Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 6:1
But Job answered and said,
Ch. Job 6:1-13. Job defends the violence of his complaints and his despair
Eliphaz had made no reference directly to sin on Job’s part; but he drew dark pictures of the evilness of human nature before the eye of his friend, and for his advantage. Job shews a dislike to touch this point. His dislike is that of a man conscious of his innocence, and who can hardly believe that his friends seriously mean what their indirect allusions seem to imply. Hence he attaches his reply to what Eliphaz had openly expressed, namely, his wonder at the despair of Job and his blameable impatience. The idea of his having sinned he touches only in passing and with strong repudiation of it (ch. Job 6:28-30).
Eliphaz had used the word “confounded” of Job’s hopeless despair (ch. Job 4:5); he had spoken of “impatience,” and “passion”; and had referred to the “fool” or godless man, as shewing this kind of temper under affliction (Job 6:2). All this wounds Job deeply, and he first of all replies to it, justifying the bitterness of his complaints by the overwhelming heaviness of his sorrow.
First, he wishes that his impatience and his calamity were laid against one another in the balance. His calamity is heavier than the sand of the sea. For that which gives it its terror is that it is from God. The arrows of the Almighty are in him, and his spirit drinks in their poison and is paralysed, Job 6:1-4.
Second, a more kindly judgment, he thinks, would have reasoned the other way from his friends, namely, from the violence of his complaints to the greatness of his sufferings. So men reasoned with regard to beasts even. No creature complained if it had no want or no pain; neither would he complain if what was unbearable were not thrust upon him, Job 6:5-7.
Third, so far he goes in his defence. But so keenly does he realize as he describes it ( Job 6:6-7) the misery and loathsomeness of his state that here he breaks out into a passionate cry for death, his mind passes into a momentary frenzy, and he says he would leap for joy in the midst of unsparing pain, if it brought death with it. This is the consolation that he seeks. And this consolation he can look for, for he has never denied the words of the Holy One. And no other can he look to, for his flesh is not brass that it should resist his exhausting afflictions; and what issue has he to expect that he should be patient? Job 6:8-13.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Job 6:1-30
But Job answered and said.
Jobs answer to Eliphaz
We must come upon grief in one of two ways and Job seems to have come upon grief in a way that is to be deprecated. He came upon it late in life. He was in solid prosperity and positive and genuine comfort. Grief must tell heavily whenever it comes upon a man in such a condition. This accounts for his lamentation, and whine, and long-drawn threnody. He was not accustomed to it. Some have been born into trouble, and they have become acclimatised. Blessed are they who come upon grief in that method. Such a method appears to be the method of real mercy. Grief must come. The devil allows no solitary life to pass upward into heaven without fighting its way at some point or other. Grief delights in monologue. Job seems scarcely to lay himself down mentally upon the line adopted by Eliphaz. It is most difficult to find the central line of Jobs speech. Too much logic would have spoiled the grief. Reasoning there is, but it comes and goes; it changes its tone; it strikes the facts of life as the trained fingers of the player might strike a chord of music. Note how interrogative is Jobs speech. More than twenty questions occur in Jobs reply. Grief is great in interrogation. Job is asking, Are the old foundations still here? Things have surely been changed in the nighttime, for I am unaccustomed to what is now round about me. Notice how many misunderstandings there are in the speech of the suffering man! Job not only misunderstood his friends and his pain, he misunderstood all men, and the whole system and scheme of things. How suffering not rightly accepted or understood colours and perverts the whole thought and service of life! Job thinks life not worth living. So much depends on our mental mood, or our spiritual condition. Hence the need of our being braced up, fired, made strong. We are what we really are in our heart and mind. Keep the soul right and it will rule the body. The Bible never shrinks from telling us that there is grief in the world, and that grief can be accounted for on moral principles. The Bible measures the grief, never makes light of it. But it can be sanctified, turned into blessing. Any book which so speaks as it does deserves the confidence of men who know the weight and bitterness of suffering. Do not come to the Bible only for condolence and sympathy; come to it for instruction, inspiration, and then you may come to it for consolation, sympathy, tenderest comfort, for the very dew of the morning, for the balm of heaven, for the very touch of Christ. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Jobs first reply
In his reply to Eliphaz, Job first takes hold of the charge of impatience and hasty indignation made in the opening of the fifth chapter. He is quite aware that his words were rash when he cursed his day and cried impatiently for death. But had Eliphaz duly considered his state, the weight of his trouble causing a physical sense of indescribable oppression? We need not fall into the mistake of supposing that it is only the pain of his disease which makes Jobs misery so heavy. Rather is it that his troubles have come from God; they are the arrows of the Almighty. Mere suffering and loss, even to the extremity of death, he could have borne without a murmur, But he had thought God to be his friend. Why on a sudden have these darts been launched against him by the hand he trusted? What does the Almighty mean? The evil-doer who suffers knows why he is afflicted. The martyr, enduring for conscience sake, has his support in the truth to which he bears witness, the holy cause for which he dies. Job has no explanation, no support. He cannot understand Providence. The God with whom he supposed himself to be at peace suddenly becomes an angry, incomprehensible Power, blighting and destroying His servants life. Existence poisoned, the couch of ashes encompassed with terrors, is it any wonder that passionate words break forth from his lips? A cry is the last power left to him. So it is with many. The seeming needlessness of their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery of the pain confounds the mind and adds to anguish and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness. Sometimes the very thing guarded against is that which happens; a mans best intelligence appears confuted by destiny or chance. Why has he, amongst the many, been chosen for this? Do all things come alike to all, righteous and wicked? The problem becomes terribly acute in the case of earnest, God-fearing men and women who have not yet found the real theory of suffering. Endurance for others does not always explain. All cannot be rested on that. Nor, unless we speak falsely for God, will it avail to say, These afflictions have fallen on us for our sins. For even if the conscience does not give the lie to that assertion, as Jobs conscience did, the question demands a clear answer, why the penitent should suffer–those who believe–to whom God imputes no iniquity. If it is for our transgression we suffer, either our own faith and religion are vain, or God does not forgive excepting in form, and the law of punishment retains its force. We have here the serious difficulty that legal fictions seem to hold their ground even in the dealings of the Most High with those who trust Him The truth is, that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin, but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting in the individual and the race. (Robert A. Watson, D. D.)
Jobs great suffering
It was–
I. Unappreciated by men. This is the meaning of the first five verses. Eliphaz had no conception of the profundity and poignancy of Jobs suffering. There are two things indicated here in relation to them.
1. They were unutterable. My words are swallowed up. His whole humanity was in torture.
(1) He suffered in body. He was smitten with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of the head, and he took a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and sat down amongst the ashes.
(2) He suffered in mind. The arrows of the Almighty were within him, whose poison drank up his spirits.
2. They were irrepressible. Doth the wild ass bray when tie hath grass? Or loweth the ox over his fodder? The idea here is, I cannot but cry; my cries spring from my agonies. Had not the wild ass his grass, he would bray with a ravenous hunger; and had not the ox his fodder, he too would low in an agony for food; this is nature, and my cries are natural–I cannot help them. Who can be silent in torture? His suffering was–
II. Misunderstood by friends. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg? This language seems to me to point to Jobs impression of the address which Eliphaz had delivered to him. Job seemed to feel–
1. That the address of Eliphaz was utterly insipid. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? As if he had said, your speech lacks that which can make it savoury to me; it does not apply: you misunderstand my sufferings: I suffer not because I am a great sinner, as you seem to imply: my own conscience attests my rectitude: nor because I need this terrible chastisement, as you have said: you neither understand the cause nor the nature of my sufferings, therefore your talk is beside the mark.
2. That the address of Eliphaz was truly offensive. The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meats. Does not this mean what Dr. Bernard says, the things you speak–your unmeaning, insipid words and similes–are as the loathsomeness of my food, or are as loathsome to my soul as food now is to my body? You intrude remarks on me that are not only tasteless, because of their unsuitability, but that are as disgusting as loathsome food.
III. Intolerable to himself. He longed for death; he believed that in the grave he would have rest.
1. Though his life was unbearable, he would not take it away himself. He felt that he Was not the proprietor, only the trustee of his life.
2. He was not forgetful of his relation to his Maker. I have not concealed the words of the Holy One. I have not shunned to declare my attachment to Himself and His cause. His sufferings did not obliterate his memory of his Creator, drive him from His presence, or impel him to blasphemy or atheism. No, he still held on. God was the Great Object in his horizon; he saw Him through the thick hot steam of his fiery trials.
3. Though his life was unbearable, he knew that it could not last long. What is my strength that I should hope? and what is mine end that I should prolong my life? etc. Whether God will loose His hand and cut me off, and thus put an end to my existence or not, I cannot endure long. I am not made of stone or brass, and I cannot stand these sufferings long. However powerful the human frame may be, great sufferings must sooner or later break it to pieces.
4. Though his life was unbearable, he was conscious of an inner strength. Is not my help in me? And is wisdom driven quite from me? No strength like this, physical strength is good, intellectual strength is better, but moral strength is the best of all. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VI
Job answers, and vindicates himself; and shows that the great
affliction which he suffered was the cause of his complaining,
by which life was rendered burdensome to him, 1-13.
He complains that, whereas he expected consolation from his
friends, he had received nothing but the bitterest reproaches,
on the assumed ground that he must be a wicked man, else God
would not so grievously afflict him, 14-20.
He shows them that they knew nothing of his case, and that they
had no compassion, 21-23.
And then entreats them, if they can, to show him in what he has
offended, as he is ready to acknowledge and correct every
trespass, 24-30.
NOTES ON CHAP. VI
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
But Job answered and said. Though Eliphaz thought his speech was unanswerable, being, as he and his friends judged, unquestionably true, and the fruit of strict, laborious, and diligent search and inquiry; or, “then Job answered” t, as the same particle is rendered, Job 4:1; after he had heard Eliphaz out; he waited with patience until he had finished his discourse, without giving him any interruption, though there were many things that were very provoking, particularly in Job 4:5; and when he had done, then he made his reply; and this was no other than what every man has a right unto, to answer for himself when any charge or accusation is brought against him; when his character is attacked, or his good name, which is better the precious ointment, is taken from him; and is what all reasonable men, and the laws of all civilized nations, allow of.
t “tunc respondit”, Drusius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1 Then began Job, and said:
2 Oh that my vexation were but weighed,
And they would put my suffering in the balance against it!
3 Then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea:
Therefore my words are rash.
4 The arrows of the Almighty are in me,
The burning poison whereof drinketh up my spirit;
The terrors of Eloah set themselves in array against me.
Vexation ( ) is what Eliphaz has reproached him with ( Job 5:2). Job wishes that his vexation were placed in one scale and his ( Keri ) in the other, and weighed together ( ). The noun ( ), from ( ), flare, hiare , signifies properly hiatus , then vorago , a yawning gulf, , then some dreadful calamity (vid., Hupfeld on Psa 5:10). , like , Isa 11:15, to raise the balance, as pendere, to let it hang down; attollant instead of the passive. This is his desire; and if they but understood the matter, it would then be manifest ( , as Job 3:13, which see), or: indeed then would it be manifest ( certainly in this inferential position has an affirmative signification: vid., Gen 26:22; Gen 29:32, and comp. 1Sa 25:34; 2Sa 2:27) that his suffering is heavier than the unmeasurable weight of the sand of the sea. is neuter with reference to . , with the tone on the penult., which is not to be accounted for by the rhythm as in Psa 37:20; Psa 137:7, cannot be derived from , but only from , not however in the signification to suck down, but from = , Arab. lagiya or also laga , temere loqui, inania effutire , – a signification which suits excellently here.
(Note: , Pro 20:25, which is doubly accented, and must be pronounced as oxytone, has also this meaning: the snare of a man who has thoughtlessly uttered what is holy (an interjectional clause = such an one has implicated himself), and after (having made) vows will harbour care (i.e., whether he will be able to fulfil them).)
His words are like those of one in delirium. is to be explained according to Psa 38:3; , according to Psa 7:15. is short for , they make war against me, set themselves in battle array against me. Bttcher, without brachylogy: they cause me to arm myself, put one of necessity on the defensive, which does not suit the subject. The terrors of God strike down all defence. The wrath of God is irresistible. The sting of his suffering, however, is the wrath of God which his spirit drinks as a draught of poison (comp. Job 21:20), and consequently wrings from him, even from his deepest soul, the thought that God is become his enemy: therefore his is an endless suffering, and therefore is it that he speaks so despondingly.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Job’s Reply to Eliphaz. | B. C. 1520. |
1 But Job answered and said, 2 Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! 3 For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up. 4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. 5 Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over his fodder? 6 Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg? 7 The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.
Eliphaz, in the beginning of his discourse, had been very sharp upon Job, and yet it does not appear that Job gave him any interruption, but heard him patiently till he had said all he had to say. Those that would make an impartial judgment of a discourse must hear it out, and take it entire. But, when he had concluded, he makes his reply, in which he speaks very feelingly.
I. He represents his calamity, in general, as much heavier than either he had expressed it or they had apprehended it, Job 6:2; Job 6:3. He could not fully describe it; they would not fully apprehend it, or at least would not own that they did; and therefore he would gladly appeal to a third person, who had just weights and just balances with which to weigh his grief and calamity, and would do it with an impartial hand. He wished that they would set his grief and all the expressions of it in one scale, his calamity and all the particulars of it in the other, and (though he would not altogether justify himself in his grief) they would find (as he says, ch. xxiii. 2) that his stroke was heavier than his groaning; for, whatever his grief was, his calamity was heavier than the sand of the sea: it was complicated, it was aggravated, every grievance weighty, and all together numerous as the sand. “Therefore (says he) my words are swallowed up;” that is, “Therefore you must excuse both the brokenness and the bitterness of my expressions. Do not think it strange if my speech be not so fine and polite as that of an eloquent orator, or so grave and regular as that of a morose philosopher: no, in these circumstances I can pretend neither to the one nor to the other; my words are, as I am, quite swallowed up.” Now, 1. He hereby complains of it as his unhappiness that his friends undertook to administer spiritual physic to him before they thoroughly understood his case and knew the worst of it. It is seldom that those who are at ease themselves rightly weigh the afflictions of the afflicted. Every one feels most from his own burden; few feel from other people’s. 2. He excuses the passionate expressions he had used when he cursed his day. Though he could not himself justify all he had said, yet he thought his friends should not thus violently condemn it, for really the case was extraordinary, and that might be connived at in such a man of sorrows as he now was which in any common grief would by no means be allowed. 3. He bespeaks the charitable and compassionate sympathy of his friends with him, and hopes, by representing the greatness of his calamity, to bring them to a better temper towards him. To those that are pained it is some ease to be pitied.
II. He complains of the trouble and terror of mind he was in as the sorest part of his calamity, v. 4. Herein he was a type of Christ, who, in his sufferings, complained most of the sufferings of his soul. Now is my soul troubled, John xii. 27. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, Matt. xxvi. 38. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Matt. xxvii. 46. Poor Job sadly complains here, 1. Of what he felt The arrows of the Almighty are within me. It was not so much the troubles themselves he was under that put him into this confusion, his poverty, disgrace, and bodily pain; but that which cut him to the heart and put him into this agitation, was to think that the God he loved and served had brought all this upon him and laid him under these marks of his displeasure. Note, Trouble of mind is the sorest trouble. A wounded spirit who can bear! Whatever burden of affliction, in body or estate, God is pleased to lay upon us, we may well afford to submit to it as long as he continues to the use of our reason and the peace of our consciences; but, if in either of these we be disturbed, our case is sad indeed and very pitiable. The way to prevent God’s fiery darts of trouble is with the shield of faith to quench Satan’s fiery darts of temptation. Observe, He calls them the arrows of the Almighty; for it is an instance of the power of God above that of any man that he can with his arrows reach the soul. He that made the soul can make his sword to approach to it. The poison or heat of these arrows is said to drink up his spirit, because it disturbed his reason, shook his resolution, exhausted his vigour, and threatened his life; and therefore his passionate expressions, though they could not be justified, might be excused. 2. Of what he feared. He saw himself charged by the terrors of God, as by an army set in battle-array, and surrounded by them. God, by his terrors, fought against him. As he had no comfort when he retired inward into his own bosom, so he had none when he looked upward towards Heaven. He that used to be encouraged with the consolations of God not only wanted those, but was amazed with the terrors of God.
III. He reflects upon his friends for their severe censures of his complaints and their unskilful management of his case. 1. Their reproofs were causeless. He complained, it is true, now that he was in this affliction, but he never used to complain, as those do who are of a fretful unquiet spirit, when he was in prosperity: he did not bray when he had grass, nor low over his fodder, v. 5. But, now that he was utterly deprived of all his comforts, he must be a stock or a stone, and not have the sense of an ox or a wild ass, if he did not give some vent to his grief. He was forced to eat unsavoury meats, and was so poor that he had not a grain of salt wherewith to season them, nor to give a little taste to the white of an egg, which was now the choicest dish he had at his table, v. 6. Even that food which once he would have scorned to touch he was now glad of, and it was his sorrowful meat, v. 7. Note, It is wisdom not to use ourselves or our children to be nice and dainty about meat and drink, because we know not how we or they may be reduced, nor how that which we now disdain may be made acceptable by necessity. 2. Their comforts were sapless and insipid; so some understand Job 6:6; Job 6:7. He complains he had nothing now offered to him for his relief that was proper for him, no cordial, nothing to revive and cheer his spirits; what they had afforded was in itself as tasteless as the white of an egg, and, when applied to him, as loathsome and burdensome as the most sorrowful meat. I am sorry he should say thus of what Eliphaz had excellently well said, ch. v. 8, &c. But peevish spirits are too apt thus to abuse their comforters.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
JOB – CHAPTER 6
JOB’S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ’S FIRST ADDRESS
Verses 1-30:
Verses 1-3 begin Job’s response to Eliphaz. He lamented that Eliphaz had not weighed or given valid consideration to the misfortunes that had befallen him in the loss of all his possessions, his children, his wife’s infideity, and his weight of afflictions of sores that had covered his body for these many days, and caused his grief. Else Eliphaz would have sympathized with and comforted him, instead of scolding, censuring, and accusing him of harboring hidden sin in his heart, 2Co 1:3-4. Because of any lack of sympathy from Eliphaz his weight of grief was like sand of the sea, so heavy that it kept him from expressing his grief in words one could understand, Job 37:19-20; Psa 40:5.
Verse 4 states that the “arrows of the Almighty,” or instruments of avenging in warfare were in Job’s heart, like poison arrows used to hasten pain and death, in his departing spirit, Psa 38:3. Job lamentingly confessed that the terrors of divine wrath cut painfully through his soul, like recurring waves of an army in array, Jdg 20:33; See also Deu 32:23; Psa 7:13; Psa 18:14; Psa 21:12; Psa 45:5.
Verse 5 rhetorically asks whether a wild ass brays when he has grass or an ox lows when it has fodder for food. The implied answer is, they do not. Job would argue that his complaint over his misfortune was therefore not without merit, yet, he compared himself with brute beasts which have not the spirit to restrain them in hunger, as man has, 1Jn 4:4; 1Co 10:13.
Verses 6, 7 further sets forth Job’s reply to the harsh words of Eliphaz by asserting that one cannot possibly like a thing that is distasteful, can he? a thing like meat or the white of an egg, so tasteless without salt. His miseries of soul were like disgusting food that one had to endure to survive. His food or staff of his life was like bitter tears, hard to bear, much as later expressed by David, Psa 42:3; Psa 80:5. Such Job contends made a valid basis for his complaint and desire to die, Job 3:1-12.
Verses 8, 9 express a longing outcry of Job’s desire for immediate death; but a cry for death is often a coward’s way out of immediate trouble. Often the wicked cry for it, not considering that “after this the judgment,” Heb 9:27. He desired that God would simply withhold His hand of mercy totally letting Satan take his life, which God had forbidden, Job 1, 12, Job 2:6. He asked that he be “cut off,” a term used for cutting off a bolt of cloth from the loom of the weaver, as a finished product; But Job was not yet a “finished product,” Isa 38:12; Rom 8:28-29.
Verse 10 asserts that Job would find comfort in the thought of dying, being cut off from life; He would harden or set himself, leaping with joy for the pain of death, because speedy death would bring him face to face with an holy God, whose commands he had no knowledge of not keeping. As God is holy so man has an obligation to be holy. And Job, in reply to Eliphaz’s insinuations that he was an hypocrite, covering personal sins, here denied it, without guilt, shame, or fear, Psa 119:46; Act 20:20; Act 20:27; Lev 19:2.
Verse 11 poses Job’s question of why he should go on suffering longer, with no normal hope to live under the terrible malady of disease and sores, all but gone. Why, he asks should he live longer to bear his hopeless calamity, Ecc 7:8; Eliphaz’s claim was vain, Job 5:11.
Verses 12, 13 continue an expression of his seemingly hopeless state; No further strength of help exists for him, he says. And deliverance, healing, or liberation from the plague was without a gleam of hope.
Verse 14 asserts that real pity or love should be shown by a friend to one who is afflicted, not needling and unfounded charges of hypocrisy; for a friend “loveth at all times,” and a brother is born for adversity, Pro 17:17. This pity should be shown all men, but especially a brother or a friend, See? 1Pe 4:8; 1Co 13:7; Pro 10:12. He is due it, unless he has renounced the Almighty, is the idea, Jas 2:13; Psa 19:9.
Verses 15, 16 charge that Job’s friends had turned false, claiming to bring help as friends, but increased his sorrow instead, disappointed him, rather than seeking to help him bear his burdens, 2Co 1:3-4; Gal 6:1-2. These pretended brethren and friends are compared with cascading brooks in rainy seasons, dark by reason of melting ice, then disappointing, of no help, when the dry season comes. Such was a vivid picture of mourning caused to Job by the accusatory nature and the unsympathetic words of Eliphaz; There was no living waters, refreshing,, living hope in the words of Eliphaz; See Isa 58:11; Jer 15:18; Jer 2:13; Psa 25:14.
Verses 17, 18 add that the stream of the brooks or rivulets grew more narrow and the water more shallow under the warmth and heat of the sun, so that their former cascading sounds availed nothing under the blast of the desert sun. Travelers, thirsty pilgrims would follow the winding paths of summer brooks only to perish, to die. So would any who listened to the counsel Eliphaz had spouted against Job, Mat 7:15-20.
Verse 19 states that the troops or caravans of Tema were in the northern Arabian desert, where sons of Ishmael dwell, Gen 25:15; Isa 21:14; Jer 25:23, while the companies of Sheba waited for their companions to return from the distance, where they had gone on a vain quest for water, as described, v. 18.
Verse 20 adds that they were confounded when their friends returned pale, in despair, having found no water in the empty brooks. They returned with shame and blasted hopes. They had deceived, deluded expectations. This is what Job’s friends, Eliphaz and his others, had brought to him. Though hope makes “not ashamed,” because it is anchored to “that one” within the veil, Jesus Christ, Rom 5:5; Heb 6:17-19.
Verse 21 concludes that Job’s false friends are “nothing,” but like those disappointed and deluded searchers of dried up brooks, that offered no relief, no hope in or from his sufferings. He added that they had sat in stunned silence at his afflictions and were themselves afraid of what they had seen. They had lost presence of mind at the sight of Job’s frightful misery, rather than reach out to him, as false friends and false lovers, Psa 35:11.
Verse 22 inquires of them, for the record, “did I say bring unto me,” or “give a reward for me of your substance?” to redeem me from judgment? He did not. He only sought their affections, Job 42:11; Act 20:33.
Verses 23, 24 further inquire if he had asked them to deliver him from his enemy’s hand or redeem him from the hand of the oppressor or the mighty? He had not. Their coming was of curiosity, their own idea. Then he ironically challenged them, as self appointed teachers, to teach him, if they were capable, and if they could give evidence he was in error, he would correct it. He was willing to hold his tongue, be silent, if they had any real Divine light to shed on his circumstance and need, Psa 39:1.
Verse 25 affirms that right, proper, or wholesome words were to be respected, but generalized babblings and insinuations against his integrity before God prove nothing. They were like “clouds and wind without rain or water,” 2Pe 2:17; Jud 1:12. He simply asks, “just what will your arguings prove?”
Verse 26 inquires, do you think or imagine you can prove anything to reprove effectively, mouthing mere sentiments, making sentimental statements that are without rhyme or reason, as one shouting at the wind, or talking through his hat? In effect Job was saying that the speech of Eliphaz had been “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Verse 27 adds that the speech of Eliphaz did overwhelm the fatherless and dig a pit or open a pitfall for his friend. Neither was complimentary to the address of Eliphaz. He might hold the immature, the fatherless spellbound by his bombast, but it was of no iota of hope, help, pity for, or comfort to Job who needed such in his present plight. Eliphaz had set a net to entrap Job, like a bird or wild animal, instead of trying to lead him out of or help him in his afflicted state, Psa 57:6. Would you trap me and feast on my miseries? he asked, Jer 18:20; Pro 26:27; 1Sa 14:42; Psa 22:18.
Verse 28 challenges Eliphaz to look directly into Job’s face, and be content or pleased to recognize that he is no hypocrite, else it would show in his face. Job was asserting his innocence of hypocrisy, a thing that Eliphaz had charged to him by insinuation, Job 4:7-9; Job 5:12-14.
Verse 29 recounts Job’s call to Eliphaz to return to soberness of reason and retract the charges of hypocrisy and hidden sin in his life, as a cause for his sufferings. The phrase “let it not be iniquity” means do not let your charge stand that I am unrighteous or an unjust person, suffering for personal sins, Lev 14:15. Job insists that his cause is a just one, Job 17:10.
Verse 30 inquires of Eliphaz whether or not he really believes that Job is a man of a perverse, dishonest, lying tongue; And he would like Eliphaz to state whether or not he thought Job had not palate taste buds, regarding taste of right and wrong, regarding testimony, Job 31:30; Pro 5:3; Psa 52:4. The Lord is gracious to the afflicted, even when their friends fail them, Isa 41:17-18; Gal 6:1-2.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
JOBOR THE POWER OF MATTER OVER MIND
Job 6, 7.
THE power of mind over matter is one of the popular themes in modern discussions. It is generally conceded that that power is much greater than men of the past have ever imagined; and there is a definite science developing in this direction, and we may yet learn that the majority of ills, to which the flesh is heir, originate not so much with diseased blood as with a disordered brain!
And yet the converse of this contains a great message of truth. Matter has a certain power over mind, body a certain control of the brain, and the Book of Job is a fair and a very faithful presentation of that fact. When in health, he was a man of remarkable poise, reputed progress and enviable position, and a man whose service to God had been of such an unusual character as to excite not only the observation of his fellows, but the attention of the great Adversarythe deviland stirred in his fiendish mind a desire to discredit the good man of God.
But no man knows himself, nor is he perfectly known by his fellows until he was experienced, at once, fortune and misfortune. Some men can remain extremely faithful while favored, and other men reveal greater faithfulness in the day of harrowing judgment; but the special depths of a mans soul have not been sounded, and his spirit has known no perfect test until he has both flourished and failed.
Paul, by the pen of inspiration, develops this idea when he insists that in all things we shall prove ourselves to be Gods servants,
in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses,
In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings;
By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,
By the Word of Truth, by the power of God; by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left,
By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true;
As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed;
As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things (2Co 6:4-10).
These two chapters (Job 6-7) are a revelation of how the man who has been prospered sees things when the day of his calamity comes, and they present: The Weight of Human Affliction; The Infidelity of Personal Suffering, and The Inquiries of a Protracted Pain.
THE WEIGHT OF HUMAN AFFLICTION
But Job answered and said,
Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!
For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea (Job 6:1-3).
His claim is, it eludes physical measure. This is no flippant speech! For seven long days Job sat, as did his three friends, in awful silence. Sorrow and suffering had stricken him dumb, and I have little doubt that since Eliphaz finished his speech another great period of silence has intervened. Many were the sobs preceding the sentences he now utters, and when at last the lips part it is not in eloquence, nor yet in that logic which presents a premise and reaches a conclusion; but it is in a passionate cry, a pathetic moan, if you please, which does not express the depths of his sorrow, but declares, rather, that no man can sound it; and the breadth of his suffering, no man can measure.
Neither does, he attempt to make clear the meaning of it all, but argues that another cannot understand it. The rivers can be numbered and named, and so can the mountains; the valleys can be surveyed and parcelled out, and the seas enumerated; but the sands of the sea, who shall count them, and, when thought of together, who can weigh them? Their infinite stretch, their unmeasurable weight stood out for Job as a symbol of his sorrow, and by their employment he flings back at his friends the great thought that they did not understand his grief. No man ever had friends who did, if his grief was great. There are some things that can never be studied from the outside and understood; one must enter into them in order to know them.
A few years since I was on the Galveston Bay when it was swept by an awful storm. From the time when the wind became a fury in the forenoon until darkness veiled the vision of the billows, I never took my eyes from them. I saw the outward expression of that storm; but, standing as I was, in a comparatively safe and well protected spot, I never understood it as did the people who had been caught in the same, fifty of whom lost their lives that day, and hundreds of whose hearts failed them before the fury abated or help was at hand.
Some experiences exceed the power of speech. Jobs was of that sort! Therefore said he, My words are swallowed up (Job 6:3). When David was judged for his sin he was struck into silence. Writing of it he says, I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because Thou didst it. And when he does speak it is an anguished cry, Remove Thy stroke away from me; I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand (Psa 39:9-10).
People sometimes say that it is good for the bereaved to weep; that in their very sobs there is relief. Doubtless there is much of truth in the claim. Speech also is a sign of a lightened load. A man whose grief is so great that speech leaves him has little of hope. The whole world knows of Richard Baxter whose single volume, The Saints Rest, would have made his name immortal; but only a few are familiar with the experiences that made possible such a productionthe experiences of poverty, of ignorance, of physical suffering, of medical maltreatment, and of such a multitude of discouragements as would have broken the heart of that man who had attempted to endure them in silence. As he himself says, I am of no University, but self-educated; weakness and pain helped me to study how to die, and that sent me on to study how to live. Beginning with necessities I proceeded by degrees, and am now going to see that for which I have lived and studied. The allusion of Baxter to weakness and pain brings out the life-long struggle he had with ill-health. He was always in the hands of the doctors. Orme in his biography, says, He was diseased literally from head to foot; his stomach flatulent and acidulous; violent rheumatic headaches; prodigious bleeding at the nose; his blood so thin and acrid that it oozed out from the points of his fingers, and kept them often raw and bloody. And Orme then adds, To be more particular would be disagreeable. Speaking about one serious sickness, Baxter said, I was restored by the mercy of God and the help of Dr. Michleth wait and the moss of a dead mans skull.
But in the midst of his suffering Baxter was never silent. He wrote one hundred and fifty treatises, did the work of an army chaplain, fulfilled a long and arduous pastorate and put in no considerable time in imprisonment after his trial before Jeffries.
If you are going to bestow sympathy on Job, the time in which he needs it most is this very experience when his words are swallowed up and every attempt at speech is only a fresh sob, and every effort at logic results in only a more prolonged silence.
Jobs affliction is more spiritual than material. Listen to his statement, The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. Matthew Henry says, Herein he is a type of Christ, who in His suffering complained most of the suffering of His soulNow is my soul troubled (Joh 12:27); My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death (Mat 26:38); My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? (Mat 27:46).
There are some experiences that pain us far beyond poverty, or disgrace, or bodily pain! Troubles that are purely mental exceed in intensity and anguish those that result from some material failure or pain. A wounded spirit who can bear? writes the inspired penman. The soul of a man does determine whether the sun is shining or whether the day is darker than night; whether the landscape is fair or whether it is foul to the point of sickening. I have known a man who had his favorite haunt in a place of surpassing beauty; it was his delight to walk there. The green sward, the blooming flowers, inviting paths, waving waters, the sweet voiced birds, called him to that spot again and again. But in the course of time there came a change over the whole landscape; the very agony he had endured by what he knew of it as a trysting place, turned him from it forever, and he could not pass even the vicinity and restrain his tears. Agonies of body he had known, but none like this mental anguish, for physical suffering and pain that may rack one and rob him of all rest, and reduce him to flesh and bones, and push him into the grave, have in them no such curse of suffering as has the immortal spirit with which God has stamped every mortal man.
But this weight of Jobs affliction results in
THE INFIDELITY OF PERSONAL SUFFERING
Job reaches the point where he doubts the compassion of God, where he disputes the generosity of men and, where he denies his own selfishness and sin.
He doubts the compassion of God. He makes his request that God would grant him the thing for which he longeth, that is, deaththat he would let loose His hand, and cut me off; but he makes it in despair, evidently feeling that God will not hear him and answer this plea. But when uttering this conviction there seems to remain with him the thought that God is not altogether just in His denial, for he says, Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let Him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.
In other words, a faithful man has a right to expect of that God to whom he has been loyal, a withholding of such affliction, but in case it does befall, the ending of it, if it need be by deatha philosophy which misses the whole point of suffering, so far as God appears at all in that experience.
Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews speaks in a very different tone; quoting from the Old Testament Proverbs, he writes:
My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him:
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed (Heb 12:5-13).
The truth is that a mans day of suffering is not that in which he sees clearly either the Divine plan or his possible profit. This is illustrated in the story of Jacob. Think of him on that day when his sons brought back to him Josephs coat, ragged and blood-stained, and the grand old Patriarch, his very heart broken, sobs out, It is my sons coat; an evil beast hath devoured him: Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. * * I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning (Gen 37:33; Gen 37:35). Then hear him later as he talks about Benjamin when it is being urged that he be permitted to go with his brethren after corn, Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away; all these things are against me (Gen 42:36). But one day they bring him a wonderful message that Joseph is alive and is the lord of the South, but Jacobs heart fainted, for he believed them not. Even when through evil God has wrought out good it is hard for the subject of it to see and accept the same.
The same infidelity disputes the generosity of man. Job feels, without occasion, that his friends are unsympathetic and hard. He says, To him that is afflicted pity should be showed from his friend; but my brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away. Which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid, which is only a figurative way of declaring that they are not only hard but cold; they are not sympathetic but suspiciousDid I say, Bring unto me? or, Give a reward for me of your substance? or, Deliver me from the enemys hand? or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty?
Second to the day when the face of God is obscured for one, does darkness enshroud that time when a man loses confidence in his fellows and becomes convinced that the whole world is unsympathetic and treacherous. The late Chauncey Depew was certainly a man of sufficient accomplishments to make it worth while to attend to his words, and he wrote: Never let us lose faith in human nature, no matter how often we are deceived. I have lost twenty-five per cent of all I have ever made in lending money and indorsing notes, and have incurred generally the enmity of those I have helped because I did not keep it up. But every once in a while there is somebody who returns in such full measure the credit for the help which was rendered that faith was kept alive, and the beauty and goodness of our human nature were made evident. I have had appointed about a thousand men to employment which gave them support and a chance to climb to positions of greater responsibility and trust, if they had the inclination and ability. About nine out of ten of them threw stones at me because I did not do better, and keep pushing them; and yet there are a hundred or so who, by the exercise of their own ability, their own grasp of the situation, have gone on to the accomplishment of such high ambitions and successes, and have appreciated in so many ways the help extended to them by helping others, that again my faith in human nature remains undiminished.
It is a strange fact, and yet it is one often found, that the man who doubts the compassion of God and the generosity of his fellows, will deliver an eloquent self-justification.
After having indicted his friends with an attempt to make merchandise of his professed friendship, he says,
Now therefore be content, look upon me; for it is evident unto you if I lie.
Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity; yea, return again, my righteousness is in it.
Is there iniquity in my tongue? cannot my taste discern perverse things? (Job 6:28-30).
No man can rightly understand himself who hath misjudged the great Father of lights, and his fellows. There is perhaps no exception to the rule; the man who brings God from His throne by any form of infidelity, immediately attempts to exalt himself; and the man who puts God on the throne in his affliction, emphasizes His justice as well as His compassion, and who looks upon his fellows to feel that they are his friends, is the man from whose heart pride perishes and upon whose lips penitent speech is often found. In other words a true vision of Gods holiness and love gives us correct estimate of human lust and sin.
Finally, learn from these two chapters in Job something of
THE INQUIRIES OF THE LONG SUFFERING
Pain turns every man into an interrogation point. Why? It is a little word but it goes up before God and demands an answer. The Book of Hosea in the Old Testament Scriptures might be expressed in this one word of three lettersWhy? As Joseph Parker sagely remarks, Jobs tone is interrogative, involving more than twenty questions, and what do these marks of interrogation mean? They almost illustrate the speech, for he who asks questions after this fashion is as a man groping his way in darkness. A blind mans staff is always asking questions. You never see a blind man put out his hand, but that hand is really in the form of an interrogation, saying, in its wavering and quest, Where am I? What is this? What is my position now? Am I far from home? Do I come near a friend? The great speeches of Demosthenes have been noted for their interrogation; the marks of interrogation stand among the sentences like so many spears, swords, or implements of war; for there was battle in every question. And grief, argues Parker, takes kindly to the interrogation form of utterance. Job wants to know if the old foundations are standing still, whether the sky is fallen, whether the sun has risen, whether sweet Mother Nature is making ready the table for her hungry children, or whether everything is gone since he fell into this trance of sorrow.
We shall attempt no answer to twenty questions, but to a very few instead: Is there to be an end to the dark day? Is there not a limit to human endurance? Is not the death of the penitent desirable?
Is there to be an end to the dark day?
Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days also like the days of an hireling?
As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work;
So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.
When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? And I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day (Job 7:1-4).
The days were to him what they were to David when he cried, O my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not (Psa 22:2); or when he wrote:
My days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.
By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin (Psa 102:3-5).
It was of such days that Father Ryan was thinking when he wrote:
They come to evry lifesad, sunless days
With not a light oer all their clouded skies;.
And thro the dark we grope along our ways
With hearts fear-filled, and lips low-breathing sighs.
What is the dark? Why cometh it? and whence?
Why does it banish all the bright away?
How does it weave a spell oer soul and sense?
Why falls the shadow whereer gleams the ray?
Hast felt it? I have felt it, and I know
How oft and suddenly the shadows roll
From out the depths of some dim realm of woe,
To wrap their darkness round the human soul.
Those days are darker than the very night;
For nights have stars, and sleep, and happy dreams;
But those days bring unto the spirit-sight
The mysteries of gloom, until it seems
The light is gone forever, and the dark
Hangs like a pall of death above the soul,
Which rocks amid the gloom like storm-swept bark,
And sinks beneath a sea where tempests roll.
Is there not a limit to human endurance?
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome.
My days are swifter than a weavers shuttle, and are spent without hope.
O remember that my life is wind: mine eye shall no more see good.
The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more: Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not.
As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more (Job 7:5-8).
When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint;
Then Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions; so that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life (Job 7:13-15).
