Ayub 10:9

10:9 Remember that you have made me as with ¹  the clay;

will ²  you return me to dust?

Ayub 11:3

11:3 Will your idle talk ³  reduce people to silence, ⁴ 

and will no one rebuke ⁵  you when you mock? ⁶ 

Ayub 13:27

13:27 And you put my feet in the stocks ⁷ 

and you watch all my movements; ⁸ 

you put marks ⁹  on the soles of my feet.

Ayub 22:6

22:6 “For you took pledges ¹⁰  from your brothers

for no reason,

and you stripped the clothing from the naked. ¹¹ 

Ayub 41:8

41:8 If you lay your hand on it,

you will remember ¹²  the fight,

and you will never do it again!

[10:9]  ¹ tn The preposition “like” creates a small tension here. So some ignore the preposition and read “clay” as an adverbial accusative of the material (GKC 371 §117.hh but cf. 379 §119.i with reference to beth essentiae: “as it were, by clay”). The NIV gets around the problem with a different meaning for the verb: “you molded me like clay.” Some suggest the meaning was “as [with] clay” (in the same manner that we have “as [in] the day of Midian” [Isa 9:4]).

[10:9]  ² tn The text has a conjunction: “and to dust….”

[11:3]  ³ tn The word means “chatter, pratings, boastings” (see Isa 16:6; Jer 48:30).

[11:3]  ⁴ tn The verb חָרַשׁ (kharash) in the Hiphil means “to silence” (41:4); here it functions in a causative sense, “reduce to silence.”

[11:3]  ⁵ tn The form מַכְלִם (makhlim, “humiliating, mocking”) is the Hiphil participle. The verb כָּלַם (kalam) has the meaning “cover with shame, insult” (Job 20:3).

[11:3]  ⁶ tn The construction shows the participle to be in the circumstantial clause: “will you mock – and [with] no one rebuking.”

[13:27]  ⁷ tn The word occurs here and in Job 33:11. It could be taken as “stocks,” in which the feet were held fast; or it could be “shackles,” which allowed the prisoner to move about. The parallelism favors the latter, if the two lines are meant to be referring to the same thing.

[13:27]  ⁸ tn The word means “ways; roads; paths,” but it is used here in the sense of the “way” in which one goes about his activities.

[13:27]  ⁹ tn The verb תִּתְחַקֶּה (titkhaqqeh) is a Hitpael from the root חָקָה (khaqah, parallel to חָקַק, khaqaq). The word means “to engrave” or “to carve out.” This Hitpael would mean “to imprint something on oneself” (E. Dhorme [Job, 192] says on one’s mind, and so derives the meaning “examine.”). The object of this is the expression “on the roots of my feet,” which would refer to where the feet hit the ground. Since the passage has more to do with God’s restricting Job’s movement, the translation “you set a boundary to the soles of my feet” would be better than Dhorme’s view. The image of inscribing or putting marks on the feet is not found elsewhere. It may be, as Pope suggests, a reference to marking the slaves to make tracking them easier. The LXX has “you have penetrated to my heels.”

[22:6]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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.

[41:8]  ¹² tn The verse uses two imperatives which can be interpreted in sequence: do this, and then this will happen.