What Does Job 39:20 Mean?
Can you make him quake like the locust? The splendor of his snorting is terror.
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
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible.THE KEY
The word rendered “afraid” shares its Hebrew root with “earthquake,” making the horse’s fear a force visible in the body.
THE MEANING
The question reaches you as a limit: you cannot summon this horse’s force by command. Its snorting carries majesty and dread together, while the word rendered “afraid” carries the sense of shaking. The creature’s power is visible in its body, but it is not yours to author.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that command can manufacture the force it handles.
THE ROOT
תַּרְעִישֶׁנּוּ
tar'ishennu
GROWS FROM
רעש
To shake or quake; in this form, to make him shake.
“quake” in this verse is tar'ishennu. The verb rendered “afraid” carries the force of shaking, giving fear an outward, bodily register. The same root names an earthquake, placing the horse’s trembling in the same word family as the ground’s upheaval.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ash: Earthquake; shaking or tumult.
רַעַשׁ
This noun shows the ground-shaking force inside the verb rendered “afraid.”
hir'ish: To cause to shake or quake.
הִרְעִישׁ
This causative form shares the verse’s action: the question is whether a person can set that force in motion.
THE PATTERN
A force beyond human command becomes visible through the shaking or thunderous movement it sets loose.
Do you give the horse strength? Do you clothe his neck with thunder?He gazes on the earth, and it quakes; he touches the mountains, and they smoke.whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”THE THREAD
And he said, "Go out, and stand on the mountain before the face of the LORD." And behold, the LORD crossed over, and a great and strong breath split the mountains and shattered the rocks before the face of the LORD. But the LORD was not in the breath; and after the breath, a quaking; but the LORD was not in the quaking.The word translated “earthquake” is רַעַשׁ (ra’ash, “shaking”), from the same root as the verb rendered “afraid” here. The shared word family lets the horse’s terror register with the physical force of the ground’s upheaval.
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