Job little understands through what agonies a man might pass and not only live but be purified by the process. His life had known so much of favor and so much of ease that he is ill-adapted to poverty and pain, and his ideas of endurance were not those of the spirit educated by sorrow. It is reported that Napoleon Bonaparte, riding over a bloody field, saw his horses hoof go through the flesh of a man that he supposed to be dead, and the poor fellow started from his comatose condition in a cry of mortal pain, whereupon the, great iron-hearted fellow said, My, God! What agonies a man may suffer! And yet that anguish was light beside what many another has endured. As Louis Albert Banks once wrote, When the books are opened it will be found that many of the greatest victories of the Christian Church have been won by those who were wounded most deeply, and many of her grandest enterprises carried to success by those whose tracks were marked by blood. And when Jesus Christ at last places the crowns of rejoicing upon the brows of the conquering hosts it will be discovered that those that wear the bestudded diadems of righteousness are the very ones that once felt the anguish of the thorns.
Is the death of the penitent desirable? Why dost Thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and Thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be (Job 7:21). You can stand before the most sorrowful soul the world knows and when the speech of anguish is finished, when they go back to that of intelligence and sobriety, and forget their impetuous desire to leave the world; when the few days of sorrow are passed, and the sober second thought takes place, they will acknowledge sin and call upon God for pardon, knowing that not even the grave holds any peace for the impenitent; and yet perfectly understanding that in God there is a peace that passeth knowledge for every man who in contrition of spirit seeks His favor; that He is the souls refuge not only from the sorrows and anguish of life, but from the sweeping storms of sin. Once more I must appeal to the good Southern poet, Father Ryan, to illustrate my meaning;
Weary hearts! weary hearts! by the cares of life oppressed,
Ye are wandring in the shadowsye are sighing for a rest:
There is darkness in the heavens, and the earth is bleak below,
And the joys we taste today may tomorrow turn to woe.
Weary hearts! God is rest.
Lonely hearts! lonely hearts! this is but a land of grief;
We are pining for reposeye are longing for relief;
What the world hath never given, kneel and ask of God above,
And your grief shall turn to gladness, if you lean upon His love.
Lonely hearts! God is Love.
Restless hearts! Restless hearts! ye are toiling night and day,
And the flowers of life, all withered, leave but thorns along your way:
Ye are waiting, ye are waiting, till your toilings all shall cease,
And your evry restless beating is a sad, sad prayer for peace.
Restless hearts! God is Peace.
Breaking hearts! broken hearts! ye are desolate and lone,
And low voices from the past oer your present ruins moan!
In the sweetest of your pleasures there were bitterest alloy.
And a starless night hath followed on the sunset of your joy.
Broken hearts! God is Joy.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
JOBS REPLY TO ELIPHAZ
I. Justifies his complaint (Job. 6:2).
O that my grief were thoroughly weighed, &c. Jobs case neither apprehended nor appreciated by his friends. Desires fervently that his suffering and his complaining were weighed against each other; or that his calamity and the grief occasioned by it were thoroughly considered. The weight of it beyond that of the sand of the sea,too numerous to be counted and too heavy to be weighed. The greatness of it beyond his ability to express, being also the cause why he had expressed himself so vehemently and inconsiderately;therefore my words are swallowed up, or, were rash or vehement. Jobs outward trials accumulated and intense beyond all precedent. These at first endured with extraordinary meekness and patience. Now, through the nature of his disease and Satan operating on his mind in consequence of it, all viewed on the dark side. Our sufferings very much as we are made to view them. The bitterest part of Jobs sufferings now probably internal ones; his external trials being viewed as sent from God, not in love but in unaccountable anger.Describes these sufferings (Job. 6:4) according to his views and feelings:
(1.) As arrows: Sharp and penetrating; coming swiftly, suddenly, and with great force; not one but many, coming in quick succession.
(2.) Arrows of the Almighty. Shot by Him as at an enemy, or as a mere butt for His archery. The Almightys arrows must be especially sharp and deadly. That they were the Almightys arrows the bitterest circumstance connected with them.
(3.) Poisoned arrows. Hence especially deadly, and discharged by a deadly foe. Indicates the intensely painful character of his sufferings; poisoned arrows inflicting especially painful and inflammatory wounds.
(4.) These arrows not only discharged against him, but abiding within him, or being with him. His distress unintermitting.
(5.) The effect of the arrows, their poison drinking up his spiritexhausting his vital energy; or, his spirit drinking up their deadly poison.
The Arrows of the Almighty
No power of man or angel able to withstand these arrows. No shield but the shield of faith able to receive them. No hand but the pierced hand of Jesus able to extract them. No balm but the blood of the Cross able to heal their burning wounds. One of these arrows able to bring down the stoutest adversary. O Galilan, thou hast conquered,said by one of the most determined enemies of Christ, Julian the Apostate Emperor, while dying on the battle-field. Jobs miseries scarcely half-told in the preceding history. His outward calamities rather the occasion than the cause of his intensest suffering. A believers inward trouble in time of trial sometimes greater than the outward trouble which occasioned it. His greatest distress often from a cause entirely different from the outward trial. Heavy outward trouble often light in comparison with inward distress from spiritual and unseen causes. The rankling arrows of the Almighty much more dreadful than either the loss of property and children, or bodily affliction. A terrible aggravation of Jobs outward trouble. Apprehended wrath on the part of God the greatest of all troubles to a believer. The essence of the Redeemers suffering, as of that of the patriarchs,My God, my God, &c. The awful experience of the lost. No greater hell than these arrows, sharp in the hearts of the Kings enemies (Psa. 45:5). Fully discharged against the Son of God while standing as the Sinners Substitute. That Substitute accepted becomes Himself the Sinners Shield. The arrows felt in the conviction of sin (Act. 2:37). Bringing the sinner to the feet of the Saviour they become arrows of mercy. The arrows extracted and the wounds healed by simple trust in Jesus and His blood. Discharged against the believer rather in his own apprehension than in reality. The apprehension intended as a discipline and trial of faith (Isa. 54:8; Isa. 57:17-18). The experience removed when the object has been served (Jer. 31:18-20). Satan, working on our unbelief in time of trouble, able to make his own darts to be mistaken for the arrows of the Almighty. The Almightys arrows now in the Saviours hand (Psa. 45:5; Rev. 6:2).
Jobs condition sufficient to account for his complaint. Even beasts do not utter their cries when they have food. (Job. 6:5)Doth the wild ass bray? &c. The ass found in a wild state, large, fleet, and strong, in Arabia and west of the Euphrates. A hint at the want of sympathy on the part of his friends. It is easy to be quiet when suffering nothing. True sympathy makes us suffer in the distress of another (1Co. 12:26). Natural to feel and utter complaint under severe suffering. Men cannot eat insipid and tasteless food without mixing salt with it. (Job. 6:6)Can that which is unsavoury? &c. Salt so important with the Arabs as to be used as a synonym for food, their diet being chiefly vegetable. Mentions, as an example of the insipid, the white of an egg, or perhaps the herb purslain, proverbial among the Arabs for its insipidity. Perhaps Job quotes a proverb in common use. Indicates not only the naturalness of complaint, but the need of sympathy and encouragement in time of trouble. Insipid things need salt to make them palatable. Speech to be with grace seasoned with salt for the benefit of others (Col. 4:6). A word spoken in season, how good is it. Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop, but a good word maketh it glad (Pro. 12:25). The true humanity of Jesus seen in His craving for human sympathy in His distress (Mat. 26:37-40). A bitter aggravation of trouble when lover and friend are put far from us (Psa. 88:18). The deepest poverty is to be without a friend to sympathize with us in our sorrow.Job reasserts his sad condition. (Job. 6:6)The things which my soul refused to touch, &c. Sad reverse when what we could not even touch before is now our daily but sorrowful and nauseous food. Jobs loathsome ulcers now as his daily bread. Similar sentiment (Psa. 102:9; Psa. 42:3; Psa. 80:5). Learn:
(1) Painful reverses to be prepared for.
(2) Moderation and humility our duty in prosperity. Sometimes but a short step from affluence to destitution (Pro. 23:5; 1Ti. 6:17). The beauty of health speedily exchanged for the loathsomeness of disease. A single day may put Dives in the place of Lazarus, or a worse.
(3) The uncertainty of earthly possessions and enjoyments to be improved to the securing of heavenly ones. Grace teaches the rich man to rejoice in that he is made low (Jas. 1:10).
II. Repeats and justifies his desire for death (Job. 6:8, &c)
O that I might have my request, &c. His request a release from present sufferings by death. Asked also as a favour from God by Elijah under the juniper tree, and by Jonah at Nineveh (1Ki. 19:4; Jon. 4:3; Jon. 4:8). God the arbiter of life and death. Job leaves his time in Gods hand (ch. Job. 14:14). Satan and Jobs wife would have had him taking the matter into his own. Ancient heathens believed they had a right to end their life when they pleased. Desire for death a natural feeling under deep and protracted distress. Often, however, rather from the impatience of the flesh than the aspiration of the spirit. Only mens waywardness and hardness of heart once awakened something of the feeling in Jesus (Mat. 17:17). Pauls desire to depart was to be with Christ (Php. 1:23). Desire for death no proof of fitness for it. The choice between life and death best referred to God Himself. Preparation for death implies some ability to glorify God in life. Soon enough to rest when our work is done. A favour to cease at once to work and live. Jobs request not granted. Some prayers better refused than answered. A sick child may be spared to die a felons death.
The reason of Jobs desire for death:
(1) The comfort in the prospect of a speedy release from his extreme distress. (Job. 6:10)Then should I yet have comfort (or, this should be my comfort); yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let Him not spare (or, I would leap for joy in my unsparing sorrow).
(2) The consciousness of having been Gods faithful servant: For I have not concealed (or denied) the words of the Holy One. Implies(i.) Fearlessness in confessing the truth; (ii.) Faithfulness in communicating it. The sin of the heathen that of holding or keeping down the truth in unrighteousness. Truth inwardly believed is to be outwardly professed (Rom. 10:10). God honoured and the world benefited by a bold and consistent profession of the truth. The practice of Gods faithful servants in every age (Psa. 71:17; Psa. 119:46). Examples: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Daniel. Truth received in order to be communicated (2Co. 4:6; Php. 2:15-16). The language of Job used by David and his great Antitype (Psa. 40:9-10). The testimony of a good and enlightened conscience a precious comfort in the midst of suffering and in the prospect of death (2Co. 1:12; 2Ti. 4:6-8). The testimony of Jobs conscience, that he had neither by fearfulness nor faithlessness concealed
The Words of the Holy One
These words found in the shape of
(1) Doctrines;
(2) Promises;
(3) Commands. They were Gods words, as
(1) Communicated by Him to Adam and others, and handed down to their posterity;
(2) Revealed to Job himself. God at sundry times and in divers manners spake to the fathers (Heb. 1:1). The Church of God in possession of such words from the beginning. Faint echoes and distorted forms of these words found everywhere among the heathen. Prominent among these was the proto-evangel of Gen. 3:15. These words the precious treasure of the children of God in every age. A light to their feet and a comfort to their heart. Employed by Job in instructing, sustaining, and comforting others (ch. Job. 4:3-4). God known in Jobs time as the Holy One. So called, Isa. 40:25; Hos. 11:9; Heb. 3:3. His name Holy (Isa. 57:15). God alone holy (Rev. 15:4). Peculiarly and essentially holy (1Sa. 2:2). Thrice holy (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8). Contrasted with the gods of the heathen. These acknowledged by their very worshippers to be impure and unworthy of imitation. The Greeks and Romans justified their own impurity by that of their gods. People naturally resemble the deities they worship. Solemn obligation resting on the worshippers of the true God to be holy (Lev. 11:44; 1Pe. 1:16). His children made partakers of his holiness (Heb. 12:10; 2Pe. 1:4).
Job justifies his desire for death on the ground of his grievous affliction. His strength unable to hold out under such accumulated evils (Job. 6:11). What is my strength, (or power of endurance) that I should hope, (indulge the slow protracted hope of recovery and the enjoyment of those temporal blessings held out by Eliphaz)? And what is mine end (the end of these miseries)that I should prolong my life? (or continue to exercise patience). The language of the flesh. Spoken according to sense. Justified by appearance and carnal reasoning. Despondency and impatience natural in the absence of faith. Faith battles with appearances and triumphs over them (Psa. 42:11; Mic. 7:7-8; Hab. 3:17-18). No time long to faith. Abrahams faith held out twenty-five years for the promised birth, till his own and his wifes body were as good as dead. Faith the mother of patience. Looks not at the weakness of the creature, but the power of the Creator. Difficulties and apparent impossibilities the true matter for faith. Laughs at impossibilities, because leaning on Omnipotence. Faith often to seek in a storm. Every man is a believer in a fair day [Rutherford]. No express promise of recovery and restoration given to Job. The fact of Gods omnipotence, and the truth that He is the hearer of prayer, that He interposes sooner or later in his servants behalf, and that He does all things well,enough for faith to rest upon in time of trouble. Faith at times triumphant in Job, though not with reference to any temporal deliverance (ch. Job. 19:25, &c.; Job. 23:10).Job. 6:12. Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of brass?the symbol of hardness and durability. The nature of unbelief to dwell in personal weakness. Faith looks not on human weakness but on Divine strength. Hence makes its possessor strong in his weakness. Through faith, believers out of weakness were made strong (Heb. 11:34). Faith enabled Paul rather to glory in his infirmities, and to say: When I am weak, then am I strong (2Co. 12:9-10).
Job justifies his despondency on the ground of his thorough and apparently hopeless prostration (Job. 6:13). Is not my help in me? And is wisdom driven quite from me? (Rather,Is it not the fact that no help for me is in myself, and that recovery (or health) is quite fled from me?). Expresses his real case as viewed by the eye of sense. Abrahams faith, however, did not stagger even when the child of promise was to be offered on the altar. Our weakness and helplessness the proper theatre for the display of Gods power and Christs grace. Divine strength magnifies itself in realized weakness (2Co. 12:9). A higher experience than that attained by Job reserved for Gods children in the Gospel age (Heb. 11:40; Mat. 11:11). The feeble to be then like David, and the House of David as God (Zec. 12:8; Isa. 30:26).
III. Complains of his friends want of sympathy (Job. 6:14-21).
Kindness to the afflicted
1. Job states a moral truth (Job. 6:14). To him that is afflicted, &c.
Compassionate kindness to the suffering a dictate of humanity, and one of the first principles of religion (Jas. 1:27; Mat. 9:13). The good Samaritan Christs chosen example for His disciples, and His own commentary on the second table of the law. Mercy accompanied with truth the essence of moral perfection, and the true spirit of Christianity (Psa. 85:10; Psa. 89:14). Pity to be shown to the afflicted
(1) In words of sympathy and kindness;
(2) In practical assistance, as far as in our power;
(3) In refraining from what may unnecessarily wound the feelings;
(4) In commending the sufferers case to God (Psa. 141:5; Jas. 5:15-16). This to be done for any in affliction, especially for a friend (Luk. 10:29-37; Luk. 17:17).
2. Applies this truth to the case of his friends. But he forsaketh the fear, &c.,viz., Eliphaz and the others, in their want of kindness and sympathy towards Job. Want of love to our neighbour proves want of love to God. Love to our neighbour enjoined by Divine authority as the second part of the law. The want of it, therefore, an evidence of the want of fear as well as love towards God. Pity is love to our neighbour in affliction. Our neighbour has always a claim on our love, and in affliction on our pity. That pity engendered by the fear of God, as
(1) Our neighbour is Gods own offspring;
(2) Our suffering neighbour is the object of His special regard. Pity required by God towards a suffering neighbour as He has had pity on ourselves (Mat. 18:33-35). Mercy and compassion His own character, to be imitated by all His children (Luk. 6:36). The fear of God therefore the guarantee of right feelings towards man. The guardian of all the social and relative duties. Love to God unable to dwell in the same heart with indifference to man. Selfishness incompatible with the fear of God. After Gods example, kindness and pity to be shown to the afflicted, whatever his character and religion. Illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the legend of Abraham and the Idolater. As a motive to shew kindness to the poor and the afflicted, God has identified their cases with His own (Pro. 14:31; Pro. 19:17). Pity due to an afflicted fellow-creature, still more to an afflicted friend. Duties and obligations enhanced according to relationship (Mal. 1:6; Pro. 17:17; Pro. 18:24).
The disappointing conduct of the friends touchingly set forth by a continued simile (Job. 6:15, &c.). My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, (or wadya narrow valley or bed of a stream between two rocky hills, filled with water in winter but usually dried up in summer)as the stream of brooks they (or, which) pass away, viz. in the heat of summer. Three points in the comparison:
(1) The former profession of friendship,resembling the noisy, rushing wady-stream, full of water through the melted ice, and snow, and rains of winter, when less required. (Job. 6:16).
(2) The failure in real kindness and sympathy when needed,like the drying up of the brook through the summer heat, and the entire disappearance of the waters, having vanished into vapour or been lost in the sands of the desert. (Job. 6:17-18).
(3) The bitter disappointment,like that of the caravans of Tema or Ishmaelites, and the trading companies of Sheba or Arabia Felix, when, contrary to their expectation, they find the stream dried up, and are unable to obtain a supply of water (Job. 6:19-20). Observe
(1) The right of the afflicted to expect kindness and sympathy, especially from their friends.
(2) Care to be taken to make a visit of condolence to correspond with its profession.
(3) A great part of friendship, to be true in time of trouble. Affection not to be cooled by affliction. A brother born for adversity. False friends like vermin that abandon a sinking vessel, or swallows that depart at the approach of winter. True friends like ivy that adheres to the tree in its decay. Genuine friendship, like the light of phosphorus, brightest in the dark.
(4) Our views of a friends character not to be lightly changed, least of all by his circumstances. Base even to suspect a friend. Love hopeth all things and thinketh no evil.
The ground of his complaint (Job. 6:21). For now ye are nothing,are to me like the vanished wady-stream, as though you had never been. Friends by profession to prove themselves worthy of the name. Base to profess friendship and to be destitute of its feelings, or to withhold its offices. Love to be not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth (1Jn. 3:18).Ye have seen my casting down, (my prostration and calamity) and are afraid. Their feelings read in their faces. Only one had spoken with his lips, all with their looks. Their fear as if a pious dread at the signal display of Divine judgment, and horror at the discovery of secret wickedness. Afraid
(1) Of being found sympathizing with a guilty man;
(2) Of being involved in the same calamity;
(3) Of being called upon to relieve or defend the sufferer. Base to withhold sympathy and kindness from regard to our own comfort, credit, or convenience.
IV. Remonstrates with his friends on the baseness of their conduct (Job. 6:22-24)
1. He had asked no favour at their hands (Job. 6:22-23). Did I say (or, is it because I said) Bring unto me (for my relief); or Give a reward for me of your substance (to repair my losses or obtain the favour of the judge); or, Deliver me from the enemys hand? Or, redeem me from the hand of the mighty?(who have robbed me of my property, or are now adding to my affliction). The right of the afflicted and suffering to receive not only sympathy but practical help. Afforded by Abraham to his captive nephew (Gen. 14:14). This a noble mind recoils from asking, though thankful in receiving. The favour Job refused to ask, afterwards liberally accorded (ch. Job. 42:11). Sometimes the only service we can render is a cordial sympathy.
2. They had not attempted to show him his sin (Job. 6:24). Teach me and I will hold my tongue; and cause me to understand wherein I have erred. Mark of an honest and ingenuous mind to be willing to be convinced of error or wrong-doing. A prejudice or superstition simply to infer sinning from suffering. Absurd to exhort to repentance without attempting to convince of sin. Jobs friends unable to point out any fault in his former life, except by inference. The language of his Antitype partially hisWhich of you couvinceth me of sin? (Joh. 8:46). All sin an erring or straying from the path of rectitude and the will of God. Found in all, Job not excepted; his friends only challenged to point out any breach of morality or religion as the cause of his peculiar suffering. To point out sin when we see it, is a duty we owe to our neighbour. Faithful and wise reproof required by the law of love (Lev. 19:17). Jobs sense of the value of such reproof (Job. 6:25).
Right Words
How forcible are right words! (Heb. words of uprightness).
1. The form of such words
(1) Argument;
(2) Reproof;
(3) Instruction;
(4) Admonition;
(5) Persuasion.
2. The character of the wordsright.
(1) Right and true in themselvesunmixed with error and falsehoodsound speech that cannot be condemned (Tit. 2:8). In speaking to others we are to beware of daubing with untempered mortar (Eze. 13:10); or of corrupting the Word of God (2Co. 2:17). To speak forth only the words of truth and soberness (Act. 26:25); acceptable words, but also words of truth (Ecc. 12:10). Arguments to be sound,premises true, and conclusions just. Our statements to be according to the law and the testimony (Isa. 8:20).
(2) The whole truth, so far as necessary, in connection with the subject. Nothing profitable to be kept back, either from fear or favour. No mere one-sided view of the truth to be given. Teachers not to be partial in the law (Mal. 2:9). Truth to be exhibited in all its parts, and in their due propositions. The word of truth to be rightly divided (2Ti. 2:15). The mercy of God not to be enlarged upon to the ignoring of His justice, nor the converse. The promises not to be without the precepts, nor the precepts without the promises. Faith not to be urged without works as its fruits, nor works without faith as their foundation. Not morality without religion, nor religion without morality. Not the law without the Gospel, nor the Gospel without the law. Words, to be right words, must be evangelical wordsthe truth as it is in Jesus. Pardon not to be held out apart from Christs blood which procures it. Holiness not to be urged apart from Christs indwelling spirit as its author.
(3) Correct in their application. Truth may be so applied as to become practical error. The fault in Jobs friends. Pillows not to be sewed to all armholes; and those not to be made sad, even with truth, whom the Lord does not make sad (Eze. 13:18-22). Meat to be given in season as each requires and is able to bear it. Milk to babes, strong meat to those of mature age. Some to be sharply reproved. The bruised reed to be bound up with tender hand. Not only truth to be preached, but seasonable truththe present truth, (2Pe. 1:12). Sound doctrine not to be so preached as to become a soporific. The words of the wise to be as goads, therefore to be wisely directed. A word spoken in season, how good is it?
(4) Spoken in uprightness and sincerity. Without fear or favour. Without prejudice or passion. Without self-seeking or time-serving. With simplicity and godly sincerity. As in the sight of God and in the view of eternity. The speaker to be, and therefore to appear, in earnest. Truth not to be spoken as if it were fiction, as if not believed by the speaker himself. To be spoken in love, in tenderness, sympathy, and concern for the hearers welfare. The speakers spirit to preach as well as his speech, his manner as well as his matter. The words of truth on the speakers lips not to be falsified by the manner in which they are spoken, or by the inconsistency of his life.
3. The efficacy of such words. Forcible,powerful, efficacious.
(1.) In enlightening she understanding, discovering truth, and to producing faith. So spake that a great multitude believed. (Act. 14:1). A well-constructed argument having truth for its basis, irresistible [A. Clarke]. In awakening the conscience, convincing of sin, and so producing repentance. So Peters words at Pentecost, and Pauls before Felix (Act. 2:37; Act. 24:25).
(3.) In moving the affections and will, and so restraining from sin, and persuading to duty. So with the awakened at Pentecost (Act. 2:41). The Ephesians burned their ungodly books (Act. 19:19). Herod heard John gladly and did many things (Mar. 6:20).
(4.) In comforting the afflicted, sustaining the weak, and succouring the tempted. Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoopa good word maketh it glad (Pro. 12:25). The effect of Jobs own words in his former condition (chap. Job. 4:3-4).
V. Complains of his friends reproof and their conduct towards him (Job. 6:25-27)
1. Their argument and reproof had been pointless and profitless (Job. 6:25). What doth your arguing reprove? (or, what conviction is there in the reproof you have administered?) Eliphaz, their chief speaker, had
(1) shewn no sin on the part of Job as meriting his severe treatment;
(2) Exhorted to repentance without showing the grounds for its necessity. In discoursing to others we are to have a clear aim and definite purpose. That aim to be a right one and important in the circumstances. Our purpose to be prosecuted in a wise and suitable manner. The preacher not to speak as uncertainly, nor to preach as one that beateth the air.
2. Their reproof was directed only against words uttered in deep distress and great disquietude of spirit (Job. 6:26). Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind? (or, and to scrutinize, sift, or air the speeches of one that is desperate?) The fault of Jobs friends that they had attacked the words of his complaint instead of showing the evil of his life. As a rule, by our words we shall be justified or condemned (Mat. 12:37). The reason, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Ordinarily, a man is as his speech. Allowance, however, to be made for words uttered under deep distress, and in exceptionally trying circumstances. A high offence in Gods sight to make a man an offender for a word (Isa. 29:21). Observe
(1.) Rash words, especially under provocation, an easily besetting sin (Heb. 12:1). Great temptation to such words under excited feeling. The heart to be kept with all diligence, especially in time of trouble (Pro. 4:23). The mouth to be kept as with a bridle when Gods hand is heavy on us (Psa. 39:1-10).
(2.) The case of a believer may appear desperate to himself and others, when it appears the very opposite to God. A child of God often writes bitter things against himself when his Father does not. A tried believer apt to judge of his case from feeling and appearance. The flesh a blind judge as to a mans real case and character. That case can never be desperate which is linked to the Almightys throne. Thou hast nothing to fear who hast Csar for thy friend. A mans case cannot be desperate who has,(i) a place in the Almightys heart; (ii) his hand in His heavenly Fathers; (iii) an interest in the everlasting covenant (2Sa. 2:3; 2Sa. 2:5).
Job strongly inveighs against his friends conduct (Job. 6:27). Yea, ye overwhelm (margin, cause [a net or noose] to fall upon) the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend (seeking to catch him in ungarded words, and to make him out to be a hypocrite and transgressor). Rightly or wrongly, Job construes his friends language and looks into malice. Their conduct harsh and unfeeling, but according to Job, diabolical. Strong language and exaggerated views of the conduct of others towards ourselves, a natural result of deep trouble and excited feeling. Men capable, however, of the conduct here ascribed by Job to his friends. Josephs brethren an example. The words strictly true of the enemies of Jesus, their truest and best friend. The conduct of Jobs friends all the guiltier as being
(1) Under colour of friendship;
(2) Under profession of piety;
(3) With considerable knowledge of Divine truth. Cruellest feelings sometimes covered with the garb of greatest sanctity. Example: Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisitors. Important prayerSearch me, O God, and know my heart &c. (Psa. 139:23).
VI. Jobs challenge to his friends (Job. 6:28-30)
1. Appeal of conscious integrity (Job. 6:28). Now, therefore, be content, look upon me: for it is evident unto you (margin, it is before your face) if I lie (or, shall I lie to your face?) Observe:
(1) Conscious innocence not only allows but solicits examination. A good conscience enables a man to live in a glass-house. So JesusWhich of you convinceth me of sin (Joh. 8:46). A mark of grace to come to the light that our deeds may be made manifest (Joh. 3:21). Paul prays for believers that they may be sincere,able, in heart and life, to bear the scrutiny of daylight (Php. 1:10). A child of God is careful to be truthful both in lip and life. A Christian is one who is more concerned to be than to appear such.
(2) Truth and sincerity read in the countenance. The face the dial-plate of the soul. An upright heart makes an open countenance (Job. 6:29). Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity (or, let there no injusticeno unjust or partial judgment); yea, return again, my righteousness is in it (margin, in this matterI shall be found innocent in the trial). Truth and innocence court investigation. The consciously upright desire only impartial and unprejudiced trial. The language of Jesus, and of those wrapped in His righteousnessWho is he that condemneth (Isa. 1:9; Rom. 8:32-34). The believer a paradoxBlack but comelyblack in himself, comely in Christ; guilty and yet righteousguilty in his own person, righteous in his righteous Head (2Co. 5:21). Renounces all righteousness but Christs in the sight of God, yet careful to maintain a spotless character in the sight of men.
2. The ground of Jobs appealhis ability to distinguish and judge of moral conduct (Job. 6:30). Is there iniquity (literally, or, a depraved taste) in my tongue? Cannot my taste (margin, palate) discern perverse things? (am I not able to distinguish between right and wrong?) No small excellence to possess a correct moral judgment. Moral sense obscured and weakened by the fall and by a course of sin. The moral judgment becomes depraved by sin as the taste by disease. The character of the ungodly to call evil good, and good evil. The mature Christian, one who has his senses exercised to discern both good and evil (Heb. 5:14). A fruit of renewing grace to know and approve the good, the perfect, and the acceptable (Rom. 12:2). Judgment to approve things that are excellent, or to distinguish between things that differ, a gift of grace (Php. 1:9-10). A part of spiritual wisdom to understand what the will of the Lord is, and the opposite (Eph. 5:17). Grace indicated not only by a tender, but an enlightened conscience. The ungodly know not what at they stumble. They know not what they do. In murdering Christs followers, men were to think they were doing God service (Joh. 16:2). Pauls former case (Act. 26:9-11). Important prayerCause me to know the way wherein I should walk (Psa. 143:8).
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
C.
SEARCH FOR COMFORT AND JOBS CONFRONTATION WITH GOD (Job. 6:1Job. 7:21)
1. There is adequate reason for his complaint. (Job. 6:1-7)
TEXT 6:17
6 Then Job answered and said,
2 Oh that my vexation were but weighed,
And all my calamity laid in the balances!
3 For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas:
Therefore have my words been rash.
4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,
The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up:
The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.
5 Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
Or loweth the ox over his fodder?
6 Can that which hath no savor be eaten without salt?
Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
7 My soul refuseth to touch them;
They are as loathsome food to me.
COMMENT 6:17
Dachau: Eine Welt-Ohne Gnade
(Dachaua world without grace)
Job. 6:1Job now replies to Eliphazs first speech. Job is responding to the three friends (Job. 6:2-30; plurals in Job. 6:24-29) rather than Eliphaz alone. First Job defends his first soliloquy (chp. 3), for which Eliphaz had rebuked him. Because of his suffering (Job. 6:2-7) he desires to die (Job. 6:8-10). Being without hope and sympathy from his friends, Job seeks the friendship of death. Why is life so difficult (Job. 7:1 ff), especially since he is innocent? Receiving no comfort from the three wise men, Job turns to God (probably from Job. 7:1, certainly from Job. 7:7as remember is second singular). After an appeal to Gods compassion (Job. 6:7-10), without restraint (Job. 6:11) he asks why He plagues Job with impossible suffering (Job. 6:12-21).[81] Jobs three friends are bound to him by a covenant of friendship (hesed).[82] Thus, they should not assume that Job is guilty of sin because of his suffering. Since they fail to express covenant concern and sympathy, Job turns to God. The speech falls into three parts: (1) Affirmation of his bitterness, (2) Disappointment in his friends (Job. 6:14-30); and (3) Intensification of his complaint at his lot, and more open appeal against Gods treatment of him (Job. 7:1-21).
[81] See the excellent exposition of three kinds of suffering which the scriptures carefully distinguish in Delitzsch, Job, Vol. I, 105ff. (1) Suffering of the godless; (2) Suffering of the righteous to intensify trust as fidelity; and (3) Suffering for witness. Compare this with the experience of a recent Job, C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (Seabury, 1963).
[82] See Nelson Gluecks exhaustive study, The Word hesed in Old Testament Usage, 1927, reprinted.
Job. 6:2Jobs anguish (ha-asA. V. as vexationtranslated as impatience in Job. 5:2 and displeasure in Job. 10:17. The basic sense of the root is happen, hence accident, misfortune) is heavier than the sands of the seas. Jobs theme is not Gods indignation but his own undeserved suffering.
Job. 6:3Jobs anguish and calamity correspond in parallelism; either of them would outweigh the sand. Job admits (therefore) that his words have been wild but not unjustified. His speech has been rash.[83]
[83] E. F. Sutcliffe, Biblica, XXI, 1950, 367ff, renders the Hebrew charged with grief.
Job. 6:4Job now names God (Shaddaithe Almighty, used by Eliphaz Job. 5:17) as the author of his misery. Job, no less than Eliphaz, believes the suffering comes from God; but rejects Eliphazs claim that Job is unrighteous, thus deserving of his plight. Why is the pain harder to bear merely because he believes in God? The imagery of God as an archer appears frequently in the Old TestamentDeu. 32:23; Eze. 5:16; Psa. 7:13; Psa. 38:2; Psa. 64:7. The poisoned arrows mentioned here are not referred to elsewhere in the Old Testament. The word translated poisonvenomis the same word as that used of the deaf adder in Psa. 58:4. Oil-soaked materials covering arrowheads were used in war. The terrors of God assault Jobs very existence; they wear me down (A. V. array against me),[84] he boldly asserts. Paul uses the imagery of the flaming darts of Satan in Eph. 6:16.
[84] G. R. Driver, Vetus Testamentum Supplement III, 1955, 73; also Saydon, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, XXIII, 1961, 252.
Job. 6:5Using powerful distress imagery (wild ass in distress for a lack of foodJer. 14:6). Job suggests that it would be better to identify the cause of his suffering rather than explain it. The wild ass brays is used only here and Job. 30:7, where it describes the agonizing cries of social outcasts. The second descriptive word is the verb translated loweth in A. V. It is used only here and in 1Sa. 6:12, where it is used of cows deprived of their calves. Even the animals understand what Eliphaz fails to comprehend.
Job. 6:6-7Though the text is difficult in these uncertain verses, something nauseating is implied. Eliphazs counsel is tasteless; it lacks the salt of sympathy. The A. V.s phrase the white of an egg might better be understood as the slime of purslane (so R. S. V., Rowley, Driver and Gray). The purslane is a leguminous plant which secretes mucilaginous jelly. Job rejects Eliphazs explanation as he (nepheshsoul) would reject tasteless food. In Hebrew psychology, nephesh (soul) is the seat of desireDeu. 24:15; Hos. 4:8; and, in particularof appetiteDeu. 14:26; Deu. 23:25; Isa. 29:8; Mic. 7:1; and Pro. 23:2. The condition of Jobs flesh[85] (lehem literally bread but here is flesh or meat), like Eliphazs comfort, is sickeningJob. 7:5; Job. 18:13; Job. 30:30.
[85] There is no need to emend the text as does Kissane et al. The they refers to Eliphazs arguments. Words and lehem in its present parallel structure means Jobs flesh or body.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
VI.
(1) But Job answered and said.Job replies to Eliphaz with the despair of a man who has been baulked of sympathy when he hoped to find it. We cannot trace, nor must we expect to find, the formal reply of a logical argument, fliphaz, he feels, has so misjudged his case that he is neither worthy of a direct reply nor susceptible of one. It is enough for him to reiterate his complaint, and long for one who can enter into it.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Job 6:2-3 Comments – Job 6:2-3 serves as an illustration of the heaviness of grief.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Job’s Dialogue with Three Friends – Job 3:1 to Job 31:40, which makes up the major portion of this book, consists of a dialogue between Job and his three friends. In this dialogue, Job’s friends engage in three rounds of accusations against Job, with him offering three defenses of his righteousness. Thus, Job and his friends are able to confirm each of their views with three speeches, since the Scriptures tell us that a matter is confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses (2Co 13:1). The underlying theme of this lengthy dialogue is man’s attempt to explain how a person is justified before God. Job will express his intense grief (Job 3:1-26), in which his three friends will answer by finding fault with Job. He will eventually respond to this condemnation in a declaration of faith that God Himself will provide a redeemer, who shall stand on earth in the latter days (Job 19:25-27). This is generally understood as a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ to redeem mankind from their sins.
Job’s declaration of his redeemer in Job 19:23-29, which would be recorded for ever, certainly moved the heart of God. This is perhaps the most popular passage in the book of Job, and reflects the depth of Job’s suffering and plea to God for redemption. God certainly answered his prayer by recording Job’s story in the eternal Word of God and by allowing Job to meet His Redeemer in Heaven. I can imagine God being moved by this prayer of Job and moving upon earth to provide someone to record Job’s testimony, and moving in the life of a man, such as Abraham, to prepare for the Coming of Christ. Perhaps it is this prayer that moved God to call Abraham out of the East and into the Promised Land.
The order in which these three friends deliver their speeches probably reflects their age of seniority, or their position in society.
Scene 1 First Round of Speeches Job 3:1 to Job 14:22
Scene 2 Second Round of Speeches Job 15:1 to Job 21:34
Scene 3 Third Round of Speeches Job 22:1 to Job 31:40
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Job Defends his Desire for Death
v. 1. But Job answered and said, v. 2. Oh, that my grief were throughly weighed, v. 3. For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea, v. 4. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, v. 5. Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass, v. 6. Can that which is unsavory, v. 7. The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat, v. 8. Oh, that I might have my request, v. 9. Even that it would please God to destroy me, v. 10. Then should I yet have comfort, v. 11. What is my strength that I should hope, v. 12. Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of brass? v. 13. Is not my help in me,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Job 6:1-30. and 7. contain Job’s reply to Eliphaz. In Job 6:1-30. he confines himself to three points:
(1) a justification of his “grief”i.e. of his vexation and impatience (Job 6:1-7);
(2) a declaration that the destruction with which he has been threatened (Job 4:9-11, Job 4:21; Job 5:2), is exactly the thing which he most longs for (Job 6:8-13); and
(3) a retort upon his friends, whom he regards as having all spoken by the mouth of Eliphaz, and whom he reproaches with their want of sympathy (Job 6:14-23), and with the weakness of their arguments (Job 6:24-30).
Job 6:1, Job 6:2
But Job answered and said, Oh that my grief were throughly weighed! rather, my anger, or my vexationthe same word as that used by Eliphaz when reproaching Job, in Job 5:2. Job wishes that, before men blame him, they would calmly weigh the force of his feelings and expressions against the weight of the calamity which oppresses him. His words may seem too strong and too violent; but are they more than a just counterpoise to the extreme character of his afflictions? The weighing of words and thoughts was an essential element in the Egyptian conception of the judgment, where Thoth held the balance, and in the one scale were placed the merits of the deceased, in the other the image of Ma, or Truth, and his fate was determined by the side to which the balance inclined. And my calamity laid in the balances together. My calamity placed in one scale, and my vexation in the other, and so weighed, each against each.
Job 6:3
For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea (comp. Pro 27:3, “A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both;” see also Ecclesiasticus 22:15). Therefore my words are swallowed up; rather, as in the Revised Version, therefore have my words been rash. Job here excuses without justifying himself. The excessive character of his sufferings has, he declares, forced him to utter rash and violent words, as these wherein he cursed his day and wished that he had never been born (Job 3:1, Job 3:3-11). Some allowance ought to be made for rash speech uttered under such circumstances.
Job 6:4
For the arrows of the Almighty are wlthin me (comp. Psa 38:2, “For thine arrows stick fast in me”). So Shakespeare speaks of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” for calamities generally. The metaphor is a very common one (see Deu 32:23, Deu 32:42; Psa 7:13; Psa 21:12; Psa 45:5; Lam 3:13, Lam 3:14). The poison whereof. Poisoned arrows, such as are now employed by the savage tribes of Central Africa, were common in antiquity, though seldom used by civilized nations. Ovid declares that the Scythians of his time made use of them (‘Tristia,’ 1, 2). Drinketh up my spirit; rather, my spirit drinketh up. Job’s spirit absorbs the poison that festers in his wounds, and therefore loses control over itself. This is his apology for his vehemence; he is well-nigh distraught. He adds, The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. Besides actual pains and sufferings, he is assailed by fears. God’s terrors, i.e. all the other evils that he has at his disposal, are drawn up against him, as it were, in battle array, and still further agitate and distract his soul. What further troubles may not God bring upon him?
