Job 8:9 (For we [are but of] yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth [are] a shadow:)
Ver. 9. For we are but of yesterday] Heb. We are yesterday, that is, yesterday's offspring, upstarts, mushrooms, novices of very small standing in the world. And yet they were old men, Job 15:10. Eliphaz is esteemed to be a hundred and fifty, Bildad a hundred and forty, Zophar a hundred and twenty years old; and yet, in comparison to the fathers before the flood, they were but of yesterday, they had lived but a very little while, and were but of late time.
And know nothing] Neque experti sumus, saith Tremellius; the greatest part of our knowledge is but the least part of our ignorance: how can we know much, when our abode here is so short, our experience so little? Art longa, vita brevis, said Hippocrates, life is short, and art is long. Themistocles, though he lived a hundred and seven years, yet at his death complained, saying, Now I am to die when I begin to be wise. Solon said, that though old, yet he thought not himself too old to learn; and Julian the lawyer was wont to say, that when he had one foot in the grave, yet he would have the other in the school.
Because our days upon earth are a shadow] Fluxa, instabilis, et ipsa ultro abiens, saith Junius, unsubstantial, unsettled, uncertain, there is no hold nor tack in it, Psalms 102:11 1 Chronicles 29:15, What is man but a dream of a shadow, saith Pindarus; a shadow of smoke, saith Sophocles; a shadow of a shadow, saith Aeschylus, σκιας ουαρ, καπνου σκια, ειδωλον σκιας. He is therefore not a man, but a shadow of man (as Lamech's second wife's name was Zillah, a shadow of a wife, Tsillah, umbra ipsius, and as Menander calleth a false friend φιλου σκιαν, the shadow of a friend); he hath not so much as shadow of reason or true understanding, who, by spending the span, by wasting the shadow of this short life, after the ways of his own heart, bereaveth himself of a room in that city of pearls, and loseth the comforts of that life which lasteth for ever.