As in the first unit (verses 7-8), Job again seems to be taunting God by rejecting life and preferring death. So that I would choose strangling is literally “so chooses strangling my soul.” I translates the Hebrew “my nefesh,” which can mean “my soul, throat,” or be used as a substitute for the personal pronoun. The one who chooses is the “soul,” which here is Job. The word translated choose is used in Psalm 84.10 with an additional particle and means “prefer” (Revised Standard Version “I would rather”); and it seems best to understand it here also as “I would prefer strangling” or “I would prefer to be strangled.” In some languages it will be necessary to supply a subject of strangling; for example, “I would prefer to have someone strangle me.” Line b has no verb, and the verb from line a must be used again, which makes line b read “I prefer death rather than my bones.” Job would rather die than go on being like a bag of bones, which Good News Translation renders “miserable body.” Others change a single letter to get “sufferings.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project regards “than my bones” as an “A” reading and suggests a meaning such as “being reduced to a skeleton.” In some languages it is possible to say “And I would rather die than go on suffering” or, if bones is used, “I would rather die than be a pile of bones” or “… than turn into nothing but bones.”

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 .