Job 15:16-18

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 15:16 tn The two descriptions here used are “abominable,” meaning “disgusting” (a Niphal participle with the value of a Latin participle [see GKC 356-57 §116.e]), and “corrupt” (a Niphal participle which occurs only in Pss 14:3 and 53:4), always in a moral sense. On the significance of the first description, see P. Humbert, “Le substantif toʾēbā et le verbe tʾb dans l’Ancien Testament,” ZAW 72 [1960]: 217-37). On the second word, G. R. Driver suggests from Arabic, “debauched with luxury, corrupt” (“Some Hebrew Words,” JTS 29 [1927/28]: 390-96).
2. Job 15:16 sn Man commits evil with the same ease and facility as he drinks in water—freely and in large quantities.
3. Job 15:17 tn The demonstrative pronoun is used here as a nominative, to introduce an independent relative clause (see GKC 447 §138.h).
4. Job 15:17 tn Here the vav (ו) apodosis follows with the cohortative (see GKC 458 §143.d).
5. Job 15:18 tn The word “tradition” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation.
6. Job 15:18 tn Heb “their fathers.” Some commentators change one letter and follow the reading of the LXX: “and their fathers have not hidden.” Pope tries to get the same reading by classifying the ם (mem) as an enclitic mem. The MT on first glance would read “and did not hide from their fathers.” Some take the clause “and they did not hide” as adverbial and belonging to the first part of the verse: “what wise men declare, hiding nothing, according to the tradition of their fathers.”