욥기 14:1의 인용 해설

and he departed joyless The meaning is: all his life he was in distress and in illnesses, and with him was fulfilled (Deut. 30:15): “See, I have set before you today life, etc.” and (Job 14:1) “short of days and full of fear.”

כי יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו, this urge is called יצר as it was formed at the same time as the fetus. The reason why the Torah writes מנעוריו, literally “from his youth,” is that the evil urge is with man from an earlier age than the יצר הטוב, the impulse to do good. The latter urge becomes active in man only with the advent of maturity, at age of 13, as we know from Job 11,12 ואיש נבוב ילבב ועיר פרא אדם יולד, “a hollow man will get understanding, when a wild ass is born a man.” The meaning of that line is that man is like wild ass from the time of birth, without restraining influences, following his instinct rather than being guided by his intelligence. As he grows older, becomes more mature, forces known as the יצר טוב begin to assert themselves Seeing that man had been formed without the benefit of the impulse to do what is good, useful, rather than what is designed to gratify his baser urges, as G’d decided in His wisdom to do, seeing that man was part of the overall scheme of nature, he will become guilty of sin again and again, with the exception of an infinitely small percentage of people. Therefore, G’d would not continue to punish mankind at large on account of most people acting out their natural inclinations. According to Sanhedrin 91 the Roman governor Antoninus asked Rabbi Yehudah hanassi, his frequent companion, at what point the “evil urge” entered the human being. He wanted to know if this occurred at the moment of birth or at the moment when the fetus assumed a certain shape, say 40 days after fertilisation of the ovum. Rabbi Yehudah answered that this occurred already at the earlier of these two points in time. Antoninus found it difficult to accept this, saying that if it were so the fetus would keep hitting out at his mother while in her womb, and as a result, she would give birth prematurely. Rabbi Yehudah quoted as his source Genesis 4,7 where G’d told Kayin that the evil urge was lying already at the entrance of the birth canal, מפתח חטאת רובץ. Antoninus countered that from our verse here it seems that the evil urge commences his activity only after the child can be called נער, a lad. Rabbi Yehudah drew Antoninus’ attention to the defective spelling in the word נעריו, which if Antoninus were correct, should have had the letter ו after the letter ע, i.e. making נעוריו, after he had attained the status of a human being. Seeing that this letter is missing, this is a clear hint that this רע within the human being predates his birth. Rabbi Yudan, enlarging on this unusual spelling, plus the fact that the words לא אסיף are repeated twice in this verse, stated that such repetition, when reported in G’d’s name, is always an equivalent to an oath by G’d, i.e. something that He will not change for any reason This is why the prophet Isaiah correctly quoted G’d in Isaiah 54,9 as saying “I have sworn to Myself not to bring on another deluge of water such as in the days of Noach.”