9:21 I am blameless. 1 I do not know myself. 2
I despise my life.
11:4 For you have said, ‘My teaching 3 is flawless,
and I am pure in your sight.’
13:2 What you know, 4 I 5 know also;
I am not inferior 6 to you!
13:18 See now, 7 I have prepared 8 my 9 case; 10
I know that I am right. 11
19:17 My breath is repulsive 12 to my wife;
I am loathsome 13 to my brothers. 14
21:6 For, when I think 15 about this, I am terrified 16
and my body feels a shudder. 17
32:18 For I am full of words,
and the spirit within me 18 constrains me. 19
32:19 Inside I am like wine which has no outlet, 20
like new wineskins 21 ready to burst!
34:5 For Job says, ‘I am innocent, 22
but God turns away my right.
34:6 Concerning my right, should I lie? 23
My wound 24 is incurable,
although I am without transgression.’ 25
1 tn Dhorme, in an effort to avoid tautology, makes this a question: “Am I blameless?” The next clause then has Job answering that he does not know. But through the last section Job has been proclaiming his innocence. The other way of interpreting these verses is to follow NIV and make all of them hypothetical (“If I were blameless, he would pronounce me guilty”) and then come to this verse with Job saying, “I am blameless.” The second clause of this verse does not fit either view very well. In vv. 20, 21, and 22 Job employs the same term for “blameless” (תָּם, tam) as in the prologue (1:1). God used it to describe Job in 1:8 and 2:3. Bildad used it in 8:20. These are the final occurrences in the book.
2 tn The meaning of the expression “I do not know myself” seems to be, “I do not care.” NIV translates it, “I have no concern for my life.”
sn Job believes he is blameless and not deserving of all this suffering; he will hold fast to that claim, even if the future is uncertain, especially if that future involved a confrontation with God.
3 tn The word translated “teaching” is related etymologically to the Hebrew word “receive,” but that does not restrict the teaching to what is received.
4 tn Heb “Like your knowledge”; in other words Job is saying that his knowledge is like their knowledge.
5 tn The pronoun makes the subject emphatic and stresses the contrast: “I know – I also.”
6 tn The verb “fall” is used here as it was in Job 4:13 to express becoming lower than someone, i.e., inferior.
7 tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) functions almost as an imperative here, calling attention to what follows: “look” (archaic: behold).
8 tn The verb עָרַךְ (’arakh) means “to set in order, set in array [as a battle], prepare” in the sense here of arrange and organize a lawsuit.
9 tn The pronoun is added because this is what the verse means.
10 tn The word מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat) usually means “judgment; decision.” Here it means “lawsuit” (and so a metonymy of effect gave rise to this usage; see Num 27:5; 2 Sam 15:4).
11 tn The pronoun is emphatic before the verb: “I know that it is I who am right.” The verb means “to be right; to be righteous.” Some have translated it “vindicated,” looking at the outcome of the suit.
12 tn The Hebrew appears to have “my breath is strange to my wife.” This would be the meaning if the verb was from זוּר (zur, “to turn aside; to be a stranger”). But it should be connected to זִיר (zir), cognate to Assyrian zaru, “to feel repugnance toward.” Here it is used in the intransitive sense, “to be repulsive.” L. A. Snijders, following Driver, doubts the existence of this second root, and retains “strange” (“The Meaning of zar in the Old Testament,” OTS 10 [1964]: 1-154).
13 tn The normal meaning here would be based on the root חָנַן (khanan, “to be gracious”). And so we have versions reading “although I entreated” or “my supplication.” But it seems more likely it is to be connected to another root meaning “to be offensive; to be loathsome.” For the discussion of the connection to the Arabic, see E. Dhorme, Job, 278.
14 tn The text has “the sons of my belly [= body].” This would normally mean “my sons.” But they are all dead. And there is no suggestion that Job had other sons. The word “my belly” will have to be understood as “my womb,” i.e., the womb I came from. Instead of “brothers,” the sense could be “siblings” (both brothers and sisters; G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray, Job [ICC], 2:168).
15 tn The verb is זָכַר (zakhar, “to remember”). Here it has the sense of “to keep in memory; to meditate; to think upon.”
16 tn The main clause is introduced here by the conjunction, following the adverbial clause of time.
17 tn Some commentators take “shudder” to be the subject of the verb, “a shudder seizes my body.” But the word is feminine (and see the usage, especially in Job 9:6 and 18:20). It is the subject in Isa 21:4; Ps 55:6; and Ezek 7:18.
18 tn Heb “the spirit of my belly.”
19 tn The verb צוּק (tsuq) means “to constrain; to urge; to press.” It is used in Judg 14:17; 16:16 with the sense of wearing someone down with repeated entreaties. Elihu cannot withhold himself any longer.
20 tn Heb “in my belly I am like wine that is not opened” (a Niphal imperfect), meaning sealed up with no place to escape.
21 tc The Hebrew text has כְּאֹבוֹת חֲדָשִׁים (kÿ’ovot khadashim), traditionally rendered “like new wineskins.” But only here does the phrase have this meaning. The LXX has “smiths” for “new,” thus “like smith’s bellows.” A. Guillaume connects the word with an Arabic word for a wide vessel for wine shaped like a cup (“Archaeological and philological note on Job 32:19,” PEQ 93 [1961]: 147-50). Some have been found in archaeological sites. The poor would use skins, the rich would use jars. The key to putting this together is the verb at the end of the line, יִבָּקֵעַ (yibbaqea’, “that are ready to burst”). The point of the statement is that Elihu is bursting to speak, and until now has not had the opening.
22 tn Heb “righteous,” but in this context it means to be innocent or in the right.
23 tn The verb is the Piel imperfect of כָּזַב (kazav), meaning “to lie.” It could be a question: “Should I lie [against my right?] – when I am innocent. If it is repointed to the Pual, then it can be “I am made to lie,” or “I am deceived.” Taking it as a question makes good sense here, and so emendations are unnecessary.
24 tn The Hebrew text has only “my arrow.” Some commentators emend that word slightly to get “my wound.” But the idea could be derived from “arrows” as well, the wounds caused by the arrows. The arrows are symbolic of God’s affliction.
25 tn Heb “without transgression”; but this is parallel to the first part where the claim is innocence.