Verse 18, like verse 6, breaks the continuity of the “if” clauses leading up to verse 22, and so Revised Standard Version places it between parentheses.

For from his youth I reared him as a father: as the footnote in Revised Standard Version shows, this verse in Hebrew may be understood as “for from my youth he grew up to me as a father, and from my mother’s womb I guided her.” The expression “he grew up to me as a father” is unclear. The verb translated “grew up” is always intransitive, but in Hebrew the verb contains the suffix meaning “me,” which translates as “to me.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project suggests “he grew up with me.” Supposedly Hebrew Old Testament Text Project can be expressed as “I reared him as his father,” and this is essentially the meaning of Good News Translation. The expression “from my youth” is translated by Good News Translation as “all my life,” which is more general. Good News Translation “taken care of them” refers to the poor, widows, and orphans in verses 16-17. Revised Standard Version, on the other hand, has made a change in “from my youth” to get “from his youth,” referring to the orphan. Translators may follow either Revised Standard Version or Good News Translation; for example, “I have been like a father to him nearly all his life,” “I brought him up like his own father,” or “I have been like a father to them all my life.”

And from his mother’s womb I guided him: Revised Standard Version has made a change from “my mother’s womb” to refer to the womb of the mother of the orphan, meaning “from the birth of the orphan.” Revised Standard Version has also changed “guided her” to guided him, the orphan. It no doubt seems exaggerated to say, as the Hebrew does, that Job took care of widows from the time he was born; but it is not unlikely that he was taught to do this in his earliest training. It is then possible to keep the Hebrew text without change and say, for example, “and I have always taken care of widows.” Translators who follow the Hebrew as it stands produce quite different renderings of this verse. For those who have to reduce parallelism, Good News Translation provides an adequate translation model. For others Good News Translation will appear too abbreviated. A better model may be Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, which keeps the parallel lines: “I have always treated the orphan as if I were his father; I have always been a defender of widows.”

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 .