Job 4:18

_BEHOLD, HE PUT NO TRUST IN HIS SERVANTS; AND HIS ANGELS HE CHARGED WITH FOLLY:_ Folly. Imperfection (Job 2:10) is to be attributed to the angels, in comparison with Him. The holiness of some of them had given way (2 Peter 2:4), and at best is but the holiness of a creature. Folly is the want of moral consideration (Umbreit)....

12-21 Eliphaz relates a vision. When we are communing with our own hearts, and are still, Psalms 4:4, then is a time for the Holy Spirit to commune with us. This vision put him into very great fear. Ever since man sinned, it has been terrible to him to receive communications from Heaven, conscious that he can expect no good tidings thence. Sinful man! shall he pretend to be more just, more pure, than God, who being his Maker, is his Lord and Owner? How dreadful, then, the pride and presumption of man! How great the patience of God! Look upon man in his life. The very foundation of that cottage of clay in which man dwells, is in the dust, and it will sink with its own weight. We stand but upon the dust. Some have a higher heap of dust to stand upon than others but still it is the earth that stays us up, and will shortly swallow us up. Man is soon crushed; or if some lingering distemper,...

Verse Job 4:18. _BEHOLD, HE PUT NO TRUST IN HIS SERVANTS_] This verse is generally understood to refer to the fall of angels; for there were some of those heavenly beings _who kept not their first_ _estate_: they did not persevere to the end of their probation, and therefore fell into condemnation, and are _reserved in chains_ _of darkness unto the judgment of the great day_; Jude 1:6. It is said _he put no trust in them_-he knew that nothing could be _absolutely immutable_ but himself; and that no intelligent beings could _subsist_ in a state of purity, unless continually dependent on himself, and deriving constant supplies of grace, power, and light, from him who gave them their being. _AND HIS ANGELS HE CHARGED WITH FOLLY_] Not _chargeth_, as many q

BEHOLD, HE PUT NO TRUST IN HIS SERVANTS - These are evidently the words of the oracle that appeared to Eliphaz; see Schultens, in loc. The word servants here refers to angels; and the idea is, that God was so pure that he did not confide even in the exalted holiness of angels - meaning that their holiness was infinitely inferior to his. The design is to state that God had the highest possible holiness, such as to render the holiness of all others, no matter how exalted, as nothing - as all lesser lights are as nothing before the glory of the sun. The Chaldee renders this, “Lo, in his servants, the prophets, he does not confide;” but the more correct reference is undoubtedly to the angels. AND HIS ANGELS HE CHARGED WITH FOLLY - Margin, Or,” Nor in his angels, in whom he put light.” The different rendering in the text and in the margin, has arisen from the supposed ambiguity of the word em...

EXPOSITION Job having ended his complaint, Eliphaz the Temanite, the first-named of his three friends (Job 2:11), and perhaps the eldest of them, takes the word, and endeavours to answer him. After a brief apology for venturing to speak at all (verse 2), he plunges into the controversy. Job has assumed that he is wholly guiltless of having given any cause for God to afflict him. Eliphaz lays it down in the most positive terms (verses 7, 8) that the innocent never suffer, only the wicked are afflicted. He then passes on to the description of a vision which has appeared to him (verses 12-21), from which he has learnt the lesson that men must not presume to be "more wise than their Maker." JOB 4:1 THEN ELIPHAZ THE TEMANITE ANSWERED AND SAID (see the comment on...

BEHOLD, HE PUT NO TRUST IN HIS SERVANTS,.... Some think the divine oracle or revelation ends in Job 4:17, and that here Eliphaz makes some use and improvement of it, and addresses Job, and argues with him upon it, with a view to his case and circumstances; but rather the account of what the oracle said, or was delivered by revelation, is continued to the end of the chapter, there being nothing unworthy of God, either in the matter or manner of it: and here Eliphaz himself is addressed, and this address ushered in with a "behold", as a note of admiration, asseveration, and attention; it being somewhat wonderful and of importance, sure and certain, and which deserved to be listened to, that God, the Maker of men and angels, did not, and does not, "put" any "trust" or confidence "in his servants"; meaning not the prophets in particular, as the Targum, though they are in an eminent sense the...

TRUST (_ See Scofield) - (Psalms 2:12). _ FEAR (_ See Scofield) - (Psalms 19:9). _...

CHAPTER S 4-5 THE FIRST ADDRESS OF ELIPHAZ _ 1. He rebukes Job (Job 4:1)_ 2. The righteous are not cast off (Job 4:6) 3. An awe-inspiring vision (Job 4:12) 4. Experience and exhortation (Job 5:1) 5. Happy is the man whom God correcteth (Job 5:17) With this chapter the long and tedious controversy between Job and his three visitors begins. His pitiful lamentation brings forth the addresses of his friends. Eliphaz and Bildad speak thrice, each answered by Job, and Zophar twice with corresponding rebuttals by Job. Job delivers his last word, the length

This is what the vision said. Translate as _mg.:_ Shall mortal man be just before God, shall a man be pure before his maker? Even the angels are fallible, how much more man, who inhabits a house of clay, _i.e._ a body formed from the dust (Genesis 2:7; Genesis 3:19; 2 Corinthians 5:1). Observe that we are not yet at the point of view of the later Judaism and the NT, according to which some angels are good, some bad. All are fallible. Again, observe that man's sin fulness is deduced simply from his creatureliness, especially, however, from his being made from the dust. The spirit that appears to Eliphaz knows nothing of the Fall as an explanation of human sin. His thought is rather that if the angels, who are of spirit

PUT NO TRUST. putteth no faith in. Hebrew. _'aman._ App-69. Compare Job 15:15; Job 15:31. SERVANTS. messengers (Psalms 104:4). CHARGED. will charge....