1:6 Now the day came when 2 the sons of God 3 came to present themselves before 4 the Lord – and Satan 5 also arrived among them.
2:1 Again the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also arrived among them to present himself before the Lord. 11
5:4 His children are far 12 from safety,
and they are crushed 13 at the place where judgment is rendered, 14
nor is there anyone to deliver them. 15
24:5 Like 16 wild donkeys in the desert
they 17 go out to their labor, 18
seeking diligently for food;
the wasteland provides 19 food for them
and for their children.
29:11 “As soon as the ear heard these things, 20 it blessed me, 21
and when the eye saw them, it bore witness to me,
29:24 If I smiled at them, they hardly believed it; 22
and they did not cause the light of my face to darken. 23
29:25 I chose 24 the way for them 25
and sat as their chief; 26
I lived like a king among his troops;
I was like one who comforts mourners. 27
31:15 Did not the one who made me in the womb make them? 28
Did not the same one form us in the womb?
34:19 who shows no partiality to princes,
and does not take note of 29 the rich more than the poor,
because all of them are the work of his hands?
36:7 He does not take his eyes 30 off the righteous;
but with kings on the throne
he seats the righteous 31 and exalts them forever. 32
37:12 The clouds 33 go round in circles,
wheeling about according to his plans,
to carry out 34 all that he commands them
over the face of the whole inhabited world.
1 sn The text draws the curtain of heaven aside for the reader to understand the background of this drama. God extols the virtue of Job, but Satan challenges the reasons for it. He receives permission to try to dislodge Job from his integrity. In short, God is using Job to prove Satan’s theory wrong.
2 tn The beginning Hebrew expression “and there was – the day” indicates that “there came a day when” or more simply “the day came when.” It emphasizes the particular day. The succeeding clause is then introduced with a preterite with the with vav (ו) consecutive (see E. Dhorme, Job, 5).
3 sn The “sons of God” in the OT is generally taken to refer to angels. They are not actually “sons” of Elohim; the idiom is a poetic way of describing their nature and relationship to God. The phrase indicates their supernatural nature, and their submission to God as the sovereign Lord. It may be classified as a genitive that expresses how individuals belong to a certain class or type, i.e., the supernatural (GKC 418 §128.v). In the pagan literature, especially of Ugarit, “the sons of God” refers to the lesser gods or deities of the pantheon. See H. W. Robinson, “The Council of Yahweh,” JTS 45 (1943): 151-57; G. Cooke, “The Sons of (the) God(s),” ZAW 76 (1964): 22-47; M. Tsevat, “God and the Gods in the Assembly,” HUCA 40-41 (1969/70): 123-37.
4 tn The preposition עַל (’al) in this construction after a verb of standing or going means “before” (GKC 383 §119.cc).
5 sn The word means “adversary” or with the article “the adversary” – here the superhuman adversary or Satan. The word with the article means that the meaning of the word should receive prominence. A denominative verb meaning “to act as adversary” occurs. Satan is the great accuser of the saints (see Zech 3 where “Satan was standing there to ‘satanize’ Joshua the priest”; and see Rev 12 which identifies him with the Serpent in Genesis). He came among the angels at this time because he is one of them and has access among them. Even though fallen, Satan has yet to be cast down completely (see Rev 12).
6 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.
7 tn The Hebrew is simply “fell” (from נָפַל, nafal). To “fall upon” something in war means to attack quickly and suddenly.
8 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.”
9 tn Heb “the edge/mouth of the sword”; see T. J. Meek, “Archaeology and a Point of Hebrew Syntax,” BASOR 122 (1951): 31-33.
10 tn The pleonasms in the verse emphasize the emotional excitement of the messenger.
11 tc This last purpose clause has been omitted in some Greek versions.
12 tn The imperfect verbs in this verse describe the condition of the accursed situation. Some commentators follow the LXX and take these as jussives, making this verse the curse that the man pronounced upon the fool. Rashi adds “This is the malediction with which I have cursed him.” That would make the speaker the one calling down the judgment on the fool rather than responding by observation how God destroyed the habitation of the fool.
13 tn The verb יִדַּכְּאוּ (yiddakkÿ’u) could be taken as the passive voice, or in the reciprocal sense (“crush one another”) or reflexive (“crush themselves”). The context favors the idea that the children of the foolish person will be destroyed because there is no one who will deliver them.