Job 6:5
Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? literally, over grass; i.e. when he has grass under his feet, and has consequently no cause of complaint. Job means to say that his own complainings are as natural and instinctive as these of animals (On the species of wild asses known to Job, see the comment on Job 39:5.) Or loweth the ox over his fodder? The lowing of the ox, like the braying of the wild ass, is a complainta sign of distress and discomfort.
Job 6:6
Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or, that which is insipid. Many critics suppose that in this and the following verse Job reproaches Eliphaz with the insipidity of his remarks, and declares that his soul refuses to touch such loathsome food. Others regard him as still speaking in his own defence, and justifying his expressions of disgust by the nauseous character of the food which had been put before him; i.e. of the treatment which he has received. Either explanation produces good sense; but perhaps the former is the more natural. Or is there any taste in the white of an egg? So our Revisers; and so Dillmann and Canon Cook. Professor Lee suggests “the whey of cheese” for “the white of an egg;” others, “the juice of purslaine.” We have certainly no other evidence that eggs were eaten in primitive times.
Job 6:7
The things that my soul refuse to touch are as my sorrowful meat; rather, as in the Revised Version, my soul refuseth to touch them; they are as loathsome meat to me. The doubt remains whether Job is speaking of the arguments of Eliphaz, or of the series of afflictions which have befallen him. Either explanation is possible.
Job 6:8
Oh that I might have my request! Here the second point is taken up. Eliphaz has threatened Job with death, representing it as the last and most terrible of punishments (Job 4:9, Job 4:20, Job 4:21; Job 5:2). Job’s reply is that there is nothing he desires so much as death. His primary wish would have been never to have been born (Job 3:3-10); next to that, he would have desired an early deaththe earlier the more acceptable (Job 3:11-19). As both these have been denied him, what he now desires, and earnestly asks for, is a speedy demise. It is not as yet clear what he thinks death to be, or whether he has any hope beyond the grave. Putting aside all such considerations, he here simply balances death against such a life as he now leads, and must expect to lead, since his disease is incurable, and decides in favour of death. It is not only his desire, but his “request” to God, that death may come to him quickly. And that God would grant me the thing that I long for; literally, my expectation‘ or wish. The idea of taking his own life does not seem to have occurred to Job, as it would to a Greek (Plato, ‘Phaedo,’ 16) or a Roman (Pithy, ‘Epist.,’ 1.12). He is too genuine a child of nature, too simple and unsophisticated, for such a thought to occur, and, if it occurred, would be too religious to entertain it for a moment. Like Aristotle, he would feel the act to be cowardly (Aristotle, ‘Eth. Nic.,’ 5; sub fin.); and, like Plato (l.s.c.), he would view it as rebellion against the will of God.
Job 6:9
Even that it would please God to destroy me; or, to crush me (Revised Version)”to break me in pieces” (Lee). That he would let loose his hand; or, put forth his handstretch it out against me threateningly.” And cut me off. “Cut me off bit by bit” (Lee); comp. Isa 38:12, where the same word is used of a weaver, who cuts the threads of his loom one by one, until the whole is liberated and comes away.
Job 6:10
Then should I yet have comfort. First, the comfort that the end was come, and that he would be spared further sufferings; and further, the still greater comfort that he had endured to the end, and not. denied nor renounced his trust in religion and in all the “words of the Holy One.” Professor Lee sees here “the recognition of a future life, expressed in words as plain and obvious as possible”. But to us it seems that, if the idea is present at all, it is covered up, latent; only so far implied as it may be said to be implied in all willingness to die, since it may be argued that even the most wretched life possible would be preferred by any man to no life at all, and so that when men are content to die they must be expecting, whether consciously or not, a life beyond the grave, and be sustained by that expectation. Yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; rather, yea, I would exult in anguish that did not spare. However great the pain that accompanied his death, Job would rejoice and exult in it, since by it his death was to be accomplished. For I have not concealed the words of the Holy One; rather, for I have not denied‘ or renounced. It would be a part of Job’s satisfaction in dying that he had not let go his integrity. Rather he had held it fast, and not renounced or abandoned his trust in God and in religion. “The words of the Holy One are the commands of God, however made known to man” (Canon Cook).
Job 6:11
What is my strength, that I should hope? Eliphaz had suggested that Job might recover and be restored to his former prosperity (Job 5:18-26). Job rejects this suggestion. His strength is brought too low; it is not conceivable that he should be restored, he cannot entertain any such hope. And what is mine end, that I should prolong my life? rather, that I should stretch out my spirit. Job cannot look forward to such an “end” as Eliphaz prophesies for him; therefore he cannot bring himself to wait on with patience.
Job 6:12
Is my strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brass? It would require a man to have a body of brass, and strength like that of rocks, for him to be able to endure the ravages of such a disease, and yet to recover from it. Job cannot pretend to either.
Job 6:13
Is not my help in me? rather, Is it not that I have no help in me? (Revised Version). Job feels that, instead of having exceptional strength of constitution to enable him to bear up against his exhausting malady, he is absolutely without strength. All his vital power is used up. There is no help in him. And is wisdom driven quite from me? rather, Is not soundness driven quite from me? Tushiyah seems to mean here “strength of constitution”that internal soundness which resists the inroads of disease, and sometimes triumphs over the most serious maladies. Whatever reserve of this kind he may have possessed by nature, it is now, Job feels, altogether lost and gone from him.
Job 6:14
To him that is afflicted pity should be showed from his friend. Job begins here the third head of his reply to Eliphaz, in which he attacks him and his companions. The first duty of a comforter is to compassionate his afflicted friend, to condole with him, and show his sympathy with his sufferings. This is what every one looks for and expects as a matter of course. But Job has looked in vain. He has received no pity, no sympathy. Nothing has been offered him but arguments. And what arguments! How do they touch the point? How are they anything more than a venting of the speaker’s own self-righteousness? Let them fairly consider his case, and point out to him where he has been blamable. But he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty; rather, even though he forsake the fear of the Almighty, or else might he forsake the fear of the Almighty. Job certainly does not mean to admit that he has renounced the fear of God, and become an apostate from religion; but only to assert, either, that, even had he done so, his friends ought still to have shown him kindness, or else that their not showing him kindness is the very way to drive him to apostasy.
Job 6:15
My brethren; i.e. “my three friends,” Eliphaz, who has spoken; Bildad and Zophar, who by their silence have shown their agreement with him. Have dealt deceitfully as a brook; i.e. “a winter torrent”a “wady,” to use the modern Arab expression. These watercourses are characteristic of Palestine and the adjacent regions. “During the winter months,” says Dr. Cunningham Geikie, “they are often foaming rivers; but in the hot summer, when they would be of priceless value, their dry bed is generally the road from one point to another. The water rushes over the sheets of rock as it would from the roof of a house, and converging, as it descends, into minor streams in the higher wadies, these sweep on to a common channel in some central valley, and, thus united, swell in an incredibly short time into a deep, troubled, roaring flood, which fills the whole bottom of the wady with an irresistible torrent The streams from Lebanon, and also from the high mountains of the Hauran. send down great floods of dark and troubled waters in spring, when the ice and snow of their summits are melted; but they dry up under the heat of summer, and the track of the torrent, with its chaos of boulders, stones, and gravel, seems as if it had not known a stream for ages. So Job’s friends had in former times seemed as if they would be true to him for ever; but their friendship had vanished, like the rush of the torrent that had passed away”. And as the stream of brooks they pass away; or, the channel; i.e. the wady itself. Canon Cook well says on this, “The simile is remarkably complete. When little needed, the torrent overflows; when needed, it disappears. In winter it does not fertilize; in summer it is dried up. Nor is it merely useless; it deceives, alluring the traveller by the appearance of verdure, promising refreshment, and giving none.”
Job 6:16
Which are blackish by reason of the ice. Job seems to have seen wadys where, in the winter-time, the water was actually frozen into hard black ice. This scarcely occurs now in the countries bordering on Palestine; but may have occurred in the region where Job dwelt, formerly. “Dark, turbid water” can scarcely be intended. And wherein the snow is hid. Some suppose melted snow to be meant; but the deep wadies in the Hauran and elsewhere would easily conceal snowdrifts.
Job 6:17
What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place (see the passage quoted from Dr. Geikie in the comment on Job 6:15).
Job 6:18
The paths of their way are turned aside; rather, as in the Revised Version, the caravans that travel by the way of them turn aside. It seems impossible that the streams can be intended, since their paths are never “turned aside”they simply shrink, fail, and dry up. But nothing is commoner than for caravans short of water to go out of their way in order to reach a wady, where they expect to be able to replenish their water-skins. If they are disappointed, if the wady is dry, they may be brought into great straits, and may even possibly perish. (For a probable instance, where dependence on a wady would, but for a miracle, have led to a great disaster, see 2Ki 3:9-20.) They go to nothing, and perish; rather, they go up into the waste, and perish. Having vainly sought water in the dry wady, they ascend out of it, and enter the broad waste of the desert, where they too often miserably perish.
Job 6:19
The troops of Tema looked. The Tema were an Arab tribe descended from Ishmael (Gen 25:15). They are generally conjoined with Dedan (Isa 21:13,Isa 21:14; Jer 25:23), another Arab tribe, noted for carry-lug on a caravan trade. Both tribes probably wandered, and occupied at different periods different portions of the desert. The name, Tema, may linger in the modern city and district of Tayma on the confines of Syria, and upon the pilgrim-route between Damascus and Mecca. The “troops of Tema” probably looked for the “caravans” of Job 6:18 to arrive in their country; but they looked in vain. The desert had swallowed them up. The companies of Sheba waited for them. (On “Sheba,” see the comment upon Job 1:15.)
Job 6:20
They were confounded because they had hoped. Shame and confusion of face came upon them in consequence of their vain hope. In the same way, Job implies, he is ashamed of having looked for compassion and kindness from his friends. He should have been wiser and have known better. They came thither, and were ashamed. They not only hoped, but acted on their hope-let it turn them aside from their way (verse 18) and bring them to ruin.
Job 6:21
For now ye are nothing. Like the dried-up torrents, the comforters had come to nought; were wholly useless and unprofitable. Another reading gives the sense, “Ye are like to them””ye comforters,” i.e; “are like the winter torrents, and have misled me, as they misled the caravans.” Ye see my casting down, and are afraid. Here Job penetrates to the motive which had produced the conduct of his friends. They had come with good intentions, meaning to comfort and console him; but when they came, and saw what a wreck he was, how utterly “broken up” and ruined, they began to be afraid of showing too much friendliness. They thought him an object of the Divine vengeance, and feared lest, if they showed him sympathy, they might involve themselves in his punishment.
Job 6:22
Did I say, Bring unto me? The meaning is probablyIf this be the ease, if ye are afraid of helping me, why have ye come? Did I ask for your aid? No. I neither requested you to bring me anything for myself, nor to make a present to any one on my behalf; much less did I call upon you to deliver me out of the hand of my enemies, to chastize the Chaldeans and the men of Sheba (Job 1:15, Job 1:17), and recoverse from them my property. No; I asked nothing at all of you; but when you came voluntarily, I did expect your pity (Job 6:14). Or, Give a reward for me of your substance? i.e. give a present on my behalf to some influential person, who might thereupon take up my cause and befriend me. There is no need of supposing a “bribe” to be meant.
Job 6:23
Or, Deliver me from the enemy’s hand? rather, from the hand of the violent man. Or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty? literally, of the oppressor (see the Revised Version). Job had not called on his friends to do any of these things. He had not worn out their patience by asking now for this, and now for that. But he had expected their compassion, and this was denied him.
Job 6:24
Teach me, and I will hold my tongue. Job is willing to be taught, if his friends have any instruction to give. He is willing to be reproved. But not in such sort as he has been reproved by Eliphas. His words were not “words of uprightness.” Cause me to understand wherein I have erred. Point out, that is, in what my assumed guilt consists. You maintain that my afflictions are deserved. Point out what in my conduct has deserved them. I am quite ready to be convinced.
Job 6:25
How forcible are right words! literally, words of uprightness. Such words have a force that none can resist. If the charges made by Eliphaz had been right and true, and his arguments sound and just, then Job must have yielded to them, have confessed himself guilty, and bowed down with shame before his judges. But they had had no such constraining power. Therefore they were not “words of uprightness.” But what doth your arguing reprove? literally, What doth your reproving reprove? That isWhat exactly is it that ye think to be wrong in me? At what is your invective aimed?
Job 6:26
Do ye imagine to reprove words? or, Do ye propose? “Is it your intention?” Am I to understand that you blame nothing in my conduct, but only the words that I have spoken? i.e. the words recorded in Job 3:1-26. And the speeshes of one that is desperate, which are as wind; or, whereas the speehes of one that is desperate are but as wind; literally, for the windspoken to the wind, for the wind to take hold of them and bear them away. Therefore not worth a reproof.
Job 6:27
Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless; rather, on the fatherless would ye east lots (comp. Joe 3:3; Oba 1:11; Nah 3:10). Job means to say they are so pitiless that they would cast lots for the children of an insolvent debtor condemned to become slaves at his death (see 2Ki 4:1; Neh 5:5). And ye dig a pit for your friend; or, ye would make merchandise of your friend‘ as in the Revised Version. Job does not speak of what his friends had done, but of what he deems them capable of doing.
Job 6:28
Now therefore be content, look upon me; rather, be pleased to look upon me. Professor Lee translates, “Look favorably upon me.” But this addition is unnecessary. What Job desires is that his friends would look him straight in the face. Then they would not be able to doubt him. They would see that he was telling the truth. For it is evident unto you if I lie; rather, it will be evident unto you, etc. Others render the passage, “For surely I shall not lie to your face” (Schultens, Canon Cook, Revised Version).
Job 6:29
Return, I pray you; i.e. “go back upon my case: reconsider it.” And then, Let it not be iniquity; or, let there be no iniquity; i.e. let no injustice be done me. Yea, return again, my righteousness is in it If my cause be well considered, it will be seen that I am in no way blameworthy.
Job 6:30
Is there iniquity in my tongue? (see Job 6:26). Job now justifies his words, which previously he had admitted to have been “rash” (verse 3). Perhaps he intends to distinguish between rashness and actual wickedness. Cannot my taste discern perverse things? i.e. I see no perversity or wickedness in what I have said. If there were any, I think I should discern it The reasoning is somewhat dangerous, since men are not infallible judges, not being unprejudiced judges, in their own case. Job’s ultimate verdict on himself is that he has “uttered that which he understood not” (Job 42:3)wherefore he “abhors himself, and repents in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).
HOMILETICS
Job 6:1-13
Job to Eliphaz: 1. Apologies and prayers.
I. A DESPERATE MAN‘S DEFENCE.
1. Job‘s calamities surveyed.
(1) Their weight. Heavier than the sand of the seas. Employed elsewhere to depict what is innumerable (Gen 22:17; Psa 78:27) and immeasurable (1Ki 4:29; Jer 33:22), the sand upon the seashore is here selected to set forth the notion of incomparable weight (Pro 27:3). Like the ocean beach stretching away measureless and oppressive, the sorrow of the patriarch was intolerably burdensome. Scripture designates as burdens afflictions and temporal calamities of all sorts, whether of individuals (Psa 55:22; 2Ki 9:25) or of nations (Isa 15:1; Isa 17:1; Isa 19:1). Yet more crushing and intolerable even than these is the burden laid by sin upon awakened and sensitive souls (Psa 38:4).
(2) Their intensity. Likened to the wounds of poisoned arrows, with a multitude of which Job describes himself as transfixed, not in body only, but in spirit too. Arrows are put in Scripture for afflictions, calamities, judgments, which, like them, are often swift (Zec 9:14), unexpected (Psa 91:5), sharp (Psa 45:5), difficult to be removed (Psa 38:1, Psa 38:2), and deadly, especially when sent in wrath (Deu 32:42).
(3) Their effect. Exhausting; the venom shot into Job’s veins setting them on fire, corrupting his blood, inflaming his flesh, enfeebling his spirit, and generally producing a sensation of constantly increasing weakness; terrifying, inspiring his trembling heart with ghostly alarms and paralyzing fears, which seemed to gather round him like a troop of pale spectres from the outlying posts of God’s dominions, and to marshal themselves like a sable host against him; nauseating, causing his soul to revolt against them as the stomach turns sickly at the sight of loathsome food.
(4) Their origin. From God. This was the principal aggravation of the patriarch’s misery. So long as a sufferer can see God’s face, the heaviest load of calamity will not crush him; but when God’s favour appears to be withdrawn, the spirit sinks like lead in the mighty waters (Job 9:13).
2. Job‘s grief justified.
(1) Compared with his calamities, it was not extravagant. His heated words (verse 3) had not been disproportioned to the misery which had given them expression. Not balancing the two things his friend had unjustly accused him ofimpatience and rage. Weighed together, the overwhelming character of his sorrow would “swallow up” his words as a wholly inadequate utterance of his grief. That Eliphaz failed to estimate accurately the intensity of Job’s sufferings was natural, since no man can put himself exactly in another’s place, and only the heart that suffers can know its own bitterness (Pro 14:10). Yet charity should have moved him to judge with leniency, and speak with tenderness of, a grief whose cause he did not comprehend. At the same time, it is hardly doubtful that Job’s misery did not warrant the appalling outburst of Job 3:1-26.; but men at all times (and especially in affliction) are readier to excuse themselves than others.
(2) Considered in itself, it was not unnatural. It was not without cause. Even the senseless ass and the stupid ox were wise enough to hold their tongues when placed in circumstances of asinine and bovine felicity; i.e. when they had plenty of food; and surely he had as much discernment as these irrational creatures, and could distinguish whether he was miserable or happy, and cry out or be silent accordingly. Then having a cause, it was likewise irrepressible, it being as impossible for him not to complain as it was for a person to eat what was unsavoury or tasteless without making wry faces and giving vent to his displeasure.
II. A MISERABLE MAN‘S PRAYER.
1. Job‘s urgent request. “Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for!” (verse 8)that thing being death (cf. Job 3:21). Job longed for death as a release from his sufferings (Job 3:13); Elijah, under a sense of weariness and disappointment (1Ki 19:4); Jonah, in a fit of rage and self-conceit (Jon 4:8); St. Paul, through ardent longing for heaven (Php 1:23); Christ, through vehement desire after man’s salvation (Luk 12:50).
2. Job‘s pitiful entreaty. “Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off” (verse 9). That Job does not think of taking his own life, although often strongly tempted to do so by his peculiar malady (Job 7:15, Job 7:16), although death was the paramount desire of his heart, and although he professed himself free from anxiety about the future, was a proof, not only of Job’s regard for the sanctity of life, and of his clear recognition of God’s proprietorship in that life, but also of his own moral integrity, and of the intensity with which he still shrank from the perpetration of known sin.
3. Job‘s melancholy plea. “Then should I yet have comfort” (verse 10). The mere anticipation of a speedy dissolution would not only cause him to forget his misery, it would thrill him with extreme delight; yea, if God would but assure him that every stroke was hastening his end, he would bear without a murmur the most unsparing affliction that might be laid upon him.
4. Job‘s twofold motive.
(1) No fear of death. “For I have not concealed the words of the Holy One” (verse 10). Had Job been apprehensive of meeting God, he would not so earnestly have longed, or so vehemently entreated, to be removed. The only thing that could have damped his exultation in the prospect of death would have been uncertainty about his future. But of this he was devoid, since he had not concealed, i.e. had not denied or neglected, but openly has practised, the words of the Holy One.
(2) No hope of life. “What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?” (verse 11). It was impossible that his strength, which was not that of stones or of brass (verse 12) could hold out much longer, and therefore idle in Eliphaz to speak, or him to think, of restoration. Nay, supposing he should recover, it could only be for so short a period that it was not worth while fostering expectation of it. But in point of fact, all natural power of rallying had departed from him, and nought remained that could be matured into health again (verse 13). Job clearly judged in this matter on the principles of sense and reason, forgetting that all things were possible with God, that God can raise a feeble man up from the very brink of the grave (Isa 38:10-20), ay, even from the dead (contrast the faith of Abraham, Rom 4:19; Heb 11:19), and that God delights to perfect his strength in human weakness (2Co 12:9).
Learn:
1. Though religion requires sufferers to submit to God’s chastisements, it does not oblige them to yield to man’s unjust accusations. Job sinned not in replying to Eliphaz.
2. It is extremely hard to hold the balance evenly between the soul’s calamities and the heart’s griefs, whether in ourselves or others. Job blamed Eliphaz for not justly weighing his sufferings and his sorrow, while practically Eliphaz censured Job for a like offence.
3. Though it is a sore trial to a good man in affliction to miss the sympathy of friends, it is incomparably more painful and distressing to lone the sense of God’s favour, not to speak of experiencing the frowns of God’s anger. Shaddai’s arrows and Eloah’s terrors were infinitely harder for Job to bear than Eliphaz’s insinuations.
4. The best of men are “poore sillie creatures’ when God presseth them with judgments, quite incompetent to bear the shock of outward calamity unless God shall hold them up. Job’s standing upright in the midst of such a tempest of tribulation as swept around him was a proof, not of man’s strength, but of God’s grace.
5. It is no sin to long for death, provided we wait God’s time for its coming. Job, though urgent for release from his sufferings, would not be released by any hand but God’s.
6. The best way to overcome the fear of death is to have a comfortable outlook into the future. Job was not afraid of dying, because not afraid of meeting God.
7. The best preparation for both death and eternity is not to conceal from our vision, but to hide within our hearts, the words of the Holy One.
Job 6:14-30
Job to Eliphaz: 2. Reproofs and retorts.
I. UNKINDNESS REPROVED. The behaviour of Eliphaz (and his friends) was:
1. Unnatural. Compassion for a suffering fellow-creature, much more for a friend, was a dictate of humanity (verse 14). The condition of Job pre-eminently claimed pitiful consideration. He was not only melting away, bodily and mentally, but spiritually he was in danger of “forsaking the fear of the Almighty,” i.e. losing his hold on God, on God’s love and favour towards himself, and, as a consequence, on his integrity before and confidence in God (of. Psa 38:6; Psa 69:2). The withholding of sympathy from one in his condition was a deplorable dereliction of duty and a manifest token of unfeeling barbarity.
2. Inconsistent. Besides being a dictate of nature, the law of kindness is one of the plainest precepts of religion (Le Job 19:18; Zec 7:9; Luk 10:37; Rom 12:10-15; Jas 1:27), and its fulfilment one of the surest marks of moral and spiritual perfection (Psa 112:4; Pro 31:26; Rom 13:8; Col 3:14; 1Pe 1:22; 1Jn 4:12). The absence, therefore, of pity on the part of Eliphaz and his friends argued them destitute of genuine religion, or, according to another reading of the clause, showed them to be “forsaking the fear of Shaddai.”
3. Injurious. A third interpretation understands Job to say that Eliphaz’s lack of sympathy had rendered it more difficult for him, Job, to believe in the kindness of his heavenly Friendwas, in fact, enough to cause him to forsake the fear of the Almighty. Earthly relationships were undoubtedly designed to be helpful for the right understanding of God’s relationship towards men; a father’s love to be an emblem of that of the Divine Father (Deu 8:5; Psa 103:13; Mat 7:11); a friend’s pity to interpret that of the Elder Brother (Pro 18:24). Hence the responsibility of so fulfilling these relationships that men shall be assisted rather than hindered on their heavenward way.
4. Disappointing. Eliphaz and his friends had deceived Job like a brook (verse 15), like the dried-up water of a mountain wady. The image, applied by Job to his brethren (verse 21) consists of four parts.
(1) The winter torrent, noisy and full, turbid and swollen by thick blocks of floating ice and fast-falling flakes of snow, rushing down the precipitous ravine, and attracting by its loud roar and white foam the attention of desert travellers as they pass (verse 16),an emblem of the loud and profuse protestations of friendship which were made by Eliphaz and his companions at a time when Job did not require them, and which gave promise of long continuance, like the waters of the brook.
(2) The dry river-bed in summer-time, from which the streams have vanished, leaving only heaps of shingle or piles of boulders (verse 17),an emblem of the quickness and completeness with which the loud-mouthed protestations of Job’s friends had disappeared, having gone to nothing, like the winter torrent, the hot sun that had shrivelled them up being Job’s deplorable and ghastly condition (verse 21).
(3) The desert caravans turning aside in search of the water they had formerly observed, being still attracted by the unusual brightness and verdure of the wadys (verses 18, 19),an emblem of the eagerness and confidence with which Job had anticipated sympathy and succour from his friends.
(4) The consternation of the travellers, going up into the waste and perishing, being confounded at the miserable disappointment of their sanguine expectations, and ashamed that they had put their trust in what was so proverbially treacherous (verse 20),an emblem of the utter collapse of Job’s hope and expectation from the coming of his friends.
5. Unreasonable. Job had not asked them for any great evidence of friendship, neither to relieve his sufferings by charitable gifts, nor to repair his losses by munificent contributions from their personal property, nor to restore his ruined fortunes by recovering them from the Chaldeans and Sabeans, as Abram delivered Lot and his goods from the hands of Chedorlaomer (Gen 14:14). Simply he had craved their sympathya small enough boon, which would not have much impoverished them; and yet even that they had withheld. Jonathan dealt otherwise with David (1Sa 23:16).
II. INSINUATION REPELLED. The imputation which underlay the whole harangue of Eliphaz, Job resented as:
1. Unproved. “Teach me, and I will hold my tongue: and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.” A perfectly reasonable demand, since conviction should always precede condemnation. So Christ challenged his countrymen first to convince him of sin (Joh 8:46). And it is manifestly absurd to expect that men will listen to admonitions who are unconscious of having committed faults. Even God does not exhort to repentance without having first demonstrated man’s guilt. The first function of the Holy Spirit is to convince the world of sin (Joh 16:8). Job’s language also indicative of an honest and ingenuous mind. Willingness to be taught is a sign of humility and a token of sincerity. “A man that is willing to be taught is in a better condition than many who are able to teach. It argues a holier temper of the heart to be willing to be taught than to be able to teach. And it is far worse to be unwilling to learn than not to be knowing” (Caryl).
2. Ungenerous. While words of uprightness, i.e. honest speech, plain dealing, even reproof when necessary, had a force which Job could not resist, a pertinency he could not challenge, and a pungency he could not fail to feel and acknowledge, their language had been wholly mean and contemptible, fastening as it did on the despairing utterances of a poor wretch half-crazed with grief, which common consent allows should be regarded as wind, or given to the wind, as idle, meaningless, shifting, and therefore not to be too closely criticized, far less made the basis of a charge of guilt. And Job’s contention was substantially correct. Words thrown off in a hasty moment, under the influence of strong passion, are not always a perfectly safe and reliable index to the character of the soul, at least when judged by man. God alone is competent to estimate man’s moral and spiritual condition by his words (Mat 12:37). All others should be guided by charity in interpreting the speech of agonized men (1Co 13:5).
3. Heartless. The men who could so make him an offender for a word were in Job’s estimation capable of any baseness, such pitiless and inhuman ruffians as would “enslave an orphan for his father’s debt, and then cast lots whose he should be” (Cox), or barter their dearest friend for pelf. Probably Job overstrained the case against Eliphaz and his companions; but men have perpetrated the villainies described, as e.g. the brethren of Joseph (Gen 37:28) and Judas (Mat 26:15).
4. Untrue. Job requests his friends to look into his face and say whether he did not carry the refutation of their slanders in his countenance (verse 28). The face is commonly a mirror to the soul. The glory of a pure soul shines through the face, illuminating, refining, etherealizing it; just as the moral gloom that enshrouds s wicked soul leaves its impress on the countenance, rendering its features coarse, brutal, sordid, revolting. There are faces that proclaim the depravity of the soul within as certainly as there are noble countenances that bear their own certificate of truth, sincerity, moral honesty, and spiritual refinement.
5. Unfair. The friends had started with a prejudice against Job, and, as a consequence, their decision had not been impartial. Accordingly, he invites them to renew their investigation, but on other principles and presuppositions: “Return, I pray you; let there be no unfairness, and my righteousness will be found to stand” (verse 29).
6. Insulting. Their insinuation practically charged Job with being a moral imbecile, who had no capacity to discriminate between right and wrongan assumption he resented with the utmost vigour (verse 30), maintaining that, as surely as his palate could distinguish meats, his moral sense could discern right and wrong in the matter of his sufferings, and generally in the providential government of the world of which he next proceeds to speak. The capacity to distinguish between right and wrong is the highest function of intelligence, and is as certainly capable of perversion and obscuration through wilful ignorance and sin as susceptible of education and refinement through Christian instruction and practical holiness.
Learn:
1. The duty of sympathizing with the suffering and sorrowful. Nature prompts to it; religion enjoins it; humanity claims it; the afflicted expect Job 2:2. The danger of putting stumbling-blocks in the way, to either keep men or withdraw men from the fear of God.
3. The folly of trusting in either princes or men’s sons, seeing that man’s goodness is commonly (except where grace intervenes)as transient as his greatness.
4. The painfulness of being deceived by any, but especially by those we trust.
5. The certain disappointment of those who lock to failing brooks for the water of eternal life.
6. The wickedness of censuring for sins that have been neither proved nor admitted.
7. The liability of man to error, and the only sure and certain pathway to truth, viz. a spirit of humble docility.
8. Truth is less dependent on argumentation than men are apt to suppose, being generally its own best witness.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Job 6:1-13
The sufferer’s self-justification.
(Job 6:1-30; Job 7:1-21.) We have seen that Eliphaz’s counsels, though well-meant, were ill-timed. They were right words‘ but not fitly spoken as to person, time, and place. They cause the poor sufferer to wince afresh instead of soothing his pain. The tumult of his spirit is now aggravated into a very tempest of woe. The human spirit is a thing of moods. We have watched the marvellous changes that pass over the surface of a lake beneath a tempestuous sky. And such are the rapid changes of pain that now pass over the mind of Job, relieved here and there by flashes of calmer reflection, of faith and hope. The picture is instructive, teaching us how feeble and unstable a thing is the human mind, and how deeply it needs to look out from itself for a sure support in the Eternal. Let us briefly take note of these moods. Not without profit shall we try to understand them if we thereby cultivate that deeper sympathy with our brethren in adversity which Job seemed to demand at the hand of his friends in vain.
I. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE IMMENSITY OF SUFFERING. (Verses 1-14.) There are times when every nerve of the sensitive organization seems to be turned into a channel of pain; when the creature, instead of basking in the brilliant ether of unbounded joy, is submerged in a boundless ocean of misery. “All thy waves and billows have gone over me.” It is with this feeling that Job exclaims, “Would that a term, a measure, a weight, might be applied to my sufferings!” A day, an hour, of such woe seems as an eternity!
II. THE FEAR OF SINNING WITH THE TONGUE. Verse 3, which appears to mean, “Therefore my words idly bubbled,” like the impatient cries and reproaches of little children against the parents whom they level But this is the only definite sin of which Job is conscious. And he prays that he may be delivered from it in this trying hour. So said the psalmist, “I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue.“ Let Christians imitate this example. Let them bridle their tongues with holy reverence, and cast upon them as a spell the prayer of Jesus in the garden.
“Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Forgive them when they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise!”
III. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HIS SUFFERINGS TRACED TO GOD. (Verse 4.) It is his arrows which have fastened themselves with poisonous inflammation in his breast; his host of terrors that have beleaguered his soul. Though in such extreme moments it is hard to reconcile our sufferings with the goodness of God, it is well to hold firmly to the clue of Divine causation. That which has not come causelessly will not causelessly remain. This is the one crevice through which light steals into the dungeon: “God is in all I suffer.”
IV. APOLOGY FOR HIS COMPLAINTS. (Verses 5-7.) They are true to nature. God has given to all animals their natural voice of pleasure and of pain. And these voices express natural tastes and repugnances. The ox and the ass are silent at the well-filled stall. It is only when unsavoury food is offered that we hear the cries of complaint. And what an unsavoury mess is this which his friends would place before him, in their rigid application to him of the doctrine that his suffering witnesses his guilt!
V. DEATH CRAVED AS A BOON. (Verses 8-13.) The very thought of it excites a frantic joy. Whereas Eliphaz had spoken of deliverance from death as one of the privileges of the blessed man, and of its lingering approach in a happy old age, Job would crave a speedy dismissal as the last boon which he feels entitled, in a clear conscience, to ask of God I “I have not denied the words of the Holy One; I shall not pass, an impenitent, rejected soul; grant me this last, this speedy favour, to die!” If such a state of mind excites our keenest pity, what shall we think of the condition of those Buddhists or pessimists among the heathen and ourselves, who have built a doctrine upon this horror-stricken mood, and teach that the highest good for man is absorption in some Nirvana of dreamless, unconscious nothingness? Truly, the gospel of Christ is the only remedy for these melancholy aberrations. M. Naville says that the impassioned earnestness of Lacroix, the great Indian missionary, which he had listened to in earlier years, was only fully understood by him when subsequent study had acquainted him with the gloomy beliefs of the Oriental world.
VI. CONFESSION OF UTTER WEAKNESS AND DESPONDENCY. (Verses 11-13.) He has neither strength nor patience to look forward to the end which is to reward endurance. Sooner or later death must be the end; and why not sooner rather than later? But weakness cannot wring from his tortured breast the confession of a guilt which conscience refuses to own. He has not denied the words of the Holy One. His heart has been true to God. This consciousness is still a kind of strength in weakness, and enables him to ask this last boon at God’s handsa speedy death.J.
Job 6:14-21
The illusions of friendship.
Oh, how sweet and blessed at this hour would the ministries of true friendship be! Job, in the shipwreck of fortune and of health, is like a poor swimmer clinging to a spar or fragment of rock with ebbing strength, looking vainly for the lifeboat, and the strong, rescuing arms of friends and saviours. Instead of this, his friends stand aloof, and lecture and lesson him on the supposed folly which has steered his bark upon the breakers. Here we see in one glance the greatest danger to which a human soul can be exposed, and the greatest service one human being can render another.
I. THE GREATEST HUMAN PERIL. What is it? The loss of life? Not in the common sense of those words. For the loss of life in this world is not necessarily the loss of the soul. The loss of worldly goods? Still less; for a man’s life consisteth not in these. The loss of family, of reputation, of health? All these may be repaired; but the loss of God is irreparable. The mangled tree may sprout again, and send forth vigorous suckers from its root; but how if that root itself be extirpated from its holding? It is the horror in the prospect of losing reverence, trustof losing Godthat now looms upon the patriarch’s soul. We need only refer to the twenty-second psalmto those words quoted by our Saviour in the agony on the crossto remind ourselves of the fearfulness of this last trial to every godly soul,
II. THE GREATEST HUMAN MINISTRY. It is to do something to save a sinking brother from such a fate. A cheerful faith is infectious. A noble courage will thrill in the vibrations of sympathy to another’s soul. And this is, then, the best office our friends can discharge for us in our greatest troubles. Let them remind us by their words, their prayers, their looks, their tones, of God. Let them not throw a new burden upon our drooping consciousness by reminding us of what we are or are not, but relieve us by telling us of what he is and ever will bethe Refuge and Strength of them that seek him. And this may be a fitting place to speak generally of
III. THE QUALITIES OF FRIENDSHIP. By a beautiful image Job describes the failure of friendship. An unfaithful or unintelligent friend is like a brook swollen with snow and rain in spring-time, but dried in its channel under the scorching heat of summer. The poet says of one who has been lost to his sorrowing companions by death
“He is gone from the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest!”
The pathos of those words is, alas I applicable to living but absent or unsympathetic friends. There is nothing more beautiful or more useful in all the world than true friendship. Perhaps as “all other things seem to be symbols of love, so love is the highest symbol of friendship.” But for the service of friendship there must be:
1. Constant affection. The equal flow of a deep river, not the intermittent gushings of a fickle fountain.
2. Habitual sympathy. We must feel with our friend so long as he is our friend. There are crimes which will break up this holy tie. Connivance at guilt can be no part of this sacred covenant. But so long as I can call my friend my friend, I must bear with his infirmities, “not make them greater than they are.” How unhappy the knack of seeing all that can be said against our friend, with blindness to all that can be urged in his favour! We dread the coming of these “candid friends,” so called. If there are unpleasant truths, let him hear them from another’s lips than ours. Let not the troubles of those we own by this sacred name be made occasions for airing the conceit of our superior wisdom, or indulging a vein of moralizing, but for unlocking all the treasures of our heart.
3. Lively imagination. Want of imagination, or, in other words, dulness and stupidity, is a great defect for general social intercourse. Men quarrel and fly asunder because they do not understand one another. They do not use the faculty of imagination to “put themselves in another’s place.” And what may hinder general intercourse may be a fatal bar to friendship. “I am not understood:” what commoner complaint? Yet what is this high faculty given us for, but that, under the guidance of Christian love, we may identity another heart with our own, appropriate all its sorrowful experiences, and think and speak and feel towards others, as well as do unto them, as we would they should do unto us? But these demands for an ideal friendship are not, after all, to be satisfied by frail human nature. Let us, then, think:
4. These qualities of friendship can be only fully found in God. The Divine Friend!he whose unfailing, self-replenished love alone is equal to supply the thirst of our hearts, whose sympathy is that of One who knows us better than we know ourselves; who numbers our hairs, and gathers our tears into his bottle; who needs to exercise no imagination in order to realize our condition, because he knows! O God! greater than our hearts, whose knowledge is the measure of thy sympathy, whose sympathy is fed from the eternal well-spring of thy love; God manifested in Jesus Christ; thou only art the Friend of our sorrow, the Sustainer of our help.
LESSONS. May we listen with humble obedience to the voice which says to us, “Henceforth I call you friends”! As life wears, and many shallow torrents of earthly kindness are dried, may we experience more profoundly thy never-wasting fulness!J.
Job 6:22-27
Friendship: its rights and its disclaimers.
In his agonized yearning for sympathy and tenderness, Job further appeals to the conscience and memory of his friends, seeking to put an end to this lacerating contention, and to be reconciled to them in peace.
I. DISCLAIMERS. True friendship disclaims the right to be exacting. We have no right to lay a tax on the property, or time, or energy of those whom we desire to grapple to us as with hooks of steel. All must be spontaneous, voluntary, free, in the mutual offices of friendship. There are a few noble hearts, indeed, with whom every benefit is a reason for another. Shakespeare has drawn the sublime picture of such a one in his ‘Merchant of Venice,’ who stops not short at the loan of goods, but pledges his very flesh for his friend. But the counterpart is not to be found in actual life. God is he who alone invites our largest asking, wearies not of our urgency, giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not. The life laid down for us is the pledge that we cannot claim too much from him. The gospel does not fail to point us to the frailty of human nature, even in its noblest moods, in order to set in contrast the illustrious sacrifices of Christ for us. Job had not asked for gifts of substance from his friends to redeem him from durance, or for any other purpose. He had been wiser than to kill the tender plant of mutual good will by unseasonable exactions. And let us read ourselves the lesson that nothing will more surely or speedily break our happiest ties than to allow the hand we offer in affection to be put forth to buy, to traffic, to exact.
