Ayub 22:5-9
Konteks22:5 Is not your wickedness great 1
and is there no end to your iniquity?
22:6 “For you took pledges 2 from your brothers
for no reason,
and you stripped the clothing from the naked. 3
22:7 You gave the weary 4 no water to drink
and from the hungry you withheld food.
22:8 Although you were a powerful man, 5 owning land, 6
an honored man 7 living on it, 8
22:9 you sent widows away empty-handed,
and the arms 9 of the orphans you crushed. 10
Ayub 24:2-16
Konteks24:2 Men 11 move boundary stones;
they seize the flock and pasture them. 12
24:3 They drive away the orphan’s donkey;
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
24:4 They turn the needy from the pathway,
and the poor of the land hide themselves together. 13
24:5 Like 14 wild donkeys in the desert
they 15 go out to their labor, 16
seeking diligently for food;
the wasteland provides 17 food for them
and for their children.
24:6 They reap fodder 18 in the field,
and glean 19 in the vineyard of the wicked.
24:7 They spend the night naked because they lack clothing;
they have no covering against the cold.
24:8 They are soaked by mountain rains
and huddle 20 in the rocks because they lack shelter.
24:9 The fatherless child is snatched 21 from the breast, 22
the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. 23
24:10 They go about naked, without clothing,
and go hungry while they carry the sheaves. 24
24:11 They press out the olive oil between the rows of olive trees; 25
they tread the winepresses while they are thirsty. 26
24:12 From the city the dying 27 groan,
and the wounded 28 cry out for help,
but God charges no one with wrongdoing. 29
24:13 There are those 30 who rebel against the light;
they do not know its ways
and they do not stay on its paths.
24:14 Before daybreak 31 the murderer rises up;
he kills the poor and the needy;
in the night he is 32 like a thief. 33
24:15 And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight,
thinking, 34 ‘No eye can see me,’
and covers his face with a mask.
24:16 In the dark the robber 35 breaks into houses, 36
but by day they shut themselves in; 37
they do not know the light. 38
[22:5] 1 tn The adjective רַבָּה (rabbah) normally has the idea of “great” in quantity (“abundant,” ESV) rather than “great” in quality.
[22:6] 2 tn The verb חָבַל (khaval) means “to take pledges.” In this verse Eliphaz says that Job not only took as pledge things the poor need, like clothing, but he did it for no reason.
[22:6] 3 tn The “naked” here refers to people who are poorly clothed. Otherwise, a reading like the NIV would be necessary: “you stripped the clothes…[leaving them] naked.” So either he made them naked by stripping their garments off, or they were already in rags.
[22:7] 4 tn The term עָיֵף (’ayef) can be translated “weary,” “faint,” “exhausted,” or “tired.” Here it may refer to the fainting because of thirst – that would make a good parallel to the second part.
[22:8] 5 tn The idiom is “a man of arm” (= “powerful”; see Ps 10:15). This is in comparison to the next line, “man of face” (= “dignity; high rank”; see Isa 3:5).
[22:8] 6 tn Heb “and a man of arm, to whom [was] land.” The line is in contrast to the preceding one, and so the vav here introduces a concessive clause.
[22:8] 7 tn The expression is unusual: “the one lifted up of face.” This is the “honored one,” the one to whom the dignity will be given.
[22:8] 8 tn Many commentators simply delete the verse or move it elsewhere. Most take it as a general reference to Job, perhaps in apposition to the preceding verse.
[22:9] 9 tn The “arms of the orphans” are their helps or rights on which they depended for support.
[22:9] 10 tn The verb in the text is Pual: יְדֻכָּא (yÿdukka’, “was [were] crushed”). GKC 388 §121.b would explain “arms” as the complement of a passive imperfect. But if that is too difficult, then a change to Piel imperfect, second person, will solve the difficulty. In its favor is the parallelism, the use of the second person all throughout the section, and the reading in all the versions. The versions may have simply assumed the easier reading, however.
[24:2] 11 tn The line is short: “they move boundary stones.” So some commentators have supplied a subject, such as “wicked men.” The reason for its being wicked men is that to move the boundary stone was to encroach dishonestly on the lands of others (Deut 19:14; 27:17).
[24:2] 12 tc The LXX reads “and their shepherd.” Many commentators accept this reading. But the MT says that they graze the flocks that they have stolen. The difficulty with the MT reading is that there is no suffix on the final verb – but that is not an insurmountable difference.
[24:4] 13 sn Because of the violence and oppression of the wicked, the poor and needy, the widows and orphans, all are deprived of their rights and forced out of the ways and into hiding just to survive.
