to seize (often with the accessory idea of holding in p… · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 37:13 The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.
Jeremiah 50:27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.
Ezekiel 21:25 And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end,
Deuteronomy 29:23-24 And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like t…
1 Kings 9:8 And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the LORD do…
Job 2:12-13 And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and…
Job 19:13-19 He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
Psalms 137:7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 18:11–end
Bildad here describes the destruction itself which wicked people are reserved for in the other world, and which, in some degree, often seizes them in this world. Come, and see what a miserable condition the sinner is in when his day comes to fall.
I. See him disheartened and weakened by continual terrors arising from the sense of his own guilt and the dread of God's wrath (Job 18:11, Job 18:12): Terror shall make him afraid on every side. The terrors of his own conscience shall haunt him, so that he shall never be easy. Wherever he goes, these shall follow him; which way soever he looks, these shall stare him in the face. It will make him tremble to see himself fought against by the whole cr…
after . . . before--rather, "those in the West--those in the East"; that is, all people; literally, "those behind--those before"; for Orientals in geography turn with their faces to the east (not to the north as we), and back to the west; so that before--east; behind--north (so Zac 14:8).
day--of ruin (Oba 1:12).
affrighted--seized with terror (Job 21:6; Isa 13:8).
John Gill on Job 18:20
They that come after him shall be astonished at his day,.... At the day of his calamity and distress, ruin and destruction, see Psalm 37:13; it would be extremely amazing to them how it should be, that a man who was in such flourishing and prosperous circumstances, should be brought at once, he and his family, into such extreme poverty, and into such a distressed and forlorn condition; they should be, as it were, thunderstruck at it, not being able to account for it: by these are meant such as are younger than the wicked man, and that continue longer than he, yet upon the spot when his calamity befell; or else posterity in later times, who would be made acquainted with the whole affair, and…
20 Those who dwell in the west are astonished at his day,
And trembling seizeth those who dwell in the east;
21 Surely thus it befalleth the dwellings of the unrighteous,
And thus the place of him that knew not God.
It is as much in accordance with the usage of Arabic as it is biblical, to call the day of a man's doom "his day," the day of a battle at a place "the day of that place." Who are the אחרנים who are astonished at it, and the קדמנים whom terror (שׂער as twice besides in this sense in Ezek.) seizes, or as it is properly, who seize terror, i.e., of themselves, without being able to do otherwise than yield to the emotion (as Job 21:6; Isa 13:8; comp. on the contrary Exo 15:14.)? Hirz.…
The Church Fathers
"Let others live among his people. That his people undergo foreign domination.
In his days the last shall be astonied, and horror shall seize on the first. For he will then let himself loose against the righteous with such a measure of iniquity, that even the hearts of the very Elect shall be struck with no small consternation. Whence it is written, Insomuch that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very Elect. Which, clearly, is said, not because the Elect shall fall, but because they shall tremble with terrible alarms. Now at that time both the latest Elect and the first Elect are described as maintaining the conflict for righteousness against him, in that both they that shall be found among the Elect at the end of the world, are destined to be laid low in the death of the flesh, and they too who proceeded from the former divisions of the world, i.e. Enoch and Elijah, shall be brought back amongst men, and shall be exposed to the savageness of his cruelty still in their mortal flesh. This one's forces let loose in such terrible power, 'the latest are astonied at, and the first do dread,' in that, though in respect of this, viz. that he is lifted up by a spirit of pride, they despise all his temporal power, yet in respect of this, that they are themselves still in mortal flesh, wherein they are liable to suffer temporal anguish, they dread the very punishments, which they bear with resolution; so that there is in them at one and the same time both constancy derived from virtue, and alarm proceeding from the flesh; in that though they be of the number of the Elect, so that they cannot be overcome by torments, yet from this only that they are men, they fear the very torments, that they overcome. So let it be said, In his days the last shall be astonied, and terror shall seize on the first. In that he shall then shew forth such signs, and do things so cruel and hard hearted, as to force them to astonishment, whom he shall find at the end of the world, and to pierce with the pang of carnal death the first fathers, who are reserved for his extirpation. Therefore whereas he has described many particulars relating to all the wicked, or to the head of the wicked himself, he immediately adds with a general description.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
in the west . . . in the east: These phrases might refer to people from times past and times to come or to people from various places.
Rashi on Job 18:20
the later people They wondered when they heard of the misfortune that befell him.
quaking Heb. שָׂעַר, tempest. This cannot be of the form of שֵׂעָר, hair, because the accent in שָׂעַר is not (on the “sin,” but on the “ayin,”) and it is not converted to a “kamatz” when it is cantillated with an “ethnachta” or a “sof pasuk.” I did not hear this.
