Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 42:1
Then Job answered the LORD, and said,
Ch. Job 42:1-6. Job’s reply to the Lord’s Second Address from the Storm
The Lord’s words make Job feel more deeply than before that greatness which belongs to God alone, and with deep compunction he retracts his past words and repents in dust and ashes.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Chap. Job 40:6 to Job 42:6. The Lord’s Second Answer to Job out of the Storm
Shall Man charge God with unrighteousness in His Rule of the World?
All that the first speech of the Lord touched upon was the presumption of a mortal man desiring to contend with the Almighty. The display from Creation of that which God is had the desired effect on Job’s mind: he is abased, and will no more contend with the Almighty.
But Job had not only presumed to contend with God, he had charged Him with unrighteousness in His rule of the world and in His treatment of himself. This is the point to which the second speech from the storm is directed.
The passage has properly two parts.
First, Job 40:6-14, as Job had challenged the rectitude of God’s rule of the world, he is ironically invited to clothe himself with the Divine attributes and assume the rule of the world himself.
Then follows, ch. Job 40:15 to Job 41:34, a lengthy description of two monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan.
Second, ch. Job 42:1-6, Job’s reply to the Divine challenge. He confesses that he spoke things which he understood not. He had heard of God by the hearing of the ear, but now his eye saw Him, and he abhorred his former words and demeanour, and repented in dust and ashes.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Job 42:1-10
Then Job answered the Lord, and said.
Jobs confession and restoration
I. Jobs acknowledgment of Gods greatness. Throughout his speeches Job had frequently asserted the majesty of God. But now he has a new view of it, which turns awe into reverence and fear into adoration.
II. Jobs confession of his ignorance. He felt that in his past utterances he had been guilty of saying that which he understood not. It is a very common fault to be too confident, and to match our little knowledge with the wonders of the universe. Behold, we know not anything, is mans truest wisdom.
III. Jobs humbleness before God. A great change had passed over his spirit. At the beginning he had sought to vindicate himself, and to charge God–with the strangeness and the mystery of His ways. Now, at the close, he repents in dust and ashes, and even abhors himself for his effrontery and impatience.
IV. Gods condemnation of Jobs friends. The friends of Job had not spoken the thing that was right of God and His ways. They had ascribed a mechanical severity to His administration of human affairs. In addition to that they had shown an acrimonious spirit in their denunciation of Job. So God reproved them, and ordered that they should prepare a burnt offering of seven bullocks and seven rams to offer for their sin.
V. Jobs abundant prosperity. Great End prosperous as Job had been before his afflictions, he was still greater and more prosperous afterwards. God gave him twice as much as he had before. (S. G. Woodrow.)
Jobs confession and restoration
This passage sets before us the result of Jehovahs coming into communion with Job.
I. The result inwardly.
1. Jobs new knowledge.
(1) He has a new knowledge of God–not new in its facts, exactly, but new in his appreciation of them. It was not so much a knowledge that God is, as that He is omnipotent, and wise in His providence. Every revelation of God to our hearts has for its contents, above the fact of Gods existence, the facts of His character. God is never shown to us except with His attributes. This new knowledge came to Job because he suffered. When Job sees God, and learns of his attributes, the cue attribute which he has questioned, and which he would naturally want to know about–justice–remains in the background. When God shows Himself to us we are satisfied, even though He does not show that part of Himself which we have most wanted to see.
(2) A new knowledge of himself. He says frankly that he had been talking about which he was ignorant. All along Job had been discussing God with his friends upon two assumptions–that he was able to know all about Him, and that he did know all about Him. He now finds that he was mistaken in both. How difficult it is to know ourselves, even negatively. A sight of the Infinitely Holy convicts us of sin. We learn what we are by contrast with something else.
2. In connection with Jobs new knowledge there came a new state of heart.
(1) He was willing to have his questions unanswered. All thought of the vexing problem of suffering seems to be forgotten. Faith has silenced doubt. We are not made to know some things. The question is, how to be satisfied while not knowing.
(2) The appearance of God brought to Job the rare virtue of humility. We cannot truthfully say that heretofore Job had shown any excess of this virtue. Now he sees that the attitude of mind out of which his bold words Godward had arisen was unbecoming one who was but a creature. It is no mark of greatness to fancy oneself infallible. To acknowledge mistake is a sign of progress.
(3) Job goes beyond humility to repentance. He says that dust and ashes are the best exponent of his state of mind. Repentance is open to any man who thinks. No one, not even righteous Job, needs to hunt long for reasons for repentance.
II. The result outwardly of Jobs coming into connection with God.
1. His misfortunes were reversed. We cannot infer from this that God will always literally restore earthly prosperity for those who are afflicted by its loss. What we may reasonably infer is that God controls outer things for good ends to us. We are not to infer that the Lords hand is shortened, but He chooses His own way.
2. God transforms Jobs sorrow into joy. Some time or some where He will do the same for us if we are His. It may be largely in this life, as in the case of Job. The area of vision has been enlarged by our blessed Lord, who brought life and immortality to light.
3. Job was able to be of service to his friends. Jehovah was angry against the three friends. Gods coming to Job was a means of his being a blessing to others. It is so with ourselves.
III. General lessons.
1. The conclusion of the Book of Job shows to us the mercy of God. God sometimes seems unmerciful, but it is only seeming.
2. Jobs questions remain unanswered. The mystery of Providence is unsolved.
3. Yet Job was satisfied. It was better for him to have Jehovah reveal Himself and His glory to him, than to know all things he wanted to know. There is something better than knowledge, something for which knowledge would be no substitute, the peace of the soul in fellowship with God.
4. The supreme lesson of this sublime Book is that joy comes through submission to God happiness for the human soul is not in conquest, but in being conquered; not in exaltation, but in humiliation. (D. J. Burrell, D. D.)
Jobs confession and restoration
The primary object of the Book of Job is to prove and illustrate the glory and force of a pure, unselfish religion. Job was reconciled to his sufferings, not by argument, but by a direct revelation of the character of God. We have here what has been well called a religious controversy issuing in utter failure. Neither party was convinced; each retained his own views. The result in this case, as in every religious controversy which has occurred since, was bitterness of spirit and alienation of heart, without adding much to the cause of truth. It was not when the friends addressed him that Job was convinced, but when Jehovah addressed him–when He brought him face to face with the wonders of creation–then the mystery of suffering was solved. The moment a man begins to have a living perception of God, when God becomes a presence and a reality to him, he begins to be sorry for his wrong-doing. Job had been peevish, complaining, and somewhat vindictive under his trials. The nearer a man approaches his perfect ideal, the more he feels his imperfections. As the moral sense of the race increases, the more heinous seem the so-called smaller sins. The term which Job uses when he says I repent is identical with that which is used in the New Testament to indicate the godly sorrow which is not to be repented of. It means a genuine turning away from evil Observe that the reprovers are reproved. The doctors are treated with a dose of their own medicine. Their dogma falls upon their own heads. They had been placing the justice of God above all His other attributes, and now this very justice has pronounced against them. It is very easy to fall into the error of Jobs three friends, to set ourselves up as monopolists of the truth, and make people around us who do not happen to agree with us very uncomfortable. The trouble with Jobs friends was, that in their zeal to vindicate their favourite doctrine they not only ignored other doctrines which were fully as important, but they violated some of the simplest principles of righteousness. How does God treat these unprofitable debaters? He rebukes their assumption by sending them to the victim of their persecution, that he may pray for them. They did as they were told. The lesson was humiliating, but it was salutary, and they showed their real goodness of heart by their prompt obedience. We must not miss noticing in the beautiful climax the double lesson which it contains. There had been wrong on both sides. Job had little occasion to boast of his victory, and the greatness of his soul appeared in the heartiness with which he accepted the Divine decision. Here we have the only true solution of the religions controversy. Among Christians who disagree there can be no victor or vanquished, Dissensions which end in the glorification of one party and the humiliation of the other are only followed by more bitter conflicts, or are the beginning of a long estrangement. It is only when Eliphaz and Job can get down on their knees together that a real peace is established. (C. A. Dickinson.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XLII
Job humbles himself before God, 1-6.
God accepts him; censures his three friends; and commands Job
to offer sacrifices for then, that he might pardon and accept
them, as they had not spoken what was right concerning their
Maker, 7-9.
The Lord turns Job’s captivity; and his friends visit him, and
bring him presents, 10, 11.
Job’s affluence becomes double to what it was before, 12.
His family is also increased, 13-15.
Having lived one hundred and forty years after his calamities,
he dies, 16, 17.
NOTES ON CHAP. XLII
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Then Job answered the Lord, and said. For though he had said he would answer no more, Job 40:5; yet he might mean not in the manner he had, complaining of God and justifying himself; besides he might change his mind without any imputation of falsehood or a lie; see
Jer 20:9; to which may be added, that he had then said all he had to say, and did not know he should have more: he then confessed as much as he was convinced of, but it was not enough; and now through what the Lord had since said to him he was more convinced of his ignorance, mistakes, and sins, and had such a sight of God and of himself, that he could not forbear speaking; moreover an injunction was laid upon him from the Lord to speak again, and therefore he was obliged to give in his answer; see Job 40:7.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1 Then Job answered Jehovah, and said:
2 Now I know that Thou canst do all things,
And no plan is impracticable to Thee.
3 “Who then hideth counsel –
Without knowledge?”
Thus have I judged without understanding,
What was too wonderful for me, without knowing.
He indeed knew previously what he acknowledges in Job 42:2, but now this knowledge has risen upon him in a new divinely-worked clearness, such as he has not hitherto experienced. Those strange but wondrous monsters are a proof to him that God is able to put everything into operation, and that the plans according to which He acts are beyond the reach of human comprehension. If even that which is apparently most contradictory, rightly perceived, is so glorious, his affliction is also no such monstrous injustice as he thinks; on the contrary, it is a profoundly elaborated , a well-digested, wise of God. In Job 42:3 he repeats to himself the chastening word of Jehovah, Job 38:2, while he chastens himself with it; for he now perceives that his judgment was wrong, and that he consequently has merited the reproof. With he draws a conclusion from this confession which the chastening word of Jehovah has presented to him: he has rashly pronounced an opinion upon things that lie beyond his power of comprehension, without possessing the necessary capacity of judging and perception. On the mode of writing , Cheth., which recalls the Syriac form med’et (with the pronominal suff. cast off), vid., Ges. 44, rem. 4; on the expression Job 42:2, comp. Gen 11:6. The repetition of Job 38:2 in Job 42:3 is not without some variations according to the custom of authors noticed in Psalter, i. 330. , “I have affirmed,” i.e., judged, is, Job 42:3, so that the notion of judging goes over into that of pronouncing a judgment. The clauses with are circumstantial clauses, Ew. 341, a.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Job’s Humble Confession. | B. C. 1520. |
1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. 3 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
The words of Job justifying himself were ended, ch. xxxi. 40. After that he said no more to that purport. The words of Job judging and condemning himself began, Job 40:4; Job 40:5. Here he goes on with words to the same purport. Though his patience had not its perfect work, his repentance for his impatience had. He is here thoroughly humbled for his folly and unadvised speaking, and it was forgiven him. Good men will see and own their faults at last, though it may be some difficulty to bring them to do this. Then, when God had said all that to him concerning his own greatness and power appearing in the creatures, then Job answered the Lord (v. 1), not by way of contradiction (he had promised not so to answer again, ch. xl. 5), but by way of submission; and thus we must all answer the calls of God.
I. He subscribes to the truth of God’s unlimited power, knowledge, and dominion, to prove which was the scope of God’s discourse out of the whirlwind, v. 2. Corrupt passions and practices arise either from some corrupt principles or from the neglect and disbelief of the principles of truth; and therefore true repentance begins in the acknowledgement of the truth, 2 Tim. ii. 25. Job here owns his judgment convinced of the greatness, glory, and perfection of God, from which would follow the conviction of his conscience concerning his own folly in speaking irreverently to him. 1. He owns that God can do every thing. What can be too hard for him that made behemoth and leviathan, and manages both as he pleases? He knew this before, and had himself discoursed very well upon the subject, but now he knew it with application. God had spoken it once, and then he heard it twice, that power belongs to God; and therefore it is the greatest madness and presumption imaginable to contend with him. “Thou canst do every thing, and therefore canst raise me out of this low condition, which I have so often foolishly despaired of as impossible: I now believe thou art able to do this.” 2. That no thought can be withholden from him, that is, (1.) There is no thought of ours that he can be hindered from the knowledge of. Not a fretful, discontented, unbelieving thought is in our minds at any time but God is a witness to it. It is in vain to contest with him; for we cannot hide our counsels and projects from him, and, if he discover them, he can defeat them. (2.) There is no thought of his that he can be hindered from the execution of. Whatever the Lord pleased, that did he. Job had said this passionately, complaining of it (ch. xxiii. 13), What his soul desireth even that he doeth; now he says, with pleasure and satisfaction, that God’s counsels shall stand. If God’s thoughts concerning us be thoughts of good, to give us an unexpected end, he cannot be withheld from accomplishing his gracious purposes, whatever difficulties may seem to lie in the way.
II. He owns himself to be guilty of that which God had charged him with in the beginning of his discourse, v. 3. “Lord, the first word thou saidst was, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? There needed no more; that word convinced me. I own I am the man that has been so foolish. That word reached my conscience, and set my sin in order before me. It is too plain to be denied, too bad to be excused. I have hidden counsel without knowledge. I have ignorantly overlooked the counsels and designs of God in afflicting me, and therefore have quarrelled with God, and insisted too much upon my own justification: Therefore I uttered that which I understood not,” that is, “I have passed a judgment upon the dispensations of Providence, though I was utterly a stranger to the reasons of them.” Here, 1. He owns himself ignorant of the divine counsels; and so we are all. God’s judgments are a great deep, which we cannot fathom, much less find out the springs of. We see what God does, but we neither know why he does it, what he is aiming at, nor what he will bring it to. These are things too wonderful for us, out of our sight to discover, out of our reach to alter, and out of our jurisdiction to judge of. They are things which we know not; it is quite above our capacity to pass a verdict upon them. The reason why we quarrel with Providence is because we do not understand it; and we must be content to be in the dark about it, until the mystery of God shall be finished. 2. He owns himself imprudent and presumptuous in undertaking to discourse of that which he did not understand and to arraign that which he could not judge of. He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame to him. We wrong ourselves, as well as the cause which we undertake to determine, while we are no competent judges of it.
III. He will not answer, but he will make supplication to his Judge, as he had said, ch. ix. 15. “Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak (v. 4), not speak either as plaintiff or defendant (ch. xiii. 22), but as a humble petitioner, not as one that will undertake to teach and prescribe, but as one that desires to learn and is willing to be prescribed to. Lord, put no more hard questions to me, for I am not able to answer thee one of a thousand of those which thou hast put; but give me leave to ask instruction from thee, and do not deny it me, do not upbraid me with my folly and self-sufficiency,” Jam. i. 5. Now he is brought to the prayer Elihu taught him, That which I see not teach thou me.
IV. He puts himself into the posture of a penitent, and therein goes upon a right principle. In true repentance there must be not only conviction of sin, but contrition and godly sorrow for it, sorrow according to God, 2 Cor. vii. 9. Such was Job’s sorrow for his sins.
1. Job had an eye to God in his repentance, thought highly of him, and went upon that as the principle of it (v. 5): “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear many a time from my teachers when I was young, from my friends now of late. I have known something of thy greatness, and power, and sovereign dominion; and yet was not brought, by what I heard, to submit myself to thee as I ought. The notions I had of these things served me only to talk of, and had not a due influence upon my mind. But now thou hast by immediate revelation discovered thyself to me in thy glorious majesty; now my eyes see thee; now I feel the power of those truths which before I had only the notion of, and therefore now I repent, and unsay what I have foolishly said.” Note, (1.) It is a great mercy to have a good education, and to know the things of God by the instructions of his word and ministers. Faith comes by hearing, and then it is most likely to come when we hear attentively and with the hearing of the ear. (2.) When the understanding is enlightened by the Spirit of grace our knowledge of divine things as far exceeds what we had before as that by ocular demonstration exceeds that by report and common fame. By the teachings of men God reveals his Son to us; but by the teachings of his Spirit he reveals his Son in us (Gal. i. 16), and so changes us into the same image, 2 Cor. iii. 18. (3.) God is pleased sometimes to manifest himself most fully to his people by the rebukes of his word and providence. “Now that I have been afflicted, now that I have been told of my faults, now my eye sees thee.” The rod and reproof give wisdom. Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest and teachest.
2. Job had an eye to himself in his repentance, thought hardly of himself, and thereby expressed his sorrow for his sins (v. 6): Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Observe, (1.) It concerns us to be deeply humbled for the sins we are convinced of, and not to rest in a slight superficial displeasure against ourselves for them. Even good people, that have no gross enormities to repent of, must be greatly afflicted in soul for the workings and breakings out of pride, passion, peevishness, and discontent, and all their hasty unadvised speeches; for these we must be pricked to the heart and be in bitterness. Till the enemy be effectually humbled, the peace will be insecure. (2.) Outward expressions of godly sorrow well become penitents; Job repented in dust and ashes. These, without an inward change, do but mock God; but, where they come from sincere contrition of soul, the sinner by them gives glory to God, takes shame to himself, and may be instrumental to bring others to repentance. Job’s afflictions had brought him to the ashes (ch. ii. 8, he sat down among the ashes), but now his sins brought him thither. True penitents mourn for their sins as heartily as ever they did for any outward afflictions, and are in bitterness as for an only son of a first-born, for they are brought to see more evils in their sins than in their troubles. (3.) Self-loathing is evermore the companion of true repentance. Ezek. vi. 9, They shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed. We must no only angry at ourselves for the wrong and damage we have by sin done to our own souls, but must abhor ourselves, as having by sin made ourselves odious to the pure and holy God, who cannot endure to look upon iniquity. If sin be truly an abomination to us, sin in ourselves will especially be so; the nearer it is to us the more loathsome it will be. (4.) The more we see of the glory and majesty of God, and the more we see of the vileness and odiousness of sin and of ourselves because of sin, the more we shall abase and abhor ourselves for it. “Now my eye sees what a God he is whom I have offended, the brightness of that majesty which by wilful sin I have spit in the face of, the tenderness of that mercy which I have spurned at the bowels of; now I see what a just and holy God he is whose wrath I have incurred; wherefore I abhor myself. Woe is me, for I am undone,” Isa. vi. 5. God had challenged Job to look upon proud men and abase them. “I cannot,” says Job, “pretend to do it; I have enough to do to get my own proud heart humbled, to abase that and bring that low.” Let us leave it to God to govern the world, and make it our care, in the strength of his grace, to govern ourselves and our own hearts well.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
JOB – CHAPTER 42
JOB’S SELF-EVALUATION
Verses 1-6:
Direct Repentance to God
Verses 1, 2 recount Job’s response to the extended rhetoric questions from the Almighty, Jehovah God, Job ch. 38-41. He began by acknowledging that he knew or realized that God knew everything, that He was omniscient, that nothing could be told Him that He did not already know, or withheld from Him knowledge of it, and that He could “do every thing,” Gen 18:14 in and with His omnipotent power over nature, contrasted with Job and man’s feebleness, which God had proved to him, Job 38:2; Job 40:15; Job 41:34. He added that “no thought” could be withheld or concealed from the Lord, so that He was competent and just in all His acts of judgment, Job 40:8-14; Job 17:11; Jas 1:13; Jas 1:17.
Verse 3 asks who it was that had hidden counsel without knowledge. He then asserts that it was he who had uttered things that he had not understood, was therefore guilty of pride, presumption, and lying. He added that he had rashly denied that the Lord had any fixed plan in governing human affairs, simply because God’s plan in governing man and the whole universe was “too wonderful” for him to comprehend, Psa 40:5; Psa 131:1; Psa 139:6.
Verse 4 appeals to Jehovah to give heed to Job, adding “I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me,” as he had foolishly done, without knowledge, Job 13:22. God alone could really demand, not Job. Therefore he quotes God’s words, Job 38:3; Job 40:7.
He was acknowledging that he had been presumptuous in his demand, rather than a pleading suppliant in prayer, as he should have.
Verse 5 continues his confession that he had heard of God by the hearing (sound) of the ear, in a formal way, Rom 10:17. But he added, “now mine eyes seeth thee,” comprehensively, with understanding, as set forth Num 12:8-9; Isa 6:1; Eph 1:17-18. He had heard about and believed or trusted in God before, but not in the deep sense of spiritual wisdom that he did now.
Verse 6 bursts forth with a confession that having seen himself as a foolish presumptuous man, who spoke with pride beyond his knowledge, he now was anxious to repent in dust and ashes, abhorring himself, before the holy and just God, much as Isaiah felt in the holy presence of Him, Isa 6:1-8. Job repented and retracted the rash speeches he had made against God, abhorring himself for having made them, v. 3, 4; Zec 8:14.
Job Exonerated and Honored
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
Notes
Job. 42:11. A piece of money. According to Gesenius and others, (kesitah), from the unused root = (kasata) to be just or true; whence (Kistoon) balances; a certain weight of money, equal to about four shekels (Gen. 42:35; Gen. 33:19, compared with Job. 23:16). According to SCHULTENS, a stater, or lump of gold exactly weighed. SEPTUAGINT: A lamb. So ABULWALID and ABEN EZRA. VULGATE: A sheep. So SYRIAC, ARABIC, and COVERDALE. LUTHER: A flne groschen. MARTIN and DIODATI: A piece of money. So the early translators and expositors in general. GROTIUS and MERCER, after the Rabbins: A coin with the figure of a sheep struck upon it. SCOTT: Some species of current coin, from Gen. 33:19, compared with Act. 7:16. HUFNAGEL: Apparently a piece of silver, not a coin. NOTES: Probably a lump of silver of a certain weight. UMBREIT: The metal weighed out, not coined. MICHAELIS: A weight which cannot be defined. LEE: Not a stamped coin but a certain weight. CAREY: A weight in the form of a lamb, used for weighing money; as seen on Egyptian monuments, one being weighed against three rings. TOWNSEND: Something weighed; each piece weighing four shekels. KITTO: Probably a present of silver, the value of a Iamb. BARTH: A piece of money; a weight of gold or silver: a coin probably with the figure of an animal upon it. FAUSSET: The term used instead of a shekel: a mark of antiquity. MAGEE and HORN: Good reason to understand it as signifying a lamb. WEMYSS: A girdle. BOOTHROYD: Term derived from a Hebrew word denoting to be pure, hence pure metal, proved money. GRTNUS: Symbol of Jobs tried fidelity.
THIRD GREAT DIVISION OF THE POEM.THE CONCLUSION
The Almightys address immediately followed by the catastrophe of the poem,the repentance of Job, and the consequent change of his condition. What the three friends, and Elihu himself, had failed to do, Jehovahs voice at once accomplishes. Where the word of a king is, there is power. No explanation given by the Almighty of the mystery of Jobs sufferings, and those of other good men, or of the prosperity of the ungodly in this world. By the mere exhibition of the Divine perfections, objection is silenced and discontent removed; while the objector confesses his error, and deeply humbles himself on account of his presumtion and folly.
From verse seven to the end, the narrative is given in prose, in the same style as the introduction in the first two chapters. The chapter stands connected with the preceding parts of the book, as the capital of the magnificent column of which the introduction is the base.
I. Jobs Repentance. Job. 42:1-6.Then Job answered the Lord, &c. Repentance the happy fruit of sanctified affliction (Isa. 27:9). Jobs repentance expressed in few words. God requires not many words, but much faith. We have
1. A believing acknowledgment of Gods omnipotence. Job. 42:2.I know that Thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from Thee (Marg, no thought of thine can be hindered; or, no purpose is too high for Thee [to accomplish]. One of Jobs errors, apparently, that he had, in his heart at least, doubted Gods omnipotence, as if He were unable either to punish the wicked as they deserved, or to deliver His servants out of trouble, or keep them from falling into it. Much of this secret infidelity lurking in the natural heart. Apparently easy and natural to believe that God is almighty and able to do all things. Easy to profess it, but not so easy to act always upon the belief, and to have our heart and life powerfully influenced by it. The belief of Gods almightiness at the bottom of all true religion. The faith that characterized the worthies of the Old Testament (Hebrews 11). Noah believed that God could destroy the world by a flood, and preserve himself and his family by the ark; Abraham, that He could give him a son when Sarah was past child-bearing, and that He could raise that son from the dead; Moses, that He could open a way for Israel through the Red Sea; Joshua, that He-could cause the walls of Jericho to fall to the ground; Shadrach, Me-shach, and Abednego, that He could deliver them from the fiery furnace; Mary, that, without her knowing a man, God could, according to His Word, make her the mother of the promised Saviour. This faith directed, in the New Testament, to Christ. Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. Believe ye that I am able to do this? If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Jesus said unto him: If thou canst believe; all things are possible to him that believeth. The Roman centurion commended for believing that Jesus had but to speak the work, where He was, and his servant should be healed. When God speaks, faith
Laughs at impossibilities,
And cries, It shall be done.
