Job 37:5-7

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 37:5 tn The form is the Niphal participle, “wonders,” from the verb פָּלָא (palaʾ, “to be wonderful; to be extraordinary”). Some commentators suppress the repeated verb “thunders,” and supply other verbs like “shows” or “works,” enabling them to make “wonders” the object of the verb rather than leaving it in an adverbial role. But as H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 236) notes, no change is needed, for one is not surprised to find repetition in Elihu’s words.
2. Job 37:5 tn Heb “and we do not know.”
3. Job 37:6 tn The verb actually means “be” (found here in the Aramaic form). The verb “to be” can mean “to happen, to fall, to come about.”
4. Job 37:6 tn Heb “and [to the] shower of rain and shower of rains, be strong.” Many think the repetition grew up by variant readings; several Hebrew mss delete the second pair, and so many editors do. But the repetition may have served to stress the idea that the rains were heavy.
5. Job 37:6 tn Heb “Be strong.”
6. Job 37:7 tn Heb “by the hand of every man he seals.” This line is intended to mean that with the heavy rains God suspends all agricultural activity.
7. Job 37:7 tc This reading involves a change in the text, for in MT “men” is in the construct. It would be translated “all men whom he made” (i.e., “all men of his making”). This is the translation followed by the NIV and NRSV. Olshausen suggested that the word should have been אֲנָשִׁים (ʾanashim) with the final ם (mem) being lost to haplography.
8. Job 37:7 tn D. W. Thomas suggested a meaning of “rest” for the verb, based on Arabic. He then reads אֱנוֹשׁ (ʾenosh) for man, and supplies a ם (mem) to “his work” to get “that every man might rest from his work [in the fields].”