Job 16:17-19

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 16:17 tn For the use of the preposition עַל (ʿal) to introduce concessive clauses, see GKC 499 §160.c.
2. Job 16:18 sn Job knows that he will die, and that his death, signified here by blood on the ground, will cry out for vindication.
3. Job 16:18 tn The word is simply “a place,” but in the context it surely means a hidden place, a secret place that would never be discovered (see 18:21).
4. Job 16:19 sn The witness in heaven must be God, to whom the cries and prayers come. Job’s dilemma is serious, but common to the human experience: the hostility of God toward him is baffling, but he is conscious of his innocence and can call on God to be his witness.
5. Job 16:19 tn The parallelism now uses the Aramaic word “my advocate”—the one who testifies on my behalf. The word again appears in Gen 31:47 for Laban’s naming of the “heap of witness” in Aramaic—“Sahadutha.”