A senseless, a disreputable brood is literally “sons of a senseless person, sons of a nameless person.” “Sons of” is an expression which indicates the nature of these people. It does not refer to their being someone’s male offspring. They have neither good morals nor respectability, and Good News Translation calls them “A worthless bunch of nameless nobodies!” The word translated senseless is the word Job used of his wife in 2.10. The term refers to persons who lack moral judgment. See 2.10 for comments. And so they are “a foolish gang of nameless people,” “A bunch of senseless people nobody knows,” or “A worthless bunch of people and nobody knows their names.”

They have been whipped out of the land: the word translated whipped is used as a transitive verb in 1 Samuel 2.14 with the meaning “to drive or thrust,” and may be translated here without any change in the text, as in Good News Translation, “They were driven out of the land.” This line may have to be shifted to an active construction; for example, “People have beaten them and forced them from the country” or “People have used clubs to drive them from the land.”

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 .