Discovery BoxJob 10:18 
Context10:18 “Why then did you bring me out from the womb?
I should have died 1
and no eye would have seen me!
Job 29:24
Context29:24 If I smiled at them, they hardly believed it; 2
and they did not cause the light of my face to darken. 3
Job 32:22
Context1 tn The two imperfect verbs in this section are used to stress regrets for something which did not happen (see GKC 317 §107.n).
2 tn The connection of this clause with the verse is difficult. The line simply reads: “[if] I would smile at them, they would not believe.” Obviously something has to be supplied to make sense out of this. The view adopted here makes the most sense, namely, that when he smiled at people, they could hardly believe their good fortune. Other interpretations are strained, such as Kissane’s, “If I laughed at them, they believed not,” meaning, people rejected the views that Job laughed at.
3 tn The meaning, according to Gordis, is that they did nothing to provoke Job’s displeasure.
4 tn The construction uses a perfect verb followed by the imperfect. This is a form of subordination equivalent to a complementary infinitive (see GKC 385-86 §120.c).
5 tn The words “if I did” are supplied in the translation to make sense out of the two clauses.
6 tn Heb “quickly carry me away.”
