The pattern of this verse is unusual. Instead of the usual two lines of equal length, which are normal in Job, the first half of the Hebrew text has three sentences of two words each. The second half consists of a line of the normal length. The clue to the pattern of parallelism in the first half of the verse consists of the balancing of forget and no longer remembered. But this leaves the middle section of the first part disconnected from the other two. So in order to make two lines of average length in the first half of the verse, in place of the three short lines, Revised Standard Version distributes the three lines into two.

The squares of the town forget them: the Revised Standard Version footnote indicates that the Hebrew is obscure. The Hebrew has “the womb forgets him,” and Revised Standard Version has changed the word for “womb” and the following word to get The squares of the town, meaning “the centers of the towns.” This change does not seem necessary. Dhorme keeps the Hebrew and translates “The womb which has formed him forgets him,” which Good News Translation translates more naturally as “Not even his mother remembers him now.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project supports this. In some languages it will be more meaningful to express “mother” as “the one who gave birth to him.”

Their name is no longer remembered is literally “the worm sucks on him and he is not remembered.” Aside from Exodus 16.24 and Job 25.6, the word rendered “worm” in Hebrew is always used with dead or decaying bodies, so Good News Translation has “he is eaten by worms…,” the reason being that he is dead. Their name is a change based on the word for “worm” and is preferred by Dhorme. Revised Standard Version has made one line of what can also be read as two lines in the Hebrew. Good News Translation does not repeat no longer remembered. This line may be translated without any change, as suggested by Good News Translation and others; for example, “worms eat his corpse” or “his dead body is eaten by worms (maggots).”

So wickedness is broken like a tree: this line is a summary statement of the preceding thoughts. Revised Standard Version makes no textual changes. Good News Translation takes wickedness to be the same subject as in the two preceding lines. Broken like a tree is at best a vague simile; only certain kinds of trees can be described as broken. Therefore Good News Translation translates more meaningfully “destroyed like a fallen tree.” This line may also be expressed “he is destroyed like a tree that is cut down,” or “like a tree he is cut down,” or “they destroy him in the same way as they cut down a tree and destroy it.”

In Revised Standard Version verse 20 concludes Job’s quoting the friends. Verses 21-25 in Revised Standard Version are Job’s own words.

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 .

In Job 24:20 the Masoretic Text is very obscure and difficult to understand. It contains a reference to rimah. Revised Standard Version supports a correction of the Hebrew text, changing rimah “maggot” to shemo “his name”. However, many commentators and most modern English versions interpret the verse without making this change and have wording similar to:

The womb [that is, his mother] forgets him,
And worms feast on him [or, suck him dry].
Thus are evil men forgotten,
like broken trees.

Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators)