He has put my brethren far from me: Job begins by accusing God of making his brothers desert him. My brethren is an archaic term for “my brothers.” The Septuagint has “My brothers have gone far.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, however, translates the Hebrew “He has put my brothers far from me.” Brethren may be taken as a general term for kin (Moffatt translates “clansmen”), but there is no reason not to use “brothers,” which would probably include the sons of Job’s father’s brothers. A satisfactory translation model is “God has taken my brothers and put them far from me” or “God has removed my brothers from me.”

And my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me: acquaintances is literally “those who know me” and is parallel to brethren in the first line. In 42.11 “all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before” come to Job and eat with him. Estranged or “alienated” is translated by Good News Translation as “stranger.” The line may also be rendered, for example, “all the people who knew me are now strangers,” “all my former friends are like foreigners to me,” or “none of my former friends know me any more.”

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 .