Verse 2 is introductory and requires verses 3 and 4 to complete the thought.
As God lives, who has taken away my right begins literally “As ʾEl lives” or “ʾEl is alive” and is the formula used in swearing an oath that what the speaker says is true. Note that the use of the name Yahweh is avoided in the oath. The thought expressed is “What I say is just as true as the truth that God is alive.” In English the equivalent is “I swear by God.” Taken away translates a verb meaning “remove,” but with the object my right, it has the sense of denying Job access to justice, and so New Jerusalem Bible “denies me justice,” or Good News Translation and others “refuse me justice.” Right translates the term which often means “judgment” and refers here to what is “right and just.” The same noun is used in 8.3, where Revised Standard Version translates it “justice.” Good News Translation has transposed Shaddai from b to line a and rendered the oath formula as “I swear by the living Almighty God.” Because of the nature of the grammatical relations and the links in meaning in verses 2, 3, and 4, it may be necessary to adjust the order of some of the elements. For example, As God lives is followed in the rest of verse 2 by actions that God has taken against Job. Verse 3 has two conditions which accompany the oath and the content of the oath comes in verse 4. Therefore in some languages it may be clearer to shift the opening words As God lives in verse 2a to verse 4. In this case verse 2 can begin, for example, “God has not allowed me to have justice,” “God has prevented me from getting fair treatment,” or “God has not treated me fairly.”
And the Almighty, who made my soul bitter: Almighty translates Shaddai which is parallel with ʾEl in line a. Job has spoken of the bitterness of his nefesh “soul” in 7.11 and 10.1. This bitterness or resentment is caused by God’s refusal to hear his case. Good News Translation has transferred “who refuses me justice” from line a and joined it with “and makes my life bitter” so that the two actions are made coordinate verb phrases. If the translator wishes to keep the two lines closer to the Hebrew form, he may translate, for example, “I swear by God who denies me justice, and who makes me feel bitter” or “… fills me with resentment.” Good News Translation ends verse 2 with a dash, “—,” showing that something is to follow. This line may also be rendered “Because of what the Almighty has done to me, I resent it,” or idiomatically sometimes, “The Almighty has made me bitter in my innermost” or “The Almighty has made my liver sour.”
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 .