Ayub 7:1-2

The Brevity of Life

7:1 “Does not humanity have hard service ¹  on earth?

Are not their days also

like the days of a hired man? ² 

7:2 Like a servant ³  longing for the evening shadow, ⁴ 

and like a hired man looking ⁵  for his wages, ⁶ 

Matius 20:1-8

Workers in the Vineyard

20:1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner ⁷  who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 20:2 And after agreeing with the workers for the standard wage, ⁸  he sent them into his vineyard. 20:3 When it was about nine o’clock in the morning, ⁹  he went out again and saw others standing around in the marketplace without work. 20:4 He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and I will give you whatever is right.’ 20:5 So they went. When ¹⁰  he went out again about noon and three o’clock that afternoon, ¹¹  he did the same thing. 20:6 And about five o’clock that afternoon ¹²  he went out and found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why are you standing here all day without work?’ 20:7 They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go and work in the vineyard too.’ 20:8 When ¹³  it was evening ¹⁴  the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the workers and give the pay ¹⁵  starting with the last hired until the first.’

[7:1]  ¹ tn The word צָבָא (tsava’) is actually “army”; it can be used for the hard service of military service as well as other toil. As a military term it would include the fixed period of duty (the time) and the hard work (toil). Job here is considering the lot of all humans, not just himself.

[7:1]  ² tn The שָׂכִיר (sakhir) is a hired man, either a man who works for wages, or a mercenary soldier (Jer 46:21). The latter sense may be what is intended here in view of the parallelism, although the next verse seems much broader.

[7:2]  ³ tn This term עֶבֶד (’eved) is the servant or the slave. He is compelled to work through the day, in the heat; but he longs for evening, when he can rest from the slavery.

[7:2]  ⁴ tn The expression יִשְׁאַף־צֵל (yish’af tsel, “longing for the evening shadow”) could also be taken as a relative clause (without the relative pronoun): “as a servant [who] longs for the evening shadow” (see GKC 487 §155.g). In either case, the expressions in v. 2 emphasize the point of the comparison, which will be summed up in v. 3.

[7:2]  ⁵ tn The two verbs in this verse stress the eager expectation and waiting. The first, שָׁאַף (sha’af), means “to long for; to desire”; and the second, קָוָה (qavah), has the idea of “to hope for; to look for; to wait.” The words would give the sense that the servant or hired man had the longing on his mind all day.

[7:2]  ⁶ tn The word פֹּעַל (po’al) means “work.” But here the word should be taken as a metonymy, meaning the pay for the work that he has done (compare Jer 22:13).

[20:1]  ⁷ sn The term landowner here refers to the owner and manager of a household.

[20:2]  ⁸ tn Grk “agreeing with the workers for a denarius a day.”

[20:2]  sn The standard wage was a denarius a day. The denarius was a silver coin worth about a day’s wage for a laborer in Palestine in the 1st century.

[20:3]  ⁹ tn Grk “about the third hour.”

[20:5]  ¹⁰ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[20:5]  ¹¹ tn Grk “he went out again about the sixth and ninth hour.”

[20:6]  ¹² tn Grk “about the eleventh hour.”

[20:8]  ¹³ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[20:8]  ¹⁴ sn That is, six o’clock in the evening, the hour to pay day laborers. See Lev 19:13b.

[20:8]  ¹⁵ tc ‡ Most witnesses (including B D W Θ Ë^1,13 33^vid Ï latt sy) have αὐτοῖς (autois, “to them”) after ἀπόδος (apodos, “give the pay”), but this seems to be a motivated reading, clarifying the indirect object. The omission is supported by א C L Z 085 Or. Nevertheless, NA²⁷ includes the pronoun on the basis of the greater external attestation.