39:23 On it the quiver rattles;
the lance and javelin 1 flash.
15:12 Why 2 has your heart carried you away, 3
and why do your eyes flash, 4
37:15 Do you know how God commands them, 5
how he makes lightning flash in his storm cloud? 6
1 tn This may be the scimitar (see G. Molin, “What is a kidon?” JSS 1 [1956]: 334-37).
2 tn The interrogative מָה (mah) here has the sense of “why?” (see Job 7:21).
3 tn The verb simply means “to take.” The RSV has “carry you away.” E. Dhorme (Job, 212-13) goes further, saying that it implies being unhinged by passion, to be carried away by the passions beyond good sense (pp. 212-13). Pope and Tur-Sinai suggest that the suffix on the verb is datival, and translate it, “What has taken from you your mind?” But the parallelism shows that “your heart” and “your eyes” are subjects.
4 tn Here is another word that occurs only here, and in the absence of a completely convincing suggestion, probably should be left as it is. The verb is רָזַם (razam, “wink, flash”). Targum Job and the Syriac equate it with a verb found in Aramaic and postbiblical Hebrew with the same letters but metathesized – רָמַז (ramaz). It would mean “to make a sign” or “to wink.” Budde, following the LXX probably, has “Why are your eyes lofty?” Others follow an Arabic root meaning “become weak.”
5 tn The verb is בְּשׂוּם (bÿsum, from שִׂים [sim, “set”]), so the idea is how God lays [or sets] [a command] for them. The suffix is proleptic, to be clarified in the second colon.
6 tn Dhorme reads this “and how his stormcloud makes lightning to flash forth?”