complete verse (Job 13:28)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 13:28:

  • Kupsabiny: “So, I have become a rotten piece of wood,
    and I am torn to pieces like a cloth eaten by a termite.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “So I am perishing like rotten things
    and like cloth eaten by moths.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “Therefore I am like a rotten thing that rots or like a cloth being-eaten by an insect.’” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “As a result, my body is decaying like [SIM] rotten wood,
    like a piece of cloth that is eaten by larvae of moths.’” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Job 13:28

In verse 28 there is a sudden switch to third person, and many translators do not believe verse 28 fits after verse 27. Accordingly they move it elsewhere: after 14.2a, 14.3, or 14.6; some put it after 13.24, while a few delete it. Good News Translation and Revised Standard Version keep it in its place, and translators should to do the same.

Man wastes away like a rotten thing: Hebrew begins with an emphatic “He” or “It.” By translating Man Revised Standard Version has attempted to represent the third person, but without some further adjustment it does not fit the context. Accordingly some modern translations shift to the first person and make a linkage with verse 27: Good News Translation “As a result I crumble like rotten wood”; Bible en français courant “But my life falls apart like rotten wood”; Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “Therefore I am falling apart like rotten wood.” On the whole it seems better for translators to make this kind of adaptation than to shift the verse to a new location. It may be advisable to provide a note in some translations to say “Hebrew says ‘He.’ ”

Like a garment that is moth-eaten: a similar expression is used in Isaiah 50.9. This line may be rendered, for example, “like clothes that have been chewed by moths” or “like clothes that moths have been eating.” The moth is used here as something that destroys silently, slowly, and surely. This image fits with the slow wasting away of man in line a. The female moth lays its eggs in woolen material, and it is the larvae that feed on the wool, not the adult moth.

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 .