Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 4:15
Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:
15. then a spirit ] Rather, a breath. It was something which he felt; that which he saw follows in Job 4:16. The word spirit does not seem used in the Old Testament in the sense of an apparition.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Then a spirit passed before my face – He does not intimate whether it was the spirit of a man, or an angel who thus appeared. The belief in such apparitions was common in the early ages, and indeed has prevailed at all times. No one can demonstrate that God could not communicate his will in such a manner as this, or by a messenger deputed from his immediate presence to impart valuable truth to people.
The hair of my flesh stood up – This is an effect which is known often to be produced by fear. Sometimes the hair is made to turn white almost in an instant, as an effect of sudden alarm; but usually the effect is to make it stand on end. Seneca uses language remarkably similar to this in describing the effect of fear, in Hercule Oetoeo:
Vagus per artus errat excussos tremor;
Erectus horret crinis. Impulsis adhuc
Star terror animis. et cor attonitum salit,
Pavidumque trepidis palpitat venis jecur.
So Virgil,
Steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit.
Aeneid ii. 774.
See also Aeneid iii. 48, iv. 289. So also Aeneid xii. 868:
Arrectaeque horrore comae.
A similar description of the effect of fear is given in the Ghosts speech to Hamlet:
But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood.
Make thy two eyes like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
The fact here referred to – that fear or fright; causes the hair to stand on end – is too well established, and too common to admit a doubt. The cause may be, that sudden fear has the effect to drive the blood to the heart, as the seat of vitality, and the extremities are left cold, and the skin thus contracts, and the effect is to raise the hair.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Then, Heb. and, or for, as this particle is oft used. So this was the reason of the foregoing thoughts and fear.
A spirit; an angel in some visible shape, otherwise he could not have discerned it, nor would have been affrighted at it.
The hair of my flesh, i.e. of my body, as flesh is taken, Gen 2:24; Psa 16:9; 119:120.
Stood up, through that excessive horror caused by so glorious, unusual, and terrible a presence; which God used to excite in men upon such occasions, to convince them that it was not a vain imagination or illusion, but a real vision and revelation, and that from God.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Then a spirit passed before my face,…. Which some interpret of a wind q, a blustering wind, that blew strong in his face; and so the Targum renders it, a stormy wind, such an one as Elijah perceived when the Lord spoke to him, though he was not in that, 1Ki 19:11; or such a whirlwind, out of which the Lord spake to Job, Job 38:1; or rather, as Jarchi, an angel, an immaterial spirit, one of Jehovah’s ministering spirits, clothed in an human form, and which passed and repassed before Eliphaz, that he might take notice of it:
the hair of my flesh stood up; erect, through surprise and dread; which is sometimes the case, when anything astonishing and terrible is beheld; the blood at such times making its way to the heart, for the preservation of that, leaves the external members of the body cold, and the skin of the flesh, in which the hair is, being contracted by the impetuous influx of the nervous fluid, causes the hair to stand upright, particularly the hair of the head, like the prickles or hedgehogs r; which has been usual at the sight of an apparition s.
q “ventus”, Vatablus, Cocceius, Schmidt, Broughton. r “Obstupui, steteruntque comae—-“. Virgil. Aeneid. l. 2. ver. 774. & l. 3. ver. 48. “arrectaeque horrore comae”. Aeneid. 4. ver. 286. & l. 12. ver. 888. s Vid. Scheuchzer. Physic. Sacr. p. 665.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(15) A spirit passed before my face.It is vain to argue from this passage that spiritual essences are capable of being seen by the bodily eye, because, first of all, the language is highly figurative and poetical, and because, secondly, every one understands that a spiritual manifestation can be made only to the spirit. The notion, therefore, of seeing a spirit is absurd in itself, because it involves the idea of seeing the invisible; but it is conceivable that the perceptions of the inner spirit may be so vivid as to assume the character of outward manifestations.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. A spirit , rouahh, as a verb, signifies to breathe or to blow, and as a noun, bears the meaning of breath or spirit, according as the associated thought shall determine. Locke early announced the principle, “I doubt not but if we could trace them to their source we should find, in all languages, the names which stand for things that fall not under our senses to have had their first rise from sensible ideas.” The use of a kindred word for spirit may have been developed in, or transmitted to, all these different languages through the reflection that breath and spirit are alike invisible, that they are so intimately associated together that, with the extinction of life, they both disappear from the knowledge of men. Or, as Delitzsch ( Bib. Psych., p. 273) more profoundly suggests, “that the breathing is that form of life, wherewith life begins to become self-life and to evidence itself outwardly.” Thus, in