19 Also -- the inhabitants of houses of clay, (Whose foundation `is' in the dust, They bruise them before a moth.)
Remember, I pray Thee, That as clay Thou hast made me, And unto dust Thou dost bring me back.
And Jehovah God formeth the man -- dust from the ground, and breatheth into his nostrils breath of life, and the man becometh a living creature.
by the sweat of thy face thou dost eat bread till thy return unto the ground, for out of it hast thou been taken, for dust thou `art', and unto dust thou turnest back.'
And Abraham answereth and saith, `Lo, I pray thee, I have willed to speak unto the Lord, and I -- dust and ashes;
And we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us;
And he, as a rotten thing, weareth away, As a garment hath a moth consumed him.
As a flower he hath gone forth, and is cut off, And he fleeth as a shadow and standeth not.
because all flesh `is' as grass, and all glory of man as flower of grass; wither did the grass, and the flower of it fell away,
His spirit goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, In that day have his thoughts perished.
Mortal man! as grass `are' his days, As a flower of the field so he flourisheth; For a wind hath passed over it, and it is not, And its place doth not discern it any more.
With reproofs against iniquity, Thou hast corrected man, And dost waste as a moth his desirableness, Only, vanity `is' every man. Selah.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 4
Commentary on Job 4 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 4
Job having warmly given vent to his passion, and so broken the ice, his friends here come gravely to give vent to their judgment upon his case, which perhaps they had communicated to one another apart, compared notes upon it and talked it over among themselves, and found they were all agreed in their verdict, that Job's afflictions certainly proved him to be a hypocrite; but they did not attack Job with this high charge till by the expressions of his discontent and impatience, in which they thought he reflected on God himself, he had confirmed them in the bad opinion they had before conceived of him and his character. Now they set upon him with great fear. The dispute begins, and it soon becomes fierce. The opponents are Job's three friends. Job himself is respondent. Elihu appears, first, as moderator, and at length God himself gives judgment upon the controversy and the management of it. The question in dispute is whether Job was an honest man or no, the same question that was in dispute between God and Satan in the first two chapters. Satan had yielded it, and durst not pretend that his cursing his day was a constructive cursing of his God; no, he cannot deny but that Job still holds fast his integrity; but Job's friends will needs have it that, if Job were an honest man, he would not have been thus sorely and thus tediously afflicted, and therefore urge him to confess himself a hypocrite in the profession he had made of religion: "No,' says Job, "that I will never do; I have offended God, but my heart, notwithstanding, has been upright with him;' and still he holds fast the comfort of his integrity. Eliphaz, who, it is likely, was the senior, or of the best quality, begins with him in this chapter, in which,
By all this he aims to bring down Job's spirit and to make him both penitent and patient under his afflictions.
Job 4:1-6
In these verses,
Job 4:7-11
Eliphaz here advances another argument to prove Job a hypocrite, and will have not only his impatience under his afflictions to be evidence against him but even his afflictions themselves, being so very great and extraordinary, and there being no prospect at all of his deliverance out of them. To strengthen his argument he here lays down these two principles, which seem plausible enough:-
Job 4:12-21
Eliphaz, having undertaken to convince Job of the sin and folly of his discontent and impatience, here vouches a vision he had been favoured with, which he relates to Job for his conviction. What comes immediately from God all men will pay a particular deference to, and Job, no doubt, as much as any. Some think Eliphaz had this vision now lately, since he came to Job, putting words into his mouth wherewith to reason with him; and it would have been well if he had kept to the purport of this vision, which would serve for a ground on which to reprove Job for his murmuring, but not to condemn him as a hypocrite. Others think he had it formerly; for God did, in this way, often communicate his mind to the children of men in those first ages of the world, ch. 33:15. Probably God had sent Eliphaz this messenger and message some time or other, when he was himself in an unquiet discontented frame, to calm and pacify him. Note, As we should comfort others with that wherewith we have been comforted (2 Co. 1:4), so we should endeavour to convince others with that which has been powerful to convince us. The people of God had not then any written word to quote, and therefore God sometimes notified to them even common truths by the extraordinary ways of revelation. We that have Bibles have there (thanks be to God) a more sure word to depend upon than even visions and voices, 2 Pt. 1:19. Observe,