Ayub 24:13-17

24:13 There are those ¹  who rebel against the light;

they do not know its ways

and they do not stay on its paths.

24:14 Before daybreak ²  the murderer rises up;

he kills the poor and the needy;

in the night he is ³  like a thief. ⁴ 

24:15 And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight,

thinking, ⁵  ‘No eye can see me,’

and covers his face with a mask.

24:16 In the dark the robber ⁶  breaks into houses, ⁷ 

but by day they shut themselves in; ⁸ 

they do not know the light. ⁹ 

24:17 For all of them, ¹⁰  the morning is to them

like deep darkness;

they are friends with the terrors of darkness.

Mazmur 139:11

139:11 If I were to say, “Certainly the darkness will cover me, ¹¹ 

and the light will turn to night all around me,” ¹² 

Matius 13:25

13:25 But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and sowed weeds ¹³  among the wheat and went away.

Yohanes 3:20

3:20 For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed.

[24:13]  ¹ tn Heb “They are among those who.”

[24:14]  ² tn The text simply has לָאוֹר (la’or, “at light” or “at daylight”), probably meaning just at the time of dawn.

[24:14]  ³ tn In a few cases the jussive is used without any real sense of the jussive being present (see GKC 323 §109.k).

[24:14]  ⁴ sn The point is that he is like a thief in that he works during the night, just before the daylight, when the advantage is all his and the victim is most vulnerable.

[24:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “saying.”

[24:16]  ⁶ tn The phrase “the robber” has been supplied in the English translation for clarification.

[24:16]  ⁷ tc This is not the idea of the adulterer, but of the thief. So some commentators reverse the order and put this verse after v. 14.

[24:16]  ⁸ tc The verb חִתְּמוּ (khittÿmu) is the Piel from the verb חָתַם (khatam, “to seal”). The verb is now in the plural, covering all the groups mentioned that work under the cover of darkness. The suggestion that they “seal,” i.e., “mark” the house they will rob, goes against the meaning of the word “seal.”

[24:16]  ⁹ tc Some commentators join this very short colon to the beginning of v. 17: “they do not know the light. For together…” becomes “for together they have not known the light.”

[24:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “together.”

[139:11]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew verb שׁוּף (shuf), which means “to crush; to wound,” in Gen 3:15 and Job 9:17, is problematic here. For a discussion of attempts to relate the verb to Arabic roots, see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 251. Many emend the form to יְשׂוּכֵּנִי (yesukkeniy), from the root שׂכך (“to cover,” an alternate form of סכך), a reading assumed in the present translation.

[139:11]  ¹² tn Heb “and night, light, around me.”

[13:25]  ¹³ tn Grk “sowed darnel.” The Greek term ζιζάνιον (zizanion) refers to an especially undesirable weed that looks like wheat but has poisonous seeds (L&N 3.30).