II. CLAIMS. But we have great rights and privileges in friendship. These the patriarch insists upon now. He has a right to good words, which are worth much and cost little. He has a right, so long as he is regarded as a friend, to have the truth of his own statements accepted. He has a right to confidence. In distress he is entitled to tenderness, compassion, and efficient guidance by those whose minds are calm and unimpaired by woe. And above all, perhaps, just now, the right of self-defence is most precious, which these advisers seem obstinately to deny. How often is this tragedy enacted! We condemn good men, honest hearts, unheard; we refuse them a fair hearing. They do not easily explain themselves, or we, with our preoccupations and prejudices, are slow to understand. There may be greater ability to defend one’s self against the accusations of bitter foes than against the misconceptions of intimate friends. In fact, this is one of those severe trials in relation to our equals of which a recent preacher has so finely discoursed (Mozley, ‘University Sermons ‘).
III. SELF–DEFENCE. Against what fault or sin are these monotonous and harsh reproofs directed? Is it against Job’s evil deeds? But they are not specified, and Job denies that they have been done. There is no keener injustice than vague attacks on a man without specification of the exact nature of the charges. Is it the present language of Job? True, hasty words may have escaped him; he fears it; but is the language of health and joy to be tested by the same measures, weighed in the same scales, with that which pain and intense distress extort from the lips? Job knows his heart has not been unfaithful to his God, whatever cries of agony and despair have been berne upon the wind. The whole section thus contains a pathetic appeal to the human conscience for human love; and it teaches us indirectly, bur. with great feeling, the duties of friendly ministry to others in their distress.
LESSONS.
1. Calm guidance, healthy suggestions for the morbid intelligence.
2. The “sweetness” (verse 25) of right words of tender sympathy.
3. Abstinence from argument in such circumstances which only irritates and never soothes.
4. Considerate listening to explanations.
5. Hearty acceptance of honest self-vindications. In all these particulars we have bright examples set us by our blessed Saviour, who never broke the bruised reed nor quenched the smoking flax. By such methods of ministry we are to earn and prove the holy name of friend to our brethren, and lead men to believe that God has angels of blessing in human shape passing about the worn paths of misery in this world.J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN
Job 6:1-13
A true estimate of grief under the severities of affliction.
Even the strong man cries for help and release. Job, in his extreme sufferings, desires that a fair judgment may be formed of them and of his complaint. Put this into one seals, and them into the other, and behold which of them is the lighter. Thus he describes them
I. THE INSUFFERABLE WEIGHT OF HIS AFFLICTION. It is as the unknown weight of the sand of the seashore. Affliction is truly as the pressure of a great weight upon the frail body. The idea of patience is gained from bearing up under a load. Heavy is the load, indeed, under which this servant of the Lord is bowed down. It is not to be estimated. No onlooker can determine it. Therefore should judgment be withheld when from the life of the sufferer there escapes the sigh of complaint. He only knows his sufferings; and he may know that his cry does not fully represent them. The untouched observer but hears the cry, and cannot put that into comparison with a pain that he feels not, and the measure of which pain the cry is supposed to represent. How shall a just judgment, therefore, be given?
II. THE KEENNESS OF THE PANG OF HIS SUFFERINGS. They pierce as doth an arrow; and are as poisoned arrows; and as arrows shot forth by no feeble arm, but by the Almighty. They penetrate to the inner spirit. The strength of their burning poison drinks upburns up his spirit. He does not encounter a feeble foe. “The terrors of God set themselves in array” against him. Is it wonderful that his words are hasty? Is there not a cause? “Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?”
III. THE ABHORRENT CHARACTER OF THE THINGS WITH WHICH HE HAS TO DO. “That which my soul refused”from which I turned away in disgustI am compelled to take as my daily bread. Yea, that which should give me comfort, even my refreshing food, is loathsome to me. Sadly does he thus represent the nature of the foul disease that cleaveth to him. The onlookers are pained, hut they taste it not. To him it is as his food.
IV. HE FURTHER DESCRIBES HIS SUFFERING CONDITION AS SO SAD THAT HE LONGS FOR DEATH. “That it would please God to destroy me!” How low is life reduced when there seems to be no release but in the gravel Worn to the earth, this sufferer cries for an end to be put to his pains. He has not strength to bear up patiently under the weight of them. He cannot desire prolonged life; for what shall the end of it be? Weary, indeed, is that spirit that craves rest in the tomb. Job feels himself so utterly powerless, that continued endurance is impossible to him. He little knew that he could survive allthat he could yet pass through all, and bear honour to God, and perceive in the end the testimony of the Divine approbation. To him it was true, and he would prove it, though the words had not fallen on his ear, “With man it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.” Job’s history, therefore, illustrates the sufficiency of the Divine grace to sustain men beneath the uttermost pressure of sorrow.R.G.
Job 6:14
The claims of the suffering on the pity of friends.
Job’s friends come to condole with him. They are staggered by the severity of his sufferings, and remain silenced before him. When they open their lips they seem not only to try to account for the affliction, but they also appear to be anxious to justify their own inability to comfort their suffering friend. Their words add to Job’s heavy affliction instead of lightening his burden, and he cries out in his bitterness, “To him that is afflicted pity should be showed from his friend.” To whom should the suffering one turn if not to end? We see at once, in such circumstances, a friend’s duty and a friend’s demand.
I. A FRIEND‘S DUTY.
1. The true office of friendship is to enter fully into the circumstances of the friend; not to be indifferent to them, and therefore ignorant. True affection will inquire gently, wisely, and with care into the state, and the need, and the sorrow, and the hopes of the object of its attachment. Not for meddlesome curiosity, but from loving interest the friend’s heart will open to take in the tale of sorrow, even the words of complaint.
2. True friendship will lovingly sympathize. The eager pleading of the casual beggar strikes upon the closed ear of the stranger. No chord of pitiful sympathy vibrates, and no hand of help is outstretched. But to the appeals of friendship the heart opens; warm sympathy is stirred. The fluttering spirit finds rest on the besom of a friend. It is a duty one friend owes to another to show the utmost pitifulness of spirita pitifulness that should ripen to loving sympathy. No hardening of the heart, no refusal to be patient, no selfishness, can be found in the breast of the true friend.
3. True friendship will be ready with its help, springing forth with spontaneous eagerness to aid and comfort. It is possible for the friend to stick closer than a brother; and he shows the true spirit of a friend who, feeling perfectly at one with his loved companion, renders willing help to him.
4. The friendship which stimulates to pitiful and loving help in need rejoices also in the joy, the prosperity, and well-being of him to whom it cleaves. The two lives are one. David and Jonathan illustrate this, and happily a thousand examples are around us daily. He that findeth a true friend findeth a precious possessiona prize whose worth cannot be estimated.
II. FOR THIS LOVING SYMPATHY AND PITIFUL HELPFULNESS EVERY ONE MAY MAKE HIS JUST AND REASONABLE DEMAND ON HIS FRIEND. Friendship has its duties of fidelity, of kindness, and help; of confidence, trust, and good will. It has also its claims. It is a silent, mutual compacteach preparing to give that which it demands of the other; each expecting that which it knows it can bestow. It is the supreme satisfaction of true friendship that either of its members may turn to other in the confident, unquestioning assurance of meeting with true sympathy, with an open hand and a warm heart. For this friendship looks, and this it is justified in expecting. A faithful friend’s love faileth not; for “a friend loveth always.” Even his very “wounds” are “faithful.” Happy he who has found a friend in whom he can place the whole faith of his heart; and who is ready to reciprocate the same full, thorough, and trustworthy affection!
1. The wisdom of seeking a friend.
2. The law: “He that would have friends must show himself friendly.”R.G.
Job 6:25
The power of right words; or, complaining stayed by instruction.
Job has hitherto met with no comfort from those who came “to mourn with him, and to comfort him.” From the inutility of their powerless words he turns aside with the bitter reflection on his lips, “How forcible are right words!” Words charged with truth, with great views of things, with tender sympathy, heal and guide and comfort the perplexed and saddened soul; while the words of false friends pierce as goads. Truth at all times is worthy of trust. The spirit, worn and weary, may rest in it and find peace. Consider the power of truththe force of right Words
I. IN RESOLVING THE ENTANGLEMENTS OF ERROR. Truth is the right, the straight, line which reveals and thereby condemns the crooked departures. Its own clear, calm utterance resolves the confusion of tortuous commingled error. It is by the simple statement of truth that the wrong of error is discovered and rebuked. Loudness of denunciation cannot contradict error, or unravel it, or expose it. Nor will mere logical demonstration; noise will not destroy darkness; nor will the gloom be illuminated by proving it to be darkness. But the quiet shining of the lamp will scatter the shades of black night. So truth in its own simplicity and realness effectually and alone disperses the gloom and guides the feet of the wanderer through the tangled path of error. Such words Job had not yet found. But the good Teacher was not far away; and finally Job was led to the open plain and the clear light and the straight way.
II. RIGHT WORDS ARE FORCIBLE IN THE PRESENCE OF DEEP SORROW. So Job thought. It was for such words he pined. He longed for the teaching that would bring him comfort, and not for the accusations that would make his burden heavier and his heart sadder. There is a deep truth relating to all human affliction. Looked at only as a derangement of human happiness, it is devoid of that completeness of view that would constitute it a truthful one. But looked at as a Divine correction, a discipline, a sharp warning or departure from law, and a just punishment for such departure; and looked at as under the control of the Almighty Father, it is seen to be invested with a momentous character, and to be. inflicted for the wisest and best purposes. Right words on it bring the mind to peace. They are forcible to counsel and to comfort; to warn of danger, to guide to safety, to console in suffering. Happy the sufferer who has an interpreter at band, who with right words can unveil the mystery, and make clear the ways of God to man!
III. RIGHT WORDS ARE FORCIBLE IN THE ADJUSTMENT OF DISTURBED RELATIONS OF LIFE. They are wise words and kind. Even enemies are overcome by them. The right word is a word in harmony with the truth. Spoken with lips that speak truth habitually, and from a heart where truth finds its home, they carry conviction. They win the ear and the confidence of the listener. They have a force peculiar to themselves. They command. They are strong and cannot be shaken. They pierce, as doth an arrow, when they are words of condemnation founded on truth; and they comfort, and heal, and restore, and readjust, when they are spoken in kindness. The wise man searches for right words, and, having found them, speaks them in all simplicity. And the seeker after truth, or rest, or comfort welcomes them. They bear help on their wings, and are as reviving as the beams of the morning.R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Job 6:2
Scales for misery.
At length Job has an opportunity to reply to his friend’s harangue, and he at once touches on its weak point by implication. Eliphaz has not been sufficiently sympathetic; he has not duly appreciated Job’s “abysmal and boundless misery.” His wise precepts may apply to some extent to the afflictions of ordinary men, but they are vitiated by his failure to enter into the abnormal distresses of Job. The cursing of his day, which has been wrung out of Job by very anguish of soul, is misjudged by his censor, because the awful depth of that anguish is not appreciated. Therefore Job longs for some scales by which his misery may be weighed, that the lack of appreciation by Eliphaz may be corrected.
I. THE SUFFERER NATURALLY DESIRES AN APPRECIATION OF HIS SUFFERINGS,
1. That he may be understood. You cannot understand a man till you know how be feels. Words are more than descriptions of hare facts; they may be utterances of the heart. To comprehend their import we must enter into the feelings of the speaker. We should study the needs and troubles of those whom we desire to understand in order to help them.
2. That he may be fairly judged. Eliphaz had made the most galling charges against Job, partly because he was utterly below understanding the afflicted man’s overwhelming grief. We are unjust with those who are incomprehensible to us. Christ’s executioners did not know him, and he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luk 23:34). The mob that yelled at him and hounded him to death had not the least conception of his Gethsemane agony.
3. That he may receive sympathy. Sympathy helps us to understand one another. But without some preliminary knowledge we can have no kind of sympathy. Ignorant, well-meant attempts at sympathy hurt rather than heal, and chafe the very wounds they are intended to soothe.
II. IT IS NOT EASY TO FIND SCALES IN WHICH SUFFERING CAN BE WEIGHED. Where shall we look for a standard of measurement? We cannot judge by outside tokens of grief; for some are reserved and self-restrained, while others are demonstrative in their abandonment to grief. We cannot judge by the measure of the events that have caused the suffering; for some feel the same calamity much more keenly than it would be felt by others. Each sufferer is tempted to think that his troubles surpass all others. We can only understand a man in so far as we can succeed in putting ourselves in his place. But only Christ can do this perfectly. His incarnation is a guarantee of his complete comprehension of human sin and sorrow; so that the sufferer who is misapprehended by his most intimate earthly friends may be assured of the perfect sympathy of his Saviour. Moreover, with his own thoughts the sufferer might measure his grief in a way which would help him to apprize it more justly than by wild conjectures. Suppose he measured it against his blessings: is it so vastly greater? Or suppose he weighed it with his deserts: is it so immensely heavier? Or suppose he compared it with what Christ suffered for him: is there really any comparison between the Christian’s roughest cross and the awful cross of his Saviour?W.F.A.
Job 6:4
The arrows of the Almighty.
The first thought that occurs to Job when he attempts to describe his trouble to his misjudging friend is that that trouble has been produced by shafts from heaven. Here is the exceeding bitterness of his grief. He regards his calamities as more than natural mischances; such a terrible conjunction of disasters points to a superhuman source. Thus Job is Scourged by his faith. His theism adds an agony which the materialist would not feel.
I. THE TERROR OF THE ARROWS OF THE ALMIGHTY.
1. They are impelled by an irresistible power. They are shot by “El Shaddai.” God in his power is conceived of as the Source of the troubles. But none can resist the might of God. No wonder Job is prostrate in despair. It is useless for him to stand up against his adversary. The shield of faith may “quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Eph 6:16); but no shield can keep off the piercing arrows of the Almighty If God is against us, we are utterly undone.
2. They come from the Source of light and blessing. God had been showering blessings on the head of the patriarch, who had learnt to honour him as his Benefactor. It was hard, indeed, to find his great Friend turned into a Foe. This fact made the wounds pain as with deadly venom. It is fearful to think that our Father in heaven is shooting wrath against his children. No arrows are so keen as the arrows of love.
3. They penetrate to the heart. Earthly calamities strike the outer life. We may have ramparts and bastions that keep them off from our true self. But God’s arrows penetrate to the citadel of the soul He reaches the heart whenever he smites. We can bear outside distresses so long as we keep up a stout heart; but the wounds of the inner man are deadly.
II. THE MISAPPREHENSION OF THE ARROWS OF THE ALMIGHTY.
1. The error of ascribing to God what he has not sent. Job thinks that God is his Adversary, but the prologue shows that the adversary is Satan. Of the Satanic cause of his trouble Job has not the least conception. He ascribes it all to God. Thus he is mistaken, unjust, and needlessly dismayed. If he had but known that he was suffering from the arrows of Satan, he would have been more courageous and hopeful. May we not be in error in ascribing to God what he never sends? The evil state of society causes many troubles to the poor, which God does not wish them to suffer from- We cannot charge him with the terrible wrongs of a corrupt civilization which darken the slums of great cities. Our worst woes come from the devil withinfrom our own heart of sin.
2. When God does smite, his purpose is good. Job was so far right that God had some hand in his sufferings, for God had permitted Satan to go to the great length in tormenting Job that he had now reached.
(1) There is a smiting to heal Grievous chastisement is a discipline of love. We think that the arrow poisons us; what it really brings is a needed astringent.
(2) There must be a smiting of judgment. God cannot suffer his rebellious creatures to sin with impunity. Though Job had not felt them, God has terrible arrows of judgment for the impenitent. It is well if we learn the lesson of the milder wounds of chastisement before those terrors burst over us.W.F.A.
Job 6:5, Job 6:6
Satisfaction and discontent.
Job proceeds to show the reasonableness of his grief, and with it the unreasonableness of his censor’s accusations. Eliphaz had been wasting his eloquence on the assumption that Job’s outburst of despairing grief was uncalled for; or, at all events, he had not appreciated the tremendous distress of which it was the result. He regarded the effect as preposterous, because he had not seen the greatness of the cause.
I. THE SATISFIED ARE NOT DISCONTENTED. We have illustrations of this fact in nature. Among the wild animals (“the wild ass”), and also among the domesticated (“the ox”), we see that sufficiency produces content. If the wild ass brays, or if the ox lows, something is amiss. Supply them with all they need, and they will be quiet and contented. If, therefore, Job is not. at rest, something must be amiss with him.
1. The discontent of society makes it evident that some want is unsupplied. Men do not rebel for the sake of rebellion. Political and social upheavals have their sources in some disorganized condition of the body politic. If all were satisfied, quiet would reign universally.
2. The discontent of the soul proves that the soul is not satisfied. Man has deeper needs than the animals. The wild ass and the tame ox can be satisfied, while man is still possessed by a “Divine discontent.” This very restlessness is a sign of his higher nature. His thirst reveals the depths from which it springs. Man is
“Poor in abundance, famish’d at a feast,
(Young.)
because “man shall not live by bread alone” (Mat 4:4).
II. THE UNSATISFIED MUST BE DISCONTENTED. This is more than the reverse side of the previous statement. It carries with it the idea that the dissatisfaction cannot be stifled, must be met, if it is to be set at rest. The truth is illustrated from natural things. Unsavoury food cannot be made savoury without the salt, the needed condiment. That which is naturally tasteless, like the white of an egg, cannot be made to have delicious flavours by any conjuring process, unless the thing itself is changed or receives additions. So no jugglery will remove the dissatisfaction of society or of the soul. We cannot make the world at rest by wishing it to be peaceful, or by declaring it to be quiet. A theory of order is not order, nor is a doctrine of optimism a quietus for the world’s distresses. The bitter cry of the outcast will not be allayed because some philosophers believe themselves to be living in “the best of possible worlds.” We do not make peace by calling, “Peace, peace!” when there is no peace. To preach to souls of rest and satisfaction is not to bestow those desired boons. It is as much a mockery to tell miserable men to be contented without supplying their wants, as to tell the hungry and naked to be fed and clothed while we do nothing to furnish them with what they lack. Any lulling of discontent without curing its cause is false and unhealthy. It is like putting a weight on the safety-valve. It is no better than the morphia that allays the symptoms of the disease it cannot cure. The discontent should go on till it finds its remedy in a true satisfaction.
1. Christ gives this for society in the kingdom of heaven; if we followed out his teaching in the world the wants of society would be satisfied.
2. He gives it for the soul in his body and blood, and the life eternal that comes from fellowship with him.W.F.A.
Job 6:8, Job 6:9
The prayer of despair.
This is an awful prayer. Job longs for death, and prays God to crush him. Then there will be an end to his agonies. He has rejected his wife’s temptation to suicide (Job 2:9); but he begs that God will take his life.
I. IT IS WELL TO BRING THE DESPAIR OF THE SOUL TO GOD. The despair is not utter and complete if it has not stifled the fountains of prayer. When it can be said of any one, “Behold, he prayeth,” all hope is not yet gone. Although for the time being he had lost sight of it, still there is a point on which hope for better days may lay hold. When all things seem to be rushing to ruin, and there is no other outlook for the soul, the outlook to heaven is still open. If we can do nothing else, the way is still before us to cast our burden upon the Lord. Though the very prayer be one of horror and despair, like Job’s, still it is a prayer. There is the saving element. The Soul is looking up to God. It is not quite alone in its desolation.
II. GOD UNDERSTANDS THE PRAYER OF DESPAIR. He is not like Job’s purblind censor Eliphaz, who judged in ignorance and wounded when he thought to heal. The breaches of conventional propriety in religion, which shock the more precise sort of piety, are not thus misapprehended by God. He views all with a large eye of charity, with a penetrating discernment of sympathy. The wild utterance that only scandalizes the superficial hearer moves the compassion of the Father of spirits. He knows from what depths of agony it has been forced, and he pardons the extravagance of it in pity for its misery.
III. THE PRAYER OF DESPAIR IS FOOLISH AND SHORT–SIGHTED. These two words “prayer” and “despair,” are quite incongruous. The one should utterly banish the other. If we quite understood the meaning and power of prayer, despair would be impossible. For prayer implies that God has not forgotten us; or why should one pray to heedless ears? When we carry our grief to God we bring it to Almighty Love, and such a haven must be more congenial to hope than to despair.
IV. GOD REFUSES TO ANSWER THE PRAYER OF DESPAIR, There are prayers which God will not answer, and that, not because he is inexorable, but because he is merciful; and as the mother is too kind to give her infant the flaming candles for which it cries, God is too good to bestow on his foolish children the evil things which they sometimes crave from his hand. Thus the very refusal to respond to the prayer is a result, not of disregarding it, but of giving to it more than that superficial attention which would have been enough for an unquestioning response. God sifts and weighs our prayers. We cannot present them as cheques on the bank of heaven, expecting immediate payment, exactly according to the measure of what we have set down in them. God is far better than our prayers. He exceeds our fears even when we beg him to act according to them. His sane mind corrects the wild fancies of our haste and passion. Therefore we need not shrink from the utmost freedom in prayer. God will not deal with us according to our words, but according to his love and our faith.W.F.A.
Job 6:14
.
The redeeming power of sympathy.
Job tells his friend that he has gone to work in a wrong way, and one which might have had most disastrous results, the opposite of those he aimed at. Eliphaz honestly intended to bring Job to God in contrite submission, but his harsh and unwise conduct was only calculated to drive the troubled man from God in wild despair. He should have chosen the “more excellent way’ of sympathy.
I. THE SECRET OF THE REDEEMING POWER OF SYMPATHY.
1. By giving strength to endure. The soul that stands alone may sink down to despair. But “two are better than one.” As we help to bear one another’s burdens, we lift the crushing load that drives to rebellion.
2. By softening the heart. The danger of. great calamity is that it will smite the heart to hardness. The most fatal effect is produced when all traces of suffering are passed, because the very faculty of feeling is frozen to death. Now, hero sympathy has a saving efficacy. The tears that are sealed up in solitude burst forth at the sight of a friend’s tears.
3. By revealing the love of God. There is danger lest great trouble should make men doubt God’s love, and even come to regard all love as a pretence and a delusion. The world then seems very black and cruel. But a brother’s kindness begins to dispel the error. It shows that the world is not wholly hard and cruel and selfish. This kindness is but a spark from the great fire of God’s love. From the sympathy of our brother we are led up to the sympathy of our Father, out of which it springs. If there were more human charity in the world there would be more faith in God. Atheism is a product of the despair which sympathy would cure.
II. THE EXERCISE OF THE REDEEMING POWER OF SYMPATHY,
1. In God. Our sympathy is but a copy of God’s sympathy. His method is to save by love. His goodness leads us to repentance. While we scold, God pities; while we blame, he forgives; while we reject, he invites. He saves the sinner by loving him.
2. In Christ. Christ’s great redemption is a work of sympathy:
(1) In its origin. It was sympathy that led to the advent of Christ. This was the ruling principle of his life on earth. This, too, brought him to the cross. He could not save himself, because he would not abandon his sinful, sorrowing brethren.
(2) In its application. Christ saves men now individually through his sympathy. We have first to see that he understands us, loves us, feels with us. Then he lays hold of us and lifts us up.
3. In men. We, too, have to save by our sympathy. The old method of repression, rebuke, and repudiation has failed miserably; its fruits are only hatred and despair. It is time we resorted to God’s method, to Christ’s method. We must understand men if we would help them, feel with them if we would restore them. So long as we will not show sympathy with our brethren in their trouble and temptation, we cannot save them from their sin and despair. Lowell says
“Far better is it to speak
One simple word, which now and then
Shall waken their free nature in the weak
And friendless sons of men.”
W.F.A.
Job 6:25
The force of right words.
Job is not so unreasonable as he appears to his friends. He will admit the force of truth and reason. Only he considers the arguments he has heard false and fallacious.
I. REASONABLE MEN RECOGNIZE THE FORCE OF RIGHT WORDS. Words may be like arrows that pierce, like swords that divide, like hammers that crush; or they may be like seeds that grow and bear fruit, like loaves of bread to feed the hungry, and streams of living water flowing by the dusty highway, from which all thirsty souls may drink. Thus they are more than mere sounds. They are expressions of thought. God’s words come with power. All right Words are forcible. But there are empty words that fall without any weight, and vapid words that are dissipated in the air without effect. It is not the number, the volume, or the noise, of the words that gives them force, but the rightness of them. We must, therefore, inquire wherein this rightness resides.
1. In truth. False words may seem to carry great weight. But in the end all lies fail. The truth, simply told, has a force which no rhetoric can equal.
2. In adaptability. There are truths which are not suitable for the occasion on which they are spoken. This was the case with many of the remarks which Eliphaz had made, which were right enough in themselves, but which did not apply to Job. They lost force by being irrelevant.
3. In moral weight. The justice of what we say adds weight to it. The most forcible words are those that find their way to our conscience. Others may be luminous; these words flame out with startling vividness.
4. In sympathy. Truth spoken in love comes with double force.
II. IT IS FOOLISH TO DISREGARD THE FORCE OF RIGHT WORDS.
1. In the speaker. This was the Temanite’s mistake. He was not sufficiently considerate of the rightness of what he said. He meant well, but he spoilt all by this grievous error. We need to weigh our words. They may have many excellent qualitiesclearness, grace, apparent vigouryet if they are not right words they will fail. The Christian teacher needs to test and correct his words by standing close to the fountain of truth and right in the Holy Scriptures, and by keeping his heart pure and sympathetic. Otherwise all his eloquence will be barren, or even poisonous as mephitic vapours.
2. In the hearer. It is excessively foolish to disregard words as though they were merely “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” They are the chariots in which thoughts ride; and if we would but open our gates to receive them, we might find those thoughts most welcome guests. Even if the words are unpopular or painful, we should be foolish to disregard them when we know them to be right. For truth does not cease to be truth by being rejected. Many unpalatable ideas are most medicinal. And many words, rejected at first, when once they are received, prove to be as the very bread of life. The words of the everlasting gospel are right words, which we may reject at our peril; which we may receive for our salvation.W.F.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. VI.
Job sheweth that his complaints are not causeless: he wisheth for death, wherein he is assured of comfort: he reproves his friends for their unkindness.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 6:1. But Job answered and said Job begins his defence with a modest apology for venting his grief in a manner somewhat unbecoming, and begs that it may be ascribed to the great multitude and sharpness of his afflictions; Job 6:3-7. But as to the advice given him by Eliphaz, to hope for an amendment of his condition, and to address God for that purpose, he tells them that his petition to God should be of a quite different nature; namely, that he would be pleased to cut him off speedily, for that the desperateness of his condition would by no means permit him to hope for any amendment; Job 6:8-13. That he could not, however, help resenting their unkind suspicions of him, that they should think him capable of such great wickedness, but, above all, should imagine him to be so abandoned as to be able to entertain a thought tending to a revolt from the Almighty; which yet they must have done, or Eliphaz would never have dared to make him such a proposition; Job 6:14-20. He saw, therefore, what kind of friends he had to do with: as soon as they perceived him in a remediless condition, they began to treat him with contempt; Job 6:21-27. As to his recovery, however, he tells them that they may set their hearts at ease; for if they would but consider his condition a little more attentively, they might soon be convinced that there was not the least chance of any thing of that nature, as all hopes of life were at an end with him. He begs them, therefore, not to condemn him barely on suspicion, and on the strength of general maxims; but to consider that it was possible he might be innocent of their charges; Job 6:28-30. See Heath.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
B.Jobs Reply: Instead of Comfort, the Friends bring him only increased Sorrow
Job 6:1 to Job 7:21
1. Justification of his complaint by pointing out the greatness and incomprehensibleness of his suffering
Job 6:1-10
1But Job answered and said:
2Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed,
and my calamity laid in the balance together!
3For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea;
therefore my words are swallowed up.
4For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,
the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit;
the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.
5Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
or loweth the ox over his fodder?
6Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?
or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
7The things that my soul refuseth to touch
are as my sorrowful meat.
8Oh that I might have my request,
and that God would grant me the thing that I long for!
9Even that it would please God to destroy me;
that He would let loose His hand, and cut me off!
10Then should I yet have comfort:
yea, I would harden myself in sorrow; let Him not spare;
for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.
2. Complaint over the bitter disappointment which he had experienced at the hands of his friends
Job 6:11-30
11What is my strength that I should hope?
and what is mine end that I should prolong my life?
12Is my strength the strength of stones?
or is my flesh of brass?
13Is not my help in me?
and is wisdom driven quite from me?
14To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend;
but he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty.
15My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,
and as the stream of brooks they pass away;
16which are blackish by reason of the ice,
and wherein the snow is hid.
17What time they wax warm, they vanish;
when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.
18The paths of their way are turned aside;
they go to nothing, and perish.
19The troops of Tema looked,
the companies of Sheba waited for them.
20They were confounded because they had hoped;
they came thither and were ashamed.
21For now ye are nothing;
ye see my casting down, and are afraid!
22Did I say, Bring unto me?
or, Give a reward for me of your substance?
23Or, Deliver me from the enemys hand?
or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty?
24Teach me, and I will hold my tongue;
and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.
25How forcible are right words!
but what doth your arguing reprove?
26Do ye imagine to reprove words,
and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind?
27Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless,
and ye dig a pit for your friend.
28Now therefore be content, look upon me;
for it is evident unto you if I lie.
29Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity;
yea, return again, my righteousness is in it.
30Is there iniquity in my tongue?
cannot my taste discern perverse things?
3. Recurrence to his former complaint on account of his lot, and accusation of God
Job 7:1-21
1Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?
are not his days also like the days of an hireling?
2As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow,
and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work;
3So am I made to possess months of vanity,
and wearisome nights are appointed to me.
4When I lie down, I say,
When shall I arise and the night be gone?
and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.
5My flesh is clothed with worms, and clods of dust;
my skin is broken, and become loathsome.
6My days are swifter than a weavers shuttle,
and are spent without hope.
7O remember that my life is wind!
mine eye shall no more see good.
8The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more;
Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not.
9As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away,
so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.
10He shall return no more to his house,
neither shall his place know him any more.
11Therefore I will not refrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
12Am I a sea, or a whale,
that Thou settest a watch over me?
13When I say, My bed shall comfort me,
my couch shall ease my complaint;
14then Thou scarest me with dreams,
and terrifiest me through visions;
15So that my soul chooseth strangling,
and death rather than my life.
16I loathe it, I would not live alway;
let me alone; for my days are vanity.
17What is man, that Thou shouldest magnify him?
and that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him?
18And that Thou shouldest visit him every morning?
and try him every moment?
19How long wilt Thou not depart from me,
nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?
20I have sinned; what shall I do unto Thee, O Thou preserver of men?
why hast Thou set me as a mark against Thee,
so that I am a burden to myself?
21And why dost Thou not pardon my transgression,
and take away mine iniquity?
for now shall I sleep in the dust;
and Thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. This discourse of Job, the first formal reply which proceeded from him, attaches itself immediately to that which was one-sided, erroneous, and unjust in the discourse of Eliphaz (comp. above, page 327. It rebukes these defects, and justifies the complaints which Job had previously uttered in regard to his miserable condition, in part repeating with increased emphasis the reproaches which in his despair he had brought against God. The tone of his discourse however is so far changed that instead of the wild and doubting agony of his former utterance he exhibits rather a spirit which may be characterized as mild, plaintive, and in some measure composed.
The discourse falls into three divisions: (1) A justification of the previous lamentation, as entirely corresponding to the fearful greatness of Jobs suffering, Job 6:2-10. (2) A sharp criticism of the friends conduct as unreasonably hard, as demonstrating indeed the deceptiveness of their friendship, Job 6:11-30. (3) Renewed lamentation over his inconsolable and helpless condition, together with an arraignment of God, Job 7:1-21. These three principal divisions have the same relative proportions, both as to the length and sub-divisions of each, as the three divisions of the discourse of Eliphaz; the first consisting of one, the two following consisting each of two long strophes. It is only in the last two, however, of these five long strophes (to wit, Job 7:1-21) that we find double-strophes composed of the longer strophes extending over 57 verses. The first three double-strophes on the contrary are composed of shorter strophes, including now three, and now four masoretic verses.
2. First Division (and Long Strophe). Justification of his former lamentation by a reference to the greatness and incomprehensibility of his suffering, Job 6:2-10.
First Strophe. Job 6:2-4. [His grief was not excessive when compared with his suffering].
Job 6:2. Oh that my grief might be but weighed, and my calamity be laid up over against it in the balances[The use of the Inf. Absol. with the Fut. (used optatively after ) shows the emphasis which Jobs mind laid on the complete exact balancing of his vexation against his suffering.E.] , grief, discontent, despondency, is that with which Eliphaz had reproached him [see Job 5:2. Vexation, impatience, either the inner irritation, or outward exhibition of it, or both. Dav.] (for which the Kri has , as also in Job 30:13 for ) my calamity, my ruin; comp. the plur. used elsewhere in the same sense, Job 6:30; Psa 57:2 [1]; Psa 91:3; Psa 94:20; Pro 19:13. The two expressions are not synonymous (Kamph.), but are related to each other as subjective and objective, or as an effect produced in Jobs emotional experience, and the cause of the same. Accordingly can not signify: that it might be laid up (weighed) all at once, altogether, i.e., my entire woe, in which case indeed we should also expect the plur. (). But denotes a simultaneous weighing of the despondency and the calamity, a balancing of either over against the other (comp. Job 17:16; Psa 141:10; Isa 45:8). The whole is a wish or a yearning prayer to God, to show clearly to his friends that his violent grief was most assuredly proportioned to the severity of his sufferings. [Conant objects to the view here given: that it is not an appropriate answer to Eliphaz, whose admonitions were not based on the disproportion of the sufferers grief to its cause. To which Davidson replies: Job is not here replying to Eliphazs whole charge, but only to the beginning of it (as was fit in the beginning of his reply), the charge of unmanliness, to which the words are an appropriate answer].
Job 6:3. For now is it heavier than the sand of the seas, i.e., heavy beyond measure. For the use of the expression sand of the sea, as a figure to set forth a weight or burden of extreme heaviness (as elsewhere it is used to set forth an innumerable multitude), comp. Pro 27:3; Sir 22:15., seas, poetic plural, used like the sing. in Gen 49:13. is rendered by Delitzsch, for then (as in Job 3:13), and the whole sentence he takes to be an inference from Job 6:2 : then would it be found heavier than the sand, etc. But this it would be found is simply interpolated into the text. Most modern expositors rightly render it: For now, as the case now stands, especially in consequence of your unfriendly conduct, etc.Therefore do my words rave., with the tone on the penult, cannot be derived from [Ges.], but either from , or , but not in the sense of sucking down, or swallowing, but in the sense, for which we have the warrant of the Arabic, of stammering, raving, [Frst]. Job therefore admits that he has heretofore spoken foolishly (comp. 2Co 11:17; 2Co 11:21; 2Co 11:23), but he justifies himself by appealing to his insupportable sorrow. [The translation of the Eng. Ver. my words are swallowed up, implying that he had been unable to speak from grief, is less significant, and less suitable to the connection than the confession that he had spoken madly: neither is it consistent with the usage of the verb elsewhere in an active sense; Oba 1:16.E.]
Job 6:4. For the arrows of the Almighty are in me, whose poison my spirit drinks up.More specifically giving the reason for 3a. By the arrows of the Almighty are meant the sickness, pains, and plagues which God inflicts on men: [the emphasis lies on Almighty, the arrows of the Almighty; there was enough in that fact, in the awful nature of his adversary, to account and more than apologize for all his madness. Dav.] comp. Psa 38:3 [2]; Deu 32:23; Eze 5:16; also below in our book, Job 16:12 seq.i.e., lit. with me, not in my body ( , LXX. Pesh.). The form of expression is chosen to represent the arrows of God as something which has hurt and wounded not only his body, but also his soul, and which accordingly is ever with him, continually present to him (comp. Job 9:35; Job 10:13). , not the subj. of the relative clause (LXX., Pesh., Vulg., Rosenm. [E. V., Noy., Lee, Con., Carey], but its object, the subj. of which is rather my spirit. heat, here equivalent to poison; comp. Job 21:20; Psa 7:14 [Psa 7:13]; Psa 58:5; Deu 32:24; Deu 32:33. [Some prefer: the poison of which drinketh up my spirit, a meaning that would account for Jobs prostration, the poison of Gods arrows was like a burning heat that dried up and drank in his spirit. It was rather, however, his violence and vehement recrimination against God which he has to excuse; impetuosity, not impotence, has to be accounted for. It is thus better to make spirit nom., the spirit drinks in the Divine virus, which works potently, as Divine poison will, excites, inflames, maddens the spirit. Dav.].The terrors of Eloah storm me. , an elliptical expression for , they set themselves in battle array against me, they assail me like an army: comp. Jdg 20:30; Jdg 20:33; 1Sa 4:2. Bttcher singularly attempts to render it (Neue Exeget. hrenlese, No. 1397): the terrors of God cause me to arm myselfcompel me to put myself in the right. Against this it may be urged that the terrors of God signify not Jobs sufferings and distresses in themselves, and objectively considered, but his subjective experiences of the same, his consciousness of the fact that his suffering proceeds from the attacks and persecutions which God in His wrath directs against his life and his happiness in life (comp. Job 23:16 seq.). [They are the conscious voluntary terrors which He actively originates, which He gathers from the ends of His dominion and the outlying posts of His power, and marshals like a sable infinite host against Job. Dav.].
Second Strophe: Job 6:5-7. [The demand that he should submit without a murmur unnatural].
Job 6:5. Does the wild ass bray by the fresh grass, or doth an ox low at his fodder?i.e., I would certainly not lament without sufficient cause; far less would I be disposed to complain than an irrational beast, which is contentedly provided with fodder. The form of the comparison vividly reminds us of Amo 3:4-6.For , to moan, to groan, to utter doleful cries, comp. Job 30:7. Concerning the wild ass see the fuller description in Job 39:5-8., maslin, farrago, a compound of various kinds of grain.
Job 6:6. Is that which is tasteless eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the white of an egg?i.e., can it be expected of me that I should freely and joyously relish the unsavory food of suffering, and especially of that loathsome disease, which has seized upon me? That Job uses tasteless, loathsome food as a figure for the sufferings which afflict him, appears both from Job 6:2-4, and from Job 6:8-10, where the burden of these self-same sufferings prompts him to desire death. The interpretation which refers the figure to the discourses of the friends (LXX. and other ancient expositors, also Retschi, Stud, und Krit., 1867) is at variance with the connection. It suits indeed the expression in the first member of the verse ( tasteless; comp. rem. on Job 1:22), but not the expression slime of the yolk of an egg, which is altogether too strong for unsuitable and harsh discourses, and which is most naturally referred to the nauseous filth, dust, and ulcerous matter of the leprosy (comp. Job 7:5). [Observe that the point of the illustration lies in the tendency of an agreeable quality, or the opposite, to produce content or discontent. Now as that which occasioned Jobs discontent was his suffering, it is doubtless this suffering which in this verse he describes negatively as tasteless, and therefore to be complained of in the next verse as positively loathsome, and therefore to be refused.Moreover, it is not until later (Job 6:25 sq.) that Job comes to speak of the nature of his friends remarks. He is here justifying his complaint which had been uttered before his friends had spoken at all, and which had been prompted by their silence, of which silence, as indicating a failure of sympathy, he again complains (Job 6:15-21).E.]. , the slime of the yolk, i.e., the liquid saliva which encloses the solid part, the yellow yolk of an egg, hence the white of an egg, which was esteemed by the Hebrews to be particularly nauseating, or at least as altogether insipid. So, following the Targ. and some of the Rabbis, Rosenm., Umbreit, Ewald, Stickel, Del., Dillmann, [E. V., Hengst., Dav., Frst, Schlottmann, Good], etc., and in general most modern writers, while the Pesh., Arab., Gesen., Heiligst., Bttcher, [Renan, Merx], translate portulacca-broth, purslainslime, a rendering, however, which assigns to the sense, elsewhere unknown, of slime, broth, or soup.
