Job 8:9

For we [are but of] yesterday (s),.... Which is not to be understood strictly of the day last past, but of a short space of time backward; and especially when compared with the antediluvian fathers,

For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers: The former age - the age immediately preceding Job. Their fathers - the fathers pricking that age, and therefore still further back.

But of yesterday; but lately born, and therefore have but little knowledge and experience, as it follows. Our days upon earth are a shadow: this is meant either, 1. Of their lives in particular, which were far shorter than the lives of their ancestors, the patriarchs, whose long lives gave them opportunity to know and see the course of God’ s providence towards good and bad men, and the differing ends and issues of their lives. Or, 2. Of men’ s lives in general; which being very short, men’ s observation reacheth but to very few events in comparison of those which may be known by the records and testimony of all former ages.

Job 8:9 (For we [are but of] yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth [are] a shadow:)Ver. 9. For we are but of yesterday] Heb. We are yesterday, that is, yesterday’ s offspring, upstarts, mushrooms, novices of very small standing in the world. And yet they were old men, Job 15:10. Eliphaz is esteemed to be a hundred and fifty, Bildad a hundred and forty, Zophar a hundred and twenty years old; and yet, in comparison to the fathers before the flood, they were but of yesterday, they had lived but a very little while, and were but of late time. And know nothing] Neque experti sumus, saith Tremellius; the greatest part of our knowledge is but the least part of our ignorance: how can we know much, when our abode here is so short, our experience so little? Art longa, vita brevis, said Hippocrates, life is short, and art is long. Themistocles, though he lived a hundred and seven years, yet at his death complained, saying, Now I am to die when I begin to be wise. Solon said, that though old, yet he thought not himself too old to learn; and Julian the lawyer was wont to say, that when he had one foot in the grave, yet he would have the other in the school. Because our days upon earth are a shadow] Fluxa, instabilis, et ipsa ultro abiens, saith Junius, unsubstantial, unsettled, uncertain, there is no hold nor tack in it, Psalms 102:11 1 Chronicles 29:15, What is man but a dream of a shadow, saith Pindarus; a shadow of smoke, saith Sophocles; a shadow of a shadow, saith Aeschylus, σκιαςουαρ, καπνουσκια, ειδωλονσκιας. He is therefore not a man, but a shadow of man (as Lamech’ s second wife’ s name was Zillah, a shadow of a wife, Tsillah, umbra ipsius, and as Menander calleth a false friend φιλουσκιαν, the shadow of a friend); he hath not so much as shadow of reason or true understanding, who, by spending the span, by wasting the shadow of this short life, after the ways of his own heart, bereaveth himself of a room in that city of pearls, and loseth the comforts of that life which lasteth for ever.

Verse 9. For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing] It is evident that Bildad refers to those times in which human life was protracted to a much longer date than that in which Job lived; when men, from the long period of eight or nine hundred years, had the opportunity of making many observations, and treasuring up a vast fund of knowledge and experience. In comparison with them, he considers that age as nothing, and that generation as being only of yesterday, not having had opportunity of laying up knowledge: nor could they expect it, as their days upon earth would be but a shadow, compared with that substantial time in which the fathers had lived. Perhaps there may be an allusion here to the shadow projected by the gnomon of a dial, during the time the sun is above the horizon. As is a single solar day, so is our life. The following beautiful motto I have seen on a sundial: UMBRAE SUMUS! "We are shadows!" referring to the different shadows by which the gnomon marked the hours, during the course of the day; and all intended to convey this moral lesson to the passengers: Your life is composed of time, marked out by such shadows as these. Such as time is, such are you; as fleeting, as transitory, as unsubstantial. These shadows lost, time is lost; time lost, soul lost! Reader take heed! The writer of this book probably had before his eyes these words of David, in his last prayer, 1 Chronicles 29:15: "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as all our fathers were; our days upon earth are as a SHADOW, and there is no expectation. There is no reason to hope that they shall be prolonged; for our lives are limited down to threescore years and ten, as the average of the life even of old men.

8–19. The moral wisdom of the ancients Bildad, having laid down his moral principle, invites Job to reflect that it is a principle resting on the research and the generalized experience of men of generations long past, whose long lives enabled them to weigh and balance and infer from the multitude of cases the general truth. It is no new theory of his or of the short-lived men of to-day, who are but of yesterday and know nothing. These maxims of the ancient world are clothed in rich and gorgeous similes drawn from the luxuriant plant-life of the sultry East.

For we are but of yesterday - That is, we are of short life. We have had but few opportunities of observation compared with those who have gone before us.

9. For we (are…) yesterday — Such is the terse original, as may be seen in the English version. The life of an individual is too short to comprehend the purposes of God.