Eliphaz describes the presence of the mysterious form as being silent and hidden. Verse 16 has two sets of two lines in which only the first lines of each pair are parallel in meaning.

It stood still translates the Hebrew “It stood.” The subject It is a prefix on the Hebrew verb that requires a masculine antecedent, which may eliminate “spirit” from the previous verse, since this noun is normally feminine. It is no doubt the intention of the author to leave the reader wondering, because a visible visit from God would, in Old Testament terms, result in the death of the viewer. For this reason Eliphaz is kept from recognizing the form it took. Translators will not always be able to use ambiguity to get around this point. Good News Translation renders the indefinite subject as “something,” “I could see something standing there,” and does this by incorporating line a of the second pair of lines into line a of the first pair.

I could not discern its appearance: the word translated appearance and also the word form in the next line are used only of God’s appearance to Moses in Numbers 12.8. A form was before my eyes: the poet is using repetition to create suspense before coming to the message that was spoken. The form is something visible, but it represents something other than itself. The Hebrew word is tamuna, and Israelites were forbidden to make tamuna of their deity in Exodus 20.4. Moses alone was allowed to see the tamuna of God. In some languages it may be necessary to reverse the two lines to say, for example, “I could see a shape but could not tell what it was” or “I could make out a form but could not see clearly to know what it was.”

There was silence: the silence before the voice spoke is used in Psalm 107.29 as the silence before a storm breaks. The idea is that a hush precedes and at the same time prepares for the frightening words that will be spoken. In translation it may be necessary to say, for example, “everything became silent” or “there was no noise anywhere.”

Then I heard a voice: Eliphaz’s description of his vision began in verse 12 with something audible, “a word was brought to me.” Now the vision will close with the hearing of the actual words. So the poetic effect has been moved from the abstract “word” in verse 12 to the concrete voice in verse 16. The voice finally comes as the climax of a series of images: nightmare, terror, stupor, a breeze against the face, vague shapes, and then at last a speaking voice. Eliphaz makes no claim as to whose voice it is. Translators who are translating this Hebrew poetry as prose will do well to follow the model of Good News Translation. Those who are translating it as poetry should try to avoid creating more ambiguity than the author did. A compromise solution may be something like this: “Something was standing there, but I could not tell what it was. I could see a shape; then, everything was hushed and I heard a voice ask:….”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .