Job 4:15 - Exposition

Then a spirit passed before my face . It has been argued (Rosenmuller) that "a breath of air," and not "a spirit," is intended; but, in that ease, how are we to understand the expressions in the following verse: "it stood still," "the form thereof," "an image"? A breath of air, the very essence of which is to be in motion, cannot stand still, nor has it any "form," "appearance," or "image." Granted that the Hebrew ruakh ( רוח ) may mean—like the Greek πνεῦμα , and the Latin spiritus— either an actual spirit, or a breath, a wind, it follows that, in every place where it occurs, we must judge by the context which is meant. Here certainly the context points to an actual living spirit, as what Eliphaz intended. Whether a spirit really appeared to him is a separate question. The whole may have been a vision; but certainly the impression left on Eliphaz was that he had had a communication from the spirit-world. The hair of my flesh stood up . Not the hair of his head only, but every hair on his whole body, stiffened, bristled, and rose up on end in horror (see the comment on Job 4:14 ).