SEV Biblia, Chapter 4:21
¿Su hermosura, no se pierde con ellos mismos? Mueren, y no lo saben.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Job 4:21
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.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 12-21 - Eliphaz relates a vision. When we are communing with our own hearts and are still, Ps 4:4, then is a time for the Holy Spirit to commun with us. This vision put him into very great fear. Ever since ma sinned, it has been terrible to him to receive communications from Heaven, conscious that he can expect no good tidings thence. Sinfu man! shall he pretend to be more just, more pure, than God, who being his Maker, is his Lord and Owner? How dreadful, then, the pride an presumption of man! How great the patience of God! Look upon man in his life. The very foundation of that cottage of clay in which man dwells is in the dust, and it will sink with its own weight. We stand but upo the dust. Some have a higher heap of dust to stand upon than others but still it is the earth that stays us up, and will shortly swallow us up Man is soon crushed; or if some lingering distemper, which consume like a moth, be sent to destroy him, he cannot resist it. Shall such creature pretend to blame the appointments of God? Look upon man in his death. Life is short, and in a little time men are cut off. Beauty strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death, but thes things die with them; nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power continue after them. Shall a weak, sinful, dying creature, pretend to be more just than God, and more pure than his Maker? No: instead of quarrelling with his afflictions, let him wonder that he is out of hell. Can a man be cleansed without his Maker? Will God justify sinfu mortals, and clear them from guilt? or will he do so without their having an interest in the righteousness and gracious help of their promised Redeemer, when angels, once ministering spirits before his throne, receive the just recompence of their sins? Notwithstanding the seeming impunity of men for a short time, though living without God in the world, their doom is as certain as that of the fallen angels, an is continually overtaking them. Yet careless sinners note it so little that they expect not the change, nor are wise to consider their latte end __________________________________________________________________
Original Hebrew
הלא 3808 נסע 5265 יתרם 3499 בם ימותו 4191 ולא 3808 בחכמה׃ 2451
