Job spoke in 10.8-12 of God’s wondrous act of creating him in the womb. Here he acknowledges that the same is true for the slave. By saying this Job gives the reason why he respected the rights of his servants. The two questions in this verse ask nearly the same thing, and both assume a positive answer. Good News Translation reduces them to one and recasts them as a single statement.

Did not he who made me in the womb make him?: translators vary considerably in the way they express the translation of this verse. Womb translates the Hebrew for “belly” and is used in 3.10; 10.19; 15.35 (“heart”). The two different words translated womb are used as a set pair in parallelism, with the more general word in the first line followed by the more specific term in the second line. It may be necessary to express the line, for example, as “Did not God make me in my mother’s womb the same as he made my servant in his mother’s womb?” In some languages this line will be better translated as a statement.

And did not one fashion us in the womb?: womb translates the more specific female organ used in Genesis 49.25; Proverbs 30.16. In the Hebrew the line ends with the word one, which can then be understood as did not one fashion us or as “did he not fashion us in one womb.” However, one is parallel with the maker in line a, and so the first interpretation is the better one, and the singular womb can then be understood as the respective womb from which each came. Revised Standard Version remains slightly ambiguous, in that it can imply that both Job and the slave were fashioned in the same womb. The ambiguity can be removed by leaving the womb implicit; for example, “Was it not the same God who made us both?” In translation it may be best to say in line a, for example, “Did not God…,” and in line b “and did not the same one (or, the same God)…?” Dhorme prefers “was it not He alone…?”

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 .