Job 8:14

Whose hope shall be cut off,.... The same thing as before, expressed in different words, and repeated for the certainty of it; signifying that it should be of no manner of use, should be wholly lost,

Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web. Cut off - so Gesenius. Or, to accord with the metaphor of the spider's house (Hebrew for "web").

i.e. Whose wealth and outward glory, which is the matter of his hope and trust, shall be cut off, i.e. suddenly and violently taken away from him. Whose hope shall be irksome or tedious to him, by the succession of earnest expectation and great disappointment. A spider’ s web; which though it be formed with great art and industry, and may do much mischief to others, yet is most slender and feeble, and easily swept down or pulled in pieces, and unable to defend the spider that made it. The application is obvious.

Job 8:14 Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust [shall be] a spider’ s web. Ver. 14. Whose hope (or whose folly, that is, whose foolish hope) shall be cut off] The Latin translation hath it, his folly shall not please him, sc. when once he seeth, by the disappointment of his high hopes, what a fool’ s paradise he had wrought himself into, what pains he hath taken to go to hell, his hope shall be cut off; and that is the greatest cut in the world, Hypocritis nihil stupidius. This Bildad telleth the hypocrite twice over; because he will hardly be drawn to believe it. But that he telleth Job so, as if he were this hopeless hypocrite, he is quite beside the cushion, as we say. And whose trust shall be a spider’ s web] Wherein there is much artifice, but no strength. Trust is somewhat more than hope; it is a bearing a man’ s self bold upon the assurance that all shall be well. Such was that of Babylon in their provision laid in to hold out a siege of twenty years’ length. Such also is that of mystical Babylon, who saith, "I shall see no sorrow," Revelation 18:7. But this trust never triumpheth. It is (by a second comparison) here fitly set forth by a spider’ s web, Heb. a spider’ s house, Isaiah 59:5, so called because therein the spider lodgeth herself, as if safe, and out of harm’ s way, which is nothing so. A reverend man cleareth the comparison thus: first, the spider’ s web is made out of her own bowels (her motto was mihi soli debeo I owe it to myself only), so is the hypocrite’ s hope merely from his own brain and imagination. Secondly, though this web be curiously framed, yet it only catcheth flies; so do hypocrites look after ceremonies, and not substance. Thirdly, the spider is full of poison, and remaineth in a dusty nasty hole, though she work never so curiously; so doth the hypocrite abide in his unregeneracy, &c. Fourthly, she gets to the top of the window, as high as she can; and then when she falls, she falls to the bottom, for nothing stays her: so here. Fifthly, when the besom comes, she and her web are swept away, and she is trodden under foot; so are all presumptuous hypocrites. Becket’ s friends advised him (for his security) to have a mass in honour of St Stephen, (to keep him from the hands of his enemies): he did so, but it saved him not. Contrarily, a poor persecuted Huguenot in the Massacre at Paris had crept into a hole, a spider comes and weaves a cobweb over it; the murderers therefore presumed him not there; and so he was preserved. What cannot the Lord do by the weakest means that may be?

Verse 14. Whose hope shall be cut off] Such persons, subdued by the strong habits of sin, hope on fruitlessly, till the last thread of the web of life is cut off from the beam; and then they find no more strength in their hope than is in the threads of the spider's web. Mr. Good renders, Thus shall their support rot away. The foundation on which they trust is rotten, and by and by the whole superstructure of their confidence shall tumble into ruin.

14. shall be cut off] Perhaps rather, goeth in sunder, though the meaning is not quite certain. One would have expected a noun here parallel to “spider’s web” in the second clause, but no efforts to find a noun have been successful. Saadia in his Arabic Translation rendered gossamer, the filmy thread-like substance that floats in the air, or the thread-like shimmer of the air itself when sultry and moist. This is a very suitable sense but is without sufficient support. a spider’s web] lit. spider’s house, cf. “house” in Job 8:15. The flimsiness of the spider’s house is proverbial in the East. Mohammed compares idolaters to the spider: The likeness of those who take to themselves patrons beside God is as the likeness of the spider who taketh to herself a house; and verily the frailest of houses is the spider’s house, if they did but know, Kor. 29:40. See also Job 27:18.

Whose hope shall be cut off - Schultens supposes that the quotation from the ancients closes with Job 8:13, and that these are the comments of Bildad on the passage to which he had referred.

14. A spider’s web — Rather, house. Comp. Isaiah 59:5. A favourite Oriental figure.