Job 38:28

38:28 Does the rain have a father,

or who has fathered the drops of the dew?

Job 15:18

15:18 what wise men declare,

hiding nothing,

from the tradition of ¹  their ancestors, ² 

Job 15:10

15:10 The gray-haired ³  and the aged are on our side, ⁴ 

men far older than your father. ⁵ 

Job 29:16

29:16 I was a father ⁶  to the needy,

and I investigated the case of the person I did not know;

Job 17:14

17:14 If I cry ⁷  to corruption, ⁸  ‘You are my father,’

and to the worm, ‘My Mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

Job 31:18

31:18 but from my youth I raised the orphan ⁹  like a father,

and from my mother’s womb ¹⁰ 

I guided the widow! ¹¹ 

Job 30:1

Job’s Present Misery

30:1 “But now they mock me, those who are younger ¹²  than I,

whose fathers I disdained too much ¹³ 

to put with my sheep dogs. ¹⁴ 

Job 42:15

42:15 Nowhere in all the land could women be found who were as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance alongside their brothers.

Job 8:8

8:8 “For inquire now of the former ¹⁵  generation,

and pay attention ¹⁶  to the findings ¹⁷ 

of their ancestors; ¹⁸ 

Job 31:17

31:17 If I ate my morsel of bread myself,

and did not share any of it with orphans ¹⁹  –

Job 5:4

5:4 His children are far ²⁰  from safety,

and they are crushed ²¹  at the place where judgment is rendered, ²² 

nor is there anyone to deliver them. ²³ 

Job 5:15

5:15 So he saves ²⁴  from the sword that comes from their mouth, ²⁵ 

even ²⁶  the poor from the hand of the powerful.

Job 22:9

22:9 you sent widows away empty-handed,

and the arms ²⁷  of the orphans you crushed. ²⁸ 

Job 24:3

24:3 They drive away the orphan’s donkey;

they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.

Job 24:9

24:9 The fatherless child is snatched ²⁹  from the breast, ³⁰ 

the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. ³¹ 

Job 29:12

29:12 for I rescued the poor who cried out for help,

and the orphan who ³²  had no one to assist him;

Job 34:36

34:36 But ³³  Job will be tested to the end,

because his answers are like those of wicked men.

[15:18]  ¹ tn The word “tradition” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation.

[15:18]  ² tn Heb “their fathers.” Some commentators change one letter and follow the reading of the LXX: “and their fathers have not hidden.” Pope tries to get the same reading by classifying the מ (mem) as an enclitic mem. The MT on first glance would read “and did not hide from their fathers.” Some take the clause “and they did not hide” as adverbial and belonging to the first part of the verse: “what wise men declare, hiding nothing, according to the tradition of their fathers.”

[15:10]  ¹ tn The participle שָׂב (sav), from שִׂיב (siv, “to have white hair”; 1 Sam 12:2), only occurs elsewhere in the Bible in the Aramaic sections of Ezra. The word יָשִׁישׁ (yashish, “aged”) occurred in 12:12.

[15:10]  ² tn Heb “with us.”

[15:10]  ³ tn The line reads: “[men] greater than your father [in] days.” The expression “in days” underscores their age – they were older than Job’s father, and therefore wiser.

[29:16]  ¹ sn The word “father” does not have a wide range of meanings in the OT. But there are places that it is metaphorical, especially in a legal setting like this where the poor need aid.

[17:14]  ¹ tn This is understood because the conditional clauses seem to run to the apodosis in v. 15.

[17:14]  ² tn The word שַׁחַת (shakhat) may be the word “corruption” from a root שָׁחַת (shakhat, “to destroy”) or a word “pit” from שׁוּחַ (shuakh, “to sink down”). The same problem surfaces in Ps 16:10, where it is parallel to “Sheol.” E. F. Sutcliffe, The Old Testament and the Future Life, 76ff., defends the meaning “corruption.” But many commentators here take it to mean “the grave” in harmony with “Sheol.” But in this verse “worms” would suggest “corruption” is better.

[31:18]  ¹ tn Heb “he grew up with me.” Several commentators have decided to change the pronoun to “I,” and make it causative.

[31:18]  ² tn The expression “from my mother’s womb” is obviously hyperbolic. It is a way of saying “all his life.”

[31:18]  ³ tn Heb “I guided her,” referring to the widow mentioned in v. 16.

[30:1]  ¹ tn Heb “smaller than I for days.”

[30:1]  ² tn Heb “who I disdained their fathers to set…,” meaning “whose fathers I disdained to set.” The relative clause modifies the young fellows who mock; it explains that Job did not think highly enough of them to put them with the dogs. The next verse will explain why.

[30:1]  ³ sn Job is mocked by young fellows who come from low extraction. They mocked their elders and their betters. The scorn is strong here – dogs were despised as scavengers.

[8:8]  ¹ sn Bildad is not calling for Job to trace through the learning of antiquity, but of the most recent former generation. Hebrews were fond of recalling what the “fathers” had taught, for each generation recalled what their fathers had taught.

