Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 13:15
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
15. The general meaning of Job 13:14 must be the same however the verse is construed, though it may be expressed in two ways, viz. either, Why should I painfully strive to preserve my life? or, I am ready to risk my life (or in both ways). Job 13:15 reads most naturally,
Behold he will slay me: I will not wait:
Yet will I defend my ways to his face.
The words “he will slay me” refer to what Job anticipates may be the result of his daring to maintain the rectitude of his life to God’s face, as the second clause intimates. These two clauses are in close connexion, and the words “I will not wait” are almost parenthetical behold he will slay me (I will not wait for a more distant death), notwithstanding I will defend, &c. Others refer the words “behold he will slay me” to Job’s certainty of speedy death from his disease. And again, some render the words “I will not wait,” I have no hope; and thus a variety of meanings all more or less suitable arises. The word to wait hardly has the sense of to hope, at least in this Book, cf. ch. Job 6:11, Job 14:14, Job 29:21, Job 30:26, and in another form in the mouth of Elihu, ch. Job 32:11; Job 32:16.
Instead of the word not before wait another reading gives for him, or for it. This is the reading of many ancient versions; and the rendering of the Vulgate, etiamsi occiderit me in ipso sperabo, has been followed by most modern translations, as by our own. Such a sense, however, does not suit the connexion. If this reading be adopted, some such sense must be given to the clause as that preferred by Delitzsch: Behold he will slay me I wait for him: only I will defend, &c.; that is, I wait for His final stroke.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Though he slay me – God may so multiply my sorrows and pains that I cannot survive them. I see that I may be exposed to increased calamities, yet I am willing to meet them. If in maintaining my own cause, and showing that I am not a hypocrite Job 13:16, it should so happen that my sufferings should be so increased that I should die, yet I will do it. The word slay, or kill, here refers to temporal death. It has no reference to punishment in the future world, or to the death of the soul. It means merely that Job was determined to maintain his cause and defend his character, though his sufferings should be so increased that life would be the forfeit. Such was the extent of his sufferings, that he had reason to suppose that they would terminate in death; and yet notwithstanding this, it was his fixed purpose to confide in God; compare the notes at Job 19:25-27. This was spoken in Jobs better moments, and was his deliberate and prevailing intention. This deliberate purpose expresses what was really the character of the man, though occasionally, when he became impatient, he gave utterance to different sentiments and feelings. We are to look to the prevailing and habitual tenor of a mans feelings and declared principles, in order to determine what his character is, and not to expressions made under the influence of temptation, or under the severity of pain. On the sentiment here expressed, compare Psa 23:4; Pro 14:32.
Yet will I trust in him – The word used here ( yachal) means properly to wait, stay, delay; and it usually conveys the idea of waiting on one with an expectation of aid or help. Hence, it means to hope. The sense here is, that his expectation or hope was in God; and if the sense expressed in our common version be correct, it implies that even in death, or after death, he would confide in God. He would adhere to him, and would still feel that beyond death he would bless him.
In him – In God. But there is here an important variation in the reading. The present Hebrew is lo’ – not. The Qeriy or marginal reading, is with a (v) – in him. Jerome renders it as if it were lo – in ipso, that is, in him. The Septuagint followed some reading which does not now appear in any copies of the Hebrew text, or which was the result of mere imagination: Though the Almighty, as he hath begun, may subdue me – cheirosetai – yet will I speak, and maintain my cause before him. The Chaldee renders it, – I will pray before him; evidently reading it as if it were lo, in him. So the Syriac, in him. I have no doubt, therefore, that this was the ancient reading, and that the true sense is retained in our common version though Rosenmuller, Good, Noyes, and others, have adopted the other reading, and suppose that it is to be taken as a negative.
Noyes renders it, Lo! he slayeth me, and I have no hope! Good, much worse, Should he even slay me, I would not delay. It may be added, that there are frequent instances where lo’ and lo are interchanged, and where the copyist seems to have been determined by the sound rather than by a careful inspection of the letters. According to the Masoretes, there are fifteen places where lo’, not, is written for lo, to him. Exo 21:8; Lev 11:21; Lev 25:30; 1Sa 2:3; 2Sa 16:18; Psa 100:4; Psa 139:16; Job 13:15; Job 41:4; Ezr 4:2; Pro 19:7; Pro 26:2; Isa 9:2; Isa 63:9. On the other hand, lo is put for lo’ in 1Sa 2:16; 1Sa 20:2; Job 6:21. A mistake of this kind may have easily occurred here. The sentiment here expressed is one of the noblest that could fall from the lips of man. It indicates unwavering confidence in God, even in death.
It is the determination of a mind to adhere to him, though he should strip away comfort after comfort, and though there should be no respite to his sorrows until he should sink down in death. This is the highest expression of piety, and thus it is the privilege of the friends of God to experience. When professed earthly friends become cold toward us, our love for them also is chilled. Should they leave and forsake us in the midst of suffering and want, and especially should they leave us on a bed of death, we should cease to confide in them. But not so in respect to God. Such is the nature of our confidence in him, that though he takes away comfort after comfort, though our health is destroyed and our friends are removed, and though we are led down into the valley and the shadow of death, yet still we never lose our confidence in him. We feel that all will yet be well. We look forward to another state, and anticipate the blessedness of another and a better world.
Reader, can you in sincerity lift the eye toward God, and say to him, Though Thou dost slay me, though comfort after comfort is taken away, though the waves of trouble roll over me, and though I go down into the valley of the shadow of death, yet i will trust in thee; – Thine I will be even then, and when all is dark I will believe that God is right, and just, and true, and good, and will never doubt that he is worthy of my eternal affection and praise? Such is religion. Where else is it found but in the views of God and of his government which the Bible reveals. The infidel may have apathy in his sufferings, the blasphemer may be stupid, the moralist or the formalist may be unconcerned; but that is not to have confidence in God. That results from religion alone.
But I will maintain mine own ways before him – Margin, prove, or argue. The sense is, I will vindicate my ways, or myself. That is, I will maintain that I am his friend, and that I am not a hypocrite. His friends charged him with insincerity. They were not able, Job supposed, to appreciate his arguments and to do justice to him. He had, therefore, expressed the wish to carry his cause directly before God Job 13:3; and he was assured that he would do justice to his arguments. Even should he slay him, he would still stand up as his friend, and would still maintain that his calamities had not come upon him, as his friends supposed, because he was a hypocrite and a secret enemy of his Maker.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Job 13:15
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him
A misinterpreted verse, and a misapprehended God
How often have these words been the vehicle of a sublime faith in the hour of supreme crisis! It is always matter of regret when one has to take away a cherished treasure from believing hearts.
Now this verse, properly translated and rightly understood, means something quite different from what it has ordinarily been considered to mean. You will find in the Revised Version a rendering differing from the accepted one–Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him, it reads. So that instead of being the utterance of a resigned soul, submissively accepting chastisement, it is rather the utterance of a soul that, conscious of its own integrity, is prepared to face the worst that Providence can inflict, and resolved to vindicate itself against any suggestion of ill desert. Behold, He will slay me. Let Him. Let Him do His worst. I wait for Him in the calm assurance of the purity of my motives and the probity of my life. I await His next stroke. I know that I have done nothing to deserve this punishment, and am prepared to maintain my innocence to His face. I will accept the blow, because I can do no other, but I will assert my blamelessness. It is a lesson, not in the blind submissiveness of a perfect trust, but in the unconquerable boldness of conscious rectitude. There is nothing cringing or abject in this language. And this is in harmony with the whole tenor of the context, which is in a strain of self-vindication throughout. But, in order to understand the real sentiment underlying this exclamation, we must have a correct conception of the theory of the Divine action in the world common to that age. Job is thinking of Jehovah as the men of his time thought of Him, as the God who punished evil in this world, and whose chastisements were universally regarded as the evidence of moral transgression on the part of the sufferer. It is a false theory of Providence and of Divine judgment against which the patriarch so vehemently protests. He has the sense of punishment without the consciousness of transgression, and this creates his difficulty. If my sufferings are to be regarded as punishment, I demand to know wherein I have transgressed. It is the attitude of a man who writhes under the stigma of false accusation, and who is prepared to vindicate his reputation before any tribunal. The struggle represented for us with so much dramatic power and vividness in this poem is Jobs struggle for reconciliation between the God of the theologians of his day and the God of his own heart. And is not this a modem as well as an ancient struggle? Does not our heart often rise within us to resent and repel the representations of Deity that the current theology gives? Job had to answer to himself, Which of these two Gods is the true one? If the God of the theological imagination Were the true God, he was prepared to hold his own before Him. This Divine despot, as the stronger, might visit him with His castigations, but in his conscious integrity, Job would not blench. Behold, He will slay me; I will wait for Him. I will maintain my cause before Him. Now, is this a right or a wrong attitude in presence of the Eternal Righteousness? Is there blasphemy in a mans maintaining his conscious innocence before God? As there was a conventional God in Jobs day, a God who was a figment of the human fancy, dressed up in the judicial terrors of an oriental despot, so is there a conventional God in our own day, the God of Calvinistic theologians, in whose presence men are taught that nothing becomes them but servile submission and abject self-vilification. But is that view compatible, after all, with what the Scripture tells us, that man is created in the very image, breathing the very breath of God? We have been taught to imagine that we are honouring God when we try to make ourselves out as bad as bad can be. What are the strange phenomena produced by this conventional conception? Why, that you will hear holy men in prayer, men of inflexible rectitude and spotless character, describing themselves to God in terms that would libel a libertine. This was Bildads theology. By a strange logic he fancied he was glorifying God by disparaging Gods handiwork. He declares (Job 25:5) that the very stars are not pure in Gods sight though God made them, and then falls into what I may call the vermicular strain of self-depreciation. How much less man, that is a worm and the son of man who is a worm? We have to judge theologies by our own innate sense of right and justice; and any theology which requires us to defame ourselves, and say of ourselves evil things not endorsed by our own healthy consciousness, is a degrading theology, one dishonouring alike to man and to God his Maker. Jobs inward sense of substantial rectitude, both in intention and in conduct, revolted against this God of his contemporaries who was always requiring him to put himself in the wrong whether he felt so or not. And Job obeyed a true instinct in taking up that attitude. God does not want us to tell Him lies about ourselves in our prayers and hymns. But I will venture to say that any attitude that is not truly manly is not truly Christian or religious. Stand upon thy feet, said the angel to the seer. The fact is, the conscience of good or evil is the God within us, and supreme. What my conscience convicts me of, let me confess to; but let me confess nothing wherein my conscience does not condemn me, out of deference to an artificial deity. Let us dare to follow our own thoughts of God, interpreting His relation and providence towards us through our own best instincts and aspirations. This is what Jesus taught us to do. He revealed and exemplified a manly and man making faith, as far removed as possible from that slavish spirit which is so characteristic of much pietistic teaching. Christ said, Find the best in yourselves and take that for the reflection of God. Reason from that up to God, He says. How much more shall your heavenly Father! Bildad and the theologians of his school transferred to their conception of Deity all their own pettinesses and foibles, and consequently conceived of Him as a being greedy of the adulation of His creatures, jealous of a monopoly of their homage. One who could not bear that anybody should be praised but Himself, and who was pleased when they unmanned themselves and wriggled like worms at His feet. To think thus of God is at once to degrade Him and ourselves. Let us not be afraid of our own better thoughts of God, assured that He must be better than even our best thoughts. I say Job was the victim of a false theology. When he was left to his own healthier instincts he took another tone. In the early chapters of this book he is represented to us as one of the sublimest heroes of faith. Under a succession of the most appalling and overwhelming calamities that stripped him of possessions and bereaved him of almost all that he loved in the world, he rises to that supreme resignation to the Divine will which found expression in perhaps the noblest utterance that ever broke from a crushed heart, The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. It is difficult to believe that it is the same man who rose to this sublime degree of submission who now adopts the semi-defiant tone of the words of my text–Behold, He will slay me. I will wait for Him; I will maintain my cause before Him. The fact is that while it is the same mane it is not the same God. The God of the earlier chapters is the God of his own unsophisticated heart. In Him he could trust as doing all things well. But the God of this later part of the story is the God of perverse human invention; not the Creator of all things, but one created by the imaginations of men who fashioned an enlarged image of themselves and called that God. Job would not have wronged God if he had not had the wrong God presented to him. It was his would be monitors who had thought that God was altogether such an one as themselves, who were guilty of this crime. And again, had Job himself been a Christian, had he possessed the ethical sense, and judged himself by the ethical standards that the teaching of Jesus created, he would not have adopted this attitude of proud self-vindication. For then, though his outward life might have been exemplary, and his social obligations scrupulously fulfilled, he would have understood that righteousness is a matter of the thoughts and motives, as well as of the outward behaviour. Judging himself by the moral standards of his time, he felt himself immaculate. It is pleasant to know from the last chapter, that before the drama closes Job comes to truer thoughts of God and a more spiritual knowledge of himself. He perceives that his heart, in its blind revolt, has been fighting a travesty of God and not the real God. Then, so soon as he sees God as He is, and himself as he is, his tone changes again. She accent of revolt is exchanged for that of adoring recognition, and the note of defiance sinks into a strain of penitential confession. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (J. Halsey.)
