complete verse (Job 30:17)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 30:17:

  • Kupsabiny: “My body is hurting till the morning,
    the pain I have never eases.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “At night all my bones hurt, feeling the sensation of piercing needles.
    My painful torture has not stopped.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “At night-time my bones are-throbbing; my pain that I feel does not stop.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “My bones ache during the night,
    and the pain that torments me never stops.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Job 30:17

The night racks my bones is literally “the night pierces my bones from upon me.” In Revised Standard Version The night is taken as the subject and personified as “boring into, piercing” Job’s bones. Another interpretation is that “he,” namely God, does this to Job at night. Dhorme and others render the verb as a passive: “At night my bones are pierced.” As noted above, the Hebrew adds “from upon me,” which the Septuagint does not translate, and neither does Revised Standard Version. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, which nearly always attempts to preserve a form of the Hebrew text, suggests “At night it pierces my bones, they drop from off me,” which may mean “Suffering pierces my bones at night, and they fall off.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch improves on this with “At night pain bores into all my bones, as though they were falling from my body.” No doubt the poet was expressing severe pain in Job’s body through these figures, but it may be necessary to avoid the figures and express the idea in a general way, as does Good News Translation, “At night my bones all ache.”

And the pain that gnaws me takes no rest: that gnaws me is literally “my gnawers.” Some take this to mean the worms in Job’s sores, as in 7.5. A word with similar sounds in Arabic means “veins,” and Dhorme and New English Bible follow this. The Septuagint translates “my nerves.” There is little certainty about the exact meaning of this Hebrew expression. Takes no rest translates a verb meaning “to lie down” for the purpose of sleeping; that is, “to go to bed” or “to sleep.” Here the expression is used figuratively, and Good News Translation translates without a figure of speech: “The pain that gnaws me never stops.” Although “nerves” or “veins” may make a better parallel with bones, that is not sufficient reason to depart from the Hebrew text. In some languages pain that gnaws may have to be expressed differently; for example, “the pain that burns in me does not stop” or “the pain that makes me suffer goes on all night.”

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 .