Job 4:15

15. A spirit רוח , 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 πνευμα , 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 1 Kings 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 1 Kings 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 1 Samuel 16:15; 1 Samuel 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 יחל , 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. Ibid.

Arrectae que horrore comae, et vox faucibus haesit. The hair stood up with horror, etc. AEneid, 12:868.