Job 24:11-13

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 24:11 tc The Hebrew term is שׁוּרֹתָם (shurotam), which may be translated “terraces” or “olive rows.” But that would not be the proper place to have a press to press the olives and make oil. E. Dhorme (Job, 360-61) proposes on the analogy of an Arabic word that this should be read as “millstones” (which he would also write in the dual). But the argument does not come from a clean cognate, but from a possible development of words. The meaning of “olive rows” works well enough.
2. Job 24:11 tn The final verb, a preterite with the ו (vav) consecutive, is here interpreted as a circumstantial clause.
3. Job 24:12 tc The MT as pointed reads “from the city of men they groan.” Most commentators change one vowel in מְתִים (m^etim) to get מֵתִים (metim) to get the active participle, “the dying.” This certainly fits the parallelism better, although sense could be made out of the MT.
4. Job 24:12 tn Heb “the souls of the wounded,” which here refers to the wounded themselves.
5. Job 24:12 tc The MT has the noun תִּפְלָה (tiflah) which means “folly; tastelessness” (cf. 1:22). The verb, which normally means “to place; to put,” would then be rendered “to impute; to charge.” This is certainly a workable translation in the context. Many commentators have emended the text, changing the noun to תְּפִלָּה (t^efillah, “prayer”), and so then also the verb יָשִׂים (yasim, here “charges”) to יִשְׁמַע (yishmaʿ, “hears”). It reads: “But God does not hear the prayer”—referring to the groans.
6. Job 24:13 tn Heb “They are among those who.”