Ayub 11:20

11:20 But the eyes of the wicked fail, ¹ 

and escape ²  eludes them;

their one hope ³  is to breathe their last.” ⁴ 

Ayub 13:27

13:27 And you put my feet in the stocks ⁵ 

and you watch all my movements; ⁶ 

you put marks ⁷  on the soles of my feet.

Ayub 14:14

14:14 If a man dies, will he live again? ⁸ 

All the days of my hard service ⁹  I will wait ¹⁰ 

until my release comes. ¹¹ 

Ayub 31:7

31:7 If my footsteps have strayed from the way,

if my heart has gone after my eyes, ¹² 

or if anything ¹³  has defiled my hands,

[11:20]  ¹ tn The verb כָּלָה (kalah) means “to fail, cease, fade away.” The fading of the eyes, i.e., loss of sight, loss of life’s vitality, indicates imminent death.

[11:20]  ² tn Heb a “place of escape” (with this noun pattern). There is no place to escape to because they all perish.

[11:20]  ³ tn The word is to be interpreted as a metonymy; it represents what is hoped for.

[11:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “the breathing out of the soul”; cf. KJV, ASV “the giving up of the ghost.” The line is simply saying that the brightest hope that the wicked have is death.

[13:27]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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.”

[14:14]  ⁸ tc The LXX removes the interrogative and makes the statement affirmative, i.e., that man will live again. This reading is taken by D. H. Gard (“The Concept of the Future Life according to the Greek Translator of the Book of Job,” JBL 73 [1954]: 137-38). D. J. A. Clines follows this, putting both of the expressions in the wish clause: “if a man dies and could live again…” (Job [WBC], 332). If that is the way it is translated, then the verbs in the second half of the verse and in the next verse would all be part of the apodosis, and should be translated “would.” The interpretation would not greatly differ; it would be saying that if there was life after death, Job would long for his release – his death. If the traditional view is taken and the question was raised whether there was life after death (the implication of the question being that there is), then Job would still be longing for his death. The point the line is making is that if there is life after death, that would be all the more reason for Job to eagerly expect, to hope for, his death.

[14:14]  ⁹ tn See Job 7:1.

[14:14]  ¹⁰ tn The verb אֲיַחֵל (’ayakhel) may be rendered “I will/would wait” or “I will/would hope.” The word describes eager expectation and longing hope.

[14:14]  ¹¹ tn The construction is the same as that found in the last verse: a temporal preposition עַד (’ad) followed by the infinitive construct followed by the subjective genitive “release/relief.” Due, in part, to the same verb (חָלַף, khalaf) having the meaning “sprout again” in v. 7, some take “renewal” as the meaning here (J. E. Hartley, Alden, NIV, ESV).

[31:7]  ¹² sn The meaning is “been led by what my eyes see.”

[31:7]  ¹³ tc The word מֻאוּם (mu’um) could be taken in one of two ways. One reading is to represent מוּם (mum, “blemish,” see the Masorah); the other is for מְאוּמָה (mÿ’umah, “anything,” see the versions and the Kethib). Either reading fits the passage.