Job 30:1-3

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 30:1 tn Heb “smaller than I for days.”
2. Job 30:1 tn Heb “who I disdained their fathers to set…,” meaning “whose fathers I disdained to set.” The relative clause modifies the young fellows who mock; it explains that Job did not think highly enough of them to put them with the dogs. The next verse will explain why.
3. Job 30:1 sn Job is mocked by young fellows who come from low extraction. They mocked their elders and their betters. The scorn is strong here—dogs were despised as scavengers.
4. Job 30:2 tn The reference is to the fathers of the scorners, who are here regarded as weak and worthless.
5. Job 30:2 tn The word כֶּלַח (kelakh) only occurs in Job 5:26, but the Arabic cognate gives this meaning “strength.” Others suggest כָּלַח (kalakh, “old age”), כֹּל־חַיִל (kol khayil, “all vigor”), כֹּל־לֵחַ (kol leakh, “all freshness”), and the like. But there is no reason for such emendation.
6. Job 30:3 tn This word, גַּלְמוּד (galmud), describes something as lowly, desolate, bare, gaunt like a rock.
7. Job 30:3 tn The verb עָקַר (ʿaqar) appears only here (and possibly in Job 30:17). Several translations render this as “they gnaw the dry ground” (NASB, ESV, NRSV), but it is not typical to gnaw on dirt. Suggested emendations include adding יְרַק (y^eraq from yereq, “vegetation, greenery of”) or עִקָּרֵי (ʿiqqare from ʿiqqar, “roots of [the parched land]”), either of which could be a food to gnaw on. They propose to restore a word with letters so similar to the verb that it may have been omitted in copying due to haplography. But the verb in Aramaic can also mean “to roam” (KJV “fleeing into the wilderness;” NIV “they roamed”), making an emendation unnecessary (see J. Hartley, The Book of Job [NICOT], 396).
8. Job 30:3 tn The MT has “last night desolate and waste.” The word אֶמֶשׁ (ʾemesh, “last night” or “yesterday”) is strange here. Among the proposals for אֶמֶשׁ (ʾemesh), Duhm suggested יְמַשְּׁשׁוּ (y^emash^eshu, “they grope”), which would require darkness; Pope renders “by night,” instead of “yesterday,” which evades the difficulty; and Fohrer suggested with more reason אֶרֶץ (ʾerets, “a desolate and waste land”). R. Gordis (Job, 331) suggests יָמִישׁוּ / יָמֻשׁוּ (yamishu/yamushu, “they wander off”).