Job 8:22

8:22 Those who hate you ¹  will be clothed with shame, ² 

and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”

Job 10:11

10:11 You clothed ³  me with skin and flesh

and knit me together ⁴  with bones and sinews.

Job 27:17

27:17 what he stores up ⁵  a righteous man will wear,

and an innocent man will inherit his silver.

Job 39:19

39:19 “Do you give the horse its strength?

Do you clothe its neck with a mane? ⁶ 

[8:22]  ¹ sn These verses show several points of similarity with the style of the Book of Psalms. “Those who hate you” and the “evil-doers” are fairly common words to describe the ungodly in the Psalms. “Those who hate you” are enemies of the righteous man because of the parallelism in the verse. By this line Bildad is showing Job that he and his friends are not among those who are his enemies, and that Job himself is really among the righteous. It is an appealing way to end the discourse. See further G. W. Anderson, “Enemies and Evil-doers in the Book of Psalms,” BJRL 48 (1965/66): 18-29.

[8:22]  ² tn “Shame” is compared to a garment that can be worn. The “shame” envisioned here is much more than embarrassment or disgrace – it is utter destruction. For parallels in the Psalms, see Pss 35:26; 132:18; 109:29.

[10:11]  ³ tn The skin and flesh form the exterior of the body and so the image of “clothing” is appropriate. Once again the verb is the prefixed conjugation, expressing what God did.

[10:11]  ⁴ tn This verb is found only here (related nouns are common) and in the parallel passage of Ps 139:13. The word סָכַךְ (sakhakh), here a Poel prefixed conjugation (preterite), means “to knit together.” The implied comparison is that the bones and sinews form the tapestry of the person (compare other images of weaving the life).

[27:17]  ⁵ tn The text simply repeats the verb from the last clause. It could be treated as a separate short clause: “He may store it up, but the righteous will wear it. But it also could be understood as the object of the following verb, “[what] he stores up the righteous will wear.” The LXX simply has, “All these things shall the righteous gain.”

[39:19]  ⁷ tn The second half of the verse contains this hapax legomenon, which is usually connected with the word רַעְמָה (ra’mah, “thunder”). A. B. Davidson thought it referred to the quivering of the neck rather than the mane. Gray thought the sound and not the movement was the point. But without better evidence, a reading that has “quivering mane” may not be far off the mark. But it may be simplest to translate it “mane” and assume that the idea of “quivering” is part of the meaning.