Mighty works wrought by means of faith in Gods almightiness. The part of such faith to remove mountains. Nothing shall be impossible to you. The virtue of faith, that it arms itself with that omnipotence it trusts. Faith honours God, and God honours it (Rom. 4:20-21). Hence, through faith, men subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens (Heb. 11:33-34). Peace and restfulness of heart the fruit of such faith. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee (Isa. 26:3). The character of unbelief and infidelity that it doubts Gods omnipotence. If the Lord should open windows in heaven might this thing be. Why should it be thought an incredible thing, that God should raise the dead?
Gods thoughts only known to us as they are revealed by Him. When known, faith rests assured that they shall be accomplished; however unlikely and impossible they may appear to carnal reason. His thoughts or purposes respect
(1) Himself;
(2) His Son, Jesus Christ;
(3) His Church as a whole;
(4) Each individual member of that Church;
(5) The creation at large (Rom. 8:21). His thoughts those of an infinite and eternal Being, who sees the end from the beginning; of one perfect in knowledge, wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth. His thoughts the foundation of His procedure, and the plan according to which He acts in Providence.
The front of Jobs offending in Gods sight, and that of which he has now so deeply to repent,his unworthy thoughts of God, and especially his unbelief in regard to Gods almightiness. Observe
(1) Grievous sin often in the heart in reference to God, when none may appear in the life in reference to men.
(2) The cause of bitter repentance to a child of God, to find that he has sinned by indulging unworthy thoughts of his heavenly Father.
(3) Much of Gods Word and works intended to teach His children that He is able to do all things.
Gods right as well as might probably included in Jobs acknowledgment. A maxim in law, that a man can only do what he has a right to do. God not only can, but justly may, do whatever He pleases. Has a sovereign right over all His creatures. May dispose of them and deal with them as He pleases. Job tempted at times to question this right, or, at least, to doubt whether it was righteously exercised. His language at the commencement of his trials not maintained to the closeThe Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Gods pleasure in regard to His creatures, always and necessarily only what is right.
2. Humble acceptance of Divine reproof. Job. 42:3.Who is he that hideth (or obscureth) counsel (or wisdom) without knowledge (or which is beyond his knowledge)? Supply: Thou speakest justly; I am that foolish and presumptuous person. Reference to the Almightys question in chap. Job. 38:2. ObserveA truly penitent heart humbly accepts of Gods reproof. An impenitent one rejects it and maintains its own innocence. Israels sin greatly aggravated in Gods sight by saying, when reproved by Him: I am innocent (Jer. 2:35). The fifty-first Psalm Davids penitent acceptance of the Divine reproof. Adams impenitence seen in charging his sin upon Eve, and Eves in charging hers upon the serpent. Saul), instead of accepting Samuels reproof, laid his sin upon the people (1Sa. 15:1-26. To accept the punishment of our iniquity a proof of a humbled heart (Lev. 26:41.)
3. Penitent acknowledgment of ignorant and rash speaking. Job. 42:3.Therefore (this being true of me, I acknowledge that) I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Observe:
(1) Much of our discontent and murmuring at Gods procedure, the result of ignorance. Asaphs acknowledgment: So foolish was I, and ignorant; I was as a beast before Thee (Psa. 73:21).
(2) Most of what we say of God, except as guided by His Spirit, that which we do not understand. Our words concerning God and His dealings in Providence mostly only the prattling of a child, without its innocence.
(3) Gods purposes and ways in Providence, too wonderful for us, in our present state, to comprehend. His thoughts a great deep. For that deep, human reason unable to furnish a sounding-line. The part of piety and faith to trust God without seeking to trace Him; and to be assured that He does all things well, however much appearances may appear to speak to the contrary. Even Gods dealings in reference to ourselves often too wonderful for us; much more those dealings in reference to the world at large. His operations in respect to outward and common things often such as we know not; much more those in respect to the renewing of our nature and the salvation of our soul. As thou knowest not the way of the Spirit (or of the wind, Joh. 3:8), nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the work of God, who maketh all (Ecc. 11:5).
4. His desire to take the place of a humble inquirer and learner. Job. 42:4.Hear, I beseech Thee, and I will speak: I will demand (or ask) of Thee, and declare (or tell) Thou unto me [things of which I am so ignorant]. Observe
(1) The mark of true repentance to desire to know the Lords will. Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?
(2) Mans proper place, in relation to God and His dealings, that of a learner and inquirer.
(3) A humble, docile, and childlike spirit, mans true nobility. The spirit and posture of a child, that of the great philosopher whose name has become inseparably connected with the achievements of modern science.
(4). Enough in God and His ways to give room for inquiry and learning throughout eternity. Into the mystery of redemption with its glorious results, the angels represented as desiring studiously to look.
(5) Wise to take all our difficulties, whether in regard to Providence or grace, His work or His Word, to God Himself for their solution. God His own interpreter. Those the most proficient in knowledge who go most to God and His Word for instruction. The disciples to be imitated who inquired in private the meaning of the Masters teaching in public. What may this parable mean?
(6) Necessary to be inquirers and learners ourselves in order to be teachers of others.
(7) In Divine things especially, nothing rightly known except as we are taught it of God. Divine teaching the special bestowment on Gods elect, and the first step in a mans salvation (Joh. 6:45). That teaching imparted to the humble (Mat. 11:25; Isa. 28:9; Psa. 25:9). The privilege of a child of God through life (Psa. 16:7; Psa. 32:8).
5. His confession to a different kind of knowledge of God from what he had before. Job. 42:5.I have heard of thee (or heard thee) by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. A perception of Gods visible glory probably vouchsafed to Job, as to Isaiah in the temple with similar results (Isa. 6:1-5). An inward and spiritual apprehension of the Divine perfections doubtless mainly intended. This the object of the Almightys address. Observe
(1) Knowledge of God and His Son different in different persons, and in the same person at different periods. That difference twofold: (i) In degree. Among believers, some are babes in knowledge, others full-grown men (Heb. 5:13-14.) All our knowledge here comparatively that of a child (1Co. 13:9-11. Knowledge obtained by seeing, much more clear and satisfactory than that by hearing. Same contrast in chap. Job. 29:11; Psa. 48:8. Much of our knowledge here obtained by hearing or report. Hence rather faith than knowledge. Knowledge hereafter rather from seeing than hearing. They shall see God. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (ii.) In kind. This difference probably, as well as the former, indicated in the contrast. The difference between a believers knowledge of God and that of an unbeliever, one of kind rather than of degree. The believer sees with the eye of faith what before he had only heard by report. Knowledge of Divine things by mere report rather that of a blind man in relation to colours. A knowledge of Christ after the flesh the utmost that a man in his unrenewed state can attain to. This superseded in a believer by a spiritual divinely given knowledge (2Co. 5:16; Gal. 1:15; Mat. 16:17). The testimony of the men of Sychar: Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. Mere traditional and educational knowledge of Divine things to be distinguished from that which is spiritual and saving. The defectiveness of the former as compared with the latter exhibited in Jobs case. The invitation of the Gospel: Come and see. Taste and see that the Lord is good. The knowledge of the believer an experimental one,not only a hearing, but a tasting of the salvation of God. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious (1Pe. 2:3).
(2) Much of Gods dealing with believers and others, with a view to bring them to an experimental knowledge of Himself and His truth. This the object of His dealings with Job. Now mine eye seeth thee. God often pleased to reveal Himself most in the rebukes of His providence. I will allure her into the wilderness, and will speak comfortably to her (Marg., to her heartin an effectual way of instruction). Spiritual knowledge often one of the most blessed fruits of sanctified affliction. Often more knowledge of Divine things gained in one month or one week on a sick bed than in many years of previous experience. Such teaching one of the ends of affliction. Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law (Psa. 94:10).
(3) A good mans knowledge of God and Divine things progressive. The hearing of God to conduct to the seeing of Him. The path of the just like the shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day. Knowledge under Divine teaching like the river in Ezekiels visionfirst up to the ankles, then the knees, then the loins, and at last a river to swim in. Saving knowledge like the restored sight of the blind man in the Gospelfirst men seen as trees walking, then all things seen clearly. The greatest increase of knowledge awaiting the believer in another world. Now I know in part (in fragments or piecemeal), but then shall I know even as also I am known (1Co. 13:12).
(4) Danger of stopping short of a spiritual and experimental knowledge of God and Divine things. Jobs now to be desired, whatever it may cost us. Pauls resolutionHenceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we him [so] no more (2Co. 5:16). Professing Christians especially counselled by Christ to come to Him for the eye-salve of His Spirit, that they may anoint their eyes and see (Rev. 3:7).
6. His self-abhorrence, as the result of his perception of the Divine perfections. Job. 42:6.Wherefore I abhor myself (or, I loath [my conduct and language]). Observe
(1) The result of the Divine manifestation and address immediate. But little time required for the Spirits teaching. Nothing unnatural in sudden conversion. Conviction and conversion the effect of the same teaching as in the case of Job. Other examples of the same suddenness: Isaiah in the temple; Zacchus; the penitent thief; the three thousand on the day of Pentecost; Saul on the way to Damascus; the Ethiopian eunuch; the jailor at Philippi, &c.
(2) Jobs language the effect of the apprehension of the Divine character and perfections. The natural effect of such apprehension is the perception of the enormity, of all sin, and the discovery of our own depravity in particularmore especially of our sinful thoughts and words in respect to God and His dealings with us. Similar effect in the case of Isaiah in the temple: Woe is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts (Isa. 6:5). Same effect on Peter at the miraculous draught of fishes: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. That in ourselves and others which needs only to be rightly known to be abhorred.
Vice is a monster of such hideous mien,
That, to be hated, needs but to be seen.
That is, to be seen as Job saw it, in the light of Gods character and perfections. All sin in itself filthy and abominable. Probably seen to be such even by the lost,an abhorring to all flesh. The right abhorrence of sin and of ourselves, that accompanied with true repentance. Judas abhorred himself, and committed suicide.
(3) Self-abhorrence a part of true repentance. The pardoned and accepted penitent is ashamed and loathes himself for his sins (Eze. 16:60-63; Eze. 36:25-32). Self-abhorrence a part of the believers sweetest experience, and will always accompany it.
(4) Sin infinitely loathsome to a holy God. Sin seen by God exactly as it is. If loathsome to Job, still infected with it, how much more to his spotless Creator! Hence (i.) The long-suffering patience and forbearance of God, in bearing with a world of sinners. (ii.) The riches of His grace in providing for such loathsome creatures a Saviour and a substitute in the person of His own Son, and in taking them again for His own children. (iii.) The mightiness and preciousness of the Holy Spirits operation, that renews and sanctifies the objects of the Divine abhorrence.
(5) Not the least favourable sign when we are most loathsome in our own eyes. Cannot be worst with us when we see ourselves as God sees us. We are often worst when we think ourselves best. The Pharisee in the temple contrasted with the Publican. God be merciful to me, a sinner, a better sign thanGod, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are. Job most commended by God when most loathed by himself. The believer most beautiful in Gods eyes when blackest in his own (Son. 1:5).
(6) Self-abhorrence a benefit to ourselves. Has the tendency(i.) To keep us from pride. (ii.) To render us forbearing and compassionate towards others. (iii.) To prepare us to act as intercessors on behalf of fellow-sinners. Job not directed to pray for his three friends till he was brought to abhor himself.
7. His declaration of repentance and humiliation. Job. 42:6.I repent in dust and ashesthat is, sitting in thema token of humiliation and repentance (Job. 3:6; Luk. 10:13). The catastrophe of the poem in these last words of Job. Probably one of the secret purposes of God in permitting the temptation and trials. Not intimated at the first; but known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. One of Gods objects in all the temptations and sufferings of his children, their perfection. That perfection connected with their self-humiliation and repentance (Eze. 16:61-63; Eze. 36:31). The aim of God in His dealings with His people, to humble them in order to their exaltationto empty in order to fill them (Isa. 57:15; Isa. 66:2). Observe, in regard to
Repentance
1. The Nature of it. A change of mindof views, feelings, dispositions; with a corresponding change of conduct. This change mainly in relation to God: hence, repentance toward God. Jobs repentance inward, but manifesting itself outwardly, both in his words and actions, negatively and positively. No more murmuring and discontent with his lot. No more unworthy thoughts of God. No more bitterness against his three friends. Fruits meet for repentance.
2. The Author of it. God himself, through the agency of the Holy Ghost. Repentance directed to God is a repentance proceeding from God. The exercise of it our own; the grace of it, Gods. Every good and perfect gift, and true repentance among them, from the Father of lights. Then hath God granted unto the Gentiles repentance unto life. Peradventure God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. The Son of God the author of saving repentance equally with the Father. Christ exalted by the Fathers right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto Israel and the remission of their sins. The Holy Ghost sent both by the Father and the Son for this purpose. God himself the Author of Jobs repentance, when the three friends and Elihu had laboured for it in vain.
3. The Means of it. The truth, as exhibited by the Holy Ghost. The exhibition of the truth regarding God and ourselves. The prodigal came to himselfhad his eyes opened to the truth as to his conduct and condition, as well as to the character of his father, and said: I will arise and go to my father. Jobs repentance after the Divine exhibition of the truth to him regarding God and his own sin. The aim of the Almighty in his prolonged address and the manifestation of Himself. After that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh (Jer. 31:19). Ministers and preachers directed in meekness to instruct those that oppose themselves, peradventure God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. Repentance and remission of sins to be preached in Christs name. The preaching of Christ as the Fathers gift of love to sinners, and as the sinners Substitute through whom we are invited back to God, one of the most effectual means of producing repentance unto life.
4. The Effects of it. The reception of blessing. Job prepared by his repentance for the turning of his captivity, with all the blessings that followed it. Repentance into life. Job further prepared for becoming a blessing to others. Only directed to intercede for his friends when he repented himself. Deep personal repentance necessary as a preparation for usefulness to others. Christs most useful and honoured servants usually those who have been brought through the deepest exercises of self-humiliation and repentance; witness Paul, Luther, John Bunyan. Isaiahs self-abasement and repentance in the temple preparatory to his answering: Here am I; send me. Peters commission as a fisher of men preceded by his exclamation: Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
II. The Divine Verdict. Job. 42:7.And it was so that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz, the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me (Hebrew, to me; Greek Version, before me,the controversy viewed as carried on in the presence of the Almighty as umpire, as all controversies should) the thing that is right (solid or true), as my servant Job hath (Greek version, against my servant Job). Eliphaz particularly named in the verdict as having been the first and chief speaker, and probably the oldest and most distinguished of the three friends. Perhaps the others influenced by his sentiments and example. Responsibility connected with age, position, and attainments, Job spoken of by the Almighty as my servant in presence of the three friends, as before in the presence of Satan and the angels. Observe
(1) Gods judgment of his servants often very different from that of men, and even of their fellow servants.
(2) God never ashamed to acknowledge his faithful servants. One of the rewards of the faithful servant to be so acknowledged at the last day (Mat. 25:21; Rev. 3:5).
(3) True godliness a thing that stands the fire. Comes out as it went in, only purer.
(4) God often most pleased with us when we are least pleased with ourselves. Job now loathing himself, and sitting in ashes. From the verdict itself observe
1. All disputes sooner or later settled by God Himself. A reason for patience and forbearance, meekness and moderation in controversy. Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart (1Co. 4:5). One great lesson of the book to teach us to wait patiently for that day (Jas. 5:7-11). The cause of Gods servants sooner or later righted by God Himself. He who has a good and righteous cause may afford to wait.
2. Gods decision often very different from mans expectation. The decision apparently expected by all but Job to be in favour of the three friends. Gods judgment entirely the reverse. Job magnified and the friends mortified. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. Not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth (2Co. 10:18). Jobs cause essentially good, though marred by many unbecoming utterances; the friends cause essentially bad, though supported by many precious and excellent truths.
3. Gods views in regard to individuals and their conduct not to be readily gathered from appearances. The three friends seemed to be enjoying Gods favour, and only Job to be lying under His displeasure. Exactly the reverse of the reality. So with Jesus, and the priests and rulers who condemned him. We esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted (Isa. 53:4). Men often stand differently in Gods account from what they do in their own and that of their fellow men. A light thing to be judged of you or of mans judgment (1Co. 4:4). God often most angry when there is least appearance of it. May be angry with men for what they are most proud of themselves.
4. God sometimes displeased with otherwise good men, and those bearing a high character for piety and morality. Such apparently the character of the three friends. What then the case of men living in constant and open rebellion against Him? If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1Pe. 4:18).
5. God angry with men on account of things not rightly and truly spoken. Gods displeasure as truly against sinful words as sinful actions. By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned (Mat. 12:37). The reasonOut of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Generally, as a mans words are, so is he.
6. God jealous of his own glory and the character of his servants. The things not rightly and truly spoken by the three friends were
(1) In regard to God Himself. So English version.
(2) In regard to His servant Job. So Greek version. Their sin in regard to Himself, that they gave an unjust view of God as always visiting the ungodly in this life with tokens of his displeasure, and that the righteous are uniformly free from outward strokes. Their sin against Job the consequence of thisin making Job out to be a great, though perhaps secret, transgressor. The character of Gods servants as dear to Him as His own. He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye (Zec. 2:8). God requires that we not only speak zealously for Him, but truthfully of Him.
7. Gods anger against sins of omission as well as sins of commission. Ye have not spoken, &c. Not enough that we do not speak stoutly and blasphemously against Him. Do we speak truly and faithfully of him?
III. The Direction. Job. 42:8-9.Therefore take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept; lest I deal with you after your folly (or impute folly to you, so as to punish it), in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job. So Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, went and did according as the Lord commanded them: the Lord also accepted Job [in his intercession for his friends, according to Job. 42:8]. The direction twofold, having reference to both parties in the controversy; involving humiliation to the one, and giving honour to the other.
1. In reference to the three friends. These directed as penitents to seek pardon and reconciliation with God through Jobs mediation. Observe
(1) God reproves only in order to reconciliation
(2) Pardon and reconciliation with God possible under a dispensation of mercy. Our happiness that Gods anger against us for sin may be turned away. Unspeakably awful were that anger to be everlasting. Yet this the case of all who continue impenitent, and who reject the Saviour that God has provided (Joh. 3:36).
(3) God takes the first step in the matter of a sinners reconciliation with Him. Gives direction to Eliphaz about the means of securing it. Our quarrels with God begin on our part; reconciliation on His. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Now then we are ambassadors of Christ as though God did beseech you by us (2Co. 5:21).
(4) With God alone, not only to say whether there should be reconciliation with Him on the part of sinners, but how the reconciliation was to be effected. In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men (Mat. 15:9). To be reconciled with God we must comply with Gods prescription.
The friends directed to offer sacrifice. Repentance implied; yet the direction not to repent as Job had done, but to take a burnt-offering. No reconciliation between God and man without sacrifice. No reconciliation without forgiveness of sin, and no forgiveness without satisfaction to justice, and no satisfaction without sacrifice. Hence all covenants made by God with men accompanied with sacrifices. Animal sacrifices appointed before and under the Law of Moses as the means of reconciliation with God. These only types or figures, for the time, of the true sacrifice, the womans Seed; the bruising of whose heel by the Serpent in his suffering and death was to take away sin (Gen. 3:15). Impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should make satisfaction for human transgression. Its object impressively to teach that without shedding of blood and the substitution of life for life, there is no remission (Heb. 9:18-23). The promise of a Divine-human Saviour and Substitute never to be lost sight of. Every slaughtered victim but pointed to that Substitute.Seven bullocks and seven rams here prescribed; to indicate
(1) The heinous-ness of sin which is to be atoned for;
(2) The sufficiency of the great Sacrifice provided to take it away;
(3) The insufficiency of every other. The same number frequently offered under the law (Lev. 23:18). ObserveAll sin to be at once confessed and taken to the blood of Christ for its forgiveness. If we confess our sin, &c. (1Jn. 1:7; 1Jn. 1:9). The conscience kept clean and peace maintained by constant confession to God (not to a priest), and faith in the sacrifice offered on Calvary.The friends to go to Job with their offering. Thus expressing both their penitence and their faith. The act humbling to themselves, but honouring to Job. The first last, and the last first. Job had humbled himself before God; they must humble themselves before him. Having joined in accusing him, they must join in seeking his mediation. Job alone to be regarded in the matter of acceptance; yet the friends to go to him. So Christ alone regarded as the ground of a sinners acceptance with God, yet sinners to go to Him in penitence and faith. To him shall men come; in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory (Isa. 45:24-25). Job apparently to officiate as priest in presenting the friends sacrifices to God. This usually done, before the law, by the head of the family or the eldest son; under the law, by Aaron and his sons after him, as types for the time being of the great Priestone not after the order of Aaron, but of Melchizedec, who was at once both priest and king; and made a priest immediately by God himself, without either predecessor or successor in the office. Job here exhibited as another type of the great High Priest, through whom we draw nigh to God.
2. In reference to Job. Job directed to pray for the friends, and to mediate with God on their behalf, with a view to their pardon and acceptance. In a sinners reconciliation with God, sacrifice not to be without prayers. As a priest, Job must pray as well as offer the sacrifice for the friends. So Christ, the true Priest of our profession, offered in he midst of this sacrifice on the cross, the prayer: Father forgive them; and on the night immediately preceding it, the prayer in the Upper Rooma specimen of the intercession which He is ever making for His people within the veil. In the prayer as well as in the sacrifice offered up by Job, the friends doubtless united. So we are exhorted, having such an High priest who is passed into the heavens, to come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help us in every time of need (Heb. 4:16). Gods promise in regard to JobHim will I accept. Him, not you. Him, and you in him, or for his sake. So men accepted with God not in themselves or on their own account, but in Christ and on Christs account. Believers made accepted in the Beloved. The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness sake. (Eph. 1:6; Isa. 42:21). Observe
(1). Believers, being accepted in Christ, not only find acceptance for themselves in their prayers, but for others also. The honour put upon Job, that put upon all Christs members, who in Him are made kings and priests unto God.
(2) Acceptance with God the thing to be aimed at in all our prayers and services. Duties not only to be discharged and prayers offered, but their acceptance to be sought and looked for.
(3) Acceptance certain, where there is obedience to Gods commands and faith in His Son. Him will I accept. Acceptance itself certainthe time and manner of its manifestation with God Himself. Part of the Spirits work to testify it. Also made known by its effects, and indicated in Providence. Gods promise sufficient.
(4) The person to be first accepted, then the prayer or service. Him, his person, will I accept.
(5) Gods method to accept and bless one man for the sake of another. So in temporal mattersGod blessed Laban for Jacobs sake, and Potiphar for Josephs sake (Gen. 30:27; Gen. 39:5). This principle at the foundation of the Gospel and the scheme of redemption. Sinners pardoned, accepted, and blessed on Christs account,the whole plan of salvation. The Gospel thus found in Job as elsewhere in the Old Testament. The Scriptures testify of Christ.
Job honoured by being made a priest in behoof of his friends, after his deep humiliation, his severe suffering, and their proud contemptuous treatment of him. So with Christsufferings first, then the glory which should follow. So with Christs membersIf we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified together. Job prepared, by his previous suffering and humiliation, for the honour now put upon him. Much of the painful discipline of Gods children doubtless intended to qualify them for the exercise of their priestly office. Believers thus much more able to sympathize with others. A deep distress hath humanized my soul.Wordsworth. So Christ Himself suffered, that He might be a merciful High Priest. Prosperity, honour, and extensive usefulness, only safe when preceded by humiliation. Christs most honoured servants usually those who have been most humbled under the mighty hand of God. Before honour cometh humility. Job thus honoured after his rejection by his friends, a type of Christ exalted at Gods right hand, as a Priest upon His throne, after His rejection by the priests and rulers. The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.
The honour put upon Job Gods highest testimony in favour of His servant. The Divine testimony
(1) To his faith;
(2) To the sincerity of his repentance;
(3) To the uprightness and excellence of his general character. To be a priest and an intercessor for others, implies
(1) Deep consciousness of the evil and demerit of sin which necessitates such an arrangement;
(2) High regard for the honour and interests of God, and the claims of His justice and government;
(3) Tender compassion and love towards those for whom the duty is exercised;
(4) A forgiving spirit towards those who are enemies to ourselves. Believers most Christlike when interceding for others. To pray for ourselves is human; to pray for others Divine. Jobs general character and power as a man of prayer and intercession for others, indicated in the only other passage in the Old Testament where his name occurs. Mentioned as such in connection with Noah and Daniel, in Eze. 14:14. The privilege and duty of believers in the New Testament to pray for others, and to mediate their reconciliation with God by publishing Christ and persuading men to be reconciled to God through Him (2Co. 5:19-21). Only known in eternity how great the blessing derived by the world and individual men from the intercession of faithful and loving believers. In answer to their prayers, sickness removed and life spared; prison doors opened; nations preserved in tranquillity; preachers of the Gospel aided and blessed in their work; sinners awakened and souls saved (Gen. 20:7; Gen. 20:17; Jas. 5:14-16; Act. 12:4-7; 1Ti. 2:1-2; Col. 4:3-4; 1Jn. 5:14-16; Jas. 5:16-20).
Jobs praying for his friends an evidence
(1) Of the heartiness of his forgiveness of them;
(2) Of the sincerity of his repentance. His prayer the most effectual means of opening their eyes and softening their heart. Ministers often more useful by their prayers than by their preaching, Saul probably impressed more by Stephens praying than by his disputing.
