God has made my heart faint: verse 16 has two closely parallel lines. My heart faint is idiomatic in Hebrew and refers to a person who is “timid, fearful.” Since God has done this to Job, Good News Translation translates “Almighty God has destroyed my courage,” that is, “made me timid.” The Almighty has terrified me: line b adds little to line a except the substitution of Shaddai for ʾEl “God.” Good News Translation has reduced the two lines to one, incorporating Almighty into line a. Many languages use figurative expressions to speak of a timid, fearful person; for example, “God has given me a quivering liver,” “God has made my stomach shake,” or “God has given me a cold innermost.”

For I am hemmed in by darkness: verse 17 is difficult to understand in Hebrew. It says literally “Because I am not cut off by reason of darkness and from my face which thick darkness covers.” Revised Standard Version, like many other translations, has omitted the negative and translates I am hemmed in. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project favors keeping the negative and translates “for I was not annihilated (before darkness came).” The verb translated hemmed in is rendered “be silent” by Syriac, and so Dhorme retains the negative and translates “I have not been silent because of darkness.” New English Bible has “Yet I am not reduced to silence by the darkness,” Bible en français courant “However, in spite of the night, I have not kept silent.” Good News Translation has sought to make clear that “It is God, not the dark, that makes me afraid,” and it does this by joining verse 16b to verse 17a in one line. Translators may express Good News Translation differently; for example, “I am not afraid of the darkness, but I am afraid of God” or “Darkness does not frighten me, but God does.”

And thick darkness covers my face: Revised Standard Version follows the change made by the Vulgate. The Hebrew has “from my face.” See the Revised Standard Version footnote. Job expresses despair in this line. He suffers from being blinded by the darkness that prevents him from seeing the God he seeks. Good News Translation “Even though darkness has made me blind” translates the same idea as that of Revised Standard Version. Bible en français courant understands that God is the one who has caused Job to be placed in the darkness, and translates verse 17 “However, in spite of the night, I have not kept silent; in spite of the darkness that he makes fall upon me.” Translators may find this a suitable model to follow or may adapt it to say, for example, “In spite of the darkness I have not stopped crying out, even though I can’t see in this dark night.”

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 .