20:9 People 1 who had seen him will not see him again,
and the place where he was
will recognize him no longer.
34:20 In a moment they die, in the middle of the night, 2
people 3 are shaken 4 and they pass away.
The mighty are removed effortlessly. 5
35:9 “People 6 cry out
because of the excess of oppression; 7
they cry out for help
because of the power 8 of the mighty. 9
1 tn Heb “the eye that had seen him.” Here a part of the person (the eye, the instrument of vision) is put by metonymy for the entire person.
2 tn Dhorme transposes “in the middle of the night” with “they pass away” to get a smoother reading. But the MT emphasizes the suddenness by putting both temporal ideas first. E. F. Sutcliffe leaves the order as it stands in the text, but adds a verb “they expire” after “in the middle of the night” (“Notes on Job, textual and exegetical,” Bib 30 [1949]: 79ff.).
3 tn R. Gordis (Job, 389) thinks “people” here mean the people who count, the upper class.
4 tn The verb means “to be violently agitated.” There is no problem with the word in this context, but commentators have made suggestions for improving the idea. The proposal that has the most to commend it, if one were inclined to choose a new word, is the change to יִגְוָעוּ (yigva’u, “they expire”; so Ball, Holscher, Fohrer, and others).
5 tn Heb “not by hand.” This means without having to use force.
6 tn The word “people” is supplied, because the sentence only has the masculine plural verb.
7 tn The final noun is an abstract plural, “oppression.” There is no reason to change it to “oppressors” to fit the early versions. The expression is literally “multitude of oppression.”
8 tn Heb “the arm,” a metaphor for strength or power.
9 tn Or “of the many” (see HALOT 1172 s.v. I רַב 6.a).