Job 4:17-21

This is what the vision said. Translate as mg.: Shall mortal man be just before God, shall a man be pure before his maker? Even the angels are fallible, how much more man, who inhabits a house of clay, i.e. a body formed from the dust (Genesis 2:7; Genesis 3:19; 2 Corinthians 5:1). Observe that we are not yet at the point of view of the later Judaism and the NT, according to which some angels are good, some bad. All are fallible. Again, observe that man's sin fulness is deduced simply from his creatureliness, especially, however, from his being made from the dust. The spirit that appears to Eliphaz knows nothing of the Fall as an explanation of human sin. His thought is rather that if the angels, who are of spirit (which was conceived by the ancient world in general as a finer kind of matter) are not perfect in God's sight, man. who is of the dust, must even less be so. Men are ephemerals (Job 4:20) they are crushed like the moth (Job 4:19 mg.) : how can such creatures claim perfection before God, or have a right against Him. Men die, just as a tent is taken down when the tent cord is plucked up, and their life comes to an end without their having obtained wisdom, i.e. in the context, the fear of God, that absolute submission to Him, which is the only wisdom for such moths.