Job 13:11,12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

Shall not his excellency His infinite wisdom, which sees your secret falsehood, and his justice and power, which can and will punish you for it; make you afraid? Of speaking rashly or falsely of his ways and counsels. Your remembrances Hebrew, זכרניכם, zichronechem, your memorials; or, as Chappelow translates it, memorabilia vestra, your remarkable things, your discourses, and arguments, and memorable actions; are like unto ashes Contemptible and unprofitable, Hebrew, משׁלי אפר, mishle epher, are parables or speeches of dust or ashes, mouldering, as it were, and coming to nothing. All that is most excellent and memorable in you; your wealth, and dignity, and wit, and reputation, or whatsoever it is for which you expect to be remembered, it is all but poor despicable dust and ashes; for, your bodies are like to bodies of clay Though they be not full of sores and biles as mine is, yet they are but dust, and to dust they shall return, as well as mine. The consideration of our mortality should make us afraid of offending God.

Job 13:11-12

11 Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you?

12 Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.