Job 16:17-19 New English Translation
17 although[a] there is no violence in my hands
and my prayer is pure.
An Appeal to God as Witness
18 “O earth, do not cover my blood,[b]
nor let there be a secret[c] place for my cry.
19 Even now my witness[d] is in heaven;
my advocate[e] is on high.
Footnotes
- Job 16:17 tn For the use of the preposition עַל (ʿal) to introduce concessive clauses, see GKC 499 §160.c.
- Job 16:18 sn Job knows that he will die, and that his death, signified here by blood on the ground, will cry out for vindication.
- Job 16:18 tn The word is simply “a place,” but in the context it surely means a hidden place, a secret place that would never be discovered (see 18:21).
- Job 16:19 sn The witness in heaven must be God, to whom the cries and prayers come. Job’s dilemma is serious, but common to the human experience: the hostility of God toward him is baffling, but he is conscious of his innocence and can call on God to be his witness.
- Job 16:19 tn The parallelism now uses the Aramaic word “my advocate”—the one who testifies on my behalf. The word again appears in Gen 31:47 for Laban’s naming of the “heap of witness” in Aramaic—“Sahadutha.”
New English Translation (NET)
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