The Hebrew verb yagor (יָגֹר) means to fear, to be afraid, to dread. It describes a state of apprehension or terror, often in the context of fearing enemies, judgment, or threatening circumstances. Job uses it repeatedly when describing his spiritual condition during suffering: 'For the thing that I fear (yagor) comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me' (Job 3:25). The related adjective is H3016.
Job 3:25 is one of the most psychologically honest verses in Scripture: fear, if given power, becomes a self-fulfilling trap. Job dreaded calamity, and calamity came — not as a direct cause-and-effect, but as an illustration of how anxiety can consume one's mental and spiritual landscape. The remedy is not denial of fear but the displacement of wrong fear with right fear. Isaiah 8:12–13 commands: 'Do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.' The cure for destructive fear is holy fear of God.