IV. Jobs Deliverance. Job. 42:10.And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when (or while) he prayed for his friends. Observe
1. The Author of the deliverance. The Lord turned, &c. Jobs trouble began from Satans malice; his deliverance, from Gods mercy. No mischief done by the serpent, but can be undone by the womans Seed. God able to deliver from Satans malice, but Satan not able to hinder Gods mercy. God Himself the deliverer both of His Church collectively and of His people individually. When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, &c. (Psa. 126:1). I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion: and the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work (2Ti. 4:17-18). See also 2Co. 1:10.
2. The Deliverance itself. Turned the captivity of Job. His trouble a captivity. His outward condition resembling such. Stripped of all his property; separated from his friends; sitting on an ash-heap, as in the mire of a dungeon; his body covered with sores and filth. Strictly a captivity, as being for the time delivered into Satans hands, who treated him with all the rigour he was capable. Bodily affliction and outward trouble perhaps more frequently from Satan than we are aware. Ought not this woman whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, &c. (Luk. 13:16). Jobs captivity an inward, as well as an outward one. Job, in his affliction, held bound by his own spirit, as well as the spirit of evil. To a child of God, the most real and painful captivity to be shut out from Gods sensible favour and fellowship, and to be shut up in spiritual darkness and desertion. Jobs captivity turned, as being now released both from Satans hand and his multiplied sufferings, whether external or internal. His disease removed, according to Elihus teaching (ch. Job. 33:24-25). What His servants say in words, God Himself confirms by deeds. His disease probably removed as quickly as it had been inflicted. Diseases often instantaneously removed by the finger of God. Examples: The leprosy of Miriam, Gehazi, and the lepers in the Gospel. Gods plaister as broad as Satans sore. Job now also restored to the light of Gods countenance and the sensible enjoyment of His favour and friendship. Also according to Elihus doctrine (ch. Job. 33:26). These deliverances and blessings followed by others afterwards narrated: plenty instead of poverty; the affection of friends instead of their alienation; a numerous and happy family instead of a desolate household.
The deliverance of Job a type
(1) Of the deliverance wrought by the Father for Christ, in terminating His sufferings, raising Him from the dead, and exalting Him to His own right hand in glory.
(2) Of the deliverance of believers at death. Their departure a release; a harvest of joy after a seed-time of tears; a morning of gladness after a night of weeping.
(3) Of the deliverance to be wrought for the Church and for creation at large at the resurrection of the just,the binding of Satan, the emancipation of the creature from the bondage of corruption, and the creation of the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
3. The Time of the deliverance. When he prayed for his friends. Observe
(1) We are often best promoting our own welfare when praying for that of others. According to the principles of the Divine government, that we should be most blessed ourselves when most solicitous about the happiness of our fellow-men. The liberal soul shall be made fat. He that watereth others shall be watered himself. There is that scattered and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty. Selfishness the greatest hindrance to our happiness. The ocean receives the influx of rivers as it exhales its waters into the air. The earth receives rain as it gives its moisture to the plants that grow on it. The clouds are replenished as they distil their treasures on the earth. To seek mercy and deliverance for others often the shortest way of obtaining it ourselves.
(2) Job, in experiencing deliverance when praying for his so-called friends (often to him real enemies), typical of the Lord Jesus Christ. His deliverance and exaltation im mediately subsequent to His prayer, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
V. Jobs increased possessions. Job. 42:10; Job. 42:12.Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. The end of the Lord now seen, that the Lord is very pitiful (Jas. 5:11). Gods thoughts towards his suffering people, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give them an expected end (Jer. 29:11). Job seen to be right in blessing God both while giving and taking away. God takes away from His own only in order to give more. Every apparent loss to a believer a real gain. As easy with God to give riches as to take them away. His to give power to get wealth, by blessing honest endeavours. Made Jacob rich in spite of all Labans endeavours to prevent it. Easy with God to restore what either Satan or man may take from us. Observe
(1) God takes care that none loses by serving Him. What is lost in Gods service is made up with more than compound interest (Mat. 19:29). God a liberal rewarder. Gave Job not only as much as he had lost, but its double. Raised faithful. Joseph from a dungeon to a palace; and, from a slave, made him prime-minister of Egypt. Valentinian lost his tribuneship for Christ, and was ultimately made Emperor.
(2) The faithful be-lievers latter end always better than his beginning. Bildads words true of every believer (chap. Job. 8:7). A good mans last days and last comforts generally his best. At eventide light. The best wine reserved by God for his obedient children to the last. As yet unknown what He has prepared hereafter for them that love Him (1Co. 2:9).
(3) God able to do more than we either ask or think. Job only asked to be shown why he was so severely afflicted and wherein he had sinned. God removes the affliction itself, and makes him twice as rich as he was be fore. Job only thought to remain practising repentance in dust and ashes. God not only withdrew him from his ash-heap, but restored him to more than his former dignity and prosperity.
(4) Believers often prepared for greater blessing by previous suffering and humiliation. Prosperity more difficult to bear than adversity, and requires preparation for it. Job prepared for his great increase of wealth by his previous troubles, and the self-abasement which preceded it. Believers prepared for being glorified with Christ by being made first to suffer with Him. Comfort in the thought that present troubles may be only the preparation for future triumphs.
(5) The history of the Church and the world, as well as of individual believers, foreshadowed in the experience of Job. The sufferings of the Church and of believers in this present time not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed. The creation itself to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, to experience a blessing, and yield an abundance unknown since the entrance of sin (Rom. 8:18-22; 2Pe. 3:13; Psa. 67:4-7).
VI. The changed conduct of friends. Job. 42:11.Then came unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord bad brought upon him; every man also gave him a piece of money (Greek version, an ewe-lamb; Latin version, a sheep; same word used only in Gen. 23:19, and Jos. 24:32), and every one an ear-ring of gold. This friendly conduct due to the favour of God. Included in the turning of Jobs captivity. When a mans ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,much more his friends. Jobs relations and acquaintances probably now more influenced by Gods hand on them, than by the removal of His hand from him. Gods favour shown to Jacob in turning Esaus heart towards him, and causing Jacob to see His face as the face of an angel. Gods hand formerly recognized by Job in the alienation of some of his friends; now doubtless acknowledged by him in the affection of others. The hearts of men, whether friends or enemies, in the hand of the Lord, who turneth them whithersoever He will. The former alienation of friends no small ingredient in Jobs cup of sorrow. Their present affection no trifling element in his restored happiness. Friendship the wine of life. Poor is the friendless master of a world. Heaven itself sweetened by the presence of loving friends.
They did eat bread in his house. No small joy to Job after his long isolation, that, his leprosy being now removed, he could have his friends partaking of a meal with him in his own house. Type of Jesus with His friends around Him at the marriage-supper of the Lamb. So also, after His resurrection, the scattered disciples gathered again to Him, and ate and drank with Him during the forty days of His sojourn with them (Act. 10:41).
The visit one of congratulation as well as condolence. They bemoaned him and comforted him, &c. Talk of past griefs an enhancement of present joy. Observe
(1) God gives not only compensation but consolation to His suffering children. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you (Isa. 66:13). God at no more loss for instruments to comfort His children than to correct them.
(2) Consolations come best in Gods time. Satans malice in keeping back these friends before, now over-ruled for the enhancement of Jobs restored happiness.
(3) Patience to have her perfect work. The Lord, after ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, strengthen, stablish, settle you. The consolation of these friends all the sweeter, now that Job, after the dark night is over, can rejoice in the sunshine of Gods favour. Yet Job still a mourner and needing consolation. His hearth still desolate, with neither son nor daughter at his board. No absolute freedom from trouble till we reach the land where the inhabitants shall no more say, I am sick; and where all tears are wiped away.
They comforted him over all the Lord had done unto him. Gods hand in Jobs troubles acknowledged by the friends as well as himself. Observe
(1) God the Author and Dispenser of our trials, whatever the instruments. Safest and best in our trouble to regard the first cause, rather than secondary and subordinate ones. God to be acknowledged in all events as ordering all things by his His Providence, even to the fall of a sparrow. Evil, as well as good, from the Lord, however He may please to send it. Acknowledged even by SatanPut forth thine hand now, &c.
(2) Praise due to God for His grace in sustaining under past troubles, and His mercy in delivering out of them. These, as well as sending, the troubles, among the things which the Lord had done to Job. Such praise to mingle with our consolations. So Jethro, alter coming out to meet Moses, praised God on hearing of all that the Lord had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israels sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and Low the Lord delivered them (Exo. 18:8-11). A picture of heaven and the enhancement of its joy.
The friends brought presents to Job, according to the custom of the country. These probably intended
(1) To testify their affection and esteem;
(2) To contribute to the restoration of his estate. The sincerity of our friendship and affection evinced by what it costs us. The extent of our sympathy with the suffering measured by what, according to our ability, we contribute to their relief.
VII. Jobs Second Family. Job. 42:13-15. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-happuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren. Children given to Job to take the place of the former one, and to sooth the sorrow for their removal. Given in the same number and proportion of sex. As easy with God to give children as riches. Observe
(1) Gods compassion and liberality towards His children. Job to have every loss made up to him, even to his deceased children. God keeps account of His servants losses, in order to make them up, either here or hereafter.
(2) Pious children not lost but gone before. The reason why Jobs cattle are doubled, but not his children. The former strictly lost, but not the latter. Those dying in the Lord not lost, but hidden from our view. Jobs godly children, buried under the ruins of their dwelling, now only waiting to welcome him to the Fathers house. All to be received again in body and spirit at the resurrection of the just. His children, therefore, really doubled, as well as his richesten with himself on earth, and ten with God in the better country. Precious comfort to pious parents in the death of their infant or believing children. These only separated from them for a time by a thin veil. The star goes out of sight with us only to shine in another hemisphere. Those not lost who are sleeping in Abrahams bosom. Those not to be considered as lost to us who are found to Christ. Those hardly absent who are in their Fathers house. Such removals sanctified to believing parents. Children and friends departing in the Lord, only a part of the plenishing of our future home, making heaven more home-like. Help to make up the sublime attractions of the grave. A purifying and elevating influence in the thought, that while a part of us is on earth, another part is glorified in heaven. The fact fitted to turn our natural sorrow into a sacred joy.
Who could sink and settle to that point
Of selfishnessso senseless who could be,
As long and perseveringly to mourn
For any object of his love, removed
From this unstable wild, if he could fix
A satisfying view upon that state
Of pure, imperishable blessedness
Which reason promises, and Holy Writ
Ensures to all believers?Wordsworth.
Job, as made the father of a new family after his restoration, a type of Christ after His resurrection and ascensionreceiving, as the eternal Father, or Father of eternity, the Gentiles as His children in the place of the Jews, who had previously constituted the covenant family, but who through unbelief were now for a time cut off. Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been (Isa. 49:20-23). Instead of the fathers shall be the children.
Jobs second daughters distinguished for the beauty of their persons. God not only gave children, but well-favoured ones. An enhancement of the gift. Gods gifts to his tried people often come with a special mark of their origin upon them. A beautiful countenance pleasant to look upon. A reflection of the beauty which is in Him who is the sum and source of all beauty. Beauty vain as compared with grace, but in itself no mean gift and a fit accompaniment to a gracious spirit. A shadow or image of the beauty of holiness. The sweetest countenance, that which is lighted up by the inward grace of the Spirit. The beauty of the outward man made prominent in the Old Testament; that of the inward man in the New. New Testament females not praised for their beauty, but for their love and good works (Romans 16). Christs second, or Gentile family, given Him after his ascension, distinguished for their spiritual beauty. The Holy Spirit only then given in his fulness. The promise then fulfilled: Thy people shall be willing (liberal, princely, or free-will offerings) in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness (Psa. 109:3).
The names of Jobs second daughters recorded. A mark of honour. The names of many of Christs daughters recorded in the New Testament; those of all of them in the Book of Life (Rom. 16:1-15; Php. 4:3). The names of Jobs daughters significant, and probably given to indicate at once the beauty of their person, and the sweetness of their disposition; as well as to commemorate the mercy of God in his own deliverance. Jemima denotes a dove, or dovelike; but may include in it the idea of day. Kezia is the Cassia, a fragrant spice. Keren-happuch is either the Horn of Paint, or the Inverted Horn; according to the Greek version, the Horn of Plenty. Thus perhaps Job praised the God of his life for changing his night into day, giving him the oil of joy for mourning, and turning again his captivity as the streams in the south. True piety will not forget Gods benefits.
Jobs estate divided among his daughters as well as his sons. Indicative
(1) Of his riches;
(2) Of the excellent character of his daughters;
(3) Of the harmony and love existing in his family. Jobs second, no less than his first children, distinguished for their unity and mutual affection. Children a blessing when love unites them to one another, and to God as their common Father. Believing women, as well as men, made heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ the Elder Brother. In Christ, neither male nor female, bond nor free (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11).
Jobs Age and Death. Job. 42:16-17.After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons and his sons sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days. Observe
1. His Age. His years thought to have been doubled as well as his estate. In this case, seventy years old at the time of his trouble, and two hundred and ten at the time of his death. Thus attained a greater age than either Abraham or Isaac. Hence earlier than either of them, though probably during part of his life contemporary with one, if not both. Corresponds with the internal evidence of the book. To be remembered in reading his speeches. His troubles all the more keenly felt as occurring before he had reached, for that period of the world, the meridian of life. His death not until he had reached, even for that period, a good old age. Length of days a part of wisdoms wages (Pro. 3:16). Jobs short season of trouble and adversity succeeded by a long life of comfort and prosperity. God a rich rewarder of his faithful servants. Joseph thirteen years a slave; eighty a prime-minister. Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory. Weeping endureth for a night, joy cometh in the morning of a nightless day. Short toil, long repose; short conflict, endless triumph. A temporary cross, an eternal crown. Every tear of Gods faithful servants a seed which shall one day produce a rich harvest of ceaseless joy.
2. His Experience. Spared to see not only his children, but his childrens children, even to the fourth generation. The promise of the Old Testament (Psa. 128:6; Pro. 17:6). Mentioned as the happiness of Joseph in Egypt (Gen. 50:23). Job still more abundantly compensated for the loss of his former family. The words of Eliphaz made good in his experience (chap. Job. 5:25). Died, not only old, but full of days. Satisfied with the days given him, both as to their number and character. Now as willing to die as ever he had been wishful to live. Ready now, like Simeon, to depart in peace, his eyes having seen Gods salvation. Had experienced the goodness of the Lord in the gooduess of the living; and now, like Jacob, waited for his salvation in a better world. Had, like David, served his generation by the will of God; and now ready, like a tired and happy child, to fall asleep. Comes to his grave, as Eliphaz had said, like a shock of corn, fully ripe. The evening of his days a tranquil sun-down. At eventide light. Typical of millennial blessedness in the evening of the world. A numerous family of the Everlasting Father, like the drops of dew from the womb of the morning. His children all in holy and happy fellowship. No more falling out of the brethren by the way. No adversary nor evil occurrent. No Canaanite in the house of the Lord. Satan bound, and no more allowed either to deceive the nations or molest the Church.
3. His Death. So Job died. Piety no exemption from death. Till Christ Himself conies, the grave receives the members as well as the Head. Death to Job no king of terrors. The messenger from his Fathers house with aWell done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of thy Lord. The good fight fought, the weary warrior only called off from the field. Had already experienced great deliverances, but was now to experience the greatest of all. A king and a priest on earth, Job died, like all believers, to exercise his royal and priestly office in a land never stained with tears, and in a temple never defiled with sin.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
D. MAN IN GODS IMAGE VS. GOD IN MANS IMAGE (Job. 42:1-6)
TEXT 42:16
42 Then Job answered Jehovah and said,
2 I know that thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of thine can be restrained.
3 Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?
Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not,
Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak;
I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
5 I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth thee:
6 Wherefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.
COMMENT 42:16
Job. 42:1Job responds to Yahweh in complete submission. The following verses can connect also with Job. 40:4 ff.
Job. 42:2No purpose of Yahweh can be withheld from HimGen. 17:11. Gods will and power are co-terminus. Jobs complaint had never been against Gods power, only His will. Job had lodged his confrontation with God concerning His indifference to moral matters, not His inability to execute justice. His wisdom and omnipotence have been acknowledged from the very beginning. Now Job affirms in faith not only Gods wisdom and power but also His goodness and graciousness. He cares for all His creation. His brief excursion throughout the system and societies of nature has provided perspective from which preview His purpose. Now he has a personal knowledge by acquaintance of his vindicator. Gods purpose is not a segment but a circle. In order to understand Gods ways with man, we must not absolutize any single degree of the cosmic circle, because ignorance of the meaning of the whole will ensue. There are no value free decisions, the assertions of many social and behavioral scientists to the contrary. All decisions entail value presuppositions. Now Job knows this fact of reality.
Job. 42:3This verse is almost identical with Job. 38:2. Job here repeats the complaint previously lodged against him for the express purpose of admitting its validity. Gods rebuke is here acknowledged to have been justified. Only those in ignorance (Heb. verb lmdarkness) of Gods complete purpose would speak out against Him.
Job. 42:4Again this verse repeats, with only slight modifications, Job. 33:31; Job. 38:3; and Job. 40:7. The marvel of memory is here set before us as Job reminisces on what Yahweh has said to himJob. 13:22.
Job. 42:5Here is the heart of Jobs restoration. In times past, Job knew God only by hearsay, literally report of earPsa. 18:45 and Job. 28:22. Job is now convinced of that which he formally doubted, i.e., of Gods providential care. He had asked for assurance that God was on his sideJob. 19:23-27, and Yahweh has once and for all spoken by The Shattering of Silence. Jobs demand has been met.
Job. 42:6Repentance removes himself from the center of the world. Job is truly a crucified self. After all the only alternatives are either a divided self or a crucified self. Job accepts Gods evaluation of himself. We are OK only when God says we are OK! Even in Job. 9:21 Job does not loath (Heb. verb ms) himself, but his condition.[405] Jobs habitat has been ashes for some timeJob. 2:8; Isa. 58:5; Jer. 6:26; Jon. 3:6; and Mic. 1:10. Like the Phoenix, Job arises up out of the bitter ashes of suffering and stands whole again. But this time Yahweh is his organizing center, and neither his family nor prosperity nor their cultural advantages. To the Christian believer, Jobs redeemer, the Christ, is the orderer of all existenceCol. 1:17 and Eph. 1:10. He is truly Christ the Center.
[405] See the examination of L. J. Kuyper, Vetus Testamentum, 1959, pp. 9194.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
JOB’S SECOND AND LAST REPLY, Job 42:2-6.
In recognising the almightiness of God his infinite power in its relations not only to the diversified types of evil, but to evil itself Job declares God to be just and wise, and in all things governed by the highest principles of right. At the contemplation of the inmost harmony in the divine Being between almightiness, justice, goodness, and wisdom, and by contrast his own rampant folly and wickedness, he abhors himself, and repents in dust and ashes, Job 42:2-6.
The reply links itself for the most part with Job 40:7-14, which contains the challenge of the Almighty respecting the control and government of the world, in connexion with which the amplification in Job 40:15-24 and chap. 41 furnishes living criteria ugly touchstones for the proudest human reason. “If even that which is apparently most contradictory, rightly perceived, is so glorious, his affliction is also no such monstrous injustice as he thinks. On the contrary, it is a profoundly elaborated thought, (mizimmah,) a well-digested counsel, (‘ heisah,) of God.” Delitzsch.
Job 42:1-6 Job’s Second Reply to God – God has demanded a second reply from Job in Job 40:7. Job 42:1-6 records this second reply to God, in which Job responds to the Lord’s discourse of Job 40:7 to Job 41:34.
Job 40:7, “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.”
Job 42:2 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.
Job 42:2 Job 42:3 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
Job 42:3 Job 42:3 “therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not” Comments – After God revealed His omniscience in the previous chapters, Job feels that his former speeches were without any knowledge in comparison.
Job 42:4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
Job 42:4 Job 42:3-4 Comments – Job Quotes the Lord’s Opening Statement to His Speech – The NIV reads, “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’” (Job 42:3-4) Thus, Job is understood to be paraphrasing a statement from the Lord’s speech in Job 38:1-3.
Job 38:1-3, “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.”
Job 42:5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
Job 42:5 Job 42:6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
Job 42:6 Isa 6:5, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
Job truly had a supernatural experience with God, and expressed the overwhelming awe and brokenness of any human that beholds the glory of God.
Job 42:6 “wherefore I abhor myself” – Comments – Job said, “I despise myself.” He saw himself like Isaiah did in Isa 6:5, which is man in relation to God’s holiness and majesty.
Isa 6:5, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
Job 42:7-17 The Epilogue Job 42:7-17 forms the epilogue to the book of Job. This passage of Scripture contains the Lord’s rebuke towards Job’s three friends (Job 42:7-9) and Job’s restoration to health and prosperity (Job 42:10-17).
Job 42:7 And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.
Job 42:7 Job 13:4, “But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.”
Job 42:8 Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job.
Job 42:8 [66] Otto Zckler, The Book of Job, trans. by L. J. Evans, in Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1872), 630.
Job 42:9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: the LORD also accepted Job.
Job 42:10 Job 42:10 3Jn 1:2, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”
Job 42:10 “when he prayed for his friends” – Comments – Job’s revelation of God in Job 38-41 helped him to focus on heavenly things and to look beyond his suffering. With this mindset, he stopped praying for the deliverance of himself and was able to prayer for the deliverance of his friends, thus receiving deliverance for himself.
Job 42:10 “also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before” – Comments – This two-fold blessing refers to Job’s prosperity (3Jn 1:2). After prospering Job, God then called him to demonstrate to his generation the fact that his prosperity was a result of divine blessings, rather than from Job’s own abilities and righteousness. Thus, it was necessary for God to remove Job’s prosperity entirely, and restore it two-fold as a sign to his generation that Job’s prosperity came from God because of his right standing before God. Job’s friends accused Job of causing his own calamities, and they could have as easily accused him of causing his own prosperity. After God restores Job two-fold, no one could doubt that Job’s prosperity came from the Lord.
3Jn 1:2, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”
Job 42:10 Comments – Health and prosperity are God’s rewards.
Job 42:11 Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.
Job 42:12 Job 42:13 Job 42:13 Job 42:14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch.
Job 42:14 Job 42:14 Word Study on “ Keziah” Gesenius says the Hebrew name “Keziah” ( ) (H7103) means, “cassiaa bark similar to cinnamon, but less aromatic, so called from its being peeled off.”
Psa 45:8, “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.”
Job 42:14 Word Study on “Kerenhappuch” Gesenius says the Hebrew name “Kerenhappuch” ( ) (H7163) means, “horn of paint.” Strong says it means, “horn of cosmetic.” PTW says it means, “horn of antimony.” It comes from ( ) (H7161), meaning, “horn,” and ( ) (H6320), meaning, “to paint, dye.” The ISBE says, “Antimony, producing a brilliant black, was used among the Orientals for coloring the edges of the eyelids, making the eyes large and lustrous. Hence, the suggestiveness of this name of an article of the ladies’ toilet, a little horn or receptacle for the eye-paint. [67] See:
[67] “Keren-happuch,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., c1915, 1939), in The Sword Project, v. 1.5.11 [CD-ROM] (Temple, AZ: CrossWire Bible Society, 1990-2008).
2Ki 9:30, “And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window.”
Job 42:17 So Job died, being old and full of days.
Job 42:17 Gen 25:8,”Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.”
Gen 35:29, “And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.”
1Ch 23:1, “So when David was old and full of days, he made Solomon his son king over Israel.”
1Ch 29:28, “And he died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour: and Solomon his son reigned in his stead.”
2Ch 24:15, “But Jehoiada waxed old, and was full of days when he died; an hundred and thirty years old was he when he died.”
God Reveals Himself to Job by His Creation Did not Job believe God heard his prayers in the midst of his prosperity? How much more should God hear him in the midst of his suffering? In a mighty display of nature’s energy, a whirlwind approaches Job, and a divine voice begins to come forth and speak to Job. God now reveals His true character to Job because his friends had misrepresented Him. He reveals Himself as the omnipotent Creator of the universe, who daily watches over each aspect of His creatures with love and concern through His omniscience and omnipresence. More specifically, God reveals that He alone is just and Job and all of mankind are in need of redemption through faith in God. In man’s fallen condition since the Garden of Eden, all of creation has been made subject to vanity and endures suffering. God will now lead Job into an act of intercession for his friends in order to receive his own deliverance as a testimony that man will have to redeem himself. Yet, what man is qualified to redeem mankind? Job will understand that it must be a man, a man who was righteous before God, a man who must suffer, a man who must be an intercessor, that will redeem mankind. The fullness of this revelation will come at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, when God Himself becomes a man to redeem His people, and with it, all of creation.
We find a similar passage of Scripture in Isa 40:12 to Isa 41:29, where God challenges backslidden Israel to produce her reasons for trusting in idols (Job 41:21). In a similar manner God reveals to Israel her frailty and weakness in the midst of His majestic creation that reveals Him as the divine creator of all things.
