Ayub 4:12

Ungodly Complainers Provoke God’s Wrath

4:12 “Now a word was secretly ¹  brought ²  to me,

and my ear caught ³  a whisper ⁴  of it.

Ayub 29:10

29:10 the voices of the nobles fell silent, ⁵ 

and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths.

Ayub 36:2

36:2 “Be patient ⁶  with me a little longer

and I will instruct you,

for I still have words to speak on God’s behalf. ⁷ 

[4:12]  ¹ tn The LXX of this verse offers special problems. It reads, “But if there had been any truth in your words, none of these evils would have fallen upon you; shall not my ear receive excellent [information] from him?” The major error involves a dittography from the word for “secret,” yielding “truth.”

[4:12]  ² tn The verb גָּנַב (ganav) means “to steal.” The Pual form in this verse is probably to be taken as a preterite since it requires a past tense translation: “it was stolen for me” meaning it was brought to me stealthily (see 2 Sam 19:3).

[4:12]  ³ tn Heb “received.”

[4:12]  ⁴ tn The word שֵׁמֶץ (shemets, “whisper”) is found only here and in Job 26:14. A cognate form שִׁמְצָה (shimtsah) is found in Exod 32:25 with the sense of “a whisper.” In postbiblical Hebrew the word comes to mean “a little.” The point is that Eliphaz caught just a bit, just a whisper of it, and will recount it to Job.

[29:10]  ⁵ tn The verb here is “hidden” as well as in v. 8. But this is a strange expression for voices. Several argue that the word was erroneously inserted from 8a and needs to be emended. But the word “hide” can have extended meanings of “withdraw; be quiet; silent” (see Gen 31:27). A. Guillaume relates the Arabic habi’a, “the fire dies out,” applying the idea of “silent” only to v. 10 (it is a form of repetition of words with different senses, called jinas). The point here is that whatever conversation was going on would become silent or hushed to hear what Job had to say.

[36:2]  ⁶ tn The verb כָּתַּר (kattar) is the Piel imperative; in Hebrew the word means “to surround” and is related to the noun for crown. But in Syriac it means “to wait.” This section of the book of Job will have a few Aramaic words.

[36:2]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew text simply has “for yet for God words.”