Job 36:14

They die in youth - Exactly what the psalmist says, "Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days," Psalm 55:23. Literally, the words of Elihu are, "They shall die in the youth of their soul."

Their life is among the unclean - בקדשים bakedeshim, among the whores, harlots, prostitutes, and sodomites. In this sense the word is used, though it also signifies consecrated persons; but we know that in idolatry characters of this kind were consecrated to Baal and Ashtaroth, Venus, Priapus, etc. Mr. Good translates the rabble. The Septuagint: Their life shalt be wounded by the angels.

They die in youth - Margin, "Their soul dieth." The word "soul" or "life" in the Hebrew is used to denote oneself. The meaning is, that they would soon be cut down, and share the lot of the openly wicked. If they amended their lives they might be spared, and continue to live in prosperity and honor; if they did not, whether openly wicked or hypocrites. they would be early cut off.

And their life is amnong the unclean - Margin, "Sodomites." The idea is, that they would be treated in the same way as the most abandoned and vile of the race. No special favor would be shown to them because they were "professors" of religion, nor would this fact be a shield against the treatment which they deserved. They could not be classed with the righteous, and must, therefore, share the fate of the most worth mss and wicked of the race. The word rendered "unclean" (קדשׁים qâdêsh) is from קדשׁ qâdash, "to be pure or holy"; and in the Hiphil to regard as holy, to consecrate, or devote to the service of God, as e. g. a priest; Exodus 28:41; Exodus 29:1. Then it means to consecrate or devote to "any" service or purpose, as to an idol god. Hence, it means one consecrated or devoted to the service of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians or Venus, and as this worship was corrupt and licentious, the word means one who is licentious or corrupt compare Deuteronomy 23:18; 1 Kings 14:24; Genesis 38:21-22. Here it means the licentious, the corrupt, the abandoned; and the idea is, that if hypocrites did not repent under the inflictions of divine judgment, they would be dealt with in the same way as the most abandoned and vile. On the evidence that licentiousness constituted a part of the ancient worship of idols, see Spencer "de Legg. ritual Hebraedor." Lib. ii. cap. iii. pp. 613, 614, Ed. 1732. Jerome renders this, "intereffoeminatos." The Septuagint strangely enough has: "Let their life be wounded by angels."

36:14 Die - They provoke God to cut them off before their time. Unclean - Or, Sodomites; to whose destruction, he may allude. They shall die by some exemplary stroke of Divine vengeance. Yea, and after death, their life is among the unclean, the unclean spirits, the devil and his angels, for ever excluded from the new Jerusalem, into which no unclean thing shall enter.