A trustful resolution
Such was the determinate resolution of the venerable and pious Job. In the history of this good man three things are evident.
1. That all things are under the Divine control.
2. Piety and integrity do not exempt from trials.
3. All things eventually work together for good to them that love God.
I. The situation in which Job was placed.
1. A great change had taken place in his worldly concerns. The day of adversity had come upon him.
2. But still Jobs case was not yet hopeless nor comfortless. There was still the same kind Providence which could bless his future life. There were his children. News comes that they are all killed.
3. Where now shall we look for any comfort for Job? Well, he has his health. But now this is taken away.
4. There was one person from whom Job might expect comfort and sympathy–his wife. Yet the most trying temptation Job ever had came from his wife.
5. Still Job had many friends. But those who came to help him proved miserable comforters. Every earthly prop had given way.
II. Jobs determination.
1. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.
2. Job might confidently trust in the Lord, because he had not brought his sufferings upon himself by his own neglect or imprudence.
3. Jobs trust or faith was of the right kind. Trust in God implies that the depending person has an experimental knowledge of His power, wisdom, and goodness. Trust in God includes prayer, patience, and a reconciliation to the Divine will. Remarks–
1. What a wonderful example of patience and resignation we have in Job.
2. What decision of character and manly firmness are exemplified in the conduct of this good man.
3. How well it was for Job that he trusted and patiently waited to see the salvation of God. (B. Bailey.)
Perfect trust in extreme trial
To most persons there is some affliction which they account the extreme of trouble. The estimate of particular troubles changes, however, with circumstances.
I. Jobs meaning. Trust in God is built on acquaintance with God. It is an intelligent act or habit of the soul. It is a fruit of religious knowledge. It is begotten of belief in the representations which are given of God, and of faith in the promises of God. It is a fruit of reconciliation with God. It involves, in the degree of its power and life, the quiet assurance that God will be all that He promises to be, and will do all that He engages to do; and that, in giving and withholding, He will do that which is perfectly kind and right. The development of trust in God depends entirely upon circumstances. In danger, it appears as courage and quietness from fear; in difficulties, as resolution and as power of will; in sorrow, as submission; in labour, as continuance and perseverance; and in extremity, it shows itself as calmness.
II. Is Jobs strong confidence justifiable? We may not think all Job thought, or speak always as Job spoke; yet we may safely copy this patient man.
1. God does not afflict willingly.
2. God has not exhausted Himself by any former deliverance.
3. In all that affects His saints, God takes a living and loving interest.
4. Circumstances can never become mysterious, or complicated, or unmanageable to God. We must in our thoughts attach mysteriousness only to our impressions: we must not transfer it to God.
5. God has in time past slain His saints, and yet delivered them.
III. The example Job exhibits. Job teaches us that it is well sometimes to imagine the heaviest possible affliction happening to us. This is distinct from the habitual imagination of evil, which we should avoid, and which we deprecate. Job teaches as that the perfect work of patience is the working of patience to the uttermost–that is, down to the lowest depths of depression, and up to the highest pitch of anguish. He teaches that the extreme of trial should call forth the perfection of trust. Our principles are most wanted in extremity. Job shows that the spirit of trust is the spirit of endurance. We may also learn that to arm ourselves against trial, we must increase our confidence. True trust respects all events, and all Divine dispensations. All–not a particular class, but the whole. All that happens to us is part of Gods grand design and of Gods great plan respecting us: Let me commend to you Jobs style of speech. To say, Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. will involve an effort, but there is no active manifestation of true godliness without exertion. Even faith is a fight. It is one of the simplest things in spiritual life to trust, but often that which involves a desperate struggle. Ignorance of Gods intentions may sometimes say to us, distrust Him; and unbelief may suggest, distrust Him; and fear may whisper, distrust Him; but, in spite of all your foes, say to yourself, I will trust Him. The day will come when such confidence in God, as that which you are now required to exercise, will no longer be needed. In that day God will do nothing painful to you. He will not move in a mysterious way, even to you, and you will chiefly be possessed by a spirit of love; but until that day dawns, God asks you to trust Him. (Samuel Martin.)
Absolute faith
Faith, like all Christian graces, is a thing of growth, and therefore capable of degree.
I. Faith is direct knowledge. It is a kind of intuition.
1. It does not depend, like scientific knowledge, on the testimony of the senses.
2. It does not rest, like judicial decisions, on the truthfulness of witnesses, and the consistency of evidence.
3. It is not founded, like mathematical convictions, on logical demonstration.
4. Intellect combines these together to reveal the soul to itself.
5. Faith thus perceives the wants of the soul, and the fitness of revealed truth to satisfy them.
II. Faith acts on a person. Its object is God–Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
1. A person is more complex than any proposition, and offers to the soul an immense number of points of contact. It is an undeveloped universe.
2. A person is a profounder reality than a doctrine. Character is more steadfast than a theory.
3. God is the universe, and can sympathise with every soul. God in Christ is a universe of mercy to the sinner.
III. It concerns the weightiest destinies of the soul and is attested by conscience.
1. It does not tolerate indifference.
2. It arouses the faculties to their utmost.
3. It comes in contact with revealed holiness. The soul cannot rest in evil. It requires truth and justice.
Without these it is a lever without a fulcrum.
1. Faith gives rest without indifference.
2. It provides happiness without delusion. (J. Peters.)
Faiths ultimatum
This is one of the supreme sayings of Scripture. It rises, like an Alpine summit, clear above all ordinary heights of speech, it pierces the clouds, and glistens in the light of God. If I were required to quote a selection of the sublimest utterances of the human mind, I should mention this among the first, Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. Methinks I might almost say to the man who thus spoke what our Lord said to Simon Peter when he had declared Him to be the Son of the Highest, Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee. Such tenacious holding, such immovable confidence, such unstaggering reliance, are not products of mere nature, but rare flowers of rich almighty grace. It is well worthy of observation that in these words Job answered both the accusations of Satan and the charges of his friends. Though I do not know that Job was aware that the devil had said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast Thou not set a hedge about him and all that he hath? yet he answered that base suggestion in the ablest possible manner, for he did in effect say, Though God should pull down my hedge, and lay me bare as the wilderness itself, yet will I cling to Him in firmest faith. The arch-fiend had also dared to say that Job had held out under his first trials because they were not sufficiently personal. Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath, will he give for his life. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face. In the brave words before us Job most effectually silences that slander by, in effect, saying, Though my trial be no longer the slaying of my children, but of myself, yet will I trust in Him. He thus in one sentence replies to the two slanders of Satan; thus unconsciously doth truth overthrow her enemies, defeating the secret malice of falsehood by the simplicity of sincerity. Jobs friends also had insinuated that he was a hypocrite. They inquired of him, Who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off? They thought themselves quite safe in inferring that Job must have been a deceiver, or he would not have been so specially punished. To this accusation Jobs grand declaration of his unstaggering faith was the best answer possible, for none but a sincere soul could thus speak. Will a hypocrite trust in God when He slays him? Will a deceiver cling to God when He is smiting him? Assuredly not. Thus were the three miserable comforters answered if they had been wise enough to see it. Our text exhibits a child of God under the severest pressure, and shows us the difference between him and a man of the world. A man of the world under the same conditions as Job would have been driven to despair, and in that desperation would have become morosely sullen, or defiantly rebellious! Here you see what in a child of God takes the place of desperation. When others despair, he trusts in God. When he has nowhere else to look, he turns to his Heavenly Father; and when for a time, even in looking to God, he meets with no conscious comfort, he waits in the patience of hope, calmly expecting aid, and resolving that even if it did not come he will cling to God with all the energy of his soul. Here all the mans courage comes to the front, not, as in the case of the ungodly, obstinately to rebel, but bravely to confide. The child of God is courageous, for he knows how to trust. His heart says, Ay, Lord, it is bad with me now, and it is growing worse, but should the worst come to the worst, still will I cling to Thee, and never let Thee go. In what better way can the believer reveal his loyalty to his Lord? He evidently follows his Master, not in fair weather only, but in the foulest and roughest ways. He loves his Lord, not only when He smiles upon him, but when He frowns. His love is not purchased by the largesses of his Lords golden hand, for it is not destroyed by the smitings of His heavy rod. Though my Lord put on His sternest looks, though from fierce looks He should go to cutting words, and though from terrible words He should proceed to cruel blows, which seem to beat the very life out of my soul, yea, though He take down the sword and threaten to execute me therewith, yet is my heart steadfastly set upon one resolve, namely, to bear witness that He is infinitely good and just. I have not a word to say against Him, nor a thought to think against Him, much less would I wander from Him; but still, though He slay me, I would trust in Him. What is my text but an Old Testament version of the New Testament, Quis separabit–Who shall separate? Job does but anticipate Pauls question. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, etc. Was not the same spirit in both Job and Paul? Is He also in us? If so, we are men indeed, and our speech is with power, and to us this declaration is no idle boast, no foolish bravado, though it would be ridiculous, indeed, if there were not a gracious heart behind it to make it good. It is the conquering shout of an all-surrendering faith, which gives up all but God. I want that we may all have its spirit this morning, that whether we suffer Jobs trial or not we may at any rate have Jobs close adherence to the Lord, his faithful confidence in the Most High. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Peace and joy and chastisement
This sentiment is founded on the belief that God is our sole strength and refuge; that if good is in any way in store for us, it lies with God; if it is attainable, it is attained by coming to God. Inquirers seeking the truth, prodigals repentant, saints rejoicing in the light, saints walking in darkness–all of them have one word on their lips, one creed in their hearts. Trust ye in the Lord forever. There is another case, in which it is equally our wisdom and duty to stay ourselves upon God; that of our being actually under punishment for our sins. Men may be conscious that they have incurred Gods displeasure, and conscious that they are suffering it; and then their duty is still to trust in God, to acquiesce, or rather to concur in His chastisements. Scripture affords us some remarkable instances of persons glorifying, or called on to glorify God when under His hand. See Joshuas exhortation to Achan. The address of Jonah to God from the fishs belly. It should not be difficult to realise the state of mind described in the text, and yet some find difficulty in conceiving how Christians can have hope without certainty, sorrow and pain without gloom, suspense with calmness and confidence. I proceed then to describe this state of mind. Suppose a good man, who is conscious of some deliberate sin or sins in time past, some course of sin, or in later life has detected himself in some secret and subtle sin, what will be his state when the conviction of his sin, whatever it is, breaks upon him? Will he think himself utterly out of Gods favour? He will not despair. Will he take up the notion that God has forgiven him? He has two feelings at once–one of present enjoyment, and another of undefined apprehension, and on looking on to the day of judgment, hope and fear both rise within him. (J. H. Newman, B. D.)
