Ayub 7:1-2

The Brevity of Life

7:1 “Does not humanity have hard service ¹  on earth?

Are not their days also

like the days of a hired man? ² 

7:2 Like a servant ³  longing for the evening shadow, ⁴ 

and like a hired man looking ⁵  for his wages, ⁶ 

Mazmur 39:1

Psalm 39 ⁷ 

For the music director, Jeduthun; a psalm of David.

39:1 I decided, ⁸  “I will watch what I say

and make sure I do not sin with my tongue. ⁹ 

I will put a muzzle over my mouth

while in the presence of an evil man.” ¹⁰ 

Yesaya 16:14

16:14 Now the Lord makes this announcement: “Within exactly three years ¹¹  Moab’s splendor will disappear, along with all her many people; there will be just a few, insignificant survivors left.” ¹² 

[7:1]  ¹ tn The word צָבָא (tsava’) is actually “army”; it can be used for the hard service of military service as well as other toil. As a military term it would include the fixed period of duty (the time) and the hard work (toil). Job here is considering the lot of all humans, not just himself.

[7:1]  ² tn The שָׂכִיר (sakhir) is a hired man, either a man who works for wages, or a mercenary soldier (Jer 46:21). The latter sense may be what is intended here in view of the parallelism, although the next verse seems much broader.

[7:2]  ³ tn This term עֶבֶד (’eved) is the servant or the slave. He is compelled to work through the day, in the heat; but he longs for evening, when he can rest from the slavery.

[7:2]  ⁴ tn The expression יִשְׁאַף־צֵל (yish’af tsel, “longing for the evening shadow”) could also be taken as a relative clause (without the relative pronoun): “as a servant [who] longs for the evening shadow” (see GKC 487 §155.g). In either case, the expressions in v. 2 emphasize the point of the comparison, which will be summed up in v. 3.

[7:2]  ⁵ tn The two verbs in this verse stress the eager expectation and waiting. The first, שָׁאַף (sha’af), means “to long for; to desire”; and the second, קָוָה (qavah), has the idea of “to hope for; to look for; to wait.” The words would give the sense that the servant or hired man had the longing on his mind all day.

[7:2]  ⁶ tn The word פֹּעַל (po’al) means “work.” But here the word should be taken as a metonymy, meaning the pay for the work that he has done (compare Jer 22:13).

[39:1]  ⁷ sn Psalm 39. The psalmist laments his frailty and mortality as he begs the Lord to take pity on him and remove his disciplinary hand.

[39:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “I said.”

[39:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “I will watch my ways, from sinning with my tongue.”

[39:1]  ¹⁰ sn The psalmist wanted to voice a lament to the Lord (see vv. 4-6), but he hesitated to do so in the presence of evil men, for such words might be sinful if they gave the wicked an occasion to insult God. See C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms (ICC), 1:345.

[16:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in three years, like the years of a hired worker.” The three years must be reckoned exactly, just as a hired worker would carefully keep track of the time he had agreed to work for an employer in exchange for a predetermined wage.

[16:14]  ¹² tn Heb “and the splendor of Moab will be disgraced with all the great multitude, and a small little remnant will not be strong.”