Will he then make requital to suit you…?: Elihu has completed his quotation of this imaginary question and now addresses Job directly, wanting to know what Job thinks of it. Make requital translates a verb meaning “to repay, get even, recompense.” The repayment in this context would be punishment, and so Elihu asks “Will God punish him?” To suit you is literally “from with you” and probably means “according to you, in your opinion,” and so Dhorme has “Is it your opinion that he will requite the wrong?”

Because you reject it: it is supplied in Revised Standard Version, but in Hebrew there is no object. The sense may be “since you reject, oppose, dislike what God does.” Dhorme thinks the missing object is “my doctrine or my teaching.” These two lines may be translated, for example, “Since you don’t accept the things God does, do you think God should punish such a person?”

For you must choose, and not I: in other words, “You are the one who has to decide, not me.”

Therefore declare what you know: “Let’s hear what you have to say.” Since Job has expressed his disagreement with the way God handles justice (at least in Job’s case), perhaps Job can tell Elihu how God should govern the world.

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 .