Here is a proposed outline:
God’s First Speech Job 38:1 to Job 40:2
Job’s Reply Job 40:3-5
God’s Second Speech Job 40:6 to Job 41:34
Job’s Reply Job 42:1-6
Job 38:1 to Job 42:6 God Reveals Himself to Job by His Creation (The Purpose of the Sciences and Art) The Lord spoke to me this morning and said that the sciences and arts are an expression of God’s divine nature. God reveals His divine nature through His creation (Job 38-41), and the sciences are the tools that mankind uses to explore His creation. The arts are an expression of man’s heart and emotions, and when the Spirit of God is allowed to inspire mankind, he speaks in poetry and song, in paintings and other works of art. (March 24, 2009)
Job 38:1 to Job 40:2 God’s First Speech to Job: The Story of His Creation In Job 38:1 to Job 40:2 God delivers His first speech to Job. The story of creation recorded in Job 38:1 to Job 40:2 serves as a testimony to Job of God’s divine attributes. In this passage of Scripture the Lord revealed to Job His omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence, and His infinite wisdom and power over all of His creation. He reveals to Job the fact that He daily oversees the activities of His creation. God’s description of creating the heavens and earth in Job 38:4-38 reveals His omnipotence. His description of overseeing and sustaining His creatures reveals His omniscience and omnipresence.
In the study of the Holy Scriptures we discover a number of passages revealing the events in the Story of Creation. For example, we have the testimony of the Father’s role in Gen 1:1 to Gen 2:4 as the One who has planned and foreknown all things in His creation. We also have the testimony of the Jesus Christ the Son’s role in creation recorded Joh 1:1-14, who is the Word of God through whom all things were created. In Pro 8:22-31 we have the testimony of the Holy Spirit’s role in creation as the Wisdom and Power of God. 2Pe 3:5-7 refers to the story of creation with emphasis upon God’s pending destruction of all things in order to judge the sins of mankind. Heb 11:3 tells us how it is by faith that we understand how the world was created by the Word of God. Another passage of Scripture that reveals the story of Creation is found in Job 38:1 to Job 40:2, where the wisdom and majesty of God Almighty are revealed by describing the details of how His creation came into existence. We can find other brief references to the creation of the earth throughout the Scriptures, such as Psalms 104 and many other individual verses.
Here is a proposed summary of Job 38:1 to Job 40:2:
God Asks Job for Dialogue Job 38:1-3
God As Creator of the Earth Job 38:4-38
God Created the Earth Job 38:4-7
God Created the Seas Job 38:8-11
God Created Day and Night Job 38:12-15
The Depths and Breath of the Sea & Earth Job 38:16-18
God Created Light and Darkness Job 38:19-21
God Created Snow and Ice Job 38:22-30
God Created the Stars & Constellations Job 38:31-33
God Created the Clouds Job 38:34-38
God As Sustainer of Life on the Earth Job 38:39 to Job 39:30
God Sustains the Lion Job 38:39-40
God Sustains the Raven Job 38:41
God Sustains the Wild Goats & Deer Job 39:1-4
God Sustains the Wild Donkey Job 39:5-8
God Sustains the Wild Ox Job 39:9-12
God Sustains the Ostrich Job 39:13-18
God Sustains the Horse Job 39:19-25
God Sustains the Hawk & Eagle Job 39:26-30
God Concludes His First Speech Job 40:1-2
Job’s Humble Confession.
v. 1. Then Job, v. 2. I know that Thou canst do every thing, v. 3. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? v. 4. Hear, I beseech Thee, and I will speak, v. 5. I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, v. 6. Wherefore I abhor myself, SECTION VII.HISTORICAL SEQUEL TO THE DIALOG
EXPOSITION
Job 42:1-17
This concluding chapter divides into two parts. In the first part (Job 42:1-6) Job makes his final submission, humbling himself in the dust before God. In the second (verses 7-17) the historical framework, in which the general dialogue is set, is resumed and brought to a close. God’s approval of Job is declared, and his anger denounced against the three friends, who are required to expiate their guilt by a sacrifice, and only promised forgiveness if Job will intercede on their behalf (verse 8). The sacrifice takes place (verse 9); and then a brief account is appended of Job’s after lifehis prosperity, his reconciliation with his family and friends, his wealth, his sons and daughters, and his death in a good old age, when he was “full of days” (verses 10-17.). The poetic structure, begun in Job 3:3, is continued to the end of Job 3:6, when the style changes into prose of the same character as that employed in Job 1:1-22; Job 2:1-13; and in Job 32:1-5.
Job 42:1, Job 42:2
Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that thou caner do every thing; i.e. I know and acknowledge thy omnipotence, which thou hast set forth so magnificently before me in ch. 38-41. It is brought home to me by the grand review of thy works which thou hast made, and the details into which thou hast condescended to enter. I know also and acknowledge that no thought can be with-holden from thee; i.e. I confess also thy omnisciencethat thou knowest even the thoughts of all created beings (comp. Psa 44:21; Psa 139:2; Heb 4:13, etc.).
Job 42:3
Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? As these are nearly the words of God in Job 38:2, some suppose that they must be his words again here, and imagine a short dialogue in this place between Job and the Almighty, assigning to Job verse 2, the latter half of verse 8, and the whole of verses 5 and 6, while they assign to God verse 4 and the first clause of verse 8. But it is far more natural to regard Job as bringing up the words which God had spoken to him, to ponder on them and answer them, or at any rate to hang his reply upon them, than to imagine God twice interrupting Job in the humble confession that he was anxious to make. We must understand, then, after the word “knowledge,” an ellipse of “thou sayest.” Therefore have I uttered that I understood not. Therefore, because of that reproof of thine, I perceive that, in what I said to my friends, I “darkened counsel,”I “uttered that I understood not,” words which did not clear the matter in controversy, but obscured it. I dealt, in fact, with things too wonderful for mebeyond my compre-hensionwhich I knew not, of which I had no real knowledge, but only a semblance of knowledge, and on which, therefore, I had better have been silent.
Job 42:4
Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me, Job refers to God’s words in Job 38:3 and Job 40:7, and realizes the humbling effect which they had had on him. They made him feel how little he knew on the subject of God’s works and ways, and how little competent he was to judge them. Hence he bursts into the confession-
Job 42:5
I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear. Hitherto, i.e; I have had nothing but hearsay knowledge of thee; I have not known thee in any true sense; but nownow that thou hast revealed thyselfmine eye seeth thee; my spiritual eye is opened, and 1 begin to see thee in thy true might, thy true greatness, thy true inscrutableness. Now I recognize the distance which separates us, and feel how unreasonable it is that I should contend with thee, argue with thee, assume myself to be competent to pass judgment on thy doings. “Wherefore I abhor myself,” etc.
Job 42:6
Wherefore I abhor myself; or, I loathe my words (see the Revised Version). And repent in dust and ashes. Job was still sitting on the ash-heap on which he had thrown himself when his disease first smote him (Job 2:8). He had thrown himself on it in grief and de, pair; he will remain seated on it in compunction and penitence. His self-humiliation is now complete. He does not retract what he has said concerning his essential integrity, but he admits that his words have been overbold, and his attitude towards God one unbefitting a creature. God accepts his submission, and proceeds to vindicate him to his “friends,” and to visit them with condemnation.
Job 42:7
And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job. The “words” intended seem to be those of ch. 38-41; not any words in the earlier portion of this chapter. God heard Job’s confession in silence, and, without further speech to him, addressed Eliphaz and his “friends.” The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends. The superior position of Eliphaz is here very strongly recognizedhe alone is mentioned by name, he alone addressed directly. The precedence thus given to him accords with that which he holds, both in the earlier historical narrative (Job 2:11) and in the dialogue (Job 4:1; Job 15:1; Job 22:1). For ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. Job had, on the whole, spoken what was right and true of God, and is acknowledged by God as his true servant. The “comforters,” consciously or unconsciously, had spoken what was false. Even if they said what they believed, they ought to have known better.
Job 42:8
Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams. (On the early and widespread prevalence of the rite of sacrifice,-see the comment upon Job 1:5.) (On the preference, for sacrificial purposes, of the number seven, see Le 23:18; Num 23:1, Num 23:14, Num 23:29; Num 28:11, Num 28:19, Num 28:27; Num 29:2, Num 29:8, Num 29:36; 1Ch 15:26 2Ch 29:21; Ezr 8:35; Eze 45:23, etc.) It is noticeable that “seven bullocks and seven rams” was exactly the offering of the Moabite king Balak, and his prophet Balaam, contemporary with Moses. And go to my servant Job. Humble yourselves before the man whom you have striven to abase and bring low. Go to himmake application to him, that he will be pleased to come to your aid, joining and assisting in the offering which I require at your hands. And offer up for yourselves a burnt offering. Do as Job had done for his sins (Job 1:5), “offer a burnt offering;” and then my servant Job shall pray for you. Present at your sacrifice, and sharing in it, he shall assume the highest priestly function, and intercede on your behalf. For him will I accept; literally, his face, or his person, will I accept. It is implied that, apart from Job, the three “comforters” would not have been listened to, much less have obtained pardon. Lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job (see the comment on the preceding verse).
Job 42:9
So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the Lord commanded them; i.e. “went” to Job, and asked his aid and interposition, and obtained it. The Lord also accepted Job; i.e. looked favourably on Job’s intercession, and for his sake pardoned those for whom he made his prayer. Job is thus a type of Christ, not merely in his sufferings, but also in his mediatorial character.
Job 42:10
And the Lord turned the captivity of Job. The literal use of this phrase is common, the metaphorical use of it uncommon, in Scripture. Still, it is so simple a metaphor, and captivity so common a thing among ancient peoples, that it may well have been in general use among the nations of Western Asia from very primitive times. It signifies, as Professor Lee remarks, “a restoration to former happy circumstances.” When he prayed for his friends. Perhaps his complete forgiveness by God was contingent on his own complete forgiveness of his “friends” (Mat 6:12, Mat 6:14, Mat 6:15; Mat 18:32-35); at any rate, his restoration immediately followed his intercession. Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before; literally, added to all that had been Job‘s to the double (comp. verse 12).
Job 42:11
Then came there unto him all his brethren. Job’s “brethren,” and his desertion by them in his misfortunes, had been mentioned in Job 19:13. Now these fair-weather friends flocked to him again, and professed affection and interest, ignoring probably, or excusing, their long absence and neglect. And all his sisters. One sex had behaved no better to him than the other. His nearest female relatives had failed to show themselves the “ministering angels” that they are commonly accounted, even when “pain and anguish” most “wrung his brow.” And all they that had been of his acquaintance before. Job, like other wealthy and prosperous men had during the time of his prosperity had “troops of friends” (see Job 29:8-10, Job 29:21-25). When adversity swooped down they fell away. Now they had the effrontery to claim his acquaintance once more, and to come and be his guests; they did eat bread with him in his house. Nay, more, they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him, whereof the worst part was their own coldness and desertion (Job 19:13, Job 19:14, Job 19:19). Finally, to establish the renewed friendship, every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an ear-ring of gold. The money given is said to have been a kesitah, which means probably a certain weight of silver, though whether a shekel or not is uncertain. The word belongs to the earlier Hebrew, being found only in Gen 33:19; Jos 24:32, and in the present passage. Ear-rings were commonly worn in the East by men as well as women, as appears from the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian sculptures.
Job 42:12
So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning (comp. above, verse 10). The restoration of prosperity, prophesied by Eliphaz (Job 5:18 26), Bildad (Job 8:20, Job 8:21), and Zophar (Job 11:13-19), but not expected by Job, came, not in consequence of any universal law, but by the will of God, and his pure grace and favour. It in no way pledged God to compensate worldly adversity by worldly prosperity in the case of any other sufferer; and certainly the general law seems to be that such earthly compensation is withheld. But, in combination with the instinct which demands that retributive justice shall prevail universally, it may be taken as an earnest of God’s ultimate dealings with men, and a sure indication that, if not on earth, at least in the future state; each man shall receive “the deeds done in the body,” according to that he hath done, whether it be good or evil. For he had (rather, and he had) fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. In every case the exact double of his original possessions (see Job 1:3; and comp. above, Job 1:12). We need not suppose, however, that either the round numbers, or the exact duplicity, are historical.
Job 42:13
He had also seven sons and three daughters. The same number as previously (Job 1:2), neither more nor fewer.
Job 42:14
And he called the name of the first, Jemima. The name “Jemima” is probably derived from yom (), “day,” and means “Fair as the day.” And the name of the second, Kezia. “Kezia” (rather, “Keziah”) was the Hebrew name of the spice which the Greeks and Romans called “cassia,” a spice closely allied to cinnamon, and much esteemed in the East (see Herod; 3.110). And the name of the third, Keren-happuch; literally, horn of stibiumstibium being the dye (antimony) with which Oriental women have from a remote antiquity been in the habit of anointing the upper and lower eyelids in order to give lustre to the eye. The three names, according to Oriental notions, implied either sweetness or beauty.
Job 42:15
And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job. Beauty has always been highly valued in the East; and Job would feel himself highly favoured in having three beautiful daughters. It may have been on account of their great beauty that their father gave them inheritance among their brethren, which was certainly an unusual practice in the East.
Job 42:16
After this lived Job an hundred and forty years. It has been concluded from this statement, combined with that at the close of verse 10, that Job was exactly seventy years of age when his calamities fell upon him; but this is really only a conjecture, since the statement that “God added to all that had been Job’s to the double,” does not naturally apply to anything but his property. We may, however, fairly allow that (as Professor Lee says) he “could scarcely have been less than seventy” when his afflictions came, having then a family of ten children, who were all grown up (Job 1:4). In this case, the whole duration of his life would have been 210 years, or a little more, which cannot be regarded as incredible by those who accept the ages of the patriarchs, from Peleg to Jacob, as respectively 239, 230, 148, 205, 175, 180, and 147 years. And saw his sons, and his sons’ sons; i.e. his descendantsgrandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Even four generations. According to the Hebrew inclusive practice of reckoning, we may regard his own generation as included.
Job 42:17
So Job died, being old and full of days. The lowest estimate places the occurrence of the afflictions of Job at the time when he was a little more than fifty (“Supponitur quinquagenario hand multo majorem fuisse Nostrum, quum conflictari coepit,” Schultens). Thus his age at his death would be at least a hundred and ninety,
HOMILETICS
Job 42:1-17
The conclusion of the drama.
I. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE THIRD CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JEHOVAH AND JOB. (Job 42:1-6.) This controversy, it will be remembered, arose out of the intensity of Job’s sufferings and the perplexity of Job’s spirit, which caused him on the one hand to form too favourable an opinion of his own, and on the other hand too unfavourable an opinion of God’s, righteousness; to misinterpret the facts of providence almost as egregiously as, though in an opposite direction from, the friends; to misapprehend the fundamental principle of the Divine administration, which, if it was not strictly retributive justice, as the friends alleged, was still less a heartless indifference to human happiness, as Job occasionally seemed to insinuate, but, as Elihu maintained, a principle of grace; to misconstrue the purpose at which God aimed in his affliction, and, as a consequence, to recklessly charge God with partiality, injustice, and enmity. Accordingly this, the last controversy to emerge, was the first which required to be disposed of; and this is done by Job’s unconditional surrender to Jehovah.
1. A clear recognition of the Divine supremacy, “I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.” The conception of Jehovah’s omnipotence and omniscience, of his infinite capability of elaborating plans and carrying them forward into execution, though not wholly unfamiliar to the mind of the patriarch, now stands out before his quickened imagination with a luminosity which was previously wanting. The contemplation of a wisdom that could fashion and a power that could govern such strange and wondrous monsters as behemoth (the hippopotamus, or Nile-horse) and leviathan (the crocodile or alligator), had enabled him to see that in the higher sphere of man also similarly elaborated thoughts, counsels, plans, might be formed by the Supreme, and even projected into actual realization. That Job’s affliction was one such exquisitely fashioned thought of God had at last dawned upon the troubled soul of the patriarch.
2. A humble acknowledgment of sin. “Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge?” So Jehovah at the opening of the theophany had charged the patriarch with doing (Job 38:2); and to this at length the patriarch, with sorrow in his heart, assents. It is a sure sign that a man has entered on the path of penitence when he owns himself prepared not alone to admit his fault, but also to accept the rebukes of God (Le 26:41). So David did when God reproved him for his great transgression in the matter of Uriah. And here Job with perfect frankness concedes that God’s language concerning him, however severe, was not undeserved; that in speaking as he did about God and his transcendently glorious administration of mundane affairs he had simply been babbling in ignorance, talking about sublimities immeasurably beyond his conception. “Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”
3. An earnest desire for Divine illumination. A second time taking up the words of God (Job 38:3), Job, as it seems to us, applies them to himself. Formerly he had deemed himself qualified to answer God, so confident did he feel as to the fulness of his knowledge and the clearness of his convictions. On this assumption God had challenged him to stand forth and submit to examination. Now, however, Job has been brought to see what every one must be brought to see before he can be either wise or good, viz. his native ignorance, his mental and moral darkness, his comparative blindness, especially as regards the things of God. Hence, with the true spirit of a penitent, he exclaims, “Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.” So did Asaph confess his ignorance and supplicate instruction (Psa 73:22). So David (Psa 25:4), and either he or a later Hebrew poet (Psa 119:12, Psa 119:18, Psa 119:19, Psa 119:27, Psa 119:33). God instructs not the wise in their own conceits; or, if he does, the first lesson he imparts is to show them their folly. Hence the words of St. Paul (1Co 3:18).
4. A penitential expression of self-abasement. The insight Job had gained from the Divine teaching had completely revolutionized his soul. From being proud and self-confident, he had become humble and subdued. Prostrate in the dust of contrition, he was full of spiritual self-loathing. “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Job felt ashamed of his behaviour in condemning God; he was not less ashamed of his own moral weakness and imperfection. Thus practically he confessed that, in the controversy he had waged with God, the right lay with God, the wrong with him.
II. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE SECOND CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JOB AND THE THREE FRIENDS. (Verses 7-9.) This controversy, as formerly explained (Job 2:11, homiletics), turned upon the relation existing between sin and suffering; the friends maintaining that suffering, in the Divine administration, was so invariably connected with sin by the principle of a strictly retributive justice, that it was always possible to estimate the amount of an individual’s guilt by the depth of his calamity; while Job, on the other hand, not only rejected the application of such a principle to himself, but contended that many facts existed which were wholly irreconcilable with such a principle. On this controversy also Jehovah pronounces an authoritative verdict, to the effect that truth lay upon the side of Job rather than upon that of the friends, to whom accordingly he now, in turn, directs his address.
1. The imputation made. Eliphaz and his friends had not spoken concerning him that which was right, as Job had. They had erred in two waysin presenting an erroneous view of the Divine dealings with mankind in general, and in maintaining it at the expense both of God and of Job. In order to make good their theory, they had alleged, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, that Job was a wicked man, and that God was incensed against him with righteous indignationboth of which assertions were incorrect. Neither was God punishing Job, nor was Job a wicked man, but one whom all through the tremendous ordeal God recognized as his servant. And if Eliphaz and his friends had transgressed against God in misrepresenting the Divine character and ways, they had offended scarcely less by misjudging the character and ways of Job. If Job himself was not entirely free from blame in the views he was sometimes driven in anguish to express, it midst still be remembered that he was nearer the truth than they were, and that occasionally he was able to recognize the Divine justice and love in his tribulation.
2. The direction given. “Therefore take unto you now seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering.” Interesting as showing the antiquity of sacrificial worship beyond the bounds of the Holy Land, this statement is also valuable. as pointing out the close correspondence as to fundamental ideas and prevailing forms between the worship observed in heathen countries and that subsequently practised in Israel. Here, as afterwards in the Mosaic cultus, the burnt offering is the appointed medium of pardon and acceptance, proclaiming to Job and his contemporaries, as later to Abraham’s descendants, that without shedding of blood there is no remission, that reconciliation is impossible except upon the ground of an atoning sacrifice. Here, as afterwards, bullocks and rams are the animals selected for the sacrificial ritual, perhaps also for a like purpose, to typify the holy Lamb of God who should in the end of the ages become the world’s Propitiation, while at the same time they suggested forcibly their own insufficiency (Heb 9:11-14; Heb 10:1-5)to cleanse the conscience from sin. Here also, as afterwards, the offering is directed to be presented through an officiating priest (in this case Job), to signify that no man can come to God except through the intervention of a Mediator. Thus the rudiments of the gospel may be said to have existed in that early agethe work of Christ being clearly symbolized, his great propitiation by the sacrificial victims, his heavenly intercession by the prayer of Job.
3. The encouragement offered. “My servant Job shall pray for you: for him [literally, ‘his face or person’] will I accept.” Having graciously constituted Job a Mediator between himself and the friends, Jehovah guarantees that if they will avail themselves of his services, he will be accepted, and of course they also in him. Here, again, it is impossible not to descry another shadow of the gospel. God, having constituted Christ a High Priest for ever, distinctly engages to accept all who through him supplicate his favour. Hence Christ says, “I am the Way: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me;” and the writer to the Hebrews declares that “he is able to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto God through him.”
4. The warning appended. “Lest I deal with you after your folly.” That is to say, unless they fit d for refuge to this hope set before them, they could not escape the punishment their folly merited. If they complied with the Divine instruction, they were safe; if they declined, they would suffer. So likewise has the gospel its warbling. If sinful men flee to Christ, the one Mediator between God and man, they will certainly be delivered; if they do not, they shall just as certainly be destroyed.
5. The obedience rendered. “So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the Lord commanded them.” And in so doing they expressed their penitencethey tacitly acknowledged their offence; their faiththey acted precisely as the Lord had commanded; their humilitythey sought the friendly offices of one whom they had regarded as an outcast; their submissionthey acquiesced in the Divine verdict, though it had gone against them. In all this they show to sinful men a pattern of how the guilty should draw near to God.
III. THE SETTLEMENT OF THE FIRST OR FUNDAMENTAL CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JEHOVAH AND SATAN. (Verses 9-17.) It has been repeatedly explained (Job 1:9, homiletics) that controversy is here also ended by the action of God, who, by delivering his servant from the furnace of affliction and reinstating him in even more than his former prosperity, virtually pronounces judgment against the devil. Job has not been a fair-weather professor of religion, but an earnest and sincere follower of Heaven, clinging to his piety amidst the severest reverses, and not only serving God for nought, but adhering to him even when it seemed that God had cast him off. It was, therefore, useless to continue the experiment a moment longer. Accordingly it is stated, “The Lord also accepted Job.” Four things are mentioned as giving unmistakable evidence el Jehovah’s acceptance of his servant.
1. The cessation of his trial. “And the Lord”that marks the Author of Job’s deliverance”turned the captivity of Job;” that describes its joy, it was like the coming home from exile; “when he prayed for his friends;” that specifies its time, when Job was interceding with Heaven in behalf of others.
2. The return of his prosperity. “Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before;” “fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses;” but only the same number of children as before”seven sons and three daughters,” perhaps because the former seven and three were not lost, but only gone before. They who lose all for God on earth will not be losers in the end. Job received twice as much as he had before. Christ’s followers are promised “an hundredfold more in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
3. The sympathy of his friends. “Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before.” During the time of his desolation they had deserted him, as he pathetically complained (Job 19:13-19), thinking him an object of Divine displeasure. Now they return with the first symptoms of returning prosperity. “And they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.” A little of this would have cheered him when in the depths; but, alas! then it was awanting. Let it not, however, be asserted that their display of sympathy was purely superficial, that in fact they were a company of hypocrites, since they at least offered a small token of their honesty in every one presenting him with gifts. “Every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.”
4. The happiness of his old age. Surrounded by a family of fair daughters and noble sons, as in the beginning of his days, and possessed of a constantly augmenting estate, the devout patriarch glided peacefully along the stream of life, till at length he reached the grave an old man and full of days, having lived after the cessation of his afflictions a hundred and forty years, and seen his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.
Learn:
1. That only that piety is sincere which exalts God and abases self.
2. That no man can truly know himself until he has first known God.
3. That true repentance ever springs from a believing apprehension of God.
4. That God is deeply displeased with those who misrepresent either himself or his ways.
5. That a good man may commit many faults without forfeiting the Divine favour.
6. That the Law of Moses was not the first or the only shadow of the good things to come.
7. That from the first the sinful world possessed a way of salvation.
8. That the essential element in justifying faith is for all men the same, viz. obedience to the revealed will of God.
9. That God’s people are commonly most blessed themselves when trying to promote the good of others.
10. That God will yet turn the captivity of all his suffering people, causing their night of sorrow to be followed by a morning of joy.
11. That God will not forsake his people who adhere to him.
12. That a peaceful old age in the bosom of a pious family is one of the choicest blessings a saint can enjoy on this side of heaven.
13. That notwithstanding God can give a saint on earth unspeakable felicity, it is better that the saint should ultimately die and go to heaven.
Job 42:5, Job 42:6
Hearsay and vision.
I. HEARSAY IS NOT VISION. Hearsay may be distinguished from vision two ways.
1. In respect of its nature. Hearsay, as the term signifies in common speech, is information received at second hand, by report, in contrast to that derived from personal observation and experience, which it is usual to describe as seeing. When applied to our knowledge of Divine things* the former may be understood as signifying all that instruction which comes to us from without, all that we receive from tradition, whatever is imparted to us by parents, teachers, ministers, that which we extract from catechisms, religious books, and even from our Bibles by our ordinary faculties of perception and reasonin short, everything commonly included in the phrase, “the letter of the truth;” the latter points to such a direct, personal, intimate acquaintance with God and truth as the soul obtains when, breathed on by that heavenly breath which, according to Elihu, is the source of all spiritual illumination, it looks outward and upward through the opened window of faith.
