¹ tn Heb “or the work of his hands.” In this context “the Lord’s actions” and “the work of his hands” probably refer to the way he carries out justice by vindicating the godly and punishing the wicked. (Note the final line of the verse, which refers to divine judgment. See also Ps 92:4-7.) Evil men do not “understand” God’s just ways; they fail to realize he will protect the innocent. Consequently they seek to harm the godly, as if they believe they will never be held accountable for their actions.

² tn Heb “over it (the feminine suffix refers back to the feminine noun “assembly” in the preceding line) on high return.” Some emend שׁוּבָה (shuvah, “return”) to שֵׁבָה (shevah, “sit [in judgment]”) because they find the implication of “return” problematic. But the psalmist does not mean to imply that God has abandoned his royal throne and needs to regain it. Rather he simply urges God, as sovereign king of the world, to once more occupy his royal seat of judgment and execute judgment, as the OT pictures God doing periodically.

² sn In Sheol who gives you thanks? According to the OT, those who descend into the realm of death/Sheol are cut off from God’s mighty deeds and from the worshiping covenant community that experiences divine intervention (Pss 30:9; 88:10-12; Isa 38:18). In his effort to elicit a positive divine response, the psalmist reminds God that he will receive no praise or glory if he allows the psalmist to die. Dead men do not praise God!

⁶ sn The difference between what they said and what Job said, therefore, has to do with truth. Job was honest, spoke the truth, poured out his complaints, but never blasphemed God. For his words God said he told the truth. He did so with incomplete understanding, and with all the impatience and frustration one might expect. Now the friends, however, did not tell what was right about God. They were not honest; rather, they were self-righteous and condescending. They were saying what they thought should be said, but it was wrong.

¹ tn This verse is difficult because of the two words, טֻחוֹת (tukhot, rendered here “heart”) and שֶׂכְוִי (sekhvi, here “mind”). They have been translated a number of ways: “meteor” and “celestial appearance”; the stars “Procyon” and “Sirius”; “inward part” and “mind”; even as birds, “ibis” and “cock.” One expects them to have something to do with nature—clouds and the like. The RSV accordingly took them to mean “meteor” (from a verb “to wander”) and “a celestial appearance.” But these meanings are not well-attested.

¹ tn The Hebrew verb means “to entice; to lure; to allure; to seduce,” but these have negative connotations. The English “to persuade; to draw” might work better. The verb is the Hiphil perfect of סוּת (sut). But the nuance of the verb is difficult. It can be equivalent to an English present expressing what God is doing (Peake). But the subject is contested as well. Since the verb usually has an evil connotation, there have been attempts to make the “plaza” the subject—“the wide place has led you astray” (Ewald).

¹ tn Heb “lest you say.” R. Gordis (Job, 368) calls this a breviloquence: “beware lest [you say].” He then suggests the best reading for their quote to be, “We have attained wisdom, but only God can refute him, not man.” H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 209) suggests the meaning is a little different, namely, that they are saying they have found wisdom in Job, and only God can deal with it. Elihu is in effect saying that they do not need God, for he is quite capable for this.

¹ tn The expression “you are the people” is a way of saying that the friends hold the popular opinion—they represent it. The line is sarcastic. Commentators do not think the parallelism is served well by this, and so offer changes for “people.” Some have suggested “you are complete” (based on Arabic), “you are the strong one” (based on Ugaritic), etc. J. A. Davies tried to solve the difficulty by making the second clause in the verse a paratactic relative clause: “you are the people with whom wisdom will die” (“Note on Job 12:2, ” VT 25 [1975]: 670-71).

⁴ sn It is not correct to try to draw theological implications from this statement or the preceding verse (Rashi said Job was denying the resurrection). Job is simply stating that when people die they are gone—they do not return to this present life on earth. Most commentators and theologians believe that theological knowledge was very limited at such an early stage, so they would not think it possible for Job to have bodily resurrection in view. (See notes on ch. 14 and 19:25-27.)

³ tn For the Hebrew בְנֵי־רֶשֶׁף (v^ene reshef, “sons of the flame”) the present translation has the rendering “sparks.” E. Dhorme (Job, 62) thinks it refers to some kind of bird, but renders it “sons of the lightning” because the eagle was associated with lightning in ancient interpretations. Sparks, he argues, do not soar high above the earth. Other suggestions include Resheph, the Phoenician god of lightning (Pope), the fire of passion (Buttenwieser), angels (Peake), or demons (Targum Job). None of these are convincing; the idea of sparks flying upward fits the translation well and makes clear sense in the passage.

