They open shafts in a valley away from where men live: verse 4, like verse 3, has three lines. However, verse 4 is unclear. The translator need only compare King James Version‘s rendering with Good News Translation to see how two translations based on the Hebrew text as it stands can differ. King James Version has “The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant; (even the waters) forgotten of the foot: they are dried up, they are gone away from men.” Some scholars have found this verse to be almost meaningless, and New American Bible omits it. The literal Hebrew of line a is approximately “One opens a valley from with a sojourner.” The Hebrew for “valley” probably refers here to a mine shaft, tunnel, or, as Hebrew Old Testament Text Project suggests, “gorge.” Revised Standard Version seems to translate this word as both shaft and valley. Dhorme and others change the expression translated away from where men live to get “a foreign people,” which is then used as the subject: “A foreign people has pierced shafts.” Good News Translation does not make any change in the text, but expresses away from where men live as an adverbial clause placed at the beginning: “Far from where anyone lives….” It is possible to keep the Hebrew as it stands and translate “They dig mine tunnels far away from where people live,” or “Miners dig mine shafts in remote places,” or “In isolated places people dig for precious metals.”
They are forgotten by travelers is literally “they are forgotten by the foot.” This line is usually taken to mean that the people who pass by above these mine tunnels or shafts are unaware of what lies beneath their path, but it may also mean “people never pass by there” due to the extreme isolation. It is in this sense that Good News Translation translates its second line, “Or human feet ever travel”; this may also be expressed as “No one ever travels that way” or “Travelers don’t even know what is there.”
They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro: this line is commonly interpreted as referring to clinging to a rope while being lowered into the mine. Good News Translation has placed part of line a at this point, making it the first verb phrase, “Men dig the shafts of mines,” and has made two lines of line c so that it ends up with five lines. Afar from men repeats the thought away from where men live in line a. They hang … they swing … may be misunderstood if deep shaft mining is unknown to the reader. One restructuring which may be useful is shown in Bible en français courant, “They open tunnels beyond the inhabited places. Far from humans, in inaccessible places, the miners swing back and forth, suspended by ropes.” Another sense suggested by Hebrew Old Testament Text Project is that the word translated “valley” refers to a “gorge,” and the two verbs in line c depict a miner suspended by a rope, high above the bottom of the gorge, against one of the rocky walls in which the galleries are cut. Good News Translation has made this clearer with “clinging to ropes in the pits.” Without doubt verse 4 will require some restructuring in many languages. Translators may follow the model of Good News Translation or, if Bible en français courant is followed, they must be careful not to give the impression that the miners have been executed by hanging from a rope. Accordingly it should be made clear that these miners are either lowered by ropes into the mine or are suspended by ropes while they dig into the walls of the mine shaft. For example, “They dig out the ore while suspended by ropes that swing back and forth.”
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 .