Behold, he scatters his lightning about him: scatters is the same verb translated “spreading” in verse 29. The word translated lightning usually means “light.” Dhorme adjusts it to get “mist,” but in the context lightning is more appropriate. About him probably implies “the place where he dwells,” and so Good News Translation has “through all the sky.” The line may also be translated “He makes the lightning strike all around him” or “He sends bolts of lightning flashing across the skies.”

And covers the roots of the sea is a line that is translated in countless ways. The expression roots of the sea is found nowhere else in the Old Testament. Roots are associated with mountains in 28.9. Since the expression makes little sense, particularly in relation to the first line, many changes have been proposed. For example, New Jerusalem Bible follows one change that gives “covers the tops of the mountains.” Dhorme, who shows contrast between the two lines, adequately translates the Hebrew text without change, “and has veiled the depths of the sea,” with which Good News Translation agrees: “but the depths of the sea remain dark.” This line may be rendered, for example, “he covers the sea with darkness” or “he covers the sea and leaves it dark.”

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 .