Job 3:25

25. I greatly feared Literally, A fear I feared, and it came upon me.

The elegance of the Hebrew ( פחד פחדתי ) is lost in the A.V. Compare Psalms 53:5, see margin. A twofold illustration of such alliteration appears to the English reader in Isaiah 27:7, which is well expressed in our translation. (Compare Isaiah 22:17-18; Micah 2:4.) These quite equal in beauty the most admired alliterations of the classic poets: for instance, πονος πονω πονον φερει . SOPHOCLES, Ajax, 866. The form of the verb is come, ויאתיני , ( Vav consecutive,) closely binds the issue with the apprehension, and perhaps justifies Hirtzel and Dillmann in their interpretation: “The trouble he thought of, and which he deprecated, immediately came upon him.” Here Job may possibly refer to his solicitude over his children in connexion with their sudden and overwhelming destruction. Some (DENDY, Philos. of Myst.) have fancifully conceived that the apprehension of misfortune may prove its cause. Thus Montaigne was all his life fearful of “the stone,” and in old age it came upon him with all its terrors. Essays, ii, chap. 37. On the other hand, Davidson mistakingly suggests that the idea that Job “in the height of his felicity had been haunted by the presentiment of coming calamity, is opposed to the whole convictions of antiquity, and contradicted by the anguish and despair of the man under his suffering, which was to him inexplicable and unexpected.” On the convictions of antiquity, see Herodotus, 1:32; 3:40; 7:10, 46.