Job 22:20

Whereas our substance is not cut down,.... As yours is; Noah and his family were preserved in the ark, and the creatures with him, and sufficient sustenance was laid up for them all, when everything

Whereas our substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them the fire consumeth. Whereas our substance is not cut down. The triumphant speech of the pious.

Whereas; or, when; or, seeing that; or, because; for this Hebrew particle im is oft used for chi. And so the following words may contain the reason of the joy and laughter of the innocent, mentioned , because when wicked men are destroyed, they are preserved; because our substance, i.e. our souls, and bodies, and subsistence, was now cut down. He should have said their substance, i.e. the substance of the righteous; but he changeth the person, and saith, our substance; either as including himself in the number of righteous persons, and thereby intimating that he pleaded the common cause of all such, whilst Job pleaded the cause of the wicked, as is elsewhere observed; or because he would hereby thankfully acknowledge some eminent and particular preservation given to him amongst other righteous men; or because he and his brethren were of the same substance with and descended from the loins of them whom God had miraculously preserved, when others round about them were cut off; as God had done for Abraham and his posterity, of which race these are conceived to have been. And a like change both of person and number we find , He found him (i.e. Jacob) in Beth-el, and there he spake with us, i.e. with him, as representing us, and for all our good. The remnant; all that was left undestroyed in the general calamity. Or, their excellency; all their desirable and delectable things. Of them, i.e. of those who are opposed to the righteous, and in whose destruction the righteous rejoiced. The fire, to wit, of God’ s wrath: some dreadful judgment, either proper fire, possibly that which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, which such knowing and inquisitive persons could not be ignorant of, as a thing done near their times and places; or some other sore calamity; for such oft come under the name of fire. But this whole verse is and may be otherwise rendered, and that interrogatively. Is not (or rather, was not, the Hebrew prefix he being here understood, after the manner of the language, from , where it is expressed) our substance (i.e. almost all our nature and kind) cut off, (almost all destroyed in the flood,) and did not the fire consume a remnant of them, i.e. of mankind, and of ungodly men, in Sodom and Gomorrah?

Job 22:20 Whereas our substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them the fire consumeth.Ver. 20. Whereas our substance is not cut down] That is, while life lasteth, and while it is called today; before death cometh: and after death, judgment; when the remnant of the wicked fire shall consume. Where we have a forcible motive to repent, because we must either turn or burn, Aut poenitendum, aut pereundum. See Acts 17:31 2 Corinthians 5:10-11 Hebrews 12:28-29. Eliphaz seemeth here on purpose to have mentioned that fire wherewith wicked men shall be tormented at the last day (and before, for every man’ s death day is his doomsday), and to have changed the person. The remnant (or excellence) of them the fire consumeth] That it might the more effectually move men to repent, that they might be delivered from the wrath to come. And here I could willingly take up Chrysostom’ s wish, Utinam ubique de Gehenna dissereretur! Oh that men would talk more everywhere of hell fire unquenchable, intolerable, and the fuel thereof made of the most tormenting temper, Isaiah 30:33. It was a speech of Gregory Nyssen, He that does but hear of hell is, without any further labour or study, taken off from sin filled pleasures, and set upon the practice of mortification. But men’ s hearts are grown harder today, and he that shall observe their impiety and impenitence may well say to them, as Cato once did to Caesar, Credo quae de inferis dicuntur falsa existimas, I believe thou thinkest all but a fable that is said concerning hell (Juven. Sat. 2.). Esse aliquos Manes, &c. Nec pueri credunt nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.

(20) Whereas our substance . . .—These are probably the words of the righteous and the innocent: “Surely they that did rise up against us are cut off, and the remnant of them the fire hath consumed.” The rendering in the Authorised Version is probably less correct, though in that also these words seem to be those of the innocent in Job 22:19.

Verse 20. Whereas our substance is not cut down] We, who fear the Lord, still continue in health and peace; whereas they who have departed from him are destroyed even to their very remnant. Mr. Good thinks that קימנו kimanu, which we translate our substance, is the same as the Arabic [Arabic] our people or tribe; and hence he translates the clause thus: "For our tribe is not cut off; while even the remnant of these a conflagration consumed." The reference here is supposed to be to the destruction of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah. A judgment by a flood took off the world of the ungodly in the days of Noah. Their remnant, those who lived in the same ungodly way, were taken off by a judgment of fire, in the days of Lot. Eliphaz introduces these two examples in order to terrify Job into a compliance with the exhortation which immediately follows.

12–20. Eliphaz, having in Job 22:6-10 suggested what Job’s offences must have been, now suggests under what feeling in regard to God he must have committed them. He thought God so far removed from the world that He did not observe men’s conduct.

Whereas our substance is not cut down - Margin, or, “Estate” Gesenius supposes that this means our adversary or enemy.

20. Contains THE SONG of the righteous: —Truly our adversary is cut off, And their residue fire consumeth.Whereas — ΰνμΰ, truly, the strongest form of affirmation: same as in Job 1:11; Job 17:2. Substance, etc.