My heart is in turmoil, and is never still: the first clause is literally “My bowels boil,” and New English Bible offers the odd rendering “My bowels are in ferment.” In Hebrew “bowels” represent the center of powerful emotions, as is seen also in Isaiah 16.11; Lamentations 1.20; 2.11 (Revised Standard Version uses “my soul” in all three examples). The expression is well translated by both Revised Standard Version, My heart is in turmoil, and Good News Translation, “I am torn apart,” which makes no reference to an organ of the body. And is never still translates “and they have not remained calm.” The reference is to the “bowels.” This phrase emphasizes the permanence of Job’s painful emotional stress, which New Jerusalem Bible translates “My stomach seethes, is never still.” Languages differ greatly in the way they express psychological states, and the translator should use an idiomatic phrase that expresses it clearly and acceptably; for example, “My innermost is churning within me,” “My liver will not sit still,” “My stomach rolls over in me.”

Days of affliction come to meet me: this line gives the reason for the physical and emotional distress in the previous line. Days of affliction calls attention to the prolonged aspect of Job’s suffering. Bible en français courant relates this line to the previous one by translating “ever since I confronted this life of misery.” Good News Translation has an independent sentence: “I have had day after day of suffering.” Come to meet me is a literal rendering. In English it may be more natural to say, for example, “I face endless days of suffering.” New Jerusalem Bible keeps days of affliction as the subject, with “Days of suffering have struck me.”

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 .