Night Tremors
Now a word was brought to me secretly, and my ear received a whisper of it. Amid disquieting thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, Dread came upon me, and trembling, and made [f]all my bones shake. Then a [g]spirit passed by my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. Job 4:12-15 NASB
Dread – Eliphaz has a waking nightmare. Something unrecognizable stands before him in the night. A question is posed (as we shall soon discover) that unravels all mankind. A terrifying inquiry that can only be answered with the greatest of grave consequences. But before it is even whispered, dread overcomes Eliphaz.
This particular word is, perhaps unfortunately, well-known. It is paḥad, famously used in Exodus 34:7 about the sins of the fathers (and infamously translated). It’s also found in that frightening description of Isaac, a man who dreaded God (Genesis 31:42) for good reason, as I suggest in my book, Crossing: The Struggle for Identity.[1] So we know this word. Eliphaz’ description of the experience of paḥad is close enough to our own for us to emotionally identify. You’ve felt it, that “monster under the bed” kind of feeling. Our parents assured us that there were no monsters. Then we grew up—and discovered they lied. Not the kind of monsters you see in Giotto or Van Eyck, Bosch or Blake—like this:
But ones like these:
And lots more, less public, but just as hideous. Enough to scare us to death—and prevent us from walking alone in a city at night. Yes, there are monsters. And they look very human.
But is God one of them?
Eliphaz experiences a rûaḥ, a word often associated with God Himself. Perhaps it was like that night in Egypt when the “angel of death” moved over the land. It made the hair on his neck stand up. Do you know that feeling? I do. There were times (not so much anymore) that I would lie in bed trying to fall asleep but thinking that if I should die this night I would be forever condemned. The pitchforks jumped over the fence, not sheep. Lots of monsters in the dark. And I wasn’t in the “killing fields” or in Leningrad or Auschwitz or hundreds of other insanely horrid places men have occupied. Eliphaz didn’t need to see Mengele walking in the dark to know what all of us know—humanity is the greatest monster the world has ever birthed.
But this time, it is rûaḥ who comes in the night. A kind of angel, terrifying, paralyzing, who scratches at the back of my consciousness with a single question I dare not answer.
As we shall see.
Topical Index: rûaḥ, spirit, paḥad, dread, Exodus 34:7, Genesis 31:42, Job 4:12-15
[1] https://skipmoen.com/books-audio/crossing-the-struggle-for-identity/
The effectual spirit of dread that overwhelms a person with that individual’s and humankind’s collective horrendous monstrous appearance is the same Spirit of Holiness whose work it is to convict one of his sin in relation to God’s righteousness and justified judgement. The horror of dread does not proceed from the rûaḥ; rather, it is a contingent horror of dread… dependent upon the manner of relationship held in trust of God’s Spirit of Holiness by that individual.
Human trust in such a relationship is generically weak… in the likeness and manner of the weakness of one’s flesh. Nevertheless, the human spirit is in faith enabled… rather, over and above that, it is empowered… to entrust one’s life to the life giving Spirit of Truth, whose joy it is to perform His consecrated work of conviction of the horrors of sin and dread of the horrendous moments of its monstrous appearance in one’s mortal life unto death.