Job 18:3-5

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 18:3 tn The verb נִטְמִינוּ (nitminu) has been explained from different roots. Some take it from תָּמֵא (tameʾ, “to be unclean”), and translate it “Why should we be unclean in your eyes?” Most would connect it to טָמַם (tamam, “to stop up”), meaning “to be stupid” in the Niphal. Another suggestion is to follow the LXX and read from דָּמַם (damam, “to be reduced to silence”). Others take it from דָּמָּה (damah) with a meaning “to be like.” But what is missing is the term of comparison—like what? Various suggestions have been made, but all are simply conjectures.
2. Job 18:4 tn The construction uses the participle and then third person suffixes: “O tearer of himself in his anger.” But it is clearly referring to Job, and so the direct second person pronouns should be used to make that clear. The LXX is an approximation or paraphrase here: “Anger has possessed you, for what if you should die—would under heaven be desolate, or shall the mountains be overthrown from their foundations?”
3. Job 18:4 tn There is a good deal of study on this word in this passage, and in Job in general. M. Dahood suggested a root עָזַב (ʿazav) meaning “to arrange; to rearrange” (“The Root ʿzb II in Job,” JBL 78 [1959]: 303-9). But this is refuted by H. G. M. Williamson, “A Reconsideration of ʿzb II in Biblical Hebrew,” ZAW 97 (1985): 74-85.
4. Job 18:4 sn Bildad is asking if Job thinks the whole moral order of the world should be interrupted for his sake, that he may escape the punishment for wickedness.
5. Job 18:5 tn Hebrew גַּם (gam, “also; moreover”), in view of what has just been said.
6. Job 18:5 sn The lamp or the light can have a number of uses in the Bible. Here it is probably an implied metaphor for prosperity and happiness, for the good life itself.
7. Job 18:5 tn The expression is literally “the flame of his fire,” but the pronominal suffix qualifies the entire bound construction. The two words together intensify the idea of the flame.