Job 24:5 New English Translation
5 Like[a] wild donkeys in the wilderness,
they[b] go out to their labor[c] seeking diligently for food;
the arid rift valley[d] provides[e] food for them and for their children.
Footnotes
- Job 24:5 tc The verse begins with הֵן (hen), but the LXX, Vulgate, and Syriac all have “like.” R. Gordis (Job, 265) takes הֵן (hen) as a pronoun “they” and supplies the comparative. The sense of the verse is clear in either case.
- Job 24:5 tn That is, “the poor.”
- Job 24:5 tc The MT has “in the working/labor of them,” or “when they labor.” Some commentators simply omit these words. Dhorme retains them and moves them to go with עֲרָבָה (ʿaravah), which he takes to mean “evening”; this gives a clause, “although they work until the evening.” Then, with many others, he takes לוֹ (lo) to be a negative and finishes the verse with “no food for the children.” Others make fewer changes in the text, and as a result do not come out with such a hopeless picture—there is some food found. The point is that they spend their time foraging for food, and they find just enough to survive, but it is a day-long activity. For Job, this shows how unrighteous the administration of the world actually is.
- Job 24:5 tc Based on the text critical question in the previous note, some read this as a form related to the noun עֶרֶב (ʿerev, “evening”). These same consonants occur as a verb in Isa 24:11, עָרְבָה (ʿarevah) from עָרַב (ʿarav, “become evening”). This would give the time frame of their work rather than the location, but the location provides a parallel to “wilderness.”tn The rift valley (עֲרָבָה, ʿaravah) extends from Galilee to the Gulf of Aqaba, but the term normally refers only to a section of it. For the book of Job, the most likely section is that south of the Dead Sea, a section that is arid with only sparse vegetation.
- Job 24:5 tn The verb is not included in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation.
New English Translation (NET)
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