Albert Barnes Commentary Job 27:18

"He buildeth his house as the moth, And as a booth which the keeper maketh." — Job 27:18 (ASV)

He buildeth his house as a moth—The house which the moth builds is the slight fabric it makes for its own dwelling in the garment it consumes. For this verse, compare Job 8:14.

The dwelling of the moth is composed of the materials of the garment on which it feeds. There may be an allusion here not only to the fact that the house which the wicked built for themselves would be temporary and would soon pass away like the dwelling of the moth, but also that it was obtained—like the dwelling of the moth—at the expense of others.

The idea of frailty, however, and of its being only a very temporary dwelling, is probably the main thought in the passage. The allusion here is to the moth-larva as it proceeds from the egg, before it is changed into the chrysalis, aurelia, or nymph. “The young moth, upon leaving the egg which a papilio has lodged upon a piece of fabric, or a well-dressed skin, suitable for its purpose, immediately finds a dwelling and food in the nap of the fabric, or hair of the skin.

“It gnaws and lives upon the nap, and also builds with it its apartment, equipped with both a front door and a back one: the whole is well fastened to the base of the fabric with several cords and a little glue. The moth sometimes pushes her head out of one opening, and sometimes out of the other, and continually demolishes everything around her; and when she has cleared the place around her, she draws out all the stakes of the tent, after which she carries it to some little distance, and then fixes it with her slender cords in a new situation.”

Burder. It is to the insect in its larval or caterpillar state that Job refers here, and the slightness of the dwelling will be easily understood by anyone who has watched the operations of the silkworm, or of the moths that appear in this country.

The idea is that the dwelling which the wicked constructed was temporary and frail, and would soon be left. The Chaldee and Syriac render this “the spider”; and so does Luther—Spinne. The slight, gossamer dwelling of the spider would correspond well with the idea Job expresses here.

And as a booth—A tent, or cottage.

That the keeper maketh—This refers to the temporary shelter that one who watches vineyards or gardens makes from the storm or the cold at night. Such structures were very frail and were designed to be only temporary dwellings; see the subject explained in the notes on Isaiah 1:8.

Niebuhr, in his description of Arabia, p. 158, says, “In the mountains of Yemen they have a sort of nest on the trees, where the Arabs sit to watch the fields after they have been planted. But in the Kehama, where they have but few trees, they build a light kind of scaffolding for this purpose.” Mr. Southey opens the fifth part of his Curse of Kehama with a similar allusion:

“Evening comes on:—arising from the stream
Homeward the tall flamingo wings his flight;
And when he sails across the setting beam,
His scarlet plumage glows with deeper light.
The watchman, at the wished approach of night,
Gladly forsakes the field, where he all day,
To scare the winged plunderers from their prey,
With shout and sling, on yonder clay-built height,
Has borne the sultry ray.”