Psalms 41:8

41:8 They say, ¹ 

‘An awful disease ²  overwhelms him, ³ 

and now that he is bed-ridden he will never recover.’ ⁴ 

Psalms 41:2

41:2 May the Lord protect him and save his life! ⁵ 

May he be blessed ⁶  in the land!

Do not turn him over ⁷  to his enemies! ⁸ 

Psalms 21:1

Psalm 21 ⁹ 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

21:1 O Lord, the king rejoices in the strength you give; ¹⁰ 

he takes great delight in the deliverance you provide. ¹¹ 

Psalms 21:1

Psalm 21 ¹² 

For the music director; a psalm of David.

21:1 O Lord, the king rejoices in the strength you give; ¹³ 

he takes great delight in the deliverance you provide. ¹⁴ 

Job 7:5

7:5 My body ¹⁵  is clothed ¹⁶  with worms ¹⁷  and dirty scabs; ¹⁸ 

my skin is broken ¹⁹  and festering.

Job 30:18

30:18 With great power God ²⁰  grasps my clothing; ²¹ 

he binds me like the collar ²²  of my tunic.

Acts 12:23

12:23 Immediately an angel of the Lord ²³  struck ²⁴  Herod ²⁵  down because he did not give the glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died. ²⁶ 

[41:8]  ¹ tn The words “they say” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation to make it clear that v. 8 contains a quotation of what the psalmist’s enemies say about him (see v. 7a).

[41:8]  ² tn Heb “thing of worthlessness.” In Ps 101:3 the phrase refers to evil deeds in general, but here it appears to refer more specifically to the illness that plagues the psalmist.

[41:8]  ³ tn Heb “is poured out on him.” The passive participle of יָצַק (yatsaq) is used.

[41:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “and he who lies down will not again arise.”

[41:2]  ⁵ tn The prefixed verbal forms are taken as jussives in the translation because the jussive is clearly used in the final line of the verse, suggesting that this is a prayer. The psalmist stops to pronounce a prayer of blessing on the godly individual envisioned in v. 1. Of course, he actually has himself primarily in view. He mixes confidence (vv. 1, 3) with petition (v. 2) because he stands in the interval between the word of assurance and the actual intervention by God.

[41:2]  ⁶ tc The translation follows the consonantal Hebrew text (Kethib), which has a Pual (passive) prefixed form, regarded here as a jussive. The Pual of the verb אָשַׁר (’ashar) also appears in Prov 3:18. The marginal reading (Qere) assumes a vav (ו) consecutive and Pual perfect. Some, with the support of the LXX, change the verb to a Piel (active) form with an objective pronominal suffix, “and may he bless him,” or “and he will bless him” (cf. NIV).

[41:2]  ⁷ tn The negative particle אַל (’al) before the prefixed verbal form indicates the verb is a jussive and the statement a prayer. Those who want to take v. 2 as a statement of confidence suggest emending the negative particle to לֹא (lo’), which is used with the imperfect. See the earlier note on the verbal forms in line one of this verse. According to GKC 322 §109.e, this is a case where the jussive is used rhetorically to “express that something cannot or should not happen.” In this case one might translate, “you will not turn him over to his enemies,” and take the preceding verbal forms as indicative in mood.

[41:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “do not give him over to the desire of his enemies” (see Ps 27:12).

[21:1]  ⁹ sn Psalm 21. The psalmist praises the Lord for the way he protects and blesses the Davidic king.

[21:1]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “in your strength.” The translation interprets the pronominal suffix as subjective, rather than merely descriptive (or attributive).

[21:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and in your deliverance, how greatly he rejoices.”

[21:1]  ¹² sn Psalm 21. The psalmist praises the Lord for the way he protects and blesses the Davidic king.

[21:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “in your strength.” The translation interprets the pronominal suffix as subjective, rather than merely descriptive (or attributive).

[21:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and in your deliverance, how greatly he rejoices.”