the Latin, we have animus, the mind, which Cicero says is so called from anima, air or breath. The Greek word , pneuma; the Sanscrit, atman; the Aztec, checatl; the Mohawk, atonritz; and our own word, spirit, (Latin, spiritus,) as well as similar words in other languages, primarily bore the meaning of breath or wind, as well as of spirit. The word rouahh belongs to the same class. With significance it appears here, as in 1Ki 22:21, (a rare construction,) in agreement with the masculine form of the verb. Its spiritual meaning was evidently just as fixed in the days of Job, (Job 32:8,) as that of spirit is in ours. In our text the word must mean spirit, as in 1Ki 22:21, and in the Targum, since acts of moral consciousness and spiritual intelligence are attributed to it. It speaks, reasons, (uses the argumentum a fortiori,) and communicates the sublimest thoughts upon the relations of man to God. This passage is of great interest, as it unquestionably shows that unembodied existence was taken for granted in the days of Job. This is the first time on scripture page that spirit, other than God, sundered from bodily restrictions, is personified. Subsequently evil spirits appear on their dark missions, as in 1Sa 16:15; 1Sa 16:23, etc. Whether this being was human or of some other order of spiritual intelligences, does not appear from the vision. Commentators in general have been of the opinion that it was an angel. We have an important datum, in the free and natural assumption of Eliphaz, that spirit can live without a body. This datum will materially help us to a proper conception of the knowledge that Job possessed in those early ages, and will shed light upon the controverted passages in this book, as to the condition of the dead.
Passed , glided by. The same word is used in Job 9:11, of deity. The employment of this verb thus in connexion with conscious existence, disposes of the reasoning Hitzig bases upon the verb, for rendering its subject rouahh, wind, ( hauch.)
The hair of my flesh In like manner the ghost of Hamlet could tell a tale that would make:
Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
Arrectae que horrore comae, et vox faucibus haesit. The hair stood up with horror, etc. AEneid, 12:868.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 4:15 Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:
Ver. 15. Then a spirit passed before my face ] Some render it a wind, as a messenger or forerunner of God near at hand, as 1Ki 19:11 . But better, a good angel in some bodily shape, Psa 104:4 Luk 24:37 ; for else how could he be seen of Eliphaz, gliding rather than going, as a ship upon the face of the waters?
The hair of my flesh stood up
Dirigui, steteruntque comae –
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
a spirit. Hebrew. ruach. App-9:. a movement of air, caused by something unseen.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
a spirit: Psa 104:4, Mat 14:26, Luk 24:37-39, Heb 1:7, Heb 1:14
the hair: Isa 13:8, Isa 21:3, Isa 21:4, Dan 5:6
Reciprocal: Luk 1:12 – he Act 10:3 – saw
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A SPECTRAL VISITOR
A spirit passed before my face.
Job 4:15
However we may explain it, there is no doubt that the real or fancied appearance of a human spirit, without the body, has, in all ages, been more than unwelcome to man; it has been terrible.
I. It may be that to a composite being like man, in whom body and soul are so subtly and intimately intertwined, the divorce between the two, when thus vividly brought before us, seems to suggest unnatural violence as nothing else can.
II. It may be that our ignorance of the capacities of a disembodied spirit, of its power to affect ourselves in a hundred ways now that it lives under totally new conditions, may explain the universal dread which it inspires.
III. It may benay, rather, it probably isthe case, that the quickened sense of the nearness and reality of the invisible world has a terror for us sinners, because we know that we are sinners.A perfectly sinless man would gaze at a ghost with reverent but untroubled curiosity. Certain it is that, for ordinary men, as in the days of Eliphaz, so in all ages of the worlds history, to see, or to think we see, a disembodied spirit inspires dread. However we may account for it, man has a secret terror at the thought of contact with pure spirit unclothed in a bodily form. This dread is part of our human nature.
Canon Liddon.
Illustration
The first speaker is Eliphaz, who commenced with a courteous apology for speaking at all, and yet a declaration that he cannot withhold himself. After expressing surprise at Jobs complaint, and asking if his integrity ought not to be a sufficient guarantee of his safety, he proceeded to a general explanation of the problem of suffering, declaring it to be Gods punishment of wickedness, a harvest for which there must have been a previous sowing. He argued the truth of this by insisting upon the fact of mans sin in the sight of God. This had been revealed to him in a solitary hour, in the dead of night, by a mystic presence, a form. The inference of this statement is that Jobs suffering was the result of Jobs sin.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Job 4:15. Then Hebrew, And, as the particle , vau, generally signifies. A spirit passed before my face An angel in a visible shape, otherwise he could not have discerned it, nor would have been affrighted by it. The hair of my flesh stood up Through that excessive consternation and horror, which seized me at the sight of so glorious and unusual an appearance.