Job 4:13 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

In thoughts; in the midst of my thoughts, or by reason of my thoughts, my perplexing thoughts. the word properly signifies a branch, and thence a thought, as 1 Kings 18:21, which proceeds from the mind as branches from a tree, and a perplexing thought, which is entangled like the branches of a tree. These thoughts were the occasion of the following fear. From the visions of the night: this may belong either to the thoughts last mentioned, or to the fear following; both which did arise from the visions of the night, i.e. from the great importance and the terribleness of such visions, whereof probably he had had former experience, and now had an expectation of another of them, which God had raised and wrought in him, to prepare him the better for the reception of it. Visions differed from dreams herein, that God imparted his mind to a man in dreams when he was asleep but in visions when they were awake. And these visions sometimes happened by day, as Luke 1:22 Acts 10:17 Acts 26:19, but most frequently by night, whence we read of vision or visions of the night, as Genesis 46:2 Job 20:8, Job 33:15. And such this was, which made it the more terrible. When deep sleep falleth on men; in the dead of the night, when men usually are in a deep sleep; though Eliphaz was not now asleep, as appears from the nature of a vision, and from the following words.