12:6 But 1 the tents of robbers are peaceful,
and those who provoke God are confident 2 –
who carry their god in their hands. 3
24:5 Like 4 wild donkeys in the desert
they 5 go out to their labor, 6
seeking diligently for food;
the wasteland provides 7 food for them
and for their children.
24:18 8 “You say, 9 ‘He is foam 10 on the face of the waters; 11
their portion of the land is cursed
so that no one goes to their vineyard. 12
1 tn The verse gives the other side of the coin now, the fact that the wicked prosper.
2 tn The plural is used to suggest the supreme degree of arrogant confidence (E. Dhorme, Job, 171).
3 sn The line is perhaps best understood as describing one who thinks he is invested with the power of God.
4 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.
5 tn That is, “the poor.”
6 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.
7 tn The verb is not included in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation.
8 tc Many commentators find vv. 18-24 difficult on the lips of Job, and so identify this unit as a misplaced part of the speech of Zophar. They describe the enormities of the wicked. But a case can also be made for retaining it in this section. Gordis thinks it could be taken as a quotation by Job of his friends’ ideas.
9 tn The verb “say” is not in the text; it is supplied here to indicate that this is a different section.
10 tn Or “is swift.”
11 sn The wicked person is described here as a spray or foam upon the waters, built up in the agitation of the waters but dying away swiftly.
12 tn The text reads, “he does not turn by the way of the vineyards.” This means that since the land is cursed, he/one does not go there. Bickell emended “the way of the vineyards” to “the treader of the vineyard” (see RSV, NRSV). This would mean that “no wine-presser would turn towards” their vineyards.