In these two parallel lines Job is saying that he understands (tastes) the flavor of his suffering, even if they cannot. Is there any wrong on my tongue?: wrong is the same word as in 29a. On my tongue is matched in the next line by taste, or more literally, “palate.” Job is not inquiring if what he has said might be wrong, but rather if his friends think he has lost the taste of injustice. He is emphatically denying that he has said anything untrue, and Good News Translation, which avoids the images of tongue and taste, says “But you think I am lying.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch implies lying by translating “I do not go too far with my words,” and Biblia Dios Habla Hoy has “Do you think I am a liar?” In some languages there are figurative expressions which can be used to preserve something of the poetic impact of line a; for example, “Does my tongue speak false words?” or “Is my mouth a crooked path? Certainly not!”

Cannot my taste discern calamity?: just as his tongue is incapable of lying, so his palate is incapable of being mistaken about the nature of his misfortune. The mouth with its tongue and palate are used in different ways; in line a the tongue is associated with speech, and in line b the palate with taste. Discern means to understand, discriminate, or distinguish between things that are different. For calamity see 6.2. In some languages this verse can be rendered figuratively as “Do you think I cannot feel (taste, smell, see) misfortune?”

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 .