Job 6:7. My soul refuses to touch, such things are to me as putrid food.Rosenm., Welte, Delitzsch, (as before them the Vulg., Luther) [so also E. V., Noy., Ren., Elz.], take the first member as an antecedent relative clause without , that which my soul refuses to touch, etc. But such an antecedent position for the relative clause when is wanting, is a rare construction, and in order to obtain for the consequent clause a tolerable sense we should be obliged to amend to (as Rosenm. and Welte do in opposition to all the MSS. and Vsns.). Such a construction, moreover, destroys the progression of thought from a to b. The object of is supplied of itself in that which from Job 6:2 on stands forth as the prominent conception, to wit, the suffering or calamity of Job, to which also the , which stands at the head of the second member, points back, they, i.e., things of that sort, such things. , lit as the disease of my bread; i.e., as though my food were diseased, putrid, loathsome: constr. state of , sickness, disease, comp Psa 41:4 [3] (so rightly Gesenius, [Frst], Ewald, Olsh., Hahn, Schlottmann, Dillmann, etc.). Others (Cocceius, Schultens, Heiligstedt, Delitzsch) take as constr. st. plur. of , sick, unclean (comp. Isa 30:22), according to which derivation, however, we should expect to read . Umbreit and Hirzel (2d Ed.) explain the disease of my bread as meaning, the disease which is my daily bread [so also Wordsworth and Renan]; Bttcher would read : they are according to the disease of my food; Hitzig, after the Arabic, explains: the crumbs of my foodpurely arbitrary evasions, and less natural than the construction followed by us.
Third Strophe: Job 6:8-10. [He longs for death, and even in death would rejoice in his integrity.]
Job 6:8. Oh that my request might be fulfilled [lit. might come], and that Eloah would grant my longing! This prayer and longing are for death, as that which would bring release from his misery, which is all that he desires: see the verse which follows. he well-known optative formula, governing also the verbs of the following verse. [It occurs quite frequently in the Book of Job, almost altogether, however, in. Jobs discourses, in the friends discourses only in Job 11:5, not once in those of Elihu and God. This indicates purpose in the linguistic structure of the argument. Jobs destiny gives him much to wish for. Hengst.] Hupfelds emendation, for , is uncalled for.
Job 6:9. That it might please Eloah to destroy me, that He would let down His hand to cut me off: lit. that He would let loose His hand, and cut me off; for , Hiph. of , to spring, signifies to cause to spring, to unbind, set loose (comp. Isa 58:6; Psa 105:20; Psa 146:7); the hand of God is thus conceived of as having been hitherto boundbound, that is, by His own will., and cut me off, (not: and crush me, Luther, comp. the LXX.: ). Jobs soul, his Ego or his life, is, after the analogy of Job 4:21, regarded as an internal cord, a string, or thread, the cutting off of which is synonymous with death: comp. also Job 27:8; Ps. 76:13, also the well-known Greek representation of the Parc.
Job 6:10. So would it ever be my comfort. Delitzsch rightly: With begins the conclusion, exactly as in Job 13:5. Most expositors extend the influence of the , Job 6:8, over this sentence, and construe the verbs here also as optatives: and that so my comfort may still be to me, etc. The comfort, according to this latter construction, would be Jobs speedy death. But how a speedy death could in and of itself bring any comfort is not made to appear in this connection. It is more natural with Hupf., Schlottmann, Delitzsch [Bernard, Conant, Rodwell, Hengst., Renan], especially on comparing this with the analogous passage in Psa 119:50, to find the statement of that which would bring comfort in the words of the last member: that I have not denied the words of the Holy One, thus treating the second member, , as a parenthesis.I would leap in unsparing pain. For the use of the cohortative () in a subjunctive sense in a parenthesis, comp. e.g.Psa 40:6; Psa 51:18. is to be explained after the Arab. zalada (to stamp the ground, tripudiare) [to beat hard; hence the E. V.: I would harden myself in sorrow, and so Lee, who explains: Because there still is, or remains consolation, I will not give way, whatever may be laid on me: or even though He cut me entirely off], as also after the of the LXX. and the (I will exult) of the Targum. It is accordingly to be taken in the sense of a jubilant expression of joy, not in the sense of being tormented (Rosenm, after some of the Rabbis [who explain the verb to mean burning; and so Bernard]), nor: to spring up through pain (Schlottmann, who accordingly takes the parenthesis in a concessive sense: although I leap up for pain). (comp. Isa 30:14 seq.), a relative clause, with the omission of the adverbial : wherewith he spares me not, namely, God, who is to be understood as the subject here (Rosenm., Ewald [who makes the omitted relative the direct object of the verbpain which he spares not; a construction, however, which does not harmonize so well with the usage of , which generally has a personal object. E.], Hirzel, Heiligstedt, Hahn, Schlottmann, Dillmann) [Renan, Hengst.]. Possibly might be taken as the subject (so Umbreit, Vaih., Stickel) [Gesen., Rodwell, Conant]: in pain which spares not, against which, however, it may be urged that, while is most simply treated as fem., the verbal form used, , is masc. In any case, the translation; in unsparing pain, corresponds to the sense of the poet.That I have not denied the words of the Holy One. This factthat he had been guilty of no denial (comp. Job 1:22; Job 2:10)constitutes the firm confidence which Job possessed in the midst of all his distress and misery, and which he felt assured would show itself, even in death. The meaning is not essentially different which results from the other and more common construction of our verse, according to which the second member is not treated as a parenthesis, and is regarded as introducing a reason for that which precedes: for I have not denied, etc.
3. Second Division: A lament over the bitter disappointment which he had experienced from his friends: Job 6:11-30.
First Long Strophe: Job 6:11-20 (consisting of three short strophes, of 3, 4, and three verses respectively). [In view of his broken strength and hopeless condition, he must reject their advice to trust in the future, and openly declare to them that he is completely disappointed in his expectations as to their friendship. Dillmann.]
a. Job 6:11-13. [His helplessness, and consequent hopelessness. Ewald and Hengstenberg put this strophe in the First Division, to which, however, as Schlottmann has shown, there are two objections. First, it mars the completeness which the preceding long strophe possesses, when regarded as closing the triumphant declaration by Job of his integrity and confidence in God contained in Job 6:10.Secondly, the picture which this short strophe gives of his helplessness and hopelessness is preparatory to the picture which immediately follows of the deceptiveness of his friends, and in that position adds greatly to the pathos and effectiveness of his complaint. E.]
Job 6:11. What is my strength that I should persevere [wait], and what mine end that I should be patient? The answer to this question which Jobs meaning would require is of course a pure negative: my strength is completely gone, and death is the only end which I look for, in all its nearness, nay more, with impatience. [Two things are necessary that one may bear misfortune patiently; first, that the strength of the sufferer is in some proportion to the power of the suffering; and, secondly, that he sees before him an end, which, when reached, will reward the present struggle. Job denies both these things of himself, the first in Job 6:12, the second in Job 6:13. Schlottmann.] For , to prolong the soul, to lengthen it, i.e. to be patient, comp. Pro 19:11; Isa 48:9. [The rendering of E. V., prolong my life, would rather require ].
Job 6:12. Or is the strength of stones my strength, or is my flesh of brass?[The first or tends rather to mar the connection. E.] A poetic illustrative expansion of the thought in Job 6:11 a. [According to Hengstenberg, stones and brass are mentioned here because of their invulnerability. Rather, according to the connection, because of their power of endurance. Schlottmann says: is properly always copper, which the ancients, however, as is known, had learned to harden, so that in firmness it resembled iron. E.]
Job 6:13. Verily, is not my help in me brought to nought? lit.: Is not the nothingness of my help with me? , which occurs elsewhere only in Num. 17:28 [Num 17:13], is neither a strengthened interrogative (Schlottmann), nor an inversion for (Delitzsch), nor a collocation of the interrogative particle with the conditional particle (whether, if my help is destroyed, etc., Kster), but simply equivalent to , in the sense of vivid interrogation or asseveration: verily not (Ewald, Dillmann). And well-being driven away from me? essentially the same as in Job 5:12, well-being, enduring prosperity. The sense of the verse as a whole is: My condition is hopeless, and all promises for the future are therefore useless and null. [It is doubtless best to give to here the sense which, as Zckler has elsewhere shown, belongs to it in the Chokma-Literature. Other interpretations are partial, and so far enfeebling: e.g. wisdom, E. V., or insight (Hengst.), deliverance (Noyes), solace (Rosenm.), restoration (Conant). What Job says is that every element of real and substantial good had been driven away from him. Davidson is more nearly right when he says, that not only was recovery driven away from him, but that the possibility of it, anything which could spring, and be matured into health again, all inner strength and resourcethe very base of recoverywas driven away or out of him. The word, however, is broader even than this, including all external as well as internal resources, a mans entire establishment of good.E.]
b. Job 6:14-17 : [He has been disappointed in the friendly sympathy which is accorded to every one in misery, but which, in his case, has proved as deceptive as a summer brook.]
Job 6:14. To the despairing gentleness (is due) from his friends (or, is shown by his friends), and [or, even] should he have forsaken the fear of the Almighty.[The prep. in does not express so much what is due as what is actually given in affliction. Jobs friends failed, not in giving what was due, the world and even friendship often does, but in giving what was actually and always given. Dav.] from , liquefieri, denotes literally one who is inwardly melted, disheartened (Delitzsch)a term strikingly descriptive of Jobs condition as one of complete depression, helpless prostration to the very ground., gentleness, friendliness, kindness (comp. the of Gal 6:1), not reproach, as Seb. Schmidt, Hitzig, and others would explain it, after Pro 14:34; for in Job 10:12 our poet again uses in its ordinary sense, and the translation: If reproach from his friends falls on one who is despairing, he will then give up the fear of God, gives a thought which is foreign to the context, and withal incorrect in itself. Equally untenable on grammatical grounds is the translation of Luther [and Wemyss; also of Merx, who however alters the text from to ]: He who withholds mercy from his neighbor, he forsakes the fear of the Almighty.This rendering, however, although resting on the authority of the Targ., Vulg., and Pesh., is to be rejected on account of the singularly harsh construction of the as a designation of the absol. case, as well as on account of its giving to the Partic. the unheard-of signification: he who withholds, or refuses. The second member cannot be regarded as the conclusion of the first,not even by taking in the sense of alioqui, and so translating with Schnurrer, Delitzsch [Noy., Words., Rod., Hengst.], otherwise he might forsake the fear of the Almighty (alioqui hic reverentiam Dei exuit). Rather, if no corruption of the text be assumed, it will be found most simple and natural to regard the first member as an ardently expressed formula of desire, with an omitted jussive from the verb , or to supply is due to, belongs to, [or is given to], and to find in the second member simply the continuation of the principal notion , introduced by a concessive : and even if he should have forsaken [Schlott., Dill., Ren., Lee, Dav.] (comp. Ges., 134 [Con.-Roed., 131] Rem. 2; Ewald, 350, b).Ewald, without necessity, would supply between a and b lines which, he assumes, had fallen out.1The whole verse is evidently an expression of resentment at the fact that Eliphaz had exhibited no trace of gentle forbearance or sympathy for Job; he claims this sympathy for himself, even in case he had in his suffering departed from the fear of God, which case, however, he presents only as possible, not as actual. [Conant translates: ready to forsake the fear of the Almighty; Davidson: to one losing hold of the fear of the Almighty. Job, says the latter, would not admit that he had forsaken, rather that he was forsaking, in danger of forsaking the fear of the Almighty. And again: in his terrible collision in darkness and doubt with the unspeaking nameless (Gen 32:25) Being he was aloneabsolutelyfor the Father was against him, and when one is losing hold () of God, he sorely enough needs a human hand to grasp, and the sufferers pathos is overwhelming, when he sees God and man alike estranged.The continuation of the participial construction by the Imperfect, with omitted relative (see Ewald, 338, b), fully justifies this construction, which is at once most simple and expressive. To one whose inner man is dissolving, whose faith and life are giving way, and who in that fearful dissolution is in danger of losing hold on God, to him surely sympathy from friends is meet.E.]
Job 6:15-17. The conduct of Jobs three friends in disappointing his hopes, illustrated by the comparison of a torrent, which in spring rushes along full and strong, but in summer is entirely dried up, an , or lying stream, as the same is described in Jer 15:18 (comp. the paronomasia in Mic 1:14, , the houses of Achzih are become a lying stream to the kings of Israel).
Job 6:15. My brethren have been false as a torrent, i.e., my friends, whom I have loved as brothers [, placed first with special emphasis],he mentions them all, because Eliphaz had spoken in the name of all (Job 5:27)have borne themselves treacherously towards me, have ministered to me an empty semblance of comfort, like the dried-up water of a wadi.As the bed of torrents which overflow. not, which vanish away (Hirzel, Delitzsch [Hengst., E. V., Con., Dav., Noy., Carey, Ren.]), for while passing away, or vanishing, may indeed be predicated of the water of a brook, it cannot be used of the brook itself. Moreover, the continuation of the description given in the following verse, assumes the torrents to be full, not as yet in course of disappearing [and so Ewald, Dillmann, Schlott. Wemyss].
Job 6:16. Turbid are they from ice: black, foul, dark; here in the literal or physical sense, different from Job 5:11.The snow hides itself in them; or: down upon which () the snow hides itself; a constr. prgnans, comp. Gesen., 141[ 138].
Job 6:17. At the time when heat comes to them they are cut off [lit., made silent]. at the time when, or so soon as they are warmed. [ in the constr. state, at the beginning of a temporal clause, with omission of the relative: see Ewald, 286, i; 332 d]. , Pual of , a poetic variant of (Eze 21:3; Pro 16:27), to burn, to parch, to glow; [and so E. V., Ew., Schlott., Del., Dillm., Dav., Carey, Hengst.According to Ges., Frst. Con., the meaning is: at the time they are poured off, or flow off; i.e., when the heat begins to melt the snow on the mountains. But as the first result of that is filling up the channels, the sense would be somewhat strained.E.]. When it is hot, they are dried up [lit., extinguished] from their place:, in its becoming hot; i.e., when it is hot. The suffix is to be taken as neuter, not (with Hirzel) to be referred to an that is understood; (when it, the time of the year, becomes hot); comp. Ewald. 295, a.
c. Job 6:18-20. A further description of the disappointment he had met with from his friends by a continuation of the simile of the treacherous torrents.
Job 6:18. The paths of their course wind about, they go up into the waste and vanish.If, with the Masor. text, we read , the rendering here given is the only one that is admissible; the ways or paths of their course are in that case the beds of the torrents, which go winding about, and thus favor the rapid extinction of the torrent; their going up into the waste ( ) is their gradual evaporation into the air, their ascent in vapors and clouds; comp. Isa 40:23; so correctly Mercerus: in auras abeunt, in nihilum rediguntur; so also Arnh., Delitzsch [Good, Barnes, Bernard, Words., Elzas]. Most modern expositors, however, correct the text here, and in the following verse to , plur. of (or also , plur. of , way, caravan), and translate either: the caravans of their way turn aside [a rendering, however, which is founded on the Masoretic text, regarding as constr., and the meaning being the caravans along their way; so Conant, Davidson, Hengstenberg,E.], or: caravans turn aside their course, they go up into the wastes, and perish, [so Ewald, Schlottmann, Dillmann, Wemyss, Noyes, Carey, Rodwell, Renan, Merx]. The phrase seems indeed to harmonize well with this explanation. But in that case Job 6:18 would anticipate Job 6:19-20 in an unprecedented manner; after the statement of this verse, which by the expression has already carried us forward to the complete destruction of the deceived caravans, what is said in those verses would drag along as a flat tautology. According to our interpretation Job 6:18 completes the description of the treacherous torrents begun in Job 6:15, while the two verses following dwell, with that epic repose and breadth which characterize the whole description, on the impression which such dried up torrents make on the thirsty caravans of the desert. [These reasons are certainly not wanting in force, still they are not conclusive. For (1) It is agreed by all that in the next verse means caravans, and it is in the highest degree improbable that in two verses, so closely connected, describing the same general idea, and belonging to the same figure, the same word should be used in two different senses. (2). The language used, while most graphically appropriate according to one interpretation, can be adapted to the other only by strained constructions. This is especially true of the secnd member. Going up into the waste, and perishing, are surely farfetched expressions for the evaporation and disappearance of water. On the other hand they are, as Zockler admits, in admirable harmony with the other interpretation. Nothing indeed can be more exquisite in its pathos than the picture which they bring before the mind of a caravan, weary with travel and thirst, and still more weary with disappointment, winding along the channel of the torrent, wistfully exploring its dry bed for water, following its course upward, hoping that in the uplands, nearer the rivers sources, some little pool may be found; hoping thus from day to day, but in vain, and so wasting away into a caravan of skeletons, until at last in the far off wastes it perishes. (3). The objection that this interpretation anticipates what follows, and thus produces a tame and dragging tautology, is answered by observing that the chief motive of the description just given is not to excite pity for the fate of such a caravan, but to justify Jobs resentment at the treachery of which the dry wady is the type. Hence in the verses following Job emphasizes the disappointment which the caravan of Tema and Sheba (named by way of vivid individualization) would feel in such a plight. This is the burden of his accusation of his friends, they had disappointed, deceived him. This was to him, at this time, a more bitter fate than his destruction would have been; so that from his point of view, Job 6:19-20, so far from being an anti-climax, contain the very climax of his sorrow.The suggestions to change either to Kal, (Frst), or to Piel, (Ewald) are unfortunate. No species could express more happily than the Niphal the helpless, semi-passive condition of an exhausted caravan, such as is here described, winding around, hither and thither, led by the channel in the search for water.E.]
Job 6:19. The caravans of Tema looked: to wit, caravans of the Ishmaelitish Arabian tribe of (Gen 25:15), in northern Arabia (Isa 21:14; Jer 25:23), which is mentioned here by way of example; so likewise in the next clause , as to which see Job 1:15.[The companies of Sheba hoped for them. is by most referred to the torrents; by Schlottmann, however, it is regarded as Dat. commodi, and so suggesting the eagerness of their search. E ] The Perfects in this and the following verse give to the whole description the appearance of a concrete historical occurrence.
Job 6:20. They were put to shame by their trust: lit. because one trusted; comp. Ewald, 294, b. The phrase describes by individualization, wherefore it is unnecessary, with Olsh., to amend to the plur. , or with Bttcher to read (a form which nowhere occurs). They came thither (the fem. suffix in in the neuter sense; comp. Job 6:29), and became red with shame; as the result, namely, of their having been disappointed.Observe the wonderful beauty of this whole illustration, which terminates with this verse. It is no less striking than clear and intelligible. The friendship of the three visitors was once great, like that rushing torrent of melting snow; now, however, in the heat of temptation, it has utterly vanished, so that the sufferer, thirsting for comfort, but meeting instead, first with silence, and afterwards with sharp and heartless censure, finds himself ignominiously deceived, like a company of travellers betrayed by a lying brook.
4. Second Division.Second Long Strophe (subdivided like the first into shorter strophes of 3, 4, and 3 verses respectively); Job 6:21-30. The complaint concerning the faithlessness of the friends is continued [in simple, non-figurative language], passing over, however, near the close (in strophe c: Job 6:28 seq.) into an appeal for the renewal of their former friendliness.
a. Job 6:21-23. [The illustration applied, and the unfaithfulness of the friends shown from the unselfishness of the demands which Job had made on their friendship].
Job 6:21. Verily, so are ye now become nothing. introduces the ground of the preceding comparison of the friends to the treacherous torrents: for now (for as you now conduct yourselves towards me) you are become a nothing, a nullity, to wit, for me; I have nothing at all in you, neither comfort nor support. Such is the explanation according to the Masoretic reading: ; here not means nothing, as in one instance the Chald. (=): Dan 4:32. [Comp. , Job 5:24; also the similar use of , Job 24:25]. According to the regular Hebrew usage, we should certainly expect: or ; still the Targ. justifies our construction (adopted among modern expositors by Umbreit, Vaih., Schlottm., Hahn, Delitzsch [E. V., Frst, Davidson, Noyes, Wordsworth, Rodwell, Renan], etc.). According to the Kri , which in many MSS. is the reading even of the text, instead of , the explanation would be: ye are become that [the same]; i.e. ye are become a deceitful , Job 6:15, which, however, hardly gives a tolerable sense. Still more unsatisfactory is the rendering favored by the LXX., Vulg, Pesh., Luth., etc., according to which the reading should be , instead of , Ye are become to me. J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Olshausen, Dillmann, also read for (), and in addition amend to at the beginning of the verse: so are ye become to me. This conjecture certainly yields a complete satisfactory sense; but the sentence as it stands with commends itself by its bolder and more comprehensive form of expression.You see a terror, and are dismayed.The words and form a paronomasia which cannot well be reproduced in a translation: the same paronomasia between and occurs also in Job 37:24; Psa 40:4 [Psa 40:3]; Psa 52:8 [Psa 52:6]; Zec 9:5. By [E. V. casting down, but rather from to be broken, crushed, metaphorically with fear: hence that which causes terror.E.] Job means the fearful calamity which has come upon him, in the presence of which his friends stand astonished and dismayed, thinking they had to do with one who was, in some extraordinary sense, an enemy of God.
Job 6:22-23. [Their cowardice in now renouncing their friendship is all the more striking, forasmuch as he has required of them no sacrifice, or heroic achievement in his behalf, a test before which a false friendship commonly fails, butfor such is his thoughtonly the comfort of words, and the aid of sympathy.Dillmann.]
Job 6:22. Did I ever say then, Give to me, and bring presents to me from your wealth?[, is it that?was your failure because I ever said? , Ewald 226, d. Green. 119:4]. The question is in a vein of derision: Did I ever require any special sacrifice of you? [and in Job 6:23] did I ever demand of you anything else, any other effort or achievement, than the exhibition of genuine compassion, of true brotherly sympathy? here means wealth (opes), as in Pro 5:10; Lev 26:10. Elsewhere we find used in this sense.
Job 6:23. [And deliver me out of the enemys hand, and redeem me from the hand of the oppressor (Renan: brigands)?] We are not specially to think here of a deliverance, or a redemption by means of a ransomnot, therefore, of a pecuniary ransom, although this thought is not to be excluded altogether.
b. Job 6:24-27. [A challenge to be convicted of wrong-doing, and a bitter upbraiding of the cruelty which had fastened on words spoken in agony.]
Job 6:24. Teach me, then will I be silent (i.e. I will cease my complaint); and wherein I have erred show me. From this urgent request, that he be openly instructed and admonished in regard to that of which he is assumed to be guilty, it is abundantly evident, that the conduct of his friends, when for seven days they sat with him in silence, had been felt by him as a mute accusation on their part, and a sore mortification to himself.
Job 6:25. How sweet are words of rectitude [i.e. right words]! it is best to take as synonymous with (comp. Psa 119:103), how sweet, how pleasant are, etc. According to this rendering, which is favored by the Targ. (also by Raschi, Schultens, Rosenm., Ewald, Schlottmann, Dillmann [Frst, Renan, Wordsworth], etc.), the question in the second member of the verse, being introduced with an adversative , expresses a contrast with the first member: but what does reproof from you reprove? i.e. what does it avail or accomplish? , a substantive Inf. Absol. [used as subj., a very rare construction; comp. Pro 25:27]. The construction adopted by the LXX., Aq., apparently also by the Pesh. and Vulg., is etymologically admissible. According to this, means: to be sick, weak, in a bad condition, the sense of the passage being: Why are the words of rectitude [i.e. my words] poorly esteemed by you? why do they seem to you worthy of blame? This explanation, however, which is that essentially followed by Luther, Hahn, Ebrard [Umbreit, Hengst., Merx, who, instead of , reads , the righteous man], etc., is made less probable in that it renders by wherefore. Others (Kimchi, Delitzsch, v. Gerl.), [so also E. V., Ges., Good, Noyes, Barnes, Conant, Davidson, Carey, Rodwell, Elzas], render: How forcible, how penetrative, are words of rectitude! Whereas , however, can scarcely be the same with , this rendering lacks the necessary etymological justification. The same is true of Hupfelds combination of the verb with ,, acerbum acrem esse: how bitter words of uprightness can be! Here, moreover, the rendering of by quantumvis is doubtful. [The word is used elsewhere twice in Niphal, as here: 1Ki 2:8, of a grievous curse, or a curse inevitably carried out (Del.); Mic 2:10, of sore, unsparing destruction; and once in Hiphil: Job 16:3, in the sense of goading, provoking, and so stirring up to speak. The analogy of these passages favors the rendering: How forcible! To this add: (1) It agrees better with the subject, upright, honest, sincere words. Words which keep the straight way of truth, go to the heart.Del. Comp. what is said of the word of God in Heb 4:12. (2) The parallelism favors it, as thus: Words which proceed from sincerity are effective: they have force and pungency; but the words which have proceeded from you ()what force, what pungency, what reproving power, have they?E.]
Job 6:26. Do you think to reprove (mere) words?i.e. will you, to justify your censorious treatment of me, fasten on my wordson words spoken by me without reflection in the excitement of passion (Job 3), instead of on the fact of my blameless conduct? The whole question attaches itself closely to Job 6:25 b, and defines more closely the sense of that interrogative sentence: Do you think to make your reproof efficacious and profitable [exactly so: a good definition of : see above.E.] in this way, by directing attention only to those words of mine? [, Inf. constr. Hiph. with Pattach: Grn. 126, 1]. Notwithstanding the words of a despairing man go to the wind, i.e., notwithstanding you should know that the words of one in despair () are necessarily inconsiderate and spoken at random, are therefore to be judged leniently, and not pressed to the quick. The same sense is also obtained if (with Delitzsch, etc.) be treated as a circumstantial clause, and translated: while nevertheless the words, etc. Our adversative rendering of the however makes the expression stronger. [The preposition in is rendered with slight variations. Ewald, Dillmann, Hengstenberg, Merx, like Zckler, render it, speaking to the wind. E. V., Con., Dav., Elz., Rod.: as the wind. And so Carey: for wind. Schlott., Noyes, Wem.: but wind. Delitzsch and Renan: belong to the wind (that they may be carried away by it, not to the judgment, which retains and analyzes them. Del.).]
Job 6:27. Ye would even cast lots for the orphan, and ye would traffic for your friend.The severest reproach which Job pronounces on his opponents in this discourse. [Renan introduces the verse with the objurgation, Traitors!] The two Imperfects express what they would do in a given case, and are thus conditional or subjunctive, as in Job 3:13; Job 3:16. With is to be supplied , after 1Sa 14:42. [Some suppose the figure in both clauses to be taken from hunting, and supply accordingly , net, in the first: You spread a net, and dig a pitfall for your friend. Hengstenberg would supply stones: you would stone your friend. E. V., Good, Elz.: cause to fall, i.e., overwhelm, fall upon. But as Zckler proceeds to say]: A casting of lots for an orphan might take place when unrelenting creditors appropriated the children of their deceased debtors as slaves by way of payment. Comp. 2Ki 4:1. With in the second member, Rosenm., Gesenius, Heiligstedt, supply , a grave [so also E. V., Good, Noyes, Wem., Carey, Rod., Elz., Hengst.]. But partly the context, partly the similar expression in Job 40:30, as also passages like Hos 3:2, Deu 2:6, assure the signification of to be: to conclude a bargain for any one, to sell, to traffic in any one, viz., as slaves. Comp. Gen 37:27 sq. [So Ewald, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Wordsworth, and Schlottmann, who argues that the ellipsis of in the first member is without any analogy: that for the ellipsis of in the second the use of in Psa 35:7 cannot be cited, seeing that there occurs in the first member, and that the construction with , to dig a pit against one, would be harsh and unprecedented.]
Job 6:28-30. [An urgent appeal to consider the righteousness of his cause. Observe the sudden and touching transition from the bitter outbreak of Job 6:27, as though himself alarmed at the violent expression of his feelings, the reaction bringing back with it something of the old trust in his friends.E.]
Job 6:28. And now be pleased to look on me.Immediately following upon the severest reproof the discourse changes its tone to that of mild entreaty and adjuration. , to turn the face to one, to consider attentively. Comp. Ecc 2:11. And of a truth I will not lie to your face:i.e., in maintaining unrighteously and untruthfully my innocence. is the particle used in a negative oath, or a solemn asseveration that this or that is not the case (Gesen. 155 [ 152], 2 f.). [The rendering of E. V.: for it is evident unto you, if I lie, is unfortunate in its use of the present, is; for as Conant says: though it was so clear to Job himself, he could not assert that it was so evident to them. This objection, however, is obviated, if, with Gesenius, we supply the future: it will be before your face (i.e., evident.) if I lie; or if, with Hengstenberg, we supply the optative: let it lie before your face (i.e., let it be determined by you, be ye judges) whether I lie. In favor of the one or the other of these constructions, which are substantially the same, it may be said: (1) It establishes a better connection of the first and second members of this verse. Having entreated them to give earnest attention to his case, he assures them that they will be satisfied with his truth. (2) It is in better harmony with the suddenly subdued and almost plaintive tone which characterizes this strophe than the strenuous asseveration that he would not lie to their faces. (3) It brings the structure of the verse into conformity with that of the verse following, where we have the same earnest entreaty, followed by the same assurance of a satisfactory conclusion. (4) Job 6:30 seems to be the expansion of the same thought. (5) The construction is much simpler and less harsh.E.]
Job 6:29. Return, I prayi.e., not: come hither in order to hear my complaint (Schlott., Kamph.), which would be trivial and inexpressive; nor: begin again (i.e., try it again, v. Gerl., Del.),a sense which cannot be referred to the simple objectless . But the meaning is rather: Return from the path of hostility and unfriendly suspicion towards me, on which you have entered. For the absolute use of , to be converted, to return (to Jehovah), comp. Jer 3:12; Jer 3:14; Jer 3:22; 2Ch 6:24, etc. Let there be no wrongviz: on your side, through your continuing to torture me, etc. Yea, return, I am still right therein.With the Kri we are to read , a reiterated urgent request that they should hear him without prejudice. The Kthibh, , admits of no satisfactory explanation. [One commentator, e.g., supposes that Job is here addressing his wife! Some (e.g., Hengstenberg) that he is addressing his cause (personified), which his friends had dismissed as adjudicated. Others, as Schultens, regard the word as Inf. with suffix; my return, i.e., I will return, or again go over my case, and establish its righteousness. But, as Schlottmann remarks, this is undoubtedly one of the few cases where the Kri is to be preferred. Renan, following, perhaps, a hint already furnished by the LXX.: (probably reading ), supposes that, stung by Jobs reproaches, especially in Job 5:27, the friends had made a movement to depart. An ingenious but a needless conjecture, which weakens the importunity of Jobs appeal for an impartial trial of his cause.E.] I am still right therein, [or lit.] my righteousness is still in it, i.e., in the mutter which we are considering [in my cause]; I still stand innocent and unconvicted in this business.
Job 6:30. Is there wrong on my tongue?i.e., have I really thus far (in that complaint, Job 3) spoken wrong? He does not therefore admit that in his vehement murmuring and cursing and lamenting he has erred; he will only acknowledge that his words have been spoken to the wind, i.e., thoughtlessly (Job 5:26), not that they are blameworthy or godless. Or does not my palate ( here, as in Job 12:11, as the organ of taste) [here of course in the figurative sense of moral discrimination] discern calamities?i.e., do I not possess so much of a right judgment and understanding that I can discern the true import of my misfortune, that I can know whether my suffering is or is not deserved? To assign to another sense than that which belongs to the sing. in Job 5:2, is not suitable. Schlottmann, Dillmann, etc., interpret it rightly in the sense of calamities, misfortunes, while most expositors adopt the signification, wickedness, iniquity (the wickedness which completely contaminates feeling and utterance. Del.), a signification which is scarcely supported by its use in other passages. [Besides its correspondence with the sing. in Job 5:2, the sense here given for is favored by the comparison of suffering with food in Job 6:6-7, and also by the circumstantial and painful description of his sufferings, into which he plunges in the following chapter. This view, moreover, results in less tautology than the other.E.] For the sense of the passage, as a whole, it matters not whether we translate as above, or: does not my palate discern iniquity? In any case, Job by this question gives evidence of his entanglement in Pelagian notions, under the influence of which he will plead guilty neither to error nor to wrong.
5. Third Division: A return to the previous lamentation because of his fate, and an accusation of God: Job 7:1-21.
First Long Strophe: Job 7:1-11, (subdivided into two strophes of 6 and 5 verses): A lamentation over the wearisomeness of life on earth in general, and over his own hopeless condition in particular.
a. Job 7:1-6. [Jobs weariness of life on account of its misery and brevity. In antagonism to Eliphazs fascinating picture of the Supreme, the Father directing all the currents of creations influence for mercy and good, Jobs inflamed eye throws up against the sky in gigantic outline an omnipotent slave driver, and fills the earth with miserable wretches overworked by day, and shaken by feverish weariness and dreams of torture by night.Davidson].
Job 7:1. Has not man a warfare on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hireling?[The fact that Job in ver 1 brings his suffering into connection with the misery of the whole human race, indicates progress in relation to Job 3, where, predominantly at least, he limited himself to the representation of his individual condition. By this advance the question concerning Gods righteousness and love receives a much more forcible significance. The question is no longer about a solitary exception, which may have a secret personal reason for its existence. Job now stands forth as representative of the whole of suffering, oppressed humanity, arraigning God because of His injustice. Hengstenberg. , used continually in Job, as in the Psalms, of man in his weakness and mortality; comp. Job 5:17; Job 7:17; Job 13:9; Job 14:19; Job 15:14; Job 25:6; or of man in his insignificance and impurity as contrasted with God: comp. Job 4:17; Job 9:2; Job 10:4-5; Job 25:4.E.]. By many the verse is translated: Has not man a service [the service, viz., of a vassal] on earth, and are not his days as the days of a hireling? (so e.g. Hahn, Vaih., etc.). But in the original text the figure first presented is rather the military one (, military service, soldiering, as in Job 14:14; Isa 40:2; Dan 10:1) [in silent antithesis to Eliphazs fascinating picture, Job 5, Dav.], while the figure taken from the peaceful life of a tiller of the soil (, hireling, one who works for wages, comp. Job 14:6) follows in the second member. This latter comparison, belonging to the sphere of agricultural life, is continued in the more detailed description of the following verse.
Job 7:2. Like a slave, who pants after the shadow [soil. of evening; see Gesenius], and like a hireling who waits for his wages. The used in each member is not the continuation of the in , Job 7:1, but stands in cor-relation to the which begins Job 7:3, that verse being the apodosis to this. [For the reason just given the translation should not be: as a slave he pants, etc. Neither: as a slave pants, which would be ]. that which is earned by working, wages: comp. Pro 21:6; Jer 22:13; also the synonymous , Lev 19:13; Isa 40:10, etc. [The reward of the days labor is to be understood as being looked forward to by the laborer here not so much for its own sake, as because it marks the close of the days work, because having received his wages he rests.E.]
Job 7:3. So months of wretchedness are allotted to me, and nights of distress are appointed for me. is translated by Delitzsch [Schlott., Hengst., Davidson, E. V.]: months of disappointment, which certainly corresponds more nearly to the literal signification of (vanity, nothingness, falsehood, the opposite of ), but furnishes no point of comparison that is altogether suitable in connection with what precedes. Moreover the signification: wretchedness, misfortune is sufficiently assured for by Job 15:31; Isa 30:28 [and so Umbr., Ew., Dil., Noy., Con.]. , lit., I am made to inherit, are appointed to me as my lot (), with accus. of the object. The Passive expresses the compulsoriness of the lot (Hirzel). [A pathetic word, made to inherit, through no cause or fault of mine, it is the mere arbitrary effect of the will of him whose slave I am. adds force to the passive, both show the non-participation of Job in causing his troubles, and his helplessness to dispose of them. Davidson]. From the months of wretchedness to the nights of distress, there is a progression in the thought; the latter are related to the former as the sharp and sudden destruction effected by a bombardment to the preceding and accompanying sufferings which a protracted siege produces among those who are beleaguered. [Dillmann states the progression thus: in contrast with the days of the hireling are the months and even the nights of the misery. It seems scarcely necessary, however, to assume a progression here. The term months indicates the long duration of the suffering, the term nights indicates its incessant recurrence, and is chosen, moreover, because it is in the night that the pressure of pain is most keenly felt.E.]. Our verse is, however, one of the most decisive evidences that our poet imagined a wide interval to have elapsed between the outbreak of Jobs disease and the beginning of the controversy; comp. above, or Job 2:11.[On , 3d plur., used indefinitely without any thought of the real agency concerned in the action spoken of, and where the English would require a passive construction, see Green, 243, 2, b].
Job 7:4. When I lie down, then I think, [lit., say]: When shall I arise, and the night be gone? is commonly translated: and the night lengthens itself, the night stretches itself out long (, Piel of , written with Pattach: comp. Gesenius, 52 [51], Rem. 1). The accents, however, favor rather the rendering adopted by Raschi, Mercerus, Rosenm., Delitzsch, [and so E. V., Noyes, Con., Dav., Carey], according to which is the const. st. of a verbal noun from , the meaning of the noun being flight, departure, and the sense of the entire clause being: when will the flight of the evening be? when will the evening come to an end? That is by this interpretation regarded as synonymous with furnishes no valid reasoning against this rendering; for the word has this meaning no less according to the other rendering, and in general means this quite often in Hebrew; comp. Gen 1:5 seq. [The night is described by its commencement, the late evening, to make the long interval of the sleepiness and restlessness of the invalid prominent. Delitzsch].And I became weary with restlessness until the dawn., here as in Job 3:9, the morning dawn. , lit., the rolling around, tossing to and fro on the bed. The word forms a paronomasia with , as Ebr. and Delitzsch rightly remark. [Thus in English: When will the night toss itself away? And I am weary with tossings until the dawn. And this paronomasia is not without weight as an argument in favor of the interpretation given above to in Job 7:4.E.].
