Job 4:20

They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(20) From morning to evening.—The process is continual and unceasing, and when we consider the ravages of time on history, we may well say, as in Job 4:20, that “none regardeth it.”

The next verse, however, may seem to imply that they themselves are unmindful of their decay, it is so insidious and so complete.

Benson Commentary

Job 4:20. They are destroyed — Bruised, or broken, as the same word, יכתו, juccattu, is rendered, Micah 1:7, where we read, The graven images shall be broken to pieces; from morning to evening — That is, either speedily, between the morning and evening, like the grass, Psalm 90:5-6. They flourish in the morning, and in the evening are cut down: or rather, all the day long; there is not a moment wherein man is not sinking toward death and corruption. If these words were considered as being connected with the latter clause of the preceding verse, as Dr. Grey thinks they ought to be, the sense would be, they are crushed and destroyed all the day long, as moths are, which, being an insect hurtful and injurious, every one is ready to destroy. They perish for ever — In reference to the present worldly life, which when once lost is never recovered; without any regarding it — Or laying it to heart, say most commentators. But the literal interpretation of the Hebrew, מבלי משׂים, mibbeli meesim, Chappelow thinks, is preferable, namely, absque imponente, without any one’s adding to their misery; or, according to Junius and Tremellius, nemine disponente, without any one’s ordering or appointing it. That is, they are continually perishing and going to destruction, of their own accord, through the mere frailty of their nature, even if no external violence be offered to them. Our translation, however, conveys an important and instructive truth, namely, that few or none that survive, lay to heart, as they ought to do, the death of those that are taken away. For it is so common a thing for all men, though ever so high and great, to perish in this manner, that no man regards it, but all pass it by, as a general accident not worthy of observation.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:12-21 Eliphaz relates a vision. When we are communing with our own hearts, and are still, Ps 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, which consumes like a moth, be sent to destroy him, he cannot resist it. Shall such a creature pretend to blame the appointments of God? Look upon man in his death. Life is short, and in a little time men are cut off. Beauty, strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death, but these things die with them; nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power, continue after them. Shall a weak, sinful, dying creature, pretend to be more just than God, and more pure than his Maker? No: instead of quarrelling with his afflictions, let him wonder that he is out of hell. Can a man be cleansed without his Maker? Will God justify sinful mortals, and clear them from guilt? or will he do so without their having an interest in the righteousness and gracious help of their promised Redeemer, when angels, once ministering spirits before his throne, receive the just recompence of their sins? Notwithstanding the seeming impunity of men for a short time, though living without God in the world, their doom is as certain as that of the fallen angels, and is continually overtaking them. Yet careless sinners note it so little, that they expect not the change, nor are wise to consider their latter end.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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 circle is affected by the death of a man, and how soon does even that circle cease to be affected! A few relatives and friends feel it and weep over the loss; but the mass of men are unconcerned. It is like taking a grain of sand from the sea-shore, or a drop of water from the ocean. There is indeed one less, but the place is soon supplied, and the ocean rolls on its tumultuous billows as though none had been taken away. So with human life. The affairs of people will roll on; the world will be as busy, and active, and thoughtless as though we had not been; and soon, O how painfully soon to human pride, will our names be forgotten! The circle of friends will cease to weep, and then cease to remember us. The last memorial that we lived, will be gone. The house that we built, the bed on which we slept, the counting-room that we occupied, the monuments that we raised, the books that we made, the stone that we directed to be placed over our graves, will all be gone; and the last memento that we ever lived, will have faded away! How vain is man! How vain is pride! How foolish is ambition! How important the announcement that there is another world, where we may live on forever!

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

20. from morning to evening—unceasingly; or, better, between the morning and evening of one short day (so Ex 18:14; Isa 38:12).

They are destroyed—better, "they would be destroyed," if God withdrew His loving protection. Therefore man must not think to be holy before God, but to draw holiness and all things else from God (Job 4:17).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

From morning to evening; either,

1. Speedily, between morning and evening, like the grass; they flourish in the morning, and in the evening are cut off, Psalm 90:5,6. Or rather,

2. All the day long, as the phrase is, 2 Corinthians 11:25. There is not a moment wherein man is not sinking and drawing on towards death and corruption.

For ever; as to human appearance and the course of nature, as many such like passages are to be understood in this book; or in reference to this present. and worldly life, which when once lost is never recovered, Job 16:22 Psalm 39:13.

