Job 4:13

Amid wisps of thought, visions of the night,

                When slumber drifts down upon mortals

Ever wonder when God talks to you? Some people think He talks to us in our dreams. Many references in the Bible, including this one, imply that God does indeed speak to us in visions and dreams. Many people claim to not remember dreams at all. Some people claim to know they dreamed but forget the topics as soon as they wake. Others claim to dream all the time and recall them with perfect clarity. I have experienced all of these, and the difference always seems to be in how well or how long I slept.

In this verse Eliphaz continues on from his condemnation of Job and begins to relay a dream He claims came from God. As I referenced to recently, I am not sure this vision did not come from demons or Satan, but never the less, Eliphaz passes it on as truth from his dream or vision. But these two verses also hint that he may have only heard part of the message and that it was indeed only a dream. Perhaps this is God preparing us with doubt before we take the following to heart as if it was indeed the direct Word of God on an issue. Indeed, we still have three more verses of discussion of the circumstances of the dream before the message even comes out.

“Amid” was used of the more frequent “in” simply because it is more poetic to me. “Wisps” was chosen over “disquieting” or no modification of thought as disquieting was once used once and lessens the impact of the following verse and reinforces the shadiness of the source. “Thoughts” was selected over “dreams” and “musings” as dreams was only in one source and was connected to disquieting that was rejected. “Musings” gave me the impression of something he made up, so I did not think that was appropriate for him to say himself.

“Visions of the night” was only offset by one use of “dreams” over “visions” and seemed too similar to debate anyway. The interesting offset here was the concept of the thoughts being in the visions, as if the dreamer was remembering what he was thinking during the activity within the dream. I liked the impression this gave, but I could not make myself follow this option. It seemed as if one could build an incorrect basis of reasoning from the use of a single word that might not be intended.

I chose slumber of “deep sleep”, “drifts” over “falls”, and “mortals” over “men”. Deep sleep seemed to technical and the others were simply personal preference. My choices were definitely from the minority of usage in my sources but felt more poetic as a group and in keeping with the mood of this section.

I will say that sometimes when I dream, I recognize a mental benefit from what I remember and know that while God may not be speaking to me every time, He does give me dreams to help me through things. Our brains are miracles beyond our understanding and model for us the complexity that is God our Creator.