Bible Strands
Job 39:20
Do you make him leap like a locust, striking terror with his proud snorting?
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God addresses Job in a rhetorical discourse about untamable creatures, focusing on the horse immediately after describing its strength and mane.
The words — תַרְעִישֶׁנּוּ (tar'i.she.nu) literally means "do you make leap," and נַחְרוֹ (nach.ro) means "its snorting," isolating the animal's violent motion and sound.
The thread — This terrifying snorting imagery appears in Jeremiah 8:16, where enemy horses quake the land, and parallels Job 41:20’s smoke from nostrils and Joel 2:5’s chariot-like thunder.
Why it lands — The text asks Job to recognize that human control cannot command the raw, fear-inducing power God alone directs in the natural world.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 8:16 The snorting of enemy horses is heard from Dan. At the sound of the neighing of mighty steeds, the whole land quakes. They come to devour the land and everything in it, the city and all who dwell in it.
- Job 41:20 Smoke billows from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
- Joel 2:5 With a sound like that of chariots they bound over the mountaintops, like the crackling of fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army deployed for battle.