Between morning and evening they are beaten to pieces; they perish forever without anyone regarding it.
Eliphaz is passing on a voice he heard in a night vision. The voice puts every person in one picture: a life so frail it can break within a single day, and end with no one taking any notice. The words sound weighty and true. That raises the real question here. Does a true statement about mankind make the right word for a suffering man?
What the picture means
Why does the speech reach for a moth and a single day? One writer explains how it uses frailty as evidence about man himself. He quotes an older translation of the question asked a few verses earlier.
Samuel Ridout"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" — or "just before God," in His presence. Compared with His holiness, even the heavenly beings are unclean. The seraphim veil their faces as they proclaim Him. How much less can mortal man, whose mortality is a witness of his sin, boast of himself. His breath is in his nostrils; like a tale that is told, his life is measured in a day — like the short-lived moth.
True in itself, wrong in its use
The speech is not false. The fault lies in a hidden assumption: God settles accounts now, so a man's circumstances show what he deserves.
William KellyEvery word may be true in itself. He says it all with the greatest dignity and force. Yet he misapplies it and tells only one side, so in effect the whole is mistaken. Eliphaz assumes that God is displaying His government now, and measures prosperity or hardship to men exactly as they deserve. This is false ground, and it ruins the application. It fails most of all with a man like Job, whom God gave up to be attacked by Satan and tried right to the end — an end that was not bitter, but sweet.
The danger of misapplied truth
True words are hard to dismiss. That is what makes them dangerous in the wrong hands.
William KellyAbstract truth is altogether useless for the saints of God. Things which are true, but misunderstood and misapplied, may do more harm than many a false thing. Misapplied truth gives an error the apparent authority of God. The error then carries all the more weight, because it comes as the truth. Say a foolish thing, or one clearly false, and people despise it. But no believer can shrug off the truth of God. So when someone misuses the truth of God — when he uses it to crush a man whom God cares about intensely at that moment — how foreign and offensive that is to His mind!
The vision's real target
The words describe every mortal. Yet Eliphaz aimed them at the one man who looked the part, and never turned them on himself.
Leslie M. GrantHow true and fitting such words are for all of mankind! But Eliphaz applied them only to Job, not to himself. He did not consider himself "crushed before a moth" and "beaten to pieces." That had happened to Job, so Eliphaz took his vision as applying directly to Job. But a vision or dream is meant to apply directly to the one who has it, and Eliphaz missed that one important fact. In the same way, we may hear good ministry which we think fits others better than ourselves. Eliphaz could see that Job's excellence was going away. But his own excellence would go away too, as it does with all men.
Half the truth about man
Eliphaz's picture ends with people perishing unnoticed. God's own thought of man runs the other way.
J. N. DarbyGod made man in His own image. This is never said of angels… It is a testimony to man's lowliness, when you look at man as he is in himself — "crushed," as Job says, "before the moth." But the moment I turn to the thoughts of God about man, I see God setting him over the works of His hand, and crowning him with glory and honour. That has put man into a wonderful place.
Summary
- Frail — set beside God's holiness, a human life is measured in a day. It can break between morning and evening, like a short-lived moth.
- True — nothing Eliphaz says here is false in itself. His words are weighty, and they fit every mortal.
- Misapplied — Eliphaz assumes God pays out rewards and punishments in plain sight now. That assumption turns a true statement into a false charge.
- Dangerous — truth aimed at the wrong man does more harm than an obvious lie. It lends God's authority to the error, and no believer can shrug it off.
- Half — Eliphaz stops at what man is in himself. God's thoughts go further: He crowns man with glory and honour.