Trustfulness
Job endured, as seeing Him who is invisible; he had that faith which has realised to itself the conviction that, somehow or other, all things are working together for good to them that love God, and which calmly submits itself without anxiety to whatever God sees fit to lay upon it. Faith comprehends trustfulness. It is the larger term of the two. None of us can have lived any length of time in the world without having, as part of our appointed trial, been visited with pain and sickness, with the loss of friends, and with more or less of temporal misfortune. How these chastisements have been borne by us, has depended upon how far we have taught ourselves to look upon them as a precious legacy from Christ our Saviour, as a portion of His Cross, as a token of His love. Looking back upon what, at the time, you considered the great misfortunes of your life, can you not now see the gracious designs with which they were sent? In this is there not a powerful argument in favour of trustfulness, and a most satisfactory evidence that in quietness and confidence will be our strength? In proportion as we have the Spirit of Christ, will be our desire to be made like unto Him in all things; and this resemblance can never be attained without a following of Him in the path of suffering, and a submission and trustfulness like His as we pass along it. There is, however, the danger of our endeavouring, by any movement of impatience, to lighten the burden which our Heavenly Father has laid on us; of taking matters, as it were, into our own hands, and so thwarting or making of none effect the merciful designs of providence towards us. We must take care that our passiveness and silence are the result of Christian principles. There is a silence which arises from sullenness, and a passiveness which comes from apathy or despair. Trials are sent us in order that when we feel their acuteness, we may raise our thoughts to Him who alone can lighten them, and bless them to us. We ought to feel that it is sin to doubt the gracious purposes of God towards us, or to receive them in any other than a thankful spirit. How mercifully we are dealt with we shall be the more ready to acknowledge, the more we reflect upon the manner of Gods visitations towards us. But it is not in personal and domestic trials only that this spirit of trustfulness will be our safeguard and support. In all those perplexities which arise from our own position in the Church, and the Churchs position in the world, and which would otherwise bewilder us, our trustfulness will come to our refuge. And there never was greater need of a trustful spirit among Churchmen than at the present time. (P. E. Paget, M. A.)
Fortitude under trial
Trust in God is one of the easiest of all things to express, and one of the hardest to practise. There is no grace more necessary, and when attained there is no grace more blessed and comforting. But if blessed when attained, it is difficult of attainment. It is no spontaneous growth of the natural mind, but implies a work of grace which the Holy Ghost can alone accomplish. It requires a deep realisation of the Divine presence, of the Divine wisdom, and of the Divine love. On our side there must be an active effort, and an utter renunciation of all trust on that effort, that simple looking out of ourselves which it is indeed most difficult to reconcile with the active instincts of the mind.
I. It is amid sorrow and trial that trust can alone be exercised. No time here on earth is free from temptation and danger, and therefore no time here on earth can we cease to rely upon God. The very meaning of trust implies doubt within and danger without, the man who trusts, if we already knew everything, where would be faith? If we already possessed everything, where would be hope?
II. This sure confidence is not the attribute of any trust which we may place in any object. It is, indeed, the nature of trust to operate in times of difficulty; but yet the success with which it can do this depends ever upon the nature of that which is trusted–the foundation on which the house of trust is built. There are two arguments which single out God as the alone object of our trust. There meet in God all the attributes which deserve confidence. And they do not meet in any other; they are not to be found, even singly, in any other.
III. Our trials ought to make our confidence more deep and constant. Has He not warned us beforehand of their existence? He has explained the very cause and reason why they are permitted–reasons to which the conscience and the experience of every believer will most deeply assent. Then let us pray for grace to hold fast our hope steadfast unto the end. (Edward Garbett, M. A.)
Joy out of suffering
The joy of the world ends in sorrow; sorrow with Christ and in Christ, yea, and for our sins, for Christs sake, ends in joy. We have many of us felt how the worlds joy ends in sorrow. We must not, would not, choose our suffering. Any pang but this, is too often the wounded spirits cry; any trouble but this. And its cry may bear witness to itself, that its merciful Physician knows well where its disease lies, how it is to be probed to the quick, how to be healthfully healed. Job refutes Satans lie. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. He holds not back his very, self. He gives up freely all which he is–his very
I. Though He slay me. Oh, glorious faith of older saints, and hope of the resurrection, and love stronger than death, and blessed bareness of the soul, which for God would part with all but God, knowing that in God it will find all! yea, which would give its very self, trusting Him who took itself from itself, that it should find again (as all the redeemed will find) itself a better self in God. Till we attain, by His mercy, to Himself, and death itself is past, there is often need, amid the many manifold forms of death, wherewith we are encompassed, for that holy steadfastness of the patriarchs trust. The first trials by which God would win us back to Himself are often not the severest. These outward griefs are often but the beginning of sorrows. Deeper and more difficult far are those sorrows wherewith God afflicts the very soul herself. A bitter thing indeed it is to have to turn to God with a cold, decayed heart; an evil thing and bitter to have destroyed ourselves. Merciful and very good are all the scourges of the All. Good and All-Merciful. The deeper, the more merciful; the more inward, the more cleansing. The more they enter into the very soul, the more they open it for the healing presence of God. The less self lives, the more Christ liveth in it. Manifold are these clouds whereby God hides, for the time, the brightness of His presence, and He seemeth, as it were, to threaten again to bring a destroying flood over our earthliness. Yet one character they have in common, that the soul can hardly believe itself in a state of grace. Hard indeed is it for hope to live when faith seems dead, and love grown cold. Faint not, thou weary soul, but trust! If thou canst not hope, act as thou wouldst if thou didst hope. If thou canst see nothing before thee but hell, shut thine eyes and cast thyself blindly into the infinite abyss of Gods mercy. And the everlasting arms will, though thou know it not, receive thee and upbear thee. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Trusting God
I never have delivered a discourse on trust in God but that someone has thanked me for it. Confidence in Him is a constant necessity, but there are always some in special need. To fail of this possession is like a captains putting to sea without fresh water, or like a mother who should think of sending a son to college without a Bible in his trunk. There are sudden surprises in life, when trouble comes like a cyclone. All we can do is to coil the rope about the belaying pin and wait. Fair-weather faith is abundant, cheap and worthless. It is easy to trust God when the larder is full and the dividends large. Indeed, there is then danger of self-content and self-conceit. But we want a faith that will hold in the teeth of the tempest. The disciples did not doubt Christs power when peace rested on the lake, but when the storm came they cried to Him, Master, save! we perish! That courage is worthless which blusters in the tent and retreats at the cannons mouth. That amiability which is seen where there is no provocation, or that temperance which is maintained where no temptations assail, is of little merit. The trust spoken of in the text is a childlike faith. We can learn much from the trustfulness of a child. It feels its weakness, and puts confidence in the parent. If he betray it, he destroys the childs confidence. Absence of faith in God is infidelity. Unbelief is dry rot to the character. A little child is not anxious as to whether there will be food for the table, or a pillow for its tired head; he leaves it all to his parent. Much of the worry which nowadays results in softening of the brain and paralysis, is only borrowed trouble. Why take thought for the morrow? Our fears strangle our faith. The soul is nightmared. We grow choleric, and complain of Gods treatment of us. We forget what is left to us. Some of you have camped out this summer, and learned how much you have at home is not absolutely needful. I said to a noble Christian merchant, who, by no fault of his, had suddenly become bankrupt, Your decks have been swept clean by the gale, but did it touch anything in the hold? The thought, he said, was a comfort to him. I was in a home of sorrow today, where the grief was peculiarly tender and sore, but there was the hope of heaven when the beloved went home. God sometimes strips us that we may be freer to run the race to heaven. The nobleness of this trust is to feel that Christ is left, though superfluous things are taken. The Bible is left, the Holy Spirit and heaven remain. No loss is comparable to the loss of Christ from the soul, yet men do not hang crape on the door, or even have a sleepless night at that loss. But anxiety for this is wholesome. To be forced to say with the poet–
A believing heart has gone from me,
is worse than to have a house burned, or a child die. Again, the childlike faith shown in the text is perfectly unsuspecting. See that beggars babe clinging to the mothers rags that hardly cover it. Why should we, when in darkened paths, hesitate to trust our Heavenly Parent implicitly? He has pledged us all things, and doubt is an insult to Him. I stood on the heights of Abraham a few weeks ago, and recalled the victory of Wolfe, with thrilling emotion, but did not forget those steps, one by one, through dark, narrow, and precipitous paths, that led that gallant general to victory. You have your heights of Abraham to scale ere triumph crowns you. Each one has his trials. There is a skeleton in each closet, a crook in each lot. Character grows under these stages of discipline. Trust Him day by day. Live, as it were, from hand to mouth. Do present duty with present ability. Trust in God for victory, and be content with one step at a time. (Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D.)
