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Job 30:17-19
New English Translation
Job 30:17-19
New English Translation
17 Night pierces[a] my bones;[b]
my gnawing pains[c] never cease.
18 With great power God[d] grasps my clothing;[e]
he binds me like the collar[f] of my tunic.
19 He has flung me into the mud,
and I have come to resemble dust and ashes.
Footnotes
- Job 30:17 tn The subject of the verb “pierces” can be the night (personified), or it could be God (understood), leaving “night” to be an adverbial accusative of time—“at night he pierces.”
- Job 30:17 tc The MT concludes this half-verse with “upon me.” That phrase is not in the LXX, and so many commentators delete it as making the line too long.
- Job 30:17 tn Heb “my gnawers,” which is open to several interpretations. The NASB and NIV take it as “gnawing pains”; cf. NRSV “the pain that gnaws me.” Some suggest worms in the sores (7:5). The LXX has “my nerves,” a view accepted by many commentators.
- Job 30:18 tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
- Job 30:18 tc This whole verse is difficult. The first problem is that this verb in the MT means “is disguised [or disfigured],” indicating that Job’s clothes hang loose on him. But many take the view that the verb is a phonetic variant of חָבַשׁ (khavash, “to bind; to seize”) and that the Hitpael form is a conflation of the third and second person because of the interchange between them in the passage (R. Gordis, Job, 335). The commentaries list a number of conjectural emendations, but the image in the verse is probably that God seizes Job by the garment and throws him down.
- Job 30:18 tn The phrase “like the collar” is difficult, primarily because their tunics did not have collars. A translation of “neck” would suit better. Some change the preposition to ב (bet), getting a translation “by the neck of my tunic.”
New English Translation (NET)
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