Job 14:20-22

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 14:20 tn D. W. Thomas took נֵצַח (netsakh) here to have a superlative meaning: “You prevail utterly against him” (“Use of netsach as a superlative in Hebrew,” JSS 1 [1956]: 107). Death would be God’s complete victory over him.
2. Job 14:20 tn The subject of the participle is most likely God in this context. Some take it to be man, saying “his face changes.” Others emend the text to read an imperfect verb, but this is not necessary.
3. Job 14:21 tn The clause may be interpreted as a conditional clause, with the second clause beginning with the conjunction serving as the apodosis.
4. Job 14:21 tn There is no expressed subject for the verb “they honor,” and so it may be taken as a passive.
5. Job 14:21 sn Death is separation from the living, from the land of the living. And ignorance of what goes on in this life, good or bad, is part of death. See also Eccl 9:5-6, which makes a similar point.
6. Job 14:21 tn The verb is בִּין (bin, “to perceive; to discern”). The parallelism between “know” and “perceive” stresses the point that in death a man does not realize what is happening here in the present life.
7. Job 14:22 tn The prepositional phrases using עָלָיו (ʿalayv, “for him[self]”) express the object of the suffering. It is for himself that the dead man “grieves.” So this has to be joined with אַךְ (ʾakh), yielding “only for himself.” Then, “flesh” and “soul/person” form the parallelism for the subjects of the verbs.
8. Job 14:22 sn In this verse Job is expressing the common view of life beyond death, namely, that in Sheol there is no contact with the living, only separation, but in Sheol there is a conscious awareness of the dreary existence.