Job 4:21

Doth not their excellency [which is] in them go away?.... Either the soul which is in them, and is the most excellent part of them; this, though it dies not, yet it goes away and departs from the

Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? they die, even without wisdom. Their excellency - (Psalms 39:11; Psalms 146:4 ; 1 Corinthians 13:8). But Umbreit by an Oriental image from a bow useless, because unstrung.

Whatsoever is really or by common estimation excellent in men, all their natural, and moral, and civil accomplishments, as high birth, great riches, power, and wisdom, &c.; these are so far from preserving men from perishing, as one would think they should do, that they perish themselves, together with those houses of clay in which they are lodged. Which is in them go away; or, go away with, (as beth is oft used) them; it doth not survive them. Without wisdom: either, 1. Like fools. Wise men and fools die alike, . Or, 2. They never attain to perfect wisdom, to that wisdom which man once had, much less to that wisdom which is in God, which Job conceiveth he hath; otherwise he would not so boldly censure the counsels and works of God as unrighteous or unreasonable, because his human and narrow capacity cannot fully understand them. Moreover, as folly is oft put for unrighteousness and wickedness, so is wisdom for justice and goodness; which is so known, that it is needless to prove it; and so by wisdom here may be meant that perfect justice and purity which Job arrogated to himself, and which Eliphaz here denies to all men, , &c.

Job 4:21 Doth not their excellency [which is] in them go away? they die, even without wisdom.Ver. 21. Doth not their excellency which is in them go away?] Journeyeth not their excellency with them? so Broughton rendereth it. By their excellence here some understand the soul, called by David his glory. A philosopher said, there was nothing excellent in the world but man, nothing in man but his soul (Favorinus). The Stoics affirmed that the body was not a part of a man, but the instrument, or rather the servant, of the soul. Hence the Latins call the body Corpus, or Corpor (as of old they speak), quasi cordis puer sive famnlus. And Plato saith that that is not the man that is seen of him; but the mind of a man, that is the man (ουκεστινανθρωποςτοορωμενον). And in the Job 4:19 man is said to dwell in a house of clay; that is, the soul to inhabit the body. The soul goes away with the name of the whole person; the soul indeed is the man in a moral consideration, and is, therefore, elsewhere called the inward man, and the hidden man of the heart, 2 Corinthians 4:16 1 Peter 3:4; the body, compared to it, is but as a clay wall encompassing a treasure, a coarse case to a rich instrument, a leathern sheath to an excellent blade, Daniel 7:15, or as a mask to a beautiful face. Now at death this excellence of a man departeth, returneth to God that gave it, Ecclesiastes 12:7. "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish," even the most excellent effects of his mind and spirit, as the word signifieth, Psalms 146:4. And as that, so all other excellencies go away at death, Psalms 39:11; Psalms 49:13; even the whole goodliness of man, Isaiah 40:6, whether it be the good things of the mind, as wisdom, science, conscience, judgment; or of the body, as beauty and health; or of fortune, as they call it, as favour and applause, together with plenty of prosperity. No man’ s glory goeth down with him into the grave, Psalms 49:16. Where is now the flourishing beauty and gallantry of Caesar, saith one? his armies and honours, his triumphs and trophies? Where are the rich fool’ s great barns? Nebuchadnezzar’ s great Babel? Agrippa’ s great pomp? &c. Have not all these made their bed in the dark, leaving their excellence behind them? Are they not, many of them, gone to their place, as a stone to the centre, or as a fool to the stocks? They die, even without wisdom] Heb. They die, and not with wisdom; they die like so many beasts (but for their pillow and bolster), without any care to lay hold on eternal life; they die as a fool dieth, 2 Samuel 3:33. Not in wisdom; that is, in abundance of folly, saith Pineda.

