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
21:16 But their prosperity is not their own doing. 5
The counsel of the wicked is far from me! 6
22:16 men 7 who were carried off 8 before their time, 9
when the flood 10 was poured out 11
on their foundations? 12
29:10 the voices of the nobles fell silent, 13
and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths.
36:11 If they obey and serve him,
they live out their days in prosperity
and their years in pleasantness. 14
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.
2 tn Heb a “place of escape” (with this noun pattern). There is no place to escape to because they all perish.
3 tn The word is to be interpreted as a metonymy; it represents what is hoped for.
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.
5 tn Heb “is not in their hand.”
sn The implication of this statement is that their well-being is from God, which is the problem Job is raising in the chapter. A number of commentators make it a question, interpreting it to mean that the wicked enjoy prosperity as if it is their right. Some emend the text to say “his hands” – Gordis reads it, “Indeed, our prosperity is not in his hands.”
6 sn Even though their life seems so good in contrast to his own plight, Job cannot and will not embrace their principles – “far be from me their counsel.”
7 tn The word “men” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied to clarify the relative pronoun “who.”
8 tn The verb קָמַט (qamat) basically means “to seize; to tie together to make a bundle.” So the Pual will mean “to be bundled away; to be carried off.”
9 tn The clause has “and [it was] not the time.” It may be used adverbially here.
10 tn The word is נָהַר (nahar, “river” or “current”); it is taken here in its broadest sense of the waters on the earth that formed the current of the flood (Gen 7:6, 10).
11 tn The verb יָצַק (yatsaq) means “to pour out; to shed; to spill; to flow.” The Pual means “to be poured out” (as in Lev 21:10 and Ps 45:3).
12 tn This word is then to be taken as an adverbial accusative of place. Another way to look at this verse is what A. B. Davidson (Job, 165) proposes “whose foundation was poured away and became a flood.” This would mean that that on which they stood sank away.
13 tn The verb here is “hidden” as well as in v. 8. But this is a strange expression for voices. Several argue that the word was erroneously inserted from 8a and needs to be emended. But the word “hide” can have extended meanings of “withdraw; be quiet; silent” (see Gen 31:27). A. Guillaume relates the Arabic habi’a, “the fire dies out,” applying the idea of “silent” only to v. 10 (it is a form of repetition of words with different senses, called jinas). The point here is that whatever conversation was going on would become silent or hushed to hear what Job had to say.
14 tc Some commentators delete this last line for metrical considerations. But there is no textual evidence for the deletion; it is simply the attempt by some to make the meter rigid.