Job 39:1-4

39:1 “Are you acquainted with the way ¹ 

the mountain goats ²  give birth?

Do you watch as the wild deer give birth to their young?

39:2 Do you count the months they must fulfill,

and do you know the time they give birth? ³ 

39:3 They crouch, they bear ⁴  their young,

they bring forth the offspring they have carried. ⁵ 

39:4 Their young grow strong, and grow up in the open; ⁶ 

they go off, and do not return to them.

Psalms 29:9

29:9 The Lord’s shout bends ⁷  the large trees ⁸ 

and strips ⁹  the leaves from the forests. ¹⁰ 

Everyone in his temple says, “Majestic!” ¹¹ 

[39:1]  ¹ tn The text uses the infinitive as the object: “do you know the giving birth of?”

[39:1]  ² tn Or “ibex.”

[39:2]  ³ tn Here the infinitive is again a substantive: “the time of their giving birth.”

[39:3]  ⁴ tc The Hebrew verb used here means “to cleave,” and this would not have the object “their young.” Olshausen and others after him change the ח (khet) to ט (tet) and get a verb “to drop,” meaning “drop [= give birth to] young” as used in Job 21:10. G. R. Driver holds out for the MT, arguing it is an idiom, “to breach the womb” (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 92-93).

[39:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “they cast forth their labor pains.” This word usually means “birth pangs” but here can mean what caused the pains (metonymy of effect). This fits better with the parallelism, and the verb (“cast forth”). The words “their offspring” are supplied in the translation for clarity; direct objects were often omitted when clear from the context, although English expects them to be included.

[39:4]  ⁶ tn The idea is that of the open countryside. The Aramaism is found only here.

[29:9]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew imperfect verbal form is descriptive in function; the psalmist depicts the action as underway.

[29:9]  ⁸ tc Heb “the deer.” Preserving this reading, some translate the preceding verb, “causes [the deer] to give premature birth” (cf. NEB, NASB). But the Polel of חוּל/חִיל (khul/khil) means “give birth,” not “cause to give birth,” and the statement “the Lord’s shout gives birth to deer” is absurd. In light of the parallelism (note “forests” in the next line) and v. 5, it is preferable to emend אַיָּלוֹת (’ayyalot, “deer”) to אֵילוֹת (’elot, “large trees”) understanding the latter as an alternate form of the usual plural form אַיָּלִים (’ayyalim).

[29:9]  ⁹ tn The verb is used in Joel 1:7 of locusts stripping the leaves from a tree. The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here carries the descriptive function of the preceding imperfect. See GKC 329 §111.t.

[29:9]  ¹⁰ tn The usual form of the plural of יַעַר (ya’ar, “forest”) is יְעָרִים (yÿ’arim). For this reason some propose an emendation to יְעָלוֹת (yÿ’alot, “female mountain goats”) which would fit nicely in the parallelism with “deer” (cf. NEB “brings kids early to birth”). In this case one would have to understand the verb חָשַׂף (khasaf) to mean “cause premature birth,” an otherwise unattested homonym of the more common חָשַׂף (“strip bare”).

[29:9]  ¹¹ tn Heb “In his temple, all of it says, ‘Glory.’”