Job 7:12

7:12 Am I the sea, or the creature of the deep, ¹ 

that you must put ²  me under guard? ³ 

Job 7:1

The Brevity of Life

7:1 “Does not humanity have hard service ⁴  on earth?

Are not their days also

like the days of a hired man? ⁵ 

Job 24:14

24:14 Before daybreak ⁶  the murderer rises up;

he kills the poor and the needy;

in the night he is ⁷  like a thief. ⁸ 

[7:12]  ¹ tn The word תַּנִּין (tannin) could be translated “whale” as well as the more mythological “dragon” or “monster of the deep” (see E. Dhorme, Job, 105). To the Hebrews this was part of God’s creation in Gen 1; in the pagan world it was a force to be reckoned with, and so the reference would be polemical. The sea is a symbol of the tumultuous elements of creation; in the sea were creatures that symbolized the powerful forces of chaos – Leviathan, Tannin, and Rahab. They required special attention.

[7:12]  ² tn The imperfect verb here receives the classification of obligatory imperfect. Job wonders if he is such a threat to God that God must do this.

[7:12]  ³ tn The word מִשְׁמָר (mishmar) means “guard; barrier.” M. Dahood suggested “muzzle” based on Ugaritic, but that has proven to be untenable (“Mismar, ‘Muzzle,’ in Job 7:12,” JBL 80 [1961]: 270-71).

[7:1]  ⁴ tn The word צָבָא (tsava’) is actually “army”; it can be used for the hard service of military service as well as other toil. As a military term it would include the fixed period of duty (the time) and the hard work (toil). Job here is considering the lot of all humans, not just himself.

[7:1]  ⁵ tn The שָׂכִיר (sakhir) is a hired man, either a man who works for wages, or a mercenary soldier (Jer 46:21). The latter sense may be what is intended here in view of the parallelism, although the next verse seems much broader.

[24:14]  ⁶ tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.

[24:14]  ⁷ tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[24:14]  ⁸ sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.