Unconditional trust in God
The measure of our being is the measure of our strength. He only is really strong who is strong in the Lord. He only who is strong in the Lord rises superior to circumstances. He whose soul is in his circumstances is weak in exact proportion as his heart is set upon surroundings. He who gives himself to the world gets nothing to self–to soul–in return. He who gives himself to God, though he may receive no objective blessing, gets God in return–finds a nobler self–saves by losing. Neither worldly splendour, nor state of our bodily health, affords any criterion to the state of our soul. We are prone to think adverse things are necessarily punitive. But the trials of Christians are disciplinary.
I. Jobs words are autobiographical. They afford insight into the state of Jobs heart, and they tell us what he had been. Trials not only show character; they reveal history. When we see a man standing morally erect in circumstances the most dire that ever fell to the lot of mortal, we cannot doubt that we have insight into his history. Job had trusted in God, had lived near to Him in the past, and so he is strong, and rises above circumstances in the adverse present. Character is not formed by one effort of will, no, nor by ten, fifty, or five hundred.
II. These words are educational. They teach us that the child of God lives by faith. There are people who assume, perhaps they really experience a species of trust in God so long as all goes well with them. When the possessions of the self-complacent man are lost, we look in vain for evidences of contentment, thankfulness, philosophic bearing. The child of God does not regard his relationship to God as simply commercial. The professor only may calculate upon the advantage which, in a worldly sense, his religion is likely to bring. The child of God has no such thoughts. Christianity is commercial in the sense that to get we must give; yet it is not commercial, as we understand the word, for he who gives most of self to Christ, thinks least about what he receives in return. The child of God bases his trust upon the last contingency. Like a crane, a waggon, or a barge, some men can bear only a certain strain. The truth is that the pruning knife is never welcome, and we always think its edge would have been less keen had that been taken which is left, and that left which is taken. But Job could base his trust upon the very last contingency.
III. These words are prophetical.
1. With respect to this life. What a man is at any time is an index to what he will be. Our daily procedure goes upon the supposition that our present character indicates our future. The present indicates the future if we continue in the same track.
2. With respect to a future life. There is a slaying which is not slaying. The child of God shall never die. (J. S. Swan.)
Trust without calculation
The friends of Job have their counterparts in every age of the world. Whenever men are in trouble, there are those who undertake the task of comforting, without any qualifications for it. They lack sympathy. When it is expected that they will minister comfort, they bring forth all the stock sentiments which those who are not in trouble squander upon those who are: the respectable commonplaces which, like ready-made garments, do not in reality fit any, because they are meant to fit all. No wise man will needlessly proffer himself as a comforter. The more wise he is, the more profoundly he will shrink from intruding upon the sanctity of an afflicted soul. The difference between Job and his friends is exactly this, that he had gone down to first principles, and they had not. You can trace beneath all his utterances a something which enables him to withstand all their poor, superficial talk. What that something was is set forth in the text. It was a trust in God, i.e., Gods character, which not even the most crushing stroke of Divine power could destroy. You will never understand the meaning of faith unless you remember that it is identical with trust. If we would understand how trust at last reaches an uncalculating perfection, consider how trust builds itself up in regard to an earthly benefactor or father. It begins with kind acts. Some one does something very generous and disinterested towards us. The child becomes aware of the ever-present care and self-denying goodness of the parent. One act, observe, does not usually furnish a rational ground of trust. Only when that act of kindness is followed by others does settled trust arise. Hence trust is, in fact, confidence in the character of another. The child, after long experience of the fathers love, acquires such faith in the parents character that it can trust even when he acts with seeming unkindness. There are cases in which even one action would command the homage of our hearts. It is by one transcendent act of love that Christ has fixed forever His claim. He has given Himself for us. However we reach it, this trust is for the man an all-powerful factor ever after. Once it is placed beyond question that God loves us, then we will not allow any subsequent chastening, any frowning providence to shake our faith in His unchanging love. Trust such as this is eminently rational. It rests on evidence. We have proved God worthy of our hearts confidence. The trust which is first built up of benefits received gradually becomes uncalculating. The highest reverence and devotion towards God is disinterested. Self, or what self may win or miss, fades out of view. The words are felt to be exaggerated in expressing the joyful and absolute self-forgetfulness of him who is dwelling in the presence of Infinite Perfection. A heart at one with God, knowing no will but His, perfect in its trust, carries within it peace and heavenly mindedness wherever it may abide in this wide universe; while a heart distrustful of God, swept by gusts of passion and self-will, lacking the one feeling which alone gives stability, can find heaven nowhere. Remember that faith may be genuine even when it is feeble. Small hope for you and me if it were not so. But to the faith which I have been describing all faith must approximate: so far as faith falls short of it, it is imperfect; and if we do not aim at the highest, we shall be only too likely to remain without faith in any degree. (J. A. Jacob, M. A.)
The triumph of faith
Faith is the reliance of the heart on God. On the one hand, it is not any mere operation of the understanding. On the other hand, it is not any assurance about our state before God. There are, perhaps, two chief ways in which we may arrive at the assurance that we are children of God. The one is looking to Christ; the other is the examination of Scripture, to see what are the marks of Gods children. When faith is true, there are many degrees and stages in it. We may have a faith which can just touch the hem of Christs garment, and that is all that it can do; and if it does this it is healing, because it is true. But there is a wide difference of degree between this infancy of faith and its manhood. It requires a strong faith to look beyond and above a frowning providence, and to trust in God in the dark. It is the Word of God, and not the dispensations of providence, which is the basis on which faith rears her column, the soil into which she sinks her roots; and resting on this she can say with Job, Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. But it is very important to distinguish between two things which many, and especially young Christians, often confound together, that is, faith and feeling. Changeful as we are in every way, there is no part of us so subject to change as our feelings–warm one day, and even hot, how cold and chilled they are the next. If we walk, not by feeling but by faith, then, when all around us and all within us is dark, we shall still cling to Gods faithful Word; we shall feel that it is we who change, and not God. (George Wagner.)
The perfect faith
When a soul is able to declare that, even under the smiting, ay, even under the slaying of God, it is able still to trust in Him, everyone feels that soul has reached a very true and deep, sometimes it must seem a rare faith in Him. Yet men must have attained this before they can be in any complete or worthy way believers in God. Merely to trust Him when He is manifestly kind to them, is surely not enough. The words of the text might be said almost in desperation. It is a question whether a faith thus desperate is faith at all. There is something far more cordial about these words of Job. They anticipate possible disappointment and pain; but they discern a hope beyond them. Their hope lies in the character of God. Whatever His special treatment of the soul may be, the soul knows Him in His character. Behind its perception of Gods conduct, as an illumination and as a retreat, always lies its knowledge of Gods character. The relations of character and conduct to each other are always interesting. Conduct is the mouthpiece of character. What a man is declares itself through what he does. Each is a poor weak thing without the other. Conduct without character is thin and unsatisfying. Conduct is the trumpet at the lips of character. Character without conduct is like the lips without the trumpet, whose whispers die upon themselves, and do not stir the world. Conduct without character is like the trumpet hung up in the wind, which whistles through it, and means nothing. It is through conduct I first know what character is. By and by I come to know character by itself; and in turn it becomes the interpreter of other conduct. To know a nature is an exercise of your faculties different from what it would be to know facts. It involves deeper powers in you, and is a completer action of your life. When a confidence in character exists, see what a circuit you have made. You began with the observation of conduct which you could understand; through that you entered into knowledge of personal character; from knowledge of character you came back to conduct, and accepted actions which you could not understand. You have made this loop, and at the turn of the loop stands character. It is through character that you have passed from the observation of conduct which is perfectly intelligible into the acceptance of conduct which you cannot understand, but of which you only know who and what the man was who did it. The same is true about everyone of the higher associations of mankind. It is true about the association of man with nature. Man watches nature at first suspiciously, seeing what she does, is ready for any sudden freak, or whim, or mood; but by and by he comes to know of natures uniformity. He understands that she is self-consistent. Same is true about any institution to which at last man gives the direction of his life. We want to carry all this over to our thought of God, and see how it supplies a key to the great utterance of faith in the text. It is from Gods treatment of any man that man learns God. What God does to him, that is what first of all he knows of God. If this were all, then the moment Gods conduct went against a mans judgment, he must disown God. But suppose that the man, behind and through the treatment that God has given him, has seen the character of God. He sees God is just and loving. He goes up along the conduct to the character. Through Gods conduct man knows Gods character, and then through Gods character Gods conduct is interpreted. Everywhere the beings who most strongly and justly laid claim to our confidence pass by and by beyond the testing of their actions, and commend themselves to us, and command our faith in them by what we know they are. Such a faith in the character of God must shape and influence our lives. (Phillips Brooks.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 15. Though he slay me] I have no dependence but God; I trust in him alone. Should he even destroy my life by this affliction, yet will I hope that when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. In the common printed Hebrew text we have lo ayachel, I will NOT hope; but the Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic, and Chaldee have read lo, HIM, instead of lo NOT; with twenty-nine of Kennicott’s and De Rossi’s MSS., and the Complutensian and Antwerp Polyglots. Our translators have followed the best reading. Coverdale renders the verse thus: Lo, there is nether comforte ner hope for me, yf he wil slaye me.
But I will maintain mine own ways] I am so conscious of my innocence, that I fear not to defend myself from your aspersions, even in the presence of my Maker.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Though God should yet more and more increase my torments, so that I could bear them no longer, but should perceive myself to be at the point of death, and without all hopes of recovery in this world.
Yet will I trust in him; or, shall I not trust in him? Should I despair? No, I will not. I know he is a just, and a faithful, and merciful God, and he knows that my heart is upright before him, and that I am no hypocrite.
But though I will trust in him, yet I will humbly expostulate the matter with him; I will argue, or prove, or demonstrate my ways, i.e. I will make a full free confession of the whole course of my life, and I will boldly, though submissively, assert mine own integrity, which he also will, I doubt not, acknowledge. And what I have done amiss I will as freely confess, and make supplication to my Judge for the pardon of it.
