38:8 “Who shut up 1 the sea with doors
when it burst forth, 2 coming out of the womb,
41:15 Its back 3 has rows of shields,
shut up closely 4 together as with a seal;
1 tn The MT has “and he shut up.” The Vulgate has “Who?” and so many commentaries and editions adopt this reading, if not from the Vulgate, then from the sense of the sequence in the text itself.
2 tn The line uses two expressions, first the temporal clause with גִּיחַ (giakh, “when it burst forth”) and then the finite verb יֵצֵא (yetse’, “go out”) to mark the concomitance of the two actions.
3 tc The MT has גַּאֲוָה (ga’avah, “his pride”), but the LXX, Aquila, and the Vulgate all read גַּוּוֹ (gavvo, “his back”). Almost all the modern English versions follow the variant reading, speaking about “his [or its] back.”
4 tn Instead of צָר (tsar, “closely”) the LXX has צֹר (tsor, “stone”) to say that the seal was rock hard.