Job 25:4
Can man be justified compared with God, or he that is born of a woman appear clean?
Open Job 25:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Numquid justificari potest homo comparatus Deo ? aut apparere mundus natus de muliere ?
- Septuagint (Swete)
- πῶς γὰρ ἔσται δίκαιος βροτὸς ἔναντι Κυρίου; ἢ τίς ἂν ἀποκαθαρίσαι αὐτὸν γεννητὸς γυναικός;
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וּמַה יִּצְדַּ֣ק אֱנ֣וֹשׁ עִם אֵ֑ל וּמַה יִּ֝זְכֶּ֗ה יְל֣וּד אִשָּֽׁה
Haydock's commentary
Clean. Job had used a similar expression, as well as Eliphaz, chap. iv. 17., and xiv. 4., and xv. 15. The holy man did not assert that he was free from sin, but only that God did not punish him (Calmet) so dreadfully (Haydock) on that account, and that he has just reasons for afflicting his servants, if it were only to manifest his own power and glory. (Calmet)
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 Of Holy Virginity, Section 48
48. What now shall I say concerning the very carefulness and watchfulness against sin? “Who shall boast that he hath a chaste heart? or who shall boast that he is clean from sin?” Holy virginity is indeed inviolate from the mother’s womb; but “no one,” saith he, “is clean in Thy sight, not even the infant whose life is of one day upon the earth.” There is kept also in faith inviolate a certain virginal chastity, whereby the Church is joined as a chaste virgin unto One Husband: but That One Husband hath taught, not only the faithful who are virgin in mind and body, but all Christians altogether, from spiritual even unto carnal, from Apostles even unto the last penitents, as though from the height of heaven even unto the bounds of it, to pray, and in the prayer itself hath admonished them to say, “And forgive us our debts, even as we also forgive our debtors:” where, by this which we seek, …
St Augustine A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants, The Universal Consensus Respecting Original Sin
And now, again, with a strange boldness in new controversy, certain persons are endeavouring to make us uncertain on a point which our forefathers used to bring forward as most certainly fixed, whenever they would solve such questions as seemed uncertain to some. When this controversy, indeed, first began, I am unable to say; but one thing I know, that even the holy Jerome, who is in our own day renowned for great industry and learning in ecclesiastical literature, for the solution of sundry questions treated in his writings, makes use of the same most certain assumption without exhibition of proofs. For instance, in his commentary on the prophet Jonah, when he comes to the passage where the infants were mentioned as chastened by the fast, he says: “The greatest age comes first, and then all the rest is pervaded down to the least. …