Ayub 14:20-22

14:20 You overpower him once for all, ¹ 

and he departs;

you change ²  his appearance

and send him away.

14:21 If ³  his sons are honored, ⁴ 

he does not know it; ⁵ 

if they are brought low,

he does not see ⁶  it.

14:22 Only his flesh has pain for himself, ⁷ 

and he mourns for himself.” ⁸ 

[14:20]  ¹ tn D. W. Thomas took נֵצַח (netsakh) here to have a superlative meaning: “You prevail utterly against him” (“Use of netsach as a superlative in Hebrew,” JSS 1 [1956]: 107). Death would be God’s complete victory over him.

[14:20]  ² tn The subject of the participle is most likely God in this context. Some take it to be man, saying “his face changes.” Others emend the text to read an imperfect verb, but this is not necessary.

[14:21]  ³ tn The clause may be interpreted as a conditional clause, with the second clause beginning with the conjunction serving as the apodosis.

[14:21]  ⁴ tn There is no expressed subject for the verb “they honor,” and so it may be taken as a passive.

[14:21]  ⁵ sn Death is separation from the living, from the land of the living. And ignorance of what goes on in this life, good or bad, is part of death. See also Eccl 9:5-6, which makes a similar point.

[14:21]  ⁶ tn The verb is בִּין (bin, “to perceive; to discern”). The parallelism between “know” and “perceive” stress the point that in death a man does not realize what is happening here in the present life.

[14:22]  ⁷ tn The prepositional phrases using עָלָיו (’alayv, “for him[self]”) express the object of the suffering. It is for himself that the dead man “grieves.” So this has to be joined with אַךְ (’akh), yielding “only for himself.” Then, “flesh” and “soul/person” form the parallelism for the subjects of the verbs.

[14:22]  ⁸ sn In this verse Job is expressing the common view of life beyond death, namely, that in Sheol there is no contact with the living, only separation, but in Sheol there is a conscious awareness of the dreary existence.