What is the way to the place where the light is distributed…?: this line has the same wording in Hebrew as in verse 19a, except for the verb is distributed. The sense of the line is unclear in Revised Standard Version. What is the way inquires how to find, and it is better rendered in English as “Where is?” “How does one get to?” “How does one find?” The Hebrew word translated as light has been changed in many different ways to produce a line that is more clearly parallel with the next line. Dhorme and others change light to get “mist.” Good News Translation understands light to refer to the sun, and then translates is distributed as “comes up.” This may be the intention of the poet, but the Hebrew does not suggest it. New International Version may be closer by taking light to refer to “lightning,” as was the case in 36.30 and 32, “What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,” that is, “sent out.” The line may also be rendered as “Do you know how to find the place where I send out the lightning?” or “Do you know how to go to where I cause the lightning to flash?”

Or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth has given rise to numerous proposals for change to make this line more parallel with line a, but no such changes are necessary. East wind translates the same word as in 15.2 and 27.21. The reference is to the scorching winds that blow across the desert from the east. Scattered translates the Hebrew, but in English the action of the wind normally scatters objects in its path, and the action itself is expressed as “to blow.” Therefore Good News Translation has “or the place from which the east wind blows?” East wind should be translated to show the direction from which the wind blows; that is, “Or where the wind blows from the east,” or “blows out of the east,” or “blows from east to west.”

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 .