the ways of an individual,

he observes all a person’s ⁸  steps.

34:22 There is no darkness, and no deep darkness,

where evildoers can hide themselves. ⁹ 

34:23 For he does not still consider a person, ¹⁰ 

that he should come before God in judgment.

34:24 He shatters the great without inquiry, ¹¹ 

and sets up others in their place.

Isaiah 40:15-17

40:15 Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket;

they are regarded as dust on the scales.

He lifts ¹²  the coastlands ¹³  as if they were dust.

40:16 Not even Lebanon could supply enough firewood for a sacrifice; ¹⁴ 

its wild animals would not provide enough burnt offerings. ¹⁵ 

40:17 All the nations are insignificant before him;

they are regarded as absolutely nothing. ¹⁶ 

Isaiah 40:22-24

40:22 He is the one who sits on the earth’s horizon; ¹⁷ 

its inhabitants are like grasshoppers before him. ¹⁸ 

He is the one who stretches out the sky like a thin curtain, ¹⁹ 

and spreads it out ²⁰  like a pitched tent. ²¹ 

40:23 He is the one who reduces rulers to nothing;

he makes the earth’s leaders insignificant.

40:24 Indeed, they are barely planted;

yes, they are barely sown;

yes, they barely take root in the earth,

and then he blows on them, causing them to dry up,

and the wind carries them away like straw.

[34:14]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:14]  ² tc This is the reading following the Qere. The Kethib and the Syriac and the LXX suggest a reading יָשִׂים (yasim, “if he [God] recalls”). But this would require leaving out “his heart,” and would also require redividing the verse to make “his spirit” the object. It makes better parallelism, but may require too many changes.

[34:19]  ³ tn The verb means “to give recognition; to take note of” and in this passage with לִפְנֵי (lifne, “before”) it means to show preferential treatment to the rich before the poor. The word for “rich” here is an unusual word, found parallel to “noble” (Isa 32:2). P. Joüon thinks it is a term of social distinction (Bib 18 [1937]: 207-8).

[34:20]  ⁴ tn Dhorme transposes “in the middle of the night” with “they pass away” to get a smoother reading. But the MT emphasizes the suddenness by putting both temporal ideas first. E. F. Sutcliffe leaves the order as it stands in the text, but adds a verb “they expire” after “in the middle of the night” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 79ff.).

[34:20]  ⁵ tn R. Gordis (Job, 389) thinks “people” here mean the people who count, the upper class.

[34:20]  ⁶ tn The verb means “to be violently agitated.” There is no problem with the word in this context, but commentators have made suggestions for improving the idea. The proposal that has the most to commend it, if one were inclined to choose a new word, is the change to יִגְוָעוּ (yigva’u, “they expire”; so Ball, Holscher, Fohrer, and others).

[34:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “not by hand.” This means without having to use force.

[34:21]  ⁸ tn Heb “his”; the referent (a person) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:22]  ⁹ tn The construction of this colon uses the Niphal infinitive construct from סָתַר (satar, “to be hidden; to hide”). The resumptive adverb makes this a relative clause in its usage: “where the evildoers can hide themselves.”

[34:23]  ¹⁰ 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.

[34:24]  ¹¹ tn Heb “[with] no investigation.”

[40:15]  ¹² tn Or “weighs” (NIV); NLT “picks up.”

[40:15]  ¹³ tn Or “islands” (NASB, NIV, NLT).

[40:16]  ¹⁴ tn The words “for a sacrifice” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[40:16]  ¹⁵ sn The point is that not even the Lebanon forest could supply enough wood and animals for an adequate sacrifice to the Lord.

[40:17]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “[as derived] from nothing and unformed.”

[40:22]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the circle of the earth” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[40:22]  ¹⁸ tn The words “before him” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[40:22]  ¹⁹ tn The otherwise unattested noun דֹּק (doq), translated here “thin curtain,” is apparently derived from the verbal root דקק (“crush”) from which is derived the adjective דַּק (daq, “thin”; see HALOT 229 s.v. דקק). The nuance “curtain” is implied from the parallelism (see “tent” in the next line).

[40:22]  ²⁰ tn The meaning of the otherwise unattested verb מָתַח (matakh, “spread out”) is determined from the parallelism (note the corresponding verb “stretch out” in the previous line) and supported by later Hebrew and Aramaic cognates. See HALOT 654 s.v. *מתה.

[40:22]  ²¹ tn Heb “like a tent [in which] to live”; NAB, NASB “like a tent to dwell (live NIV, NRSV) in.”