[8:8]  ² tn The verb כוֹנֵן (khonen, from כּוּן, kun) normally would indicate “prepare yourself” or “fix” one’s heart on something, i.e., give attention to it. The verb with the ל (lamed) preposition after it does mean “to think on” or “to meditate” (Isa 51:13). But some commentators wish to change the כּ (kaf) to a בּ (bet) in the verb to get “to consider” (from בִּין, bin). However, M. Dahood shows a connection between כּנן (knn) and שׁאל (sh’l) in Ugaritic (“Hebrew-Ugaritic Lexicography,” Bib 46 [1965]: 329).

[8:8]  ³ tn The Hebrew has “the search of their fathers,” but the word is probably intended to mean what that observation or search yielded (so “search” is a metonymy of cause).

[8:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “fathers.”

[31:17]  ¹ tn Heb “and an orphan did not eat from it.”

[5:4]  ¹ tn The imperfect verbs in this verse describe the condition of the accursed situation. Some commentators follow the LXX and take these as jussives, making this verse the curse that the man pronounced upon the fool. Rashi adds “This is the malediction with which I have cursed him.” That would make the speaker the one calling down the judgment on the fool rather than responding by observation how God destroyed the habitation of the fool.

[5:4]  ² tn The verb יִדַּכְּאוּ (yiddakkÿ’u) could be taken as the passive voice, or in the reciprocal sense (“crush one another”) or reflexive (“crush themselves”). The context favors the idea that the children of the foolish person will be destroyed because there is no one who will deliver them.

[5:4]  ³ tn Heb “in the gate.” The city gate was the place of both business and justice. The sense here seems to fit the usage of gates as the place of legal disputes, so the phrase “at the place of judgment” has been used in the translation.

[5:4]  ⁴ tn The text simply says “and there is no deliverer.” The entire clause could be subordinated to the preceding clause, and rendered simply “without a deliverer.”

[5:15]  ¹ tn The verb, the Hiphil preterite of יָשַׁע (yasha’, “and he saves”) indicates that by frustrating the plans of the wicked God saves the poor. So the vav (ו) consecutive shows the result in the sequence of the verses.

[5:15]  ² tn The juxtaposition of “from the sword from their mouth” poses translation difficulties. Some mss do not have the preposition on “their mouth,” but render the expression as a construct: “from the sword of their mouth.” This would mean their tongue, and by metonymy, what they say. The expression “from their mouth” corresponds well with “from the hand” in the next colon. And as E. Dhorme (Job, 67) notes, what is missing is a parallel in the first part with “the poor” in the second. So he follows Cappel in repointing “from the sword” as a Hophal participle, מֹחֳרָב (mokhorav), meaning “the ruined.” If a change is required, this has the benefit of only changing the pointing. The difficulty with this is that the word “desolate, ruined” is not used for people, but only to cities, lands, or mountains. The sense of the verse can be supported from the present pointing: “from the sword [which comes] from their mouth”; the second phrase could also be in apposition, meaning, “from the sword, i.e., from their mouth.”

[5:15]  ³ tn If the word “poor” is to do double duty, i.e., serving as the object of the verb “saves” in the first colon as well as the second, then the conjunction should be explanatory.

[22:9]  ¹ tn The “arms of the orphans” are their helps or rights on which they depended for support.

[22:9]  ² tn The verb in the text is Pual: יְדֻכָּא (yÿdukka’, “was [were] crushed”). GKC 388 §121.b would explain “arms” as the complement of a passive imperfect. But if that is too difficult, then a change to Piel imperfect, second person, will solve the difficulty. In its favor is the parallelism, the use of the second person all throughout the section, and the reading in all the versions. The versions may have simply assumed the easier reading, however.

[24:9]  ¹ tn The verb with no expressed subject is here again taken in the passive: “they snatch” becomes “[child] is snatched.”

[24:9]  ² tn This word is usually defined as “violence; ruin.” But elsewhere it does mean “breast” (Isa 60:16; 66:11), and that is certainly what it means here.

[24:9]  ³ tc The MT has a very brief and strange reading: “they take as a pledge upon the poor.” This could be taken as “they take a pledge against the poor” (ESV). Kamphausen suggested that instead of עַל (’al, “against”) one should read עוּל (’ul, “suckling”). This is supported by the parallelism. “They take as pledge” is also made passive here.

[29:12]  ¹ tn The negative introduces a clause that serves as a negative attribute; literally the following clause says, “and had no helper” (see GKC 482 §152.u).

[34:36]  ¹ tc The MT reads אָבִי (’avi, “my father”), which makes no sense. Some follow the KJV and emend the word to make a verb “I desire” or use the noun “my desire of it.” Others follow an Arabic word meaning “entreat, I pray” (cf. ESV, “Would that Job were tried”). The LXX and the Syriac versions have “but” and “surely” respectively. Since this is the only ms support, albeit weak, it may be the best choice. In this sense Elihu would be saying that because of Job’s attitude God will continue to test him.