Job 16:14 — ExegesisTAB

The verse is built as a compact, two-line poetic assault image, with each clause intensifying the previous one. The opening verb yifretseni {יִפְרְצֵ֣נִי | yip̄rəṣēnî} ‘he breaks through me’ places Job as the direct object via the attached suffix, making the violence personal and immediate. The sequence perets {פֶ֭רֶץ | pereṣ} followed by the prepositional chain al-penei-farets {עַל־פְּנֵי־פָ֑רֶץ | ʿal-pənê-p̄āreṣ} ‘upon the face of a breach’ forms an idiom of accumulation (“breach upon breach”), where repetition functions rhetorically to depict successive, compounding blows rather than a single event. The second clause advances from the image of rupturing to forward motion: yaruts {יָרֻ֖ץ | yārûṣ} ‘he runs’ presents the attacker as pressing the advantage, while alai {עָלַ֣י | ʿālai} ‘upon me’ keeps the focus on hostile direction. The final simile kegibbor {כְּגִבּֽוֹר | kəgibbôr} ‘like a mighty man’ frames the attack in martial terms, so the English renderings preserve the parallel two-clause structure and the piling effect of the repeated “breach” imagery.