You who tear yourself in your anger: this line translates the Hebrew “O tearer of himself in his anger.” In 16.9 Job said God “has torn me in his wrath.” However, Bildad says Job tears himself in his own anger. This line is the opening address of the two parallel lines which will follow. Here Bildad addresses Job in the third person singular in the Hebrew, but Revised Standard Version and others translate with the second singular You who … your anger. According to Bildad it is Job’s passion that carries him away and causes him injury. Although the line is translated in many ways, it is probably best to treat it as an address for the remainder of the chapter; for example, “Job, you injure yourself in your anger” or “Job, you get angry, and it is your anger that wounds you.”

Shall the earth be forsaken for you…?: according to Bildad, Job thinks the very course of nature should be altered to suit him. Bildad has in mind that Job’s complaints to God are like asking that the world be remade just to fit Job. According to the three friends the moral principle on which the world rests is that sin results in suffering. Earth … forsaken implies an earth whose inhabitants have abandoned it, gone away, all for Job’s sake. This would be extreme chaos. This line and the next may be treated as sarcastic rhetorical questions; for example, “Do you think everyone must abandon the earth to prove you are right?” or “Do you believe the earth must become like a desert to show you are in the right?”

Or the rock be removed out of its place?: in 14.18b Job laments that a man dies and disappears under the grinding force of God: “The rock is removed from its place.” Bildad now picks up from this line to tell Job that such a thing does not take place just to satisfy Job. This line may also be translated, for example, “Do you think God must push over mountains to satisfy you?” or “Do you believe God must knock down the hills to make you happy?”

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 .