Job 7:5. My flesh is clothed with worms and crusts of earth. , decay, rottenness, which passes over into worms, vermin; comp. Job 17:14; Job 21:26., for which the Kri substitutes the common reading of the Talmud, , is elsewhere clods of earth; here crusts, scabs, such as cover indurated ulcers [used here, says Delitzsch, because of the cracked, scaly, earth-colored skin of one suffering with elephantiasis].My skin heals (, shrinks together, contracts, becomes hard and stiff) and breaks out again, lit., is again melted, [festers again], , a variant. of (comp. Ewald, 114 b) [Green, 139, 3], Psa 58:8.
Job 7:6. My days pass away more swiftly than a weavers shuttle. not the web itself, as the Pesh. and Vulg. render it, but the shuttle, , radius; comp. Job 9:25, where precisely, as here, swift motion forms the point of comparison.And vanish without hope, i.e. without hope of deliverance (comp. Job 9:25-26), not: without hope of a better lot after death, as Hirzel, Hahn, Delitzsch, etc., explain, with a reference to Job 14:12; Job 14:19. The reference to the life beyond is as yet altogether foreign to the connection. [The rendering of Good, Wemyss, Elzas assumes to mean yarn for the web, the verb to be slight, and thread; and so they translate:
My days are slighter than yarn,
They are finished by the breaking of the thread.
What is thus gained, however, in the symmetrical completeness of the figure, is lost in depth of feeling. There is inexpressible pathos in the sentiment that his days are wasting away () without hope; the use of the preposition , lit. in the extreme end, at the vanishing point, being also exquisitely appropriate.E.]
b. Job 7:7-11 : A plaintive plea for Gods compassion, out of which, however, the suppliant sinks back into hopeless lamentation.
Job 7:7. Remember that my days are a breath (, wind, breath of air, the same as , Job 7:17), that mine eye shall never behold prosperity. Lit. will not return to see; or mine eye will nevermore see good,when it is broken off, that is, in death, when, therefore, this earthly life of mine shall reach its end. It is not the absolute cessation of all sight, observation, consciousness, life in general, that Job here affirms of the Hereafter, but only that he will cease to behold happiness and well-being (, as in Job 2:10; Job 21:13; Job 36:11; Psa 4:7 (6); Psa 25:13; Psa 34:13 (12), etc.), that days of prosperity will never return: and so in the three verses following.
Job 7:8-9. The eye of him who looketh after me shall see me no more. , the eye of my beholder, my visitor, and so of my friend, who comes to see me and to comfort me. So according to the reading , with the tone on the last syllable, while the accentuation for , preferred by Arnheim, Stickel, Vaihinger, etc., pausal form, would give the sense, which here is less suitable [and which Schlottmann justly characterizes as insipid]: an eye of seeing=a seeing eye. [Comp. in 2Sa 13:5; 2Ki 8:29].Thine eyes (supply: look, are turned) towards me: I am no more. The address, as in the preceding verse, is directed to God: If Thou seekest me there, I shall be no more; Thou wilt therefore be able to show me no manner of kindness. [The anthropomorphism of a heart stung by pangs of the bitterest disappointment: I have been deceived in my fondest hopes, when I looked for sympathy and help, they were not to be found. So be it! The day will come when perhaps Thou wilt feel moved to show me some kindness, buttoo late. Thou wilt look for me among the livingbut I shall not be.E.] That (the being no more is to be understood, not absolutely, but only relatively, is evident from the following verse, which, through the simile of the cloud which vanishes without leaving a trace of it behind, illustrates the hopelessness of the return of the departed from Sheol, not, however, their complete annihilation. Concerning , Hell, i.e. the underworld, the realm of the dead (to be derived, indeed, from , to demand, rather than from , to be hollow); comp. notes on Pro 1:12; Pro 2:18; Pro 7:27; Son 8:6. [ is now almost universally derived from =, to be hollow, to be deepened; and aptly so, for they imagined the Shel as under ground, as Num 16:30; Num 16:33, alone shows, on which account even here; as from Gen 37:35 onwards is everywhere used. It is, however, open to question, whether this derivation is correct: at least passages like Isa 5:14; Hab 2:5; Pro 30:15 seq. show that in the later usage of the language, , to demand, was thought of in connection with it: derived from which Shel signifies (1) the inevitable and inexorable demand made on everything earthly (an infinitive noun like ,; (2) conceived of as space, the place of shadowy duration, whither everything on earth is demanded (3) conceived of according to its nature, the divinely appointed fury which gathers in and engulfs everything on the earth.Del.]
[Job 7:9. The cloud is vanished [or consumes away), and is gone (a figure particularly expressive in the East); so he that goes down to the underworld cometh not up. See on Job 7:8.]
Job 7:10. He returns no more to his house, his place knows him not again;i.e. his home (, as in Job 8:18; Job 20:9; Psa 103:16 [with which the second member corresponds literatim]), which formerly on his return from a journey rejoiced and greeted him as it were, will not recognize him again (), even because he will not return. Of any hope of a resurrection to new life and prosperity in life Job manifestly exhibits here no trace: no more is it the case in Job 10:21; Job 14:10 seq.; Job 16:22.It is otherwise on the contrary in Job 19:25 seq.
Job 7:11. [This verse Schlottmann, Conant, Wemyss, Davidson, Carey, Renan, connect with the next strophe: while Noyes, Dillmann, Del., agree with Zckler in placing it at the end of the present strophe. Ewald and Hengstenberg treat it as an independent verse, a passionate convulsive outcry of rebellious discontent in the midst of the plaintive moaning of a crushed and helpless heart, which pervades the rest of the chapter.E.]Therefore will I also not restrain my mouth, I will speak in the anguish of my spirit:i.e. since God hears me so little, since He abandons me so pitilessly to the lot of those who dwell in the realm of the dead, therefore neither will I on my part ( for this so-called talionis, compare Eze 16:43; Psa 52:7 (5); Hab 2:9, etc.) give any heed to Him, rather will I let my grief and anguish have free course. I will complain in the anguish of my soul: lit. in the bitterness of my soul; comp. Job 10:1, as also the adjective phrase , disturbed, troubled in soul: 1Sa 1:10; 1Sa 22:2, etc.
6. Third Division. Second Long Strophe: Job 7:12-21 (consisting of two strophes of five verses each): A vehemently passionate arraignment of God on account of the unrelenting severity with which He persecutes and oppresses him.
a. Job 7:12-16. [The first conceivable cause of Jobs troubleshe might be a menace to heaven. Dav.]
Job 7:12. Am I a sea, or a monster [of the deep], that Thou ( as in Job 3:12; Job 6:11) settest a watch upon me?, guard, watch-post, an expression which strictly belongs only to the second element in the comparison, the (sea-monster, dragon, whale), being less suited to the first. A watch is set, however, on the raging and tossing sea by means of dams and dikes (comp. Job 38:8 seq.; Jer 5:22; Jer 31:35). [Schultens quotes from an Arabic poet, who calls Tamerlane a vast sea, swallowing up everything.] According to Hirzel, Delitzsch, etc., we are to understand by the Nile, and by the crocodile. This interpretation, however, rests on grounds equally insufficient with the specifically Egyptian reference which is fancied to lie in various other figures and descriptions of our book; comp. Introduction, 7. [The image must be left in all its magnitude and generality; if there is any particular reference, it is in to the tumultuous primitive abyss which God watched and confined, and still watches and enchains (Psa 104:9) lest it overwhelm the world; and in to those vast creatures with which the early waters of creation teemed, Gen 1:21.Dav. and so Schlottmann.]
Job 7:13. When I think, my bed shall comfort me., when, so often as; as in Job 5:21 b. [There is no good reason for rendering I think, rather than I say. As Hengstenberg says: In violent grief thought passes easily into words.] The whole verse is he protasis, to which Job 7:14-15 form the apodosis. My couch shall help to bear my complaint.[, the general word, place of lying; , canopied couch]. , to help to bear anything [ partitive] sublevare, as in Num 2:17; comp. Neh 4:4; Neh 4:11. [The vast images called up by the terms sea and sea-monster are very significantly followed by those of the bed and couch, as comforters and helpers sought in vain, bringing before our minds the littleness of mans lot. Schlott.] For , complaint, comp. Job 9:27; Job 10:1; Job 21:4.
Job 7:14-15. Then Thou scarest me [, liter. Thou shakest me] with dreams, and makest me to tremble through visions of the night., out of visions, and so through them, in consequence of them.So that my soul chooseth strangling. in introduces a consequent to that which precedes, and so then, in consequence of those terrifying dreams and visions, my soul chooseth strangling. Death rather than these my bones:i.e. rather than this body reduced to a skeleton; comp. Job 19:20. The in is comparative, not causaldeath which is produced from these bones (Stickel, Retschi), or againdeath from my own bones, i.e. by my own hand, suicide (Merx, Umbreit, Schlottmann, [Carey]). The last interpretation is by no means supported by , which signifies only strangling, not self-strangulation (comp. words of analogous structure like ,, and Ewald, 106, c). [Although the sing is used of self, it would be forced and against all usage to take the plur. in that sense, or in the sense of members, hands. Moreover, the usual force of after is comparative. To this add what is said in the following extract from Avicenna of the sensation of suffocation in elephantiasis. This description of himself as bones is most strikingly suggestive when compared with the conception of himself as a sea or a leviathan in Job 7:12, capable of vexing and obstructing the Almighty. There is fearful irony in the comparison of this skeleton, impotent and helpless, his very weakness a terror to himself and his onlookers, to the great heaven-assaulting ocean, lifting itself up in the consciousness of infinite power, or to some dragon of the prime in which the whole energy of creation in its youth lay compressed (Davidson).E.] With the description here given of the symptoms of elephantiasis in its advanced stages, comp. what Avicenna says in his description of the same: During sleep there come frequent atrabilious dreams. The breathing becomes excessively hard and labored. There is severe constriction of the chest, and extreme hoarseness. The lips become thick and black, and the body is covered with lumps, and becomes entirely black. It often becomes necessary to open the jugular vein to relieve the hoarseness and the tendency to suffocation, etc.
Job 7:16. I loathe itnot: I pass [waste] away (Rosenm., Stick.) [Conant, Renan], but I despise, viz., lifeI am disgusted with life. That this is to be supplied as the object of the verb, which is used absolutely, is made apparent by the clause immediately following: I would not live always. [Those who render disappear, take the remainder of the line as in like manner affirming Jobs mortality. Thus Conant: I waste away, I shall not live always.] Let me alonei.e., desist from continually assailing and besieging me, from the of Job 7:12. The request is addressed to God (not to Jobs own life, as Hahn thinks), and expresses not a humble modest desire, but a stormy demand on the part of Job, sorely distressed as he was, and so weary of life. [Hence Davidson renders it: Away from me!] On the reason given for this request: for my days are a breath, comp. Job 5:7 a (=).
b. Job 7:17-21. [The other conceivable cause of Jobs sufferings, sin. Dav. The discourse in these verses assuming a calmer tone, as if to justify the vehemence of his doubt. Ew.]
Job 7:17. What is man that Thou magnifiest him, and that Thou settest thy mind on him?These questions (in this and the following verse) parody in deliberate form and with bitter irony the words of Psa 8:5 sq. (comp. Psa 144:3; Lam 3:23). There it is said that God exalts puny man to a kingly and divine position among His creatures, and distinguishes him continually with new tokens of His favor; here, that instead of ignoring him, He makes too much of him, by selecting him, insignificant as he is, as the object of ever new and ceaseless sufferings. Del. [Davids What is man that thou shouldst think of him to bless him? is turned into What is man that thou shouldst think of him to curse him? Dav. Herein lies the wonderful irony of the passage. Wordsworth: Why shouldst thou break a fly upon a wheel?]
Job 7:18. And that thou visitest him every morning?On , to visit, inspect, comp. above on Job 5:24, also Psa 8:5. And every moment triest him?, i.e., puttest his patience and power to the test continually, and by sufferings which are ever renewed.
Job 7:19. How long dost Thou not look away from me?, lit.: how much? how often? here in the sense of quamdiu, construed with the Imperf. in the sense of a Future, as in Psa 35:17 with , to look away from, as in Isa 22:4; here in the special sense of turning away from any one a look expressive of displeasure and punishment, exactly as in Job 14:6, where moreover is connected with . Nor lettest me alone till I swallow my spittlei.e., for one little instanta proverbial expression for a minimum of time, in use also among the Arabians and Persians; comp. Schultens and Umbreit on the passage.
Job 7:20. If I have sinned (, an elliptical conditional clause, comp. Ewald, 357 b), what could I do (thereby) to Thee?[the fut, in the potential sense]: i.e., what harm would I thereby occasion to thee? what detriment would I cause to Thy self-sufficient greatness and glory? (comp. Job 35:3-8, especially Job 7:6). Ewald and Olshausen construe as a relative clause of more precise specification, dependent on , and so equivalent to an accus. of this verb: If I have sinned in what I do to thee. Grammatically possible, but much tamer and less emphatic than our rendering. [If I have sinned in what I do unto thee, why hast thou made me thy mark? would be, says Conant, a challenge without any pretence of justification. It would certainly involve a meaningless non sequitur. If Job had sinned, that certainly was a reason why God should set Himself against him. The clause is thus needed to mediate between and .E.] Thou watcher of men!This appellation, which of itself is one that conveys praise of God and comfort to men (comp. Psa 121:3; Isa 27:3), is used here not sensu bono, but with bitter irony, in the sense of an austere pitiless scrutinizer of men, without giving it, however, the shamefully frivolous sense given in Renans rendering: O espion de lhomme. [This sense of being continually tracked, of having the Divine shadow ever at his heels, following him about with evil eye, speechless but malevolent, puts the sufferer out of himself. How long wilt thou not look away from me? What is the meaning of this horrible espionage? Davidson.] Wherefore dost Thou make me thy point of attack?, the object against which one rushes, or impinges ( ), an expression of not exactly the same, but yet of similar signification with , target, in Job 16:12; Lam 3:12. [Such an obstacle the Deity had made to Himself of Job. Job was in His way. He was perpetually striving against Hima tremendous figure. Dav. This is vividly put: the conception of a perpetual stumbling-block in Gods way, however, is scarcely the one conveyed by the term. The idea here and in Job 16:12 is that Job was a mark, against which God deliberately directed His power. There the figure is drawn from archery; here from war.E.] So that I am become a burden to myself: ( consec. as in Job 7:15 a; the whole expression as in 2Sa 15:33). The LXX. read here ( ), and moreover the Masoretic tradition affirms that one of the eighteen corrections of the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible ( ) obtains here, the original having been set aside on account of its objectionable meaning [being too bold or blasphemous]wherefore became I a burden to Thee?and exchanged for the less objectionable . In any case, this latter reading gives a striking sense.
Job 7:21. And why dost Thou not pardon my transgression? (with the vowel e, according to Ewald, 152 b) [Green, 75, 1], here=. The question expresses what was to be expected, instead of the incessant hostile assaults of God on him, the presumed sinner, if he had really transgressed,namely, the pardon of his guilt, since verily his end was now nigh. [And put away my iniquity.According to Hengstenberg, there lies a certain irony in the use by Job of the strong expressions and to designate the sins which to his consciousness proceeded only from infirmity.] For (to pass over, to overlook, ) as a synonym of , to bear, to forgive, comp. 2Sa 12:13; 2Sa 24:10. For now shall I lie in the dust, and if Thou seekest after me, I am no morei.e., death will soon hurry me away, and Thou wilt then have no further opportunity to show me favor; unless therefore Thou doest this immediately, Thy character will be seen to be that of a cruel being, who unnecessarily torments men. This reason for the question: why will not God forgive without further question or delay? is akin to the thought in Job 7:7 a, 8b, and 16b.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. In poetic elevation of thought, nervous strength of expression, and in wealth of figurative ornamentation, this first discourse of Job is not inferior to that of Eliphaz. It resembles the same also in that it conducts the argument more upon the basis of that Divine wisdom which belongs to mankind universally than of that which is specifically theocratic, and serves to express a religious consciousness which is firmly rooted in faith in a personal God (Eloah, Shaddai). That, however, which it sets forth as the contents and voice of this consciousness, with its faith in Jehovah, is no less obnoxious to the charge of one-sidedness, of beclouding the truth by many wrong representations and religiously impure sentiments, and indeed of partially eclipsing the same by grave errors, than the contents and tendency of that discourse of Eliphaz. There are one-sided representations, partly related and partly opposed to those of Eliphaz, to which we see Job here giving his adherence. Like him he is inclined to regard being a man and committing sin, or sensuousness and sinfulness, as inseparably connected together, and accordingly to look on the forgiveness of sin by God as a matter of courseas something which is to be expected on the part of man without giving himself any further concern on the subject (Job 7:21; comp. Job 6:14; Job 7:7-8; Job 7:16). But in the disposition which he shows to make his sin as small as possible, to represent himself as in the main guiltless, and his friends as unjustly suspecting his innocence (Job 6:10; Job 6:24; Job 6:26; Job 6:29 sq.; Job 7:20), he in turn comes in conflict with Eliphaz, the zealous champion of the universal sinfulness of all men. In consequence of the unqualified way in which he rejects the conjectures of the latter respecting his moral guiltiness in the matter of his suffering, he exhibits a stronger pelagian bias, greater self-righteousness, and more of the conceited arrogance of virtue, than his opponent. And when he upbraids him, and the two other friends who are like-minded with him, with a want of love, with a lack of gentleness, and even with a faithless neglect of their duty to comfort him (Job 6:11-20; especially Job 6:14 sq.), this reproach seemseven quite apart from the bitter satirical tone in which it is clothedin so far intemperate and exaggerated, in that he most decidedly declines to allow himself to be charged by them with any crime whatsoever, and so finds in their conduct only unfriendliness, hostility, and bitterness, and on the other hand wholly misapprehends the partial truth of that which is said by Eliphaz in their name. So far is he from submitting to being exhorted by them to penitence, that he seems rather to think he must preach repentance and conversion to them (Job 6:29)like so many church-goers of our day, who, under the influence of pelagian prejudice and rationalistic blindness, complain of their preacher that, instead of ministering to them the consolation of the Gospel, he does nothing but exhort them to repent, thereby showing his own need of repentance (on account of fanaticism, intolerance, hypocrisy, muckerism, obscurantism [puritanical bigotry], etc.). Comp. Hengstenberg, p. Job 202: It should not be overlooked that suffering would not have inflicted its crushing power on Job to such a degree if he had possessed the foundation of a theodicy in a deeper knowledge of human, and especially of his own, sinfulness. It is the lack of this that first gives to his suffering its real sting. For the sufferings of this life sometimes wax so great that a moderate knowledge of what sinfulness is will be found altogether inadequate. Jobs description in this section shows that very clearly. Its lesson is that even the mildest and most moderate pelagianism, or semi-pelagianism, must inevitably lead in its consequences to blasphemy.
The most doubtful point of antagonism to Eliphaz into which Job is led is when, instead of complying with his repeated exhortations to humble himself beneath the mighty hand of God, he falls rather into the tone of bitter, angry contention and litigation with God, and goes so far as to accuse Him of injustice and want of compassion, speaking of the poisoned arrows of the Almighty which are in him (Job 6:4), attributing to God the purpose, or at least the disposition, to crush and destroy him, even though he had in no wise sinned against Him (Job 6:9-10), charging Him with making ceaseless hostile assaults upon him, and decreeing wanton tortures for him (Job 7:12 sq.), and with reference to this giving Him in bitter sarcasm the name of a watcher of men (in the unfavorable sense of the expression), a hostile sentinel or jailer of men (Job 7:20). And these harsh and presumptuous speeches against God are accompanied by no qualifications, or partial retractions, such as we find in nearly all the lamentations of the Psalmists, or of the Prophet Jeremiah, where they make use of similar expressions, and represent God now by this, and now by that figurative expression, as their unsparing persecutor, and their stern unpitying judge. Job persists in all that he says in this direction of a doubtful character; he takes nothing of it back; he concludes his discourse immediately after the most passionate and presumptuous of these sayings has passed from his lips. Comp. Delitzsch (1:131 seq.): We should be mistaken if there were sin in the expressions in themselves considered by which Job describes Gods hostility against himself. We may compare, e.g. Lam 3:9-10 : He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone; He hath made my paths crooked; He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in the thicket. It is, moreover, not Jobs peculiar sin that he thinks God has changed to an enemy against him; that is the view which comes from his vision being beclouded by the conflict through which he is passing, as is frequently the case in the Psalms. His sin does not even consist in the inquiries, How long? and Wherefore? The Psalms, in that case, would abound in sin. But the sin is that he hangs on to these doubting questions, and thus attributes apparent mercilessness and injustice to God. And the friends constantly urge him on still deeper in this sin, the more persistently they attribute his suffering to his own unrighteousness. Jeremiah (in Job 3 of the Lamentations), after similar complaints, adds: Then I repeated this to my heart, and took courage from it: the mercies of Jehovah, they have no end; His compassions do not cease, etc. Many of the Psalms that begin sorrowfully end in the same way; faith at length breaks through the clouds of doubt. But it should be remembered that the change of spiritual condition which, e.g. in Psalms 6, is condensed to the narrow limits of a lyric composition of eleven verses, is here in Job worked out with dramatic detail as a passage of his lifes history: his faith, once so heroic, only smoulders under ashes; the friends, instead of fanning it to a flame, bury it still deeper, until at last it is set free from its bondage by Jehovah Himself, Who appears in the whirlwind.
2. Notwithstanding these manifold tokens of a profound and grievous darkening of soul from which Job suffered during this discourse, it presents scattered through it much that is true, much that is directly conducive to the knowledge and appropriation of revealed truth. To these points of light, in which is comprised whatever in the two chapters is really significant in a doctrinal and ethical respect, belong:
(a) The beautiful sentiment: To one that is despairing gentleness is due from his friends, even though he should have forsaken the fear of the Almighty (Job 6:14); a genuine pearl of ethical theological wisdom, an unconscious prophetic saying, anticipating from afar such New Testament utterances as: They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick (Mat 9:12); or: Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness (Gal 6:1); or: Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins (Jam 5:19-20; comp. 1Pe 4:8).
b. The sorrowful lamentation over the misery of human life at the beginning of Job 7 (Job 7:1-6), which, even in those parts of it that have special reference to Jobs fearful sufferings as a leper, admits of a measure of generalization, and analogical extension to the condition of all men as sinners, and as suffering in consequence of their sins. For not only that which in this earthly life, with its thousand troubles and hardships, resembles the service of the soldier and of the hireling, but also the months of evil which are to be lived through, and the nights of misery which are to be watched through, likewise the many harbingers of death and of decay, swallowing up the bodily life corroded and disintegrated by diseases of all kinds (comp. Job 7:3-5)all this even suits more or less the experience which all men have of life, inasmuch as there is no one, under the present order of existence, who is absolutely free from the law of sin and death, which through our first parents has descended upon all the race; comp. Rom 7:24-25; Rom 8:10; 2Co 4:16, etc.
c. Connected with this lamentation is the reflection upon the evanescence and vanity of the days of man on earth, as well as upon the injustice and cruelty which would be exercised, if God should treat a being so weak and frail, so much like a breath in his nothingness, only according to the severity of His justice, and not rather according to the gracious fulness of His love and mercy (Job 7:7 seq.especially Job 7:21). In Jobs sense, indeed, who does not adequately appreciate the bitter malignity and ill-desert of sin, and who is inclined, in view of the helpless moral misery of mankind, to rest his appeal for the forgiveness of his sins by God, not on the ground of its being fitting, but on a ground of formal right, this reflection is inadmissible before God, proceeding equally from the pride of the natural man, and from moral levity. It sounds almost like the frivolous remark of a Voltaire, or a Heine, like the notorious saying: Dieu me pardonnera, c est son metier! At least it enables us to forebode how frivolous men might gradually reach such an abyss of wicked principles and of outrageous continued sinning against Gods grace!But even this reflection exhibits a certain relationship to those deep and undeniable truths in respect to the weakness of the natural man, and the necessity of pointing him to the power of divine grace which alone can deliver him, and which the Old Testament embodies in such expressions as those of Psa 89:48; Psa 90:5 seq.; Psa 102:12 (11); Psa 103:14, but the New Testament in its testimonies, infinitely more consoling, to the salvation which is found only in Christ, such as Act 4:12; Rom 3:23 seq.; Rom 8:34 seq.; Rom 11:30 seq.; Gal 3:22; Eph 2:8 seq., as well as in the not less comforting assurances of the gracious hearing which our Heavenly Father will grant to all prayers addressed to Him in the name of Jesus, and in trust exercised only in His grace (Luk 11:5-13; Luk 18:1-8; Joh 14:13 seq.; Joh 16:23 seq.). Comp. Hengstenberg, p. Job 215: Job cannot once give up the thought that God is a God of love, and so it seems to him to contradict His nature if, through the immediate prospect of death, the opportunity is taken away from Him of making amends for His severity by love.
d. Finally, the way in which Job, in Job 7:7-10, expresses himself concerning his destiny after death, though not properly belonging to the luminous side of his discourse, should still be reckoned among those expressions in it which contain positive instruction, and which are important in the development of the Old Testament Revelation. In this gloomy description of the dismal prospect beyond the grave, Job is as far as possible from exhibiting any hope of a resurrection, especially such as is so distinctly and gloriously revealed in Christianity. He knows nothing of such a hope. Just as little, however, does he know anything of any annihilation of his existence, of its total extinction after death. His disconsolateness in view of certain and near death is not that of the materialistic atheist, or of the heathen sage, who, with the hope of a resurrection, abandons also all hope of immortality. When in Job 7:8, and in like manner, in Job 7:21, he speaks of soon being no more, this strong expression explains itself by means of the parallel passages which surround it, as meaning that he shall be no more on this earth, that this earthly life and earthly happiness will never again return (see Job 7:7 b; Job 7:8 b; Job 7:21 c), but that, on the contrary, he anticipates a cheerless and prospectless confinement in Hades. He recognizes an existence after death, but one that is necessarily devoid of happiness, unilluminated by a single ray of the Messianic grace of salvation glimmering from afar. His outlook into the Hereafter is essentially one with his dread of Hades, the king of terrors, the realm of a never-ending death-gloom, a desolate and horrible darkness relieved by no light (comp. Job 10:20 sq.; Job 20:9 sq.; also the similar gloomy descriptions of the condition of being in Hades in the Psalms: Psa 6:6 [Psa 6:5]; Psa 30:10 [Psa 30:9]; Psa 88:11 [Psa 88:10] sq.; Psa 115:17; in the Proverbs, in Ecclesiastes, etc.). He evidently belongs as yet to those who are groaning under the yoke of bondage to death, which preceded the coming of Christ, those whom the Epistle to the Hebrews designates as , (Heb 2:15). He stands, at least in the preceding discourse (it is otherwise later in Job 19:25 sq.), decidedly on the stand-point of those who, being as yet subject to the conomia Legis, had not learned to view the destiny of the dead in the mild light of the grace of Jesus Christ. Comp. Brentius: The condition of death or of Hades is such that by its own nature it holds all whom it embraces, and releases them not until Christ, the Son of God, shall by death descend into Hades, i.e. until He shall have died; for through Him, death and Hades being conquered, as many as have been renewed by faith are set free. Also Delitzsch (1:130 sq.): From this chaotic conception of the other side of the grave, against which even the psalmists still struggle, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead had not been set forth at the time of Job, and of the author of the book of Job. The restoration of Israel buried in exile (Ezekiel 37) first gave the impulse to it; and the resurrection of the Prince of Life, who was laid in the grave, set the seal upon it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was first of all the actual overthrow of Hades. We shall see by and by how the more his friends torment him, the more he is urged on to the longing for a future life (i.e. a bright Hereafter, full of life and being, a Hereafter worthy of the name); but the word of revelation, which could alone change desire into hope, is wanting. The more tragic and heart-rending Jobs desire to be freed by death from his unbearable suffering is, the more touching and importunate is his prayer that God may consider that now soon he can no longer be an object of His mercy.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
A sermon on the whole of the preceding discourse of Job must have two chief divisions: I. Jobs complaint concerning his friends as poor comforters, Job 6:2. Jobs arraignment of God as his cruel, merciless persecutor. In both divisions it would be necessary to set forth so much of Jobs utterances as is blameworthy, perverted, and one-sided, along with that which is of a higher character (such as, in the First Division, that passage particularly, which, from Jobs stand-point, is comparatively justifiable, in which he claims gentle treatment, Job 6:14; and in the Second Division, more particularly the opening and closing verses of chap. 7).In view of the length of the whole discourse, it will be better, for the most part, to divide it into two texts, corresponding to the usual division by chapters, having in view a final consideration of both chapters. The following thoughts from ancient and modern practical commentators may serve as hints for the homiletic treatment of particular passages.
Job 6:2 sq. Starke: The cross must be weighed not according to reason, but in comparison with the future glory, 2Co 4:17.Zeyss: That which the much afflicted Job said of the greatness, heaviness, and severity of his suffering, might with much more justice and in the truest sense be said of the suffering of our Redeemer.
Job 6:11 sq. Brentius: Most truly, and at the same time most impatiently, Job confesses that he cannot endure patiently such torments of hell. Verily, although it is impossible for the flesh to stand in judgment, in Christ all things are possible, and by His virtue even hell is conquered. When, therefore, you hear it said that no amount of fortitude will suffice to bear the wrath of God, you may learn to fear the Lord and to commit yourself to His hands, so that you may be delivered; for He says: Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.
Job 6:14 sq. Idem: Ungodly hypocritesif at any time they see one in affliction, they presently revile him with much chiding and upbraiding, and seeking out every thing about him from infancy up that is most disgraceful, if they do not report it, they at least suspect it. On the contrary, it is the nature of piety to plead, to reprove, to be urgent, , so long as the Lord spares, and grants time for repentance. For He Himself also bears the wicked with the utmost long-suffering, to the end that He might in the meanwhile by doctrine, exhortation and reproof persuade them to repentance.
Job 6:22 sq.: Osiander: Our flesh is altogether restive under the cross, and is wont to show particular resentment toward friends if they do not immediately come to our relief.Starke (on Job 6:24): A wise man is glad to be admonished when he has erred; Jam 3:17.
Job 7:1 sq. Seb. Schmidt: Each of these (the servant and the hireling) continues in perpetual toils and miseries. Every man may rightly be compared with either, seeing that throughout his life he is overwhelmed with toils and miseries, looks in vain for rest before death.Starke: Our present life is nothing else than a service. Well for us if therein we serve God; but woe be to us if we yield ourselves to the service of sin; Rom 6:13.Wohlfarth: Human life is a continuous strife and conflict; a conflict with the infirmities of the body, with the sufferings of this life, with sin! But why does thine eye look sad? Where there is strife, there is victory; and more than all, a noble prize is put before the Christian to strive for, both in this life and in the life beyond.
Job 7:5-6. Weim. Bib.: Our life is empty and fleeting, and all human beauty is perishable; Psa 102:4; Psa 144:4; Psa 103:15.Wohlfarth: How swift the ceaseless flight of time! How rapidly the moments resolve themselves into hours, the hours into days, the days into months, the months into years! How much even the longest human life resembles a short dream of the morning! Yes, our life hastes away like a weavers shuttle, like a breath, like a cloud!
Job 7:8-10. Brentius (on Job 7:9): A beautiful comparison. As a cloud passes away, vanishes, and returns not, so he who goes down into the under-world, and never returns from thence. In Hades there is no redemption through the feeling of despair, or by ones own strength or virtues, but there is abundant redemption even in hades through the Lords compassion and restoring grace. (Comp. also the words of this expositor quoted above near the end of the Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks.)
Job 7:12-16 : To those who are tried it seems as though God had shut them up in a dark prison, or had even thrust them from Him, while they are still in His hand!It is not an uncommon thing for those who are tried to be haunted by the purpose of taking their own life; these persons must not be allowed to go unwatched.Wohlfarth: How shall we overcome the temptation to suicide?
Job 7:19-21 (on Job 7:19): Cocceius: One of two things is to be desired by the godly: either that they may live without fear, that they may enjoy some good in this life, by which they may understand that God is at peace with them, and does not wish to show forth His wrath and justice towards them; or that they may die speedily. Now the godly live in perpetual afflictions and trials, or at least they are always troubled with anxiety and fear concerning them. Hence nothing is more natural than that they should desire to die at once. For truly to live without comfort is harder than to die. And so human nature is not able to bear even the least pressure of Gods wrath. Hence it is plain to see what every discourse of Jobs aims at, to wit, to possess the comfort of the Gospel.Joach. Lange: We must truly humble ourselves under the mighty and heavy hand of God (1Pe 5:6). Only then do we come to know ourselves, and become poor in spirit, when we become a real burden to ourselves (Job 7:20 c). And that is then the right way of becoming rich towards God (Mat 11:28; Luk 12:21).Starke: All saints should with Job pray God for the forgiveness of their sins (Psa 32:6). He who is assured of the forgiveness of his sins can die peacefully and joyfully, Luk 2:29.See Remarks by Hengstenberg and Delitzsch above, under Doctrinal and Ethical.
Footnotes:
[1]To him who despairs there is love from a friend [from a brother sympathy for him who is bowed down by God, in order that he may not succumb to the grief of his heart], and forsake the fear of the Almighty.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
We have in this chapter Job’s answer to Eliphaz. He entereth upon his defense, in which we see the workings of the afflicted mind; and the mingled state of grace, with human infirmity, variously displaying itself.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(1) But Job answered and said, (2) Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! (3) For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up. (4) For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.
There is a great beauty here manifesting itself, in the wish of Job for a Mediator; for I hope the Reader will not overlook what is plainly implied, in all these several expressions. Job tells Eliphaz and his friends with him, that their incompetency of knowing what his grief was, made both him and them, think lighter of it than it really was. Therefore saith Job, Oh! that it were weighed! Are not these the cries both of nature and grace, after one that could weigh them? Job perfectly knew that the Almighty, whose arrows he says were within him, could not be ignorant of the depth of his sorrows. But if there was a day’s man, a mediator, who from a perfect knowledge of his state, could graciously stand up between GOD and his soul, to plead his cause and make his peace: this would be the desire of his heart. Reader! how sweet is it to remark, the universal voice of every enlightened mind; from the first transgressor in the garden of Eden, to the coming of the promised seed, all sending forth their most fervent cries, for this glorious, gracious Mediator! Did not Adam say as much when he cried out, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid? Gen 3:10 . And did not Israel do the same, when they cried unto Moses: go thou near and hear all that the LORD our GOD shall say, and speak thou unto us, all that the LORD our GOD shall speak? Deu 5:27 . What are these instances, with many others that might be brought forward in proof, but testimonies, that it is a Mediator, the soul oppressed with sin and sorrow, hath been longing for in all ages. Reader! think of your happiness in having one, so sweetly revealed to you, and one so near to you, and so near to GOD?
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job 6:1 f
The sixth and seventh chapters are molten from end to end, and run in one burning stream…. Everything which can be said by a sick man against life is in these chapters. The whole of a vast subsequent literature is summed up here, and he who has once read it may fairly ask never to be troubled with anything more upon that side.
Mark Rutherford, The Deliverance, p. 13 f.
‘When He does smite,’ wrote General Gordon to his sister from the Red Sea in 1879, ‘His arrows are almost too sharp for one to bear: I will not say too sharp, for He tempers His wind to the shorn lamb, but it is a wearisome life, and I am tired…. The spite in my own heart and in those round me fills me with hatred of any human being. A more detestable creature than man cannot be conceived, and yet you and I are cased, or sheathed in man. But do not fear for me, for, even if He multiplies my woes a million times, He is just and upright, and will give me the necessary strength. What enrages the flesh is, that I am in a cul de sac, a road which has no dbouche, a hole out of which I see no exit. Everything I do will be misconstrued. This shows I have not faith. I do care for what man says, though, in words, I say I do not. I have not overcome the world. Read Job 6:4 ; that is the bitter feeling I have. Job was a scoffer vide chap. 12:2, 3 and so am I in heart and tongue.’
Reference. VI. 6. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No. 1730.
Job 6:8-9
In describing Dr. Donne’s grief after his wife’s death, Izaak Walton writes: ‘How grief took so full a possession of his heart, as to leave no place for joy. If it did, it was a joy to be alone, when, like a pelican in the wilderness, he might bemoan himself, without witness or restraint, and pour forth his passions like Job in the days of his affliction: “Oh that I might have the desire of my heart! Oh that God would grant me the one thing that I long for!” For then as the grave is become her house, so would I hasten to make it mine also, that we two might then make our beds together in the dark.’
Reference. VI. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1471.
Job 6:15
‘I have many friends and many enemies,’ Swift wrote to Stella, ‘and the last are more constant in their nature.’
Never man had kinder or more indulgent friends than I have had; but I expressed my own feeling as to the mode in which I had gained them, in this very year 1829, in the course of a copy of verses. Speaking of my blessings, I said, ‘Blessings of friends which to my door unasked, unhoped, have come’. They have come, they have gone; they came to my great joy; they went to my great grief.
Newman, Apologia, chap. 1.
