Job 37:6-8

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 37:6 tn The verb actually means “be” (found here in the Aramaic form). The verb “to be” can mean “to happen, to fall, to come about.”
2. Job 37:6 tn Heb “and [to the] shower of rain and shower of rains, be strong.” Many think the repetition grew up by variant readings; several Hebrew mss delete the second pair, and so many editors do. But the repetition may have served to stress the idea that the rains were heavy.
3. Job 37:6 tn Heb “Be strong.”
4. Job 37:7 tn Heb “by the hand of every man he seals.” This line is intended to mean that with the heavy rains God suspends all agricultural activity.
5. Job 37:7 tc This reading involves a change in the text, for in MT “men” is in the construct. It would be translated “all men whom he made” (i.e., “all men of his making”). This is the translation followed by the NIV and NRSV. Olshausen suggested that the word should have been אֲנָשִׁים (ʾanashim) with the final ם (mem) being lost to haplography.
6. Job 37:7 tn D. W. Thomas suggested a meaning of “rest” for the verb, based on Arabic. He then reads אֱנוֹשׁ (ʾenosh) for man, and supplies a ם (mem) to “his work” to get “that every man might rest from his work [in the fields].”