Job 13:26-28 New English Translation
26 For you write down[a] bitter things against me
and cause me to inherit the sins of my youth.[b]
27 And you put my feet in the stocks[c]
and you watch all my movements;[d]
you put marks[e] on the soles of my feet.
28 So I[f] waste away like something rotten,[g]
like a garment eaten by moths.
Footnotes
- Job 13:26 tn The meaning is that of writing down a formal charge against someone (cf. Job 31:15).
- Job 13:26 sn Job acknowledges sins in his youth, but they are trifling compared to the suffering he now endures. Job thinks it unjust of God to persecute him now for those—if that is what is happening.
- Job 13:27 tn The word occurs here and in Job 33:11. It could be taken as “stocks,” in which the feet were held fast; or it could be “shackles,” which allowed the prisoner to move about. The parallelism favors the latter, if the two lines are meant to be referring to the same thing.
- Job 13:27 tn The word means “ways; roads; paths,” but it is used here in the sense of the “way” in which one goes about his activities.
- Job 13:27 tn The verb תִּתְחַקֶּה (titkhaqqeh) is a Hitpael from the root חָקָה (khaqah, parallel to חָקַק, khaqaq). The word means “to engrave” or “to carve out.” This Hitpael would mean “to imprint something on oneself” (E. Dhorme [Job, 192] says on one’s mind, and so derives the meaning “examine.”). The object of this is the expression “on the roots of my feet,” which would refer to where the feet hit the ground. Since the passage has more to do with God’s restricting Job’s movement, the translation “you set a boundary to the soles of my feet” would be better than Dhorme’s view. The image of inscribing or putting marks on the feet is not found elsewhere. It may be, as Pope suggests, a reference to marking the slaves to make tracking them easier. The LXX has “you have penetrated to my heels.”
- Job 13:28 tn Heb “and he.” Some of the commentators move the verse and put it after Job 14:2, 3 or 6.
- Job 13:28 tn The word רָקָב (raqav) is used elsewhere in the Bible of dry rot in a house, or rotting bones in a grave. It is used in parallelism with “moth” both here and in Hos 5:12. The LXX has “like a wineskin.” This would be from רֹקֶב (roqev, “wineskin”). This word does not occur in the Hebrew Bible, but is attested in Sir 43:20 and in Aramaic. The change is not necessary.
New English Translation (NET)
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