Ayub 10:12

10:12 You gave me ¹  life and favor, ² 

and your intervention ³  watched over my spirit.

Ayub 13:1

Job Pleads His Cause to God ⁴ 

13:1 “Indeed, my eyes have seen all this, ⁵ 

my ears have heard and understood it.

Ayub 14:8

14:8 Although its roots may grow old ⁶  in the ground

and its stump begins to die ⁷  in the soil, ⁸ 

[10:12]  ¹ tn Heb “you made with me.”

[10:12]  ² tn E. Dhorme (Job, 150) suggests that the relation between these two words is like a hendiadys. In other words, “life,” which he says is made prominent by the shift of the copula, specifies the nature of the grace. He renders it “the favor of life.” D. J. A. Clines at least acknowledges that the expression “you showed loyal love with me” is primary. There are many other attempts to improve the translation of this unusual combination.

[10:12]  ³ tn The noun פְּקָָֻדּה (pÿquddah), originally translated “visitation,” actually refers to any divine intervention for blessing on the life. Here it would include the care and overseeing of the life of Job. “Providence” may be too general for the translation, but it is not far from the meaning of this line. The LXX has “your oversight.”

[13:1]  ⁴ sn Chapter 13 records Job’s charges against his friends for the way they used their knowledge (1-5), his warning that God would find out their insincerity (6-12), and his pleading of his cause to God in which he begs for God to remove his hand from him and that he would not terrify him with his majesty and that he would reveal the sins that caused such great suffering (13-28).

[13:1]  ⁵ tn Hebrew has כֹּל (kol, “all”); there is no reason to add anything to the text to gain a meaning “all this.”

[14:8]  ⁶ tn The Hiphil of זָקַן (zaqan, “to be old”) is here an internal causative, “to grow old.”

[14:8]  ⁷ tn The Hiphil is here classified as an inchoative Hiphil (see GKC 145 §53.e), for the tree only begins to die. In other words, it appears to be dead, but actually is not completely dead.

[14:8]  ⁸ tn The LXX translates “dust” [soil] with “rock,” probably in light of the earlier illustration of the tree growing in the rocks.

[14:8]  sn Job is thinking here of a tree that dies or decays because of a drought rather than being uprooted, because the next verse will tell how it can revive with water.