30:4 By the brush 1 they would gather 2 herbs from the salt marshes, 3
and the root of the broom tree was their food.
30:7 They brayed 4 like animals among the bushes
and were huddled together 5 under the nettles.
1 tn Or “the leaves of bushes” (ESV), a possibility dating back to Saadia and discussed by G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray (Job [ICC], 2:209) in their philological notes.
2 tn Here too the form is the participle with the article.
3 tn Heb “gather mallow,” a plant which grows in salt marshes.
4 tn The verb נָהַק (nahaq) means “to bray.” It has cognates in Arabic, Aramaic, and Ugaritic, so there is no need for emendation here. It is the sign of an animal’s hunger. In the translation the words “like animals” are supplied to clarify the metaphor for the modern reader.
5 tn The Pual of the verb סָפַח (safakh, “to join”) also brings out the passivity of these people – “they were huddled together” (E. Dhorme, Job, 434).