Ayub 18:5

18:5 “Yes, ¹  the lamp ²  of the wicked is extinguished;

his flame of fire ³  does not shine.

Ayub 18:7-14

18:7 His vigorous steps ⁴  are restricted, ⁵ 

and his own counsel throws him down. ⁶ 

18:8 For he has been thrown into a net by his feet ⁷ 

and he wanders into a mesh. ⁸ 

18:9 A trap ⁹  seizes him by the heel;

a snare ¹⁰  grips him.

18:10 A rope is hidden for him ¹¹  on the ground

and a trap for him ¹²  lies on the path.

18:11 Terrors ¹³  frighten him on all sides

and dog ¹⁴  his every step.

18:12 Calamity is ¹⁵  hungry for him, ¹⁶ 

and misfortune is ready at his side. ¹⁷ 

18:13 It eats away parts of his skin; ¹⁸ 

the most terrible death ¹⁹  devours his limbs.

18:14 He is dragged from the security of his tent, ²⁰ 

and marched off ²¹  to the king ²²  of terrors.

[18:5]  ¹ tn Hebrew גַּם (gam, “also; moreover”), in view of what has just been said.

[18:5]  ² sn The lamp or the light can have a number of uses in the Bible. Here it is probably an implied metaphor for prosperity and happiness, for the good life itself.

[18:5]  ³ tn The expression is literally “the flame of his fire,” but the pronominal suffix qualifies the entire bound construction. The two words together intensify the idea of the flame.

[18:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “the steps of his vigor,” the genitive being the attribute.

[18:7]  ⁵ tn The verb צָרַר (tsarar) means “to be cramped; to be straitened; to be hemmed in.” The trouble has hemmed him in, so that he cannot walk with the full, vigorous steps he had before. The LXX has “Let the meanest of men spoil his goods.”

[18:7]  ⁶ tn The LXX has “causes him to stumble,” which many commentators accept; but this involves the transposition of the three letters. The verb is שָׁלַךְ (shalakh, “throw”) not כָּשַׁל (kashal, “stumble”).

[18:8]  ⁷ tn See Ps 25:15.

[18:8]  ⁸ tn The word שְׂבָכָה (sÿvakhah) is used in scripture for the lattice window (2 Kgs 1:2). The Arabic cognate means “to be intertwined.” So the term could describe a net, matting, grating, or lattice. Here it would be the netting stretched over a pit.

[18:9]  ⁹ tn This word פָּח (pakh) specifically refers to the snare of the fowler – thus a bird trap. But its plural seems to refer to nets in general (see Job 22:10).

[18:9]  ¹⁰ tn This word does not occur elsewhere. But another word from the same root means “plait of hair,” and so this term has something to do with a net like a trellis or lattice.

[18:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “his rope.” The suffix must be a genitive expressing that the trap was for him, to trap him, and so an objective genitive.

[18:10]  ¹² tn Heb “his trap.” The pronominal suffix is objective genitive here as well.

[18:11]  ¹³ sn Bildad is referring here to all the things that afflict a person and cause terror. It would then be a metonymy of effect, the cause being the afflictions.

[18:11]  ¹⁴ tn The verb פּוּץ (puts) in the Hiphil has the meaning “to pursue” and “to scatter.” It is followed by the expression “at his feet.” So the idea is easily derived: they chase him at his feet. But some commentators have other proposals. The most far-fetched is that of Ehrlich and Driver (ZAW 24 [1953]: 259-60) which has “and compel him to urinate on his feet,” one of many similar readings the NEB accepted from Driver.

[18:12]  ¹⁵ tn The jussive is occasionally used without its normal sense and only as an imperfect (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[18:12]  ¹⁶ tn There are a number of suggestions for אֹנוֹ (’ono). Some take it as “vigor”: thus “his strength is hungry.” Others take it as “iniquity”: thus “his iniquity/trouble is hungry.”

[18:12]  ¹⁷ tn The expression means that misfortune is right there to destroy him whenever there is the opportunity.

[18:13]  ¹⁸ tn The expression “the limbs of his skin” makes no sense, unless a poetic meaning of “parts” (or perhaps “layers”) is taken. The parallelism has “his skin” in the first colon, and “his limbs” in the second. One plausible suggestion is to take בַּדֵּי (badde, “limbs of”) in the first part to be בִּדְוָי (bidvay, “by a disease”; Dhorme, Wright, RSV). The verb has to be made passive, however. The versions have different things: The LXX has “let the branches of his feet be eaten”; the Syriac has “his cities will be swallowed up by force”; the Vulgate reads “let it devour the beauty of his skin”; and Targum Job has “it will devour the linen garments that cover his skin.”

[18:13]  ¹⁹ tn The “firstborn of death” is the strongest child of death (Gen 49:3), or the deadliest death (like the “firstborn of the poor, the poorest). The phrase means the most terrible death (A. B. Davidson, Job, 134).

[18:14]  ²⁰ tn Heb “from his tent, his security.” The apposition serves to modify the tent as his security.

[18:14]  ²¹ tn The verb is the Hiphil of צָעַד (tsa’ad, “to lead away”). The problem is that the form is either a third feminine (Rashi thought it was referring to Job’s wife) or the second person. There is a good deal of debate over the possibility of the prefix t- being a variant for the third masculine form. The evidence in Ugaritic and Akkadian is mixed, stronger for the plural than the singular. Gesenius has some samples where the third feminine form might also be used for the passive if there is no expressed subject (see GKC 459 §144.b), but the evidence is not strong. The simplest choices are to change the prefix to a י (yod), or argue that the ת (tav) can be masculine, or follow Gesenius.

[18:14]  ²² sn This is a reference to death, the king of all terrors. Other identifications are made in the commentaries: Mot, the Ugaritic god of death; Nergal of the Babylonians; Molech of the Canaanites, the one to whom people sent emissaries.