I became a burden to You.
The Masoretic Text reads “to myself,” but this is a famous case of a tiqun
sofrim, a euphemistic scribal correction. That is, the scribes did not want
to write the virtually blasphemous phrase that Job had become a burden to God,
so they substituted the first-person pronoun for the second person. (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 3:483)
A tantalizing example is Job
7:20, where most MSS of the MT read, “I have become a burden (מַשָּׂא)
to myself (עָלַי).” That reading, however, represents one
of the eighteen tiqqune sopherim, the
purpose of which was a pious attempt to remove what were considered to be
objectionable statements about God. The LXX, as well as a few MSS of the MT,
read, “I have become a burden to you (עָלֵיךָ)” in Job 7:20. The
NIV chooses an admirable via media by
retaining the more difficult reading but softening it into a question, which
also respects the context: “Have I become a burden to you?” (Ronald
F. Youngblood, “נָשָׂא,” in New
International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, ed. Willem VanGemeren, 5 vols. [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997], 2:1112)
