Discovery BoxJob 8:7 
Context8:7 Your beginning 1 will seem so small,
since your future will flourish. 2
Job 8:11
Context8:11 Can the papyrus plant grow tall 3 where there is no marsh?
Can reeds flourish 4 without water?
Job 14:9
Context14:9 at the scent 5 of water it will flourish 6
and put forth 7 shoots like a new plant.
Job 15:32
Context15:32 Before his time 8 he will be paid in full, 9
and his branches will not flourish. 10
1 tn The reference to “your beginning” is a reference to Job’s former estate of wealth and peace. The reference to “latter end” is a reference to conditions still in the future. What Job had before will seem so small in comparison to what lies ahead.
2 tn The verb has the idea of “to grow”; here it must mean “to flourish; to grow considerably” or the like. The statement is not so much a prophecy; rather Bildad is saying that “if Job had recourse to God, then….” This will be fulfilled, of course, at the end of the book.
3 sn H. H. Rowley observes the use of the words for plants that grow in Egypt and suspects that Bildad either knew Egypt or knew that much wisdom came from Egypt. The first word refers to papyrus, which grows to a height of six feet (so the verb means “to grow tall; to grow high”). The second word refers to the reed grass that grows on the banks of the river (see Gen 41:2, 18).
4 tn The two verbs, גָּאָה (ga’ah) and שָׂגָה (sagah), have almost the same meanings of “flourish, grow, become tall.”
5 tn The personification adds to the comparison with people – the tree is credited with the sense of smell to detect the water.
6 tn The sense of “flourish” for this verb is found in Ps 92:12,13[13,14], and Prov 14:11. It makes an appropriate parallel with “bring forth boughs” in the second half.
7 tn Heb “and will make.”
8 tn Heb “before his day.”
9 tn Those who put the last colon of v. 31 with v. 32 also have to change the verb תִּמָּלֵא (timmale’, “will be fulfilled”). E. Dhorme (Job, 225) says, “a mere glance at the use of yimmal…abundantly proves that the original text had timmal (G, Syr., Vulg), which became timmale’ through the accidental transposition of the ‘alep of bÿsi’o…in verse 31….” This, of course, is possible, if all the other changes up to now are granted. But the meaning of a word elsewhere in no way assures it should be the word here. The LXX has “his harvest shall perish before the time,” which could translate any number of words that might have been in the underlying Hebrew text. A commercial metaphor is not out of place here, since parallelism does not demand that the same metaphor appear in both lines.
10 tn Now, in the second half of the verse, the metaphor of a tree with branches begins.
