Job 11:11

For he ¹  knows deceitful ²  men; when he sees evil, will he not ³  consider it? ⁴ 

Surely he recognises deceitful men; and when he sees evil, does he not take note?

"For He knows false men, And He sees iniquity without investigating.

For he knows those who are false, and he takes note of all their sins.

He sees through vain pretensions, spots evil a long way off--no one pulls the wool over his eyes!

For in his eyes men are as nothing; he sees evil and takes note of it.

For he knows those who are worthless; when he sees iniquity, will he not consider it?

For He knows deceitful men; He sees wickedness also. Will He not then consider it ?

For he ¹  knows deceitful ²  men; when he sees evil, will he not ³  consider it? ⁴ 

¹ tn The pronoun is emphatic implying that Zophar indicates that God indeed knows Job’s sin even if Job does not.

² tn The expression is literally “men of emptiness” (see Ps 26:4). These are false men, for שָׁוְא (shavÿ’) can mean “vain, empty, or false, deceitful.”

³ tn E. Dhorme (Job, 162) reads the prepositional phrase “to him” rather than the negative; he translates the line as “he sees iniquity and observes it closely.”

⁴ tn Some commentators do not take this last clause as a question, but simply as a statement, namely, that when God sees evil he does not need to ponder or consider it – he knows it instantly. In that case it would be a circumstantial clause: “without considering it.” D. J. A. Clines lists quite an array of other interpretations for the line (Job [WBC], 255); for example, “and he is himself unobserved”; taking the word לֹא (lo’) as an emphatic; taking the negative as a noun, “considering them as nothing”; and others that change the verb to “they do not understand it.” But none of these are compelling; they offer no major improvement.