Job 9:33–34

Footnotes

1. 100 The participle מוֹכִיחַ (mokhiakh) is the “arbiter” or “mediator.” The word comes from the verb יָכַח (yakhakh, “decide, judge”), which is concerned with legal and nonlegal disputes. The verbal forms can be used to describe the beginning of a dispute, the disputation in progress, or the settling of it (here, and in Isa 1:18). The old translation of “daysman” came from a Latin expression describing the fixing of a day for arbitration.
2. 101 The relative pronoun is understood in this clause.
3. 102 The jussive in conditional sentences retains its voluntative sense: let something be so, and this must happen as a consequence (see §109.i).
4. 103 The idiom of “lay his hand on the two of us” may come from a custom of a judge putting his hands on the two in order to show that he is taking them both under his jurisdiction. The expression can also be used for protection (see Ps 139:5). Job, however, has a problem in that the other party is God, who himself will be arbiter in judgment.
5. 104 The verse probably continues the description from the last verse, and so a relative pronoun may be supplied here as well.
6. 105 According to some, the reference of this suffix would be to God. The arbiter would remove the rod of God from Job. But others take it as a separate sentence with God removing his rod.
7. 106 The “rod” is a symbol of the power of God to decree whatever judgments and afflictions fall upon people.
8. 107 “His terror” is metonymical; it refers to the awesome majesty of God that overwhelms Job and causes him to be afraid.