19:15 My guests 1 and my servant girls
consider 2 me a stranger;
I am a foreigner 3 in their eyes.
41:5 Can you play 4 with it, like a bird,
or tie it on a leash 5 for your girls?
1 tn The Hebrew גָּרֵי בֵיתִי (gare beti, “the guests of my house”) refers to those who sojourned in my house – not residents, but guests.
2 tn The form of the verb is a feminine plural, which would seem to lend support to the proposed change of the lines (see last note to v. 14). But the form may be feminine primarily because of the immediate reference. On the other side, the suffix of “their eyes” is a masculine plural. So the evidence lies on both sides.
3 tn This word נָכְרִי (nokhri) is the person from another race, from a strange land, the foreigner. The previous word, גֵּר (ger), is a more general word for someone who is staying in the land but is not a citizen, a sojourner.
4 tn The Hebrew verb is שָׂחַק (sakhaq, “to sport; to trifle; to play,” Ps 104:26).
5 tn The idea may include putting Leviathan on a leash. D. W. Thomas suggested on the basis of an Arabic cognate that it could be rendered “tie him with a string like a young sparrow” (VT 14 [1964]: 114ff.).