Eliphaz continues:
"In thoughts, from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on me, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up."
A voice spake:
"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly: How much less them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth. They are destroyed from morning to evening; they perish forever without any regarding it."
{p. 284}
The moth can crush nothing, therefore Maurer thinks it should read, "crushed like the moth." "They are destroyed," etc.; literally, "they are broken to pieces in the space of a day."[1]
All through the text of Job we have allusions to the catastrophe which had fallen on the earth (chap. v, 3):
"I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I," (God,) "cursed his habitation."
"4. His children are far from safety," (far from any place of refuge?) "and they are crushed in the gate, neither is there any to deliver them.
"5. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance."