What Does Job 4:14 Mean?
Fear met me, and trembling, which made all my bones come apart.
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
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.THE KEY
The Hebrew names fear twice: it first arrives, then the same root says it terrifies the bones.
THE MEANING
Dread meets you with force, and your body carries it as trembling that reaches the bones. The verse gives bodily fear its full weight instead of reducing it to a thought.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the idea that fear is only a thought: here it reaches the bones and becomes bodily shaking.
THE ROOT
פַּחַד
pachad
GROWS FROM
פחד
To dread, be terrified.
The Hebrew closes the verse by returning to this same root in a causative form: dread arrives, then fear itself terrifies the bones. The English shows the bodily result as shaking, while the Hebrew keeps the fear-root active through the whole movement.
ALSO GROWS
pachad: Dread, terror.
פַּחַד
This is the verse’s first naming of fear, presented as something that comes upon you.
hifhid: To terrify, cause fear.
הִפְחִיד
The same root returns in a causative form, carrying dread into the bones.
THE PATTERN
Dread is portrayed as a force that enters the body and appears as trembling, quivering, or fear.
Fear and trembling come upon me, and shuddering covers me.When I heard and responded, my belly trembled; my lips shook at the voice. Rot entered my bones, and beneath me I trembled, so that I might rest in the day of the narrow place. When he comes up against the people, he will cut into them with his troops.But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.THE THREAD
Fear and trembling come upon me, and shuddering covers me.Psalm 55:5 repeats both Hebrew words in Job’s pairing: פַּחַד (pachad, dread) and רְעָדָה (re’adah, trembling). The shared words show fear arriving as a bodily force in both verses; Job carries the image as far as the bones.
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