--- title: "Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible · Volume 1: Genesis to Jeremiah" author: "Adam Clarke" languages: [en] shelf: "Commentaries" section: 494 of 914 url: https://scriptura.si/works/adam-clarke-commentary-volume-1-genesis-to-jeremiah/494/ cite: "Adam Clarke, Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible · Volume 1: Genesis to Jeremiah, section 494. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/adam-clarke-commentary-volume-1-genesis-to-jeremiah/494/" --- # Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible · Volume 1: Genesis to Jeremiah *Adam Clarke* Clarke's learned notes on the Hebrew and Greek, verse by verse, from Genesis to Revelation: volume 1 of 2. ## 494. Job · 21 of 73 Source: https://scriptura.si/works/adam-clarke-commentary-volume-1-genesis-to-jeremiah/494/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/adam-clarke-commentary-volume-1-genesis-to-jeremiah/494/#p-N ### Verse 22 [¶1] Then call thou - Begin thou first to plead, and I will answer for myself; or, I will first state and defend my own case, and then answer thou me. ### Verse 23 [¶3] How many are mine iniquities - Job being permitted to begin first, enters immediately upon the subject; and as it was a fact that he was grievously afflicted, and this his friends asserted was in consequence of grievous iniquities, he first desires to have them specified. What are the specific charges in this indictment? To say I must be a sinner to be thus afflicted, is saying nothing; tell me what are the sins, and show me the proofs. ### Verse 24 [¶5] Wherefore hidest thou thy face - Why is it that I no longer enjoy thy approbation? [¶6] Holdest me for thine enemy? - Treatest me as if I were the vilest of sinners? ### Verse 25 [¶8] Wilt thou break a leaf - Is it becoming thy dignity to concern thyself with a creature so contemptible? ### Verse 26 [¶10] Thou writest bitter things against me - The indictment is filled with bitter or grievous charges, which, if proved, would bring me to bitter punishment. [¶11] The iniquities of my youth - The Levities and indiscretions of my youth I acknowledge; but is this a ground on which to form charges against a man the integrity of whose life is unimpeachable? ### Verse 27 [¶13] Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks - בסד bassad, "in a clog," such as was tied to the feet of slaves, to prevent them from running away. This is still used in the West Indies, among slave-dealers; and is there called the pudding, being a large collar of iron, locked round the ankle of the unfortunate man. Some have had them twenty pounds' weight; and, having been condemned to carry them for several years, when released could not walk without them! A case of this kind I knew: The slave had learned to walk well with his pudding, but when taken off, if he attempted to walk, he fell down, and was obliged to resume it occasionally, till practice had taught him the proper center of gravity, which had been so materially altered by wearing so large a weight; the badge at once of his oppression, and of the cruelty of his task-masters! [¶14] And lookest narrowly - Thou hast seen all my goings out and comings in; and there is no step I have taken in life with which thou art unacquainted. [¶15] Thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet - Some understand this as the mark left on the foot by the clog; or the owner's mark indented on this clog; or, Thou hast pursued me as a hound does his game, by the scent. ### Verse 28 [¶17] And he, as a rotten thing - I am like a vessel made of skin; rotten, because of old age, or like a garment corroded by the moth. So the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic understood it. The word he may refer to himself. ### Introduction [¶19] The shortness, misery, and sinfulness of man's life, [Job 14:1-4]. The unavoidable necessity of death; and the hope of a general resurrection, [Job 14:5-15]. Job deplores his own state, and the general wretchedness of man, [Job 14:16-22]. ### Verse 1 [¶21] Man - born of a woman - There is a delicacy in the original, not often observed: אדם ילוד אשה Adam yelud ishah, "Adam born of a woman, few of days, and full of tremor." Adam, who did not spring from woman, but was immediately formed by God, had many days, for he lived nine hundred and thirty years; during which time neither sin nor death had multiplied in the earth, as they were found in the days of Job. But the Adam who springs now from woman, in the way of ordinary generation, has very few years. Seventy, on an average, being the highest term, may be well said to be few in days; and all matter of fact shows that they are full of fears and apprehensions, רגז rogez, cares, anxieties, and tremors. He seems born, not indeed to live, but to die; and, by living, he forfeits the title to life. ### Verse 2 [¶23] He cometh forth like a flower - This is a frequent image both in the Old and New Testament writers; I need not quote the places here, as the readers will find them all in the margin. [¶24] He fleeth also as a shadow - Himself, as he appears among men, is only the shadow of his real, substantial, and eternal being. He is here compared to a vegetable; he springs up, bears his flower is often nipped by disease, blasted by afflictions and at last cut down by death. The bloom of youth, even in the most prosperous state, is only the forerunner of hoary hairs, enfeebled muscles, impaired senses, general debility, anility, and dissolution. All these images are finely embodied, and happily expressed, in the beautiful lines of a very nervous and correct poet, too little known, but whose compositions deserve the first place among what may be