Job 38:8

38:8 “Who shut up ¹  the sea with doors

when it burst forth, ²  coming out of the womb,

Job 38:10

38:10 when I prescribed ³  its limits,

and set ⁴  in place its bolts and doors,

Job 3:10

3:10 because it ⁵  did not shut the doors ⁶  of my mother’s womb on me, ⁷ 

nor did it hide trouble ⁸  from my eyes!

Job 31:32

31:32 But ⁹  no stranger had to spend the night outside,

for I opened my doors to the traveler ¹⁰  –

Job 41:14

41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? ¹¹ 

Its teeth all around are fearsome.

[38:8]  ¹ tn The MT has “and he shut up.” The Vulgate has “Who?” and so many commentaries and editions adopt this reading, if not from the Vulgate, then from the sense of the sequence in the text itself.

[38:8]  ² tn The line uses two expressions, first the temporal clause with גִּיחַ (giakh, “when it burst forth”) and then the finite verb יֵצֵא (yetse’, “go out”) to mark the concomitance of the two actions.

[38:10]  ³ tc The MT has “and I broke,” which cannot mean “set, prescribed” or the like. The LXX and the Vulgate have such a meaning, suggesting a verb עֲשִׁית (’ashiyt, “plan, prescribe”). A. Guillaume finds an Arabic word with a meaning “measured it by span by my decree.” Would God give himself a decree? R. Gordis simply argues that the basic meaning “break” develops the connotation of “decide, determine” (2 Sam 5:24; Job 14:3; Dan 11:36).

[38:10]  ⁴ tn Dhorme suggested reversing the two verbs, making this the first, and then “shatter” for the second colon.

[3:10]  ⁵ tn The subject is still “that night.” Here, at the end of this first section, Job finally expresses the crime of that night – it did not hinder his birth.

[3:10]  ⁶ sn This use of doors for the womb forms an implied comparison; the night should have hindered conception (see Gen 20:18 and 1 Sam 1:5).

[3:10]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew has simply “my belly [= womb].” The suffix on the noun must be objective – it was the womb of Job’s mother in which he lay before his birth. See however N. C. Habel, “The Dative Suffix in Job 33:13,” Bib 63 (1982): 258-59, who thinks it is deliberately ambiguous.

[3:10]  ⁸ tn The word עָמָל (’amal) means “work, heavy labor, agonizing labor, struggle” with the idea of fatigue and pain.

[31:32]  ⁷ tn This verse forms another parenthesis. Job stops almost at every point now in the conditional clauses to affirm his purity and integrity.

[31:32]  ⁸ tn The word in the MT, אֹרחַ (’orakh, “way”), is a contraction from אֹרֵחַ (’oreakh, “wayfarer”); thus, “traveler.” The same parallelism is found in Jer 14:8. The reading here “on/to the road” is meaningless otherwise.

[41:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “his face.”