14:3 Do you fix your eye 1 on such a one? 2
And do you bring me 3 before you for judgment?
21:18 How often 4 are they like straw before the wind,
and like chaff swept away 5 by a whirlwind?
22:16 men 6 who were carried off 7 before their time, 8
when the flood 9 was poured out 10
on their foundations? 11
23:7 There 12 an upright person
could present his case 13 before him,
and I would be delivered forever from my judge.
25:4 How then can a human being be righteous before God?
How can one born of a woman be pure? 14
33:5 Reply to me, if you can;
set your arguments 15 in order before me
and take your stand!
41:10 Is it not fierce 16 when it is awakened?
Who is he, then, who can stand before it? 17
1 tn Heb “open the eye on,” an idiom meaning to prepare to judge someone.
2 tn The verse opens with אַף־עַל־זֶה (’af-’al-zeh), meaning “even on such a one!” It is an exclamation of surprise.
3 tn The text clearly has “me” as the accusative; but many wish to emend it to say “him” (אֹתוֹ, ’oto). But D. J. A. Clines rightly rejects this in view of the way Job is written, often moving back and forth from his own tragedy and others’ tragedies (Job [WBC], 283).
4 tn To retain the sense that the wicked do not suffer as others, this verse must either be taken as a question or a continuation of the question in v. 17.
5 tn The verb used actually means “rob.” It is appropriate to the image of a whirlwind suddenly taking away the wisp of straw.
6 tn The word “men” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied to clarify the relative pronoun “who.”
7 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.”
8 tn The clause has “and [it was] not the time.” It may be used adverbially here.
9 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).
10 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).
11 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.
12 tn The adverb “there” has the sense of “then” – there in the future.
13 tn The form of the verb is the Niphal נוֹכָח (nokkakh, “argue, present a case”). E. Dhorme (Job, 346) is troubled by this verbal form and so changes it and other things in the line to say, “he would observe the upright man who argues with him.” The Niphal is used for “engaging discussion,” “arguing a case,” and “settling a dispute.”
14 sn Bildad here does not come up with new expressions; rather, he simply uses what Eliphaz had said (see Job 4:17-19 and 15:14-16).
15 tn The Hebrew text does not contain the term “arguments,” but this verb has been used already for preparing or arranging a defense.
16 sn The description is of the animal, not the hunter (or fisherman). Leviathan is so fierce that no one can take him on alone.
17 tc MT has “before me” and can best be rendered as “Who then is he that can stand before me?” (ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, NJPS). The following verse (11) favors the MT since both express the lesson to be learned from Leviathan: If a man cannot stand up to Leviathan, how can he stand up to its creator? The translation above has chosen to read the text as “before him” (cf. NRSV, NJB).