called the minor poets of Britain. See at the end of the chapter, [Job 14:22] (note). ### Verse 3 [¶26] Dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one - The whole of this chapter is directed to God alone; in no part of it does he take any notice of his friends. ### Verse 4 [¶28] Who can bring a clean thing - This verse is thus rendered by the Chaldee: "Who will produce a clean thing from man, who is polluted with sins, except God, who is one?" By Coverdale thus: Who can make it cleane, that commeth of an uncleane thinge? No body. The text refers to man's original and corrupt nature. Every man that is born into the world comes into it in a corrupt or sinful state. This is called original sin; and is derived from fallen Adam, who is the stock, to the utmost ramifications of the human family. Not one human spirit is born into the world without this corruption of nature. All are impure and unholy; and from this principle of depravity all transgression is produced; and from this corruption of nature God alone can save. The Septuagint, in the Codex Alexandrinus, reads the verse thus: Τις γαρ εσται καθαρο· απο ῥυπου; ουδε εἱς, εαν και μιας ἡμερας γενηται ὁ βιος αυτου επι της γης; "Who is pure from corruption? Not one, although he had lived but one day upon the earth." ### Verse 5 [¶30] Seeing his days are determined - The general term of human life is fixed by God himself; in vain are all attempts to prolong it beyond this term. Several attempts have been made in all nations to find an elixir that would expel all the seeds of disease, and keep men in continual health; but all these attempts have failed. Basil, Valentine, Norton, Dastin, Ripley, Sandivogius, Artephius, Geber, Van Helmont, Paracelsus, Philalethes, and several others, both in Europe and Asia, have written copiously on the subject, and have endeavored to prove that a tincture might be produced, by which all imperfect metals may be transmuted into perfect; and an elixir by which the human body may be kept in a state of endless repair and health. And these profess to teach the method by which this tincture and this elixir may be made! Yet all these are dead; and dead, for aught we know, comparatively young! Artephius is, indeed, said to have lived ninety years, which is probable; but some of his foolish disciples, to give credit to their thriftless craft, added another cipher, and made his age nine hundred! Man may endeavor to pass the bound; and God may, here and there, produce a Thomas Parr, who died in 1635, aged one hundred and fifty-two; and a Henry Jenkins, who died in 1670, aged one hundred and sixty-nine; but these are rare instances, and do not affect the general term. Nor can death be avoided. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return, is the law, and that will ever render nugatory all such pretended tinctures and elixirs. But, although man cannot pass his appointed bounds, yet he may so live as never to reach them; for folly and wickedness abridge the term of human life; and therefore the psalmist says, Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out Half their days, [Psa 55:23], for by indolence, intemperance, and disorderly passions, the life of man is shortened in cases innumerable. We are not to understand the bounds as applying to individuals, but to the race in general. Perhaps there is no case in which God has determined absolutely that man's age shall be so long, and shall neither be more nor less. The contrary supposition involves innumerable absurdities. ### Verse 6 [¶32] Turn from him, that he may rest - Cease to try him by afflictions and distresses, that he may enjoy some of the comforts of life, before he be removed from it: and thus, like a hireling, who is permitted by his master to take a little repose in the heat of the day, from severe labor, I shall also have a breathing time from affliction, before I come to that bound over which I cannot pass. See [Job 10:20] (note), where there is a similar request. ### Verse 7 [¶34] For there is hope of a tree - We must not, says Calmet, understand this of an old tree, the stem and roots of which are dried up and rotted: but there are some trees which grow from cuttings, and some which, though pulled out of the earth, and having had their roots dried and withered by long exposure to the sun and wind, will, on being replanted, take root and resume their verdure. There are also certain trees, the fibres of which are so solid, that if after several years they be steeped in water, they resume their vigor, the tubes dilate, and the blossoms or flowers which were attached to them expand; as I have often witnessed in what is called the rose of Jericho. There are few trees which will not send forth new shoots, when the stock is cut down level with the earth. ### Verse 9 [¶36] Through the scent of water it will bud - A fine metaphor: the water acts upon the decaying and perishing tree, as strong and powerful odors from musk, otto of roses, ammonia, etc., act on a fainting or swooning person. ### Verse 10 [¶38] But man dieth - No human being ever can spring from the dead body of man; that wasteth away, corrupts, and is dissolved; for the man dies; and when he breathes out his last breath, and his body is reduced to dust, then, where is he? There is a beautiful verse in the Persian poet Khosroo, that is not unlike this saying of Job: - "I went towards the burying ground, and wept [¶39] To think of the departure of friends which were captives to death; [¶40] I said, Where are they! and Fate [¶41] Gave back this answer by Echo, Where are they? [¶42] Thus paraphrased by a learned friend: - [¶43] Beneath the cypress' solemn shade, [¶44] As on surrounding tombs I gazed,