9:16 If I summoned him, and he answered me, 1
I would not believe 2
that he would be listening to my voice –
40:9 Do you have an arm as powerful as God’s, 3
and can you thunder with a voice like his?
1 sn The idea of “answer” in this line is that of responding to the summons, i.e., appearing in court. This preterite and the perfect before it have the nuance of hypothetical perfects since they are in conditional clauses (GKC 330 §111.x). D. J. A. Clines (Job [WBC], 219) translates literally, “If I should call and he should answer.”
2 tn The Hiphil imperfect in the apodosis of this conditional sentence expresses what would (not) happen if God answered the summons.
3 tn Heb “do you have an arm like God?” The words “as powerful as” have been supplied in the translation to clarify the metaphor.