Ayub 18:18-19

18:18 He is driven ¹  from light into darkness

and is banished from the world.

18:19 He has neither children nor descendants ²  among his people,

no survivor in those places he once stayed. ³ 

Ayub 27:13-15

27:13 This is the portion of the wicked man

allotted by God, ⁴ 

the inheritance that evildoers receive

from the Almighty.

27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! ⁵ 

His offspring never have enough to eat. ⁶ 

27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, ⁷ 

and their ⁸  widows do not mourn for them.

[18:18]  ¹ tn The verbs in this verse are plural; without the expressed subject they should be taken in the passive sense.

[18:19]  ² tn The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: Moffatt had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the NIV “offspring or descendants.”

[18:19]  ³ tn Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.

[27:13]  ⁴ tn The expression “allotted by God” interprets the simple prepositional phrase in the text: “with/from God.”

[27:14]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”

[27:15]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.