Job 4:12

Ungodly Complainers Provoke God’s Wrath

4:12 “Now a word was secretly ¹  brought ²  to me,

and my ear caught ³  a whisper ⁴  of it.

Job 12:11

12:11 Does not the ear test words,

as ⁵  the tongue ⁶  tastes food? ⁷ 

Job 13:1

Job Pleads His Cause to God ⁸ 

13:1 “Indeed, my eyes have seen all this, ⁹ 

my ears have heard and understood it.

Job 29:11

Job’s Benevolence

29:11 “As soon as the ear heard these things, ¹⁰  it blessed me, ¹¹ 

and when the eye saw them, it bore witness to me,

Job 34:3

34:3 For the ear assesses ¹²  words

as the mouth ¹³  tastes food.

Job 36:10

36:10 And he reveals ¹⁴  this ¹⁵  for correction,

and says that they must turn ¹⁶  from evil.

[4:12]  ¹ tn The LXX of this verse offers special problems. It reads, “But if there had been any truth in your words, none of these evils would have fallen upon you; shall not my ear receive excellent [information] from him?” The major error involves a dittography from the word for “secret,” yielding “truth.”

[4:12]  ² tn The verb גָּנַב (ganav) means “to steal.” The Pual form in this verse is probably to be taken as a preterite since it requires a past tense translation: “it was stolen for me” meaning it was brought to me stealthily (see 2 Sam 19:3).

[4:12]  ³ tn Heb “received.”

[4:12]  ⁴ tn The word שֵׁמֶץ (shemets, “whisper”) is found only here and in Job 26:14. A cognate form שִׁמְצָה (shimtsah) is found in Exod 32:25 with the sense of “a whisper.” In postbiblical Hebrew the word comes to mean “a little.” The point is that Eliphaz caught just a bit, just a whisper of it, and will recount it to Job.

[12:11]  ⁵ tn The ו (vav) introduces the comparison here (see 5:7; 11:12); see GKC 499 §161.a.

[12:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “the palate.”

[12:11]  ⁷ tn The final preposition with its suffix is to be understood as a pleonastic dativus ethicus and not translated (see GKC 439 §135.i).

[13:1]  ⁹ sn Chapter 13 records Job’s charges against his friends for the way they used their knowledge (1-5), his warning that God would find out their insincerity (6-12), and his pleading of his cause to God in which he begs for God to remove his hand from him and that he would not terrify him with his majesty and that he would reveal the sins that caused such great suffering (13-28).

[13:1]  ¹⁰ tn Hebrew has כֹּל (kol, “all”); there is no reason to add anything to the text to gain a meaning “all this.”

[29:11]  ¹³ tn The words “these things” and “them” in the next colon are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[29:11]  ¹⁴ tn The main clause is introduced by the preterite with the vav (ו) consecutive (see GKC 327 §111.h); the clause before it is therefore temporal and circumstantial to the main clause.

[34:3]  ¹⁷ tn Or “examines; tests; tries; discerns.”

[34:3]  ¹⁸ tn Or “palate”; the Hebrew term refers to the tongue or to the mouth in general.

[36:10]  ²¹ tn The idiom once again is “he uncovers their ear.”

[36:10]  ²² tn The revelation is in the preceding verse, and so a pronoun must be added to make the reference clear.

[36:10]  ²³ tn The verb שׁוּב (shuv, “to turn; to return”) is one of the two major words in the OT for “repent” – to return from evil. Here the imperfect should be obligatory – they must do it.