Job 30:3-5 New English Translation
3 gaunt[a] with want and hunger,
they would roam[b] the parched land,
by night a desolate waste.[c]
4 By the brush[d] they would gather[e] herbs from the salt marshes,[f]
and the root of the broom tree was their food.
5 They were banished from the community[g]—
people[h] shouted at them
as they would shout at thieves[i]—
Footnotes
- Job 30:3 tn This word, גַּלְמוּד (galmud), describes something as lowly, desolate, bare, gaunt like a rock.
- Job 30:3 tn The verb עָקַר (ʿaqar) appears only here (and possibly in Job 30:17). Several translations render this as “they gnaw the dry ground” (NASB, ESV, NRSV), but it is not typical to gnaw on dirt. Suggested emendations include adding יְרַק (yeraq from yereq, “vegetation, greenery of”) or עִקָּרֵי (ʿiqqare from ʿiqqar, “roots of [the parched land]”), either of which could be a food to gnaw on. They propose to restore a word with letters so similar to the verb that it may have been omitted in copying due to haplography. But the verb in Aramaic can also mean “to roam” (KJV “fleeing into the wilderness;” NIV “they roamed”), making an emendation unnecessary (see J. Hartley, The Book of Job [NICOT], 396).
- Job 30:3 tn The MT has “last night desolate and waste.” The word אֶמֶשׁ (ʾemesh, “last night” or “yesterday”) is strange here. Among the proposals for אֶמֶשׁ (ʾemesh), Duhm suggested יְמַשְּׁשׁוּ (yemasheshu, “they grope”), which would require darkness; Pope renders “by night,” instead of “yesterday,” which evades the difficulty; and Fohrer suggested with more reason אֶרֶץ (ʾerets, “a desolate and waste land”). R. Gordis (Job, 331) suggests יָמִישׁוּ / יָמֻשׁוּ (yamishu/yamushu, “they wander off”).
- Job 30:4 tn Or “the leaves of bushes” (ESV), a possibility dating back to Saadia and discussed by G. R. Driver and G. B. Gray (Job [ICC], 2:209) in their philological notes.
- Job 30:4 tn Here too the form is the participle with the article.
- Job 30:4 tn Heb “gather mallow,” a plant which grows in salt marshes.
- Job 30:5 tn The word גֵּו (gev) is an Aramaic term meaning “midst,” indicating “midst [of society].” But there is also a Phoenician word that means “community” (DISO 48).
- Job 30:5 tn The form simply is the plural verb, but it means those who drove them from society.
- Job 30:5 tn The text merely says “as thieves,” but it obviously compares the poor to the thieves.
New English Translation (NET)
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