Job 14:2
Who cometh forth like a flower, and is destroyed, and fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in the same state.
Open Job 14:2 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Qui quasi flos egreditur et conteritur, et fugit velut umbra, et numquam in eodem statu permanet.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ἢ ὥσπερ ἄνθος ἀνθῆσαν ἐξέπεσεν, ἀπέδρα δὲ ὥσπερ σκιὰ καὶ οὐ μὴ στῇ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- כְּצִ֣יץ יָ֭צָא וַיִּמָּ֑ל וַיִּבְרַ֥ח כַּ֝צֵּ֗ל וְלֹ֣א יַעֲמֽוֹד
Haydock's commentary
Shadow. Pulvis et umbra sumus. (Horace iv. Ode 7.) "Come then, ye men, whom nature condemns to spend your days in darkness, ye who resemble the leaves, are of little strength, formed of mud, shadow-like,...of a day's duration, miserable mortals, men like dreams, attend to the immortals." (Aristophanes, Avib.)
Most of these expressions occur in Job, Psalm ci. 12., Wisdom ii. 5., and Ecclesiastes ii. 23., &c.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine A Treatise on Nature and Grace, A Distinction Drawn by Pelagius Between the Possible and Actual
For he first of all makes a distinction: “It is one thing,” says he, “to inquire whether a thing can be, which has respect to its possibility only; and another thing, whether or not it is.” This distinction, nobody doubts, is true enough; for it follows that whatever is, was able to be; but it does not therefore follow that what is able to be, also is. Our Lord, for instance, raised Lazarus; He unquestionably was able to do so. But inasmuch as He did not raise up Judas must we therefore contend that He was unable to do so? He certainly was able, but He would not. For if He had been willing, He could have effected this too. For the Son quickeneth whomsoever He will. Observe, however, what he means by this distinction, true and manifest enough in itself, and what he endeavours to make out of it. …
St Augustine On Marriage and Concupiscence, The Rise and Origin of Evil. The Exorcism and Exsufflation of Infants, a Primitive Christian Rite
As to the passage, which he seemed to himself to indite in a pious vein, as it were, “If nature is of God, there cannot be original sin in it,” would not another person seem even to him to give a still more pious turn to it, thus: “If nature is of God, there cannot arise any sin in it?” And yet this is not true. The Manicheans, indeed, meant to assert this, and they endeavoured to steep in all sorts of evil the very nature of God itself, and not His creature, made out of nothing. For evil arose in nothing else than what was good, not, however, the supreme and unchangeable good which is God’s nature, but that which was made out of nothing by the wisdom of God. This, then, is the reason why man is claimed for a divine work; for he would not be man unless he were made by the operation of God. …