Discovery BoxJob 14:19-21 
Context14:19 as water wears away stones,
and torrents 1 wash away the soil, 2
so you destroy man’s hope. 3
14:20 You overpower him once for all, 4
and he departs;
you change 5 his appearance
and send him away.
14:21 If 6 his sons are honored, 7
he does not know it; 8
if they are brought low,
he does not see 9 it.
1 tn Heb “the overflowings of it”; the word סְפִיחֶיהָ (sÿfikheyha) in the text is changed by just about everyone. The idea of “its overflowings” or more properly “its aftergrowths” (Lev 25:5; 2 Kgs 19:29; etc.) does not fit here at all. Budde suggested reading סְחִפָה (sÿkhifah), which is cognate to Arabic sahifeh, “torrential rain, rainstorm” – that which sweeps away” the soil. The word סָחַף (sakhaf) in Hebrew might have a wider usage than the effects of rain.
2 tn Heb “[the] dust of [the] earth.”
3 sn The meaning for Job is that death shatters all of man’s hopes for the continuation of life.
4 tn D. W. Thomas took נֵצַח (netsakh) here to have a superlative meaning: “You prevail utterly against him” (“Use of netsach as a superlative in Hebrew,” JSS 1 [1956]: 107). Death would be God’s complete victory over him.
5 tn The subject of the participle is most likely God in this context. Some take it to be man, saying “his face changes.” Others emend the text to read an imperfect verb, but this is not necessary.
6 tn The clause may be interpreted as a conditional clause, with the second clause beginning with the conjunction serving as the apodosis.
7 tn There is no expressed subject for the verb “they honor,” and so it may be taken as a passive.
8 sn Death is separation from the living, from the land of the living. And ignorance of what goes on in this life, good or bad, is part of death. See also Eccl 9:5-6, which makes a similar point.
9 tn The verb is בִּין (bin, “to perceive; to discern”). The parallelism between “know” and “perceive” stress the point that in death a man does not realize what is happening here in the present life.
