He will fly away like a dream: the fleeting dream is used in Psalm 73.20 to illustrate the temporariness of the wicked. Good News Translation translates “vanish like a dream,” which is more suitable for English. In some languages it may be necessary to replace the pronoun He with “the wicked person.” The Hebrew appears to be in the passive, “He is driven away like a dream.” Again the thought is focused not on how the dream goes away, but on the fact that a dream is impermanent. Therefore “disappear, vanish, go away” may express the thought better as an active construction; for example, “He will disappear like the dream a person had during his sleep.”

He will be chased away like a vision of the night: this line recalls Job’s complaint in 7.14 that God terrified him with night visions. Good News Translation has removed the passive sense of be chased away by employing “He will vanish” and using it for both the dream in line a and the vision of the night in line b. As in 7.14 there is no attempt here to distinguish between dream and vision. The poet uses vision of the night to extend the sense of dream and to go beyond it poetically, but not to speak of two different experiences. Therefore the translator should not make an artificial distinction in the meanings. In languages in which there is only one word for dream, it may be possible to use a descriptive phrase in the second; for example, “he will disappear like images seen during sleep” or “like thoughts that pass through the mind while asleep.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .