Ayub 6:30

6:30 Is there any falsehood ¹  on my lips?

Can my mouth ²  not discern evil things? ³ 

Ayub 15:24

15:24 Distress and anguish ⁴  terrify him;

they prevail against him

like a king ready to launch an attack, ⁵ 

Ayub 20:16

20:16 He sucks the poison ⁶  of serpents; ⁷ 

the fangs ⁸  of a viper ⁹  kill him.

Ayub 21:9

21:9 Their houses are safe ¹⁰  and without fear; ¹¹ 

and no rod of punishment ¹²  from God is upon them. ¹³ 

[6:30]  ¹ tn The word עַוְלָה (’avlah) is repeated from the last verse. Here the focus is clearly on wickedness or injustice spoken.

[6:30]  sn These words make a fitting transition to ch. 7, which forms a renewed cry of despair from Job. Job still feels himself innocent, but in the hands of cruel fate which is out to destroy him.

[6:30]  ² tn Heb “my palate.” Here “palate” is used not so much for the organ of speech (by metonymy) as of discernment. In other words, what he says indicates what he thinks.

[6:30]  ³ tn The final word, הַוּוֹת (havvot) is usually understood as “calamities.” He would be asking if he could not discern his misfortune. But some argue that the word has to be understood in the parallelism to “wickedness” of words (D. J. A. Clines, Job [WBC], 162). Gordis connects it to Mic 7:3 and Ps 5:10 [9] where the meaning “deceit, falsehood” is found. The LXX has “and does not my throat meditate understanding?”

[15:24]  ⁴ tn If “day and darkness” are added to this line, then this verse is made into a tri-colon – the main reason for transferring it away from the last verse. But the newly proposed reading follows the LXX structure precisely, as if that were the approved construction. The Hebrew of MT has “distress and anguish terrify him.”

[15:24]  ⁵ tn This last colon is deleted by some, moved to v. 26 by others, and the NEB puts it in brackets. The last word (translated here as “launch an attack”) occurs only here. HALOT 472 s.v. כִּידוֹר links it to an Arabic root kadara, “to rush down,” as with a bird of prey. J. Reider defines it as “perturbation” from the same root (“Etymological Studies in Biblical Hebrew,” VT 2 [1952]: 127).

[20:16]  ⁶ tn The word is a homonym for the word for “head,” which has led to some confusion in the early versions.

[20:16]  ⁷ sn To take the possessions of another person is hereby compared to sucking poison from a serpent – it will kill eventually.

[20:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “tongue.”

[20:16]  ⁹ 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.

[21:9]  ¹⁰ tn The word שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace, safety”) is here a substantive after a plural subject (see GKC 452 §141.c, n. 3).

[21:9]  ¹¹ tn The form מִפָּחַד (mippakhad) is translated “without fear,” literally “from fear”; the preposition is similar to the alpha privative in Greek. The word “fear, dread” means nothing that causes fear or dread – they are peaceful, secure. See GKC 382 §119.w.

[21:9]  ¹² tn Heb “no rod of God.” The words “punishment from” have been supplied in the translation to make the metaphor understandable for the modern reader by stating the purpose of the rod.

[21:9]  ¹³ sn In 9:34 Job was complaining that there was no umpire to remove God’s rod from him, but here he observes no such rod is on the wicked.