Job 24:12

12 From the city the dying
The MT as pointed reads “from the city of men they groan.” Most commentators change one vowel in מְתִים (metim) 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.
groan,
and the wounded
Heb “the souls of the wounded,” which here refers to the wounded themselves.
cry out for help,
but God charges no one with wrongdoing.
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 (tefillah, “prayer”), and so then also the verb יָשִׂים (yasim, here “charges”) to יִשְׁמַע (yishma’, “hears”). It reads: “But God does not hear the prayer” – referring to the groans.

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