with a silver cord, which holds the lamp hanging from the covering of the tent. Olshausen is inclined to read יתדם, their tent-pole, instead of יתרם, and at any rate thinks the accompanying בּם superfluous and awkward. But (1) the comparison used here of the soul, and of the life sustained by it, corresponds to its comparison elsewhere with a thread or weft, of which death is the cutting through or loosing (Job 6:9; Job 27:8; Isa 38:12); (12) בּם is neither superfluous nor awkward, since it is intended to say, that their duration of life falls in all at once like a tent when that which in them (בם) corresponds to the cord of a tent (i.e., the נפשׁ) is drawn away from it. The relation of the members of the sentence in Job 4:21 is just the same as in Job 4:2 : Will they not die when it is torn away, etc. They then die off in lack of wisdom, i.e., without having acted in accordance with the perishableness of their nature and their distance from God; therefore, rightly considered: unprepared and suddenly, comp. Job 36:12; Pro 5:23. Oehler, correctly: without having been made wiser by the afflictions of God. The utterance of the Spirit, the compass of which is unmistakeably manifest by the strophic division, ends here. Eliphaz now, with reference to it, turns to Job.
Chap. 5
Verses 1-5
Job 5:1-5 1 Call now, - is there any one who will answer thee?
And to whom of the holy ones wilt thou turn? 2 For he is a fool who is destroyed by complaining,
And envy slays the simple one. 3 I, even I, have seen a fool taking root:
Then I had to curse his habitation suddenly. 4 His children were far from help,
And were crushed in the gate, without a rescuer; 5 While the hungry ate his harvest,
And even from among thorns they took it away,
And the intriguer snatched after his wealth.
