John Trapp on Job 8:9

Verſe 9. For we are but of yeſterday] Heb. We are yesterday, that is, yeſterdays off-ſpring, upſtarts, muſhrooms, novices, of very ſmall ſtanding in the would. And yet they were old men, chap. 15.10. Eliphaz is eſteemed to be an hundred and fifty; Bildad and hundred and forty; Zophar an hundred and twenty years old; and yet, in compariſon of he fathers before the flood, they were but of yesterday, they had lived but a very little while, and were but of late time.

And know nothing] Neque experti ſumus, ſaith Tremellius: the greateſt part of our knowledg is but the leaſt part of our ignorance: how can we know much, when our abode here is ſo ſhort, our experience ſo little? Ars long, vita brevis, ſaid Hippocrates, life is ſhort, and art is long. Themiſtocles though he lived an hundred and ſeven years; yet at his death complained, ſaying, Now I am to die when I begin to be wiſe. Solon ſaid, that though old, yet he thought not himſelf too old to learn: and Julian the Lawyer was wont to ſay, that when he had one foot in the grave, yet he would have the other in the School.

Becauſe our dayes upon earth are a ſhadow] Fluxa, inſtabilis, & ipſa ultro abiens, ſaith Junius, unſubſtantial, unſetled, uncertain, there is no hold nor tack in it, Pſalm 102.11. 1 Chron. 29.15. What is man but a dream of a ſhadow, ſaith Pindarus, [non-Latin text not transcribed]. Tſillah. umbra ipſius. [illegible: 1 letter] a ſhadow of ſmoke, ſaith Sophocles; a ſhadow of a ſhadow, ſaith Aeſchylus. He is therefore not a man, but a ſhadow of man (as Lamechs ſecond wives name was Zillah a ſhadow of a wife; and as Menander calleth a falſe friend [non-Latin text not transcribed], the ſhadow of a friend) he hath not ſo much as ſhadow of reaſon or true underſtanding, who by ſpending the ſpan, by waſting the ſhadow of this ſhort life, after the wayes of his own heart, bereaveth himſelf of a room in that city of pearls, and loſeth the comforts of that life which laſteth for ever.