Job 20:16

He sucks the poison ¹  of serpents; ²  the fangs ³  of a viper ⁴  kill him.

He will suck the poison of serpents; the fangs of an adder will kill him.

"He sucks the poison of cobras; The viper’s tongue slays him.

He will suck the poison of snakes. The viper will kill him.

They gorge on evil, make a diet of that poison--a deadly diet--and it kills them.

He takes the poison of snakes into his mouth, the tongue of the snake is the cause of his death.

They will suck the poison of asps; the tongue of a viper will kill them.

He will suck the poison of cobras; The viper’s tongue will slay him.

He sucks the poison ¹  of serpents; ²  the fangs ³  of a viper ⁴  kill him.

¹ tn The word is a homonym for the word for “head,” which has led to some confusion in the early versions.

² sn To take the possessions of another person is hereby compared to sucking poison from a serpent – it will kill eventually.

³ tn Heb “tongue.”

⁴ tn Some have thought this verse is a gloss on v. 14 and should be deleted. But the word for “viper” (אֶפְעֶה, ’ef’eh) is a rare word, occurring only here and in Isa 30:6 and 59:5. It is unlikely that a rarer word would be used in a gloss. But the point is similar to v. 14 – the wealth that was greedily sucked in by the wicked proves to be their undoing. Either this is totally irrelevant to Job’s case, a general discussion, or the man is raising questions about how Job got his wealth.