Before him; before his tribunal; for I desire no other judge but him.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. in himSo the marginor keri, reads. But the textual reading or chetib is”not,” which agrees best with the context, and otherpassages wherein he says he has no hope (Job 6:11;Job 7:21; Job 10:20;Job 19:10). “Though He slayme, and I dare no more hope, yet I will maintain,” &c., thatis, “I desire to vindicate myself before Him,” as not ahypocrite [UMBREIT andNOYES].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,…. There is a double reading of these words; the “Keri”, or marginal reading, is , “in him”, which we follow; the “Cetib”, or textual reading, is , “not”, which many follow, and render the words, “lo, he will slay me, I shall not hope”; or, “I have no hope”, or “do not expect” m that is, any other than to be slain or die; and this agrees with various expressions of his elsewhere, that he had no hope of any long continuance of life, or of restoration to health and outward happiness again, but expected to die quickly; see Job 6:11;
but I will maintain mine own ways before him; or “to his face” n; though I die on the spot instantly, I will stand by it, and make it appear that the ways I have walked in are right, that I have behaved as a sincere upright man, a man fearing God, and eschewing evil; a character which God himself has given of me, and I have not forfeited it: “I will argue” or “prove” o it before him, as it may be rendered; that my life and conversation has been agreeable to my profession of him; that my ways have been according to his revealed will, and my walk as becoming the character I bear; and this I will maintain and support as long as I live; I will never depart from this sentiment, or let go my integrity to my latest breath; see Job 27:5; but the marginal reading seems best, “yet will I trust in him” p? verily I will, though I am under cutting and slaying providences, under sore afflictions, which may be called killing and slaying, or death itself; though there is an addition of them, one affliction upon another, and sorrow upon sorrow; though I am killed continually, all the day long, or die by inches; yea, though in the article of death itself, yet even then “will I trust” and hope: God only is the object of trust and confidence, and not a creature, or any creature enjoyment, or creature act; and great encouragement there is to trust in him, seeing in him is everlasting strength, to fulfil his promises, to help in time of need, and to save with an everlasting salvation; he is to be trusted in at all times, in times of affliction, temptation, desertion, and death itself: it may be rendered q, “I will hope in him”, since there is mercy and plenteous redemption with him, and he delights in those that hope in his mercy; his eye is upon them, and his heart is towards them: or “I will wait for him”, or “expect him” r; wait for deliverance by him, wait all the days of his appointed time, till his change come; wait for the hope of righteousness by faith, expect all needful grace from him now, and eternal glory and happiness hereafter: “but” notwithstanding his trust was alone in God for time and eternity, yet, says he, “I will maintain mine own ways before him”; that I am not an hypocrite, or have behaved as a bad man; but have acted under the influence of grace, according to his mind and will revealed.
m “Non sperabo”, Pagninus, Montanus, Vatablus. So Cocceius, Schultens, Gussetius, p. 420. n – “ad facies ejus”, Montanus, Bolducius; so Vatablus, Schultens. o “arguam”, Pagninus, Montanus, Bolducius, Schmidt, Schultens; “probabo”, Piscator. p “An non sperem in eum?” so some in Munster; so Junius & Tremellius, Beza, Codurcus. q “In eo tamen sperabo”, Schmidt, Piscator, Michaelis. r “Ipsum expectabo”, Drusius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(15) Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.This rendering is almost proverbial; but, to say the least, its accuracy is very doubtful, for the better reading does not warrant it, but runs thus: Behold He will slay me. I have no hope; yet will I maintain my ways before Him. It is true we thus lose a very beautiful and familiar resolve; but the expression of living trust is not less vivid. For though there is, as there can be, no gleam of hope for victory in this conflict, yet, notwithstanding, Job will not forego his conviction of integrity; for the voice of conscience is the voice of God, and if he knows himself to be innocent, he would belie and dishonour God as well as himself in renouncing his innocence.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him “This is one of the highest among the notabilia of Scripture,” (Chalmers,) and yet its interpretation is disputed. The question is whether the Hebrew word lo, translated in him, should not be , lo, signifying not. The manuscripts favour the , not; but the Masoretes regarded it as an error, and have put into the margin a note called keri. This reforms the reader that the copyists have erred in this one word, and that it should be read as our version has it, in him. There are fourteen other passages in the entire Bible in which the keri substitutes lo, ( for him,) for lo, not. See Delitzsch on Isa 13:9. Similar to these clerical errors is that one in our own version of the New Testament where at is printed for out: “Strain at a gnat.” (Mat 23:24.) The old versions, as well as the old Jewish critics, Latin and English commentators, (among those to be excepted are Noyes, Davidson, and Conant,) adopt the reading of in him. On the contrary, lo, not, is defended by most German commentators, yet with such exceptions as Arnheim and Delitzsch. If it be read lo, not, the sense is not necessarily changed. “Whichever way you read it, the sense is the same. For if it is read not, it will be pronounced interrogatively although he kill me shall I not hope?” Calvin. The Germans, however, prefer to read it as an affirmation. Thus Ewald, “Yet he will slay me! I hope not.” (A feeble platitude!) With Job, here as elsewhere, (Job 14:14-15; Job 19:25,) the deeper the night of gloom and despair the more vivid the lightning gleams of faith and hope. In his Titanic struggles he resembles the ancient giant who, when he touched the earth, is fabled to have gathered new life and hope. The word , translated “trust,” signifies also hope. Death and hope here join hand in hand. Death has no power to slay hope; “Job’s hope almost enlivened his death. He had more life in death than most men have in their lives.” Caryl. “It is the sign of a great soul always to hope,” said the heathen historian, Florus, (iv, 8;) the child of God goes beyond and plains his standard of faith on the other side of the brink of death. The last movement of the wasted fingers of Grace Aguilar, a Jewess, was to spell the words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 13:15. Though he slay me, &c. It is impossible to understand this of a temporal deliverance; for how should a man hope for this, though he were slain? This passage, according to another reading, is, “Lo, he will kill; I will not hope; nevertheless, I will argue mine own ways, or plead mine own cause before him. He also shall be my salvation, &c.” It is plain that Job here despairs of life, and yet hopes for salvation; which, therefore, must necessarily be understood of a future absolution and reward in the day of judgment. Peters.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Job 13:15 Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
Ver. 15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him ] Though he should multiply my miseries, and lay stroke after stroke upon me, till he had dashed the very breath out of my body, yet he shall not be so rid of me, for I will hang on still; and if I must needs die, I will die at his feet, and in the midst of death expect a better life from him. Dam expiro spero, shall be my motto. “The righteous hath hope in his death,” Pro 14:32 ; yea, his hope is most lively when himself lieth a dying, superest sperare salutem. “My flesh and my heart faileth,” saith he; “but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever,” Psa 73:26 . True faith in a danger (as the blood) gets to the heart, Joh 14:1 , and if itself be in good heart it will believe in an angry God, as Isa 63:15-16 (the Church there thought she should know him amidst all his austerities); yea, in a killing God, as here; yea (as a man may say with reverence), whether God will or no, as that woman of Canaan, Matt. xv., who would not be damped or discouraged with Christ’s either silence or sad answers; and therefore had what she came for, besides a high commendation of her heroic faith.
But (or nevertheless) I will maintain mine own ways before him] We have had the triumph of Job’s trust, here we have the grounds for it, viz. his uprightness, the testimony of his conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity he had his conversation in the world, 2Co 2:12 . This was his cordial, without which grief would have broken his heart, Psa 69:20 ; this was his confidence, even the clearness of his conscience, 1Jn 3:21 . Uprightness hath boldness; and that man who walks uprightly before God may trust perfectly in God. Job was either innocent or penitent; he would therefore either maintain his ways before God, and come to the light, that his deeds might be manifest, that they were wrought in God, Joh 3:21 , Quem poenitet peccasse pene est innocens (Sen. Again.), or else he would reprove and correct his ways (so the Hebrew word signifieth also), that is, he would confess and forsake his sins, and so be sure to have mercy, according to that soul satisfying promise, Pro 28:13 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
trust in Him = wait for Him. Hebrew. yahal. See App-69.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Trust Inextinguishable
Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him.Job 13:15.
1. These words, in their strange mixture of faith and unfaith, of trust and mistrust may be taken as summing up the argument of Job in the book called by his name. That book is one of the most remarkable in the Bible, not merely for its great literary qualities, for the imaginative grandeur of its pictures of nature, and the boldness and directness of its expression of the facts of human life, and the emotions they excite in us, but above all for the vivid way in which it brings before us what we may call the great perennial debate between mans soul and God. It describes the struggle between the doubts that beset man as to the existence of any Divine justice or goodness and the faith that sustains him against such doubts, and ultimately enables him to triumph over them.
This book has special reference to a stage in the development of the creed of Israel when the belief in a simple justice of rewards and punishmentsthe belief that goodness is directly followed by success and happiness, and ill-doing by failure and miserybegan to be shaken by the experience of life. It was observed that the facts of human existence did not support the idea of any such immediate distribution of rewards and punishments, and the minds of men began to be distressed and perplexed by the problem, whether the whole conception of God as a righteous Judge was to be abandoned, or whether, on the other hand, a deeper justice could be discerned in the apparent injustice, and the old faith could be widened and elevated so as to overcome the new difficulties raised against it. And the intensity of the conflict was made greater by the fact that as yet there was no thought of a future life, or at least of a future life that had any joy or energy in it.
Yetand this is the characteristic feature of the poemthrough all his doubt and distress, through all his suffering and the agony of mind it produces, Job is exhibited as maintaining his faith in God; and in the end his integrity is vindicated by God against those who have denied it merely on the ground of his misfortunes. The aim of the writer, therefore, is to show that there is a point of view from which the difficulties in question may be removed, or transcended, that they are not fatal to faith but only trials of it, from which it may emerge purer and stronger than ever.
2. In the verses preceding the text Job resolves to appeal to God. But he knows how terrible will be the risk of this great enterprise. I will take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hand! he cries,a fine proverbial expression for running all hazards even to the last, of which Shakespeare gives a noble variation in King Henry 8, when describing the people of England under oppressions which break the sides of loyalty, as
Compelld by hunger
And lack of other means, in desperate manner
Daring the event to the teeth.
Then comes our text. And first about its meaning. We have so fine a rendering in our Authorized Version that we cannot surrender it without pain. And, indeed, many competent scholars refuse to surrender it. They still read the verse, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. But properly translated and rightly understood, it means something quite different. In the Revised Version there is a rendering differing from the accepted oneThough he slay me, yet will I wait for him, it reads. But with their usual timidity the Revisers have thrown the really correct translation into the margin, and the passage ought to stand, as it there stands, Behold, he will slay me; I wait for him; I will maintain my ways (or, I will argue my cause) before him. So that instead of being the utterance of a resigned soul, submissively accepting chastisement, it is rather the utterance of a soul that, conscious of its own integrity, is prepared to face the worst that Providence can inflict, and resolved to vindicate itself against any suggestion of ill desert. Behold, He will slay me. Well, I wait for Him in the calm assurance of the purity of my motives and the probity of my life. I will accept the blow, because I can do no other, but I will assert my blamelessness.
