Job 33:20-22

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 33:20 tn Heb “food of desire.” The word “rejects” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.
2. Job 33:21 tc Heb “are laid bare.” This is the Qere reading; the Kethib means “bare height.” Gordis reverses the word order: “his bones are bare [i.e., crushed] so that they cannot be looked upon.” But the sense of that is not clear.
3. Job 33:22 tn Heb “his soul [נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh, “life”] draws near.”
4. Job 33:22 tn The MT uses the Hiphil participle, “to those who cause death.” This seems to be a reference to the belief in demons that brought about death, an idea not mentioned in the Bible itself. Thus many proposals have been made for this expression. Hoffmann and Budde divide the word into לְמוֹ מֵתִּים (l^emo metim) and simply read “to the dead.” Dhorme adds a couple of letters to get לִמְקוֹם מֵתִּים (limqom metim, “to the place [or abode] of the dead”).