12:7 “But now, ask the animals and they 7 will teach you,
or the birds of the sky and they will tell you.
33:23 If there is an angel beside him,
one mediator 8 out of a thousand,
to tell a person what constitutes his uprightness; 9
34:33 Is it your opinion 10 that God 11 should recompense it,
because you reject this? 12
But you must choose, and not I,
so tell us what you know.
1 tn The LXX has “the spoilers spoiled them” instead of “the Sabeans swooped down.” The translators might have connected the word to שְָׁבָה (shavah, “to take captive”) rather than שְׁבָא (shÿva’, “Sabeans”), or they may have understood the name as general reference to all types of Bedouin invaders from southern Arabia (HALOT 1381 s.v. שְׁבָא 2.c).
sn The name “Sheba” is used to represent its inhabitants, or some of them. The verb is feminine because the name is a place name. The Sabeans were a tribe from the Arabian peninsula. They were traders mostly (6:19). The raid came from the south, suggesting that this band of Sabeans were near Edom. The time of the attack seems to be winter since the oxen were plowing.
2 tn The Hebrew is simply “fell” (from נָפַל, nafal). To “fall upon” something in war means to attack quickly and suddenly.
3 sn Job’s servants were probably armed and gave resistance, which would be the normal case in that time. This was probably why they were “killed with the sword.”
4 tn Heb “the edge/mouth of the sword”; see T. J. Meek, “Archaeology and a Point of Hebrew Syntax,” BASOR 122 (1951): 31-33.
5 tn The pleonasms in the verse emphasize the emotional excitement of the messenger.
6 sn As J. E. Hartley (Job [NICOT], 216) observes, in this section Job argues that respected tradition “must not be accepted uncritically.”
7 tn The singular verb is used here with the plural collective subject (see GKC 464 §145.k).
8 sn The verse is describing the way God can preserve someone from dying by sending a messenger (translated here as “angel”), who could be human or angelic. This messenger will interpret/mediate God’s will. By “one … out of a thousand” Elihu could have meant either that one of the thousands of messengers at God’s disposal might be sent or that the messenger would be unique (see Eccl 7:28; and cp. Job 9:3).
9 tn This is a smoother reading. The MT has “to tell to a man his uprightness,” to reveal what is right for him. The LXX translated this word “duty”; the choice is adopted by some commentaries. However, that is too far from the text, which indicates that the angel/messenger is to call the person to uprightness.
10 tn Heb “is it from with you,” an idiomatic expression meaning “to suit you” or “according to your judgment.”
11 tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
12 tn There is no object on the verb, and the meaning is perhaps lost. The best guess is that Elihu is saying Job has rejected his teaching.