properly · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine singular
perished
אָבָ֑ד'a.Vad
H6
properly · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
innocent
נָקִ֣יna.Ki
H5355
innocent · adjective, masculine singular absolute
where
וְ֝אֵיפֹ֗הve.'ei.Foh
H375
what place? · conjunction + interrogative particle
righteous
יְשָׁרִ֥יםye.sha.Rim
H3477
straight (literally or figuratively) · adjective, masculine plural absolute
off
נִכְחָֽדוּni.Kha.du
H3582
to secrete · verb, niphal perfect, 3rd person common plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 37:25 I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Job 36:7 He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: but with kings are they on the throne; yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are ex…
2 Peter 2:9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:
Job 8:20 Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers:
Acts 28:4 And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though h…
Job 9:22-23 This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.
Ecclesiastes 7:15 All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that pro…
Ecclesiastes 9:1-2 For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: n…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 4:7-11
Eliphaz here advances another argument to prove Job a hypocrite, and will have not only his impatience under his afflictions to be evidence against him but even his afflictions themselves, being so very great and extraordinary, and there being no prospect at all of his deliverance out of them. To strengthen his argument he here lays down these two principles, which seem plausible enough: -
I. That good men were never thus ruined. For the proof of this he appeals to Job's own observation (Job 4:7): "Remember, I pray thee; recollect all that thou hast seen, heard, or read, and give me an instance of any one that was innocent and righteous, and yet perished as thou dost, and was cut off as tho…
Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, &c.--Does thy fear, thy confidence, come to nothing? Does it come only to this, that thou faintest now? Rather, by transposition, "Is not thy fear (of God) thy hope? and the uprightness of thy ways thy confidence? If so, bethink thee, who ever perished being innocent?" [UMBREIT]. But Luk 13:2-3 shows that, though there is a retributive divine government even in this life, yet we cannot judge by the mere outward appearance. "One event is outwardly to the righteous and to the wicked" (Ecc 9:2); but yet we must take it on trust, that God deals righteously even now (Psa 37:25; Isa 33:16). Judge not by a part, but by the whole of a godly man's life, and by hi…
Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?.... Here Eliphaz appeals to Job himself, and desires him to recollect if ever anyone instance had fallen under his observation, in the whole course of his life, or it had ever been told him by credible persons, that an "innocent" man, by whom he means not one entirely free from sin original or actual, for he knew there was no such persons in the world, since the fall of Adam, but a truly good and gracious man, who was not guilty of any notorious and capital crime, or did not live a vicious course of life; if he ever knew or heard of any such persons that "perished", which cannot be understood of eternal ruin and destruction, which wou…
The Church Fathers
Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off? Whether it be heretics, of whom we have said that the friends of blessed Job bore an image, or whether any of the froward ones, they are as blameable in their admonitions, as they are immoderate in their condemnation. For he says, Who ever perished being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off? Since it often happens that in this life both 'the innocent perish,' and 'the righteous are 'utterly cut off,' yet in perishing they are reserved to glory eternal. For if none that is innocent perished, the Prophet would not say, The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart. If God in His providential dealings did not carry off the righteous, Wisdom would never have said of the righteous man, Yea, speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding. If no visitation ever smote the righteous, Peter would never foretell it, saying, For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. They then are really righteous, who are furnished forth by the love of the Country above to meet all the ills of the present life. For all that fear to endure ills here, for the sake of eternal blessings, clearly are not righteous men. But Eliphaz does not take account either that the righteous are cut off, or that the innocent perish here, in that oftentimes they that serve God, not in the hope of heavenly glory, but for an earthly recompense, make a fiction in their own head of that which they are seeking after, and, taking upon themselves to be instructors, in preaching earthly immunity, they shew by all their pains what is the thing they love.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
6 Is not thy piety thy confidence,
Thy Hope? And the uprightness of thy ways?
7 Think now: who ever perished, being innocent?!
And where have the righteous been cut off?!
8 As often as I saw, those who ploughed evil
And sowed sorrow, - they reaped the same.
9 By the breath of Eloah they perished,
By the breath of His anger they vanished away.
10 The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the shachal,
And the teeth of the young lions, are rooted out.
11 The lion wanders about for want of prey,
And the lioness' whelps are scattered.
In Job 4:6 all recent expositors take the last waw as waw apodosis: And thy hope, is not even this the integrity of thy way? According to our punctuation, there is…
Job probably counted his children among the innocent dead (1:5), and even Eliphaz must have known that innocent blood is sometimes shed (cp. Deut 19:10; Prov 6:17; Jer 7:6).
Rashi on Job 4:7
destroyed Heb. נכחדו, disappeared and perished, like (Exod. 9:15), “and you would vanish (ותכחד) from the earth.”
