His young ones suck up blood describes the young birds eating the flesh referred to in the next line. Line a is abrupt, since the blood is not identified until line b; therefore Good News Translation transposes the two lines. The word translated as suck up is found nowhere else in the Old Testament. By adding one letter to the Hebrew word it can be changed to “lick up,” which is the Aramaic equivalent used in 1 Kings 21.19. However, sucking and licking do not express in English the way a bird takes up liquids, and so Good News Translation has “drink.”

And where the slain are, there is he is loosely quoted in Matthew 24.28 and Luke 17.37 as a proverbial saying. This saying may have already been in circulation before Job was written. In Hebrew the line is literally “and where the dead, there he.” The slain refers to corpses of dead persons who have been fatally wounded, as in 24.12. By extension the word came to denote dead people, especially those killed violently, and to corpses which lay unburied on the battlefield, to be eaten by vultures. The line may be expressed “Where the dead bodies are, the vultures gather,” “The vultures come where there are dead bodies,” or “Where there are dead bodies the vultures gather to eat them.”

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 .