Can you, like him, spread out the skies…? is the final question Elihu asks to remind Job of his frail human condition. Like him, which may also be understood as “with him,” is taken by Good News Translation to mean working with God, alongside God, and so Good News Translation translates “Can you help God…?” Spread out translates a verb meaning “to hammer, beat out, flatten,” and is used in Exodus 39.3; Numbers 16.39, referring to the beating of metal into thin sheets. The related noun is used in Genesis 1.6, where it refers to the “firmament” or “dome” (Good News Translation) of the sky. Spread out or “stretch out” gives a better picture of the process. New English Bible “beat out the vault of the skies, as he does” is less clear than spread out. Skies is the same word translated “clouds” in 35.5. In languages in which spread or “stretch” cannot be used naturally with the skies as object, it may be necessary to shift to an expression like “make” or “create”; for example, “Can you help God create the sky?”

Hard as a molten mirror: mirror translates a word found only here and in Sirach 12.11. A related word occurs in Exodus 38.8. In ancient times mirrors were made of polished bronze, not glass. The word translated molten is used to indicate the formation of a solid mass in verse 10, and rendered as “fast” by Revised Standard Version. New English Bible translates “hard as a mirror of cast metal.” “Cast metal” is metal that has been heated to a liquid, poured into a particular shape, and then hardened while cooling. In Revised Standard Version this line gives a further description of the content of line a, but it may require a verb to make it a separate clause, as in Good News Translation. In some languages molten mirror will have to be expressed differently; for example, “and make it like a mirror” or “and make it shine like glass.”

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 .