Job 13:1-3

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 13:1 sn Chapter 13 records Job’s charges against his friends for the way they used their knowledge (1-5), his warning that God would find out their insincerity (6-12), and his pleading of his case to God in which he begs for God to remove his hand from him and that he would not terrify him with his majesty and that he would reveal the sins that caused such great suffering (13-28).
2. Job 13:1 tn Hebrew has כֹּל (kol, “all”); there is no reason to add anything to the text to gain a meaning “all this.”
3. Job 13:2 tn Heb “Like your knowledge”; in other words Job is saying that his knowledge is like their knowledge.
4. Job 13:2 tn The pronoun makes the subject emphatic and stresses the contrast: “I know—I also.”
5. Job 13:2 tn The verb “fall” is used here as it was in Job 4:13 to express becoming lower than someone, i.e., inferior.
6. Job 13:3 tn The verb is simply the Piel imperfect אֲדַבֵּר (ʾadabber, “I speak”). It should be classified as a desiderative imperfect, saying, “I desire to speak.” This is reinforced with the verb “to wish, desire” in the second half of the verse.
7. Job 13:3 tn The Hebrew title for God here is אֶל־שַׁדַּי (ʾel shadday, “El Shaddai”).
8. Job 13:3 tn The infinitive absolute functions here as the direct object of the verb “desire” (see GKC 340 §113.b).
9. Job 13:3 tn The infinitive הוֹכֵחַ (hokheakh) is from the verb יָכַח (yakhakh), which means “to argue, plead, debate.” It has the legal sense here of arguing a case (cf. 5:17).