The Hebrew in Job 42:6 is translated in the English translation by E.L. Greenstein (2019) as:
That is why I am fed up;
I take pity of “dust and ashes!”
Greenstein explains this unconventional choice (p. XIXff.):
“Job’s response to the deity’s lengthy lecture on his prowess as creator and sustainer of the world — and on Job’s total lack of power and esoteric knowledge — is routinely interpreted as surrender. The verse (Job 42:6) has always stymied translators. The earliest translation, an Aramaic version found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, interprets: ‘Therefore I am poured out and boiled up, and I will become dust.’ The two verbs are parsed entirely differently from the way they are most often understood today. A typical modern translation of Job 42:6 is: ‘Therefore I despise myself (or: recant), and repent in dust and ashes.’
“The first part of this translation is a stretch, and the second part turns out, after advanced investigation, to be highly improbable. The verb in the first clause (mans’) is assumed to be transitive, in need of an object, and the translators supply that object, either explicitly or by implication. Concerning the widespread interpretation as ‘recant,’ it is an invention of the translator — no such usage is attested in ancient Hebrew. It assumes an implicit object, ‘words’ or the like, but no such expression occurs with this sense. Concerning the rendering ‘despise (myself),’ the closest phrase one can find occurs in Job 9:21: ‘I’m fed up with (despise) my life.’ However, the verb in question does not need an object. It occurs intransitively in the sense of ‘I am fed up’ in Job 7:16, where it is often rendered correctly. In other words, there is a very weak foundation in biblical parlance for the common rendering. It stems from the presumption of the translator that Job is repentant.
“The second verb phrase, ordinarily rendered ‘I repent,’ has other well-known usages. An often overlooked one is ‘to take pity, have compassion’ (for example, in Psalm 90:13). Those who translate ‘I repent’ tend to render the following words literally: ‘on dust and ashes.’ They assume that in Biblical Hebrew one can say, ‘I am doing such and such (in the present case, repenting) in / on dust and ashes.’ The assumption is false. An extensive examination of all phrases relating to performing an act in the dust, on the earth, and the like shows that another verb is required: if Job were ‘repenting’ or ‘regretting,’ he would have to be ‘sitting in / standing on / lying in / being in (and so forth) dust and ashes.’ No such complementary verb is found here. We ought therefore to adopt the same meaning for the phrase ‘dust and ashes’ here that we find in its two other occurrences, one in the haggling between Abraham and God concerning the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:27), where the patriarch humbly presents himself as no more than ‘dust and ashes,’ and the other in Job’s characterization of his abasement: ‘making me seem like dust and ashes’ (Job 30:19). The phrase is used figuratively of the wretched human condition.
“In this light, Job, in 42:6, is expressing defiance, not capitulation: ‘That is why I am fed up; I take pity on ‘dust and ashes!’ (= humanity).’ I note as well that in the preceding verses Job is mimicking the deity’s addresses to him from the storm (see there). Mimicry is the quintessence of parody. Parodic as well is Job’s assertion in 42:2: ‘you cannot be blocked from any scheme.’ Job is unmistakably alluding to the disdainful remark the deity makes about the builders of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:7: ‘they will not be blocked from anything they scheme to do.’ Consequently, Job is parodying God, not showing him respect. If God is all about power and not morality and justice, Job will not condone it through acceptance. This response may not accord with the image of a pious, Bontshe the Silent -type Job that most interpreters have wanted to find in this biblical book. However, Job’s defiance, a product of his absolute integrity, is not the only radical or surprising feature of the book in the reading presented and defended here.”
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