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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 4:12 - 4:12
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
12 And a word reached me stealthily,
And my ear heard a whisper thereof.
13 In the play of thought, in visions of the night,
When deep sleep falleth on men,
14 Fear came upon me, and trembling;
And it caused the multitude of my bones to quake with fear.
15 And a breathing passed over my face;
16 It stood there, and I discerned not its appearance:
An image was before my eyes;
A gentle murmur, and I heard a voice.
The fut. יְגֻגָּב, like Jdg 2:1; Psa 80:9, is ruled by the following fut. consec.: ad me furtim delatum est (not deferebatur). Eliphaz does not say אֵלַי וַיְגֻנַּב (although he means a single occurrence), because he desires, with pathos, to put himself prominent. That the word came to him so secretly, and that he heard only as it were a whisper (שָׁמַץ, according to Arnheim, in distinction from שָׁמַע, denotes a faint, indistinct impression on the ear), is designed to show the value of such a solemn communication, and to arouse curiosity. Instead of the prosaic מִמֶּנִוּ, we find here the poetic pausal-form מֶנְהוּ expanded from מֶנּוּ, after the form מֶנִּי, Job 21:16; Psa 18:23. מִן is partitive: I heard only a whisper, murmur; the word was too sacred and holy to come loudly and directly to his ear. It happened, as he lay in the deep sleep of night, in the midst of the confusion of thought resulting from nightly dreams. שְׂעִפִּים (from שְׂעִיף, branched) are thoughts proceeding like branches from the heart as their root, and intertwining themselves; the מִן which follows refers to the cause: there were all manner of dreams which occasioned the thoughts, and to which they referred (comp. Job 33:15); תַּרְדֵּמָה, in distinction from שֵׁנָה, sleep, and תְּנוּמָה, slumber, is the deep sleep related to death and ecstasy, in which man sinks back from outward life into the remotest ground of his inner life. In Job 4:14, קְרָאַנִי, from קָרָא = קָרָה, to meet (Ges. §75, 22), is equivalent to קָרָנִי (not קְרָנִי, as Hirz., first edition, wrongly points it; comp. Gen 44:29). The subject of הִפְחִיד is the undiscerned ghostlike something. Eliphaz was stretched upon his bed when רוּחַ, a breath of wind, passed (חָלַף( dessap, similar to Isa 21:1) over his face. The wind is the element by means of which the spirit-existence is made manifest; comp. 1Ki 19:12, where Jehovah appears in a gentle whispering of the wind, and Act 2:2, where the descent of the Holy Spirit is made known by a mighty rushing. רוּחַ, πνεῦμα, Sanscrit âtma, signifies both the immaterial spirit and the air, which is proportionately the most immaterial of material things.
(Note: On wind and spirit, vid., Windischmann, Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgesch. S. 1331ff.)
His hair bristled up, even every hair of his body; סִמֵּר, not causative, but intensive of Kal. יַעֲמֹד has also the ghostlike appearance as subject. Eliphaz could not discern its outline, only a תְמוּנָה, imago quaedam (the most ethereal word for form, Num 12:8; Psa 17:15, of μορφή or δόξα of God), was before his eyes, and he heard, as it were proceeding from it, רָקֹל דְּמָמָה, i.e., per hendiadyn: a voice, which spoke to him in a gentle, whispering tone, as follows: