Job 6:2

6:2 “Oh, ¹  if only my grief ²  could be weighed, ³ 

and my misfortune laid ⁴  on the scales too! ⁵ 

Job 7:17

Insignificance of Humans

7:17 “What is mankind ⁶  that you make so much of them, ⁷ 

and that you pay attention ⁸  to them?

Job 9:33

9:33 Nor is there an arbiter ⁹  between us,

who ¹⁰  might lay ¹¹  his hand on us both, ¹² 

Job 13:27

13:27 And you put my feet in the stocks ¹³ 

and you watch all my movements; ¹⁴ 

you put marks ¹⁵  on the soles of my feet.

Job 15:10

15:10 The gray-haired ¹⁶  and the aged are on our side, ¹⁷ 

men far older than your father. ¹⁸ 

Job 19:23

Job’s Assurance of Vindication

19:23 “O that ¹⁹  my words were written down,

O that they were written on a scroll, ²⁰ 

Job 29:22

29:22 After I had spoken, they did not respond;

my words fell on them drop by drop. ²¹ 

Job 30:14

30:14 They come in as through a wide breach;

amid the crash ²²  they come rolling in. ²³ 

Job 34:13

34:13 Who entrusted ²⁴  to him the earth?

And who put him over ²⁵  the whole world?

Job 36:1

Elihu’s Fourth Speech ²⁶ 

36:1 Elihu said further: ²⁷ 

Job 39:11

39:11 Will you rely on it because its strength is great?

Will you commit ²⁸  your labor to it?

Job 40:4

40:4 “Indeed, I am completely unworthy ²⁹  – how could I reply to you?

I put ³⁰  my hand over my mouth to silence myself. ³¹ 

[6:2]  ¹ tn The conjunction לוּ (lu, “if, if only”) introduces the wish – an unrealizable wish – with the Niphal imperfect.

[6:2]  ² tn Job pairs כַּעְסִי (ka’si, “my grief”) and הַיָּתִי (hayyati, “my misfortune”). The first word, used in Job 4:2, refers to Job’s whole demeanor that he shows his friends – the impatient and vexed expression of his grief. The second word expresses his misfortune, the cause of his grief. Job wants these placed together in the balances so that his friends could see the misfortune is greater than the grief. The word for “misfortune” is a Kethib-Qere reading. The two words have essentially the same meaning; they derive from the verb הָוַה (havah, “to fall”) and so mean a misfortune.

[6:2]  ³ tn The Qal infinitive absolute is here used to intensify the Niphal imperfect (see GKC 344-45 §113.w). The infinitive absolute intensifies the wish as well as the idea of weighing.

[6:2]  ⁴ tn The third person plural verb is used here; it expresses an indefinite subject and is treated as a passive (see GKC 460 §144.g).

[6:2]  ⁵ tn The adverb normally means “together,” but it can also mean “similarly, too.” In this verse it may not mean that the two things are to be weighed together, but that the whole calamity should be put on the scales (see A. B. Davidson, Job, 43).

[7:17]  ⁶ tn The verse is a rhetorical question; it is intended to mean that man is too little for God to be making so much over him in all this.

[7:17]  ⁷ tn The Piel verb is a factitive meaning “to magnify.” The English word “magnify” might not be the best translation here, for God, according to Job, is focusing inordinately on him. It means to magnify in thought, appreciate, think highly of. God, Job argues, is making too much of mankind by devoting so much bad attention on them.

[7:17]  ⁸ tn The expression “set your heart on” means “concentrate your mind on” or “pay attention to.”

[9:33]  ¹¹ tn The participle מוֹכִיחַ (mokhiakh) is the “arbiter” or “mediator.” The word comes from the verb יָכַח (yakhakh, “decide, judge”), which is concerned with legal and nonlegal disputes. The verbal forms can be used to describe the beginning of a dispute, the disputation in progress, or the settling of it (here, and in Isa 1:18).

[9:33]  ¹² tn The relative pronoun is understood in this clause.

[9:33]  ¹³ tn The jussive in conditional sentences retains its voluntative sense: let something be so, and this must happen as a consequence (see GKC 323 §109.i).

[9:33]  ¹⁴ sn The idiom of “lay his hand on the two of us” may come from a custom of a judge putting his hands on the two in order to show that he is taking them both under his jurisdiction. The expression can also be used for protection (see Ps 139:5). Job, however, has a problem in that the other party is God, who himself will be arbiter in judgment.

[13:27]  ¹⁶ tn The word occurs here and in Job 33:11. It could be taken as “stocks,” in which the feet were held fast; or it could be “shackles,” which allowed the prisoner to move about. The parallelism favors the latter, if the two lines are meant to be referring to the same thing.

