What Does Job 18:11 Mean?
Terrors startle him on every side, and scatter him at his feet.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.THE KEY
Terror closes in from every side, then scatters him, the verse moves from enclosure to disorientation.
THE MEANING
Fear can occupy the whole field of vision and press the body into motion. In this image, no direction feels safe and there is no settled footing.
THE ROOT
בִּעֲתוּהוּ
biʿatuhu
GROWS FROM
ב־ע־ת
b-ʿ-t
to startle, alarm, or terrify
“make him afraid” in this verse is biʿatuhu. The act of terrifying and the noun for terrors grow from the same root. English separates the action from its result, while Hebrew holds together the force that terrifies and the dread it names.
ALSO GROWS
tevaʿatanni: you terrify me
תְּבַעֲתַנִּי
Job 7:14 uses this root for terror that seizes a person through dreams and visions.
biʿutekha: your terrors
בִּעוּתֶיךָ
Psalm 88:16 turns the same root into a noun: what terrifies becomes the terrors that cut the speaker off.
וְהֱפִיצֻהוּ
wĕhēp̄îṣuhû
GROWS FROM
פוץ
pûṣ
to scatter or disperse
“scatter him” in this verse is wĕhēp̄îṣuhû. This root carries the image of scattering, adding a sense of lost direction to the movement in the verse. With terrors all around, the person is not simply startled; he is driven out of any settled place.
ALSO GROWS
yafutsu: let them be scattered
יָפֻצוּ
Numbers 10:35 uses this root for enemies being scattered, showing movement away from cohesion or a gathered place.
nafuts: be scattered
נָפוּץ
Genesis 11:4 uses the root for people dispersed across the earth, echoing the loss of a single place to stand.
THE PATTERN
Fear becomes total when it occupies every direction and hour and unsettles the body’s sense of steadiness.
They circle me like waters all day long; they close around me together.People breathing out their living souls from fear in their hearts, and from watching for what is coming upon the inhabited earth, for the strength of the heavens will be shaken.THE THREAD
Your burning passes over me; your terrors have cut me off.Job’s verb translated “make him afraid” comes from ב־ע־ת (b-ʿ-t); the Psalm’s word for “terrors,” בִּעוּתֶיךָ (biʿutekha), comes from that same root. Hebrew keeps the act of being terrified and the terrors themselves in one word-family, a connection the English wording conceals.
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