Job 14:14 (KJV and NWT 2013)

A man has asked me why Job 14:14 (KJV) reads, "If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come." Yet NWT 2013 says, "If a man dies, can he live again? I will wait all the days of my compulsory service Until my relief comes."

So the issue for him is "change" versus "relief." Byington renders the passage: "If a man dies will he come to life? I would wait all the time I had to serve till my relief came;"

He also uses "relief" as opposed to "change."

NET Bible: "If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait until my release comes."

Footnote: tn The construction is the same as that found in the last verse: a temporal preposition עַד (ʿad) followed by the infinitive construct followed by the subjective genitive “release/relief.” Due, in part, to the same verb (חָלַף, khalaf) having the meaning “sprout again” in v. 7, some take “renewal” as the meaning here (J. E. Hartley, Alden, NIV, ESV).

Robert Alter (Hebrew Bible): "If a man dies will he live? All my hard service days I shall hope until my vanishing comes"

Alter's Comment on 14:14: until my vanishing comes. Some understand ḥalifati as “my relief,” but the primary sense of the verbal root is to be gone or slip away, with “change” as a secondary sense. Perhaps the poet is playing on both meanings of the term. See the comment on 10:17.

Comment on Job 10:17 in Alter: vanishings and hard service are mine. This entire clause is one of the notable puzzles in Job. The second of the two nouns is the same word used at the beginning of chapter 7 (and rendered there, because of the immediate context, as “fixed service”). The first noun, ḥalifot, derives from a verb that means “to slip away,” “to vanish,” or “to change.” What Job may be saying is that his existence has become durance vile (“hard service”) in which everything he would cling to slips between his fingers (“vanishings”).