³ tn The verb is literally בָּרַךְ, (barakh, “bless”). As in the earlier uses, the meaning probably has more to do with renouncing God than of speaking a curse. The actual word may be taken as a theological euphemism for the verb קִלֵּל (qillel, “curse”). If Job’s wife had meant that he was trying to justify himself rather than God, “bless God” might be translated “speak well of God,” the resolution accepted by God in 42:7-8 following Job’s double confession of having spoken wrongly of God (40:3-5; 42:1-6).

² sn The general consensus is that Job was afflicted with a leprosy known as elephantiasis, named because the rough skin and the swollen limbs are animal-like. The Hebrew word שְׁחִין (sh^ekhin, “boil”) can indicate an ulcer as well. Leprosy begins with such, but so do other diseases. Leprosy normally begins in the limbs and spreads, but Job was afflicted everywhere at once. It may be some other disease also characterized by such a malignant ulcer. D. J. A. Clines has a thorough bibliography on all the possible diseases linked to this description (Job [WBC], 48). See also HALOT 1460 s.v. שְׁחִין.

¹ tn Heb “and Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and [between] the king and [between] the people, to become a people for the Lord, and between the king and [between] the people.” The final words of the verse (“and between the king and [between] the people”) are probably accidentally repeated from earlier in the verse. They do not appear in the parallel account in 2 Chr 23:16. If retained, they probably point to an agreement governing how the king and people should relate to one another.

¹ sn So he went on up, looked, and reported, “There is nothing.” Several times in this chapter those addressed by Elijah obey his orders. In vv. 20 and 42 Ahab does as instructed, in vv. 26 and 28 the prophets follow Elijah’s advice, and in vv. 30, 34, 40 and 43 the people and servants do as they are told. By juxtaposing Elijah’s commands with accounts of those commands being obeyed, the narrator emphasizes the authority of the Lord’s prophet.

¹ tn Though this verb in the MT is third person masculine singular, it should probably be read as second person masculine singular. It is one of 15 places where the Masoretes placed a dot over each of the letters of the word in question in order to call attention to their suspicion of the word. Their concern in this case apparently had to do with the fact that this verb and the two preceding verbs alternate from third person to second and back again to third. Words marked in this way in Hebrew manuscripts or printed editions are said to have puncta extrordinaria, or “extraordinary points.”

¹ tc This clause is difficult in the MT. The present translation accepts the text as found in the MT and understands this clause to be elliptical, with an understood verb such as “look” or “consider.” On the other hand, the LXX seems to reflect a slightly different Hebrew text, reading “after” where the MT has “my brothers.” The Greek translation yields the following translation: “You should not do this after the Lord has delivered us.” Although the Greek reading should be taken seriously, it seems better to follow the MT here.

³ sn This observation marks the preceding statement (v. 28) as an unconditional, unalterable decree. When God makes such a decree he will not alter it or change his mind. This does not mean that God never deviates from his stated intentions or changes his mind. On the contrary, several passages describe him as changing his mind. In fact, his willingness to do so is one of his fundamental divine attributes (see Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). For a fuller discussion see R. B. Chisholm, Jr., “Does God Change His Mind?” BSac 152 (1995): 387-99.

¹ tc Heb “Doing an extraordinary deed while Manoah and his wife were watching.” The subject of the participle is missing. The translation assumes that the phrase “the Lord’s messenger” was lost by homoioteleuton. If the text originally read לַיהוָה מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה (layhvah malʾakh y^ehvah), the scribe’s eye could have jumped from the first יְהוָה to the second, accidentally omitting two of the three words. Later the conjunction וּ (shureq) would have been added to the following מַפְלִא (mafliʾ) for syntactical reasons. Another possibility is that a pronominal subject (הוּא, huʾ) has been lost in the MT due to haplography.

³ tn The structure of this list presents problems. In v. 28 no conjunction appears before “Haeleph” or “Kiriath” in the Hebrew text. This suggests they should be compounded with the preceding names, yielding “Zelah Haeleph” and “Gibeah Kiriath” respectively. This results in a list of only 12 cities, however, while the summary statement (v. 28) gives the number 14. One should note, however, that the city lists in chap. 15 do not consistently use the conjunction before the name of each city. See also Josh 19:7, where no conjunction appears before “Rimmon,” but the summary assumes that Ain and Rimmon are distinct.

¹ tn The Hebrew term עֶלְיוֹן (ʿelyon) is an abbreviated form of the divine name El Elyon, frequently translated “God Most High” (so here NCV, CEV) or something similar. This full name (or epithet) occurs only in Gen 14, though the two elements are parallel in Pss 73:11; 107:11; etc. Here it is clear that Elyon has to do with the nations in general whereas in v. 9, by contrast, Yahweh relates specifically to Israel. See T. Fretheim, NIDOTTE 1:400-401. The title depicts God as the sovereign ruler of the world, who is enthroned high above his dominion.