Verse 21. Doth not their excellency - go away!] Personal beauty, corporeal strength, powerful eloquence, and various mental endowments, pass away, or are plucked up by the roots; they are no more seen or heard among men, and their memory soon perisheth. They die, even without wisdom.] If wisdom means the pursuit of the best end, by the most legitimate and appropriate means, the great mass of mankind appear to perish without it. But, if we consider the subject more closely, we shall find that all men die in a state of comparative ignorance. With all our boasted science and arts, how little do we know! Do we know any thing to perfection that belongs either to the material or spiritual world? Do we understand even what matter is? What is its essence? Do we understand what spirit is? Then, what is its essence? Almost all the phenomena of nature, its grandest operations, and the laws of the heavenly bodies, have been explained on the principle of gravitation or attraction; but in what does this consist? Who can answer? We can traverse every part of the huge and trackless ocean by means of the compass; but who understands the nature of magnetism on which all this depends? We eat and drink in order to maintain life; but what is nutrition, and how is it effected? This has never been explained. Life depends on respiration for its continuance; but by what kind of action is it, that in a moment the lungs separate the oxygen, which is friendly to life, from the nitrogen, which would destroy it; suddenly absorbing the one, and expelling the other? Who, among the generation of hypothesis-framers, has guessed this out? Life is continued by the circulation of the blood; but by what power and law does it circulate? Have the systole and diastole of the heart, on which this circulation depends, ever been satisfactorily explained? Most certainly not. Alas, we die without wisdom; and must die, to know these, and ten thousand other matters equally unknown, and equally important. To be safe, in reference to eternity, we must know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent; whom to know is life eternal. This knowledge, obtained and retained, will entitle us to all the rest in the eternal world.

21. their excellency go away] This verse is obscure. The word rendered go away means to pull out, as a pin or the posts of a gate, Judges 16:3; Judges 16:14 (English version, went away with), or the stake of a tent, Isaiah 33:20 (be removed). This is probably the original meaning. Then the word is used in a secondary, more general sense, to break up an encampment, to remove or journey, to depart, e.g. very often in Numbers 33. In the present verse the verb is pass., and probably has its original sense, plucked up, or torn out. The word translated excellency has that meaning, e.g. Genesis 49:3; Proverbs 17:7. In other places the word means a cord, Judges 16:7-9, the string of a bow, Psalms 11:2; and similarly Job 30:11. The figure in the Poet’s mind here is the pulling down of a tent, to which the death of man is compared; so in Isaiah 38:12, where the meaning is, my habitation is removed. The meaning cord suits this figure better than excellency, and the sense would be, their tent-cord is torn away. As to the relation of the two clauses of the verse to one another, the construction is probably the same as in ch. Job 4:2, if one should venture … wilt thou be grieved? Therefore, If their tent-cord is torn away in them, Do they not die, and not in wisdom? There is an emphasis on die; the moment the tent falls, through the tearing-away of the cord that upheld it, the inhabitant wholly perishes. It is not necessary to ask what the tent-cord is. The cord belongs to the figure, and is scarcely to be interpreted of the soul. They die without attaining unto wisdom. This trait heightens the darkness of the picture of man’s condition. He is not only frail, his frailty is but another side of his moral imperfection, and this cleaves to him to the very end. There is something very wise and considerate as well as profoundly reverential in these words of the aged speaker. He does not touch Job’s murmurs directly, but seeks to reach them by suggesting other thoughts to Job. First, he speaks of the exalted purity of God, to awaken reverence in Job’s mind. Then he descends to the creatures and seeks to look at them as they appear unto God. In His eyes, so sublime is He in holiness, all creatures, angels and men, are erring. Thus Eliphaz makes Job cease to be an exception, and renders it more easy for him to reconcile himself to his history and acknowledge the true cause of it. He is but one where all are the same. There is nothing strange in his having sinned (ch. Job 5:6-7). Neither, therefore, are his afflictions strange. But it will be something strange if he murmurs against God.

Doth not their excellency ... - Dr. Good renders this, “Their fluttering round is over with them,” by a very forced construction of the passage.

21. Excellency — ιϊψ. Among its significations is also that of a cord, for instance, of a tent. The language is now generally regarded as figurative.