They said to God ‘Depart from us’: the similarity of the wording in this line to 21.14a suggests that Eliphaz is here referring back to those words spoken by Job. The only difference in the Hebrew is in the form of the verb at the beginning of the verse. In 21.14, as here, the Hebrew takes the form of direct speech. Revised Standard Version maintains this, but Good News Translation shifts to indirect. The line can be rendered “These are the men who said to God, ‘Leave us alone.’ ”

And ‘What can the Almighty do to us?’: most translations change the Hebrew from “them” to us, following the Septuagint. Both the sense and the parallelism require this change. The words of the unbelievers in this line are expressed in direct speech. Since the implied answer to this question is in the negative, Good News Translation expresses it as negative statement: “and believed that he could do nothing to them.” Verse 17 may be rendered, for example, “Those people said to God ‘Leave us alone’; they believed Almighty God could not harm them” or “ ‘Let us be,’ these evil people said to God; ‘although he is the Almighty God, he can do nothing to us.’ ”

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 .