[24:5] 14 tc The verse begins with הֵן (hen); but the LXX, Vulgate, and Syriac all have “like.” R. Gordis (Job, 265) takes הֵן (hen) as a pronoun “they” and supplies the comparative. The sense of the verse is clear in either case.
[24:5] 15 tn That is, “the poor.”
[24:5] 16 tc The MT has “in the working/labor of them,” or “when they labor.” Some commentators simply omit these words. Dhorme retains them and moves them to go with עֲרָבָה (’aravah), which he takes to mean “evening”; this gives a clause, “although they work until the evening.” Then, with many others, he takes לוֹ (lo) to be a negative and finishes the verse with “no food for the children.” Others make fewer changes in the text, and as a result do not come out with such a hopeless picture – there is some food found. The point is that they spend their time foraging for food, and they find just enough to survive, but it is a day-long activity. For Job, this shows how unrighteous the administration of the world actually is.
[24:5] 17 tn The verb is not included in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation.
[24:6] 18 tc The word בְּלִילוֹ (bÿlilo) means “his fodder.” It is unclear to what this refers. If the suffix is taken as a collective, then it can be translated “they gather/reap their fodder.” The early versions all have “they reap in a field which is not his” (taking it as בְּלִי לוֹ, bÿli lo). A conjectural emendation would change the word to בַּלַּיְלָה (ballaylah, “in the night”). But there is no reason for this.
[24:6] 19 tn The verbs in this verse are uncertain. In the first line “reap” is used, and that would be the work of a hired man (and certainly not done at night). The meaning of this second verb is uncertain; it has been taken to mean “glean,” which would be the task of the poor.
[24:8] 20 tn Heb “embrace” or “hug.”
[24:9] 21 tn The verb with no expressed subject is here again taken in the passive: “they snatch” becomes “[child] is snatched.”
[24:9] 22 tn This word is usually defined as “violence; ruin.” But elsewhere it does mean “breast” (Isa 60:16; 66:11), and that is certainly what it means here.
[24:9] 23 tc The MT has a very brief and strange reading: “they take as a pledge upon the poor.” This could be taken as “they take a pledge against the poor” (ESV). Kamphausen suggested that instead of עַל (’al, “against”) one should read עוּל (’ul, “suckling”). This is supported by the parallelism. “They take as pledge” is also made passive here.
[24:10] 24 sn The point should not be missed – amidst abundant harvests, carrying sheaves about, they are still going hungry.
[24:11] 25 tc The Hebrew term is שׁוּרֹתָם (shurotam), which may be translated “terraces” or “olive rows.” But that would not be the proper place to have a press to press the olives and make oil. E. Dhorme (Job, 360-61) proposes on the analogy of an Arabic word that this should be read as “millstones” (which he would also write in the dual). But the argument does not come from a clean cognate, but from a possible development of words. The meaning of “olive rows” works well enough.
[24:11] 26 tn The final verb, a preterite with the ו (vav) consecutive, is here interpreted as a circumstantial clause.
[24:12] 27 tc The MT as pointed reads “from the city of men they groan.” Most commentators change one vowel in מְתִים (mÿtim) to get מֵתִים (metim) to get the active participle, “the dying.” This certainly fits the parallelism better, although sense could be made out of the MT.
[24:12] 28 tn Heb “the souls of the wounded,” which here refers to the wounded themselves.
[24:12] 29 tc The MT has the noun תִּפְלָה (tiflah) which means “folly; tastelessness” (cf. 1:22). The verb, which normally means “to place; to put,” would then be rendered “to impute; to charge.” This is certainly a workable translation in the context. Many commentators have emended the text, changing the noun to תְּפִלָּה (tÿfillah, “prayer”), and so then also the verb יָשִׂים (yasim, here “charges”) to יִשְׁמַע (yishma’, “hears”). It reads: “But God does not hear the prayer” – referring to the groans.
[24:13] 30 tn Heb “They are among those who.”
[24:14] 31 tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.
[24:14] 32 tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).
[24:14] 33 sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.
[24:16] 35 tn The phrase “the robber” has been supplied in the English translation for clarification.
[24:16] 36 tc This is not the idea of the adulterer, but of the thief. So some commentators reverse the order and put this verse after v. 14.
[24:16] 37 tc The verb חִתְּמוּ (khittÿmu) is the Piel from the verb חָתַם (khatam, “to seal”). The verb is now in the plural, covering all the groups mentioned that work under the cover of darkness. The suggestion that they “seal,” i.e., “mark” the house they will rob, goes against the meaning of the word “seal.”
[24:16] 38 tc Some commentators join this very short colon to the beginning of v. 17: “they do not know the light. For together…” becomes “for together they have not known the light.”
