God’s actions are taken to save man from a fate such as described in this verse. He keeps back his soul from the Pit: keeps back renders the terms used in 7.11; 16.5, 6, with the sense of “restrain” or “check.” Here it means “to spare, to save someone.” New Jerusalem Bible translates “preserves his soul.” Soul translates the Hebrew nefesh, referring to a person’s physical life. Pit, as in 17.14, refers generally to the world of the dead or more specifically to “the grave.” Good News Translation has avoided Pit in this line, which it translates negatively, “He will not let them be destroyed.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch is closer to the original with “So he rescues their life from the grave,” which gives a good translation model. In some languages this expression may have to be restructured, for example, “When they are about to die and be buried, he saves them.”

His life from perishing by the sword suggests a violent death, but there is nothing in the context to support this rendering. The verb translated perishing can mean “pass through, cross over,” and although the word translated sword sometimes means “weapon,” neither that meaning nor sword are suitable as a parallel to Pit in line a. Accordingly some scholars identify the Hebrew word translated sword with a “canal” or “river,” as in Nehemiah 3.15 and Isaiah 8.6, and associated in ancient mythology with the underground river on which the soul travels to its destination. Others, like Good News Translation, understand sword not as the instrument of violent death, but of death generally, and so Good News Translation “He saves them from death itself,” which gives the same thought without the appeal to the mythological image of crossing the river to death. Some translators may feel that this line repeats line a so fully that to translate it will be repetitious. Parallelism may best be retained in the translation by following the thought of crossing the river, and translating similarly to New English Bible, “and stops him from crossing the river of death.” In this case “river of death” may also be expressed as “the river that leads to death” or “the river that carries away the dead.”

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 .