2. In respect of its effects. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,” exclaims the patriarch; but what then? This hearsay knowledge left me a prey to serious misconceptions both as to thyself and myselfpermitted me to fancy thee an unjust Judge, an inequitable Sovereign, an arbitrary Ruler, an implacable Foe; and myself a harshly treated and cruelly oppressed saint. And so for the most part that knowledge of God which is purely external, intellectual, dogmatical, has little power to change the heart and life, or even to conduct the mind to just conceptions of the character of God. But, on the other hand, when this hearsay has been transmuted into vision, and the soul has arrived at a truthful idea of the character of God as a Being all-powerful, holy, wise, just, and loving,l! immediately the self-righteous sinner is discovered prostrate in the dust, like Job, crying, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes;” like Isaiah in the temple, “Woe is me!” like St. Peter in his boat upon the sea of Galilee, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord!”
II. HEARSAY MAY BECOME VISION. This may be held as proved by the ease of Job.
1. The manner of its transmutation. An experience similar to that of Job must take place in every instance in which a soul passes from a mere hearsay knowledge to a believing vision of God.
(1) As Jehovah came to Job in the whirlwind, and made to him a personal revelation of his character as a Being of awful majesty, ineffable wisdom, and infinite power, so must God with a like disclosure of himself approach the human soul. This God has done; not, however, “in rainbow wreath and robe of storm,” but in the meek and lowly form of a sinless, suffering humanityin the Person of Jesus Christ.
(2) As in Job’s case there must have been a corresponding influence exerted on the mind of Job to enable him to apprehend the revelation given, so in that of all who attain to his position of spiritual Perception, “the eyes of the understanding must be opened.”
2. The time of its transmutation. The season in which Job was honoured to receive the sublime theophany which exerted such a marvellous, subduing influence upon his soul, was one of intense bodily affliction, and deep mental and spiritual anxiety; and so mostly it is found that such are the seasons God selects for discovering himself and his grace to the soul. As Christ came to his disciples on the sea of Galilee when they were toiling in rowing, and said to them, “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid,” no does he still come to souls when they are tossed upon the sea of doubt and fear.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Job 42:1-6
Job’s answer and confession.
It Consists of
I. THE HUMBLE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GOD‘S POWER. (Verse 2.) God can do everything; and no “beginning,” no germinating or budding thought, is hidden from him; he sees it alike in its origin, development, and end. Both the fearful forms of force in the animal life of nature, and the striking destinies of individual men, are constant proofs of the presence of him who governs the world in power and in justice.
II. AS ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS OWN IGNORANCE AND WEAKNESS. (Verse 3.) Justly did God rebuke him in the question, “Who darkeneth counsel without understanding?” He has been passing judgment on matters he did not understand, drawing conclusions from imperfect premisses, dealing with things that are and must remain to us mysterious, as if they could be explained by the rules of a limited experience. [t is this haste, this childish impatience of suspense, which drives some into discontent and murmuring, others into unbelief and atheism. A haste to speak before our thought is ripe, a haste to judge before the materials of judgment are at hand,these lead in human intercourse and in Divine relations to false positions, which must be sooner or later abandoned. But we see in Job
III. THE EXPRESSION AND THE ACT OF PENITENT. (Verses 4-6.) Quoting (verse 4) the summons of Jehovah at the beginning of his discourses (Job 38:3 and Job 40:7), he gives the answer alone befitting and required. He had before heard of God, i.e. had had an indirect and imperfect acquaintance with God. There is a knowledge of God at second hand, which is insufficient to bring us to the sense of our true relations to him (comp. Psa 48:9). We hear about God from the sources of early instruction, parents, teachers, pulpits, and books, and yet may thus not be brought into personal communication with God. In contrast to this is the personal vision of God. Not with the eyes of the body, but with the deeper view of the mindthe intellectual intuition, the contemplation of the Invisible through his creative manifestations (Rom 1:19, Rom 1:20). This immediate view of God produces at once a new view of sell. To see that God is infinite is to see that we are finite; to behold his perfection is to be sensible of our own imperfection; to acknowledge him to be in the right is to confess that our thoughts are wrong; to be amazed and enraptured with his glory is to loathe our own meanness. Yet these thoughts may exist in the mind, and yet be without result except that of conscious misery. But their tendency and their purpose are to produce repentance, as we see in the example of Job. And here we mark the traits of a true repentance. It is to” recall” the idle word, the impious thought; and it is to reverse the attitude of the mind from that of presumption and pride to that of submission and humility. So in dust and ashes, with pride abased, overcome by the Divine majesty, would Job offer those sacrifices which God does not despise (Psa 51:1-19.). In returning to God he returns to his true spirit and attitude of patience. Out of this, by the provocation of his friends, he had allowed himself to be mused. But now hearing the rod, and who hath appointed it, kissing the hand that hath smitten, he waits in silence until the blessing of the Most High anew exalts the sincere penitent.J.
Job 42:7-17
Conclusion of the story.
I. THE DIVINE JUSTIFICATION OF JOB. (Job 42:7-10.) The cure of the inward sickness of the sufferer’s spirit is followed here, as we often see in the course of life, by outward health and happiness.
1. The reproof of the friends. (Job 42:7.) Addressing Eliphaz, as their chief spokesman, Jehovah declares his displeasure that they have not spoken the truth concerning him. Not that they have spoken with wilful dishonesty, but that they have been in error. There has been a want of heart, and therefore a want of right thought. They have refused to receive the testimony of a brother’s substantial innocence; have persistently tried to fix on him a guilt which did not exist. The habit of censeriousness, the habitual exclusion of charity from our feelings, vitiates and falsifies the whole course of our thought. The grave question arises, whether any intellectual error can in the end escape condemnation; whether the very definition of such error is not the thought arising from an evil state of heart. But Job, on the other hand, has spoken the substantial truth, and for the opposite reason. Again and again we have seen how his contention is for truth; and how, beneath all the irritation of his hasty words, there has been throbbing a heart true to God. And now comes the hour of recognition, as it ever will come for every faithful soul. What a blissful sound is there in those words of recognition and of pardon and of justification, “My servant Job”! What grace in the long-delayed, but now fully granted answer to the prayer (Job 16:21) that right may be done before God and his friends! But let us clearly grasp and retain the principle and the contents of this Divine judgment. The friends spoke ill, and Job spoke well. This is the Divine judgment. On what ground is it based? Their one point was this: affliction is the evidence of God’s wrath, and of the afflicted one’s guilt. And they were wrong. Job’s insistence is that afflictions are not always the sign of the sufferer’s guilt nor of the anger of God. And Job is right. And there remains the grand principle illustrated by the discourses of Jehovah, and on which this judgment rests, that affliction comes from the will of supreme power and justice. And this is so, although the reasons of affliction cannot by our imperfect intelligence be fully known. At the same time, the judgment on this great point at issue does not exclude the elements of truth and beauty to be richly found in the discourses of the friends; nor does it excuse the passion and the hasty speeches of Job.
2. Sacrifice for sin and intercessoty prayer. (Verses 8, 9.) The friends are directed to perform an act of worship, the character el which appears to point back to early times (comp. Num 23:1; Gen 7:2, Gen 7:3; Gen 8:20, et seq.). All outward sacrifices were the visible expression of inward feelings, of thankfulness and joy, of reverence, and especially, as here, of the desire of the penitent to renounce his sin and be at one with his God. Blood was the most sacred symbol, because it was the expression of life. The life of the animal offered in sacrifice represents the life of the worshipper surrendered to God. Hence for us the deep significance of the “blood of Christ;” and the highest act of worship is the presenting ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, to God through Christ and his sacrifice; that is, with his spiritual sacrifice present to the eye of the spirit, as the ancient animal sacrifice was present to the bodily eye of the early worshipper. Then, on the other hand, sacrifice as divinely ordained is a language from God to us, as well as one on our part to God. It bespeaks the willingness of God to enter into relations of peace with man. It therefore announces the possibility of repentance and of forgiveness conditional upon repentance; and so calls man to turn, to be converted and healed. Thus regarded and used, the great Christian sacrament is a powerful means of grace, and is most appropriately resorted to at such great epochs of spiritual history as that here set before us. Again, the passage brings to notice the privilege of intercession. “Pray for one another, that ye may be healed” As the intercession of Abraham for Abimelech is honoured, so now is Job appointed a mediator and intercessor for those who have forfeited a measure of Divine grace, and thus the prophecy of Eliphaz (Job 22:30) is realized. We are encouraged in the New Testament to pray for one another. The great law of mediation runs through life (comp. Butler’s ‘Analogy’), and this is one of its illustrations. A value is justly attached to good men’s prayers. How far this privilege extends, and what are its limits, we do not know. It belongs to spiritual laws, the operation of which cannot be fully verified in the field of experience. It is a truth revealed in the heart and for the heart; and the heart has reasons, as Pascal says, which reason knows not. Let us sacredly guard the oracles of the heart, and thankfully receive every ray of confirmatory light that actual experience affords. The song of a tiny bird by the wayside which brings us comfort, may be a messenger of God to the soul; and the prayer of our feebleness for those whom we know not otherwise how to assist may effect a far-working good, as may theirs for us. But what a beautiful touch is this in the narrative, “Jehovah turned the captivity of Job while he was praying for his friends”! For it points to the fact that amongst the best moments of our life are those in which we lose sight of self in thought for others; when we can forgive and forget the injuries we have received from others, and seek their good in deeds of kindness, in words of prayer.
II. RESTORATION OF OUTWARD PROSPERITY. (Verses 11-17.) “Twice as much as he had before.” God takes away only to enrich, never to ruin and destroy, the faithful heart. He knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation; and as we have seen throughout the book the powers by which he leads souls to himself more nearly, so here we see his “end” (Jas 5:7-11; 1Co 10:13). The swallow-like friendship of men, vanishing as the winter of trouble draws on, returning when the sun of prosperity gains power once more, is contrasted with t he enduring, never-changing friendship of the eternal, one God. The life, then, the sufferings, the triumph and happy end of Job, are a type for all ages of the lot of the Christian, of the child of God. A harmony of the inward spirit with the outward surroundings is necessary to the completeness of life. This restored possession of wealth and honour is a happier state than his life’s beginning, because it is a state more truly in relation to God. All that he has and enjoys he now possesses for God’s sake. God is revealed in his gifts, and from his presence and love they derive their savour. Deus meus et omnia! “My God and my all!” is the motto of the heart purified and humbled by affliction. The darkness and the mystery pass away from the life when the great secret is discovered that in all outward changes “God is God to me.” Here is a type of him who was humbled to the death of the cross, and who, because he, though a Son, learned obedience by the things he suffered, received a name above every name. What, then, have we to do, as followers of him, but to commit ourselves to God as to a faithful Creator; to receive what he assigns us humbly, and enjoy it thankfully, knowing that by denying us many things on which our hearts are set, he is doing us the greatest kindness in the world, which is to “keep us from temptation,” and by keeping us from temptation, to “deliver us from evil,” and by delivering us from evil, to prepare and fit us for all the good that can be desired, and for himself, the endless inexhaustible Fountain of it, “in whose presence there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore”? To whom be ascribed all praise, might, majesty, and dominion for ever. Amen.J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN
Job 42:1-6
Contrition.
Job, chastened with severe afflictions, harassed by the biting words of incompetent teachers, and now by the Divine voice humbled into the very dust, makes his lowly confession unto Almighty God, and casts himself upon the Divine forbearance and mercy. The confession of this truly humble, lowly, contrite, and obedient heart embraces
I. A JUST APPREHENSION OF THE DIVINE POWER. The ability of God to work all in allto do whatsoever he pleaseth. “Now I know that thou canst do everything.”
II. A LOWLY RECOGNITION OF THE DIVINE KNOWLEDGE. “No thought can be withholden from thee.” Not only the visible works of the world are before the eye of the Almighty, but the very thoughts and intents of the mind (verse 2).
III. A BECOMING ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PERSONAL IGNORANCE, ERROR, AND PRESUMPTION. (Verse 3.) Before God Job confesses his faults, though in presence of man he maintained his untarnished integrity. But he who may feel himself able to answer to his fellow may fall silent before the infinitely Holy One. Job’s confession reveals
IV. A LOWLY PENITENCE, which finds its expression in fervent prayer (verse 4). Job is willing to be taught of God. He abandons his own self-confident boasting. He is truly humbled. All this is produced by
V. A VIVID PERCEPTION OF THE SUPREME NATURE OF GOD. He is not dependent for this upon the teachings of friends. “Now mine eye seeth thee.” The true vision of God humbles the proudest heart. It is finally perfected
VI. IN SELF–ABHORRENCE AND SINCERE REPENTANCE. This is the end of all When man has reached his lowest estate he may be lifted up. The whole course of Job’s affliction with the whole teaching of the poem brings the sufferer in penitent, contrite humiliation to the footstool of Divine mercy. “In dust and ashes” Job repents, renounces all his claim to self-righteousness, and casts himself upon that God who has declared himself to be just, to care for his creatures, and to wait as with open ear to listen to the voice of their cry. Job is truly broken before God. All his pride is crushed. He is a lowly suppliant. He justifies God in his own self-condemnation.R.G.
Job 42:7-17
The Divine vindication of Job.
The poem ends in undimmed brightness. The great ends of suffering have been answered. Job has been put to the proof and tried, and he has been found faithful. God has permitted all the joy and light of his life to be wiped out. His faithful servant of whom it was said, “There is none like him in the earth,” has been subjected to the severest tests; yet, according to the Divine assertion, he has spoken of God “the thing that is right.” Now he who had appeared to be Job’s enemy appears as his true Vindicator, and bears his witness and high testimony to Job’s fidelity. The Divine vindication of Job embraces
I. AN ASSERTION OF THE ERROR OF HIS ENEMIES. (Verse 7.) They had not spoken of God the thing that was right, and their unjust accusations of Job are found to have had no foundation in truth.
II. A TESTIMONY TO JOB‘S RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Verses 7, 8.) As the heart is so the lips speak; and Job had spoken that which was right. To this Jehovah bears witness. But a higher testimony is forthcoming
III. IN THE DECLARATION OF THE ACCEPTABILITY OF HIS PRIESTLY SERVICE. “Him will I accept.” Even the self-assured teachers who could find so many faults with Job are now directed to bring their offering to him that he may intercede for them. It was the utmost humiliation of them (verse 9) and the utmost elevation of him. “The Lord also accepted Job.”
IV. A further vindication is given IN THE SPECIAL MARKS OF THE DIVINE FAVOUR SHOWN TO JOB.
1. His affliction was removed. “His captivity was turned.”
2. He was enriched with abundant possessions. “The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before” (verse 12).
3. His friendships were restored (verse 11).
4. He was enriched by the tokens of sympathy and good will. “Every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an ear-ring of gold.”
5. His family joys were restored to him (verses 13-16).
6. His life was prolonged in honour and happiness (verses 16, 17). “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.”R.G.
Job 42:17
The gathered lessons.
This remarkable book we close with the persuasion that whilst its separate statements are full of teaching, the whole idea is to be summed up in a few plain and obvious lessons; such as the following:
I. THE GOOD MAN MAY RECEIVE TOKENS OF THE DIVINE BLESSING IN THE FORM OF HEALTH, HONOUR, AND FAMILY JOY.
II. THE GOOD MAN, THOUGH MAINTAINING HIS INTEGRITY, MAY LOSE HIS POSSESSIONS, HIS HEALTH, AND HIS FAMILY JOY THROUGH THE TESTINGS AND TEMPTATIONS OF SATAN.
III. THAT THE HONOR OF EVEN A GOOD MAN MAY BE TEMPORARILY OVERSHADOWED BY UNTOWARD CIRCUMSTANCES.
IV. THAT THE LOSS OF ALL THINGS, AND THE ENDURANCE OF SUFFERINGS BY THE FAITHFUL, ARE NOT ALWAYS TO BE INTERPRETED INTO TOKENS OF THE DIVINE DISPLEASURE.
V. THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR THE GOOD TO MAINTAIN THEIR INTEGRITY UNIMPAIRED AMIDST GREAT LOSS, PAIN, AND SORROW.
VI. THAT TO HIM WHO MAINTAINS HIS INTEGRITY AND RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE TIME OF CALAMITY GOD WILL GIVE A FINAL TESTIMONY OF APPROVAL.
VII. THAT THE END OF AFFLICTION AND SORROW IS THE PURIFICATION OF THE CHARACTER, AND THE GLORY OF GOD.
VIII. THAT THE VINDICATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE GOOD IS IN THE HANDS OF THE LORD.
So the Book of Job harmonizes with the general teaching of the entire Word of God. Its many beautiful, simple truths scattered in such profusion are as so many separate flowers; but the whole presents the appearance of a well-watered garden. The book has its place of high importance in that book which is for the education of the world. It has served its purpose as a medium for the revelation of important truths, and it has been made a means of blessing to thousands of afflicted ones who have “heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; how that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful” (Jas 5:11).R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Job 42:1, Job 42:2
The confession of God’s supremacy.
At last the end has come to the discipline of Job. He is brought to more than resignationto a clear perception of the supremacy of God, and to a humble submission to it.
I. THE FACT OF GOD‘S SUPREMACY. This is what Job has now come to see. God is supreme both in power and in wisdom.
1. In power. There is no resisting his might. He does as he will with the children of men. Even “the king of the children of pride” is one of his creatures, endowed with the might he has given, and subject to the laws he has imposed. All rebellion against God’s will must be futile. It can be no better than dashing one’s self against a granite cliff. But if God is so powerful when opposed to us, he is equally powerful as our Saviour. He uses his might to further what is good as well as to thwart what is evil. If he can cast the mighty down, he can lift. the helpless up.
2. In knowledge. There is thought in all the work of God. But God’s thought also penetrates to all that we do. No excuses or subterfuges can enable us to elude his searching glance. He knows the hidden sin. But he also knows the hidden sorrow; and the misjudged sufferer is quite understood by God. Friends may calumniate, as they calumniated Job; but God knows all.
II. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS FACT. Job is now brought to see that God is supreme in power and knowledge. He may have admitted the truth in words all along. But he did not appreciate it until the end of his long trial. In his very natural but very foolish complaints he was virtually ignoring the great truth which he is now confessing. How, then, has he come at length to perceive it as by the flash of a new revelation?
1. Through suffering. Many lessons are being taught by the strange experience of Job; among them some are for his own benefit. Suffering opens our eyes to our own littleness and to the greatness of God.
2. By means of the works of nature. The great theophany, wherein God called to Job out of the whirlwind, led to a display of some of the grandest works of God, first in the physical forces of the universe, and then in the most wonderful creatures of the animal world. A study of nature should lead us to perceive both the power and the wisdom of God.
III. THE CONFESSION. It is one thing for God to be supreme, and another thing for man to know that he is. Yet a third stage is reached when the truth is-frankly admitted and openly confessed. It is our duty to confess the supremacy of God.
1. For the glory of God. We rob him of his own when we ignore his great power and wisdom. Worship, which acknowledges the greatness of God, and adores him, not only for might and knowledge, but also for righteousness and love, is a right and fitting exercise for all spiritual beings.
2. For our own guidance and assurance. The confession will help us to obey God. It will also aid us in the attempt to bear the strange distresses of life. When the confession advances beyond what Job saw, surely submission should be more perfect. If we are to be patient when we see that God is almighty and all-wise, we should be confident when we go on to see that he is just and merciful.W.F.A.
Job 42:5
The soul’s experience of God.
This is a grand experience for Job to attain to. It is worth all the agony and mystery of his bitter affliction. Suddenly the black clouds break open and the glorious vision of God appears beyond them. Job now contrasts his new, direct seeing of God with his former hearsay knowledge.
I. A HEARSAY KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. This is what Job possessed in the old days. Not that he was without any religious experience in those prosperous times. But the shallowness of it in comparison with what he has now attained makes it look of little worth. Most of us begin in this way. We hear of God “by the hearing of the ear.” This is especially true in a Christian country. Here we seem to breathe a Christian atmosphere, and Christian ideas float in upon us unsought. But the faint perception of God that is acquired in this way cannot be of very great value to us. Historical facts can only be known by testimony, and the facts of the gospel must reach us through “the hearing of the ear.” But we have got a very little way when we have only come to understand and believe in the historical character of those facts. We are still only among the antiquarian relics at a museum. There is no life in such a knowledge, and it has little influence over us.
II. A PERSONAL VISION OF GOD. “Now mine eye seeth thee.” Job had longed for a revelation of God; at length he has received one. But this was not in a vision like those of Jacob at Bethel or Moses at Horeb. It was not after the manner of the startling apparition that Eliphaz describes with so much pomp and self-importance (Job 4:12-21). It was the calm inward vision of spiritual experience, which is indeed an experience of God.
1. This has been brought about through trouble. In his great distress Job has been continually seeking God. His grief has strengthened his hold upon the unseen world by making him feel that world to be most real.
2. God has spoken and manifested himself, Religion is not a one-sided effort of man to reach after God. God descends to man, and the communion of God’s Spirit with man’s spirit is the deepest fact in religious experience.
3. This interior vision of God is what all our souls need. We have to go beyond the hearing of sermons to our own personal experience of God. Then we begin to understand him; then he becomes real to us; then we can say with Tsuler, “I am more certain of the being of God than I am of my own existence.”
III. THE EFFECT OF THE NEW EXPERIENCE.
1. It leads to self-humiliation It is vain any longer to boast of our own rights and to make the most of ourselves. We cannot think of ourselves but with shame and. confusion of face in the light of the new vision of God. When once he manifests himself to us, he is everything.
2. It awakens repentance. In the light of God we not only see our littleness, we perceive our sire This vision had done for Job what all the harangues of his three friends had failed to effect. They had charged him falsely, and his pride had been hardened by their unjust accusations. God had not charged him at all, but the very vision of the Divine at once revealed his mistaken position to Job. He saw that he had been wrong in arraigning the justice of God. So it will ever be. We never know ourselves till we see ourselves in the light of God.W.F.A.
Job 42:7-9
The accusers accused.
Job is first dealt with; when he has Been brought to a right state of mind, God turns to the three friends. They have been permitted to play their Part without any interference on the part of God, and perhaps they have regarded his silence as a mark of acquiescence. Now their time has come.
I. THEY WHO ACCUSE OTHERS LAY THEMSELVES OUT TO BE ACCUSED. Even when they act innocently this is the case. The censor should be above reproach. His action shows that he is awake to moral considerations, that he is not unable to perceive them, that he sets a high value on them. Then he should apply them to himself. “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things” (Rom 2:1). Further, the habit of censoriousness provokes accusations. It shows an unkind and a proud spirit. There is not the motive of compassion to lead us to pass lightly over his faults in the case of a censorious person, which influences us when we have to do with one of a modest and kindly disposition (Mat 7:1-7).
II. GOD IS ANGRY WITH THOSE WHO ADVOCATE HIS CAUSE UNRIGHTEOUSLY. This was the great fault of the three friends. They represented themselves as God’s champions, and professed to speak for God when they arraigned Job. Yet they spoke what was not right. God cannot hut be angry when he is thus misrepresented. He does not seek the low-toned homage of the courtier who cares only to propitiate his Master, regardless of right and truth. Some of the people who think themselves God’s best friends will have a great deal to answer for when their just and righteous Lord calls them to account. No falsehood can please God, and least of all can one please him that professes to be uttered for his benefit. This is not a case in which the end justifies the means. It is most grievous in the sight of God, because it dishonours his Name. We cannot depend on unjust actions By representing them as beneficial to the cause of religion. A false theology is not redeemed by the pretext that it glorifies God.
III. THE TRUE REVENGE IS TO “HEAP COALS OF FIRE” ON MEN BY DEEDS OF KINDNESS. Job is fully and gloriously avenged. Not only is his innocence of the gross charges brought against him by his friends made clear, not only are they condemned by God, but Job is called upon to intercede for their pardon. Thus in the first place they are thoroughly humiliated, as Haman was when he was condemned to lead the horse of Mordecai Est 6:9, Est 6:10). But Job is far too magnanimous to triumph over their defeat, Even when he is interceding for them, we may be sure that his action betrays no pride. For has he not been repenting himself in dust and ashes (verse 6)? Assuredly Job’s intercession was generous and heartfelt. He could afford to forgive when he had himself been graciously accepted by God. The best vengeance we can have on those who ill-treat us is to pray for them, not in hypocritical self-righteousness, but in true-hearted, unaffected kindness. This is Christ’s method. He subdues his enemies by dying for them.W.F.A.
Job 42:10
The captivity turned.
I. THE REVERSAL.
1. A true reversal. Job’s troubles have come to an end. That was a long avenue of fire which he was made to pass through; but the terminus was reached at last. Man may be “born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7); but he is not born to everlasting trouble. St. Paul writes of “our light affliction, which is but for a moment” (2Co 4:17). Present distress is not a presage of future evil. The very blackness of the clouds that gather about our heads in the dark hour prevents us from seeing the distant prospect where sunshine awaits those who are faithful in trial. There is room for hope, even if we see no light, for though trouble may be lengthy, love outlasts it; “the mercy of the Lord endureth for ever.”
2. A Divine reversal. Satan inflicted the blows, though with the permission of God. It is God himself who brings back prosperity. Through whatever channels and instruments evil may come upon us, good comes from the hand of God. Satan simply disappears from the drama. His bold assertions are so absolutely refuted, and he is so completely discomfited, that he passes into oblivion. In the day of the Lord, God’s action is everything.
