Job 4:7

4:7 Call to mind now: ¹ 

Who, ²  being innocent, ever perished? ³ 

And where were upright people ⁴  ever destroyed? ⁵ 

Job 9:24

9:24 If a land ⁶  has been given

into the hand of a wicked man, ⁷ 

he covers ⁸  the faces of its judges; ⁹ 

if it is not he, then who is it? ¹⁰ 

Job 12:9

12:9 Which of all these ¹¹  does not know

that the hand of the Lord ¹²  has done ¹³  this,

Job 14:13

The Possibility of Another Life

14:13 “O that ¹⁴  you would hide me in Sheol, ¹⁵ 

and conceal me till your anger has passed! ¹⁶ 

O that you would set me a time ¹⁷ 

and then remember me! ¹⁸ 

Job 31:31

31:31 if ¹⁹  the members of my household ²⁰  have never said, ²¹ 

‘If only there were ²²  someone

who has not been satisfied from Job’s ²³  meat!’ –

Job 38:6

38:6 On what ²⁴  were its bases ²⁵  set,

or who laid its cornerstone –

Job 38:41

38:41 Who prepares prey for the raven,

when its young cry out to God

and wander about ²⁶  for lack of food?

Job 41:11

41:11 (Who has confronted ²⁷  me that I should repay? ²⁸ 

Everything under heaven belongs to me!) ²⁹ 

[4:7]  ¹ sn Eliphaz will put his thesis forward first negatively and then positively (vv. 8ff). He will argue that the suffering of the righteous is disciplinary and not for their destruction. He next will argue that it is the wicked who deserve judgment.

[4:7]  ² tn The use of the independent personal pronoun is emphatic, almost as an enclitic to emphasize interrogatives: “who indeed….” (GKC 442 §136.c).

[4:7]  ³ tn The perfect verb in this line has the nuance of the past tense to express the unique past – the uniqueness of the action is expressed with “ever” (“who has ever perished”).

[4:7]  ⁴ tn The adjective is used here substantivally. Without the article the word stresses the meaning of “uprightness.” Job will use “innocent” and “upright” together in 17:8.

[4:7]  ⁵ tn The Niphal means “to be hidden” (see the Piel in 6:10; 15:18; and 27:11); the connotation here is “destroyed” or “annihilated.”

[9:24]  ⁶ tn Some would render this “earth,” meaning the whole earth, and having the verse be a general principle for all mankind. But Job may have in mind the more specific issue of individual land.

[9:24]  ⁷ sn The details of the verse are not easy to explain, but the meaning of the whole verse seems to be about the miscarriage of justice in the courts and the failure of God to do anything about it.

[9:24]  ⁸ tn The subject of the verb is God. The reasoning goes this way: it is the duty of judges to make sure that justice prevails, that restitution and restoration are carried through; but when the wicked gain control of the land of other people, and the judges are ineffective to stop it, then God must be veiling their eyes.

[9:24]  ⁹ sn That these words are strong, if not wild, is undeniable. But Job is only taking the implications of his friends’ speeches to their logical conclusion – if God dispenses justice in the world, and there is no justice, then God is behind it all. The LXX omitted these words, perhaps out of reverence for God.

[9:24]  ¹⁰ tn This seems to be a broken-off sentence (anacoluthon), and so is rather striking. The scribes transposed the words אֵפוֹא (’efo’) and הוּא (hu’) to make the smoother reading: “If it is not he, who then is it?”

[12:9]  ¹¹ tn This line could also be translated “by all these,” meaning “who is not instructed by nature?” (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 93). But D. J. A. Clines points out that the verses have presented the animals as having knowledge and communicating it, so the former reading would be best (Job [WBC], 279).

[12:9]  ¹² tc Some commentators have trouble with the name “Yahweh” in this verse, which is not the pattern in the poetic section of Job. Three mss of Kennicott and two of de Rossi have “God.” If this is so the reminiscence of Isaiah 41:20 led the copyist to introduce the tetragrammaton. But one could argue equally that the few mss with “God” were the copyists’ attempt to correct the text in accord with usage elsewhere.

[12:9]  ¹³ sn The expression “has done this” probably refers to everything that has been discussed, namely, the way that God in his wisdom rules over the world, but specifically it refers to the infliction of suffering in the world.

[14:13]  ¹⁶ tn The optative mood is introduced here again with מִי יִתֵּן (mi yitten), literally, “who will give?”

[14:13]  ¹⁷ sn Sheol in the Bible refers to the place where the dead go. But it can have different categories of meaning: death in general, the grave, or the realm of the departed spirits [hell]. A. Heidel shows that in the Bible when hell is in view the righteous are not there – it is the realm of the departed spirits of the wicked. When the righteous go to Sheol, the meaning is usually the grave or death. See chapter 3 in A. Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and the Old Testament Parallels.

[14:13]  ¹⁸ tn The construction used here is the preposition followed by the infinitive construct followed by the subjective genitive, forming an adverbial clause of time.

[14:13]  ¹⁹ tn This is the same word used in v. 5 for “limit.”

[14:13]  ²⁰ tn The verb זָכַר (zakhar) means more than simply “to remember.” In many cases, including this one, it means “to act on what is remembered,” i.e., deliver or rescue (see Gen 8:1, “and God remembered Noah”). In this sense, a prayer “remember me” is a prayer for God to act upon his covenant promises.

[31:31]  ²¹ tn Now Job picks up the series of clauses serving as the protasis.

[31:31]  ²² tn Heb “the men of my tent.” In context this refers to members of Job’s household.

[31:31]  ²³ sn The line is difficult to sort out. Job is saying it is sinful “if his men have never said, ‘O that there was one who has not been satisfied from his food.’” If they never said that, it would mean there were people out there who needed to be satisfied with his food.

[31:31]  ²⁴ tn The optative is again expressed with “who will give?”

[31:31]  ²⁵ tn Heb “his”; the referent (Job) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[38:6]  ²⁶ tn For the interrogative serving as a genitive, see GKC 442 §136.b.

[38:6]  ²⁷ sn The world was conceived of as having bases and pillars, but these poetic descriptions should not be pressed too far (e.g., see Ps 24:2, which may be worded as much for its polemics against Canaanite mythology as anything).

[38:41]  ³¹ tn The verse is difficult, making some suspect that a line has dropped out. The little birds in the nest hardly go wandering about looking for food. Dhorme suggest “and stagger for lack of food.”

[41:11]  ³⁶ tn The verb קָדַם (qadam) means “to come to meet; to come before; to confront” to the face.

[41:11]  ³⁷ sn The verse seems an intrusion (and so E. Dhorme, H. H. Rowley, and many others change the pronouns to make it refer to the animal). But what the text is saying is that it is more dangerous to confront God than to confront this animal.

[41:11]  ³⁸ tn This line also focuses on the sovereign God rather than Leviathan. H. H. Rowley, however, wants to change לִי־חוּא (li-hu’, “it [belongs] to me”) into לֹא הוּא (lo’ hu’, “there is no one”). So it would say that there is no one under the whole heaven who could challenge Leviathan and live, rather than saying it is more dangerous to challenge God to make him repay.