12:4 I am 1 a laughingstock 2 to my friends, 3
I, who called on God and whom he answered 4 –
a righteous and blameless 5 man
is a laughingstock!
34:20 In a moment they die, in the middle of the night, 6
people 7 are shaken 8 and they pass away.
The mighty are removed effortlessly. 9
35:14 How much less, then,
when you say that you do not perceive him,
that the case is before him
and you are waiting for him! 10
1 tn Some are troubled by the disharmony with “I am” and “to his friend.” Even though the difficulty is not insurmountable, some have emended the text. Some simply changed the verb to “he is,” which was not very compelling. C. D. Isbell argued that אֶהְיֶה (’ehyeh, “I am”) is an orthographic variant of יִהְיֶה (yihyeh, “he will”) – “a person who does not know these things would be a laughingstock” (JANESCU 37 [1978]: 227-36). G. R. Driver suggests the meaning of the MT is something like “(One that is) a mockery to his friend I am to be.”
2 tn The word simply means “laughter”; but it can also mean the object of laughter (see Jer 20:7). The LXX jumps from one “laughter” to the next, eliminating everything in between, presumably due to haplography.
3 tn Heb “his friend.” A number of English versions (e.g., NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT) take this collectively, “to my friends.”
4 tn Heb “one calling to God and he answered him.” H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 92) contends that because Job has been saying that God is not answering him, these words must be part of the derisive words of his friends.
5 tn The two words, צַדִּיק תָּמִים (tsadiq tamim), could be understood as a hendiadys (= “blamelessly just”) following W. G. E. Watson (Classical Hebrew Poetry, 327).
6 tn Dhorme transposes “in the middle of the night” with “they pass away” to get a smoother reading. But the MT emphasizes the suddenness by putting both temporal ideas first. E. F. Sutcliffe leaves the order as it stands in the text, but adds a verb “they expire” after “in the middle of the night” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 79ff.).
7 tn R. Gordis (Job, 389) thinks “people” here mean the people who count, the upper class.
8 tn The verb means “to be violently agitated.” There is no problem with the word in this context, but commentators have made suggestions for improving the idea. The proposal that has the most to commend it, if one were inclined to choose a new word, is the change to יִגְוָעוּ (yigva’u, “they expire”; so Ball, Holscher, Fohrer, and others).
9 tn Heb “not by hand.” This means without having to use force.
10 sn The point is that if God does not listen to those who do not turn to him, how much less likely is he to turn to one who complains against him.