Job 4:17

Shall mortal man be more just than God?.... Poor, weak, frail, dying man, and so sinful, as his mortality shows, which is the effect of sin; how should such a man be more righteous than God?

Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker? Mortal man ... a man.

The sense is, Thou, O Job, dost presumptuously accuse God for dealing harshly and unrighteously with thee, in sending thee into the world upon such hard terms, and punishing all innocent and righteous man with such unparalleled severity; but consider things calmly within thyself; if God and thou come to a trial before any equal judge, canst thou think that thou wilt go away justified, and the great God shall be condemned? No righteous man will punish another without cause, or more than he deserves; and therefore if God do so with thee, as thy words imply, he is less just than a man; which is blasphemous and absurd to imagine. Shall a man; a great and mighty man, as this word signifies, a man eminent for wisdom, or justice, or power, or any other perfections, such as thou art thought by thyself or others to be; who therefore might expect more favour than a poor miserable and contemptible man, which the word enosch, used in the former branch, signifies. So he anticipates this objection which Job might make. Be more pure than his Maker? an unanswerable argument against Job. He made thee, and that for himself and his own glory, and therefore hath an unquestionable right to deal with thee, and dispose of thee, the work of his hands, as he sees fit. Woe to him that striveth with his maker! . Besides, he made man just and pure; if any man have any thing of justice or purity in him, it is derived from God, the undoubted and only fountain of it; and therefore it must necessarily be in God in a far more eminent degree.

Job 4:17 Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?Ver. 17. Shall mortal man] Sorry sinful man, a very mixture and hodge podge of dirt and sin, Miser, aerumnis et peccatis obnoxius. Be more just than God?] Or, be just rather than God? as Luke 18:14. This is the matter of the vision; and it is (saith Diodati) a revelation of the doctrine of the free remission of sins, and of the sinner’ s justification by grace, through his faith in the promised mediator. But Eliphaz turns it another way, and misapplying it to Job, would there hence evince, that all his present sufferings were the proceeds of his own sin, and so from the process of God’ s justice. The truth is, Job had blurted out some words in the former chapter that reflected somewhat upon God: he had also bitterly cursed the day and services of his birth; this latter, if Eliphaz had sharply reproved Job for, he had done him a friendly good office: but he waives that part, et quae desperat nitescere posse, relinquit; the other, of clearing God’ s justice, he takes up and presseth it too far, to prove this unsound position: that whosoever is greatly afflicted by God, and for a long time together, that man is to be numbered with the wicked, though no other evidence or witness, appear or speak a word against him; for if he be innocent, how shall God be just that punisheth him? But Eliphaz should have known that afflictions are of two sorts, penal and probational; these latter are not simply for punishment of men’ s sins, but for trial and exercise of their graces, to humble them, to prove them, and to do them good at their latter end, Deuteronomy 8:16. Wait till God have made an end of his work (and we must not judge God’ s works, saith Peter Martyr, ante quintum actum, before the fifth act), and we shall see the effect both just and good. This Job had scarcely the patience to do, as appeareth by sundry passages of his; howbeit he ever preserved high and holy thoughts of God, neither at any time questioned his justice and purity, or complained of his dealings with him, and dispensations toward him, as unrighteous, though now and then, through the extremity of his pain, the anguish of his spirit, and the provocation of his friends, some unwary speeches slipped from him. Shall man be more pure than his maker?] Take man in his prime and pride, in his best estate and utmost strength, when and wherein he is most a man, ááø Vir a viribus, a man of the first magnitude, of the highest elevation (as one fitly phraseth it), both in parts, gifts, and graces; shall he be more pure than his Maker? never think it.

(17) Shall mortal man be more just than God?—This is the burden, or refrain, upon which the friends of Job are for ever harping. It is perfectly orthodox, but at the same time perfectly inadequate to deal with the necessities of Job’s case. He is willing to admit that it is impossible for any man to be just with God; but then arises Job’s dilemma, Where is God’s justice if He punishes the innocent as the guilty? The word rendered “mortal” man is really weak, frail man, involving, it may be, the idea of mortality, but not immediately suggesting it. As far as mortality implies sin, the notion of being just is absurd; and even a strong man—such is the antithesis—cannot be more pure than He that made him, who, it is assumed, must be both strong and righteous.

Verse 17. Shall mortal man] אנוש enosh; Greek βροτος. poor, weak, dying man. Be more just than God?] Or, האנוש מאלוה יצדק haenosh meeloah yitsdak; shall poor, weak, sinful man be justified before God? Shall a man] גבר gaber, shall even the strong and mighty man, be pure before his Maker? Is any man, considered merely in and of himself, either holy in his conduct, or pure in his heart? No. He must be justified by the mercy of God, through an atoning sacrifice; he must be sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God, and thus made a partaker of the Divine nature. Then he is justified before God, and pure in the sight of his Maker: and this is a work which God himself alone can do; so the work is not man's work, but God's. It is false to infer, from the words of this spectre, (whether it came from heaven or hell, we know not, for its communication shows and rankles a wound, without providing a cure,) that no man can be justified, and that no man can be purified, when God both justifies the ungodly, and sanctifies the unholy. The meaning can be no more than this: no man can make an atonement for his own sins, nor purify his own heart. Hence all boasting is for ever excluded. Of this Eliphaz believed Job to be guilty, as he appeared to talk of his righteousness and purity, as if they had been his own acquisition.

17. be more just than God] This translation is possible. It is very unnatural, however; for though, if a man were found complaining of God’s ways, the immediate inference might be that he was making himself more righteous (at least in the perception of moral rectitude) than God, such an inference does not seem drawn by any of the speakers, the idea of a man being more righteous than God being too absurd to suggest itself. The charge brought against Job was that he made God unrighteous, not that he claimed to be more righteous than He. Two senses seem possible, either, Can man be righteous before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker? a sense which the phrase has Numbers 32:22, and is adopted by the Sept.; or, can man be in the right in his plea against God? a meaning which the phrase has in the speeches of Elihu, ch. Job 32:2. This latter sense is less suitable to the second clause of the verse. The first and more general sense is the more probable because, of course, the vision appeared to Eliphaz before Job’s calamities befell him and had no direct reference to them. This sense also suits the scope of the following verses, and the general aphorism ch. Job 5:6-7 with which Eliphaz sums up this paragraph of his speech, and is most in harmony with the studiously general tone of Eliphaz’s first discourse.

Shall mortal man - Or, shall feeble man. The idea of “mortal” is not necessarily implied in the word used here, אנושׁ 'ĕnôsh.

Second strophe — The purport of the revelation whose faintest whisper Eliphaz heard, Job 4:17-21. Job 4:17 contains the thesis which the subsequent portion of the disclosure illustrates.17.