How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?
Houses of clay - "earthly house of this tabernacle" (2 Corinthians 5:1). Houses made of sun-dried clay bricks are common in the East; they are easily washed away (Matthew 7:27). Man's foundation is this dust: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Genesis 3:19).
Before the moth - rather, as before the moth, which devours a garment (Job 13:28, "He, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth-eaten;" 27:18; Psalms 39:11; Isaiah 50:9). Man who cannot, in a physical point of view, stand before the very moth, surely cannot, in a moral, stand before God (cf. remark; Job 3:24). So Vulgate translation, Umbreit. But as the moth does not crush or destroy anything by force, but rather consume it by gnawing (Isaiah 51:8), Maurer thinks the moth is used as an image of an object after the crushed, and translates 'Crushed like (literally, after the manner of) the moth.'