7:7 Remember 1 that my life is but a breath,
that 2 my eyes will never again 3 see happiness.
10:21 before I depart, never to return, 4
to the land of darkness
and the deepest shadow, 5
19:22 Why do you pursue me like God does? 6
Will you never be satiated with my flesh? 7
21:25 And another man 8 dies in bitterness of soul, 9
never having tasted 10 anything good.
21:29 Have you never questioned those who travel the roads?
Do you not recognize their accounts 11 –
27:14 If his children increase – it is for the sword! 12
His offspring never have enough to eat. 13
1 sn Job is probably turning here to God, as is clear from v. 11 on. The NIV supplies the word “God” for clarification. It was God who breathed breath into man’s nostrils (Gen 2:7), and so God is called to remember that man is but a breath.
2 tn The word “that” is supplied in the translation.
3 tn The verb with the infinitive serves as a verbal hendiadys: “return to see” means “see again.”
4 sn The verbs are simple, “I go” and “I return”; but Job clearly means before he dies. A translation of “depart” comes closer to communicating this. The second verb may be given a potential imperfect translation to capture the point. The NIV offered more of an interpretive paraphrase: “before I go to the place of no return.”
5 tn See Job 3:5.
6 sn Strahan comments, “The whole tragedy of the book is packed into these extraordinary words.”
7 sn The idiom of eating the pieces of someone means “slander” in Aramaic (see Dan 3:8), Arabic and Akkadian.
8 tn The expression “this (v. 23)…and this” (v. 25) means “one…the other.”
9 tn The text literally has “and this [man] dies in soul of bitterness.” Some simply reverse it and translate “in the bitterness of soul.” The genitive “bitterness” may be an attribute adjective, “with a bitter soul.”
10 tn Heb “eaten what is good.” It means he died without having enjoyed the good life.
11 tc The LXX reads, “Ask those who go by the way, and do not disown their signs.”
tn The idea is that the merchants who travel widely will talk about what they have seen and heard. These travelers give a different account of the wicked; they tell how he is spared. E. Dhorme (Job, 322) interprets “signs” concretely: “Their custom was to write their names and their thoughts somewhere at the main cross-roads. The main roads of Sinai are dotted with these scribblings made by such passers of a day.”
12 tn R. Gordis (Job, 294) identifies this as a breviloquence. Compare Ps 92:8 where the last two words also constitute the apodosis.
13 tn Heb “will not be satisfied with bread/food.”