As for you, you whitewash with lies: As for you translates the same contrastive conjunction used in verse 3. Here it serves to shift the focus from God in verse 3 to you (plural). Whitewash with lies translates “plasterers of lies” and is similar to Psalm 119.69 “The godless besmear me with lies” (Revised Standard Version). Whitewash is lime mixed with water and is used for painting on walls to make them white and cover ugly rough surfaces. (See Matt 23.27; Acts 23.3, “whitewashed tombs.”) Here the lies are the whitewash that conceals the truth. In English the expression “whitewash” is used to say that something ugly and distasteful has been covered up to improve its appearance. In this case Job pictures the friends as disturbed by the ugly truth, and thus they attempt to hide, or cover, it with lies, as one uses whitewash. Job’s friends are depicted as “falsehood-plasterers,” meaning they have covered over the truth with a coating of lies, and so Good News Translation has “You cover up your ignorance (of the truth) with lies.” This may also be rendered, for example, “You tell lies to hide the truth” or “You hide what you don’t understand by telling lies.”

Worthless physicians are you all: this line should be seen as parallel in meaning to the previous line. Job accuses his friends of covering the truth with lies in line a, and in line b of being healers with worthless medicines. Job’s friends who came to give him comfort and healing are failures. This is the sense of Good News Translation “like doctors who can’t heal anyone.” Another interpretation is that the word physicians is to be read “patchers,” and so “worthless patchers” who try to cover up the tears in a garment. New English Bible “stitching a patchwork of lies” follows this sense, which makes the two lines similar in meaning. Although nearly all translations follow Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, the understanding of New English Bible is likewise possible, but the first is more likely. This line may be translated, for example, “You are like doctors who treat the sick with bad medicines,” “You are false doctors unable to cure the sick,” or “You give out medicines that will cure no one.”

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 .