What Cheyne has happily called an inspired mistranslation has to be given up. For many reasons, one regrets this, and yet I personally believe that the Revised Translation expresses a mightier faith than even the sacredly familiar translation of the Authorized Version Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. Here I unhesitatingly affirm that waiting for God in these circumstances is a higher type of faith than trusting in Him.
Job, in saying Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him, practically says, Though He slay me, yet will I not try to escape from Him, or evade Him, I will wait for Him. If I am to be slain, it shall be with my face, and not my back, toward Him; and if I am to fall, I will fall at His feet! Was there ever a more daring expression of faith than that?1 [Note: D. Davies, The Book of Job, i. 295.]
3. Yet, the words, as usually understood, have an historic claim in their favour which cannot be disputed. Even the Apostles do not spurn the use of the Greek words of the Old Testament, though they do not accord with the proper connexion in the original text, provided they are in accordance with sacred Scripture, and give brief and pregnant expression to a truth taught elsewhere in the Scriptures. Thus it is with this utterance, which, understood as the Vulgate understands it, is thoroughly Job-like, and in some measure the final solution of the Book of Job. It is also, according to its most evident meaning, an expression of perfect resignation. We admit that if it is translated: behold, He will slay me, I hope not, i.e. I await no other and happier issue, a thought is obtained that also agrees with the context.2 [Note: F. Delitzseh, Commentary on the Book of Job; i. 214.]
Now, as no history is more various than Jobs fortune, so is no phrase, no style more ambiguous than that in which Jobs history is written; very many words so expressed, very many phrases so conceived, as that they admit a diverse, a contrary sense; for such an ambiguity in a single word, there is an example in the beginning, in Jobs wife; we know not (from the word itself) whether it be benedicas, or maledicas, whether she said Bless God, and die, or, Curse God: and for such an ambiguity, in an entire sentence, the words of this text are a pregnant and evident example, for they may be directly and properly thus rendered out of the Hebrew, Behold he will kill me, I will not hope; and this seems to differ much from our reading, Behold, though he kill me, yet will I trust in him. And therefore to make up that sense, which our translation hath (which is truly the true sense of the place), we must first make this paraphrase, Behold he will kill me, I make account he will kill me, I look not for life at his hands, his will be done upon me for that; and then, the rest of the sentence (I will not hope) (as we read it in the Hebrew) must be supplied, or rectified rather, with an interrogation, which that language wants, and the translators used to add it, where they see the sense require it: and so reading it with an interrogation, the original, and our translation will constitute one and the same thing; it will be all one sense to say, with the original, Behold he will kill me (that is, let him kill me), yet shall not I hope in him? and to say with our translation, Behold, though he kill me, yet will I hope in him: and this sense of the words, both the Chaldee paraphrase, and all translations (excepting only the Septuagint) do unanimously establish.1 [Note: John Donne, Works, iv. 539.]
4. May we take the text both ways? As Delitzsch says, each translation teaches a good lesson and a scriptural. So perhaps we maythe vindication first and the trust after. They show us, in a striking way, the two sides of one great truth.
I.
Vindication
1. In order to understand the real sentiment underlying this exclamation we must have a correct conception of the theory of the Divine action in the world common to that age. For let us remember that this is a dramatic poem; that Job is a real personage in the sense in which Shakespeares Hamlet is a real personage; and that the author of the poem is simply putting into his mouth a protest against the sentiments current in his day as formulated by the friends who came to condole with him in so extraordinary a fashion. And if the boldness of his self-vindication sounds somewhat too audacious, and, to some, seems to verge even upon the blasphemous, it must be borne in mind that it is the God of the contemporary theologians who is thus challenged, not the Father in Heaven whom our Lord revealed.
The struggle represented for us with so much dramatic power and vividness in this poem is Jobs struggle for reconciliation between the God of the theologians of his day and the God of his own heart. And is not this a modern as well as an ancient struggle? Does not our heart often rise within us to resent and repel the representations of Deity that some forms of theology give? Do we not say to ourselves, This God cannot be our God for ever and ever?
Job had to answer to himself, Which of these two Gods is the true one? The God of my contemporaries, who is ever on the watch for a slip or an offence that He may punish it, and who seems often to punish when there is no offence; or the God of whom my own heart speaks to me, who doth not afflict willingly, and whose chastisements are all kind? If the God of the theological imagination were the true God, he was prepared to hold his own before Him. This Divine Despot, as the stronger, might visit him with His castigations, but in his conscious integrity, Job would not blench. Behold, he will slay me; I will wait for him. I will maintain my cause before him.
A favourite theme of Greek tragedy was the conflict between fate and freedom, between Divine necessity and mans free will, between the despotism of natures inexorable laws and the passionate longings of the human soul. And in the story of Prometheus, or Forethought, we have this conflict most vividly set forth. Because Prometheus brought fire from heaven for the benefit of mortals, Jupiter was angered and caused him to be chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where for thirty thousand years a vulture was sent to feed upon his liver, which was never diminished, though continually devoured. His offence was that he had brought a heavenly boon to men; and he would not cry Peccavi any more than Job would in order to secure release. He whose God-like crime it was to be kind, he who resisted the torments and the terrors of Zeus, relying upon his own fierce soul, is in this respect the counterpart of Job in his suffering. Each refuses to say he is wrong merely to pacify God, when he does not see that he is wrong. As Prometheus maintains this inflexible purpose, so Job holds fast his integrity.1 [Note: J. Halsey, The Spirit of Truth, 83.]
2. Let us dare to follow our own thoughts of God, interpreting His relation and providence towards us through our own best instincts and aspirations. This is what Jesus taught us to do. He revealed and exemplified a manly and man-making faith, as far removed as possible from that slavish spirit which is so characteristic of much pietistic teaching. Christ said, Find the best in yourselves and take that for the reflection of Godthe parental instinct, for instance, with its patience, its unselfishness, its self-denying love. Reason from that up to God, He says. How much more shall your heavenly Father!
John Sterling with us. Talked over many people. Much discourse on special providences, a doctrine which he totally disbelieves, and views the supporters of it as in the same degree of moral development as Jobs comforters. Job, on the contrary, saw further; he did not judge of the Almightys aspect towards him by any worldly afflictions or consolations; he saw somewhat into the inner secret of His providence, and so could say, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. We must look for the hand of His providence alike in all dispensations, however mysterious to us. Every movement here has its first impulse in Heaven; though, like a pure ether, it may be contaminated or altogether changed by collision with the atmosphere of this world, yet its origin is Divine. Thus, on the ruins of the doctrine of particular providences may be built up our belief in the constant superintendence and activity of our Infinite Father; and though some highly extolled species of faith may lose their value for us, we shall, instead of them, see our entire dependence on Omnipotence for every gift, however trifling, and feel that He doeth all things transcendently well.1 [Note: Caroline Fox, Journals and Letters, i. 236.]
3. It is pleasant to know from the last chapter, that before the drama closes Job comes to truer thoughts of God and a more spiritual knowledge of himself. He perceives that his heart, in its blind revolt, has been fighting a travesty of God and not the real God. Then, as soon as he sees God as He is, and himself as he is, his tone changes again. The accent of revolt is exchanged for that of adoring recognition, and the note of defiance sinks into a strain of penitential confession. Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not. I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear (the things that Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite had said to him about God); but now mine eye seeth thee. The vision brought him back by one bound to God and himself. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
The sentiment that the highest bliss might be found in love without return is no other than that which has nourished in all time the noblest forms of human love and devotion. It is the sentiment which inspired with sublime passion the well-known words of Saint Teresa: Thou drawest me, my God. Thy death agony draws me; Thy love draws me, so that, should there be no Heaven, I would love Thee. Were there no Hell, I would fear Thee no less. Give me naught in return for this my love to Thee; for were I not to hope that I long for, then should I love Thee even as I do now. Not until the passion of self-abandonment has touched the point at which the words, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him, are the simple and natural expression of pride and joy, is that height of exaltation reached the attainment of which includes the highest possibilities of love and sorrow. For loves limits are ample and great, and a spacious walk it hath, but with thorns not lightly to be passed over. The call to love, rightly understood, is, in truth, a call to self-renunciation, as indeed is every call to lead the higher life. The soul to whom such a call comes is directly confronted with the necessities of sacrifice, for devotion to another in its highest form leads to the way of the Cross. Only through much suffering may the Saint attain the fulfilment of the promise of the spiritual life and see Him face to face, yet in her triumph she cries, Give me naught in return for this my love to Thee!1 [Note: Lady Dilke, The Book of the Spiritual Life, 162.]
Couldst thou love Me when suns are setting,
Their glow forgetting
In thought of Me;
Couldst thou refrain thy soul from fretting
For days that used to be?
Couldst thou love Me when creeds are breaking,
Old landmarks shaking
With wind and sea;
Couldst thou restrain the earth from quaking,
And rest thy heart in Me?
Couldst thou love Me when friends are failing,
Because fast paling
Thy fortunes flee;
Couldst thou prevent thy lips from wailing,
And say, I still have Thee?
Couldst thou love Me when wealth is flying,
The night-blast sighing
Through lifes proud tree;
Couldst thou withhold thy heart from dying,
And find its life in Me?
Couldst thou love Me when tears are welling
Within thy dwelling
Once glad and free;
Couldst thou escape their floods high swelling,
And reach thine ark in Me?
Couldst thou love Me when storms are roaring,
Their torrents pouring
Oer mart and lea;
Couldst thou on larger wings be soaring,
And hear all calm in Me?
Couldst thou love Me when death is nearing,
A mist appearing
In all but Me?
If then thy heart cast out its fearing,
Thy love shall perfect be.1 [Note: George Matheson, Sacred Songs, 168.]
II.
Trust
1. How often have these words been the vehicle of a sublime faith in the hour of supreme crisis! In the moment of their darkest necessity and deepest anguish pious hearts have adopted this as the formula of their unwavering confidence in and submission to the Infinite Wisdom; and in the hour when their lifes path has been strewn with the wreck of all that was delightsome in their eyes, and all that was dear to their hearts, have cried, with unfaltering tones, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. And from this usage of centuries the words have acquired a sacredness, and are invested with associations, that make it very difficult to break the spell they hold over our devout affections by any attempt to show that they do not stand for the writers original thought, and are far from representing the suffering patriarchs real state of mind.
There is a story, in Swedish history, of a king who was mad with rage; and, in his madness, sent for one of his prisoners to be brought before him. Then the king drew his dagger, and passed it through the arm of his victim; and the poor wounded man just drew the dagger out, kissed it, and gave it back to the brutal hand which had smitten him. Now, hating such loyalty, as I do, yet how one wonders at the passionate beauty of that deed! Marvelling that the man could so worship such a creature, yet how perfect was his loyalty to him! That man might have written, Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust in Thee. It was the kings dagger that struck him, and he was the kings subject, so he just drew out the dagger, kissed the bloody blade, and gave it back.1 [Note: G. Dawson, The Authentic Gospel, 269.]
