If I am wicked, woe to me!: in 9.22 Job says that whether he is guilty or innocent, it is all the same to God. He now repeats the same utterance of despair. Job believes it is God’s intention to make him suffer, whether he is wicked or righteous. The exclamation translated woe to me! is found only here and in Micah 7.1, where it is rendered by Revised Standard Version as “Woe is me!” This somewhat archaic exclamation is translated “I’m in trouble with you” in Good News Translation. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy says “I am lost,” Bible en français courant “too bad for me,” and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “it goes badly for me.” If the translator keeps the “if” clause, line a may be expressed in some languages “If I am wicked, pain is mine,” “If I am evil, suffering takes hold of me,” or “If I am bad, trouble awaits me.” Line b gives the contrast: if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head. Being righteous is to act rightly in regard to God and one’s fellow beings, or, as Good News Translation says, “When I do right….” Lift up my head is an expression meaning to have self respect, to be unashamed, or to act with a clear conscience. In Judges 8.28 the Midianites were subdued and therefore “lifted up their heads no more.” In Psalm 83.2 the same expression is taken as a sign of defiance. Some translations express the negative side of shame as in Bible en français courant: “Even if I am innocent (of wrongdoing), I must keep my head bowed.” Biblia Dios Habla Hoy translates “If I am innocent, there is little I can be happy about.” Moffatt says “I must hang my head!” which expresses the Hebrew idiomatically. Good News Translation “get no credit” is less forceful and far less picturable, and is typical of the frequent demetaphorizing in Good News Translation. In many languages it will be appropriate to use a different figure to represent lift up my head to convey the notion of self-respect; for example, “I cannot see with clear eyes” or “I cannot walk a straight path.”

For I am filled with disgrace and look upon my affliction: it is necessary to examine this pair of lines as a unit. Filled with disgrace means “covered with shame,” “dishonored,” “humiliated.” Some scholars delete this line as a gloss (in this case, for example, supposing it was an explanatory remark someone added next to the text). Others, including Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, understand the word translated look upon to mean “saturated, soaked, drunk,” and therefore “I am filled with disgrace and drunk with my affliction.” The word translated filled with means having plenty of food, and its parallel suggests having plenty of drink. There is clearly poetic intensification in the movement from “filled” in the first half line to “drunk” in the second, with the idea “I am not only filled with disgrace, I am even drunk from suffering.” Bible en français courant translates this pair of lines “and I am tipsy with disgrace, drunk with my misery.” The whole expression may also be rendered, for example, “I am dishonored and suffer greatly.” If the receptor language permits, the translator may be able to reflect the intensification in the second half; for example, “I am dizzy with dishonor and drunk with suffering.”

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 .