Job 4:17

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 morerighteous 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.