This verse opens with another comparison taken from nature. This time man, when he dies, is compared to a body of water that dries up.

As waters fail from a lake: As is supplied by the Revised Standard Version translators to mark the comparison; the Hebrew text does not have any such marker. Lake translates the Hebrew yam, which usually means “sea,” but covers the area of meaning of both seas and lakes. Since line b has river, it is better to use “lake” in line a. And a river wastes away and dries up: wastes away is the gradual process that results in the final state of being dry, or in the final process of drying up.

It is usual in Hebrew parallelism to shift to the smaller item in the second line. Good News Translation has reversed the two images, putting “river” in the first and “lake” in the second line. There does not appear to be any good reason for doing this. The nature of the comparison is between the verbs associated with the bodies of water and death. The whole verse may be expressed, for example, “Like a lake that dries up or a river that stops flowing.” In languages in which the comparison can only come after the thing compared, it may be necessary to say, for example, “a person’s life is like….”

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 .