Without any regarding it, Heb. without putting the heart to it; the word heart being understood there, as also Job 23:6 34:23 Isaiah 41:20, as may appear by comparing 1 Samuel 9:20 2 Samuel 18:3 Isaiah 41:22 57:1, where the same phrase is used, and the word heart expressed. The meaning is either,

1. Yet few or no men that survive them lay it to heart as they should do. Or,

2. They perish beside the expectation of all men, when both themselves and others thought their mountain was so strong that it could not be removed. Or rather,

3. This is so common a thing for all men, though never so high and great, to perish in this manner, that no man heeds it, but passeth it by as a general accident not worthy of observation. Otherwise, no man procuring or furthering it, Heb. without any man’s putting the hand to it, i.e. they perish of themselves, without any violent hand.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

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 between a time to be born and a time to die, Ecclesiastes 3:2; so frail and short is the life of man; his days are but as an hand's breadth, Psalm 39:5,

they perish for ever: which is not to be understood of the second or eternal death which some die; for this is not the case of all; those that believe in Christ shall not perish for ever, but have everlasting life; but this respects not only the long continuance of men under the power of death until the resurrection, which is not contradicted by thus expression; but it signifies that the dead never return to this mortal life again, at least the instances are very rare; their families, friends, and houses, that knew them, know them no more; they return no more to their worldly business or enjoyments, see Job 7:9,

without any regarding it; their death; neither they themselves nor others, expecting it so soon, and using no means to prevent it, and which, if made use of, would not have availed, their appointed time being come; or "without putting" (k), either without putting light into them, as Sephorno, which can only be true of some; or with out putting the hand, either their own or another's, to destroy them, being done by the hand of God, by a distemper of his sending, or by one providence or another; or without putting the heart to it, which comes to the sense of our version; though death is so frequent every day, yet it is not taken notice of; men do not lay it to heart, so as to consider of their latter end, and repent of their sins, and reform from them, that they may not be their ruin; and this is and would be the case of all men, were it not for the grace of God.

(k) "propter non ponentem", Montanus; "sub. manum", Codurcus; "cor", R. Levi, Jarchi, Mercerus, Piscator, Michaelis.

Geneva Study Bible

They are destroyed from {o} morning to evening: they perish for ever {p} without any regarding it.

(o) They see death continually before their eyes and daily approaching them.

(p) No man for all this considers it.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

20. from morning to evening] i. e. from a morning to an evening, in the course of a single day, cf. Isaiah 38:12. They are short-lived as ephemerids.

without any regarding] i. e. without any one noticing it; so insignificant and of no account are they, that they pass away unobserved, like ephemeral insects. The words might mean, without any of them laying to heart; they are thoughtless in their sinful levity, an idea parallel to “without wisdom” in the next verse. Job 4:19 described how easily men are destroyed, this verse describes how soon. All is meant to widen the chasm between men and God, and by giving Job right thoughts of God, and of himself a man, to bring back his mind to a becoming attitude towards Heaven.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 20. - They are destroyed from morning to evening. Human bodies undergo a continuous destruction. From the moment that we are born we begin to die. Decay of powers is coeval with their first exercise. Our insidious foe, Death, marks us as his own from the very first breath that we draw. Our bodies are machines wound up to go for a certain time. The moment that we begin to use them we begin to wear them out. They perish for ever. The final result is that Our" houses of clay "perish, crumble to dust, disappear, and come to nothing. They "perish for ever," says Eliphaz, repeating what he believed the spirit of ver. 15 to have said to him; but it is not clear that he understood more by this than that they perish and disappear for ever, so far as this life and this world are concerned. Without any regarding it. No one is surprised or thinks it hard. It is the lot of man, and every one's mind is prepared for it. Job 4:20

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

אף signifies, like כּי אף, 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 2 Samuel 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 יסוד, i.e., foundation of existence, is in dust - shows still more clearly that the poet has Genesis 2:7; Genesis 3:19, in his mind. It crushes them (subject, everything that operates destructively on the life of man) לפני־עשׁ, 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 לפני signifies, as Job 3:24 (cf. 1 Samuel 1:16), ad instar: as easily as a moth is crushed. They last only from morning until evening: they are broken in pieces (הכּת, from כּתת, for הוּכת); they are therefore as ephemerae. They perish for ever, without any one taking it to heart (suppl. על־לב, Isaiah 42:25; Isaiah 57:1), or directing the heart towards it, animum advertit (suppl. לב, 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 Ecclesiastes 12:6, with a silver cord, which holds the lamp hanging from the covering of the tent. Olshausen is inclined to read יתדם, their tent-pole, instead of יתרם, and at any rate thinks the accompanying בּם 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; Isaiah 38:12); (12) בּם 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 נפשׁ) 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; Proverbs 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.