Job 4:20

_THEY ARE DESTROYED FROM MORNING TO EVENING: THEY PERISH FOR EVER WITHOUT ANY REGARDING IT._ From morning to evening - unceasingly; or, better, between the morning and evening of one short day (so Exodus 18:14; Isaiah 38:12). 'From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me' (Umbreit). "In the morning it flourisheth-in the evening it is cut down" (Psalms 90:5). "They are destroyed." (literally, broken in pieces) in the space of a day." Therefore man must not think to be holy before God, but to draw holiness, and all things else, from God (Job 4:17)....

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 4:20. _THEY ARE DESTROYED FROM MORNING TO EVENING_] In almost every moment of time some human being comes into the world, and some one departs from it. Thus are they "destroyed from morning to evening." _THEY PERISH FOR EVER_] יאבדו _yobedu; peribunt_, they _pass by_; they _go out of sight_; they moulder with the dust, and are soon forgotten. Who regards the past generation now among the dead? _Isaiah_ has a similar thought, Isaiah 57:1: "The righteous perisheth, and No MAN LAYETH IT TO HEART: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come." Some think that Isaiah borrowed from Job; this will appear possible when it has been _proved_, which has never yet been done, that the wr

THEY ARE DESTROYED FROM MORNING TO EVENING - Margin, “beaten in pieces.” This is nearer to the Hebrew. The phrase “from morning to evening” means between the morning and the evening; that is, they live scarcely a single day; see the notes at Isaiah 38:12. The idea is, not the continuance of the work of destruction from morning to evening; but that man’s life is excecdingly short, so short that he scarce seems to live from morning to night. What a beautiful expression, and how true! How little qualified is such a being to sit in judgment on the doings of the Most High! THEY PERISH FOREVER - Without being restored to life. They pass away, and nothing is ever seen of them again! WITHOUT ANY REGARDING IT - Without its being noticed. How strikingly true is this! What a narrow circ

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...

THEY ARE DESTROYED FROM MORNING TO EVENING,.... That is, those that dwell in houses of clay, before described; the meaning is, that they are always exposed to death, and liable to it every day they live; not only such who are persecuted for the sake of religion, but all men in common, for of such are both the text and context; who have always the seeds of mortality and death in them, that is continually working in them; and every day, even from morning to evening, are innumerable instances of the power of death over men; and not only some there are, whose sun rises in the morning and sets at evening, who are like grass in the morning, gay, and green, and by evening cut down and withered, live but a day, and some not that, but even it is true of all men, comparatively speaking, they begin to die the day they begin to live; so that the wise man takes no notice of any intermediate time betw...

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

Third, surely instead of despairing and murmuring under his afflictions Job should follow a very different way. I, says Eliphaz, putting himself in Job's place, would seek unto God, all whose doings are directed to the saving of the meek and disappointing the devices of the evil. When He smites, He smites only that He may the more profoundly heal. Happy should the man count himself whom God corrects. for his correction is meant to awaken him out of his dream of evil and lead him into a broader, clearer life, rich in blessings, and to be crowned with a ripe and peaceful end. This beautiful speech consists of three parts, of which the first contains a single division, ch. Job 4:1-11; the second, two divisions, ch. Job 4:12-21, and ch. Jo

THEY ARE DESTROYED FROM MORNING TO EVENING, &C.— _From morning until evening they are destroyed; for want of discernment they perish together:_ Heath; who renders the next verse thus: _It not the excellence which was in them pulled up by the roots? They die, but not in wisdom._ This seems to allude to the corruption of human nature by the fall. REFLECTIONS.—1st, Having heard Job's impatient complaint, Eliphaz can no longer keep silence. 1. He apologizes for the part that he is about to take, but hopes that Job will not be offended if he and his friends essay to apply some remedy to his disease; and, as they apprehended his wound needed to be laid open, he begs he will not think that unkindness, but friendship, dictates his discourse. He would not willingly grieve him; but he intimates, that in this case silence would be criminal, and that God's glory, as well as Job's good, required the...