to move unsteadily: to shake or quiver in place, to reel, or to roam with no settled place to rest.
At its heart this word pictures motion that has come loose from any anchor. Whatever moves this way has lost its footing or its fixed place. Sometimes that is literal trembling: doorframes shudder, the ground heaves, a tree sways, lips quiver as a woman prays without sound. Sometimes it is the lurching of someone who cannot walk straight, the way a drunk reels and cannot hold a line. And sometimes it is a person with nowhere to belong, wandering from place to place as a fugitive or a beggar, never able to settle.
These pictures are one idea, not three. The thread that runs through all of them is unsettledness, the loss of a stable place. A trembling tree, a staggering drunk, and a homeless wanderer are all moving without control or rest. That is why the same word can describe an earthquake and an exile in the same breath: both have been shaken loose.
When the word is used of one person acting on another, it means to set that motion going: to make something shake, to drive people from place to place, to disturb what was at rest. From this comes a vivid gesture that recurs across the Bible. To shake the head (or wave the hand) at someone is a body-language insult, the motion of mockery aimed at a person already brought low.
Nuances
Whether the final verb of Job 28:4 pictures the isolated miners physically swinging and dangling from their ropes deep in the shaft, or describes them going away from human company.
- majorityThe verb pictures the miners swinging or dangling to and fro on their ropes, paired with the preceding verb for hanging low: a literal image of unsteady, suspended motion far from any settlement.; BDB, s.v. נוּעַ; HALOT, s.v. נוּעַ
- minorityThe verb describes the miners going away or departing from other people, reading the clause as a statement of isolation rather than a picture of physical swinging.; King James Version, Job 28:4