2. Now, taking the text in this sense, we notice first that it is very easy to praise God when all things prosper. Praise and prosperity usually go together. Just as all my good luck comes from Gods providence, so Gods mercies perfect my praise. But that is no sign of faith. Even the Gentiles do that. To be thankful when there is something to be thankful forthere is nothing in that. To look pleasant when things are pleasant is but common graciousness. Not to smile when the sun shines would be churlish. To dance when the music is good is inevitable to those who are well attunedthere is nothing in that. But there are some men who are gracious when all things are ungracious, sweet when things are sour, bright when other people are in the dark. The good economist keeps his candle for the time when it is most needed; then his little light comes into eminent service. He puts his lamp out while other peoples lamps are shining; then, by and by, when the unwise virgins are all in the dark, this cheery soul lights his lamp.
(1) Do we trust God in the presence of the evil that is in the world, and in the darkness that accompanies it? Conscience affirms right and duty as supreme realities, but God pays no heed to them and lets the righteous sufferthis is the puzzle of the ages, and it is as far from solution to-day as ever. Conscience still holds men to duty, but what is the profit? The righteous suffer and die and pass away under the natural laws of God with no advantage over the wicked. Natureand to the Jew nature was Godlooked down on good and evil alike, and by no law, by no variation of its forces, showed that the good had any advantage over the evil. The wise avoid evil; the foolish incur it: but ask the light, the rain, the dew; ask gravitation and chemical affinity and electricity if they distinguish between good and evil men. To the Jew these things were Godhe knew no difference between an agent of God and God Himself; and thus the terrible contradiction involved God. We blunt the force of it by referring evil to nature; but the Jew saw things more nearly as they are. Here was God in the conscience demanding righteousness, and here was God in nature ignoring righteousness. His intense sense of God deepened the problem and made it awful as a fact.
It is not the mere existence of evil, but the amount of evil in the world that really depresses us and seems like a load too heavy to be lifted up. And if we could realize to ourselves that the purposes of God are known to us in part only, not merely as regards another life, but also as regards this; if we could imagine that the evil and disorder which we see around us are but a step or stage in the progress towards order and perfection, then our conception of evil would be greatly changed. Slowly, and by many steps, did the earth which we inhabit attain to the fulness of life which we see around us. I might go on to speak of this world as a pebble in the ocean of space, as no more in relation to the universe than the least things are to the greatest, or to the whole earth. But, that we may not become dizzy in thinking about this, I will ask you to consider the bearing of such reflections, which are simple matters of fact, on our present subject. They tend to show us how small a part, not only of the physical but also of the moral world, is really known to us. They suggest to us that the evil and suffering which we see around us may be only the beginning of another and higher state of being, to be realized during countless ages in the history of man. That progress of which we think so much, from barbarism to civilization, or from ancient to modern times, may be as nothing compared with that which God has destined for the human race. And if we were living in those happier times, we should no more think seriously of the misery through which many have attained to that higher state of being than we should think of some bad dream, or dwell on some aberration or perversity of childhood when the character had been formed and had grown up to the stature of the perfect Man 1:1 [Note: B. Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, 44.]
I questioned: Why is evil on the Earth?
A sage for answer struck a chord, and lo!
I found the harmony of little worth
To teach my soul the truth it longed to know.
He struck again; a saddened music, rife
With wisdom, in my ear an answer poured:
Sin is the jarring semitone of life,
The needed minor in a perfect chord.2 [Note: Francis Howard Williams.]
(2) But the test can be closer; other calamities come pouring in upon Job with true epic swiftness. His family is swept out of existence. To the Jew this meant more than to usnot more grievous, but as taking away the hope of the Messiah. Under this hope the family had become a Divine institution, and so an intenser, if not a dearer, relation; it embraced his whole world; he had no thought, or life, or hope outside of it. When our children die we quench our tears with the hope of meeting them again; but to the Jew it was the overthrow of his life, the blotting out of his world. Job also endured this test, evolving in his communings with himself a full belief in another world, where, if he should find personal vindication, he might also find what was dearer to him.
Forty-three years ago, four men were left to starve on a southern isle, whither they had gone in the hope of preaching the Gospel to some of the lowest savages which the earth contains. Three of them slowly died of hunger; the fourth, Captain Allan Gardiner, survived them in a prolongation of agony. When the winter was over a ship touched on that bleak shore, and his remains were found near the entrance of the cave which had given rude shelter. Can you imagine a lot more lonely or horrible? Here was a noble and holy man, filled with the burning and the sole desire to make known the love of Jesus Christ to the miserable Fuegians, and God allowed him to starve to death in lonely anguish on a desert isle. And did his faith fail in that extremity of horror? Not for one moment. At the entrance of the cave, in red paint, he had painted a rude hand pointing downward, and under it the words, My soul, trust thou still upon God. The diary containing his last words, as for weeks he slowly starved to death, is written with the sunshine of joy and peace in God. Asleep or awake, said one of his starving companions, I am happy beyond the poor compass of language to tell. The very last words which Allan Gardiner wrote in his diary were these: I know not how to thank my gracious God for His marvellous loving kindness. Many a man, many a king, many a prince, many a millionaire, might give all that they had ever done and all they had ever possessed to die a death like that. And did these saintly heroes die in vain? No! Their very deaths brought about that Patagonian mission on which their labours had been spent.1 [Note: F. W. Farrar.]
The Electoress Louise Henriette von Oranien (died 1667), the authoress of the immortal hymn, Jesus meine Zuversicht [the English translation begins, Jesus Christ, my sure defence], chose these words, Though the Lord should slay me, yet will I hope in him, for the text of her funeral oration. And many in the hour of death have adopted the utterance of Job in this form as the expression of their faith and consolation. Among these we may mention a Jewess. The last movement of the wasted fingers of Grace Aguilar was to spell the words, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.2 [Note: F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Book of Job, i. 214.]
(3) Again, reverses of fortune often come on the good and honest with giant strides because of sickness, because of fraud, or the failure of others, because of unforeseen calamities; and then, oh! the anguish of heart-breaking anxieties which a man must feel, if not for himself, at least for those whom he loves. What is he to do? What form is his faith and fortitude to take?
There is a grandeur which has always touched my heart in the young man struggling with the storm of fate, in dipus nobler and grander in his blindness and exile than on the throne, in Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage, and Belisarius begging for his obolus in the streets of Constantinople. Strip a man of everything that he possesses, rain all sorts of blights and sorrows and afflictions on his head as on the head of Job, let him die by lonely martyrdom, after long imprisonment, amid the alienation of all for whom he has spent his life, like St. Paul; let him be pelted and spat upon by the boys in the streets of his own city; or, like Savonarola, cast into the flames after recantation, enforced by the hideous torture of his fellow-men, and what remains to him? The grandest of all things remains to him, as an inalienable and abiding possessionhimself. Not all the vaunted legions of men and devils can rob a man of himself and his immortality, of his peace with God, the glory-cloud of Gods presence in the temple of every pure and noble soul.1 [Note: F. W. Farrar.]
Our earth holds no more glorious scene than that of men and women who have passed from a mansion to a cottage, from abundance and servants to simplicity and necessity, and who have widened their influence as the path of life narrowed. Here is a man who, through no fault of his own, has lost all his goods. Gone the splendid house, the carriages, the positions of honour. Gone his pictures, his wifes piano and all her jewels. He lives in a tiny little house. He who always rode now walks. He still stands in the aisle of the church on Sunday morning; his beautiful face is more handsome at seventy than it was in the prosperous days when he was fifty. Never was he so useful, never did his word and example count for so much. Having no more duties as director of companies he has more time to visit the poor, to teach boys in the mission school, to serve the needy, to carry the flower and the cup of cold water to Christs little ones. He never repines. The note of victory is in his voice when he refers to the old days. Once he ruled over things and bonds and stocks and markets. Now he rules over souls, and has time to spare. His last days have been his best days, through poverty. His happiest years have been his despoiled years. Once he made his gold to shine through Christian generosity; now he makes his coppers to shine. Yesterday, in the brown sear field, where the plough had made havoc, where the gleaners had carried away the last ear of corn, there stood in the corner of the field a bunch of wild asters, blooming up to the very edge of frost and winter, their brave beauty challenging the north wind! It was my old friend, with his stout heart, his finely-chiselled face, his beautiful, Christlike life, flinging out his challenge to poverty, disaster, revolution, and standing victorious over all lifes troubles. When the sunset gun shall boom for him the end of that man will be peace.2 [Note: N. D. Hillis, The Contagion of Character, 266.]
(4) But there are even closer tests, harder trials and heavier burdens. So long as a man is strong he can endure; the crucial test is made in weakness. He can endure poverty, standing erect in the strength of manhood; he can bear deathit is the common lot. But there is one thing a man cannot endure, simply because it takes away the strength to endure. Disease is the intolerable thing in human life, because it is the reversal and negation of life. It confuses or destroys our field of action; it takes the world from under our feet; it is a subtraction from our powers; it colours and distempers the action of the mind; it saps the will, dulls or exaggerates the sensibilities; and because it does all this, it unfits us beyond all else for resistance.
Not in the hour of peril, thronged with foes,
Panting to set their heel upon my head,
Or when alone from many wounds I bled
Unflinching beneath Fortunes random blows;
Not when my shuddering hands were doomed to close
The unshrinking eyelids of the stony dead;
Not then I missed my God, not thenbut said:
Let me not burden God with all mans woes!
But when resurgent from the womb of night
Springs oriflamme of flowers waves from the sod;
When peak on flashing alpine peak is trod
By sunbeams on their missionary flight;
When heaven-kissed earth laughs, garmented in light;
That is the hour in which I miss my God.1 [Note: Mathilde Blind, Poems, 140.]
3. Now while the problem of the Book of Job is always a problem, it does not always press upon men in exactly the same way. The existence of evil and the fact of death, poverty, and disease are still felt to be hard to bear and harder to explain. But the great perplexity of our day is due to the decay of authority. This age has been called the age of criticism, an age in which every belief and institution inherited from the past is called upon to show its credentials, and in which, at least for educated men, there is no possibility of evading the duty of examining them, and endeavouring to the best of their ability to distinguish what is accidental and changeable from that which is essential and of permanent value. What, then, is the best course for those who are born in such a time to follow?
(1) There are many at the present day who tell us that, in view of the progress of science and the results of critical inquiry, the only rational course is to adopt an Agnosticism which gives up as hopeless the whole problem of religion; that is to say, all the great problems of human life and destiny. Guided by a very narrow view of science, they advise us to repudiate the great heritage of religious thought and life which has been accumulated by all the labours and sacrifices of the past, because it centres in a belief for which, in their view, scientific evidence is wanting. They think, like Jobs wife, that the difficulties which try our faith are a sufficient reason for renouncing it altogether.
