Job 15:32–33

Footnotes

1. 66 Heb “before his day.”
2. 67 Those who put the last colon of v. 31 with v. 32 also have to change the verb תִּמָּלֵא (timmale’, “will be fulfilled”). E. Dhorme (Job, 225) says, “a mere glance at the use of yimmal … abundantly proves that the original text had timmal (G, , Vulg), which became timmale’ through the accidental transposition of the ‘alep of bÿsi’o … in verse 31.…” This, of course, is possible, if all the other changes up to now are granted. But the meaning of a word elsewhere in no way assures it should be the word here. The has “his harvest shall perish before the time,” which could translate any number of words that might have been in the underlying Hebrew text. A commercial metaphor is not out of place here, since parallelism does not demand that the same metaphor appear in both lines.
3. 68 Now, in the second half of the verse, the metaphor of a tree with branches begins.
4. 69 The verb means “to treat violently” or “to wrong.” It indicates that the vine did not nourish the grapes well enough for them to grow, and so they dry up and drop off.
5. 70 The point is that like the tree the wicked man shows signs of life but produces nothing valuable. The olive tree will have blossoms in the years that it produces no olives, and so eventually drops the blossoms.