14 tn Heb “in the gate.” The city gate was the place of both business and justice. The sense here seems to fit the usage of gates as the place of legal disputes, so the phrase “at the place of judgment” has been used in the translation.
15 tn The text simply says “and there is no deliverer.” The entire clause could be subordinated to the preceding clause, and rendered simply “without a deliverer.”
16 tc The verse begins with הֵן (hen); but the LXX, Vulgate, and Syriac all have “like.” R. Gordis (Job, 265) takes הֵן (hen) as a pronoun “they” and supplies the comparative. The sense of the verse is clear in either case.
17 tn That is, “the poor.”
18 tc The MT has “in the working/labor of them,” or “when they labor.” Some commentators simply omit these words. Dhorme retains them and moves them to go with עֲרָבָה (’aravah), which he takes to mean “evening”; this gives a clause, “although they work until the evening.” Then, with many others, he takes לוֹ (lo) to be a negative and finishes the verse with “no food for the children.” Others make fewer changes in the text, and as a result do not come out with such a hopeless picture – there is some food found. The point is that they spend their time foraging for food, and they find just enough to survive, but it is a day-long activity. For Job, this shows how unrighteous the administration of the world actually is.
19 tn The verb is not included in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation.
20 tn The words “these things” and “them” in the next colon are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation for clarity.
21 tn The main clause is introduced by the preterite with the vav (ו) consecutive (see GKC 327 §111.h); the clause before it is therefore temporal and circumstantial to the main clause.
22 tn The connection of this clause with the verse is difficult. The line simply reads: “[if] I would smile at them, they would not believe.” Obviously something has to be supplied to make sense out of this. The view adopted here makes the most sense, namely, that when he smiled at people, they could hardly believe their good fortune. Other interpretations are strained, such as Kissane’s, “If I laughed at them, they believed not,” meaning, people rejected the views that Job laughed at.
23 tn The meaning, according to Gordis, is that they did nothing to provoke Job’s displeasure.
24 tn All of these imperfects describe what Job used to do, and so they all fit the category of customary imperfect.
25 tn Heb “their way.”
26 tn The text simply has “and I sat [as their] head.” The adverbial accusative explains his role, especially under the image of being seated. He directed the deliberations as a king directs an army.
27 tc Most commentators think this last phrase is odd here, and so they either delete it altogether, or emend it to fit the idea of the verse. Ewald, however, thought it appropriate as a transition to the next section, reminding his friends that unlike him, they were miserable comforters. Herz made the few changes in the text to get the reading “where I led them, they were willing to go” (ZAW 20 [1900]: 163). The two key words in the MT are אֲבֵלִים יְנַחֵם (’avelim yÿnakhem, “he [one who] comforts mourners”). Following Herz, E. Dhorme (Job, 422) has these changed to אוֹבִילֵם יִנַּחוּ (’ovilem yinnakhu). R. Gordis has “like one leading a camel train” (Job, 324). But Kissane also retains the line as a summary of the chapter, noting its presence in the versions.
28 tn Heb “him,” but the plural pronoun has been used in the translation to indicate that the referent is the servants mentioned in v. 13 (since the previous “him” in v. 14 refers to God).
29 tn The verb means “to give recognition; to take note of” and in this passage with לִפְנֵי (lifne, “before”) it means to show preferential treatment to the rich before the poor. The word for “rich” here is an unusual word, found parallel to “noble” (Isa 32:2). P. Joüon thinks it is a term of social distinction (Bib 18 [1937]: 207-8).
30 tc Many commentators accept the change of “his eyes” to “his right” (reading דִּינוֹ [dino] for עֵינָיו [’enayv]). There is no compelling reason for the change; it makes the line commonplace.
31 tn Heb “them”; the referent (the righteous) has been repeated from the first part of the verse for clarity.
32 tn Heb “he seats them forever and exalts them.” The last verb can be understood as expressing a logical consequence of the preceding action (cf. GKC 328 §111.l = “he seats them forever so that he exalts them”). Or the two verbs can be taken as an adverbial hendiadys whereby the first modifies the second adverbially: “he exalts them by seating them forever” or “when he seats them forever” (cf. GKC 326 §111.d). Some interpret this verse to say that God seats kings on the throne, making a change in subject in the middle of the verse. But it makes better sense to see the righteous as the subject matter throughout – they are not only protected, but are exalted.
33 tn The words “the clouds” are supplied from v. 11; the sentence itself actually starts: “and it goes round,” referring to the cloud.
34 tn Heb “that it may do.”