If a thinker had no stake in the unknown, no vital needs, to live or languish according to what the unseen world contained, a philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe either one way or the other, would be his wisest cue. But, unfortunately, neutrality is not only inwardly difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, where our relations to an alternative are practical and vital. This is because, as the psychologists tell us, belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not. If, for instance, I refuse to believe that the room is getting cold, I leave the windows open and light no fire just as if it still were warm. If I doubt that you are worthy of my confidence, I keep you uninformed of all my secrets just as if you were unworthy of the same. If I doubt the need of insuring my house, I leave it uninsured as much as if I believed there were no need. And so, if I must not believe that the world is Divine, I can only express that refusal by declining ever to act distinctively as if it were so, which can only mean acting on certain critical occasions as if it were not so, or in an irreligious way. There are, you see, inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action, and must count as action, and when not to be for is to be practically against; and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an unattainable thing.1 [Note: W. James, The Will to Believe, 54.]
(2) There are others who tell us that the only safe course is to shut our ears to every doubt and difficulty, and simply to adhere to every element in the faith. They bid us follow Jobs friends in simply reaffirming the forms of doctrine we have inherited, and refusing to pay any regard to the new questions which our new experiencethe experience of a world which, both in knowledge and in action, has been carried far beyond any previous generationinevitably presents for our consideration.
(3) Both these alternatives are counsels of despair, and they both lead to a narrowing of human life and thought; in the one case by a scepticism which gives up as hopeless all endeavour to throw light upon the ultimate meaning of our lives, and abandons all those beliefs in which the best of our race have found their greatest support and stimulus; in the other case by making our religion an adherence to the tradition of the past rather than an immediate living experience of the present.
The spiritual life of man cannot detach itself from its religious root without withering and decaying; but neither can it continue to exist without growing. Neither Scripture nor reason gives any encouragement to such a desperate alternative between all and nothing, between Agnosticism and a faith which is fixed once for all and has no possibility of growth.
For us, as for Job, it is the greatest of all the supports of spiritual life to believe in the rational character of the system of things in which we are placed, or, in other words, in the wisdom and goodness of the power which manifests itself in our own life and in the life of the world. For us, as for him, the essence of religion lies in the simple elementary creed that there is a Divine purpose in our existence, and that, if we make ourselves its servant and instrument, it will be well with us, but, if not, it will be ill with us. Now, as then, the great source of religious energy is to feel that the cause we serve is the good cause, and that the good cause is the cause of God. The simple consciousness expressed already in the song of Deborah, that the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, that is, that the whole system of things is leagued against evil, and makes its ultimate triumph impossible, has been the great solace and support of religious men in all ages.
The ideal end for man, as it exists in the mind of God, is only gradually being revealed to him, so that every height he attains to discloses a higher yet behind it:
We climb, lifes view is not at once disclosed
To creatures caught up, on the summit left,
Heaven plain above them, yet of wings bereft;
But lower laid as at the mountains foot.
We press on towards a phantom light that for ever flies before us, bidding us aspire, but not suffering us to attain; or perhaps we should rather say that the goal of our journey is, as it were, a to-morrow that never comes, or the last of all the lamps upon a winding road, where each appears the last until the traveller draws near it, and sees another coming into view. We pass therefore, not merely from what seems bad to what seems good, but also from what once seemed good, to what now seems best, not merely, that is, from what we are, towards what we think we ought to be, but also from what we once thought we ought to be towards a more recent ideal of ourselves.1 [Note: A. C. Pigou, Robert Browning as a Religious Teacher, 73.]
Literature
Askew (E. A.), The Service of Perfect Freedom, 68.
Bennie (J. N.), The Eternal Life, 179.
Caird (E.), Lay Sermons and Addresses, 285.
Dawson (G.), The Authentic Gospel, 264.
Donne (J.), Works, iv. 537.
Hall (N.), Gethsemane, 237.
Halsey (J.), The Spirit of Truth, 79.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv. 117.
Pusey (E. B.), Sermons from Advent to Whitsuntide, 91.
Pusey (E. B.), Selected Occasional Sermons, 41.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxi. (1875), No. 1244.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Grace Triumphant, 300.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, iii. 17.
Christian World Pulpit, xliv. 184 (Munger), 369 (Farrar); lxxiii. 372 (Sparrow); Ixxv. 189 (Abey).
Church of England Pulpit, xxxvii. 97 (Farrar).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
he slay me: Job 13:18, Job 19:25-28, Job 23:10, Psa 23:4, Pro 14:32, Rom 8:38, Rom 8:39
but I will: Job 10:7, Job 16:17, Job 16:21, Job 23:4-7, Job 27:5, Job 31:31-37, Job 40:2, Job 40:4, Job 40:5, Job 40:8, 1Jo 3:20
maintain: Heb. prove, or argue
Reciprocal: 1Sa 30:6 – David 2Ki 18:5 – trusted Job 2:3 – holdeth Job 4:6 – thy confidence Job 14:14 – will I wait Job 17:15 – my hope Job 19:7 – no judgment Job 31:37 – declare Job 32:1 – righteous Job 35:15 – because Job 38:3 – for Psa 39:7 – hope Psa 42:5 – hope Psa 62:8 – Trust Psa 71:14 – But Psa 73:26 – flesh Psa 138:7 – Though I walk Pro 3:5 – Trust Isa 50:10 – let Lam 3:24 – therefore Dan 3:18 – be it Jon 2:1 – out Hab 3:18 – I will rejoice Mat 15:28 – Jesus 1Co 13:7 – endureth 2Co 1:12 – our rejoicing Gal 6:4 – prove Jam 5:11 – Ye
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him.
Job 13:15
It is not certain that we know the exact meaning of the words of the old Patriarch Job, but we find just the same thought in the perfectly understood words of another sufferer, 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. Let us try to find some help here.
You know your own hearts bitterness. The world has brought you disappointment. You think you deserved better of it than you have got. You have sowed, but you have not reaped. You have trusted, but have not been trusted in return. Perhaps you are equally distressed about religious matters. Out of a hundred souls, it seems to you that ninety are living without God; and you find deadness and darkness all about you. Within, you find a heart doubting and growing hard from incessant weary looking for a God Who hides Himself.
And if this were allif we could know nothing but what we see and experienceit would be a life so doubtfully good that it would be hard to say it is always worth living.
I. But one of the great blessings which the Word of God, spoken through His Church, and written in the Scripture, brings is this: that it does not allow for a moment that these innumerable evils are any reasons for dismay. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It is a picture in half a dozen words, which is at least as dark as our darkest experience. Though I walk through this, I will fear no evil. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. The words are common even to staleness. But if you have that light given youand for it do pray onthen nothing can be more helpful to you than the short simple words, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.
II. Let us bring these words into the daylight of common life.One great reason of our distress, and our want of comfort when things are happening which give us pain, is that we grow up with a fixed impression that if God is dealing with us kindly the process must be pleasant. We do not think young people can imagine anything really to be good and worth having unless it is enjoyable. And older people require a great deal of training and trying, and much reflection upon it, and years of steady pressure of some sort before they can quite say from their heart, I thank Thee, O God! for this bitter cup. Now the words of Job take us further, Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.
Though He slay me. God did not intend, as we know, to allow Satan to take away Jobs life; there was (but Job did not know it) store of even earthly good before him. But Job did not reason thus. He did not reason as some do, I am in trouble about money, but I will not fear. In some way or other God will send me what I want. His faith was one which went deeper. Though He slay me, and I have no earthly reward; though the sun should never shine out from these clouds again; though the tide should never turn and the money never come, yet will I trust Him. This is a far deeper and more refined trust. This trust that somehow or other He will see our faithfulness and make all bright is a happy one, and not one to be looked down upon; for it is a great triumph over human nature and human doubt. But there is a trust which goes far beyond this. It is that which Job seems to have had, if we rightly translate his words. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him; though my trust does not lead to anything pleasant, bright, or good to me. Though I never get my will, and the last page of my lifes history is still a record of pain, I will trust in Him. He who has been given help to say this from his heart, has learned O how much deeper a lesson! He has learned to know that the will of God must be right, and ought to be done even if it costs us our lives. It is a lesson that we are slow to learn that our happiness, our enjoyment, our success are not the great things that even God must stoop down to consider with respect. If in the pursuit of the glorious end He has set before Him, the pure and perfect triumph of love and goodness over all things evil, you and I and another must seem to lose all and fail, should He not do it, and should not I, if I trust Him perfectly say, Do Thy great will, O God?
III. There are two or three things which may lighten the burden of saying, Thy will be done, when that will seems purely painful.
(a) There is a feeling of strange peace which is sure to flow into a heart which is conquering its desire to be the guide of its destiny. For it brings with it a certainty that He who is thus fully trusted is so good and so strong that He will somehow and somewhere in His love give back what we have willingly lost for His sake.
(b) The heart that trusts thus cannot possibly think the limit of this life to be the end of our personal existence. For trust in Gods wisdom and consent to His will also involve dependence on His word, and His promise is sureI shall dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.
Archdeacon G. R. Wynne.
Illustration
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him, is not the highest expression of faith. Death is not the last trial of the daughters and sons of God. It may be, it often is, preceded by a brief, sharp Gethsemane. But Jesus can make a dying bed as soft as downy pillows are, and He does it for His people. Even those who make no open profession of Christianity often die their quiet little deaths tranquilly enough. The sharpness of the pang is more frequently for others than for themselves. There is so much that loosens us from the love of life and teaches us as the years pass that there are many things worse than dying. But is there any thought so desolating as that of facing a great bereavement? When the sufferers case grows grave, when the signs of peril multiply, it often seems as if the very foundations of faith were reeling, and we wonder whether the strain can be borne. To be able to say, Though He slay him, though He slay her, yet will I trust in Him, is only possible to those who are rooted and grounded in the love of God.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Job 13:15. Though he slay me But though God should yet more and more increase my torments, so that I could bear them no longer, but should perceive myself to be at the point of death, without any hope of recovery; yet will I trust in him Or, more exactly according to the Hebrew text, Shall I not trust in him? Shall I despair? No; I will not, I know he is a just, a faithful, and merciful God; and he knows that my heart is upright before him, and that I am no hypocrite. But I will maintain mine own ways Though I trust in him, yet I will humbly expostulate the matter with him. Hebrew, I will argue, prove, or demonstrate my ways; that is, I will make a free and full confession of the whole course of my life, and I will boldly, though submissively, assert my own integrity, which he also, I doubt not, will acknowledge. And, what I have done amiss, I will as freely confess, and make supplication to my Judge for the pardon of it. Before him Hebrew, , el panaiv, before his face, in his presence, or before his tribunal, for I desire no other judge but him.