Job 18:11–21

Footnotes

1. 22 Bildad is referring here to all the things that afflict a person and cause terror. It would then be a metonymy of effect, the cause being the afflictions.
2. 23 The verb פּוּץ (puts) in the Hiphil has the meaning “to pursue” and “to scatter.” It is followed by the expression “at his feet.” So the idea is easily derived: they chase him at his feet. But some commentators have other proposals. The most far-fetched is that of Ehrlich and Driver ( 24 [1953]: 259–60) which has “and compel him to urinate on his feet,” one of many similar readings the accepted from Driver.
3. 24 The jussive is occasionally used without its normal sense and only as an imperfect (see §109.k).
4. 25 There are a number of suggestions for אֹנוֹ (’ono). Some take it as “vigor”: thus “his strength is hungry.” Others take it as “iniquity”: thus “his iniquity/trouble is hungry.”
5. 26 The expression means that misfortune is right there to destroy him whenever there is the opportunity.
6. 27 The expression “the limbs of his skin” makes no sense, unless a poetic meaning of “parts” (or perhaps “layers”) is taken. The parallelism has “his skin” in the first colon, and “his limbs” in the second. One plausible suggestion is to take בַּדֵּי (badde, “limbs of”) in the first part to be בִּדְוָי (bidvay, “by a disease”; Dhorme, Wright, ). The verb has to be made passive, however. The versions have different things: The has “let the branches of his feet be eaten”; the has “his cities will be swallowed up by force”; the reads “let it devour the beauty of his skin”; and Job has “it will devour the linen garments that cover his skin.”
7. 28 The “firstborn of death” is the strongest child of death (Gen 49:3), or the deadliest death (like the “firstborn of the poor, the poorest). The phrase means the most terrible death (A. B. Davidson, Job, 134).
8. 29 Heb “from his tent, his security.” The apposition serves to modify the tent as his security.
9. 30 The verb is the Hiphil of צָעַד (tsa’ad, “to lead away”). The problem is that the form is either a third feminine (Rashi thought it was referring to Job’s wife) or the second person. There is a good deal of debate over the possibility of the prefix t- being a variant for the third masculine form. The evidence in Ugaritic and Akkadian is mixed, stronger for the plural than the singular. Gesenius has some samples where the third feminine form might also be used for the passive if there is no expressed subject (see §144.b), but the evidence is not strong. The simplest choices are to change the prefix to a י (yod), or argue that the ת (tav) can be masculine, or follow Gesenius.
10. 31 This is a reference to death, the king of all terrors. Other identifications are made in the commentaries: Mot, the Ugaritic god of death; Nergal of the Babylonians; Molech of the Canaanites, the one to whom people sent emissaries.
11. 32 This line is difficult as well. The verb, again a third feminine form, says “it dwells in his tent.” But the next part (מִבְּלִי לוֹ, mibbéli lo) means something like “things of what are not his.” The best that can be made of the is “There shall live in his tent they that are not his” (referring to persons and animals; see J. E. Hartley, Job [], ). G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray (Job [], 2:) refer “that which is naught of his” to weeds and wild animals. M. Dahood suggested a reading מַבֶּל (mabbel) and a connection to Akkadian nablu, “fire” (cf. Ugaritic nbl). The interchange of and n is not a problem, and the parallelism with the next line makes good sense (“Some Northwest Semitic words in Job,” 38 [1957]: 312ff.). Others suggest an emendation to get “night-hag” or vampire. This suggestion, as well as Driver’s “mixed herbs,” are linked to the idea of exorcism. But if a change is to be made, Dahood’s is the most compelling.
12. 33 Heb “outside.” Cf. ESV, “in the street,” referring to absence from his community’s memory.
13. 34 The verbs in this verse are plural; without the expressed subject they should be taken in the passive sense.
14. 35 The two words נִין (nin, “offspring”) and נֶכֶד (nekhed, “posterity”) are always together and form an alliteration. This is hard to capture in English, but some have tried: had “son and scion,” and Tur-Sinai had “breed or brood.” But the words are best simply translated as “lineage and posterity” or as in the “offspring or descendants.”
15. 36 Heb “in his sojournings.” The verb גּוּר (gur) means “to reside; to sojourn” temporarily, without land rights. Even this word has been selected to stress the temporary nature of his stay on earth.
16. 37 The word אַחֲרֹנִים (’akharonim) means “those [men] coming after.” And the next word, קַדְמֹנִים (qadmonim), means “those [men] coming before.” Some commentators have tried to see here references to people who lived before and people who lived after, but that does not explain their being appalled at the fate of the wicked. So the normal way this is taken is in connection to the geography, notably the seas—“the hinder sea” refers to the Mediterranean, the West, and “the front sea” refers to the Dead Sea (Zech 14:8), namely, the East. The versions understood this as temporal: “the last groaned for him, and wonder seized the first” ().
17. 38 Heb “his day.”
18. 39 The expression has “they seize horror.” The renders this “horror seizes them.” The same idiom is found in Job 21:6: “laid hold on shuddering.” The idiom would solve the grammatical problem, and not change the meaning greatly; but it would change the parallelism.
19. 40 The word “saying” is supplied in the translation to mark and introduce the following as a quotation of these people who are seized with horror. The alternative is to take v. 21 as Bildad’s own summary statement (cf. G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray, Job [], 2:; J. E. Hartley, Job [], ).
20. 41 The term is in the plural, “the tabernacles”; it should be taken as a plural of local extension (see §124.b).
21. 42 The word “place” is in construct; the clause following it replaces the genitive: “this is the place of—he has not known God.”