complete verse (Job 41:20)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 41:20:

  • Kupsabiny: “Smoke wells up from its nostrils,
    like the vapor of a pot that is bubbling.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Smoke comes out from his nostrils like
    what comes welling up [from] a cauldron set on the fire.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “and smoke comes-out of his nose like the smoke in the boiling pot that has a blazing firewood.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Job 41:20

Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke: nostrils translates a word that occurs only here but is based on the root rendered “snorting” in 39.20. Where fire and sparks come from his mouth, now smoke is said to come from his nostrils: “Smoke pours out of his snout.”

As from a boiling pot and burning rushes: the second line is more complex. Revised Standard Version, New International Version, and Good News Translation all translate the Hebrew text but reach somewhat different results, since a literal translation would give “like a blown pot of rushes.” In Jeremiah 1.13 “a boiling pot” is literally “a blown pot,” suggesting that it means a pot under which the flame is blown so that its contents boil from the increased heat. Revised Standard Version interprets the rushes as burning rushes, while Good News Translation describes the smoke pouring out of Leviathan’s nose as being “like smoke from weeds,” in which “weeds” represents a shift to a more general term. In Good News Translation these weeds are said to be “burning under the pot.” This is not a very close translation of the Hebrew. New International Version apparently likens the smoke from Leviathan’s nostrils to the vapor “from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.” This represents the Hebrew more closely than either Revised Standard Version or Good News Translation, but it is doubtful whether the reeds are really part of the picture in the writer’s mind. A more satisfactory translation is “Smoke pours forth from his snout as from a boiling cooking pot.”

New English Bible and New Jerusalem Bible change the Hebrew word translated as rushes to a word not found elsewhere, which they understand to mean “hot, boiling,” on the basis of a similar Arabic word. This is evidently how the Hebrew was understood by the translators of the Vulgate. So New Jerusalem Bible has “like a cauldron boiling on the fire,” with a literal translation in a footnote: “like a heated and boiling cauldron.” New English Bible has “like a cauldron on a fire blown to full heat.” In view of the support from the Vulgate and the clear sense given by this change, it is best to follow New Jerusalem Bible in translating verse 20b.

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 .