II. ITS OCCASION. Why did the reversal come when it did? Why not earlier? Why not later? The note of time is significant. God reversed the fortune of Job “when he prayed for his friends.”
1. In humility. Job was first brought very low. His fidelity had been severely tested, and it had stood the strain. Job did not “curse God and die.” Satan’s charge was abundantly refuted. Job was not serving God only for the profits accruing from religion. Disinterested devotion was proved to be possible. Yet Job was not faultless. At least there were advantages to be gained by discipline. It would have been cruel to have used him as an unconscious example for the settlement of a question with which he had no concern, like the victim of vivisection. This was not the case. Elihu showed how God trained and educated his children in the school of affliction. Job had been to that school, and there he had learnt humility and a true appreciation of the greatness of God, whom man cannot judge.
2. In kindness. Job bears no grudge against his three friends. He intercedes for them in genuine concern for their condition under the wrath of God. When he shows a forgiving spirit God is most merciful to him. This is not the formal return of payment; but it is a gracious reward, and it is a favour shown to one who is fit to accept it. For we are never so fit to receive good fortune as when we are chiefly occupied in kindly concern for others. Selfish prayers do not bring a blessing. We are most blessed when we forget ourselves in praying for others.
III. ITS EFFECTS. Job’s fortune is doubled. God never blesses imperfectly. He does not simply mend and patch up the broken life. He heals and renews and blesses with superabundant kindness. Job’s fortune was but external. This was according to the ideas of primitive time& Christ has led us to look for higher blessings. The Christian Job may never recover his property or his health; and yet in his afflictions he may receive his greatest heritage of blessing from Heaven. But whatever be the form of God’s blessing, it is great and wonderful. The Christian has more than a Paradise regained. The second Adam brings a kingdom of heaven that is more precious than the lost Eden. The soul that has been tried by fire has a richer inheritance in God than it ever had in the old days of peace. The discipline of sorrow is the key to wonderful treasures of heavenly joy.W.F.A.
Job 42:11-17
The return of prosperity.
Job is now restored to the favour of God. The result is earthly prosperity. With our Christian light we know that this does not always follow, nor is it the best blessing. But as the portrait of Job is painted in the colours of his day, we must accept the lessons which it contains in sympathy with his age and circumstances. Let us, then, look at the ingredients of the new prosperity.
I. A REVIVAL OF OLD FRIENDSHIPS. We are horrified to have it brought distinctly before us on the last page of the book that Job had had brothers and sisters as well as other acquaintances during the whole time of his affliction; and yet they had discreetly retired from the unpleasant neighbourhood of the afflicted man. Now they reappear with his prosperity. This common experience of life is often commented on with some bitterness. But Job shows no bitterness. His grand soul forgets the previous unkindness In his own humility he ignores the faults of his brethren. With princely magnanimity he accepts their presents when he does not need them, though they had not thought fit to offer them him in the time of his dire necessity. This is the Christ-spirit. There is no true happiness in selfish isolation. Even though our acquaintances may not deserve much attention, it is a miserably selfish thing to throw them off. Generosity is a mark of genuine health of soul. The Christian must learn to be brotherly and to cultivate social sympathies.
II. A RECOVERY OF GREAT POSSESSIONS. Job is now richer than ever, and he is now more than ever fitted to hold wealth. He will receive it back with double gratitude. He will recognize more clearly that it all comes from the hand of God. Having himself suffered from hardships and troubles, he will be the better able to succour the afflicted. Therefore he can well be trusted with great wealth. It is not every good man to whom wealth would be a blessing, or who would make a good use of it. But when God gives temporal prosperity to one of his true servants, this should be accepted not only as a token of his kindness, but also as a trust. The talents are increased; so is the responsibility.
III. THE GIFT OF A NEW FAMILY. Property is a poor recompense to offer to the bereaved and desolate man. A true father values his children above all flocks and herds. Job is to be restored in all respects. And yet we cannot but feel that to have more children, but other ones, could not make up for the loss of the first family. Job’s fatherly heart could not have been thus easily satisfied. All we can say is that the picture of the return of prosperity is made as complete as it could be. But we have a brighter prospect through Christ in again meeting the blessed dead, who are not lost, but who have only gone on before us.
IV. THE ENJOYMENT OF FULNESS OF LIFE. Job lives to a green old age. In his misery he had prayed for death; in his renewed prosperity life is a boon. The value of life depends on the use that is made of it. In Christ the poorest earthly life is rich; and the most unfortunate life is well worth living when it is given to God. But the Old Testament blessedness of long life is enlarged in the New Testament, and appears as the gift of eternal lifethe greatest blessing enjoyed by God’s redeemed children.W.F.A.
CHAP. XLII.
Job humbleth himself before God, who, preferring Job’s cause, accepteth him, and commands his friends to make due submission. He blesses the latter end of Job, doubling all his fortunes.
Before Christ 1645.
Second Discourse of Jehovah (together with Jobs answer):
To doubt Gods justice, which is most closely allied to His wonderful omnipotence, is a grievous wrong, which must be atoned for by sincere penitence:
Job 40:6 to Job 42:6
1. Sharp rebuke of Jobs presumption, which has been carried to the point of doubting Gods justice:
Job 40:6-14
Job 40:6.Then answered the Lord unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said:
7Gird up thy loins now like a man:
I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
8Wilt thou also disannul my judgment?
wilt thou condemn me that thou mayest be righteous?
9Hast thou an arm like God?
or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?
10Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency,
and array thyself with glory and beauty.
11Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath;
and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
12Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low;
and tread down the wicked in their place.
13Hide them in the dust together:
and bind their faces in secret.
14Then will I also confess unto thee
that thine own right hand can save thee.
2. Humiliating exhibition of the weakness of Job in contrast with certain creatures of earth, not to say with God; shown
a. by a description of the behemoth (hippopotamus):
Job 40:15-24
15Behold now behemoth,
which I made with thee; 16Lo now, his strength is in his loins,
and his force is in the navel of his belly.
17He moveth his tail like a cedar:
the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
18His bones are as strong pieces of brass;
his bones are like bars of iron.
19He is the chief of the ways of God:
He that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.
20Surely the mountains bring him forth food,
where all the beasts of the field play.
21He lieth under the shady trees,
in the covert of the reed, and fens.
22The shady trees cover him with their shadow;
the willows of the brook compass him about.
23Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not:
he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan in his mouth.
24He taketh it with his eyes:
his nose pierceth through snares.
b. by a description of the leviathan (crocodile): Job 40:2541:26 [E. V. Job 41:1-34]
E.V. [Heb.] 1[25] Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?
or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
2[26] Canst thou put a hook into his nose?
or bore his jaw through with a thorn?
3[27] Will he make many supplications unto thee?
will he speak soft words unto thee?
4[28] Will he make a covenant with thee?
wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
5[29] Wilt thou play with him as with a bird?
or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
6[30] Shall the companions make a banquet of him?
shall they part him among the merchants?
7[31] Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons?
or his head with fish spears?
8[32] Lay thine hand upon him,
remember the battle, do no more.
[41]
9[1] Behold the hope of him is in vain:
shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
10[2] None is so fierce that dare stir him up;
who then is able to stand before Me?
11[3] Who hath prevented me that I should repay him?
whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.
12[4] I will not conceal his parts,
nor his power, nor his comely proportion.
13[5] Who can discover the face of his garment?
or who can come to him with his double bridle?
14[6] Who can open the doors of his face?
his teeth are terrible round about.
15[7] His scales are his pride,
shut up together as with a close seal.
16[8] One is so near to another,
that no air can come between them.
17[9] They are joined one to another,
they stick together that they cannot be sundered.
18[10] By his neesings a light doth shine,
and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
19[11] Out of his mouth go burning lamps,
and sparks of fire leap out.
20[12] Out of his nostrils goeth smoke,
as out of a seething pot, or cauldron.
21[13] His breath kindleth coals,
and a flame goeth out of his mouth.
22[14] In his neck remaineth strength,
and sorrow is turned into joy before him.
23[15] The flakes of his flesh are joined together:
they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.
24[16] His heart is as firm as a stone;
yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
25[17] When he raiseth up himself the mighty are afraid:
by reason of breakings they purify themselves.
26[18] The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold:
the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.
27[19] He esteemeth iron as straw,
and brass as rotten wood.
28[20] The arrow cannot make him flee;
slingstones are turned with him into stubble.
29[21] Darts are counted as stubble;
he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.
30[22] Sharp stones are under him:
he spreadeth sharp-pointed things upon the mire.
31[23] He maketh the deep to boil like a pot;
he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.
32[24] He maketh a path to shine after him;
one would think the deep to be hoary.
33[25] Upon earth there is not his like,
who is made without fear.
34[26 He beholdeth all high things:
he is a king over all the children of pride.
3. Jobs answer: Humble confession of the infinitude of the divine power, and penitent acknowledgment of his guilt and folly:
Job 42:1-6
1Then Job answered the Lord and said:
2I know that Thou canst do everything,
and that no thought can be withholden from Thee.
3Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge?
therefore have I uttered that I understood not; 4Hear, I beseech Thee, and I will speak:
I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me.
5I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
but now mine eye seeth Thee:
6Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent
in dust and ashes.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. That the omnipotent and infinitely wise activity of the Creator in nature is at the same time just, was in the first discourse of God affirmed for the most part only indirectly, or implicite. Only once, in Job 38:13-15, was this aspect of His character expressly presented, and then only incidentally. The second discourse of Jehovah is intended to supply what is still lacking as to this point, to constrain Job fully to recognize the justice of God in all that He does, and in this way to vanquish the last remainder of pride and presumption in his heart. It accomplishes this end by a twofold method of treatment. First by the direct method of severely censuring the doubt which Job had uttered as to the divine justice, and by vindicating Gods sole and exclusive claim to the power requisite for exercising sovereignty over the universe (first, and shorter part: Job 40:6-14). Next by the indirect method of attacking his pride through a lengthened description of two proud monster-beasts, mighty creations of Gods hand, which after all the amazing wonder which their gigantic power calls forth, are nevertheless only instruments in the hand of the Almighty, and must submit, if not to the will of man, at least to the will of God, who crushes all tyrannous pride (second, and longer part: Job 40:15 to Job 41:26 [ Job 41:34]). This second part, which is again divided into two unequal halves-the shorter describing the behemoth- Job 40:15-24, the longer the leviathan, Job 40:25-41:26. [E. V., Job 41:1-34], falls back on the descriptive and interrogative tone of the first discourse of God; in contrast with which however it is characterized by an allegorizing tendency. It directly prepares the way for Jobs second and last answer, in which he renews the humble submission which he had previously made, and strengthens it by a penitent confession of his own sinfulness.-The strophic arrangement of this second discourse of Jehovah is comprehensively simple and grand, corresponding to the contents, which are thoroughly descriptive, with a massive execution. It embraces in all five Long Strophes, of 812 verses each, not less than three of which are devoted to the description of the leviathan in Job 40:2541:26, [E. V., Job 41.] These five Long Strophes include indeed shorter subordinate divisions, but not, strictly speaking, regularly constructed strophes.-Against the modern objections to the authenticity of the episode referring to the behemoth and leviathan, see above in the Introd. 9, II. (also the notice taken of the peculiar theory of Merx in the Preface).
2. First Division (Long Strophe): Severe censure of Jobs presumptuous doubt respecting the justice of the divine course of action: Job 40:6-14.
Job 40:6. Then answered Jehovah Job out of the storm, etc.-This intentional repetition of Job 38:1 is to show that God continues to present Himself to Job as one who, if not exactly burning with wrath towards him, would have him feel His mighty superiority. That here also, instead of , the original text was , is evident from the Masorah itself. The absence of the art. , if it originally belonged here, is by no means to be explained, with Ramban, as designed to indicate that the storm was no longer as violent as before.
Job 40:7 precisely as in Job 38:3.
Job 40:8. Wilt thou altogether annul my right?– stands in a climactic relation to Jobs contending () reproved in Job 40:2. To break () Gods right would be the same as to abolish, annul the same (comp. Job 15:4). Job was on the point of becoming guilty of this wickedness, in that he sought to substitute what he assumed to be right, his idea of righteousness, for that of God, so that he might be accounted righteous, and God unjust, (see the second member).
Job 40:9. Or hast thou an arm like God?– interrogative, as in Job 8:3; Job 21:4; Job 34:17. The arm of God as a symbol of His power, comp. Job 22:8; so also the thunder-voice spoken of in the second member; comp. Job 37:2 seq.-, lit., wilt, canst thou thunder? dost thou pledge thyself to thunder?
Job 40:10. Then put on majesty and grandeur, as an ornament; clothe, deck thyself with these attributes of divine greatness and sovereignty (comp. Psa 104:1 seq.; Job 21:6 [5]. The challenge is intended ironically, since it demands of Job that which is in itself impossible; in like manner all that follows down to Job 40:13 (comp. Job 38:21).
Job 40:11. Let the outbreakings of thy wrath pour themselves forth.-, effundere, to pour forth, to cause to gush forth, as in Job 37:11; Pro 5:16. , lit., over-steppings, are here the overflowings, or outbreakings of wrath; comp. Job 21:30; and for the thought, particularly in the second member, comp. Isa 2:12 seq. The fact that Jehovah ironically summons Job to display such manifestations of holy wrath and of stern retributive justice against sinners, conveys an indirect, but sufficiently clear and emphatic assurance of the truth that He Himself, Jehovah, governs the world thus rigidly and justly; comp. above, Job 38:13 seq.
Job 40:12. Look on all that is proud, and bring it low.-This almost verbal repetition of Job 40:11 b is intended to emphasize the fact that at the moment when God casts His angry glance upon the wicked, the latter is cast down; comp. Psa 34:17 [16].-And overturn the wicked in their place, , . ., to throw down, or perhaps to tread down (related to ). In the latter case the passage might be compared with Rom 16:20.-On in their place [= on the spot], comp. Job 36:20.
Job 40:13. Hide them in the dust altogether;i.e., in the dust of the grave (hardly in holes of the earth, or of rooks, as though Isa 2:10 were a parallel passage).-Shut up fast (lit., bind, fetter) their faces in secret, i.e., in the interior of the earth, in the darkness of the realm of the dead; here substantially = Comp. the passage out of the Book of Enoch Job 10:5, cited by Dillmann: , .
Job 40:14. Then will I too praise thee, not only wilt thou praise thyself (comp. Job 40:8)-That thy right hand brings thee succor;i.e., that thou dost actually possess the power (the arm, Job 40:9) to put thy ideas of justice into execution with vigor; comp. the similar expressions in Psa 44:4 [3]; Isa 59:18; Isa 63:5. This conclusion of the rebuke which Jehovah administers directly to Jobs insolent presumption, as though he only knew what is just, prepares at once the transition to the description which follows of the colossal animals which are introduced as eloquent examples of Gods infinite creative power, which for the very reason of its being such is of necessity united to the highest justice.
3. Second Division: The descriptions of animals, given for the purpose of humiliating Job by showing his weakness, and the absolute groundlessness of his presumptuous pride.
a. The description of the behemoth: Verses 1524.
Job 40:15. Behold now the behemoth.-Even Dillm., one of the most zealous opponents of the genuineness of the whole section, is obliged to admit that the connection with what precedes by means of is an easy one. Moreover it is by no means one that is purely external, for the behemoth is brought to Jobs attention for the very purpose of illustrating the proposition that no creature of Gods, however mighty, can succeed against Him, can with his right hand obtain for himself help against Him (see Job 40:14 b). This is clearly enough indicated by the second member: which I have made with thee;i.e. as well as thee ( as though it were comparative, as in Job 9:26; comp. Job 37:18). Job is bid to contemplate his fellow-creature, the behemoth, far huger and stronger than himself, that he may learn how insignificant and weak are all created beings in contrast with God, and in particular how little presumptuous and proud confidence in external things can avail against Him (comp. the passage of Horace; Vis consil expert mole ruit sua, etc.). The name (which the ancient versions either misinterpreted as a plural [so the LXX.: ], or left untranslated, as a proper name [Vulg., etc.]), in itself denotes, in accordance with the analogy of other plural formations with an intensive signification: the great beast, the colossus of cattle, the monster animal. The word is, however, a Hebraized form of the Egyptian p–ehe–mau, the water-ox (p=the, ehe=ox, mau or mou=water), and like this Egypt, word (besides which indeed the hieroglyphic apet is more frequently to be met with), and the Ital. bomarino, it signifies the Nile-horse, or hippopotamus. For it is to this animal that the whole description which follows refers, as is most distinctly and unmistakably shown by the association with another monster of the Nile, the crocodile: not to the elephant, of which it is understood by Thom. Aquinas, Oecolampadius, the Zrich Bib., Drusius, Pfeifer, Le Clerc, Cocceius, Schultens, J. D. Michaelis [Scott, Henry. Good refers the description to some extinct pachyderm of the mammoth or mastodon species. Lee, following the LXX., understands it of the cattle, first collectively, and then distributively]. The correct view was taken by Bochart (Hieroz. iii. 705 seq.), and after him has been adopted by the great majority of moderns. With the following vivid description of this animals way of living and form, beginning with the mention of his eating grass (supporting himself on tender plants, the reeds of the Nile, roots, etc.), may be compared Herod, ii. 6971; Pliny viii. 25; Aben Batuta, ed. Defrem 4., p. 426; among the moderns, Rppell: Reisen in Nubien, 1829, p. 52 seq.; and in particular Sir Sam. Baker in his travels, as in The Nile and its Tributaries, The Albert Nyanza, etc. (See extracts from these works, with striking illustrations of the hippopotamus in the Globus, Vol. XVII., 1870, Nos. 2224) [Livingstone, Travels and Researches, p. 536].
Job 40:16. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, etc.– as in Job 18:7; Job 18:12. in b, a word found only here (derived from the root , to wind, to twist, which is contained also in , navel, as also in root), cannot signify, the bones, of which mention is first made in Job 40:18 (against Wetzstein in Delitzsch), but the cords, the sinews and muscles, which in the case of the hippopotamus (not, however, of the elephant) are particularly firm and strong just in the region of the belly.
Job 40:17. He bends his tail like a cedar;i.e. like a cedar-bough; the tert. comp. lies in the straightness, firmness and elasticity of the tail of the hippopotamus (which is furthermore short, hairless, very thick at the root, of only a fingers thickness, however, at the end, looking therefore somewhat like the tail of the hog, but not at all like that of the elephant). , instead of being translated he bends (Targ.), may possibly be explained to mean he stiffens, stretches out (LXX., Vulg., Pesh.).-The sinews of his thighs are firmly knit together; or also the veins of his legs (by no means nervi testiculorum ejus, as the Vulg. and Targ. [also E. V.] render it). With , they are wrapped together, they present a thick, twig-like texture, comp. , vine-tendrils [the interweaving of the vine-branches being before the poets eye in his choice of the word. Del.].
Job 40:18. His bones are pipes of brass.- here pipes, tubes, channels, as in Job 41:7; comp. , Job 28:4. , a word peculiar to our book, instead of the form which obtains elsewhere, (comp. further Job 20:24; Job 28:2; Job 41:19). Concerning , staff, pole, bar, probably the Semitic etymological basis of , comp. Delitzsch on the passage. In respect to the similes in both members of the verse, comp. Son 5:15 a.
Job 40:19. He is a firstling of Gods ways;i.e. a master-piece of His creative power (comp. Gen 49:3). can all the more easily dispense with the article here, seeing that it denotes only priority of rank (as in Amo 6:1; Amo 6:6; comp. also in Job 18:13, and often), not of time (as e.g. in Pro 8:22; Num 24:20). In respect to Gods ways in the sense of the displays of His creative activity in creating and governing the universe, comp. Job 26:14. The whole clause refers to the immense size and strength of the hippopotamus, which, at least in length and thickness, if not in height, surpasses even the elephant, and overturns with ease the ships of the Nile, vessel, crew and cargo. In reality therefore there is no exaggeration in the statement; and only an exegetical misapprehension of it, and an idle attempt at allegorizing it (stimulated in the present instance by the resemblance to Pro 8:22) could have influenced the Jewish Commentators, and those of the ancient Church, to find in this designation of the behemoth as a firstling of Gods ways a symbolic representation of Satan (comp. Book of Enoch, 60, 6 seq.; many Rabbis of the Middle Ages; the Pseudo-Melitonian Clavis Scriptur Sacr [in Pitra, Spicileg. Salesm. Vol. II.], Eucherius of Lyons in his Formul maj. et minores [Idem, Vol. III., p. 400 seq.], Gregory the Great, and most of the Church Fathers on the passage; Luther also in his marginal gloss on the passage, Brentius [see below, Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks.-The same view is taken moreover by Wordsworth, who explains: It seems probable that Behemoth represents the Evil One acting in the animal and carnal elements of mans own constitution, and that Leviathan symbolizes the Evil One energizing as his external enemy. Behemoth is the enemy within us; Leviathan is the enemy without us].-It only remains to say, that there is nothing surprising in the fact that here, in a discourse by God, He should speak of Himself in the third person; comp. above Job 39:17; Job 38:41.-He who made him furnished to him his sword, viz. his teeth, his two immense incisors (which according to Rppell in l. c. grow to be twenty-six French inches long), with which as with a sickle (a , Nicander, Theriac. 566; Nonnus, Dionysiac. 26) he mows down the grass and green corn-blades. stands for , He who hath made him, his Creator (the article being used as demonstrative; comp. Gesenius 109 [ 108, 2, a]), and elliptically for , brought near to him, furnished to him. The emendation suggested by Bttcher and Dillmann- instead of : which was created [lit. plur. which were created] so as to attach thereon a sword ( as Jussive)-is unnecessary, as is also Ewalds rendering of in the sense of to blunt, to make harmless.
Job 40:20 gives a reason for Job 40:19 b:For the mountains bring him forth food.-=, produce, fruit, vegetation. The clause is not intended to describe the hippopotamus as an animal that commonly or frequently grazes on the mountains (in point of fact it is only in exceptional instances that he ascends the mountains or high grounds, when the river-banks and the grounds immediately around them have been eaten up). It only intends to say that entire mountains, vast upland tracts, where large herds of other animals abide, must provide for him his food (see b).
Job 40:21 states where the hippopotamus is in the habit of staying: He lies down under the lotus-trees, in the covert of reeds and fens (comp. Job 8:11)-, plur. of , or of (a word which occurs also in the Arabic), are not the lotus-flowers, i.e., the water-lilies (Nympha Lotus) [so Conant], but the lotus-bushes, or trees (Lotus silvestris s. Cyrenaica), a vegetable growth frequently found in the hot and moist lowlands of Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Syria, with thorny branches, and a fruit like the plum. On b comp. the description of the hippopotamus given by Ammianus Marcellinus (XXII. 15): Inter arundines celsas et squalentes nimia densitate hc bellua cubilia ponit.
Job 40:22. Lotus-trees cover him as a shade.– (resolved from , like , Job 20:7, from ) is in apposition to the subject, with which it forms at the same time a paronomasia. Another paronomasia occurs between and in b.
Job 40:23. Behold, the river shows violence; he trembles not; lit., he does not spring up, is not startled. at the beginning of this clause has, as in Job 12:11; Job 23:8, substantially the force of a conditional particle. here without an object: to exercise violence, to act violently, (differing from Job 10:3) a word which strikingly describes a river wildly swelling and raging [sweeping its borders with tyrannous devastation. E. V., following the Vulg. absorbebit fluvium (Targ. he doth violence to the river) gives to a meaning not warranted]. He remains unconcerned (lit. he is confident) when a Jordan rushes (lit. bursts through, pours itself forth, as in Job 38:8) into his mouth. The Jordan, ( without the Art.) is used here in an appellative sense of a river remarkable for its swiftly rushing course, not as a proper name, for hippopotami scarcely lived in the Jordan. There is nothing strange in this mention of the Jordan in order vividly to illustrate the description, the same being a river well known to Job, and also to his friends. It certainly cannot be urged as an argument for the hypothesis that the author of this section is not the same with the author of the remainder of the book (against Ewald and Dillmann). [The reason why the Jordan is the river particularly here used as an illustration is, I suppose, because not unlikely, rising as it does at the foot of the snow-clad Lebanon, it was liable to more sudden and violent swellings than either the Euphrates or the Nile. It is, in fact, more of a mountain torrent than either, and probably in its irruptions it drove away in consternation the lions and other wild beasts, located in the thickets on its banks. Carey. Comp. Jer 12:5 and Jer 41:19].
Job 40:24. Before his eyes do they take him, pierce through his nose with snares.-The position and tone of the words forbid one taking this verse as an ironical challenge: Let one just take him! or as a question: Shall, or does any one take him, etc.? Instead of (i.e., while he himself is looking on, under his very eyes; comp. Pro 1:17), we must at least have read . Moreover instead of the 3d Pers. we should rather have looked for the 2d, if either of the above constructions had been the true one (comp. the questions in Job 40:25 seq.) [Job 41:1 seq.]. The clause accordingly is to be taken, with the ancient versions, and with Stickel, Umbreit, Ewald, Dillmann [Conant] as descriptive of something which actually takes place, and hence as referring to the capture of the river-horse. By the ancients in like manner as by the Nubians of to-day this was accomplished by means of harpoons fastened to a long rope. It is either to this harpoon-rope, or to a switch drawn through the nose after the capture has been effected that the word in b refers. It can hardly mean a common trap (Delitzsch [let one lay a snare which, when it goes into it, shall spring together and pierce it in the nose]).-Why does God close the description of the hippopotamus with a reference to its capture? Evidently because He wishes thereby to emphasize the thought that this animal is wholly and completely in His power, that all its size and strength are of no avail to it, and that when God determines to deliver it into the hands of men, its pride is humbled without fail. Whereas on the other hand the description of the leviathan which follows contains no such reference to its capture, but sets forth throughout only the difficulty, or indeed the impossibility of becoming its master by the use of ordinary strength and cunning; this indicates an advance over what goes before.