[7:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “my flesh.”

[7:5]  ¹⁶ tn The implied comparison is vivid: the dirty scabs cover his entire body like a garment – so he is clothed with them.

[7:5]  ¹⁷ sn The word for “worms” (רִמָּה, rimmah, a collective noun), is usually connected with rotten food (Exod 16:24), or the grave (Isa 14:11). Job’s disease is a malignant ulcer of some kind that causes the rotting of the flesh. One may recall that both Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Macc 9:9) and Herod Agrippa (Acts 12:23) were devoured by such worms in their diseases.

[7:5]  ¹⁸ tn The text has “clods of dust.” The word גִּישׁ (gish, “dirty scabs”) is a hapax legomenon from גּוּשׁ (gush, “clod”). Driver suggests the word has a medical sense, like “pustules” (G. R. Driver, “Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 73) or “scabs” (JB, NEB, NAB, NIV). Driver thinks “clods of dust” is wrong; he repoints “dust” to make a new verb “to cover,” cognate to Arabic, and reads “my flesh is clothed with worms, and scab covers my skin.” This refers to the dirty scabs that crusted over the sores all over his body. The LXX links this with the second half of the verse: “And my body has been covered with loathsome worms, and I waste away, scraping off clods of dirt from my eruption.”

[7:5]  ¹⁹ tn The meaning of רָגַע (raga’) is also debated here. D. J. A. Clines (Job [WBC], 163) does not think the word can mean “cracked” because scabs show evidence of the sores healing. But E. Dhorme (Job, 100) argues that the usage of the word shows the idea of “splitting, separating, making a break,” or the like. Here then it would mean “my skin splits” and as a result festers. This need not be a reference to the scabs, but to new places. Or it could mean that the scabbing never heals, but is always splitting open.

[30:18]  ²⁰ tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[30:18]  ²¹ tc This whole verse is difficult. The first problem is that this verb in the MT means “is disguised [or disfigured],” indicating that Job’s clothes hang loose on him. But many take the view that the verb is a phonetic variant of חָבַשׁ (khavash, “to bind; to seize”) and that the Hitpael form is a conflation of the third and second person because of the interchange between them in the passage (R. Gordis, Job, 335). The commentaries list a number of conjectural emendations, but the image in the verse is probably that God seizes Job by the garment and throws him down.

[30:18]  ²² tn The phrase “like the collar” is difficult, primarily because their tunics did not have collars. A translation of “neck” would suit better. Some change the preposition to בּ (bet), getting a translation “by the neck of my tunic.”

[12:23]  ²³ tn Or “the angel of the Lord.” See the note on the word “Lord” in 5:19.

[12:23]  ²⁴ sn On being struck…down by an angel, see Acts 23:3; 1 Sam 25:28; 2 Sam 12:15; 2 Kgs 19:35; 2 Chr 13:20; 2 Macc 9:5.

[12:23]  ²⁵ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Herod) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:23]  ²⁶ sn He was eaten by worms and died. Josephus, Ant. 19.8.2 (19.343-352), states that Herod Agrippa I died at Caesarea in a.d. 44. The account by Josephus, while not identical to Luke’s account, is similar in many respects: On the second day of a festival, Herod Agrippa appeared in the theater with a robe made of silver. When it sparkled in the sun, the people cried out flatteries and declared him to be a god. The king, carried away by the flattery, saw an owl (an omen of death) sitting on a nearby rope, and immediately was struck with severe stomach pains. He was carried off to his house and died five days later. The two accounts can be reconciled without difficulty, since while Luke states that Herod was immediately struck down by an angel, his death could have come several days later. The mention of worms with death adds a humiliating note to the scene. The formerly powerful ruler had been thoroughly reduced to nothing (cf. Jdt 16:17; 2 Macc 9:9; cf. also Josephus, Ant. 17.6.5 [17.168-170], which details the sickness which led to Herod the Great’s death).