Psalms 39:6

39:6 Surely people go through life as mere ghosts. ¹ 

Surely they accumulate worthless wealth

without knowing who will eventually haul it away.” ² 

Job 21:21

21:21 For what is his interest ³  in his home

after his death, ⁴ 

when the number of his months

has been broken off? ⁵ 

Job 27:14-17

27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! ⁶ 

His offspring never have enough to eat. ⁷ 

27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, ⁸ 

and their ⁹  widows do not mourn for them.

27:16 If he piles up silver like dust

and stores up clothing like mounds of clay,

27:17 what he stores up ¹⁰  a righteous man will wear,

and an innocent man will inherit his silver.

Luke 16:27-28

16:27 So ¹¹  the rich man ¹²  said, ‘Then I beg you, father – send Lazarus ¹³  to my father’s house 16:28 (for I have five brothers) to warn ¹⁴  them so that they don’t come ¹⁵  into this place of torment.’

[39:6]  ¹ tn Heb “surely, as an image man walks about.” The preposition prefixed to “image” indicates identity here.

[39:6]  ² tc Heb “Surely [in] vain they strive, he accumulates and does not know who gathers them.” The MT as it stands is syntactically awkward. The verb forms switch from singular (“walks about”) to plural (“they strive”) and then back to singular (“accumulates and does not know”), even though the subject (generic “man”) remains the same. Furthermore there is no object for the verb “accumulates” and no plural antecedent for the plural pronoun (“them”) attached to “gathers.” These problems can be removed if one emends the text from הֶבֶל יֶהֱמָיוּן (hevel yehemaun, “[in] vain they strive”) to הֶבְלֵי הָמוֹן (hevley hamon, “vain things of wealth”). This assumes a misdivision in the MT and a virtual dittography of vav (ו) between the mem and nun of המון. The present translation follows this emendation.

[21:21]  ³ tn Heb “his desire.” The meaning is that after he is gone he does not care about what happens to his household (“house” meaning “family” here).

[21:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “after him,” but clearly the meaning is “after he is gone.”

[21:21]  ⁵ tc The rare word חֻצָּצוּ (khutsatsu) is probably a cognate of hassa in Arabic, meaning “to cut off.” There is also an Akkadian word “to cut in two” and “to break.” These fit the context here rather well. The other Hebrew words that are connected to the root חָצַצ (khatsats) do not offer any help.

[27:14]  ⁶ tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.

[27:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”

[27:15]  ⁸ tn The text says “will be buried in/by death.” A number of passages in the Bible use “death” to mean the plague that kills (see Jer 15:2; Isa 28:3; and BDB 89 s.v. בְּ 2.a). In this sense it is like the English expression for the plague, “the Black Death.”

[27:15]  ⁹ tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.

[27:17]  ¹⁰ 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.”

[16:27]  ¹¹ tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “so” to indicate the rich man’s response to Abraham’s words.

[16:27]  ¹² tn Grk “he”; the referent (the rich man, v. 19) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[16:27]  ¹³ tn Grk “Then I beg you, father, that you send him”; the referent (Lazarus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[16:28]  ¹⁴ sn To warn them. The warning would consist of a call to act differently than their dead brother had, or else meet his current terrible fate.

[16:28]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “lest they also come.”