Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 4:17 - 4:17

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 4:17 - 4:17


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

17 Is a mortal just before Eloah,

Or a man pure before his Maker?

18 Behold, He trusteth not His servants!

And His angels He chargeth with imperfection.

19 How much more those who dwell in houses of clay,

They are crushed as though they were moths.

20 From morning until evening, - so are they broken in pieces:

Unobserved they perish for ever.

21 Is it not so: the cord of their tent in them is torn away,

So they die, and not in wisdom?

The question arises whether מִן is comparative: prae Deo, on which Mercier with penetration remarks: justior sit oportet qui immerito affligitur quam qui immerito affligit; or causal: a Deo, h.e., ita ut a Deo justificetur. All modern expositors rightly decide on the latter. Hahn justly maintains that עִם and בְּעֵינֵי are found in a similar connection in other places; and Job 32:2 is perhaps not to be explained in any other way, at least that does not restrict the present passage. By the servants of God, none but the angels, mentioned in the following line of the verse, are intended. שִׂים with בְּ signifies imputare (1Sa 22:15); in Job 24:12 (comp. Job 1:22) we read תִּפְלָה, absurditatem (which Hupf. wishes to restore even here), joined with the verb in this signification. The form תָּהֳלָה is certainly not to be taken as stultitia from the verb הָלַל; the half vowel, and still less the absence of the Dagesh, will not allow this. תֹּרֶן (Olsh. §213, c), itself uncertain in its etymology, presents no available analogy. The form points to a Lamedh-He verb, as תָּרְמָה from רָמָה, so perhaps from הָלָה, Niph. נַהֲלָא, remotus, Mic 4:7 : being distant, being behind the perfect, difference; or even from הָלָה (Targ. הֲלָא, Pa. הַלֵּי) = לָאָה, weakness, want of strength.

(Note: Schnurrer compares the Arabic wahila, which signifies to be relaxed, forgetful, to err, to neglect. Ewald, considering the ת as radical, compares the Arabic dll, to err, and tâl, med. wau, to be dizzy, unconscious; but neither from וָהַל nor from תָּהַל can the substantival form be sustained.)

Both significations will do, for it is not meant that the good spirits positively sin, as if sin were a natural necessary consequence of their creatureship and finite existence, but that even the holiness of the good spirits is never equal to the absolute holiness of God, and that this deficiency is still greater in spirit-corporeal man, who has earthiness as the basis of his original nature. At the same time, it is presupposed that the distance between God and created earth is disproportionately greater than between God and created spirit, since matter is destined to be exalted to the nature of the spirit, but also brings the spirit into the danger of being degraded to its own level.

Job 4:19

אַף signifies, like כִּי אַף, quanto minus, or quanto magis, according as a negative or positive sentence precedes: since Job 4:18 is positive, we translate it here quanto magis, as 2Sa 16:11. Men are called dwellers in clay houses: the house of clay is their φθαρτὸν σῶμα, as being taken de limo terrae (Job 33:6; comp. Wis. 9:15); it is a fragile habitation, formed of inferior materials, and destined to destruction. The explanation which follows - those whose יְסֹוד, i.e., foundation of existence, is in dust - shows still more clearly that the poet has Gen 2:7; Gen 3:19, in his mind. It crushes them (subject, everything that operates destructively on the life of man) לִפְנֵי־עָשׁ, i.e., not: sooner than the moth is crushed (Hahn), or more rapidly than a moth destroys (Oehler, Fries), or even appointed to the moth for destruction (Schlottm.); but לִפְנֵי signifies, as Job 3:24 (cf. 1Sa 1:16), ad instar: as easily as a moth is crushed. They last only from morning until evening: they are broken in pieces (הֻכַּת, from כָּתַת, for הוּכַת); they are therefore as ephemerae. They perish for ever, without any one taking it to heart (suppl. עַל־לֵב, Isa 42:25; Isa 57:1), or directing the heart towards it, animum advertit (suppl. לֵב, Job 1:8).

In Job 4:21 the soul is compared to the cord of a tent, which stretches out and holds up the body as a tent, like Ecc 12:6, with a silver cord, which holds the lamp hanging from the covering of the tent. Olshausen is inclined to read יְתֵדָם, their tent-pole, instead of יִתְרָם, and at any rate thinks the accompanying בָּם superfluous and awkward. But (1) the comparison used here of the soul, and of the life sustained by it, corresponds to its comparison elsewhere with a thread or weft, of which death is the cutting through or loosing (Job 6:9; Job 27:8; Isa 38:12); (12) בָּם is neither superfluous nor awkward, since it is intended to say, that their duration of life falls in all at once like a tent when that which in them (בם) corresponds to the cord of a tent (i.e., the נֶפֶשׁ) is drawn away from it. The relation of the members of the sentence in Job 4:21 is just the same as in Job 4:2 : Will they not die when it is torn away, etc. They then die off in lack of wisdom, i.e., without having acted in accordance with the perishableness of their nature and their distance from God; therefore, rightly considered: unprepared and suddenly, comp. Job 36:12; Pro 5:23. Oehler, correctly: without having been made wiser by the afflictions of God. The utterance of the Spirit, the compass of which is unmistakeably manifest by the strophic division, ends here. Eliphaz now, with reference to it, turns to Job.