How much less, understand, doth he put trust in them, &c.! Or, How much more, understand, doth he charge folly on them, &c.! Either of these supplements are natural and easy, being fetched out of the former verse, and necessary to make the sense complete. The sense is, What strange presumption then is it, for a foolish and mortal man to pretend to a higher privilege than the angels do, to make himself more just than God, or to exalt himself above or against God, as thou dost! On them, i.e. on men, as it follows, who, though they have immortal spirits, yet those spirits dwell in mortal bodies, which are great debasements, and clogs, and encumbrances, and snares to them; and which are here called houses, (because they are the receptacles of the soul, and the places of its settled and continual abode,) and houses of clay, and earthly houses, 2 Corinthians 5:1; partly because they were made of clay, or earth, Genesis 2:7 1 Corinthians 15:47; and partly to note their great frailty and mutability; whereas the angels are free spirits, unconfined to such carcasses, and dwell in celestial, and glorious, and everlasting mansions. Whose foundation is in the dust; whose very foundation, no less than the rest of the building, is in the dust; who as they dwell in dust and clay, so they had their foundation or original from it, and they must return to it, Ecclesiastes 12:7; and, as to their bodies, lie down and sleep in it, Daniel 12:2, as in his long home, Ecclesiastes 12:5, and the only continuing city which he hath in this world. Which are crushed, Heb. they crush them, i.e. they are or will be crushed; the active verb used impersonally, as it is Job 7:3, Job 24:20 Proverbs 6:30 Luke 12:20. Before the moth, i.e. sooner than a moth is crushed, which is easily done by a gentle touch of the finger. An hyperbolical expression. So the Hebrew word liphne, commonly signifying place, doth here note time, as it is used Genesis 27:7, Genesis 29:26 36:31. Or, at the face, or appearance, of a moth. No creature is so weak and contemptible but one time or other it may have the body of man in its power, as the worms, the moths cousin-germans, have in the grave. But he instanceth in a moth rather than a worm, because it is the weaker of the two, and because it better agrees with the similitude of a house, in which moths commonly are more frequent, and powerful, and mischievous than worms. How then canst thou think, O Job, to contend with thy Maker, that must become a prey to such small and impotent creatures?
Related Commentaries of Job 4:19
Job 4:19
19 How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?