27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! 1
His offspring never have enough to eat. 2
27:15 Those who survive him are buried by the plague, 3
and their 4 widows do not mourn for them.
27:16 If he piles up silver like dust
and stores up clothing like mounds of clay,
27:17 what he stores up 5 a righteous man will wear,
and an innocent man will inherit his silver.
1 tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.
2 tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”
3 tn The text says “will be buried in/by death.” A number of passages in the Bible use “death” to mean the plague that kills (see Jer 15:2; Isa 28:3; and BDB 89 s.v. בְּ 2.a). In this sense it is like the English expression for the plague, “the Black Death.”
4 tc The LXX has “their widows” to match the plural, and most commentators harmonize in the same way.
5 tn The text simply repeats the verb from the last clause. It could be treated as a separate short clause: “He may store it up, but the righteous will wear it. But it also could be understood as the object of the following verb, “[what] he stores up the righteous will wear.” The LXX simply has, “All these things shall the righteous gain.”