Ayub 24:8-12
Konteks24:8 They are soaked by mountain rains
and huddle 1 in the rocks because they lack shelter.
24:9 The fatherless child is snatched 2 from the breast, 3
the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. 4
24:10 They go about naked, without clothing,
and go hungry while they carry the sheaves. 5
24:11 They press out the olive oil between the rows of olive trees; 6
they tread the winepresses while they are thirsty. 7
24:12 From the city the dying 8 groan,
and the wounded 9 cry out for help,
but God charges no one with wrongdoing. 10
Ayub 30:3-9
Konteks30:3 gaunt 11 with want and hunger,
they would gnaw 12 the parched land,
in former time desolate and waste. 13
30:4 By the brush 14 they would gather 15 herbs from the salt marshes, 16
and the root of the broom tree was their food.
30:5 They were banished from the community 17 –
people 18 shouted at them
like they would shout at thieves 19 –
30:6 so that they had to live 20
in the dry stream beds, 21
in the holes of the ground, and among the rocks.
30:7 They brayed 22 like animals among the bushes
and were huddled together 23 under the nettles.
30:8 Sons of senseless and nameless people, 24
they were driven out of the land with whips. 25
30:9 “And now I have become their taunt song;
I have become a byword 26 among them.
[24:8] 1 tn Heb “embrace” or “hug.”
[24:9] 2 tn The verb with no expressed subject is here again taken in the passive: “they snatch” becomes “[child] is snatched.”
[24:9] 3 tn This word is usually defined as “violence; ruin.” But elsewhere it does mean “breast” (Isa 60:16; 66:11), and that is certainly what it means here.
[24:9] 4 tc The MT has a very brief and strange reading: “they take as a pledge upon the poor.” This could be taken as “they take a pledge against the poor” (ESV). Kamphausen suggested that instead of עַל (’al, “against”) one should read עוּל (’ul, “suckling”). This is supported by the parallelism. “They take as pledge” is also made passive here.
[24:10] 5 sn The point should not be missed – amidst abundant harvests, carrying sheaves about, they are still going hungry.
[24:11] 6 tc The Hebrew term is שׁוּרֹתָם (shurotam), which may be translated “terraces” or “olive rows.” But that would not be the proper place to have a press to press the olives and make oil. E. Dhorme (Job, 360-61) proposes on the analogy of an Arabic word that this should be read as “millstones” (which he would also write in the dual). But the argument does not come from a clean cognate, but from a possible development of words. The meaning of “olive rows” works well enough.
[24:11] 7 tn The final verb, a preterite with the ו (vav) consecutive, is here interpreted as a circumstantial clause.
[24:12] 8 tc The MT as pointed reads “from the city of men they groan.” Most commentators change one vowel in מְתִים (mÿtim) to get מֵתִים (metim) to get the active participle, “the dying.” This certainly fits the parallelism better, although sense could be made out of the MT.
[24:12] 9 tn Heb “the souls of the wounded,” which here refers to the wounded themselves.
[24:12] 10 tc The MT has the noun תִּפְלָה (tiflah) which means “folly; tastelessness” (cf. 1:22). The verb, which normally means “to place; to put,” would then be rendered “to impute; to charge.” This is certainly a workable translation in the context. Many commentators have emended the text, changing the noun to תְּפִלָּה (tÿfillah, “prayer”), and so then also the verb יָשִׂים (yasim, here “charges”) to יִשְׁמַע (yishma’, “hears”). It reads: “But God does not hear the prayer” – referring to the groans.
[30:3] 11 tn This word, גַּלְמוּד (galmud), describes something as lowly, desolate, bare, gaunt like a rock.
[30:3] 12 tn The form is the plural participle with the definite article – “who gnaw.” The article, joined to the participle, joins on a new statement concerning a preceding noun (see GKC 404 §126.b).
[30:3] 13 tn The MT has “yesterday desolate and waste.” The word “yesterday” (אֶמֶשׁ, ’emesh) is strange here. Among the proposals for אֶמֶשׁ (’emesh), Duhm suggested יְמַשְּׁשׁוּ (yÿmashÿshu, “they grope”), which would require darkness; Pope renders “by night,” instead of “yesterday,” which evades the difficulty; and Fohrer suggested with more reason אֶרֶץ (’erets), “a desolate and waste land.” R. Gordis (Job, 331) suggests יָמִישׁוּ / יָמֻשׁוּ (yamishu/yamushu), “they wander off.”
[30:4] 14 tn Or “the leaves of bushes” (ESV), a possibility dating back to Saadia and discussed by G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray (Job [ICC], 2:209) in their philological notes.
[30:4] 15 tn Here too the form is the participle with the article.
[30:4] 16 tn Heb “gather mallow,” a plant which grows in salt marshes.
[30:5] 17 tn The word גֵּו (gev) is an Aramaic term meaning “midst,” indicating “midst [of society].” But there is also a Phoenician word that means “community” (DISO 48).
[30:5] 18 tn The form simply is the plural verb, but it means those who drove them from society.
[30:5] 19 tn The text merely says “as thieves,” but it obviously compares the poor to the thieves.
[30:6] 20 tn This use of the infinitive construct expresses that they were compelled to do something (see GKC 348-49 §114.h, k).
[30:6] 21 tn The adjectives followed by a partitive genitive take on the emphasis of a superlative: “in the most horrible of valleys” (see GKC 431 §133.h).
[30:7] 22 tn The verb נָהַק (nahaq) means “to bray.” It has cognates in Arabic, Aramaic, and Ugaritic, so there is no need for emendation here. It is the sign of an animal’s hunger. In the translation the words “like animals” are supplied to clarify the metaphor for the modern reader.
[30:7] 23 tn The Pual of the verb סָפַח (safakh, “to join”) also brings out the passivity of these people – “they were huddled together” (E. Dhorme, Job, 434).
[30:8] 24 tn The “sons of the senseless” (נָבָל, naval) means they were mentally and morally base and defective; and “sons of no-name” means without honor and respect, worthless (because not named).
[30:8] 25 tn Heb “they were whipped from the land” (cf. ESV) or “they were cast out from the land” (HALOT 697 s.v. נכא). J. E. Hartley (Job [NICOT], 397) follows Gordis suggests that the meaning is “brought lower than the ground.”
[30:9] 26 tn The idea is that Job has become proverbial, people think of misfortune and sin when they think of him. The statement uses the ordinary word for “word” (מִלָּה, millah), but in this context it means more: “proverb; byword.”