[13:27]  ¹⁷ tn The word means “ways; roads; paths,” but it is used here in the sense of the “way” in which one goes about his activities.

[13:27]  ¹⁸ tn The verb תִּתְחַקֶּה (titkhaqqeh) is a Hitpael from the root חָקָה (khaqah, parallel to חָקַק, khaqaq). The word means “to engrave” or “to carve out.” This Hitpael would mean “to imprint something on oneself” (E. Dhorme [Job, 192] says on one’s mind, and so derives the meaning “examine.”). The object of this is the expression “on the roots of my feet,” which would refer to where the feet hit the ground. Since the passage has more to do with God’s restricting Job’s movement, the translation “you set a boundary to the soles of my feet” would be better than Dhorme’s view. The image of inscribing or putting marks on the feet is not found elsewhere. It may be, as Pope suggests, a reference to marking the slaves to make tracking them easier. The LXX has “you have penetrated to my heels.”

[15:10]  ²¹ 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]  ²² tn Heb “with us.”

[15:10]  ²³ 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.

[19:23]  ²⁶ tn The optative is again expressed with the interrogative clause “Who will give that they be written?” Job wishes that his words be preserved long after his death.

[19:23]  ²⁷ tn While the sense of this line is clear, there is a small problem and a plausible solution. The last word is indeed סֶפֶר (sefer, “book”), usually understood here to mean “scroll.” But the verb that follows it in the verse is יֻחָקוּ (yukhaqu), from חָקַק (khaqaq, “to engrave; to carve”). While the meaning is clearly that Job wants his words to be retained, the idea of engraving in a book, although not impossible, is unusual. And so many have suggested that the Akkadian word siparru, “copper; brass,” is what is meant here (see Isa 30:8; Judg 5:14). The consonants are the same, and the vowel pattern is close to the original vowel pattern of this segholate noun. Writing on copper or bronze sheets has been attested from the 12th to the 2nd centuries, notably in the copper scroll, which would allow the translation “scroll” in our text (for more bibliography see D. J. A. Clines, Job [WBC], 432). But H. S. Gehman notes that in Phoenician our word can mean “inscription” (“SEÝFER, an inscription, in the book of Job,” JBL 63 [1944]: 303-7), making the proposed substitution unnecessary.

[29:22]  ³¹ tn The verb simply means “dropped,” but this means like the rain. So the picture of his words falling on them like the gentle rain, drop by drop, is what is intended (see Deut 32:2).

[30:14]  ³⁶ tn The MT has “under the crash,” with the idea that they rush in while the stones are falling around them (which is continuing the figure of the military attack). G. R. Driver took the expression to mean in a temporal sense “at the moment of the crash” (AJSL 52 [1935/36]: 163-64). Guillaume, drawing from Arabic, has “where the gap is made.”

[30:14]  ³⁷ tn The verb, the Hitpalpel of גָּלַל (galal), means “they roll themselves.” This could mean “they roll themselves under the ruins” (Dhorme), “they roll on like a storm” (Gordis), or “they roll on” as in waves of enemy attackers (see H. H. Rowley). This particular verb form is found only here (but see Amos 5:24).

[34:13]  ⁴¹ tn The verb פָּקַד (paqad) means “to visit; to appoint; to number.” Here it means “to entrust” for care and governing. The implication would be that there would be someone higher than God – which is what Elihu is repudiating by the rhetorical question. No one entrusted God with this.

[34:13]  ⁴² tn The preposition is implied from the first half of the verse.

[36:1]  ⁴⁶ sn This very lengthy speech can be broken down into the following sections: the discipline of suffering (36:2-25), the work and wisdom of God (36:26–37:24).

[36:1]  ⁴⁷ tn The use of וַיֹּסֶף (vayyosef) is with the hendiadys construction: “and he added and said,” meaning “and he said again, further.”

[39:11]  ⁵¹ tn Heb “leave.”

[40:4]  ⁵⁶ tn The word קַלֹּתִי (qalloti) means “to be light; to be of small account; to be unimportant.” From this comes the meaning “contemptible,” which in the causative stem would mean “to treat with contempt; to curse.” Dhorme tries to make the sentence a conditional clause and suggests this meaning: “If I have been thoughtless.” There is really no “if” in Job’s mind.

[40:4]  ⁵⁷ tn The perfect verb here should be classified as an instantaneous perfect; the action is simultaneous with the words.

[40:4]  ⁵⁸ tn The words “to silence myself” are supplied in the translation for clarity.