Ayub 4:2

4:2 “If someone ¹  should attempt ²  a word with you,

will you be impatient? ³ 

But who can refrain from speaking ⁴ ?

Ayub 7:15

7:15 so that I ⁵  would prefer ⁶  strangling, ⁷ 

and ⁸  death ⁹  more ¹⁰  than life. ¹¹ 

Ayub 16:18

An Appeal to God as Witness

16:18 “O earth, do not cover my blood, ¹² 

nor let there be a secret ¹³  place for my cry.

Ayub 19:22

19:22 Why do you pursue me like God does? ¹⁴ 

Will you never be satiated with my flesh? ¹⁵ 

Ayub 21:7

The Wicked Prosper

21:7 “Why do the wicked go on living, ¹⁶ 

grow old, ¹⁷  even increase in power?

Ayub 29:20

29:20 My glory ¹⁸  will always be fresh ¹⁹  in me,

and my bow ever new in my hand.’

Ayub 35:16

35:16 So Job opens his mouth to no purpose; ²⁰ 

without knowledge he multiplies words.”

[4:2]  ¹ tn The verb has no expressed subject, and so may be translated with “one” or “someone.”

[4:2]  ² tn The Piel perfect is difficult here. It would normally be translated “has one tried (words with you)?” Most commentaries posit a conditional clause, however.

[4:2]  ³ tn The verb means “to be weary.” But it can have the extended sense of being either exhausted or impatient (see v. 5). A. B. Davidson (Job, 29) takes it in the sense of “will it be too much for you?” There is nothing in the sentence that indicates this should be an interrogative clause; it is simply an imperfect. But in view of the juxtaposition of the first part, this seems to make good sense. E. Dhorme (Job, 42) has “Shall we address you? You are dejected.”

[4:2]  ⁴ tn The construction uses a noun with the preposition: “and to refrain with words – who is able?” The Aramaic plural of “words” (מִלִּין, millin) occurs 13 times in Job, with the Hebrew plural ten times. The commentaries show that Eliphaz’s speech had a distinctly Aramaic coloring to it.

[7:15]  ⁵ tn The word נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) is often translated “soul.” But since Hebrew thought does not make such a distinction between body and soul, it is usually better to translate it with “person.” When a suffix is added to the word, then that pronoun would serve as the better translation, as here with “my soul” = “I” (meaning with every fiber of my being).

[7:15]  ⁶ tn The verb בָּחַר (bakhar, “choose”) followed by the preposition בּ (bet) can have the sense of “prefer.”

[7:15]  ⁷ tn The meaning of the term מַחֲנָק (makhanaq, “strangling”), a hapax legomenon, is clear enough; the verb חָנַק (khanaq) in the Piel means “to strangle” (Nah 2:13), and in the Niphal “to strangle oneself” (2 Sam 17:23). This word has tempted some commentators to take נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) in a very restricted sense of “throat.”

[7:15]  ⁸ tn The conjunction “and” is supplied in the translation. “Death” could also be taken in apposition to “strangling,” providing the outcome of the strangling.

[7:15]  ⁹ tn This is one of the few words recognizable in the LXX: “You will separate life from my spirit, and yet keep my bones from death.”

[7:15]  ¹⁰ tn The comparative min (מִן) after the verb “choose” will here have the idea of preferring something before another (see GKC 429-30 §133.b).

[7:15]  ¹¹ tn The word מֵעַצְמוֹתָי (me’atsmotay) means “more than my bones” (= life or being). The line is poetic; “bones” is often used in scripture metonymically for the whole living person, so there is no need here for conjectural emendation. Nevertheless, there have been several suggestions made. The simplest and most appealing for those who desire a change is the repointing to מֵעַצְּבוֹתָי (me’atsÿvotay, “my sufferings,” adopted by NAB, JB, Moffatt, Driver-Gray, E. Dhorme, H. H. Rowley, and others). Driver obtains this idea by positing a new word based on Arabic without changing the letters; it means “great” – but he has to supply the word “sufferings.”

[16:18]  ¹² sn Job knows that he will die, and that his death, signified here by blood on the ground, will cry out for vindication.

[16:18]  ¹³ tn The word is simply “a place,” but in the context it surely means a hidden place, a secret place that would never be discovered (see 18:21).

[19:22]  ¹⁴ sn Strahan comments, “The whole tragedy of the book is packed into these extraordinary words.”

[19:22]  ¹⁵ sn The idiom of eating the pieces of someone means “slander” in Aramaic (see Dan 3:8), Arabic and Akkadian.

[21:7]  ¹⁶ sn A. B. Davidson (Job, 154) clarifies that Job’s question is of a universal scope. In the government of God, why do the wicked exist at all? The verb could be translated “continue to live.”

[21:7]  ¹⁷ tn The verb עָתַק (’ataq) means “to move; to proceed; to advance.” Here it is “to advance in years” or “to grow old.” This clause could serve as an independent clause, a separate sentence; but it more likely continues the question of the first colon and is parallel to the verb “live.”

[29:20]  ¹⁸ tn The word is “my glory,” meaning his high respect and his honor. Hoffmann proposed to read כִּידוֹן (kidon) instead, meaning “javelin” (as in 1 Sam 17:6), to match the parallelism (RQ 3 [1961/62]: 388). But the parallelism does not need to be so tight.

[29:20]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “new.”

[35:16]  ²⁰ tn The word הֶבֶל (hevel) means “vanity; futility; to no purpose.”