complete verse (Job 4:14)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 4:14:

  • Kupsabiny: “I was startled and trembled a lot
    until my whole body shook in fear.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Being afraid I trembled,
    my bones shook.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “I became-afraid and my whole body trembled.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Job 4:14

Dread came upon me, and trembling: dread and trembling describe the mental and physical reaction of Eliphaz to his nightmarish revelation. The parallelism shows a change from the mental emotion of being terrorized to the picturable trembling of the entire body. Dread translates a Hebrew term used also in Genesis 15.12, when Abraham went into a deep sleep. It is the same term used in Job 3.25. Job there experienced it only as terror, “the thing that I fear.” For Eliphaz it is associated with revelation. Came upon me in Hebrew means to confront or to meet up with. It is used in that sense in Numbers 23.3, where Balaam tells Balak “Perhaps the LORD will come to meet me.”

Which made all my bones shake: the implication is that, as a result of the trembling, Eliphaz’s entire body shook with fear. Bones is a typical poetic usage of a part of the body for the whole body. Shake translates a form of the Hebrew word translated dread in line a. The meaning of the full expression is “My whole body shook with fear,” as in Good News Translation. In some languages physical and emotional states act grammatically as agents, so that we can say, for example, “Terror and trembling took hold of me” or “Fear and trembling caught me by the throat.”

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 .

textual location of Job 4:12-21

According to the Job translation by Greenstein (2019), Job 4:12-21 should be located following Job 3:26. He explains:

“For many reasons the passage 4:12-21 should be read here, right after chapter 3, as the conclusion of Jobs opening speech. One may suppose that two pages of ancient papyrus or parchment containing the two equal halves of chapter 4 were accidentally interchanged in the course of the text’s transmission. In an oft-compared Babylonian composition about a pious sufferer (“I Shall Praise the Lord of Wisdom”) it is the complainant, not the would-be sage, who experiences a divine revelation. It is also Job the sufferer, not his companions, who receives a theophany near the end of the book. More important, in the ensuing chapters both Eliphaz and Job refer to Jobs claim to have enjoyed a revelation. Further, Eliphaz (in chapter 15) and Bildad (in chapter 25) cite the words of the revelation as Jobs, and Elihu, who engages only with the arguments of Job, quotes from it (33:15).”