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<p>Eliphaz, having endeavoured to convict Job, by setting his sins (as he thought) in order before him, here endeavours to awaken him to a sight and sense of his misery and danger by reason of sin; and this he does by comparing his case with that of the sinners of the old world; as if he had said, “Thy condition is bad now, but, unless thou repent, it will be worse, as theirs was—theirs <i>who were overflown with a flood</i>, as the old world (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.22.16" href="/passage/?search=Job.22.16">Job 22:16</a>), and theirs the <i>remnant of whom the fire consumed</i>” (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.22.20" href="/passage/?search=Job.22.20">Job 22:20</a>), namely, the Sodomites, who, in comparison of the old world, were but a remnant. And these two instances of the wrath of God against sin and sinners are more than once put together, for warning to a careless world, as by our Saviour (<a class="bibleref" title="Luke.17.26-Luke.17.30" href="/passage/?search=Luke.17.26-Luke.17.30">Luke 17:26-30</a>) and the apostle, <a class="bibleref" title="2Pet.2.5,2Pet.2.6" href="/passage/?search=2Pet.2.5,2Pet.2.6"><span class="bibleref" title="2Pet.2.5">2 Pet. 2:5</span>, <span class="bibleref" title="2Pet.2.6">6</span></a>. Eliphaz would have Job to <i>mark the old way which wicked men have trodden</i> (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.22.15" href="/passage/?search=Job.22.15">Job 22:15</a>) and see what came of it, what the end of their way was. Note, There is an old way which wicked men have trodden. Religion had but newly entered when sin immediately followed it. But though it is an old way, a broad way, a tracked way, it is a dangerous way and it leads to destruction; and it is good for us to mark it, that we may not dare to walk in it. Eliphaz here puts Job in mind of it, perhaps in opposition to what he had said of the prosperity of the wicked; as if he had said, “Thou canst find out here and there a single instance, it may be, of a wicked man ending his days in peace; but what is that to those two great instances of the final perdition of ungodly men—the drowning of the whole world and the burning of Sodom?” destructions by wholesale, in which he thinks Job may, as in a glass, see his own face. Observe, 1. The ruin of those sinners (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.22.16" href="/passage/?search=Job.22.16">Job 22:16</a>): <i>They were cut down out of time</i>; that is, they were cut off in the midst of their days, when, as man’s time then went, many of them might, in the course of nature, have lived some hundreds of years longer, which made their immature extirpation the more grievous. They were <i>cut down out of time</i>, to be hurried into eternity. And their foundation, the earth on which they built themselves and all their hopes, was <i>overflown with a flood</i>, the flood which was <i>brought in upon the world of the ungodly</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="2Pet.2.5" href="/passage/?search=2Pet.2.5">2 Pet. 2:5</a>. Note, Those who build upon the sand choose a foundation which will be <i>overflown</i> when <i>the rains descend and the floods come</i> (<a class="bibleref" title="Matt.7.27" href="/passage/?search=Matt.7.27">Matt. 7:27</a>), and then their building must needs fall and they perish in the ruins of it, and repent of their folly when it is too late. 2. The sin of those sinners, which brought that ruin (<a class="bibleref" title="Job.22.17" href="/passage/?search=Job.22.17">Job 22:17</a>): <i>They said unto God, Depart from us</i>. Job had spoken of some who said so and yet prospered, <a class="bibleref" title="Job.21.14" href="/passage/?search=Job.21.14">Job 21:14</a>. “But these did not (says Eliphaz); they found to their cost what it was to set God at defiance. Those who were resolved to lay the reins on the neck of their appetites and passions began with this; they said unto God, <i>Depart</i>; they abandoned all religion, hated the thoughts of it, and desired to live <i>without God in the world</i>; they shunned his word, and silenced conscience, his deputy. <i>And what can the Al
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