Job 4:20
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They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
In reply to Sommer, who in his excellent biblische Abhandlungen, 1846, considers the octastich as the extreme limit of the compass of the strophe, it is sufficient to refer to the Syriac strophe-system. It is, however, certainly an impossibility that, as Ewald (Jahrb. ix. 37) remarks with reference to the first speech of Jehovah, Job 38-39, the strophes can sometimes extend to a length of 12 lines = Masoretic verses, consequently consist of 24 στίχοι and more. Then Eliphaz the Temanite began, and said:
Open source ↗Job having warmly given vent to his passion, and so broken the ice, his friends here come gravely to give vent to their judgment upon his case, which perhaps they had communicated to one another apart, compared notes upon it and talked it over among themselves, and found they were all agreed in their verdict, that Job's afflictions certainly proved him to be a hypocrite; but they did not attack Job with this high charge till by the expressions of his discontent and impatience, in which they thought he reflected on God himself, he had confirmed them in the bad opinion they had before conceived of him and his character. Now they set upon him with great fear. The dispute begins, and it soon becomes fierce. The opponents are Job's three friends. Job himself is respondent. Elihu appears, first, as moderator, and at length God himself gives judgment upon the controversy and the management of it. The question in dispute is whether Job was an honest man or no, the same question that was in dispute between God and Satan in the first two chapters. Satan had yielded it, and durst not pretend that his cursing his day was a constructive cursing of his God; no, he cannot deny but that Job still holds fast his integrity; but Job's friends will needs have it that, if Job were an honest man, he would not have been thus sorely and thus tediously afflicted, and therefore urge him to confess himself a hypocrite in the profession he had made of religion: "No," says Job, "that I will never do; I have offended God, but my heart, notwithstanding, has been upright with him;" and still he holds fast the comfort of his integrity. Eliphaz, who, it is likely, was the senior, or of the best quality, begins with him in this chapter, in which, I. He bespeaks a patient hearing (Job 4:2). II. He complim…
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
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he will perish forever, like his own dung; those who had seen him will ask, ‘Where is he?’
When a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, until my renewal comes.
You forever overpower him, and he passes on; You change his countenance and send him away.
The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.
Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He died, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.
yet he passed away and was no more; though I searched, he could not be found.
For when only a few years are past I will go the way of no return.
Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God afflicted them with all kinds of adversity.
that though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed.