What Does Job 4:14 Mean in the King James?
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops.But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.THE THREAD
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed 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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