4. Continuation, b. First part of the description of the leviathan: Job 41:1-11 [Heb. Job 40:25-41:3]: the untamableness and invincibility of the leviathan.-Dost thou draw out the leviathan with a net? [or as E. V., Gesen., Frst, etc., with a hook]. The name denotes here neither the mythical dragon of heaven, as in Job 3:8 (see on the passage), nor the whale, as in Psa 104:26, but the crocodile, whose structure and mode of life are in the following description depicted with fidelity to the minutest particular (comp. the evidence in detail in Bochart, Hieroz. III., 737 seq.). In and of itself is the generic name of any monster capable of wreathing itself in folds, in like manner as (comp. ) may denote any monster that is long stretched out. But as the latter name is become the prevalent designation of the whale, (see on Job 7:12), so the name leviathan seems to have attached itself from an early period to the crocodile, that particularly huge and terrible amphibious monster of Bible lands, for which animal there was no special name appropriated in the primitive Hebrew, as it was not indigenous to Palestine, or at all events was but rarely found in its waters (traces indeed are not absolutely wanting of its having existed in them at one time: see the remarks of Robinson in respect to the coast-river Nahr ez Zerka, or Maat-Temsh [crocodile-waters], and also in respect to the city Crocodilon, not far from Cesarea, in his Physical Geography, etc., p. 191). The name leviathan does not involve the Hebraizing of an Egyptian name of the crocodile, (analogous to that of pe–ehe–mou in behemoth). By so much the more probable is it that in the interrogative drawest thou (without , see Ew., 324, a), the poet intends an allusion to the well-known Egyptian name of the animal, which in Copt, is temsah, in modern Arab, timsah (Ew., Del., Dillm., etc).-Dost thou with a cord press down his tongue? i.e., when, liks a fish, be has bitten the fishing-hook, dost thou, in pulling the line, cause it to press down the tongue? The question is not (with Schult., Hirzel, Delitzsch, etc.) to be rendered: Canst thou sink a line into his tongue [or his tongue into a line]? a rendering which is indeed verbally admissible, but which yields an idea that is not very intelligible. This member expresses, only with a little more art, the same thought as the first. It is not at all necessary to assume (with Ewald, Dillmann and other opponents of the genuineness of the present section), that the poet represents the capture of the crocodile as absolutely impossible, thus contradicting the fact attested by Herodotus, II., 7, that the ancient Egyptians caught this animal with fishing-hooks. That which the ironical question of God denies is simply the possibility of overcoming this animal, like a harmless fish, with ordinary craft or artifice, not the possibility of ever capturing it.-There is nothing to forbid the assumption that instead of the Egyptian crocodile (or at least along with it) the author had in view a Palestinian species or variety of the same animal, which is no longer extant, and that this Palestinian crocodile, just because it was rarer than the saurian of the Nile, was in fact held to be impossible of capture, (comp. Delitzsch II, p. 366, n. 2). It is, generally speaking, a very precarious position to question the accuracy of our poets statements even in a single point: compare e.g., the perfectly correct mention in this passage of the tongue of the crocodile, with the ridiculous assertion of Herodot. (II. 68), Aristotle, and other ancients, that the crocodile has no tongue.
Job 41:2 [Job 40:26]. Canst thou put a rush-ring into his nose, and bore through his jaw (or, his cheek) with a hook?–i.e.. canst thou deal with him as fishermen deal with the fish captured by them, piercing their mouths with iron hooks in order afterwards to thrust through them rush-cords (), or iron rings (the fishermen of the Nile use the latter to this day, see Bruce, Travels, etc.), and to lay the fish thus tied together in the water?
Job 41:3 [Job 40:27.] Will he make many supplications to thee, etc., i. e., will he speak thee fair, in order to retain his freedom? The question which follows in Job 41:28 enlarges upon this thought, with a somewhat different application. For a servant for ever is here equivalent to for a tamed domestic animal (comp. Job 39:9).
Job 41:5 [Job 40:29]. Wilt thou play with him as with a bird?– differently from Psa 104:26, where it signifies to play in something. By the bird here spoken of is meant neither the golden beetle (which in the language of the Talmud is called bird of the vineyard), nor the grasshopper (comp. Lewysohn, Zool. des Talmud. 364). We are rather to compare with it the sparrow of Catullus: Passer, delici me puell, and, as in that poem, we are to understand by the female slaves; scarcely the little daughters of the one who is addressed (as Dillmann thinks, who takes pains to exhibit here a new reason for suspecting the genuineness of this section).
Job 41:6 [Job 40:30]. Do fishermen-partners trade in him? [do they divide him among the Canaanites?] (different from Isa 44:11) are fishermen as members of a guild, or as partners in a company associated together for the capture of fish; comp. Luk 5:7; Luk 5:10, with as in Job 6:27, to make bargains for anything, to traffic with it; not to feast upon anything, to make a banquet, as the phrase is rendered by the LXX. (), Targum [E. V.], Schult., Rosenmller, etc.; for to banquet (2Ki 6:23) agrees neither with the construction with , nor the mention of the Canaanites, i.e., the Phenician merchants (Isa 23:8; Zec 14:21; Pro 31:24) in the second member. [Gesenius, Conant, etc., less simply take in its more usual sense, to dig, i.e., dig pits, lay snares for. Merx. reads from , and translates: The animal, against which hunters go in troops].
Job 41:7 [Job 40:31]. Not only is the crocodile unsuited to be an article of commerce, but. coated as he is with scales, he is equally unsuited to be the object of an exciting harpoon-hunt. With , pointed darts, comp. the Arab, sauke, which signifies both thorn and spear.
Job 41:8 [Job 40:32]. Remember the battle, thou wilt not do it again–i. e., shouldst thou presume to fight with him (, not Infinit. dependent on , but Imperat. consecut., comp. Ew., 347, b), thou wilt not repeat the experiment ( pausal form for , see Ew., 224, b). Needless violence is done to this verse also, if (as by Dillmann) the attempt be made to deduce from it the idea of the absolute impossibility of capturing and conquering the crocodile. Let it be borne in mind that the words are addressed to a single individual.
Job 41:9 [Job 41:1], Behold, every hope is disappointed; lit. behold, his hope is disappointed, that viz. of the man who should enter into a contest with the monster (the use of the suffix accordingly being similar to that of Job 37:12). Even at the sight of him one is cast down; lit. as a question: is one cast down? etc.; i.e., is it. not the fact that the mere sight of him is enough to cast one down with terror? On , which is not plur.. but sing, comp. Gesenius, 93 [ 91], 9, Rem.
Job 41:10 [Job 41:2], None so fool-hardy that he would stir him up.- is not, without further qualification, (Hirz.), but the lacking subj. is to be supplied out of the next member, and the whole clause is exclamatory: not fierce (fool-hardy, rash) enough, that he should rouse him up! Respecting , (comp. Job 30:21. And who will take his stand before Me?–i.e., appear against Me as Mine adversary; here in another sense than in Job 1:6; Job 2:1. According to some MSS. and the Targ. the text should be , referring to the crocodile: and who will stand before him? But this would destroy the characteristic fundamental thought of the verse, which consists in a conclusio a min. ad majus: If no one ventures to stir up that creature which I have made, how much less will any one dare to contend with Me, the Almighty Creator?
Job 41:11 [3]. Who gave to me first of all that I must requite it?–i. e., who would dare to appear against me as my accuser or my enemy, on the ground that he has perchance given me something, and is thus become my creditor? (Rom 11:35). As to the second half of the verse which gives the reason for the question, in which God claims all created beings as His property, comp. Psa 50:10 seq.; on see Job 28:24; on the neuter see Job 13:16; Job 15:9.-The general thoughts advanced in Job 41:2 b, and Job 41:3 are a suitable close to what is said of the invincibility of the crocodile, as a mighty illustration of Gods creative power, so that we are required neither to transpose the passage (as e.g., by placing it after Job 40:14), nor to deem it out of place here, between the description of the leviathans untamableness, and that of his bodily structure (against Dillmann).
5. Conclusion: c. Second part of the description of the leviathan: The bodily structure and mode of life characteristic of the leviathan, the king of all proud beasts: Job 41:12-34 [420].
Job 41:12 [4]. I will not keep silent as to his members (, see Job 18:13). So according to the Kthibh ; the Kri would give the idea in the form of a question: as to him should I pass his limbs in silence? which as being a little more difficult is to be preferred. In no case does the clause deserve to be called a prosaic and precise announcement of the subject to be treated of, such as would seem to be not very suitable in a discourse delivered by God (Dillmann): the idea of the ancients touching what might be suitable and in taste, and what might not be so, were quite different from our modern notions. Nor as to the fame of his powers (so Vaihinger strikingly); lit. nor of the word of his powers i.e., of their kind and arrangement (Ewald), how the case stands with respect to them; comp. in Deu 15:2; Deu 19:4. In the final clause the word is in any case equivalent to disposition, structure (Aq.: ), and seems to be a secondary form of = come-liness, gracefulness, with which the tenor of this description which follows well agrees, setting forth as it does not only that which is fearful, but also that which is beautiful and elegant in the structure of the leviathan. For this reason it is unnecessary either with Ewald to identify the word with , measure (dry measure), or with Dillmann to amend the text (to ? or ?)
Job 41:13-17 [59]: The upper and foreside [face] of the crocodile.-Who has uncovered the face of his garment?i.e., no one can uncover, lift up the upper side ( as in Isa 25:7) of his scaly coat of mail; this lies on his back with such tenacity that it cannot be removed, nor broken. [Others, Ewald, Schlott., etc., explain of the anterior part of his garment, or armor, that which pertains to the head or face; but this would be less natural, and would involve tautology-the. opening of the jaws being referred to again in the next ver.].-Into his doable jaws who enters in?-Lit., into the double of his jaws; here accordingly in a different sense from Job 30:11 [where it means bridle, the meaning which E. V. gives to it here]. The fact mentioned by Herod. II., 68, and confirmed by modern observations, to wit, that a little bird, the plover, (Charadrius gyptius, in Herod, ) enters the open jaw of the crocodile, in order to look for insects there, need not be deemed unknown to our author; only we are not to insist on his having such an incident in mind in the passage before us.
Job 41:14 [6]. The doors of his face-who has opened them?i.e., his jaws, his mouth, the aperture of which reaches back of the eyes and ears (comp. the well-known picture, taken from the Description de lEgypte, and introduced into several pictorial works on zoology, e.g., into Klotz and Glasers Leben und Eigenthmlichkeiten der mittleren und niederen Thierwelt, Leipzig, 1869, p. 15, representing the mouth of a crocodile wide open, with a Charadrius in it).-Round about his teeth is terror; comp. Job 39:20. The crocodile has thirty-six long, pointed teeth in the upper jaw, and thirty in the lower, the appearance of which is all the more terrible that they are not covered by the lips.
Job 41:15 [7]. A pride are the furrows of the shields (comp. Job 40:18), referring to the arched bony shields, of which the animal has seventeen rows, all equally large and square in form. [According to this interpretation means first channels, and then the shields bounded by those channels. Others (Gesenius, Conant, etc.) take it as an adj. = robusta (robora) scutorum].-Fastened together like a closely, fitting seal; or, construing not as appositional, but as instrumental accusative (according to Ewald, 297, b): fastened together as with a closely-fitting seal [so E. V.]. How this is to be understood is shown by the two verses which follow; in which comp., as to the phrase, , Gesen., 124, [ 122], Rem. 4; as to the verbs and Job 38:30; Job 38:38.
Job 41:18-21 [1013]. The sneezing and breathing of the crocodile.-His sneezing flashes forth light (, abbreviated from , Hiph. of , comp. Job 31:26); i.e., when the crocodile turned toward the sun with open jaws is excited to sneezing (which in such a posture happens very easily, see Bochart III., 753 seq.), the water and slime gushing from his mouth glisten brilliantly in the sunbeams. As Delitz. says truly: This delicate observation of nature is here compressed into three words; in this concentration of whole, grand thoughts and pictures, we recognize the older poet.-And his eyes are as eyelids of the dawn (Job 3:9); i.e., when with their red glow they glimmer in the water, before the animals head becomes visible above the surface of the water. This cat-like sparkle of the crocodiles eyes was observed from an early period, and is the reason why in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics two crocodiles eyes became the hieroglyph for the dawn, according to the express statement of Horus, Hierogl. I., Job 68: .
Job 41:19 [11]. Out of his mouth proceed torches;i.e., not literal torches, but streams of water shining like torches, when the animal emerging out of the water breathes violently.-Out of his nostrils goes forth smoke, like a seething pot with reeds [lit., like a kettle blown and reeds]; i.e., like a heated kettle standing over a crackling and strongly smoking fire of reeds (Ewald, Bttcher, Delitzsch, Dillm.) [Conant]. The common rendering is: as a seething pot and caldron; but is scarcely to be taken to signify something else here than above in Job 40:26 [Job 41:2]; caldron would be , Arab, iggane. With the description before us, as well as with the still more strongly hyperbolical description in the verse which follows, comp. the description of Bochart, l. c.: Turn spiritus diu pressus sic effervescit et erumpit tam violenter, ut flammas ore et naribus videatur evomere. Also what the traveler Bartram (in Rosenmllers Alterth., p. 250) relates of an alligator in Carolina, that a thick smoke streamed out of its distended nostrils, with a noise which made the earth shake. [Schlottmann calls attention to the close parallelism between Job 41:18-19 and Job 41:20-21].
Job 41:22 [14]. On his neck dwells (lit., passes the night, lodges, as in Job 17:2) strength, and despair danceth hence before him. , leaps, springs up suddenly. Both members of the verse refer to the crocodile suddenly emerging out of the water, and terrifying men or beasts, and particularly to the violent movements of its neck or head, which are sufficient to overturn ships, etc. [The trepidation, the confused running to and fro of one who is in extreme anguish (comp. Job 41:17) is compared to the dancing of one who is crazed, and this is attributed to the as the personification of the anguish. Schlott.-E. V., less suitably: and sorrow is turned into joy before him].
Job 41:23 [15] seq., describe the lower and hinder parts of the animal.-The flanks [, the flabby pendulous parts of the body, especially the belly] of his flesh are closely joined together, are fixed fast upon him, are not moved; i.e., they do not shake with the motions of the body, being thickly lined with strong scales, smaller however than those on the back. , pass. partic. of , differing accordingly from Job 28:2; Job 29:6.
Job 41:24 [16]. His heart is firmly cast as a stone, firmly cast as a nether millstone, [not as E. V., as a piece of the nether millstone, for , as that which is split off, or produced by cleavage, refers to the whole stone; hence elsewhere (Jdg 9:53; 2Sa 24:6), for the upper millstone]. It was necessary that the nether millstone should be particularly hard, because it has to bear the weight and friction of the upper stone; comp. the Biblical Archologies and Dictionaries, under the word Mill. Besides the physical hardness of the crocodiles heart (in respect to which comp. Arist. De partib. animal. 3, 4), the poet here has in view the firmness of his heart in the tropical or ethical sense, i.e., the courage and fierceness of the beast, as the following verses show clearly enough.
Job 41:25 [17]. At his rising up heroes tremble.-, or, as many MSS. read mighty ones, from to be thick, strong: comp. Exo 15:15 with Eze 31:11; Eze 32:21. , contracted from , cannot mean here before his majesty (Job 13:11; Job 31:23), but simply: at his rising, when he raises himself up.-From terror they miss their aim. , lit., from brokenness [breakings]; not however from wounds. Jerome correctly: trriti (comp. Isa 65:14). , lit., they miss, i.e., their mark (to wit, here, the slaying of the monster). [Gesenius, Conant, etc., they lose themselves for terror, spoken of a person in astonishment and terror missing his way in precipitate flight.-Frst: they disappear, i.e., they cannot hold out.-E. V., under the influence of the Vulg. and Targ. by reason of breakings they purify themselves, which hardly yields an intelligible meaning].
Job 41:26 [18]. If one reaches him with the sword, lit., he who reaches him with the sword, it doth not hold, i.e., the sword, (lit., it does not get up), it glances off without effect from the scaly armor of the beast. As to the construction comp. Ewald, 357, c; on the use of with the finite verb, which occurs only here, Ew., 322, a. In the second member, which introduces three additional subjects to the verb , this is to be again supplied: nor spear, dart, and armor.-According to the testimony of the ancient versions it would seem that must be rendered as a synonym of , coat of mail, although the context, and a comparison with the Arab, sirwe, or surwe, arrow, would favor rather the meaning missile, either the harpoon, or some peculiar kind of arrow. For the definition sling-stone has the support of the Targ., while the LXX and the Vulg. associate the word with the preceding in the sense of hasta missilis.
Verses 2729 [1921] describe more at length the ineffective rebound of ordinary human weapons from the armor of the leviathan, together with the animals fearlessness in encountering all assaults by means of such weapons. Respecting in Job 41:19, b, comp. on Job 40:18. in the same member is a poetic form for (Job 13:28). The son of the bow, Job 41:20 a is the arrow, as the son of the flame in Job 5:7 meant the spark of fire. The turning to stubble, Job 41:20 b is of course to be taken only in the subjective sense of becoming as it were stubble.
Job 41:29 [21]. Clubs are accounted (by him) as chaff; lit. a club; , as a generic term, is construed with the plur. On b ( and ), comp. Job 39:23-24.
Job 41:30 [22] continues the description of the under side of the body begun in Job 41:23 [16]. His under parts are pointed shards; lit. the sharpest of shards, ; on this mode of expressing the superlative, which occurs also in Job 30:6, comp. Gesen., 112 [ 110], Rem. 1. The comparison of the scales on the under side of the crocodile, and especially on his tail, with pointed sherds, is found also in Aelian, H. N. 10, 24. He spreadeth a threshing sledge upon the mire; i.e., by means of those same pointed scales, which leave a mark on the soft mire, like that made by the iron spikes of a threshing-sledge (comp. Isa 28:27).
Job 41:31 [23]. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.-On , to cause to seethe, to boil and foam violently, comp. Job 30:27. The deep [), i.e., literally, the deep of the sea. (=) is a word which can also be applied to a great river, like the Nile; comp. Isa 19:5; Nah 3:8. The Bedouins to this day call the Nile bahr. sea, it being quite like a sea when it overflows its banks. He maketh the sea (comp. Job 14:11) like a pot of ointment, i.e., as respects its bubbling and foaming. An Egyptian sea may here be assumed, standing in connection with the Nile, or perhaps one of the seas of the Jordan, if the author took a Palestinian crocodile as the object of his description. The figure of the pot of ointment can hardly allude to the strong odor of musk which the crocodile emits when playing in the water (Bochart, Del.) seeing that the poet is describing here only the visible effects of his tumbling and rushing in the water.
Job 41:32 [24]. After him he maketh the path to shine, by means of the bright white trail which he leaves behind him on the surface of the water, and which in b is compared to the silver bright whiteness of hoary hair (), in the same way that the classic poets speak of a (Il. I. 350; Od. IV. 405), or of a canescere (incanescere) of the waves (Catull. Epithal. Pelei; Manilius, Astron.: Ut freta canescunt, sulcum ducente carina, etc.).
Job 41:33 [25] seq.: Conclusion of the whole description, repeating the affirmation of the invincibility of the leviathan as a proud tyrant in the animal kingdom. There is not upon the earth one who commands him; lit. there is not upon the dust (comp. Job 19:25) dominion over him, comp. Zec 9:10. So correctly the Targ., Pesh., and most of the moderns, while the LXX, Vulg., [E. V.], Umbreit, Delitzsch, [Lee, Noyes, Merx] translate: on earth there is not his like. By itself could certainly be thus rendered; but the second member-he who is made ( comp. Job 15:22) [Green, 172, 5] for no-fear (or for, into a fearless creature, )-favor rather the meaning given above.
Job 41:34 [26]. He looks on all that is high; i.e., looks it boldly in the face, without fearing or turning back before it (comp. Job 40:11). He is king overall the sons of pride, i.e., over all the huge, proudly stalking beasts of prey (comp. Job 28:8), he is therefore a tyrant in the midst of the animal kingdom, to whom the larger quadrupeds must submit, especially in consequence of the violent blows which he inflicts with his tail (Bochart, p. 767; Oken, Allgem. Naturgesch., VI, 654 seq.).
6. Jobs answer and penitent confession: Job 42:1-6.
Job 42:2. Now I know that Thou canst do all things-now that in these two animal colossi Thou hast set before me the most convincing proofs of Thine omnipotence, and at the same time of the constant justice of Thy ways. And that no undertaking (no thought, or purpose, which Thou dost undertake to carry out; sensu bono, comp. Job 17:11) is forbidden to Thee (lit. cut off) [rendered inaccessible, impracticable]. To these thoughts, which God has the power to execute without condition or any limitation whatever, belongs, in the very first rank, the appointment of severe sufferings for men who, apparently, are innocent. This Job here recognizes as the normal result of the operations of the All-wise, All-merciful, and Righteous God in His government of the world, being just as truly the result of His operations as the terrible forms and activities of the behemoth and leviathan.
Job 42:3. Who is this that obscureth counsel without knowledge? thus, namely hast thou rightly spoken to me. The words of God at the beginning of the first discourse (Job 38:2), are cited here verbally; and from this divine verdict, as one that cannot be assailed nor abrogated, the inference which follows is immediately drawn: thus have I judged, without understanding, what was too wonderful for me, without knowing;i.e., the judgments which I have heretofore pronounced respecting my sufferings as unmerited and unreasonably cruel, were uttered without understanding or knowledge. To the idea, complete in itself, conveyed by , I have judged (uttered), an object is emphatically added in the following member, so that the notion of judging passes over into that of deciding or passing judgment upon something.
Job 42:4 contains another expression, cited both from the first discourse of Jehovah (Job 38:3), and from the introduction to the second (Job 40:7), here however preceded and strengthened by the short introductory clause: Hear, I pray thee, and I will speak, and for this reason to be regarded as only a free citation, to which Job then appends the observation contained in Job 42:5. This verse (4) is not therefore to be regarded as an independent entreaty on the part of Job to Jehovah, framed however in imitation of the words of Jehovah in the passages referred to (as Rosenm., Stick., Hirz., Hahn., Del. [Scott, Noyes, Barnes] think). The meaning is: Thou hast demanded of me to make my answer to Thee, as in a judicial trial; my answer can be none other than that which now follows (Job 42:5-6). [To the view that this is the language of humility on the part of Job, seeking for further instruction from God, Carey objects: (1) That Job does not ask God any particular question on which he requires information. (2) That on the supposed view the first clause, Hear now, and I will speak, would be the formula of an opening address, leading one to expect that that address was to be of some length, at least, whereas no such address does actually follow. (3.) That the words themselves would be too arrogant for Job to use in his present humbled state of mind. (4.) That as Job 42:3 is manifestly a citation from Job 38:2, and as the words in this present verse occur in Job 38:3, they may reasonably be supposed to be a citation also. (5.) On the supposition of their being a citation, a more natural, and, at the same time, a more pregnant sense is obtained].
Job 42:5. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear.-According to (, as, e.g., in Job 28:22; Psa 18:45) the hearing of the ear, i.e., on the basis of a knowledge which was mediate only, and therefore incomplete, the opposite information resting on the firm basis of immediate perception, observation, or experience; comp. Psa 48:9. But now mine eye hath seen thee–i.e., not externally, or corporeally, but intuitively, by means of that intellectual faith-perception which, in the visible manifestations of creation, beholds the Creator Himself; comp. the of Rom 1:19; also above on Job 38:1.
