How much less [in] them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation [is] in the dust, [which] are crushed before the moth?
Ver. 19. How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay] Or how much more (in reference to the latter part of the preceding verse) may God charge men with folly and depravity! And how much more ought he to acknowledge that he cannot subsist nor stand before God's judgment, as Job 4:17 but only by his gracious pardon and absolution!
That dwell in houses of clay] Periphrasis est hominum, saith Mercer; this is a description of men, as opposed to angels, those inhabitants of heaven, called therefore the angels of heaven, Mat 24:36 Galatians 1:8, the courtiers of that heavenly Jerusalem, Hebrews 12:22, in and with which, it may seem, they were created; as Christ's soul was in and with his body in the virgin's womb, the same moment. Hence they are also said to be in heaven, when as men and other things here below are said to be on earth, Matthew 6:10, on the surface only, as ready to be shaken off, and as having here no continuing city, Hebrews 13:14, no mansions till they come to heaven, John 14:2, no settled abode: some huts we have here, rather than houses; clay cottages, earthly tabernacles, το σκηνος, as Paul after Plato calleth men's bodies, 2 Corinthians 5:1. And so the most interpreters understand these words of Eliphaz concerning the body of man (rather than of his house he dwells in here, made up of clay and dust a little refined and sublimated by art or nature), which is nothing else but a clod of clay neatly made up. What is man, saith Greg. Nazianzen out of Genesis 2:7, but Nους και χους, soul and soil, breath and body, a puff of wind the one, a pile of dust the other? no solidity in either, עפר אפר κονις, cinis, ashes Genesis 3:19; Genesis 18:21. Pulvis et umbra sumus, Dust and shadows we are, saith the poet, Her. Od. iv. 7, 16; and Kεραμος ο ανθρωπος, saith the Greek proverb, Man is but an earthen pot. The first man, Adam, was of the earth earthy, 1 Corinthians 15:47. And no better are the best, quos ex meliore forsan lute finxit Titan, who are made of the finest common mould; but as the finer the metal, the purer the matter of any glass or earthen vessel, the more subject it is to break, so are they to die: for what reason?
Whose foundation is in the dust] The house is but weak, and yet the foundation weaker, terra friabilis, flying, light, unstable, unmoveable, dust that is soon wherried and whirled about with every puff of wind. Hence the apostle calleth man's body not a house only (in respect of, 1. The comely and orderly workmanship thereof; 2. The soul which inhabiteth it), but a tabernacle, which hath no foundation, and is transportative, 2 Corinthians 5:1, opposing to it building, which is firm and stable. Hence David, Omnis Adam est totus Abel, saith he. Verily every man in his best estate (when he is best founded and settled on his best bottom, when he is underlaid on all sides, and seems set to live) is altogether vanity, Psalms 39:5; Psalms 39:12. So Psalms 144:4. Adam is Abel's equal, or man is like to vanity; what can he be better, when as
Which are crushed before the moth?] He saith not, before the lion, but before the moth. Now what a poor thing is man, that a moth may crush him; that a flee may choke him, as it did Pope Alexander; that a light bruise on his toe may kill him, as it did Aemilius Lepidus (Plin. lib. 7, cap. 53), that a poisoned torch may light him to his long home, as it did the Cardinal of Lorraine! I have known, saith one, death admitted in by a corn on the toe; and enough the hurt were so far off the heart, yet the man died upon it (Purchas). Another I knew, who seeming to have conquered the elements, the wide ocean, wild wilderness, wilder beasts, wildest men, hottest climates; after sixteen years' absence, returned home, and died of a hurt in his thumb. Mr Terry, a great traveller, telleth of a nobleman in the Great Mogul's court, who sitting in dalliance with one of his women, had a hair plucked by her from his breast; this little wound, made by that small and unexpected instrument of death, presently festered; and turning to an incurable cancer, killed him (Lawless Liberty, in a Serm. at Paul's, by Edm. Terry, p. 21). God needs no bigger a lance than a hair to kill an atheist, as this dying man acknowledged. But besides all ill accidents and casualties from without; look how the garment breeds the moth, and then the moth eats the garment; so man's own distempered body breeds ill burnouts, they diseases, and these breed death, as one well observeth upon this text. It is holden for certain, that in every two years there is such store of ill humours and excrements engendered in the body, that a vessel of one hundred ounces will scarce contain them. Ipsa suis augmentis vita ad detrimenta impellitur, saith Gregory, et inde deficit undo proficere creditur. Life weareth out by the very meat that maintaineth it; and every man hath his bane about him.