Job 20:8
As a dream that fleeth away he shall not be found, he shall pass as a vision of the night:
Open Job 20:8 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Velut somnium avolans non invenietur : transiet sicut visio nocturna.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὥσπερ ἐνύπνιον ἐκπετασθὲν οὐ μὴ εὑρεθῇ, ἔπτη δὲ ὥσπερ φάσμα νυκτερινόν·
- Hebrew (WLC)
- כַּחֲל֣וֹם יָ֭עוּף וְלֹ֣א יִמְצָא֑וּהוּ וְ֝יֻדַּ֗ד כְּחֶזְי֥וֹן לָֽיְלָה
Haydock's commentary
Fleeth. The poets assign wings to sleep and to dreams. (Homer, &c.) Isaias (xxix. 7.) describes a man who dreams that he is eating, and finds himself hungry when he awakes. Such is the live of the avaricious, (Calmet) and of all wicked people. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Gregory Nazianzen Panegyric on His Brother S. Cæsarius
19. Such, my brethren, is our existence, who live this transient life, such our pastime upon earth: we come into existence out of non-existence, and after existing are dissolved. We are unsubstantial dreams, impalpable visions, like the flight of a passing bird, like a ship leaving no track upon the sea, a speck of dust, a vapour, an early dew, a flower that quickly blooms, and quickly fades. As for man his days are as grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. …