complete verse (Job 3:9)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 3:9:

  • Kupsabiny: “May the stars of the morning be covered
    and (it/the night) want light (to come) and not receive (it).
    That night should not see the light of dawn,” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “May that morning star give no light.
    May that night be waiting in vain for the early morning light.
    May that night never see the light of dawn.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “The morning-star would had- not -shined that day, and would had- not -become-morning.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “I wish that the stars that shone early in the morning on that day after I was conceived will not shine again.
    I want those stars to have wished in vain for light to shine;
    and that they would not have shone on that day.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Job 3:9

This verse has three lines in Hebrew. The second and third intensify the picture through the use of figurative language. Let the stars of its dawn be dark: the word translated dawn may refer to morning twilight as in 7.4; Psalm 119.147, or to evening twilight as in 24.15; Proverbs 7.9. Since the pronominal reference has been to the night of Job’s conception, it is best to take it that way here. So the meaning is the dawn following the night of conception, and the stars are the planets Venus and Mercury, which can sometimes be seen as the brightest stars in the sky just before sunrise. Job wishes these stars had remained dark so that the day of his birth never would have come round. The translation of the stars of its dawn may be as specific as is customary when the language speaks of the stars that shine at dawn. If specific names are not used to designate these, it will be best to say, for example, “the stars that shine at dawn” or “… before the sun rises.”

Let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning: these two lines are parallel. The personified hope for light is paralleled by the more dramatic figure see the eyelids of the morning. The heightening effect may be translated in English as “Let the morning stars of the night I was conceived not shine, let that night hope to have light, but have none, and do not let the day dawn at all.” In some languages these wishes, which represent already-realized events, will need to be expressed differently to say something like “How I wish the morning star had not shone the night I was conceived.” The personalization of the night hoping may have to be restructured to say, for example, “Let the night become very long without any daylight coming,” “Let the night end without a sunrise,” or “Let the night go on and on without a dawn.” Eyelids of the morning suggests the streaks of light that glow on the eastern horizon as sunrise approaches. This will usually have to be changed into a different figure, or more commonly expressed as a nonfigure. Good News Translation has combined and shortened lines b and c and makes no attempt to show the poetic intensification. And Good News Translation has kept the poetic personalization but done away with the poetic imagery: “give the night no hope of dawn.”

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 .