Thou didst clothe me with skin and flesh: Job continues to remind God how he has been intimately responsible for Job’s prenatal development. Some translations take this verse to be a question, as in verse 10. God is the subject of the verb. And knit me together with bones and sinews: the verb translated knit implies in today’s English the use of needles to intertwine two threads to form a fabric or cloth. The meaning of the Hebrew term is better conveyed by “weave, intertwine, form, or shape.” Good News Translation reverses the two lines to give a more logical sequence. That is, it prefers to have the body formed first with bones and sinews and then covered with muscles and skin, and this may be preferred in other languages. Reversing the sequence in this fashion, the whole verse may be expressed as “wove my body together with bones and muscles, and covered it with flesh and skin.”

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 .