Job 14:1

The Brevity of Life

14:1 “Man, born of woman, ¹ 

lives but a few days, ²  and they are full of trouble. ³ 

Job 14:4

14:4 Who can make ⁴  a clean thing come from an unclean? ⁵ 

No one!

Job 15:14

15:14 What is man that he should be pure,

or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?

Job 25:4

25:4 How then can a human being be righteous before God?

How can one born of a woman be pure? ⁶ 

Psalms 51:5

51:5 Look, I was guilty of sin from birth,

a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. ⁷ 

Ephesians 2:3

2:3 among whom ⁸  all of us ⁹  also ¹⁰  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ¹¹  even as the rest… ¹² 

[14:1]  ¹ tn The first of the threefold apposition for אָדָם (’adam, “man”) is “born of a woman.” The genitive (“woman”) after a passive participle denotes the agent of the action (see GKC 359 §116.l).

[14:1]  ² tn The second description is simply “[is] short of days.” The meaning here is that his life is short (“days” being put as the understatement for “years”).

[14:1]  ³ tn The third expression is “consumed/full/sated – with/of – trouble/restlessness.” The latter word, רֹגֶז (rogez), occurred in Job 3:17; see also the idea in 10:15.

[14:4]  ⁴ tn The expression is מִי־יִתֵּן (mi-yitten, “who will give”; see GKC 477 §151.b). Some commentators (H. H. Rowley and A. B. Davidson) wish to take this as the optative formula: “O that a clean might come out of an unclean!” But that does not fit the verse very well, and still requires the addition of a verb. The exclamation here simply implies something impossible – man is unable to attain purity.

[14:4]  ⁵ sn The point being made is that the entire human race is contaminated by sin, and therefore cannot produce something pure. In this context, since man is born of woman, it is saying that the woman and the man who is brought forth from her are impure. See Ps 51:5; Isa 6:5; and Gen 6:5.

[25:4]  ⁶ sn Bildad here does not come up with new expressions; rather, he simply uses what Eliphaz had said (see Job 4:17-19 and 15:14-16).

[51:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “Look, in wrongdoing I was brought forth, and in sin my mother conceived me.” The prefixed verbal form in the second line is probably a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive), stating a simple historical fact. The psalmist is not suggesting that he was conceived through an inappropriate sexual relationship (although the verse has sometimes been understood to mean that, or even that all sexual relationships are sinful). The psalmist’s point is that he has been a sinner from the very moment his personal existence began. By going back beyond the time of birth to the moment of conception, the psalmist makes his point more emphatically in the second line than in the first.

[2:3]  ⁸ sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

[2:3]  ⁹ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ¹⁰ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ¹¹ sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ¹² sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.