Job 12:4

I am ¹  a laughingstock ²  to my friends, ³  I, who called on God and whom he answered ⁴  – a righteous and blameless ⁵  man is a laughingstock!

Job 11:3; Job 16:10; Job 16:20; Job 17:2,6; Job 21:3; Job 30:1; Ps 22:7,8; Ps 35:16; Ps 91:15; Pr 14:2; Jer 33:3; Mic 7:7; Mt 27:29; Mr 5:40; Lu 16:14; Ac 17:32; Heb 11:36

¹ tn Some are troubled by the disharmony with “I am” and “to his friend.” Even though the difficulty is not insurmountable, some have emended the text. Some simply changed the verb to “he is,” which was not very compelling. C. D. Isbell argued that אֶהְיֶה (’ehyeh, “I am”) is an orthographic variant of יִהְיֶה (yihyeh, “he will”) – “a person who does not know these things would be a laughingstock” (JANESCU 37 [1978]: 227-36). G. R. Driver suggests the meaning of the MT is something like “(One that is) a mockery to his friend I am to be.”

² tn The word simply means “laughter”; but it can also mean the object of laughter (see Jer 20:7). The LXX jumps from one “laughter” to the next, eliminating everything in between, presumably due to haplography.

³ tn Heb “his friend.” A number of English versions (e.g., NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT) take this collectively, “to my friends.”

⁴ tn Heb “one calling to God and he answered him.” H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 92) contends that because Job has been saying that God is not answering him, these words must be part of the derisive words of his friends.

⁵ tn The two words, צַדִּיק תָּמִים (tsadiq tamim), could be understood as a hendiadys (= “blamelessly just”) following W. G. E. Watson (Classical Hebrew Poetry, 327).