Ayub 15:12

15:12 Why ¹  has your heart carried you away, ² 

and why do your eyes flash, ³ 

Ayub 20:16

20:16 He sucks the poison ⁴  of serpents; ⁵ 

the fangs ⁶  of a viper ⁷  kill him.

Ayub 27:21

27:21 The east wind carries him away, and he is gone;

it sweeps him out of his place.

Ayub 33:22

33:22 He ⁸  draws near to the place of corruption,

and his life to the messengers of death. ⁹ 

Ayub 36:27

36:27 He draws up drops of water;

they distill ¹⁰  the rain into its mist, ¹¹ 

Ayub 37:9

37:9 A tempest blows out from its chamber,

icy cold from the driving winds. ¹² 

[15:12]  ¹ tn The interrogative מָה (mah) here has the sense of “why?” (see Job 7:21).

[15:12]  ² tn The verb simply means “to take.” The RSV has “carry you away.” E. Dhorme (Job, 212-13) goes further, saying that it implies being unhinged by passion, to be carried away by the passions beyond good sense (pp. 212-13). Pope and Tur-Sinai suggest that the suffix on the verb is datival, and translate it, “What has taken from you your mind?” But the parallelism shows that “your heart” and “your eyes” are subjects.

[15:12]  ³ tn Here is another word that occurs only here, and in the absence of a completely convincing suggestion, probably should be left as it is. The verb is רָזַם (razam, “wink, flash”). Targum Job and the Syriac equate it with a verb found in Aramaic and postbiblical Hebrew with the same letters but metathesized – רָמַז (ramaz). It would mean “to make a sign” or “to wink.” Budde, following the LXX probably, has “Why are your eyes lofty?” Others follow an Arabic root meaning “become weak.”

[20:16]  ⁴ tn The word is a homonym for the word for “head,” which has led to some confusion in the early versions.

[20:16]  ⁵ sn To take the possessions of another person is hereby compared to sucking poison from a serpent – it will kill eventually.

[20:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “tongue.”

[20:16]  ⁷ tn Some have thought this verse is a gloss on v. 14 and should be deleted. But the word for “viper” (אֶפְעֶה, ’ef’eh) is a rare word, occurring only here and in Isa 30:6 and 59:5. It is unlikely that a rarer word would be used in a gloss. But the point is similar to v. 14 – the wealth that was greedily sucked in by the wicked proves to be their undoing. Either this is totally irrelevant to Job’s case, a general discussion, or the man is raising questions about how Job got his wealth.

[33:22]  ⁸ tn Heb “his soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh, “life”] draws near.”

[33:22]  ⁹ tn The MT uses the Hiphil participle, “to those who cause death.” This seems to be a reference to the belief in demons that brought about death, an idea not mentioned in the Bible itself. Thus many proposals have been made for this expression. Hoffmann and Budde divide the word into לְמוֹ מֵתִּים (lÿmo metim) and simply read “to the dead.” Dhorme adds a couple of letters to get לִמְקוֹם מֵתִּים (limqom metim, “to the place [or abode] of the dead”).

[36:27]  ¹⁰ tn The verb means “to filter; to refine,” and so a plural subject with the drops of water as the subject will not work. So many read the singular, “he distills.”

[36:27]  ¹¹ tn This word עֵד (’ed) occurs also in Gen 2:6. The suggestion has been that instead of a mist it represents an underground watercourse that wells up to water the ground.

[37:9]  ¹² tn The “driving winds” reflects the Hebrew “from the scatterers.” This refers to the north winds that bring the cold air and the ice and snow and hard rains.