Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud.
Terrors are turned upon Job, with calamities pursuing him relentlessly as the wind while his welfare and prosperity pass away quickly like a passing cloud. The verse belongs to Job's argument about human suffering, showing that affliction does not prove a person is under God's displeasure, contrary to what his friends wrongly inferred. He contrasts his former honored state with his changed circumstances, in which people who once honored him now hold him in contempt and his enemies rejoice over his fall.
The word translated soul means nobility, or figuratively an elevated and happy state or excellence, referring to Job's former elevated and happy condition. The Hebrew word behind soul in this verse is n'dee-vah, not nephesh, the usual Old Testament word for soul. This makes the verse an exception to the nearly universal pattern by which soul in the Old Testament comes from nephesh, one of two such Old Testament exceptions. The Hebrew word so translated occurs nowhere else in the Bible. The margin's rendering my principal one reflects the sense of nobility or excellence.
In this verse soul does not refer to the soul as a distinct part of a person. The mere use of the word soul there determines nothing about an immortal part, since immortality must be affirmed of it somewhere before such a meaning can be claimed. The Hebrew word roo-agh in the verse means wind.
Terrors are turned upon Job, with calamities pursuing him relentlessly as the wind while his welfare and prosperity pass away quickly like a passing cloud. The verse belongs to Job's argument about human suffering, showing that affliction does not prove a person is under God's displeasure, contrary to what his friends wrongly inferred. He contrasts his former honored state with his changed circumstances, in which people who once honored him now hold him in contempt and his enemies rejoice over his fall.
The word translated soul means nobility, or figuratively an elevated and happy state or excellence, referring to Job's former elevated and happy condition. The Hebrew word behind soul in this verse is n'dee-vah, not nephesh, the usual Old Testament word for soul. This makes the verse an exception to the nearly universal pattern by which soul in the Old Testament comes from nephesh, one of two such Old Testament exceptions. The Hebrew word so translated occurs nowhere else in the Bible. The margin's rendering my principal one reflects the sense of nobility or excellence.
In this verse soul does not refer to the soul as a distinct part of a person. The mere use of the word soul there determines nothing about an immortal part, since immortality must be affirmed of it somewhere before such a meaning can be claimed. The Hebrew word roo-agh in the verse means wind.