will do, for it is not meant that the good spirits positively sin, as if sin were a natural necessary consequence of their creatureship and finite existence, but that even the holiness of the good spirits is never equal to the absolute holiness of God, and that this deficiency is still greater in spirit-corporeal man, who has earthiness as the basis of his original nature. At the same time, it is presupposed that the distance between God and created earth is disproportionately greater than between God and created spirit, since matter is destined to be exalted to the nature of the spirit, but also brings the spirit into the danger of being degraded to its own level.
Verse 19
Job 4:19 אף signifies, like כּי אף, quanto minus, or quanto magis, according as a negative or positive sentence precedes: since Job 4:18 is positive, we translate it here quanto magis, as 2Sa 16:11. Men are called dwellers in clay houses: the house of clay is their φθαρτὸν σῶμα, as being taken de limo terrae (Job 33:6; comp. Wis. 9:15); it is a fragile habitation, formed of inferior materials, and destined to destruction. The explanation which follows - those whose יסוד, i.e., foundation of existence, is in dust - shows still more clearly that the poet has Gen 2:7; Gen 3:19, in his mind. It crushes them (subject, everything that operates destructively on the life of man) לפני־עשׁ, i.e., not: sooner than the moth is crushed (Hahn), or more rapidly than a moth destroys (Oehler, Fries), or even appointed to the moth for destruction (Schlottm.); but לפני signifies, as Job 3:24 (cf. 1Sa 1:16), ad instar: as easily as a moth is crushed. They last only from morning until evening: they are broken in pieces (הכּת, from כּתת, for הוּכת); they are therefore as ephemerae. They perish for ever, without any one taking it to heart (suppl. על־לב, Isa 42:25; Isa 57:1), or directing the heart towards it, animum advertit (suppl. לב, Job 1:8).
In Job 4:21 the soul is compared to the cord of a tent, which stretches out and holds up the body as a tent, like Ecc 12:6,
