But you are doing away with the fear of God: in this verse Eliphaz drops the rhetorical question form to aim his rebuke directly at Job, and addresses him in the second person. But translates a Hebrew connective that intensifies the following clause in regard to the preceding one. It is equivalent to English “Indeed!” or “Why!” It may be translated “You even…” or “You go so far as to….” Eliphaz accuses Job of doing away with, which translates a term meaning to “lower, diminish, decrease.” Good News Translation expresses this in a clause: “no one would fear God.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has “undermine,” Bible en français courant “ruin,” New Jerusalem Bible “suppress.” Fear translates the Hebrew “fear, reverence, worship,” and is used also to mean “religion.” Translations use such expressions as “faith,” “belief,” “religion,” “reverence,” or “piety,” sometimes in association with God; for example, “reverence for God” or “belief in God.” This line may also be expressed, for example, “You are even making reverence for God a thing of little importance,” “Yes, you are reducing belief in God to nothing,” or “Indeed, Job, you do away with religion.”

And hindering meditation before God: hindering is parallel to doing away with in the previous line. Its root meaning is “to pull down” and is again an accusation of destroying religion. Meditation translates a word which is used as a verb in Psalm 119.15 with the sense of “reflect, meditate.” New Jerusalem Bible, which translates “discussion before God,” says in its note, “means the application of the mind to religious truths coupled with the idea of speech….” Gordis supports this with “conversation, communion with God,” and so Good News Translation and others translate “pray to God.” In many languages it will be difficult to express the destruction of an activity such as meditation or prayer, and so we must sometimes restructure this line to say, for instance, “you make it difficult for a person to pray to God,” “you take away the practice of meditation before God,” or “you take away the custom of speaking to God in prayer.”

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 .