Kejadian 47:9

47:9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “All ¹  the years of my travels ²  are 130. All ³  the years of my life have been few and painful; ⁴  the years of my travels are not as long as those of my ancestors.” ⁵ 

Ayub 5:7

5:7 but people ⁶  are born ⁷  to trouble,

as surely as the sparks ⁸  fly ⁹  upward. ¹⁰ 

Ayub 7:1

The Brevity of Life

7:1 “Does not humanity have hard service ¹¹  on earth?

Are not their days also

like the days of a hired man? ¹² 

Ayub 14:1

The Brevity of Life

14:1 “Man, born of woman, ¹³ 

lives but a few days, ¹⁴  and they are full of trouble. ¹⁵ 

Ayub 2:1

Satan’s Additional Charge

2:1 Again the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also arrived among them to present himself before the Lord. ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 20:18

20:18 Why did I ever come forth from my mother’s womb?

All I experience is trouble and grief,

and I spend my days in shame. ¹⁷ 

[47:9]  ¹ tn Heb “the days of.”

[47:9]  ² tn Heb “sojournings.” Jacob uses a term that depicts him as one who has lived an unsettled life, temporarily residing in many different places.

[47:9]  ³ tn Heb “the days of.”

[47:9]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew word רַע (ra’) can sometimes mean “evil,” but that would give the wrong connotation here, where it refers to pain, difficulty, and sorrow. Jacob is thinking back through all the troubles he had to endure to get to this point.

[47:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “and they have not reached the days of the years of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.”

[5:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “man [is].” Because “man” is used in a generic sense for humanity here, the generic “people” has been used in the translation.

[5:7]  ⁷ tn There is a slight difficulty here in that vv. 6 and 7 seem to be saying the opposite thing. Many commentators, therefore, emend the the Niphal יוּלָּד (yullad, “is born”) to an active participle יוֹלֵד (yoled, “begets”) to place the source of trouble in man himself. But the LXX seems to retain the passive idea: “man is born to trouble.” The contrast between the two verses does not seem too difficult, for it still could imply that trouble’s source is within the man.

[5:7]  ⁸ tn For the Hebrew בְנֵי־רֶשֶׁף (bÿne reshef, “sons of the flame”) the present translation has the rendering “sparks.” E. Dhorme (Job, 62) thinks it refers to some kind of bird, but renders it “sons of the lightning” because the eagle was associated with lightning in ancient interpretations. Sparks, he argues, do not soar high above the earth. Other suggestions include Resheph, the Phoenician god of lightning (Pope), the fire of passion (Buttenwieser), angels (Peake), or demons (Targum Job). None of these are convincing; the idea of sparks flying upward fits the translation well and makes clear sense in the passage.

[5:7]  ⁹ tn The simple translation of the last two words is “fly high” or “soar aloft” which would suit the idea of an eagle. But, as H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 53) concludes, the argument to identify the expression preceding this with eagles is far-fetched.

[5:7]  ¹⁰ tn The LXX has the name of a bird here: “the vulture’s young seek the high places.” The Targum to Job has “sons of demons” or “the sparks which shoot from coals of fire.”

[7:1]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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.

[14:1]  ¹³ tn The first of the threefold apposition for אָדָם (’adam, “man”) is “born of a woman.” The genitive (“woman”) after a passive participle denotes the agent of the action (see GKC 359 §116.l).

[14:1]  ¹⁴ tn The second description is simply “[is] short of days.” The meaning here is that his life is short (“days” being put as the understatement for “years”).

[14:1]  ¹⁵ tn The third expression is “consumed/full/sated – with/of – trouble/restlessness.” The latter word, רֹגֶז (rogez), occurred in Job 3:17; see also the idea in 10:15.

[2:1]  ¹⁶ tc This last purpose clause has been omitted in some Greek versions.

[20:18]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Why did I come forth from the womb to see [= so that I might see] trouble and grief and that my days might be consumed in shame.”