The Pulpit Commentary on Job 4:20

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

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 Job 4:15 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.

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