Job 24:19-21

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 24:19 tn Or “dryness.” The term צִיָּה (tsiyyah) normally refers to a dry region, a wilderness or desert. Here the focus is on dryness.
2. Job 24:19 tn Heb “the waters of the snow.”
3. Job 24:19 tn Or “Sheol.”
4. Job 24:19 tc Heb “The grave [] they have sinned.” The verb “snatch up/away” is understood by parallelism. If the perfect verb is maintained, the line also implies the relative pronoun, “the grave [snatches] [those who] have sinned.” If the verb is emended from the perfect to a participle by deleting or moving the ו (vav) from חטאו to חוטא, it reads “the grave [snatches] one who sins.”
5. Job 24:20 tn Here “womb” is synecdoche, representing one’s mother.
6. Job 24:21 tc The form in the text is the active participle, “feed; graze; shepherd.” The idea of “prey” is not natural to it. R. Gordis (Job, 270) argues that third he (ה) verbs are often by-forms of geminate verbs, and so the meaning here is more akin to רָעַע (raʿaʿ, “to crush”). The LXX seems to have read something like הֵרַע (heraʿ, “oppressed”).
7. Job 24:21 tn Heb “the childless [woman], she does not give birth.” The verbal clause is intended to serve as a modifier here for the woman. See on subordinate verbal clauses GKC 490 §156.d, f.