References. VII. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2705. VII. 1 . W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches, p. 89. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 286. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1258.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Job’s Answer to Eliphaz
Job 6-7
The speech of Eliphaz, which we have already considered, was not the kind of speech to be answered off-handedly. We have been struck by its nobleness and sublimity, its fulness of wisdom; and, indeed, we have not seen any reason, such as Job seems to have seen, for denying to that great speech the merit of sympathy. Why, then, does Job break out into these lamentations? The reason appears to be obvious. We must come upon grief in one of two ways, and Job seems to have come upon grief in a way that is to be deprecated. He came upon it late in life. “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” Observe how Job comes before us a master, a chief, a very prince, a great flockmaster, and in possession of all comforts, privileges, and enjoyments usually accounted essential to solid prosperity and positive and genuine comfort Grief must tell heavily whenever it comes upon a man in such a condition. This accounts for his lamentation, and whine, and long-drawn threnody. He was not accustomed to it. Some men have been born into trouble, and they have become acclimatised; it has become to them a kind of native condition, and its utterances have been familiar as the tongue of nativity. Blessed are they who come upon grief in that method. Such a method appears to be the method of real mercy. Sad is it, or must it be, to begin life with both hands full, with estate upon estate, with luxury upon luxury, so that the poor little world can give nothing more! When grief strikes a child born under the disadvantage of riches, it must make him quail it must be hard upon him. Grief must come. The question would seem to be, When? or, How? Come it will. The devil allows no solitary life to pass upward into heaven without fighting its way at some point or other. It would seem to me as if the suggestion that Job came upon grief late in life was a kind of key to many utter ances of suffering, and many questions as to the reality and beneficence of God’s government. Yet, what is to be done? No doubt there is a practical difficulty. Who can help being born into riches? Not the child. The responsibility, then, is with the father. What do you want with everything? When are you going to stop the self-disappointing process of acquisition? You think it kind to lay up whole thousands for the boy. In your cruel kindness you start him with velvet. Secretly or openly, you are proud of him as you see him clothed from head to foot, quite daintily, almost in an aesthetic style, without a sign on his little hands of ever having earned one solitary morsel of bread. You call him beautiful; you draw attention to his form and air and whole mien, and inwardly chuckle over the lad’s prospects. Better he had been born in the workhouse! And you are to blame! You are the fool! But grief must come. You cannot roof it out with slates and tiles, nor keep it at bay with stone walls. Let us say, again and again, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth”; and you know it, because you bore the yoke in your youth. Your father, or grandfather, was quite in a small way of business: but oh, how you enjoyed the bread! You had to run an errand before breakfast, and came back with an appetite, your boy comes down late, without any soul for his food; and you think him not well, and call in aid, and elicit neighbourly sympathy! Oh, how unwise! How untrue to the system of things which God has established in his universe! Make your acquaintance with a man who has seven sons, three daughters, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she asses, and a very great household; and you might well say, What a field there is for the devil to try temptation in! Yet how to obviate the difficulty is certainly a question not easily answered. We can but approach the possible solution of the problem little by little, ordering everything in a spirit of discipline, without ever touching the meanness of oppression. It is one thing to be Job, and another to read his book. We do not read it well. We read it as if it had all been done with in an hour or two; whereas the book ought to be spaced out almost like the first chapter of Genesis. We have had occasion to say that the first chapter of Genesis would create less confusion if we inserted a millennium now and then if we punctuated it with a myriad ages here and there. But we rush through it. Quite in a hot gallop we finish the Book of Job. Who can understand such a dramatic history so reading it? Why not remember that seven days and seven nights elapsed before a word was spoken by Eliphaz, after he had seen that the grief of Job was very great? Observe where the period of silence comes in; and consider the thought that it is possible that days and nights may have elapsed as between the various speeches, setting them back in time, giving them an opportunity for taking upon themselves the right atmosphere and colour, and affording the speakers also an opportunity of uttering their grief with appropriate gesture and accent. The speeches were punctuated with sobs. The sentences were never uttered flippantly, but were drawn out as is the manner of sorrow, or were ejected, thrown out, with a jerk and hurry characteristic of some moods of grief. Let us allow, then, that the speech of Eliphaz had been uttered, and had lain as it were some time in the mind of Job. Grief delights in monologue. Job seems scarcely to lay himself down mentally upon the line adopted by Eliphaz. It is most difficult to find the central line of Job’s speech, and yet that very difficulty would seem to show the reality of his grief, the tumult of his ungovernable emotion. Too much logic would have spoiled the grief. Reasoning there is, but it comes and goes; it changes its tone now hardly like reason in its logical form; now a wave, an outburst of heart-sorrow; and then coming firmly down upon realities it strikes the facts of life as the trained fingers of the player might strike a chord of music.
Note how interrogative is the tone of Job’s speech, and found an argument upon its interrogativeness. More than twenty questions occur in Job’s reply. He was great, as grief often is, in interrogation. What do these marks of interrogation mean? They almost illustrate the speech; for he who asks questions after this fashion is as a man groping his way in darkness. A blind man’s staff is always asking questions. You never saw a blind man put out his hand but that hand was really in the form of an interrogation, saying, in its wavering and quest, Where am I? What is this? What is my position now? Am I far from home? Do I come near a friend? The great speeches of Demosthenes have been noted for their interrogation; the marks of interrogation stand among the sentences like so many spears, swords, or implements of war; for there was battle in every question. It would appear as if grief, too, also took kindly to the interrogative form of eloquence. Job is asking, Are the old foundations still here? things have surely been changed in the night-time, for I am unaccustomed to what is now round about me: is the sky torn down? does the sun still rise? does the sun still set? is old sweet mother nature still busy getting the table ready for her hungry children? or has everything changed since I have passed into this trance of sorrow? All this is natural. It is not mere eloquence. It is eloquence coloured with grief; eloquence ennobled by pain. The great words might be read as a mere school exercise; whereas they ought to be read by shattered men, who can annotate every sentence by a corresponding record in their own experience. Is it not what men do just now in times of change and great stress and fear? They ask one another questions; they elevate commonplaces into highly-accentuated inquiries; things that have been perfectly familiar to them now startle them into questioning and wonder, because surely since they themselves have been so unbalanced, caught in so tremendous an uproar and tumult, things must have been decentrailsed, or somehow thrown out of equipoise and shape.
Notice how many misunderstandings there are in this speech of the suffering man:
“Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea” ( Job 6:2-3 ).
Who ever thought that his grief was exactly comprehended by his friends? Job makes much of the grief with which a thousand other men had been familiar all their lives. When the rich man loses any money, what an outcry there is in his house! When the poor man loses something, he says As usual! well, we must hope that tomorrow will be brighter than today! But let a great, prosperous, space-filling rich man lose any money, and he loses a whole night’s sleep immediately after it; he says, “Oh that my grief were throughly weighed!” He likes “thorough” work when the work is applied to sympathising with him. So we misunderstand our friends; then we misunderstand our pain:
“Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! Then should I yet have comfort” ( Job 6:8-10 ).
We do not know that our pain is really working out for us, if we truly accept it, the highest estate and effect of spiritual education. No man can enjoy life who has not had at least one glimpse of death. What can enjoy food so keenly as hunger? Who knows the value of money so well as he who has none, or has to work hardly for every piece of money that he gains? Such is the mystery of pain in human education Have not men sometimes said: It was worth while to be sick, so truly have we enjoyed health after the period of disablement and suffering? Pain cannot be judged during its own process. From some pictures we must stand at a certain distance in order to see them in proper focus, and get upon them interpreting and illuminating lights. It is sympathetically so with pain. The pain that tears us now like a sharp instrument, working agony in the flesh, will show its whole meaning tomorrow, or on the third day God’s resurrection day, and day of culmination and perfecting. “Let patience have her perfect work.”
Job not only misunderstood his friends and misunderstood his pain, he misunderstood all men, and the whole system and scheme of things. He said::
“My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away; which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid: what time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish. The troops of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited for them” ( Job 6:15-19 ).
How suffering not rightly accepted, or not rightly understood, colours and perverts the whole thought and service of life! Job said:
“Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days also like the days of an hireling? As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work: so am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me” ( Job 7:1-3 ).
So we return to our starting-point, that sorrow must come. It is difficult for the young to believe this. The young have had but a transient ache or pain, which could be laughed off, so superficial was it. So when preachers talk of days that are nights, and summers that are made cold by unforgotten or fast-approaching winters, the young suppose the preachers are always moaning, and the church is but a painted grave, and it is better to be in the lighted theatre and in the place of entertainment, where men laugh wildly by the hour and take hold of life with a light and easy touch. The preachers must bear that criticism, committing themselves to time for the confirmation of their words, which indicate the burden, stress, and the weariness of life. Life has been one continual grief. Death soon came into the house, and made havoc at the fireside. Poverty was a frequent visitor at the old homestead lean, wrinkled, husky-voiced poverty, without a gleam of sunlight on its weird face, without a tone of music in its exhausted voice; want painted upon every feature, necessity embodied in every action and attitude: then every enterprise failed; the letter that was to have brought back the golden answer was either never received or never answered. Now the natural issue of sorrow is gloom, dejection, despair of life. To this end will sorrow bring every man who yields himself to it. Suffering will pluck every flower, destroy every sign of beauty, put back the dawn, and lengthen the black night. This is what sorrow, unblessed, must always do. It will blind the eye with tears; it will suffocate the throat with sobs; it will enfeeble the very hand when it is put out to make another effort at self-restoration. But has it come to this, that sorrow must be so received and yielded to? Is there any way-by which even sorrow can be turned into joy? The Bible discloses such a way. The Bible never shrinks from telling us that there is grief in the world, and that that grief can be accounted for on moral principles. The Bible measures the grief: never lessens it, never makes light of it, never tells men to shake themselves from the touch and tyranny of grief by some merely human effort; the Bible says, The grief must be recognised: it is the black child of black sin; it is God’s way of showing his displeasure; but even sorrow, whether it come in the form of penalty or come simply as a test, with a view to the chastening of the man’s heart and life, can be sanctified and turned into a blessing. Any book which so speaks deserves the confidence of men who know the weight and bitterness of suffering. Look at the old family Bible, and observe where it is thumbed most. Have we not said before that we can almost tell the character of the household from the finger-marks upon the old family Bible? Did we not once say, Turn to the twenty-third Psalm, and see how that has been treated? Ah! there how well thumbed it is! There has been sorrow in this house. Turn to the fourteenth chapter of John, and see whether that chapter is written upon a page unstained by human touch; and behold how all the margin seems to be impressed as by fingers that were in quest of heaven’s best consolations! Do not come to the Bible only for condolence and sympathy; come to it for instruction, inspiration, and then you may come to it for consolation, sympathy, tenderest comfort for the very dew of the morning, for the very balm of heaven, for the very touch of Christ. We must not make a convenience of the Bible, coming to it only when we are in sore straits; we must make a friend of it a great teacher. God’s statutes should be our songs in the house of our pilgrimage, and if we are faithful at Sinai we shall be welcomed at the Mount of Beatitudes. If we have struggled well as faithful servants there will not be wanting at last the welcome which begins and means all the reward of heaven.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).
V
THE FIRST ROUND OF SPEECHES
Job 4-14.
This debate extends from Job 4-31 inclusive. There are three rounds of speeches by all the four except that Zophar drops out in the last round. Each round constitutes a scene in Act II of the drama.
In this chapter we will discuss Scene I and commence with the first speech of Eliphaz (Job 4-5) the points of which are as follows:
Introduction (Job 4:1-2 ). In his introduction he deprecates grieving one so afflicted but must reprove Job,
1. For weakness and inconsistency. The one who had instructed, comforted, and strengthened others in their troubles, faints when trouble comes to him (Job 4:3-5 ).
2. Because Job had neither the fear of God nor personal integrity, for the fear of God gives confidence, and integrity gives hope, but Job’s complaint implies that he had neither confidence nor hope, therefore he must be devoid of the fear of God and of integrity (Job 4:6 ).
3. Because the observation of the general trend of current events argued Job’s guilt. The innocent do not perish; those who reap trouble are those who have sowed trouble and plowed iniquity. Ravening lions, though strong and terrible, meet the hunter at last (Job 4:7-11 ).
4. Because revelation also convicts him. Eliphaz relates one of his own visions (Job 4:12-17 ), very impressively, which scouted the idea that mortal man could be more just than God, or purer than his maker. But Job’s complaint seemed to embody the idea. Eliphaz argues from his vision that a pure and just God crushes impure and unjust men and suggests the application that Job’s being crushed reproves his impurity and injustice (Job 4:18-21 ).
5. Because Job’s outcry against God was foolish and silly, and since no angels would hear such complaint, or dare to avert its punishment (Job 5:1-2 ) there can be no appeal from the supreme to the creature.
6. Because observation of a particular case illustrates Job’s guilt (Job 5:3-5 ). The circumstances of this case seen by Eliphaz, make it parallel with Job’s case; a certain foolish man took root and prospered for a while, but the curse smote him suddenly and utterly; his children perished, his harvest was eaten by the hungry, and all his substance was snatched away.
7. Because these results are not accidental, nor of earthly origin, but must be attributed to God who punishes sin. Because man is a sinner he is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward (Job 5:6-7 ).
The remedy suggested to Job by Eliphaz is as follows:
1. Take your case to God confession of sin and repentance are suggested (Job 5:8 ) who will exalt the penitent (Job 5:11 ) as certainly as he has frustrated their craftiness (Job 5:12-14 ) and so the poor may have hope after the mouth of their iniquity is stopped (Job 5:15-16 ).
2. Instead of murmuring, count yourself happy in receiving this punishment, and after penitence expect restoration of prosperity (Job 5:17-27 ).
On comparing this analysis with that given by Dr. Tanner (see his Syllabus on the speech of Eliphaz) it will be noted that the author here differs widely with Tanner in his analysis and interpretation of this speech. Tanner presents Eliphaz as assuming the position that Job was a righteous man and that God would deliver him. The author presents Eliphaz as taking the position that Job had sinned, which was the cause of his suffering and that he should confess and repent; that he should count himself happy in receiving this punishment, and thus after penitence expect the restoration of prosperity. It will be recalled here that the author, in commending the Syllabus of Dr. Tanner noted the weakness of his analysis at this point.
There are several things notable in this first speech of Eliphaz, viz:
1. The recurrence in all his speeches of “I have seen,” “I have seen,” “I saw,” showing that the experience and observation of a long life constituted the basis of his argument.
2. The good elements of his arguments are as follows: (1) He refers to the natural law of sowing and reaping (Cf. Gal 6:7 ); (2) the sinner’s way to happiness is through confession and repentance; (3) chastisement of an erring man should be recognized as a blessing, since it looks to his profit (Cf. Pro 3:11 and the use made of it as quoted in Heb 12:5 ).
3. The bad elements in his speech are as follows: (1) His induction of facts ignores many other facts, particularly that all suffering is not penal; (2) He fails in the application of his facts, since the case before him does not come in their classification; in other words, through ignorance he fails in his diagnosis of the case, and hence his otherwise good remedies fall short of a cure.
4. The exquisite simplicity and literary power of his description of his vision, makes it a classic gem of Hebrew poetry.
The following points are noted in Job’s reply (Job 6-7) :
1. The rash words of my complaint are not evidence of previous sins, but the result of immeasurable calamities from the hand of God. They cannot be weighed; they are heavier than the sandy shores which confine the ocean; they are poisoned arrows from the quiver of the Almighty which pierce my very soul and rankle there; they are terrors marshalled in armies by the Almighty (Job 6:1-4 ).
2. The braying of an ass and the lowing of an ox are to be attributed to lack of food, not meanness. Let the favorable construction put upon the discordant noise of hungry animals be applied to my braying and lowing (Job 6:5 ), for in my case also there is the hunger of starvation since the food set before me is loathsome and without savor (Job 6:6-7 ).
3. I repeat my prayer to God for instant death, because I have not the strength to endure longer, nor the wisdom to understand (Job 6:8-9 ; Job 6:11-13 ) but while exulting in the pain that slays me, my consolation still is, that I have not denied the words of the Holy One (Job 6:10 ).
4. Instead of moralizing on the causes and rebuking suspected sins, friends should extend kindness to one ready to faint, even though he forsake the fear of God (or lest he forsake, Job 6:14 ). This is like the story of the drowning boy who asked the moralizing man on the bank to help him out first and then inquire into the causes of his mishap.
5. In your treatment of me, ye are like a deceitful brook, roaring with water only while the snow on the mountains is melting, but being without springs, directly you run dry. The caravans from the desert that come to it hoping, turn aside from its dusty channels and perish. So you that seemed like a river when I was not thirsty, put me to shame by your nothingness now that I thirst. Compare “Wells without water . . . clouds without rain” in Jud 1:12-13 .
6. Is it possible that you condemn me because you apprehend that otherwise I might ask you for help? In your moralizing are you merely hedging against the expectation of being called on to help a bankrupt sufferer, by furnishing a reward or ransom for the return of my stolen flocks and herds? Do you try to make me guilty that you may evade the cost of true friendship (Job 6:21-23 )? I have asked for no financial help, but for instruction. How forcible are right words !
7. But you, instead of explaining my calamities have been content to reprove the words of my complaint, extorted by the anguish of my calamities, words that under the circumstances should have been counted as wind, being only the speeches of one that is desperate.
8. The meanness of such treatment in your case would prompt in other cases to cast lots for the orphans of the dead and make merchandise out of a stranded friend by selling him as a slave (Job 6:27 ). This is a terrible invective, but more logical than their argument, since history abundantly shows that some believers in their creed have done these very things, the argument being that thereby they are helping God to punish the wicked.
9. He begs them to turn from such injustice, look on his face and behold his sincerity, concede his ability to discern a thing which is wicked, and accept his deliberate statement that he is innocent of the things which they suspect (Job 6:28-30 ).
10. He laments his case as hopeless (Job 7:1-10 ). Here Job asks if there is not a warfare to man and his days like the days of a hireling. His waiting for relief was like a hireling waiting for his wages, during which time he is made to pass months (moons) of misery. In this hopeless condition he longs for relief and would gladly welcome death from which there is no return to the walks of this life.
11. Job now lifts his voice in complaint to God (Job 7:11-21 ). In the anguish of his spirit he could not refrain from complaining that God had set a watch over him and terrified him with dreams and visions. He was made to loathe his life and again to wish for death. Then he closes this speech by raising the question with the Almighty as to why he would not pardon him if he had sinned (as his accusers had insinuated) and take away his iniquity. Here he addresses God as a “watcher of men”; as one who had made him a target for his arrows. Now we take up the first speech of Bildad, the Shuhite (Job 8 ).
The substance of this speech is as follows:
1. He charges that Job seeks to make himself better than God, then he hints at the sins of his children and insinuates that Job does not pray, for prayer of the right sort brings relief (Job 8:1-7 ).
2. He exhorts Job to learn the lesson from the past. The wisdom of the fathers must be good. Therefore, learn the lesson of the ancients (Job 8:8-10 ).
3. He contrasts the fate of the wicked and that of the righteous, reasoning from cause to effect, thus insinuating that Job’s condition was the result of a cause, and since (to him) all suffering was the result of sin, the cause must be in Job (Job 8:11-22 ).
The substance of Job’s reply is,
1. True enough a man cannot be righteous with God, since he is unable to contend with him. He is too wise and powerful; he is invincible. Who can match him (Job 9:1-12 )?
2. Praying does not touch the case. He is unjust and proves me perverse. Individual righteousness does not avail to exempt in case of a scourge. He mocks at the trial of the innocent and the wicked prosper. Then Job says, “If it be not he, who then is it?” This is the climax of the moral tragedy (Job 9:13-24 ).
3. There is no daysman betwixt us, and I am not able to meet him in myself for Judgment (Job 9:25-35 ).
4. I will say unto God, “Why? Thou knowest I am not wicked.” Here it will be noted that a revelation is needed in view of this affliction (Job 10:1-7 ).
5. God is responsible for my condition; he framed and fashioned me as clay, yet he deals with me as milk or cheese; it is just the same whether I am wicked or righteous; changes and warfare are with me (Job 10:8-17 ).
6. Why was I born? or why did I not die at birth? Then would I have escaped this great suffering, but now I must abide the time until I go into the land of midnight darkness (Job 10:18-22 ).
The substance of Zophar’s first speech is this:
1. What you have received is not as much as you deserve; you are full of talk and boastful; you are self-righteous and need this rebuke from God (Job 11:1-6 ).
2. You cannot find out God; he is far beyond man; he is all-powerful and omniscient; man is as void of understanding as a wild ass’s colt (Job 11:7-12 ).
3. Put away your wickedness; you need to get right and then you will be blessed; you should set your heart and house in order, then all will clear up; then you will be protected from the wicked (Job 11:13-20 ).
Job’s reply to the first speech of Zophar embraces three chapters, as follows:
1. No doubt you are the people and wisdom will die with you; I am not inferior to you; you mock and do not help; I, though upright, am a laughingstock and you, who are at ease, have contempt for misfortune; God brought this about (Job 12:1-6 ).
2. Learn the lessons from nature; the beasts, the birds, the earth, and the fishes can teach thee; everybody knows these things; the ear tries words and the palate tastes food, and wisdom is learned by age (Job 12:7-12 ).
3. God is the source of wisdom and power; he deals wisely with all men; he debases and he exalts (Job 12:13-25 ).
4. I understand it all as well as you; ye are forgers of lies; ye are physicians of no value; your silence would be wisdom; you speak wickedly for God, therefore your sayings are proverbs of ashes and your defenses are defenses of clay (Job 13:1-12 )
5. Why should I take my life in my hand thus? I want to be vindicated before I die; “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him”; I know that I am righteous; therefore I have hope (Job 13:13-19 ).
6. He pleads his cause with God; he asks two things of God, viz: (1) that he would put an end to his bodily suffering and (2) that he would abstain from terrifying him; then he challenges God to call him; then he interrogates God relative to his sins, God’s attitude toward him and his dealings with him; and finally charges God with unjust dealings with him (Job 13:20-28 ).
7. Man that is born of woman is frail and sinful; man’s weakness should excite pity with the Almighty; that which is born of an unclean thing is unclean and since a man’s days and months are numbered, why not turn from him as an hireling and let him rest (Job 14:1-6 ).
8. The hope of a tree, though it be cut down, is that it will sprout again but man’s destiny to lie down in death and rise no more till the heavens pass away should be a cause for mercy from God (Job 14:7-12 ).
9. In despair of recovery in this life Job again prays for death; that God would hide him in the grave till his wrath be past; that he would appoint him a day, in the hope that if he should die he would live again; his destiny is in God’s hands and therefore he is hopeless for this life (Job 14:13-17 ).
10. Like the mountain falling, the rock being removed out of its place and waters wearing away the stones, the hope of man for this life is destroyed by the providences of God; man is driven by them into oblivion; his sufferings become so great that only for himself his flesh has pain and only for himself his soul mourns (Job 14:18-22 ).
In this round of speeches the three friends have followed their philosophy of cause and effect and thus reasoning that all suffering is the effect of sin, they have, by insinuations, charged Job of sin, but they do not specify what it is. Job denies the general charge and in a rather bad spirit refutes their arguments and hits back at them some terriffic blows. He is driven to the depths of despair at the climax of the moral tragedy where he attributes all the malice, cunning, and injustice he had felt in the whole transaction to God as his adversary. They exhort him to repent and seek God, but he denies that he has sinned; he says that he cannot contend with the Almighty because he is too high above him, too powerful, and that there is no umpire, or daysman, between them. Here Job is made to feel the need of a revelation from God explaining all the mysteries of his providence. In this trial of Job we have ‘Satan’s partial victory over him -where he led Job to attribute the evils that had come upon him to God. This is the downfall in Job’s wrestle with Satan. He did not get on top of Job but gave him a great deal of worry. We will see Job triumphing more and more as he goes on in the contest.
QUESTIONS 1. What the points of Eliphaz’s first speech?
2. What things are notable in this first speech of Eliphaz?
3. What the points of Job’s reply (Job 6-7)?
4. What the substance of Bildad’s first speech?
5. What the substance of Job’s reply?
6. What the substance of Zophar’s first speech?
7. What Job’s reply?
8. Give a summary of the proceedings and results of the first round.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Job 6:1 But Job answered and said,
Ver. 1. But Job answered and said ] Eliphaz thought he had silenced him, and set him down with so much reason, that he should have had nothing to reply; yet Job, desirous to disasperse himself, and to clear up his reputation, answered, and said. For indeed Negligere quid de se quisque sentiat, non solum arrogantis est, sed et dissoluti, saith one, that is, altogether to neglect what others think or speak of a man’s self, and not to make apology, is the part not only of a proud, but of a dissolute, person; silence sometimes argueth guiltiness, or at least it strengtheneth suspicion.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job Chapter 6
Now for Job’s answer (Job 6 ). “Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed” – there was just where they were wrong; they only looked at the surface – “and my calamity laid in the balances together.” No, they had no proper balances, they were all one-sided. “For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea” – and so it was – “therefore my words are swallowed up.” They were all confused. He admits his language was not what it ought to be. He was so put to it by inward suffering and desperate pain that his words were quite confused, not quietly uttered, but simply swallowed up in the violence of his emotion. “For the arrows of the Almighty are within me.” You see he entirely gives way to it. “The poison whereof drinketh up my spirit; the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.”
Now they had talked about the lions – Eliphaz had, at any rate. But Job brings a much more pertinent case into the matter. “Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?” If he has got his proper food does he bray as if he were suffering from great hunger? “Or loweth the ox over his fodder?” No, he thankfully eats it. “Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?” Here am I, and not even a morsel of food but what costs me pain, and I have nothing to make it agreeable; no salt with it; it is all poison as it were – poison that entered and drank up his spirit. “Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?” The best thing he could get was that which was altogether insipid and disagreeable. “The things that my soul refused to touch are my sorrowful meat; Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that it would please God to destroy me.”
You see he had not the slightest fear of death. He was singularly above it; but he looked at death not so much as gain – he could not do that; he had not Christ to make it gain; but he looked to death as the cessation of his trouble, the end of his suffering. And so it would be. That, of course, was a very partial way, and by no means up to the mark that God was going to show him. But I mention it to show that it was not at all any fear of the unseen world; it was the trial that he could not solve it this present tangled life. “Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: Let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.” The ordinary meaning of, “concealed” is not at all the idea here. “I have not violated” – I have not denied – “the words of the Holy One.” That is what they were doing; they were denying the words of the Holy One. They in their zeal, and in their superficial judgment, were not guided by the Holy One at all; they were acting according to their own thoughts; judging according to their own feelings, on the mere surface of poor Job’s intense affliction.
“What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life? Is my strength the strength of stone, or is my flesh of brass?” – to be able to endure all this without any feeling. “Is not my help in me? and is wisdom driven quite from me? To him that is afflicted pity should be showed from his friend.” That they should be so lacking in pity – there was what galled him; there was what was inexplicable, next to the great riddle of how God allowed all this to come upon him – that there was not one word of true pity; not one word but what was very superficial, because of the bad judgment, the misjudgment that was underneath it. “My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away; which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid: what time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.” They were of no use whatever to him. “The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish.” He compares it with the desert; he was familiar with it, as they all were. It is a very different thing to pass through the desert in the winter, and to pass through the same desert in the summer – in the winter when people do not want so much the refreshment of water, and in the heat of summer when they feel the great need of even a drop of water to cool their tongue – then it is that the ‘wadies’ as they call them – those brooks that for a time cross the desert of despair – are completely sucked up by the sand or exhaled by the power of the son. That is what he compares this to. And therefore it is that the same company of Tema, or of Sheba, that passed through the desert might remember that there is where we should find water in the midst of all this trouble: ‘Ah! we hope we are nearing it now.’ Not a drop; not a drop! That is like you. Time was when I could have got comfort from you, but now everything is changed. You have nothing now but an evil lurking suspicion that has no foundation at all. “The troops of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited for them. They were confounded because they had hoped; they came thither, and were ashamed.” There was not water to be seen. They had been promising themselves when nearing it, ‘That is where we were only six months ago, when there was plenty of water’ – and now six months after, not a drop! “For now ye are nothing; ye see my casting down, and are afraid.”
Yes, that was their state; they were shocked; they did not want to get near him even. They did not wish to have even the sense of the fetid breath of the poor sufferer, or to touch the skin for fear of contracting something bad themselves. They kept away from it; they were afraid. “Did I say, Bring unto me? or, Give a reward for me of your substance?” He says, ‘It is not that I have the least want for anything, and yet you are treating me as if I were a person to be wanting to draw upon you in my trouble. No, I ask nothing of you except that you should not misjudge me.’ “Did I say, Bring unto me? or, Give a reward for me of your substance? or, Deliver me from the enemy’s hand? or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty? Teach me, and I will hold my tongue; and cause me to understand wherein I have erred. How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove? Do you imagine to reprove words?”
That is what they were doing. He had broken out in these violent words, and they pitched upon them at once to say, ‘Ah, yes! there is old Job beginning to show himself. Now he is in this way, just think what the world would say if they heard or saw Job now!’ “Do ye imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind? Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend. Now, therefore, be content; look upon me” – yes, he begs that they would look upon him – “for it is evident unto you if I lie.” That is, ‘if there is anything hidden under; that is what you suspect.’ “Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity” – he begs them to return to that, and to return to a sound judgment of the case, that it was their poor friend put to so tremendous a trial and could not see why it was come upon him. “Let it not be iniquity.” It has nothing to do with that. He had to learn that his own righteousness, however real, could be no ground; he must have the righteousness of God to stand upon, though he hardly knew how it could be. That is what comes out later in the book. “Is there iniquity in my tongue? Cannot my taste discern perverse things?” That is what they were treating him to.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
answered = spake, but Hebrew Idiom = replied. See note on Job 4:1 and Deu 1:41.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 6
So Job responds to him and he says, Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamities laid in the balances together! ( Job 6:1-2 )
Now, of course, picturesque, you got to see it. In those days, the balances, the scales were always balances and they had the little weights that they would put on the one side and then, you know, the grapes or whatever you were buying were put on the other side. And when the balance came to be equal, then you had the talent, the weight of the talent, the talent of grapes and so forth. And you’ve got to see these balances. Now he said, “Oh that my calamities, my griefs were laid in the balance.”
They would be heavier than the sands of the sea ( Job 6:3 ):
So you picture all of the sand of the sea put in the one side of the balance, and now you’re pouring in Job’s calamities and Job’s grief and it balances up. I think he’s exaggerating a little bit. “They would be heavier than the sand of the sea.”
therefore my words are swallowed up. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. Does the wild donkey bray when he hath grass? or does the ox loweth over his fodder? Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg? The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat. Oh that I might have my request; and that God would just grant me the thing that I long for! ( Job 6:3-8 )
Oh, what is it, Job, that you request?
Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! ( Job 6:9 )
And poor old Job, he’s really in desperate straits. “I just wish God would grant me my request, the thing that I long for. And it’s just that I be dead; I be cut off. I can’t stand life anymore.” And I’m certain that all of us have come to situations in our own lives that are so unsavory, so distasteful that there have been those same thoughts pass through. “Oh, that God would grant me my desire.” But yet, I don’t think that we always really think those thoughts sincerely. I think a lot of times we say that. “Oh, I wish I were dead.” But we really don’t mean it.
Like the fellow who was carrying his heavy load on a hot, hot day. And he finally came to this river. And he just sort of collapsed and he set the load down and he was just sitting there by the river, and he said, “Oh, death, death, please come, death.” And he felt a tap on his shoulder and he looked up and there was death. It said, “Did you call me?” And he said, “Yes, would you mind helping me get this back on my back so I can get going again?” So we don’t always mean what we say when we call for death or wish it was all over. But yet we feel that way sometimes, you know, at least for the moment of despair. And Job is expressing it himself. Now he’s still, though, expressing about, he doesn’t know what death is all about. “For if I were destroyed,”
Then should I yet have comfort; yes, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One. What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life? Is my strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brass? Is not my help in me? and is wisdom driven quite from me? To him ( Job 6:10-14 )
Now he’s talking to Eliphaz and to the whole speech that Eliphaz had given to him.
To him that is afflicted pity should be showed from his friend ( Job 6:14 );
Look, man, I need pity. I don’t need someone to come and jump on my case at this point. I need pity.
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away; Which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid: What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place ( Job 6:15-17 ).
Now this is very picturesque and it’s poetry. And thus, it’s meant to be picturesque and he’s just saying, “My friends are like ice or like snow. They appear to be friends, but when things get hot, they melt. They don’t exist.” I’ve had those kind of friends. They’re called fair-weather friends. When things get hot, you’ll never find them.
The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish ( Job 6:18 ).
Down to verse Job 6:21 :
For now you are nothing; you see my casting down, and you are afraid. Did I say unto you, Come to me? Give me a reward of your substance? Or, Deliver me from the enemy’s hand? Redeem me from the hand of the mighty? ( Job 6:21-23 )
Job said, “Look, man, did I ask you to come around? Did I ask you for anything? Don’t give me anymore. I’m tired of you. I didn’t ask you for anything. I didn’t say I want you to give me something.” He said, “I didn’t call for you.” And then he went on to say,
Teach me, and I will hold my tongue ( Job 6:24 ):
Tell me something that’s worthwhile and I’ll be quiet. You haven’t told me anything worthwhile.
and cause me to understand wherein I have erred. How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove? ( Job 6:24-25 )
Boy, Job gets really cutting with his tongue.
Do you imagine to reprove words, and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind? ( Job 6:26 )
Just a bag of wind, man, it just…you don’t have anything to say of any value.
Yea, you overwhelm the fatherless, and you dig a pit for your friend. Now therefore be content, look on me; for it is evident unto you if I lie. Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity; yea, return again, my righteousness is in it. Is there any iniquity in my tongue? cannot my taste discern perverse things? ( Job 6:27-30 ) “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Job 6:1-7
Job 6
JOB’S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ:
JOB DEFENDS THE RASHNESS OF HIS LAMENT
Job 6:1-7
“Then Job answered and said,
Oh that my vexation were but weighed,
And all my calamity laid in the balances!
For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas;
Therefore have my words been rash.
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,
The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up:
The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.
Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
Or loweth the ox over his fodder?
Can that which hath no savor be eaten without salt?
Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
My soul refuseth to touch them;
They are as loathsome food to me.”
These words of Job are, “Strong and coherent, contrasted with those of Eliphaz, which are incoherent and without the backbone of any clear conviction, turning hither and thither.” These words of Job were spoken out of deep disappointment and pain in what Eliphaz had said. Eliphaz had applied such words as fool, godless man, confounded and impatient to Job,” bringing him no comfort whatever.
“Oh that my vexation were but weighed” (Job 6:1). Job’s contention here is that the weight of his vexations greatly outweighs the alleged rashness and impatience of his words.
“The arrows of the Almighty are within me” (Job 6:4). “Job here, for the first time, distinctly names God as the author of his afflictions.” The perplexity and distress of Job came from his bewilderment concerning why God was wounding him. “The evil-doer knows why he suffers; the martyr is sustained by the truth for which he suffers; but Job suffered without either support or explanation.”
“Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass” (Job 6:5)? Here Job appealed to the behavior of animals, the cries of which arise from their distress. The same should be accepted as the allowable behavior of men. “Job argues that he has the right to bray like a hungry wild ass, or to bellow like a hungry bull.”
“Or is there any taste in the white of an egg” (Job 6:6)? The RSV renders the last five words of this, in the slime of the purslane. But that rendition is a blunder because, “Most modern readers never heard of the purslane.” “The purslane is a plant, the flower of which, as it fades away, resolves into an insipid mucilaginous jelly. It is that tasteless jelly which is alluded to here.”
“My soul refuseth to touch them” (Job 6:7). This refers to the insipid, tasteless food just mentioned; but what did Job mean? Kelly thought that Job was comparing, “His flat and tasteless existence,” to that tasteless food. Heavenor suggested that Job was comparing his tasteless life to “Insipid and saltless food.” However, Pope wrote that, “The figure of taste is most appropriate as applied to the arguments of Eliphaz”; and, although Rawlinson stated that either meaning is appropriate, we strongly prefer Pope’s understanding of the place.
E.M. Zerr:
Job 6:1-2. Job made no direct reply to the speech of Eliphaz, for he believed that his own problem was underestimated. Grief were thoroughly weighed means that his grief deserved a fairer consideration.
Job 6:3. If the grief of Job could be literally weighed it would be found to outweigh the sand of the seashore. Words swallowed up means he did not have words to express his grief fully.
Job 6:4. Arrows is used figuratively and refers to the afflictions that Job was suffering. Within me has reference to the manner of wounding with an arrow. If a man could find an opening in the armor of another, he could get his arrow through that opening and within the victim or into his body.
Job 6:5. A beast will not complain when he has what he needs. Job reasoned that his complaints were just because he lacked the comforts of life.
Job 6:6. The complaints of Job were just and as reasonable as it would be to object to food that had been improperly seasoned, or not seasoned at all.
Job 6:7. This verse gives us a terrible picture of the unfortunate condition of Job. Because all of his property had been destroyed and his family and friends were no more, there was no one to provide him with food. Such a condition compelled him to eat things that he formerly would not even have touched with his hands.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Job’s answer is a magnificent and terrible outcry. First, he speaks of his pain as a protest against the method of Eliphaz. His reply is not to the deduction which Eliphaz’ argument suggested, but rather to the charge it made, of unreasonableness and folly manifest in his lamentation. Eliphaz had used terms of strong condemnation. Job declared, in effect, that he did not understand the cry because he did not know the pain. His vexation and calamity should be set over against each other, poised in fair balances. If this were done, the calamity would be found to be so heavy as to excuse even the rashness of speech. The wail is always evidence of a want. The wild ass does not bray when he has grass, nor the ox low over his fodder. Having declared this, his sorrow seemed to surge on his soul anew, and he cried out for death because his strength was not equal to the strain thus placed upon him. His strength was not “the strength of stones,” nor was his “flesh of brass.”
Job then turned on his friends with reproaches of fine satire. He had expected kindness, but was disappointed. Here there would seem to be reference not merely to the attitude of Eliphaz, but to that attitude as a culminating cruelty. His eyes were wandering back to olden days, and he spoke of “my brethren,” likening them to a brook in the desert to which the traveling caravans turned, only to find them consumed and passed. He declared that his friends were nothing. Reproach merged into a fierce demand that instead of generalization and allusion,
there should be definiteness in the charges they made against him. “What,” says he, “doth your arguing reprove?” There is a majesty in this impatience with men who philosophize in the presence of agony, and it is impossible to read it without a consciousness of profound sympathy with the suffering man.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
A Deceitful Brook
Job 6:1-30
The burden of Jobs complaint is the ill-treatment meted out by his friends. They had accused him of speaking rashly, but they had not measured the greatness of his pain, Job 6:4, or they would have seen it to be as natural as the braying and lowing of hungry and suffering beasts, Job 6:5. A man would not take insipid food without complaint; how much more reason had he to complain whose tears were his meat day and night, Job 6:6-7! So bitter were his pains that he would welcome death, and exult in the throes of dissolution, Job 6:8-10. It could hardly be otherwise than that he should succumb, since he had only the ordinary strength of mortals, and both strength and wisdom were exhausted, Job 6:11-13.
Job next characterizes the assistance of his friends as winter brooks, turbid with melted ice and snow, which bitterly disappoint the travelers who had hoped to find water, and perish beside the dry heaps of stones, Job 6:17. They had found fault with his words, which, in the circumstances, were not a true index to his heart, Job 6:26; but a look into his face would have sufficed to attest his innocence of the sin of which they accused him, Job 6:28-30.
From these complaints of faithlessness and disappointment we turn to Him who, having been made perfect through suffering, has become the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him, Heb 5:9.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
CHAPTERS 6-7 Jobs Answer
1. His Despair justified by the greatness of his suffering (Job 6:1-7)
2. He requests to be cut off (Job 6:8-13)
3. He reproacheth his friends (Job 6:14-30)
4. The misery of life (Job 7:1-7)
5. Two questions: Why does God deal with me thus? Why does He not pardon? (Job 7:8-21)
Job 6:1-7. He meets first of all the reproach and accusation of Eliphaz (Job 4:1-5). Because his sufferings are so great his utterances are so desperately wild. If Eliphaz only would consider this he would find how enormous the Pressure is heavier than the sand of the seas which weighs him down and he would have shown the sympathy and tenderness for which Job longed. And then the description of what his agony is:
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me
The heat whereof my spirit drinketh up.
Gods terrors now against me are arrayed.
This inward suffering of his soul was even greater than the loathsome disease which covered his body. He felt that Gods hand in holy anger was upon him and he knew not what he learned afterward, that all was love and compassion from Gods side. Satan must have had a share and part in these increasing soul-agonies of Job. But has he not a perfect right to complain? The animals in Gods creation do not complain without reason. If the wild ass has grass and the ox fodder, they utter no sound. Nor would he complain if all was well with him. But his afflictions are like loathsome meat, and should he not murmur and complain. It is all the language of despairing grief.
Job 6:8-13. And now he returns to his great lamentation:
Oh that I might have my request;
And that God would grant me the thing I long for!
Even that it would please God to crush me;
That He would let loose His hand, and cut me off!
