complete verse (Job 7:9)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 7:9:

  • Kupsabiny: “As a cloud climbs/moves up and disappears,
    people also die and they are completely forgotten.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “As clouds scatter and disappear,
    so those who go to grave will never come back again.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “As a dark-cloud vanishes and no-longer can-be-seen, the (one-who) dies does not return anymore.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Job 7:9 - 7:10

The second unit opens, as did the first, with a generalized observation. Verse 9 is a simile in which a person who dies and goes down into Sheol is compared to a vanishing cloud. As the cloud fades and vanishes: Hosea 13.3 uses similar images, with mist, dew, and smoke to represent how temporary those things are which fade away. Fades does not refer to the gradual loss of color but to the gradual dispersion of the drifting cloud. Vanishes refers to the final stage of fading so that the cloud is no longer visible.

So he who goes down to Sheol does not come up: Sheol was believed to be beneath the earth. In 1 Samuel 28.15 Samuel complained of Saul’s disturbing him by “bringing him up.” In 10.21 Sheol is a place from which the dead do not return, a land of gloom and darkness. It is the place where all living beings go after death. It may be more natural to place the comparison after the thing compared; for example, “A person dies and does not come back again; he is like a cloud that fades and disappears” or “After a person dies he does not live again; he is like a cloud that fades away and vanishes.”

He returns no more to his house: this line simply repeats with a little more detail the end of verse 9b, he … does not come up, and is omitted by Good News Translation. Nor does his place know him any more: place refers to the people where he lived. They do not know him, in the sense that the memory of him vanishes, and so Good News Translation says “he is forgotten.” We may sometimes translate “The people who knew him forget him,” “He is forgotten by his relatives,” or “Those where he lived soon forget him.”

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 .