Ayub 11:11

11:11 For he ¹  knows deceitful ²  men;

when he sees evil, will he not ³  consider it? ⁴ 

Ayub 19:13

Job’s Forsaken State

19:13 “He has put my relatives ⁵  far from me;

my acquaintances only ⁶  turn away from me.

Ayub 31:12

31:12 For it is a fire that devours even to Destruction, ⁷ 

and it would uproot ⁸  all my harvest.

[11:11]  ¹ tn The pronoun is emphatic implying that Zophar indicates that God indeed knows Job’s sin even if Job does not.

[11:11]  ² tn The expression is literally “men of emptiness” (see Ps 26:4). These are false men, for שָׁוְא (shavÿ’) can mean “vain, empty, or false, deceitful.”

[11:11]  ³ tn E. Dhorme (Job, 162) reads the prepositional phrase “to him” rather than the negative; he translates the line as “he sees iniquity and observes it closely.”

[11:11]  ⁴ tn Some commentators do not take this last clause as a question, but simply as a statement, namely, that when God sees evil he does not need to ponder or consider it – he knows it instantly. In that case it would be a circumstantial clause: “without considering it.” D. J. A. Clines lists quite an array of other interpretations for the line (Job [WBC], 255); for example, “and he is himself unobserved”; taking the word לֹא (lo’) as an emphatic; taking the negative as a noun, “considering them as nothing”; and others that change the verb to “they do not understand it.” But none of these are compelling; they offer no major improvement.

[19:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “brothers.”

[19:13]  ⁶ tn The LXX apparently took אַךְ־זָרוּ (’akh, “even, only,” and zaru, “they turn away”) together as if it was the verb אַכְזָרוּ (’akhzaru, “they have become cruel,” as in 20:21). But the grammar in the line would be difficult with this. Moreover, the word is most likely from זוּר (zur, “to turn away”). See L. A. Snijders, “The Meaning of zar in the Old Testament,” OTS 10 (1964): 1-154 (especially p. 9).

[31:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “to Abaddon.”

[31:12]  ⁸ tn The verb means “to root out,” but this does not fit the parallelism with fire. Wright changed two letters and the vowels in the verb to get the root צָרַף (tsaraf, “to burn”). The NRSV has “burn to the root.”