With verse 3 Bildad shifts from scolding Job to instructing him, and begins his discourse on God’s justice with a pair of parallel rhetorical questions whose meanings are about the same. Does God pervert justice?: Bildad blames Job for accusing God of not being just, because Job insists that he is innocent. Even if he has sinned, Job demands that God leave him in peace, because his time to live is so short (7.20-21). In Bildad’s view God can only act fairly. The word translated pervert means “to bend or distort” and is used of falsifying scales in Amos 8.5. Good News Translation “twist” applies well in English when used with “justice.” Justice or judgment refers not only to the act of judging but also to what is right. If the rhetorical question must be answered in translation, the reply will be “No.” It may be necessary to shift to a negative statement, “God does not pervert justice!” Pervert in the sense used here may sometimes be rendered, for example, “God does things in the right way,” or “God judges things straight,” or sometimes idiomatically, “When God judges people he does not do it with two mouths.”

Or does the Almighty pervert the right?: this line expresses the same thought as the previous line. In line a God translates ʾEl, and in line b Almighty translates Shaddai. Almighty is discussed in 5.17. Instead of a word with similar meaning being used to replace pervert in line b, the same Hebrew verb is repeated. Right translates the Hebrew tsedeq and in this context has the same meaning as justice. Because the two parallel lines are so close in meaning, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy condenses the two into one by saying “God, the Almighty, never twists justice nor the right.”

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 .