Discovery BoxJob 15:2 
Context15:2 “Does a wise man answer with blustery knowledge, 1
or fill his belly 2 with the east wind? 3
Job 15:35
Context15:35 They conceive 4 trouble and bring forth evil;
their belly 5 prepares deception.”
Job 40:16
Context40:16 Look 6 at its strength in its loins,
and its power in the muscles of its belly.
Job 20:23
Context20:23 “While he is 7 filling his belly,
God 8 sends his burning anger 9 against him,
and rains down his blows upon him. 10
1 tn The Hebrew is דַעַת־רוּחַ (da’at-ruakh). This means knowledge without any content, vain knowledge.
2 tn The image is rather graphic. It is saying that he puffs himself up with the wind and then brings out of his mouth blasts of this wind.
3 tn The word for “east wind,” קָדִים (qadim), is parallel to “spirit/wind” also in Hos 12:2. The east wind is maleficent, but here in the parallelism it is so much hot air.
4 tn Infinitives absolute are used in this verse in the place of finite verbs. They lend a greater vividness to the description, stressing the basic meaning of the words.
5 tn At the start of the speech Eliphaz said Job’s belly was filled with the wind; now it is there that he prepares deception. This inclusio frames the speech.
6 tn In both of these verses הִנֶּה (hinneh, “behold”) has the deictic force (the word is from Greek δείκνυμι, deiknumi, “to show”). It calls attention to something by pointing it out. The expression goes with the sudden look, the raised eye, the pointing hand – “O look!”
7 tn D. J. A. Clines observes that to do justice to the three jussives in the verse, one would have to translate “May it be, to fill his belly to the full, that God should send…and rain” (Job [WBC], 477). The jussive form of the verb at the beginning of the verse could also simply introduce a protasis of a conditional clause (see GKC 323 §109.h, i). This would mean, “if he [God] is about to fill his [the wicked’s] belly to the full, he will send….” The NIV reads “when he has filled his belly.” These fit better, because the context is talking about the wicked in his evil pursuit being cut down.
8 tn “God” is understood as the subject of the judgment.
9 tn Heb “the anger of his wrath.”
10 tn Heb “rain down upon him, on his flesh.” Dhorme changes עָלֵימוֹ (’alemo, “upon him”) to “his arrows”; he translates the line as “he rains his arrows upon his flesh.” The word בִּלְחוּמוֹ (bilkhumo,“his flesh”) has been given a wide variety of translations: “as his food,” “on his flesh,” “upon him, his anger,” or “missiles or weapons of war.”
