Job 8:19

8:19 Indeed, this is the joy of his way, ¹ 

and out of the earth ²  others spring up. ³ 

Job 19:7

Job’s Abandonment and Affliction

19:7 “If ⁴  I cry out, ⁵  ‘Violence!’ ⁶ 

I receive no answer; ⁷ 

I cry for help,

but there is no justice.

Job 28:27

28:27 then he looked at wisdom ⁸  and assessed its value; ⁹ 

he established ¹⁰  it and examined it closely. ¹¹ 

Job 30:16

Job’s Despondency

30:16 “And now my soul pours itself out within me; ¹² 

days of suffering take hold of me.

Job 33:21

33:21 His flesh wastes away from sight,

and his bones, which were not seen,

are easily visible. ¹³ 

Job 37:22

37:22 From the north he comes in golden splendor; ¹⁴ 

around God is awesome majesty.

Job 38:8

38:8 “Who shut up ¹⁵  the sea with doors

when it burst forth, ¹⁶  coming out of the womb,

Job 41:1

The Description of Leviathan

41:1 (40:25) ¹⁷  “Can you pull in ¹⁸  Leviathan with a hook,

and tie down ¹⁹  its tongue with a rope?

[8:19]  ¹ tn This line is difficult. If the MT stands as it is, the expression must be ironic. It would be saying that the joy (all the security and prosperity) of its way (its life) is short-lived – that is the way its joy goes. Most commentators are not satisfied with this. Dhorme, for one, changes מְשׂוֹשׂ (mÿsos, “joy”) to מְסוֹס (mÿsos, “rotting”), and gets “behold him lie rotting on the path.” The sibilants can interchange this way. But Dhorme thinks the MT was written the way it was because the word was thought to be “joy,” when it should have been the other way. The word “way” then becomes an accusative of place. The suggestion is rather compelling and would certainly fit the context. The difficulty is that a root סוּס (sus, “to rot”) has to be proposed. E. Dhorme does this by drawing on Arabic sas, “to be eaten by moths or worms,” thus “worm-eaten; decaying; rotting.” Cf. NIV “its life withers away”; also NAB “there he lies rotting beside the road.”

[8:19]  ² tn Heb “dust.”

[8:19]  ³ sn As with the tree, so with the godless man – his place will soon be taken by another.

[19:7]  ⁴ tn The particle is used here as in 9:11 (see GKC 497 §159.w).

[19:7]  ⁵ tc The LXX has “I laugh at reproach.”

[19:7]  ⁶ tn The same idea is expressed in Jer 20:8 and Hab 1:2. The cry is a cry for help, that he has been wronged, that there is no justice.

[19:7]  ⁷ tn The Niphal is simply “I am not answered.” See Prov 21:13b.

[28:27]  ⁷ tn Heb “it”; the referent (wisdom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[28:27]  ⁸ tn The verb סָפַר (safar) in the Piel basically means “to tell; to declare; to show” or “to count; to number.” Many commentators offer different suggestions for the translation. “Declared” (as in the RSV, NASB, and NRSV) would be the simplest – but to whom did God declare it? Besides “appraised” which is the view of Pope, Dhorme and others (cf. NAB, NIV), J. Reider has suggested “probed” (“Etymological studies in biblical Hebrew,” VT 2 [1952]: 127), Strahan has “studied,” and Kissane has “reckoned.” The difficulty is that the line has a series of verbs, which seem to build to a climax; but without more details it is hard to know how to translate them when they have such a range of meaning.

[28:27]  ⁹ tc The verb כּוּן (kun) means “to establish; to prepare” in this stem. There are several mss that have the form from בִּין (bin, “discern”), giving “he discerned it,” making more of a parallel with the first colon. But the weight of the evidence supports the traditional MT reading.

[28:27]  ¹⁰ tn The verb חָקַר (khaqar) means “to examine; to search out.” Some of the language used here is anthropomorphic, for the sovereign Lord did not have to research or investigate wisdom. The point is that it is as if he did this human activity, meaning that as in the results of such a search God knows everything about wisdom.

[30:16]  ¹⁰ tn This line can either mean that Job is wasting away (i.e., his life is being poured out), or it can mean that he is grieving. The second half of the verse gives the subordinate clause of condition for this.

[33:21]  ¹³ tc Heb “are laid bare.” This is the Qere reading; the Kethib means “bare height.” Gordis reverses the word order: “his bones are bare [i.e., crushed] so that they cannot be looked upon.” But the sense of that is not clear.

[37:22]  ¹⁶ tn The MT has “out of the north comes gold.” Left in that sense the line seems irrelevant. The translation “golden splendor” (with RV, RSV, NRSV, NIV) depends upon the context of theophany. Others suggest “golden rays” (Dhorme), the aurora borealis (Graetz, Gray), or some mythological allusion (Pope), such as Baal’s palace. Golden rays or splendor is what is intended, although the reference is not to a natural phenomenon – it is something that would suggest the glory of God.

[38:8]  ¹⁹ tn The MT has “and he shut up.” The Vulgate has “Who?” and so many commentaries and editions adopt this reading, if not from the Vulgate, then from the sense of the sequence in the text itself.

[38:8]  ²⁰ tn The line uses two expressions, first the temporal clause with גִּיחַ (giakh, “when it burst forth”) and then the finite verb יֵצֵא (yetse’, “go out”) to mark the concomitance of the two actions.

[41:1]  ²² sn Beginning with 41:1, the verse numbers through 41:9 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 41:1 ET = 40:25 HT, 41:2 ET = 40:26 HT, etc., through 41:34 ET = 41:26 HT. The Hebrew verse numbers in the remainder of the chapter differ from the verse numbers in the English Bible. Beginning with 42:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

[41:1]  ²³ tn The verb מָשַׁךְ (mashakh) means “to extract from the water; to fish.” The question here includes the use of a hook to fish the creature out of the water so that its jaws can be tied safely.

[41:1]  ²⁴ tn The verb שָׁקַע (shaqa’) means “to cause to sink,” if it is connected with the word in Amos 8:8 and 9:5. But it may have the sense of “to tie; to bind.” If the rope were put around the tongue and jaw, binding tightly would be the sense.