Job continues to cry out but gets no response. This verse is exceedingly difficult, and translators and commentators interpret it in various ways. Both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation margins indicate that the Hebrew is unclear. Pope says it is one of the most difficult in the entire poem.

Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand: the first problem is the subject of stretch out his hand. In Good News Translation the subject is “you,” referring to God. In Revised Standard Version it is Job himself. Both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation understand one in a heap of ruins to be Job describing his own condition, which Good News Translation renders “a ruined man.” Stretch out his hand is a phrase used in Genesis 37.22, in which Reuben warns his brothers to “lay no hand upon” Joseph to do him harm. Good News Translation, Dhorme, Pope, and many others interpret this expression as meaning “to do harm,” and so Good News Translation “Why do you attack?” On the other hand Revised Standard Version and some others understand it to mean “to obtain help.” Furthermore the word translated heap of ruins is interpreted by many, including Dhorme, to mean “poor man,” and so Dhorme translates “I (Job) did not strike the poor man with my hand,” and New Jerusalem Bible “Yet have I ever laid a hand on the poor?”

And in his disaster cry for help: this line seems to state the conditions for the question or statement made in the previous line. Most modern translators make a change in the words translated cry for help. Good News Translation is close to Revised Standard Version in “beg for pity.” In both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation Job speaks of himself indirectly, as in Bible en français courant “In distress, doesn’t one cry out for help?” Bible en français courant has a note saying “Verse obscure, meaning uncertain.” Dhorme changes the text to say “If in his distress he cried out for my help,” referring to the same person as in the first line. Translators appear to be divided into two groups: (1) those who depict Job as defending himself for not harming the unfortunate person who called out for help; and (2) those like Revised Standard Version who depict Job justifying his pleas for help in the midst of his suffering. In the light of the following verse, it is preferable to follow the first group and translate, for example, “I never did anything to harm a person who was suffering, and who called out to me in his troubles.”

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 .