This is still greater despair. And that he looks upon as comfort; yea, he would exult in pain that spareth not. It would end his sufferings and then after death he need fear nothing. He was conscious that he was right with God. For I have not denied the words of the Holy One. Here is the first note of self-righteousness, of justifying himself, which later on becomes more pronounced in his answers.
Job 6:14-30. The sympathetic kindness he expected from his friends had not come. Eliphazs address gave the evidence of it.
Een to th afflicted, love is due from friends;
Een though the fear of God he might forsake.
But my brethren have dealt deceitfully, like a brook
Like streams whose flowing waters disappear,
And are hidden by reason of the ice
And of the snow, which, falling, covers them. (Companion Bible.)
He had been bitterly disappointed in his friends. Their silence first, their wailing, and the outward signs of deepest grief, had led him to hope for comfort from their lips. They were like water brooks promising an abundant supply of refreshing water in winter time when not needed. But–
What time it waxeth warm, they disappear
When it is hot they vanish from their place.
The travelling caravans by the way turn aside
They go up into the waste, and perish.
Such were his friends. They were like dried up brooks in the summers heat. He had not asked them to give.
Did I say, Give unto me?
Or, Offer a present for me of your substance?
Or, Deliver me from the Adversarys power?
Or, Redeem me from the Oppressors hand?
Nothing like this he had asked of their hands; all he craved was kind and tender sympathy. He urges them to teach him, to show him in what he has sinned, if he suffers for his sins. He urges them to look straight into his face and see if he is lying. He solemnly assures his friends of his innocence.
If only Job had not looked to his friends but to Him whose goodness and mercy he knew so well, he would not have suffered such disappointment. And what a contrast with Davids faith: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
Job 7:1-7. This section is one of great beauty, describing human existence and the misery connected with it, as it was so markedly in his own case.
As soon as I lie down to sleep, I say:
How long till I arise, and night be gone?
And I am full of tossings till the dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms, and clods of earth;
My broken skin heals up, then runs afresh.
Swifter than weavers shuttle are my days,
And they are spent without a gleam of hope.
It is the picture of despair. The dark shadow of the enemy who had so wrongfully accused him must have told him without a gleam of hope as if God had now forsaken him.
Job 7:8-21. Why did God deal with him in this way? He thinks God must be his enemy and asks:
Am I a sea? or a monster of the deep;
That Thou settest a watch over me?
He had dreams too, not like the dreams of Eliphaz which reveal the greatness of God, but dreams of terrifying visions, so that he loatheth his life.
… I would not live always: Let me alone; for my days are vanity.
Poor, suffering, despairing Job! To think of Him whose love had been so fully demonstrated in the past, as his enemy and to pray to Him, Let me alone, was indeed horrible despondency. And if he has sinned, why does not God pardon and take away his iniquity? But this is not confession of sin. A different thing it is when finally he cries out, Behold I am vile, I abhor myself.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
answered: Job 4:1
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A TORTURED HEART
But Job answered and said, etc.
Job 6:1
I. Job tries to justify the strong expressions he had made use of by describing the sharpness and bitterness of his pain.As the animals only cry aloud when they are ill at ease from hunger, so his cryings were justified by his anguish. There is no prohibition in the Word of God against strong cryings and tears. Sometimes nature, rent to breaking, must utter itself. Jesus wept. But, Ah! how great is the difference between the expressions of bitter but resigned sorrow, and those of murmuring and rebellion. The one is the godly sorrow that needs not to be repented of; the other worketh death.
II. Have you ever wished, like Job, to die, that the long entail of suffering might be broken, and that the bitter heart-ache might no longer gnaw?Others have felt this; but they have lived to see the day when joy came back on them, as the tide returns up the beach, and they reaped in joy where they had sown in tears. God does not prolong your life because He takes pleasure in your pain, but because He desires that the affliction, which is but for a moment, may work out for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. The dentist submits you to pain because a few moments of it will relieve you from hours of agonising and sleepless suffering, and restore you the powers of digestion and health. Only dare to believe in the personal care of God and that He is keenly interested. He will not suffer one moment of pain beyond what is absolutely needful. He will, in the meanwhile, give strength as the strength of stones, and make thy flesh as brass.
III. More bitter than physical suffering is our suffering when we are misunderstood or misrepresented by our friends, when they become as streams which are abundant in the winter, but dried up in the heat of summer, so that there is least water when it is most wanted. We expect our friends to make allowances for our wild words, spoken in the extremity of agony and grief; to bear with our petulance; to be patient with us. It is a bitter disillusionment when we find we have counted on them in vain. Job found it so. But there is a love that never fails!
Illustration
In Jobs vivid eager expostulation there is at least much of human nature. It abounds in natural touches common to all time, and in shrewd ironic perception. The sarcasms of Job bear not only upon his friends, but also upon our lives. The words of men who are sorely tossed with trouble, aye, even their deeds, are to be judged with full allowance for circumstances. A man driven back inch by inch, in a fight with the world, irritated by defeat, thwarted in his plans, missing his calculations, how easy it is to criticise him from the standpoint of a successful career, high repute, a good balance at the bankers! The hasty words of one who is in sore distress, due possibly to his own ignorance and carelessness, how easy to reckon them against him, find in them abundant proof that he is an unbeliever and a knave, and so pass on to offer in the temple the Pharisees prayer!
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Job 6:1. Job answered and said Eliphaz concluded his discourse with an air of assurance, being very confident that what he had advanced was so plain and so pertinent that nothing could be objected to it. Job, however, is not at all convinced by it, but still justifies himself in his complaints, and condemns his friend for the weakness of his arguing. Though Eliphaz, in the beginning and some other parts of his speech, was very severe upon Job, he gave him no interruption, but heard him patiently till he had delivered his whole mind. But when he had done this, and had finished all he had to say, Job modestly, but feelingly, makes his reply. He begins with an apology for venting his grief in a manner somewhat unbecoming, and begs it may be ascribed to the great multitude and sharpness of his afflictions; but as to the advice given him by Eliphaz, to hope for an amendment of his condition: and to address God for that purpose, he tells them, that his petition to God should be of a quite different nature, namely, that he would be pleased to cut him off speedily; for that the desperateness of his condition would by no means permit him to hope for any amendment. That, however, he could not help resenting their unkind suspicions of him, that they should think him capable of such great wickedness; but, above all, should imagine him to be so abandoned as to be able to entertain a thought tending to a revolt from the Almighty. He begs them not to condemn him barely on suspicion, and on the strength of general maxims, but to consider it was possible he might be innocent.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 6:4. The poison of the arrows absorbed his spirits. In 1822, when Campbel the missionary travelled in South Africa, a bushman shot one of his men in the back with a poisoned arrow. He languished about two and forty hours in extreme pain. A hottentot said next day, he will die tomorrow about sunrise, which happened according to his calculation of the time in which others had died of those wounds.
Job 6:5. Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? This animal, often named in the sacred writings, has lately been described, and accompanied with a drawing by Sir Robert K. Porter. It is larger than the common ass, and of a silvery colour. It has a black band along the spine, with patches of pure white on the flanks. The male has a bar of black across his shoulders. Those animals have more vivacity than the common ass, and are formed peculiarly for deserts and hills, having the power to subsist for two or three days without water. The hunters catch them by mounting fresh horses, and running them down. They are much esteemed in the east, and often rode by persons of quality.
Job 6:9. Let loose his hand. Job felt that God only touched him, and was cautious not to kill him, nor to deprive him of exquisite sensibility.
Job 6:10. Then should I yet have comfort, by an entrance into peace.I have not concealed, or as Schultens reads, non abnegavi, I have not denied the words of the Holy One. This was his confidence, that he had been faithful as a preacher of righteousness, and a worshipper of God.
Job 6:12. Is my strength the strength of stones, in a walled city or tower, to bear the incessant strokes of a battering ram in a close siege?
Job 6:13. Is not my help in me, in comfort, in confidence, and in all the sanctifying powers of religion on the mind. This is the sacred test, which exterior adversities can never touch.
Job 6:15. My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, to which the thirsty beasts go afar to drink; but alas, the heat of summer has dried up the stream.
Job 6:16. The ice and the snow were frequent on the ranges of Abarim, whose highest summits were mount Nebo, and mount Pisgah.
REFLECTIONS.
Notwithstanding all the terrors of the tempest which now assailed the soul of Job, the renewal of his complaints, after Eliphaz had closed his sharp speech, is extremely beautiful. He was so much shaken with his afflictions, that he makes no apology for the severity of his language. His griefs were heavier than his groanings. He invites his friends to weigh his sorrows, and lay his calamities in the balances. They were heavier than the mountains of sand driven from the deep by foaming billows, and the roaring of the tempests. His words were swallowed up, language was inadequate to description. It was Omnipotence contending with a worm. He fell wounded with his poisoned arrows. He had no soul, no might in contest. Therefore the words of Eliphaz were to him as unsavoury meat.
Job having entreated his friends to weigh his sorrows, next, by a request four times repeated, he entreats the Lord, like Elijah, to kill the body, and take him out of the world. His reasons are many. Death would comfort him by a release from pain and sorrow. Death would restore his confidence and hope; he would harden himself in sorrow; therefore he challenged and invited its approach. The grounds of his confidence were a good conscience; he had neither concealed the words of the Holy One, nor wrested their meaning. He had no hope on earth; his strength was not as stones and brass, to bear perpetual strokes. Hence it is not sinful to groan under the heavier strokes of affliction; and provided we do not murmur, we may implore deliverance. Christ himself deprecated the bitter cup. Hence also, though a man may pray for death, yet he must neither indulge despair, nor have recourse to suicide. That infidel, who under a severe stroke of mortification has recourse to the halter is a fool and a coward. He is a fool, because his affairs might in a short time take a turn to his greater advantage: so it happens in a multitude of cases, and his calamities may be graciously designed to prevent greater evils. He is a coward, because he shrinks at the adversities common to man. He rashly retires from life at enmity with God, for having afflicted him above measure: and dying in this awful state, what reception is he likely to meet with in the invisible world?
Job not only justifies himself in urging those complaints as helping himself by the operations of right reason, but reproaches his friend for not showing pity, which is a first duty of those that fear the Lord. Instead of comforting him, they were as the ice and snow in winter, which promise the troop or caravan of merchants water; but behold, when they return in summer, the whole is dried up. Let us therefore learn of Jobs friends to visit the afflicted uninvited; then we are doubly welcome. Let us also learn of those friends to be faithful to the afflicted; but above all, let us beware of augmenting afflictions by mistaking the case of a friend.
After admonishing the errors of his friends, Job asserts his purity and rectitude in a most admirable strain of eloquence. Did I ask your substance to repair my losses; or to pursue the enemy and retake my cattle? Say now, and I will hold my peace; for I know the force of right words. But what is the substance of your arguments? Do you hope to succeed in reproving a man whose case is desperate? You take up the whole affair on a wrong ground; you overwhelm the orphans, whose fathers have perished in my cause, with an idea of their sins; and you strive to sink your friend into a yet deeper pit, as the sole cause of all their woes. Return, I pray thee, return, and view my whole case on a new ground, or return altogether to your own homes, and I will not account it iniquity. Though Job had no spirit to resist God, he had abundance of courage to plead against the errors of his friends. The whole of this discourse is a model of the true sublime and beautiful of ancient composition.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 6:1-13. Job in his reply deals first of all with the charge of impatience. He catches up the word used by Eliphaz (Job 5:2), and declares that his impatience does but balance his calamity (Job 6:1 f.). The dreadfulness of the latter is that it is from God Himself (Job 6:4). The image is that of poisoned arrows, whose points have penetrated (within me). Jobs spirit drinks their poison, so that he cannot help roaring. No creature complains without reason, no more does he (Job 6:5). What is loathsome and unbearable is thrust upon him (Job 6:6 f.) So keenly does he feel the truth of what he is saying that he forgets his defence, and once more cries passionately for death (Job 6:8-10), Patience, he says, is impossible; he is not stone or brass (Job 6:11 f.). All resource is at an end with him.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
JOB’S REPLY TO ELIPHAZ
(vv.1-30)
It is remarkable that Job, being in the painful condition he was, was still able to reply in such capable and stirring language to Eliphaz. He knew that Eliphaz had not shown any understanding of Job’s predicament, and he again emphasised the unutterable pain and grief that had overtaken him. He knew Eliphaz had not weighed Job’s grief accurately, or he would have had more compassion for the poor sufferer (vv.2-3). Job says, “Therefore my words have been rash,” that is, he had spoken as one in deepest anguish, so that he had inferred that God was not just in allowing this suffering to one who was upright. Of course it is rash to say such a thing, but Job’s friends should have realised that Job’s condition was such that wrong words were virtually forced from his mouth. Could they not make some allowance for this?
He goes on to describe something of the awfulness of his grief, speaking of “the arrows of the Almighty” piercing him and God’s terrors arrayed against him. “Does the wild donkey bray when it has grass,” he asks. If his situation was favourable, would Job be crying out as he was? Why would he be like an ox lowing when it was satisfied? The ox will not do that. Where was the salt to give some savour to the things Job had to bear? What comfort could he get from having to virtually eat the slime of an egg? He was left with no desire for food, in fact considered food loathsome (v.7).
Again he expresses his desire for death, for which he had prayed before. He could not understand why God did not answer such a prayer, for he was sure death was preferable to the anguish he was suffering (vv.8-9). Yet he did not think of suicide being an option. He says he has not concealed the words of the Holy One. He had not been guilty of covering up anything that God has spoken (v.10): could God not then listen to Job’s prayer for death?
He felt he had no strength to even hope for anything better on earth, and no prospect of anything better, for which his life should be prolonged (v.11). Was he as strong and hard as stone or bronze that he could bear all his affliction with no feeling? (v.12). He could not look within himself for any help, and soundness (even sound reasoning) was virtually impossible to him (v.13 – JND trans.).
In verse 14 Job rightly remonstrates to the effect that kindness ought to be shown to one who was afflicted, even if that one had gone so far as to “forsake the fear of the Almighty.” Not that Job had done so, but Eliphaz suspected he was on the verge of this. But in contrast to showing sympathy for Job, he says, “My brothers have dealt deceitfully like a brook, like the streams of the brook that pass away,” that is, the streams in winter swollen by snow and ice, promising blessing and refreshment, is soon dried up, leaving nothing of blessing behind (vv.16-17). Travellers may come, expecting water, but are disappointed to find nothing and are confused. Job thus expressed his own confusion at the words of Eliphaz (vv.19-20).
Job asks, “Did I ever say, ‘Bring something to me?'” (v.22). Job had not even asked his three friends to come, let alone asking them for some benefit from their hands. Why did they then accuse him when all he needed was a little sympathy?
If they had something profitable and true to teach him, Job would willingly hold his tongue and listen. If he had erred as they supposed, why did they not tell him in what way he had erred (v.24). Right words would have been forceful and effective, but their arguments proved nothing (v.25). They rebuked his words that issued from his desperation, with no consideration of the depth of his suffering (v.26). They sought to overwhelm the fatherless, which seems to infer that Job’s father had died, so that he did not have a father to help him; and they were undermining their own friend, a heartless attitude in contrast to former friendship (v.27).
Then Job pleads with them to just look at him. Did they see deceit in his countenance? He insists, “I would never lie to your face;” yet they were certain he must be concealing sin in his life (v.28). “Yield now,” he tells them, let them not be guilty of injustice in their attitude. “Yes, concede my righteousness still stands!” Had his character changed since they last saw him?
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
2. Job’s first reply to Eliphaz chs. 6-7
Job began not with a direct reply to Eliphaz but with another complaint about his condition. Then he responded to Eliphaz’s speech but addressed all three of his friends. The "you" and "yours" in Job 6:24-30 are plural in the Hebrew text.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Job’s reason for complaining 6:1-7
Job said he complained because of his great irritation. His calamities were as heavy as wet sand (Job 6:2-3). The Hebrew word translated "iniquity" in Job 6:2 occurs only here in the Old Testament. We should probably translate it "calamity" or "misfortune." Job implied that his words of complaint were nothing in comparison to his suffering. His situation was harder for him to bear because he believed his misfortune came from God.
"The God he had known and the God he now experiences seemed irreconcilable." [Note: Rowley, p. 58.]
Job refused to accept his trials without something to make them bearable, namely, complaining. Similarly a person refuses tasteless food without salt (Job 6:6-7).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
VIII.
MEN FALSE: GOD OVERBEARING
Job 6:1-30; Job 7:1-21
Job SPEAKS
WORST to endure of all things is the grief that preys on a mans own heart because no channel outside self is provided for the hot stream of thought. Now that Eliphaz has spoken, Job has something to arouse him, at least to resentment. The strength of his mind revives as he finds himself called to a battle of words. And how energetic he is! The long address of Eliphaz we saw to be incoherent, without the backbone of any clear conviction, turning hither and thither in the hope of making some way or other a happy hit. But as soon as Job begins to speak there is coherency, strong thought running through the variety of expression, the anxiety for instruction, the sense of bewilderment and trouble. We feel at once that we are in contact with a mind no half-truths can satisfy, that will go with whatever difficulty to the very bottom of the matter.
Supreme mark of a healthy nature, this. People are apt to praise a mind at peace, moving composedly from thought to thought, content “to enjoy the things which others understand,” not distressed by moral questions. But minds enjoying such peace are only to be praised if the philosophy of life has been searched out and tried, and the great trust in God which resolves all doubt has been found. While life and providence, ones own history and the history of the world present what appear to be contradictions, problems that baffle and disturb the soul, how can a healthy mind be at rest? Our intellectual powers are not given simply that we may enjoy; they are given that we may understand. A mind hungers for knowledge, as a body for food, and cannot be satisfied unless the reason and the truth of things are seen. You may object that some are not capable of understanding, that indeed Divine providence, the great purposes of God, lie so far and so high beyond the ordinary human range as to be incomprehensible to most of us. Of what use, then, is revelation? Is it given merely to bewilder us, to lead us on in a quest which at the last must leave many of the searchers unsatisfied, without light or hope? If so, the Bible mocks us, the prophets were deceivers, even Christ Himself is found no Light of the world, but a dreamer who spoke of that which can never be realised. Not thus do I begin in doubt, and end in doubt. There are things beyond me; but exact or final knowledge of these is not necessary. Within my range and reach through nature and religion, through the Bible and the Son of God, are the principles I need to satisfy my souls hunger. And in every healthy mind there will be desire for truth which, often baffled, will continue till understanding comes.
And here we join issue with the agnostic, who denies this vital demand of the soul. Our thought dwelling on life and all its varied experience-sorrow and fear, misery and hope, love threatened by death yet unquenchable, the exultation of duty, the baffling of ambition, unforeseen peril and unexpected deliverance-our thought, I say, “dealing with these elements of life, will not rest in the notion that all is due to chance or to blind forces, that evolution can never be intelligently followed.” The modern atheist or agnostic falls into the very error for which he used to reprove faith when he contemptuously bids us get rid of the hope of understanding the world and the Power directing it, when he invites us to remember our limitations and occupy ourselves with things within our range. Religion used to be taunted with crippling mans faculties and denying full play to his mental activity. Scientific unbelief does so now. It restricts us to the seen and temporal, and, if consistent, ought to refuse all ideals and all desires for a “perfect” state. The modern sage, intent on the study of material things and their changes, confining himself to what can be seen, heard, touched, or by instruments analysed, may have nothing but scorn or, say, pity for one who cries out of trouble-
“Have I sinned? Yet, what have I done unto Thee, O Thou Watcher of men?
Why hast Thou set me as Thy stumbling block,
So that I am a burden to myself?
And why wilt Thou not pardon my transgression,
And cause my sin to pass away?”
But the man whose soul is eager in the search for reality must endeavour to wrest from Heaven itself the secret of his dissatisfaction with the real, his conflict with the real, and why he must so often suffer from the very forces that sustain his life. Yes, the passion of the soul continues. It protests against darkness, and therefore against materialism. Conscious mind presses toward an origin of thought. Soul must find a Divine Eternal Soul. Where nature opens ascending ways to the reason in its quest; where prophets and sages have cut paths here and there through the forest of mystery; where the brave and true testify of a light they have seen and invite us to follow; where One stands high and radiant above the cross on which He suffered and declares Himself the Resurrection and the Life, -there men will advance, feeling themselves inspired to maintain the search for that Eternal Truth without the hope of which all our life here is a wearisome pageant, a troubled dream, a bitter slavery.
In his reply to Eliphaz, Job first takes hold of the charge of impatience and hasty indignation made in the opening of the fifth chapter. He is quite aware that his words were rash when he cursed his day and cried impatiently for death. In accusing him of rebellious passion, Eliphaz had shot the only arrow that went home; and now Job, conscientious here, pulls out the arrow to show it and the wound. “Oh,” he cries, “that my hasty passion were duly weighed, and my misery were laid in the balance against it! For then would it, my misery, be found heavier than the sand of the seas: therefore have my words been rash.” He is almost deprecatory. Yes: he will admit the impatience and vehemence with which he spoke. But then, had Eliphaz duly considered his state, the weight of his trouble causing a physical sense of indescribable oppression? Let his friends look at him again, a man prostrated with sore disease and grief, dying slowly in the lepers exile.
“The arrows of the Almighty are within me,
The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up.
The terrors of God beleaguer me.”
We need not fall into the mistake of supposing that it is only the pain of his disease which makes Jobs misery so heavy. Rather is it that his troubles have come from God; they are “the arrows of the Almighty.” Mere suffering and loss, even to the extremity of death, he could have borne without a murmur. But he had thought God to be his friend. Why on a sudden have those darts been launched against him by the hand he trusted? What does the Almighty mean? The evildoer who suffers knows why he is afflicted. The martyr enduring for conscience sake has his support in the truth to which he bears witness, the holy cause for which he dies. Job has no explanation, no support, he cannot understand providence. The God with whom he supposed himself to be at peace suddenly becomes an angry incomprehensible Power, blighting and destroying His servants life. Existence poisoned, the couch of ashes encompassed with terrors, is it any wonder that passionate words break from his lips? A cry is the last power left to him.
So it is with many. The seeming needlessness of their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery of the pain confounds the mind, and adds to anguish and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness. Sometimes the very thing guarded against is that which happens; a mans best intelligence appears confuted by destiny or chance. Why has he amongst the many been chosen for this? Do all things come alike to all, righteous and wicked? The problem becomes terribly acute in the case of earnest God-fearing men and women who have not yet found the real theory of suffering. Endurance for others does not always explain. All cannot be rested on that. Nor unless we speak falsely for God will it avail to say, These afflictions have fallen on us for our sins. For even if the conscience does not give the lie to that assertion, as Jobs conscience did, the question demands a clear answer why the penitent should suffer, those who believe, to whom God imputes no iniquity. If it is for our transgressions we suffer, either our own faith and religion are vain, or God does not forgive excepting in form, and the law of punishment retains its force. We have here the serious difficulty that legal fictions seem to hold their ground even in the dealings of the Most High with those who trust Him. Many are in the direst trouble still for the same reason as Job, and might use his very words. Taught to believe that: suffering is invariably connected with wrong doing and is always in proportion to it, they cannot find in their past life any great transgressions for which they should be racked with constant pain or kept in grinding penury and disappointment. Moreover, they had imagined that through the mediation of Christ their sins were expiated and their guilt blotted out. What strange error is there in the creed or in the world? Have they never believed? Has God turned against them? So they inquire in the darkness.
The truth, however, as shown in a previous chapter, is that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin, but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting in the individual and the race. Afflictions, pains, and griefs are appointed to the best as well as the worst, because all need to be tried and urged on from imperfect faith and spirituality to vigour, constancy, and courage of soul. The principle is not dearly stated in the Book of Job, but underlies it, as truth must underlie all genuine criticism and every faithful picture of human life. The inspiration of the poem is so to present the facts of human experience that the real answer alone can satisfy. And in the speech we are now considering some imperfect and mistaken views are swept so completely aside that their survival is almost unaccountable.
Beginning with the fifth verse we have a series of questions somewhat difficult to interpret:-
“Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
Or loweth the ox over his fodder?
Can that be eaten which is unsavoury, without salt?
Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?
My soul refuseth to touch them;
They are to me as mouldy bread.”
By some these questions are supposed to describe sarcastically the savourless words of Eliphaz, his “solemn and impertinent prosing.” This, however, would break the continuity of the thought. Another view makes the reference to be to Jobs afflictions, which he is supposed to compare to insipid and loathsome food. But it seems quite unnatural to take this as the meaning. Such pain and grief and loss as he had undergone were certainly not like the white of an egg. But he has already spoken wildly, unreasonably, and he now feels himself to be on the point of breaking out afresh in similar impatient language. Now, the wild ass does not complain when it has grass, nor the ox when it has fodder; so, if his mind were supplied with necessary explanations of the sore troubles he is enduring, he would not be impatient, he would not complain. His soul hungers to know the reason of the calamities that darken his life. Nothing that has been said helps him. Every suggestion presented to his mind is either trifling and vain, without the salt of wisdom, like the white of an egg, or offensive, disagreeable. Ruthlessly sincere, he will not pretend to be satisfied when he is not. His soul refuses to touch the offered explanations and reasons. Verily, they are like mouldy bread to him. It is his own impatience, his loud cries and inquiries, he desires to account for; he does not attack Eliphaz with sarcasm, but defends himself.
At this point there is a brief halt in the speech. As if after a pause, due to a sharp sting of pain, Job exclaims: “Oh that God would please to destroy me!” He had felt the paroxysm approaching; he had endeavoured to restrain himself, but the torture drives him, as before, to cry for death. Again and again in the course of his speeches sudden turns of this kind occur, points at which the dramatic feeling of the writer comes out. He will have us remember the terrible disease and keep continually in mind the setting of the thoughts. Job had roused himself in beginning his reply, and, for a little, eagerness had overcome pain. But now he falls back, mastered by cruel sickness which appears to be unto death. Then he speaks:-
“Oh that I might have my request, That God would give me the thing I long for, Even that God would be pleased to crush me, That He would loose His hand and tear me off; And I should yet have comfort, I should even exult amidst unsparing pain, For I have not denied the words of the Holy One.”
The longing for death which now returns on Job is not so passionate as before; but his cry is quite as urgent and unqualified. As we have already seen, no motion towards suicide is at any point of the drama attributed to him. He does not, like Shakespeares Hamlet, whose position is in some respects very similar, question with himself,
“Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”
Nor may we say that Job is deterred from the act of self-destruction by Hamlets thought,
“The dread of something after death
that makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.”
Job has the fear and faith of God still, and not even the pressure of “unsparing pain” can move him to take into his own hands the ending of that torment God bids him bear. He is too pious even to dream of it. A true Oriental, with strong belief that the will of God must be done, he could die without a murmur, in more than stoical courage; but a suicide he cannot be. And indeed the Bible, telling us for the most part of men of healthy mind, has few suicides to record. Saul, Zimri, Ahithophel, Judas, break away thus from dishonour and doom; but these are all who, in impatience and cowardice, turn against Gods decree of life.
Here, then, the strong religious feeling of the writer obliges him to reject that which the poets of the world have used to give the strongest effect to their work. From the Greek dramatists, through Shakespeare to Browning, the drama is full of that quarrel with life which flies to suicide. In this great play, as we may well call it, of Semitic faith and genius, the ideas are masterly, the hold of universal truth is sublime. Perhaps the author was not fully aware of all he suggests, but he feels that suicide serves no end: it settles nothing; and his problem must be settled. Suicide is an attempt at evasion in a sphere where evasion is impossible. God and the soul have a controversy together, and the controversy must be worked out to an issue.
Job has not cursed God nor denied his words. With this clear conscience he is not afraid to die; yet, to keep it, he must wait on the decision of the Almighty-that it would please God to crush him, or tear him off like a branch from the tree of life. The prospect of death, if it were granted by God, would revive him for the last moment of endurance. He would leap up to meet the stroke, Gods stroke, the pledge that God was kind to him after all.
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battles to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
According to Eliphaz there was but one way for a sufferer. If Job would bow humbly in acknowledgment of guilt, and seek God in penitence, then recovery would come; the hand that smote would heal and set him on high; all the joy and vigour of life would be renewed, and after another long course of prosperity, he should come to his grave at last as a shock of corn is carried home in its season. Recalling this glib promise, Job puts it from him as altogether incongruous with his state. He is a leper; he is dying.
“What is my strength that I should wait,
And what my term that I should be patient?
Is my strength the strength of stones?
Is my flesh brass?
Is not my help within me gone,
And energy quite driven from me?”
Why, his condition is hopeless. What can he look for but death? Speak to him of a new term; it was adding mockery to despair. But he would die still true to God, and therefore he seeks the end of conflict. If he were to live on he could not be sure of himself, especially when, with failing strength, he had to endure the nausea and stings of disease. As yet he can face death as a chief should.
The second part of the address begins at the fourteenth verse of chapter 6. (Job 14:6) Here Job rouses himself anew, and this time to assail his friends. The language of their spokesman had been addressed to him from a height of assumed moral superiority, and this had stirred in Job a resentment quite natural. No doubt the three friends showed friendliness. He could not forget the long journey they had made to bring him comfort. But when he bethought him how in his prosperity he had often entertained these men, held high discourse with them on the ways of God, opened his heart and showed them all his life, he marvelled that now they could fail of the thing he most wanted-understanding. The knowledge they had of him should have made suspicion impossible, for they had the testimony of his whole life. The author is not unfair to his champions of orthodoxy. They fail where all such have a way of failing. If their victim in the poem presses on to stinging sarcasm and at last oversteps the bounds of fair criticism, one need not wonder. He is not intended as a type of the meek, self-depreciating person who lets slander pass without a protest. If they have treated him badly, he will tell them to their faces what he thinks. Their want of justice might cause a weak man to slip and lose himself.
Pity from his friend is due to the despairing,
Lest he forsake the fear of the Almighty:
But my brethren have deceived as a torrent,
Like the streams of the ravine, that pass away,
That become blackish with ice,
In which the snow is dissolved.
What time they wax warm they vanish,
When it is hot they are dried up out of their place.
The caravans turn aside,
They go up into the desert and are perishing.
The caravans of Tema look out,
The merchants of Sheba hope for them.
They were ashamed because they had trusted,
They came up to them and blushed.
Even so, now are ye nought.
The poetical genius of the writer overflows here. The allegory is beautiful, the wit keen, the knowledge abundant; yet, in a sense, we have to pardon the interposition. Job is not quite in the mood to represent his disappointment by such an elaborate picture. He would naturally seek a sharper mode of expression. Still, the passage must not be judged by our modern dramatic rules. This is the earliest example of the philosophic story, and elaborate word pictures are part of the literature of the piece.
We accept the pleasure of following a description which Job must be supposed to have painted in melancholy humour.
The scene is in the desert, several days journey from the Jauf, that valley already identified as the region in which Job lived. Beyond the Nefood to the west towers the Jebel Tobeyk, a high ridge covered in winter with deep snow, the melting of which fills the ravines with roaring streams. Caravans are coming across the desert from Tema, which lies seven days journey to the south of the Jauf, and from Sheba still farther in the same direction. They are on the march in early summer and, falling short of water, turn aside westward to one of the ravines where a stream is expected to be still flowing. But, alas for the vain hope! In the wadi is nothing but stones and dry sand, mocking the thirst of man and beast. Even so, says Job to his friends, ye are treacherous; ye are nothing. I looked for the refreshing waters of sympathy, but ye are empty ravines, dry sand. In my days of prosperity you gushed with friendliness. Now, when I thirst, ye have not even pity. “Ye see a terror, and are afraid.” I am terribly stricken. You fear that if you sympathised with me, you might provoke the anger of God.
From this point he turns upon them with reproach. Had he asked them for anything, gifts out of their herds or treasure, aid in recovering his property? They knew he had requested no such service. But again and again Eliphaz had made the suggestion that he was suffering as a wrong doer. Would they tell him then, straightforwardly, how and when he had transgressed? “How forcible are words of uprightness,” words that go right to a point; but as for their reproving, what did it come to? They had caught at his complaint. Men of experience should know that the talk of a desperate man is for the wind, to be blown away and forgotten, not to be laid hold of captiously. And here from sarcasm he passes to invective. Their temper, he tells them, is so hard and unfeeling that they are fit to cast lots over the orphan and bargain over a friend. They would be guilty even of selling for a slave a poor fatherless child cast on their charity. “Be pleased to look on me,” he cries; “I surely will not lie to your face. Return, let not wrong be done. Go back over my life. Let there be no unfairness. Still is my cause just.” They were bound to admit that he was as able to distinguish right from wrong as they were. If that were not granted, then his whole life went for nothing, and their friendship also.
In this vivid eager expostulation there is at least much of human nature. It abounds in natural touches common to all time and in shrewd ironic perception. The sarcasms of Job bear not only upon his friends, but also upon our lives. The words of men who are sorely tossed with trouble, aye even their deeds, are to be judged with full allowance for circumstances. A man driven back inch by inch in a fight with the world, irritated by defeat, thwarted in his plans, missing his calculations, how easy is it to criticise him from the standpoint of a successful career, high repute, a good balance at the bankers! The hasty words of one who is in sore distress, due possibly to his own ignorance and carelessness, how easy to reckon them against him, find in them abundant proof that he is an unbeliever and a knave, and so pass on to offer in the temple the Pharisees prayer! But, easy and natural, it is base. The author of our poem does well to lay the lash of his inspired scorn upon such a temper. He who stores in memory the quick words of a sufferer and brings them up by and by to prove him deserving of all his troubles, such a man would cast lots over the orphan. It is no unfair charge. Oh for humane feeling, gentle truth, self-searching fear of falsehood! It is so easy to be hard and pious.
Beginning another strophe Job turns from his friends, from would be wise assertions and innuendoes, to find, if he can, a philosophy of human life, then to reflect once more in sorrow on his state, and finally to wrestle in urgent entreaty with the Most High. The seventh chapter, in which we trace this line of thought, increases in pathos as it proceeds and rises to the climax of a most daring demand which is not blasphemous because it is entirely frank, profoundly earnest.
The friends of Job have wondered at his sufferings. He himself has tried to find the reason of them. Now he seeks it again in a survey of mans life:-
“Hath not man war service on earth?
And as the days of a hireling are not his?”
The thought of necessity is coming over Job, that man is not his own master; that a Power he cannot resist appoints his task, whether of action or endurance, to fight in the hot battle or to suffer wearily. And there is truth in the conception; only it is a truth which is inspiring or depressing as the ultimate Power is found in noble character or mindless force. In the time of prosperity this thought of an inexorable decree would have caused no perplexity to Job, and his judgment would have been that the Irresistible is wise and kind. But now, because the shadow has fallen, all appears in gloomy colour, and mans life a bitter servitude. As a slave, panting for the shade, longing to have his work over, Job considers man. During months of vanity and nights of weariness he waits, long nights made dreary with pain, through the slow hours of which he tosses to and fro in misery. His flesh is clothed with worms and an earthy crust, his skin hardens and breaks out. His days are flimsier than a web (Job 7:6), and draw to a close without hope. The wretchedness masters him, and he cries to God.
“O remember, a breath is my life
Never again will mine eye see good.”
Does the Almighty consider how little time is left to him? Surely a gleam might break before all grows dark! Out of sight he will be soon, yea, out of the sight of God Himself, like a cloud that melts away. His place will be down in Sheol, the region of mere existence, not of life, where a mans being dissolves in shadows and dreams. God must know this is coming to Job. Yet in anguish, ere he die, he will remonstrate with his Maker: “I will not curb my mouth, I will make my complaint in the bitterness of my soul.”
Striking indeed is the remonstrance that follows. A struggle against that belief in grim fate which has so injured Oriental character gives vehemence to his appeal; for God must not be lost. His mind is represented as going abroad to find in nature what is most ungovernable and may be supposed to require most surveillance and restraint. By change after change, stroke after stroke, his power has been curbed; till at last, in abject impotence, he lies, a wreck upon the wayside. Nor is he allowed the last solace of nature in extremis; he is not unconscious; he cannot sleep away his misery. By night tormenting dreams haunt him, and visions make as it were a terrible wall against him. He exists on sufferance, perpetually chafed. With all this in his consciousness, he asks, –
“Am I a sea, or a sea monster,
That thou keepest watch over me?”
In a daring figure he imagines the Most High who sets a bound to the sea exercising the same restraint over him, or barring his way as if he were some huge monster of the deep. A certain grim humour characterises the picture. His friends have denounced his impetuosity. Is it as fierce in Gods sight? Can his rage be so wild? Strange indeed is the restraint put on one conscious of having sought to serve God and his age. In self-pity, with an inward sense of the absurdity of the notion, he fancies the Almighty fencing his squalid couch with the horrible dreams and spectres of delirium, barring his way as if he were a raging flood. “I loathe life,” he cries; “I would not live always. Let me alone, for my days are a vapour.” Do not pain me and hem me in with Thy terrors that allow no freedom, no hope, nothing but a weary sense of impotence. And then his expostulation becomes even bolder.
“What is man,” asks a psalmist, “that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” With amazement Gods thought of so puny and insignificant a being is observed. But Job, marking in like manner the littleness of man, turns the question in another way:- “What is man that Thou magnifiest him, And settest Thine heart upon him? That Thou visitest him every morning, And triest him every moment?”
Has the Almighty no greater thing to engage Him that He presses hard on the slight personality of man? Might he not be let alone for a little? Might the watchful eye not be turned away from him even for a moment? And finally, coming to the supposition that he may have transgressed and brought himself under the judgment of the Most High, he even dares to ask why that should be:-
“Have I sinned? Yet what have I done unto Thee,
O Thou Watcher of men?
Why hast Thou set me as Thy butt,
So that I am a burden to myself?
And why will Thou not pardon my transgression,
And cause my sin to pass away?”
How can his sin have injured God? Far above man the Almighty dwells and reigns. No shock of human revolt can affect His throne. Strange is it that a man, even if he has committed some fault or neglected some duty, should be like a block of wood or stone before the feet of the Most High, till bruised and broken he cares no more for existence. If iniquity has been done, cannot the Great God forgive it, pass it by? That would be more like the Great God. Yes; soon Job would be down in the dust of death. The Almighty would find then that he had gone too far. “Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be.”
More daring words were never put by a pious man into the mouth of one represented as pious; and the whole passage shows how daring piety may be. The inspired writer of this book knows God too well, honours Him too profoundly to be afraid. The Eternal Father does not watch keenly for the offences of the creatures He has made. May a man not be frank with God and say out what is in his heart? Surely he may. But he must be entirely earnest. No one playing with life, with duty, with truth, or with doubt may expostulate thus with his Maker.
There is indeed an aspect of our little life in which sin may appear too pitiful, too impotent for God to search out. “As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.” Only when we see that infinite Justice is involved in the minute infractions of justice, that it must redress the iniquity done by feeble hands and vindicate the ideal we crave for yet so often infringe; only when we see this and realise therewith the greatness of our being, made for justice and the ideal, for moral conflict and victory; only, in short, when we know responsibility, do we stand aghast at sin and comprehend the meaning of judgment. Job is learning here the wisdom and holiness of God which stand correlative to His grace and our responsibility. By way of trial and pain and these sore battles with doubt he is entering into the fulness of the heritage of spiritual knowledge and power.