² tn These are not formal legal charges, but reports from friends, acquaintances, etc.; Grk “A certain man was rich who had a manager, and this one was reported to him as wasting his property.”

⁴ tn Heb “they flow away.” The verb זוּב (zuv, “to flow, gush”) is used figuratively here, meaning “to pine away” or “to waste away” from hunger. See also the next note.

¹ tn Heb “The valley will be destroyed and the tableland laid waste.” However, in the context this surely refers to the towns and not to the valley and the tableland itself.

¹ tn Heb “I will dry up the mountains and hills.” The “mountains and hills” stand by synecdoche for the trees that grow on them. Some prefer to derive the verb from a homonymic root and translate, “I will lay waste.”

¹ tn Heb “surely—vanity, he does not hear.” The cry is an empty cry, not a prayer to God. Dhorme translates it, “It is a pure waste of words.”

³ tn The MT has “last night desolate and waste.” The word אֶמֶשׁ (ʾemesh, “last night” or “yesterday”) is strange here. Among the proposals for אֶמֶשׁ (ʾemesh), Duhm suggested יְמַשְּׁשׁוּ (y^emash^eshu, “they grope”), which would require darkness; Pope renders “by night,” instead of “yesterday,” which evades the difficulty; and Fohrer suggested with more reason אֶרֶץ (ʾerets, “a desolate and waste land”). R. Gordis (Job, 331) suggests יָמִישׁוּ / יָמֻשׁוּ (yamishu/yamushu, “they wander off”).

¹ tn Heb “Emptiness and devastation and being laid waste.” Several English versions attempt to reproduce the assonance, alliteration, and paronomasia of three similarly sounding Hebrew words: בּוּקַָה וּמְבוּקָה וּמְבֻלָּקָה (buqah um^evuqah um^evullaqah; NJPS “Desolation, devastation, and destruction!”; NRSV “Devastation, desolation, and destruction!”).

¹ sn Destruction, devastation, and desolation. The feminine form of each of these terms is used, referring to Nineveh (e.g., NASB “She is emptied! Yes, she is desolate and laid waste!”). Conquered cities are often personified as a desolated woman (e.g., Isa 47:1; 54:1).

⁴ tn Verse 16b is a classic example of Hebrew wordplay. In the first line (“I’m wasting away….”) four consecutive words end with hireq yod ( ִי); in the second line all forms are derived from the root בָּגַד (bagad). The repetition of sound draws attention to the prophet’s lament.

² tn Heb “and eats his own flesh.” Most English versions render the idiom literally: “and eats/consumes his flesh” (KJV, AS, NASB, NAB, RSV, NRSV, NJPS). However, a few versions attempt to explain the idiom: “and lets life go to ruin” (Moffatt), “and wastes away” (NEB), “and ruins himself” (NIV).

³ tn The verb זָלַל (zalal) means “to be light; to be worthless; to make light of.” Making light of something came to mean “to be lavish with; to squander,” especially with regard to food. So it describes “gluttons” primarily, but in the expression there is also room for the person who wastes a lot of food as well.

¹ tn This line can either mean that Job is wasting away (i.e., his life is being poured out), or it can mean that he is grieving. The second half of the verse gives the subordinate clause of condition for this.

³ tn The text has בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ (b^etohu loʾ darekh): “in waste—no way,” or “in a wasteland [where there is] no way,” thus, “trackless” (see the discussion of negative attributes using לֹא [loʾ] in GKC 482 §152.u).

⁴ tn “Sorrow” is עָמָל (ʿamal), used in 3:10. It denotes anxious toil, labor, troublesome effort. It may be that the verse expresses the idea that the nights are when the pains of his disease are felt the most. The months are completely wasted; the nights are agonizing.

¹ tc Heb “Nevertheless Cain will be wasted; how long will Asshur take you captive?” Cain was believed to be the ancestor of the Kenites. The NAB has “yet destined for burning, even as I watch, are your inhabitants.” Asshur may refer to a north Arabian group of people of Abrahamic stock (Gen 25:3), and not the Assyrian empire.

² tn Heb “our money.” The word “money” is used figuratively here; it means the price paid for Leah and Rachel. A literal translation (“our money”) makes it sound as if Laban wasted money that belonged to Rachel and Leah, rather than the money paid for them.

¹ sn He sold us and…wasted our money. The precise nature of Rachel’s and Leah’s complaint is not entirely clear. Since Jacob had to work to pay for them, they probably mean that their father has cheated Jacob and therefore cheated them as well. See M. Burrows, “The Complaint of Laban’s Daughters,” JAOS 57 (1937): 250-76.

² sn There is a very interesting play on words and sounds in this verse that paints a picture of desolation and the pathos it evokes. Part of this is reflected in the translation. The same Hebrew word referring to a desolation or a waste (שְׁמֵמָה, sh^ememah) is repeated three times at the end of three successive lines (the first is the last line of v. 10), and the related verb is found at the beginning of the fourth (נָשַׁמָּה, nashammah). A similar sounding word is found in the second of the three successive lines (שָׁמָהּ, shamah = “he [they] will make it”). This latter word is part of a further play because it is repeated in a different form (שָׁם, sham = “laying”) in the last two lines of the verse: they lay it waste, but no one lays it to heart. There is also an interesting contrast between the sorrow the Lord feels and the inattention of the people.

² tc The MT reads “there is what is swept away without justice” (וְיֵשׁ נִסְפֶּה בְּלֹא מִשְׁפָּט, v^eyesh nispeh b^eloʾ mishpat). The LXX reads “the great enjoy wealth many years, but some men perish little by little.” The Syriac reads “those who have no habitation waste wealth many years, and some waste it completely.” Tg. Prov 13:23 reads “the great man devours the land of the poor, and some men are taken away unjustly.” The Vulgate has “there is much food in the fresh land of the fathers, and for others it is collected without judgment.” C. H. Toy says that the text is corrupt (Proverbs [ICC], 277). Nevertheless, the MT makes sense: The ground could produce enough food for people if there were no injustice in the land.

² tc The LXX and Vulgate (dependent on the LXX) include a preface that is lacking in the MT: “And it came to pass after Israel had been taken captive and Jerusalem had been laid waste, Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented this lament over Jerusalem, and said….” Scholars generally view the preface in the LXX and Vulgate as a later addition, though the style is Hebrew rather than Greek.