Job 42:6. Therefore do I recant-lit. I reject [repudiate], that, viz., which I have heretofore said; the object omitted, as in Job 7:16; Job 36:5. The LXX., Symm., and Vulg. read : I reject, blame, accuse myself (Luth.) [E. V.: abhor myself], which gives substantially the same sense with the Masoretic reading (for Bttchers rendering of this Niphal-I despair-finds no conclusive support in Job 7:5), but is by no means of necessity to be substituted for the same. And I repent (am sorry, , Niph.) in dust and ashes–i.e., like one in deep mourning, one who feels himself completely broken and humbled; comp. Job 2:8; Job 2:12. And so Job returns, as it were, to his heap of ashes, the symbol of his voluntary submission under the mighty hand of God. He perfectly resumes that patient resignation to the will of God, out of which he had allowed himself to be provoked by the accusation of the friends, in that he recognizes the divine decree of suffering as one that has been inflicted on him not unjustly, and holds his peace, until the sentence of the Most High, pronouncing His blessing upon him, again exalts the upright penitent.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The progress which this second discourse of God, taken in connection with Jobs confession of penitence, marks in the inward development of the poem, is in general clear. The destruction and punishment of the proud self-exaltation of the presumptuous censurer of Gods ways, which had constituted the aim and issue of the first discourse (see on Job 40:5), must be followed by the entire overthrow of the presumption in Jobs heart, in consequence of which he had not deeply and earnestly enough perceived his sinfulness, had doubted whether the severe visitation which had come upon him was deserved, and had thus assailed Gods justice. In addition to the complete humiliation of Job it was necessary still further to produce in him entire contrition, the voluntary confession of his guilt; and this is exactly what this second discourse aims at and accomplishes. It accomplishes this, as may be seen from the first part, which is in the form of a direct rebuke (Job 40:7-14), by the ironical challenge addressed to Job, to take the government of the world into his own hand, and to judge the proud transgressors on the earth (see Job 40:10 seq.). This is a challenge which shows an advance beyond the series of ironical questions in the first discourse, in that it imputes to him who is addressed not merely the exercise of a high, wonderful, and all-embracing divine knowledge, but rather of an omnipotent activity resembling that of God, the ruler of the universe. God now no longer says, knowest thou? or canst thou? but do it! seat thyself on my judicial throne! and the stronger irony which flashes forth from such appeals must in the nature of things be accompanied by a stronger power to cause shame to him who is addressed, so that the last remnant of presumption in his heart is swept away. By thus thinking of himself as the ruler and judge of the world, Job is obliged to think of the cutting contrast between his feebleness and the divine rule, with which he has ventured to find fault; at the same time, however, he is taught that-what he would never be able to do-God really punishes the ungodly, and must have wise purposes when He does not, as indeed He might, let loose at once the floods of His wrath (Del.). In other words: Job, brought to the lowest depths of shame, must, by that challenge, be made sensible of two things in one, the omnipotence and the inflexible justice of the divine government of the world. He is compelled to see that there cannot be, and least of all in the administration of the Most High, a bare omnipotence, disjoined from justice and love.
2. So far the purpose of this discourse is clear. But is the second part of it, which is characterized by disproportionate length, and in which nature, or rather, more particularly, the animal world, is described, in accordance with this purpose? Are we, with a number of critics (see Introd. 9) to reject this part of the book as not genuine? Or, instead of resorting to this violent operation, favored as it is by nothing in the historic transmission of the text, are we, by more profoundly fathoming the meaning and aim of this wonderful description of animals, to exhibit its original organic connection with its surroundings? Obviously there is little to be gained from such ingenious, and yet at bottom, superficial remarks as that of Herder: Behemoth and Leviathan are the pillars of Hercules at the end of the book, the Non plus ultra of another world; and just as little from the flat and shallow physical theology of the vulgar rationalism, which represents the poet as finding in these prodigies of the amphibious world (Job 40:9) the hippopotamus and the crocodile, the power, wisdom, and goodness of God (see, e.g., Wohl-farth on the passage), or from the downright allegorizing of the Church Fathers, who in the leviathan and also in behemoth found the devil, with whom also Luther is in accord, when he says; By behemoth is meant all the large monster beasts, and by leviathan all the large monster fishes. But under these names he describes the power and might of the devil, and of his servants, the ungodly multitude in the world.1 On the other side, the opinion favored by most moderns, that the hippopotamus and crocodile, like the animal pictures grouped together in the first discourse of Jehovah (Second Part, Job 38:39 seq.), are designed to illustrate the greatness and wonderful glory of Gods creative energy, and so to present impressive pictures of created existence mirroring the omnipotence of God-this opinion is far from furnishing a perfectly satisfactory explanation of the poets purpose in describing so earnestly and elaborately these two animals, and in this way dissipating completely the doubt which has been raised touching the genuineness of this section of the book. That which alone can help us to a correct appreciation of the poets purpose is the truth, flowing from the view of nature presented throughout the revealed Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, that the entire animal world is a living text-book, a mirror of morals, now warning, now encouraging and shaming us, a gallery of pictures, ethical and parenetic, collected for men by God Himself; and that in particular the animals distinguished for ferocity and size are awe-inspiring examples for us, symbols, as it were, or pictorial embodiments of the Divine Wrath. Novatian, in his work on the Jewish legislation touching food (De cibis Judaicis), says: In animalibus mores depinguntur humani et actus et voluntates; and most of the Church Fathers express themselves in substantial agreement with this view in respect to the more profound ethical and symbolical significance of the animal world. So, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, among whose utterances on this subject (Pdag. III. 11; Strom. II., p. 389 C; 405 D, etc.), that which he has said respecting the sphinx (Strom. V., p. 561 C) deserves to be mentioned here as being of special significance: the human half of this creature teaches us that God is to be loved, the animal ( ) that He is to be feared. Comp. also Irenus (Adv. hr. V. 8), Tertullian (Adv. Marc. II. 18; IV. 24; De Resurr. carn. 52), Origen (Homil. VII. in Levit.), Gregory of Nyssa (Opp. T. I., p. 165, 166), Chrysostom (Homil. in Genes. XII.), and Jerome, who (Comm. in Isaj. l. VI. c. 14, p. 259, Vall.) sets forth with peculiar vividness the ethical significance of animals, especially of the poisonous and ravenous sort: Mores igitur hominum in diversis animantibus monstrantur, sicut Pharisi et Sadduci propter nequitiam appellantur genimina viperarum et propter dolos Herodes vulpus dicitur, etc.2 That this ethico-symbolical, or, if you please, ethico-allegorical, conception of the animal world is most deeply rooted in the Sacred Scriptures, and especially in the Old Testament, scarcely requires to be more particularly proved. We need only refer to the many passages where godless men, who have sunk beneath their proper dignity, are described as beasts (), such as Psa 49:13 [Psa 49:12], Psa 49:21 [Psa 49:20]; Psa 73:22; Jer 5:8; Dan 4:12 seq.; comp. also Psa 32:9; 2Ki 19:28; Tit 1:12, etc. Is it likely that our passage, which, with the most penetrating sympathy, describes two species of wild beasts, whose ferocity and strength make them dangerous, setting forth their physical constitution and mode of life, was composed without any reference to this deeper symbolical significance of the animals for man? Because it has nothing in common with that archetypal ideal significance which belongs to those royal beasts which appear in Ezekiels description of the cherub, the lion, the eagle, and the ox, is it therefore devoid of all and every profounder meaning, and entitled simply to the claim of being a broad, detailed, poetic description of natural objects, without any religious and ethical purpose? If the passage did not itself repeatedly call attention to the deeper meaning of that which is described, we might possibly entertain in regard to it that depreciative opinion which regards it as not genuine. But after the repeated intimations which itself conveys-especially in Job 40:19; Job 41:19; Job 2 [Job 2:10], Job 2:3 [Job 2:11], Job 2:14 [Job 2:22], Job 2:17 [Job 2:25]-concerning the presumptuous pride and the tyrannical ferocity of the two animals described, it is scarcely to be doubted that, according to the clearly defined and firmly maintained purpose of the poet, these are to be regarded as symbols not merely of the power, but also of the justice of God; or, in other words, that the divine attribute of which the poet desires to present them as the vivid living mirror and manifesting medium is omnipotence in the closest union with justice (more particularly with punitive justice, or wrath), or omnipotence in its judicial manifestations. These two pictures from the animal world are designed to hold up before Job the truth that all pride and presumption shown by Gods creatures towards Him, the Creator, can avail nothing; and that there is nothing in the creation so powerful and fearful, or even so invincible to man, but that it is compelled to serve the wise and exalted purposes of God in governing the world. They are intended to teach him how little capable of passing sentence upon the evil-doer he is, who cannot even draw a cord through the nose of the behemoth, and who, if he once attempted to attack the leviathan, would have reason to remember it so long as he lived, and would henceforth let it alone (Delitzsch).-To go further in the direction of a symbolical and allegorical explanation of the two monsters, and to find in them emblems of the world-power which is hostile to God, but which is powerless as against Him, would not be advisable. At least the description contains no sort of intimation, pointing more definitely to such an emblematic application to any historical empires or nations; and the pre-eminently significant and instructive passage at the close of the discourse in which the leviathan is described as king overall the proud, gives us to understand clearly enough what is the deeper meaning which the poet wishes to put in the very foreground of his description. [See further the very striking remarks on the view of the animal kingdom conveyed by these descriptions, in their contradiction to those oriental dreams which made the animal creation an occasion of offense to the languid, oriental devotee, and their accordance with those juster views of the economy of the animal system which modern science has lately brought itself to approve, in Isaac Taylors pirit of the Hebrew Poetry, Ch. VIII.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
It will not be found difficult in the homiletic treatment of this discourse rightly to apprehend and profitably to apply both the fundamental parenetic thought which it presents (as distinguished from that of the first discourse of Jehovah), and the allegorical vesture and illustrative treatment which it receives in the second longer part. The older practical expositors indeed do not furnish much help, because they wander for the most part into the extreme of unhealthy allegorical exaggerations, just as the modern scientific exegesis, in the majority of its representatives, strays into the opposite extreme of a superficial, barren, literal interpretation. A few hints deserving attention may be introduced here from the older as well as the more recent expositions of the discourse.
Job 40:7 seq. Brentius: Thus doth the Lord say to Job: Is my judgment, by which I either afflict the pious, or declare all men to be liars, to be made void and of no effect by thy opinion? Does it behoove me to be unrighteous, in order that thy righteousness may be established? Thou art righteous indeed, and to this thou hast my own testimony (in Job 2), but thou art not therefore at liberty to calumniate Gods judgments in the afflictions which He sends.-Cramer: Those who ascribe to themselves any righteousness before God proceeding from their own powers, they do nothing else than condemn God, and attempt to annul His sentence, as though He had no authority and power to judge, and to condemn them (Rom 3:4)!-Starke: God seeks to remind man, not once simply, but again and again, of the sins which he has committed, and to work in him thorough conviction, in order that his repentance may be sincere (Mat 23:37).-Wohlfarth: As God repeatedly challenges Job to convict Him, the author of his lot, if he can, so does the Lord in His works and word call upon us to do the same. And if we do not succumb to the power of sorrow on account of our sufferings, if on the contrary we hearken to the voice of divine truth which everywhere surrounds us, we shall be constrained to acknowledge that the sufferings of the pious are always under Gods oversight, and that, so far from making the friend of virtue wholly unfortunate, it is absolutely certain that He, the Almighty and Holy One, guards innocence, and that if He will not deliver it here, He will recompense it hereafter for the pain which it has endured here below.
Job 40:15 seq. Cocceius: It will be easy, if we wish to follow Scripture, to resolve into an allegory those things which are here spoken to Job, both in general and in detail (!), and from the physical object described to learn a notable lesson. For it is a remarkable feature of Gods plan that He makes the most savage of men subserve the good of the Church, so that although they may not love God from the heart, nor understand the truth, they will nevertheless, notwithstanding their own wisdom and judgments be thereby condemned, embrace the pious, hear cheerfully the word of truth, take pleasure in the reputation of the faithful, so that now with the whole world raging against the truth of the doctrine of Christ, it is a great and blessed dispensation that many vain, proud, fierce, pleasure-loving men are so softened that they will endure the doctrine and reproofs of Christs peaceful ministers, and wish to be esteemed among Christs, without being such, etc.-V. Gerlach: That which this second discourse of God shows to Job is this, that justice and omnipotence are inseparable, and that in order to establish his righteousness, man must have as much power as God himself. If any creature feels that in itself it is powerless, it thereby confesses at the same time that it is not righteous, but is in a moral, as well as a natural sense, dependent. For righteousness is nought else than that which the Almighty has established as the law after which the world is governed; In order now to make this principle clear to Jobs perception, God does not stop in His discourse with that which He says to Job with a view to his humiliation and reconciliation; but in like manner as in the series of natural wonders presented in the previous discourse, the Lord exhibits His surpassing wisdom, so by these two most powerful beasts, which man is unable to subdue, He exhibits His power, in order to prove that man, who is not able to tame these animals, is still less able to carry out his will in the government of the world, and to humble beneath himself the pride of the unrighteous.
Job 41:1 seq. H. Vict. Andre: If in what is said of the leviathan we find it expressly set forth how utterly powerless in his own strength is man as compared with him, we are naturally led to regard this leviathan as a type of the evil, and of the human misery connected with it, which existing on the earth as they do in accordance with the divine decree and permission, present in the world without so mighty a power adverse to humanity, that the individual man, even when in his own person he is able, as in fact is the case, inwardly to release himself from their hold upon him by dint of a living faith, he is nevertheless, as regards his external participation in the evil which has come through sin into the world subject to the evil and the misery, and seeks in vain to become their master. At the close (Job 41:33 [26]), God points as with the finger to the pride of the leviathan, and characterizes him as king of all the children of self-exaltation, whose servants they make themselves through their own pride. Thus, at least in general, does that accuser [murderer] of men from the beginning (Joh 8:44), in harmony with the antecedent scenes in heaven mentioned in the prologue, present himself to us here at the close as a highly expressive figure, nay as the right key to the interpretation of Jobs own history, as well as of the entire history of humanity.
Job 42:1-6. v. Gerlach: Job, in repeating here the words of God in His first address to him, acknowledges to his own shame the truth of that which God had held up before him. Gods incomprehensible wisdom and omnipotence have convinced him that the ways of His providence also are inscrutable.-Vilmar. (Past.-theol. Bltt XI, 70): By Elihus discourses and Gods judicial manifestation, and then by the repentance which is in this way produced within him, Job is brought back to the stand-point at first occupied by him (comp. Job 2:10), and the close of the book in general must be brought back rigidly to this initial point. The bodily disease remains at first unrelieved, but the sting which by the intervention of the three friends it had inflicted on the sufferer, is plucked out of his soul. In a sense that is absolutely proper the book forms a ; after long wandering the resignation to God which marks the beginning of the book reappears in the resignation of its close. And after that the inward disease has been overcome, the outward is also healed by God.
Footnotes:
[1]Concerning Luthers predecessors in this Satanological allegoristic interpretation (which of late H. V. Andrea has again attempted to revive up to a certain point, see Homiletic Remarks below-but which the representation of Satan in the prologue clearly shows to be inadmissible), see above on Job 40:19, and comp. G. M. Dursch, Symbolik der Christichen Religion, Vol. II, (1859), p. 344seq. [Wordsworth also adopts this allegoristic interpretation, and applies in detail to Satan the description of both behemoth and leviathan.]
[2]Among later advocates of the same idea, comp., e.g., Peter Damiani, Opusc. 52; de bono religiosi status et variarum animantium tropologiis; Pierre Viret. Metamorphose Chrestienne, Genve, 1561; Joh. Bapt. Porta ( 1561), De physiologia humana; Jac. Bhme. Gnadenw. VII. 3, 4; V. 20, etc.; John Bunyan, in his Autobiography [Works, Vol. I., p. 28, Newhaven, 1831]; also G. H. v. Schubert, Geschichte der Seele, 4th Ed., p. 732 seq.; Lotze, Mikro kosmos. II. p. 108 seq; also my Theol. Naturalis, I. p. 537 seq.; 541 seq.
CONTENTS
This chapter brings us to the close of Job’s history, in which we find the testimony which the Holy Ghost gave by his servant James, to be true. The end of the Lord concerning him is, that the Lord is very pitiful and gracious. Job submitteth himself to God. The Lord having reproved his servant for what was in him wrong, now prefers his cause in what he was right, and in making the three friends of Job submit themselves. The Lord blesseth the close of Job’s life more than the beginning. Job’s age and death.
(1) Then Job answered the LORD, and said, (2) I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. (3) Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. (4) Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. (5) I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. (6) Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
We have here Job’s dutiful submission, and the very humble acknowledgment of himself before GOD. Nothing can display more fully the state of a true penitent before the LORD. In the expressions Job makes use of, the very inside of his heart seems to be turned out to view. Self loathing, and self-abhorring, are among the highest tokens of the real contrition which passed within. But what I beg the Reader particularly to observe with me is, the striking difference Job makes between human and divine teaching. All that men can say, all the preaching in the world, without GOD the SPIRIT condescends to instruct; will end just where it began, in the hearing of the ear. But if GOD takes up the cause, then, and not before, the LORD carries conviction to the heart. Reader, do you know the vast difference? Hath GOD the SPIRIT been your teacher? Hath it induced these blessed effects, like Job? Are you brought down in the deepest humiliation of soul, and is JESUS exalted to your view, and all human greatness come to nothing? Isa 2:17 .
The Divine Attributes
Job 42:2
The meaning is that there is no purpose which the Almighty cannot carry out.
I. Though literally the words seem merely an acknowledgment of power they are also an admission of wisdom, the plans or purposes of which may be beyond the understanding of man.
II. Job does not, as might have been expected, acknowledge the Divine righteousness. His confession corresponds to the Almighty’s address to him. That address did not insist on any one Divine attribute, but rather represented God in the whole circle of His attributes, power and wisdom but also goodness; and His omnipotence goes hand in hand with His moral rule.
III. The Divine nature is not a segment but a circle. Any one Divine attribute implies all others.
IV. Similarly Job’s reply reflects the great general impression God now made on him. The exhibition of the Divine wisdom as it operates in nature has led him to feel that within his own history also there is a Divine ‘thought’ or ‘counsel,’ though he is unable to understand it
A. B. Davidson, The Book of Job, p. 286.
The Book of Job
Job 42:2
The author of the book of Job is entirely unknown; guesses have, to be sure, been made as to his name, but they are unsupported by any evidence worthy of credit. It is tolerably certain that Luther was right in his opinion that the book of Job is a religious drama, in which, somewhat as in Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ the experiences of a well-known figure in legendary history are made the vehicle for expressing the anxious questionings of men as to the deepest problems with which the mind of man can be engaged, and that the book was marked off as unlike other books, that it was counted worthy of a place in the Sacred Canon of the Old Testament, will not be thought surprising by anyone who is at the pains to think over its wonderful teaching, who observes the reverent and piercing insight with which this inspired poet has justified the ways of God to man.
I. This is the main subject of the book. Job is a man who has met with extraordinary misfortunes. The devil uses them as a means by which he may shake Job’s faith in God, his trust in an overruling Providence. But it is in vain. Still greater trials are in store. Well-meaning friends come to visit him. Throughout their long speeches they return again and again to this one principle, that suffering is always and invariably the consequence of sin. Sin is always punished by the Supreme, they say, and such misery as this of yours can spring from nothing else but some violation of God’s law or neglect of His will, some proud boastfulness or secret indulgence in wrongdoing. Confident in his innocence Job dares to appeal from the judgment of man to the judgment of the All Righteous One Himself, who will surely deliver him in due time.
II. The next section of the book is taken up with the speeches of Elihu, who through respect for his elders has kept silent until now. The insignificance and the ignorance of man he speaks of; and he adds a thought which none of the older men had put forward, as to the educational value of pain in the formation of character. This mystery of sorrow may be part of the discipline by which man is trained to holiness.
III. Man’s finitude and God’s infinite wisdom and power are the topic of the concluding chapters, in which Jehovah is represented as answering Job out of the whirlwind and the storm. The littleness of man. The greatness of God. It is. this thought of the unmeasured greatness of the Supreme, this thought of the infinite resourcefulness of the Divine Wisdom, that brought relief to the faith of the stout-hearted old saint. Man is ignorant, weak, and sinful. Aye, but God is wise and powerful and Holy; so wise, so good, so merciful that no complexity of circumstances is too difficult to disentangle, no life too insignificant to be guarded by His love, no sorrow too humble to be relieved by His compassion.
J. H. Bernard, Via Domini, p. 21.
Job 42:2-3
The God who is the antagonist of Prometheus has power, but he has not goodness: the God who is the antagonist of Job is perfect in goodness as in power. And so Prometheus, strong in conscious right and in foreknowledge of the future, remains unshaken by persuasions and threats. At the close of the drama, from out of elemental ruin earthquake and lightning and tempest he utters his last defiant words: ‘Thou seest what unjust things I suffer’. Job, who in all his troubled questionings has never lost his central trust in the God whom he has upbraided, ends by a retractation: ‘I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of Thine can be restrained…. I have uttered that which I understood not, things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.’ The infinite mysteries of creation, as they are flashed before him in a series of sublime descriptions, have subdued the heart as well as the intellect. Love, dormant throughout, is now fully awakened. Yet even for Job the bewildering problem remains unsolved. Jehovah’s answer had merely shown him Nature’s immensity and the nothingness of Man.
S. H. Butcher.
Job 42:5-6
God reminds us of His wisdom, of the mystery of things, and that man is not the measure of His creation. The world is immense, constructed on no plan or theory which the intellect of man can grasp. It is transcendent everywhere. This is the burden of every verse, and is the secret, if there be one, of the poem. Sufficient or insufficient, there is nothing more. Job is to hold fast to the law within; that is his candle which is to light his path; but God is infinite. Job, if he is not satisfied, submits. Henceforth he will be mute.
Mark Rutherford.
Job suffers and draws an inference from his suffering. Now, to suffer and draw an inference is to teach; sorrow logically leads to God. Job teaches. He is the first to show that sublime madness of wisdom which, two thousand years later, will be the foolishness of the cross. The dunghill of Job, transfigured, will become the Calvary of Jesus.
Victor Hugo.
We are usually better persuaded by reasons which we have ourselves discovered, than by those which have come into the mind of others.
Pascal.
Job’s friends discoursed on life as they thought it was; he, as he knew it and felt it. There is no philosophy of life but the experience of it; there is no Knowledge of God, until, in some way, we come completely into His hands. Sin and need and sorrow may drive us there, but only life itself, in all its length and depth and vicissitude and final emptiness, can fully place us there.
T. T. Munger.
In the fourth chapter of The Grammar of Assent Newman applies this passage to the sudden recognition, under pressure of some change or crisis, of truths hitherto accepted but not fully understood. ‘To the devout and spiritual, the Divine Word speaks of things, not merely of notions. And, again, to the disconsolate, the tempted, the perplexed, the suffering, there comes, by means of their very trials, an enlargement of thought, which enables them to see in it what they never saw before. Henceforth there is to them a reality in its teachings, which they recognize as an argument, and the best of arguments, for its Divine origin. Hence the practice of meditation on the Sacred Text; so highly thought of by Catholics. Reading, as we do, the Gospels from our youth up, we are in danger of becoming so familiar with them as to be dead to their force, and to view them as a mere history. The purpose, then, of meditation is to realize them; to make the facts which they relate stand out before our minds as objects, such as may be appropriated by a faith as living as the imagination which apprehends them.
‘It is obvious to refer to the unworthy use made of the more solemn parts of the Sacred Volume by the more popular preacher. His very mode of reading, whether warnings or prayers, is as if he thought them to be little more than fine writing, poetical in sense, musical in sound, and worthy of inspiration. The most awful truths are to him but sublime or beautiful conceptions, and are adduced and used by him, in season and out of season, for his own purposes, for embellishing his style or rounding his periods. But let his heart at length be ploughed by some keen grief or deep anxiety, and Scripture is a new book to him. This is the change which so often takes place in what is called religious conversion, and it is a change so far simply for the better, by whatever infirmity or error it is in the particular case accompanied, and it is strikingly suggested to us, to take a saintly example, in the confession of the patriarch Job, when he contrasts his apprehension of the Almighty before and after his affliction. He says he had indeed a true apprehension of the Divine attributes before as well as after; but with the trial came a great change in the character of that apprehension: “With the hearing of the ear,” he says, “I have heard Thee, but now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I reprehend myself and do penance in dust and ashes!”‘
‘The central feature of his experience was the conviction that God was addressing him, with a living voice, with the immediacy of a direct appeal. His previous state was really one of indifference, owing to his preoccupation with linguistic studies and philosophical speculations. His idea of the relation of God to the universe and to human souls, was that of a vast Superintendent, not that of a Divine Parent or a ceaselessly appealing Oracle.’ Prof. Knight thus describes the state of Dr. John Duncan’s mind, when the great change came over him, adding: ‘But as the clouds parted above him, he discerned the light of the Omnipresent and heard the voice of the Revealer. His awakening was the discernment of a truth, to the reality of which he had been oblivious for years, and the response of his heart to the Divine appeal followed naturally.’ It seems to me that it has been the one purpose of all the Divine revelation or education of which we have any record, to waken us up out of this perpetually recurring tendency to fall back into ourselves.
R. H. Hutton.
References. XLII. 5. W. Ross Taylor, Christian World Pulpit, 1891, p. 181. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iii. p. 434. XLII. 5, 6. C. W. Furse, Lenten Sermons, p. 31. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2207. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2009.
Job 42:7
There is superstition in our prayers, often in our hearing of sermons, bitter contentions, invectives, persecutions, strange conceits, besides diversity of opinions, schisms, factions, etc. But as the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, and his two friends, ‘his wrath was kindled against them, for they had not spoken of him things that were right’; so we may say justly of these schismatics and heretics, how wise soever in their own conceits, non recte loquuntur de Deo , they speak not, they think not, they write not well of God, and as they ought.
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
Job 42:10
At the outset, he prays for his family a narrow circle; but when he has passed through his mighty lesson, he prays again for his friends, so called, but no friends. They had come to him as such, but they proved themselves miserable comforters…. Job’s feeling is the reflection of God’s, whose wrath was kindled against these men; but it was a transient feeling, and passed away as he emerged from his trial. When he had come to see God with his eye, and had humbled himself in dust and ashes, there was no place left in him for wrath and reproach. God be thanked that a time comes to all when hatred dies out!
T. T. Munger.
‘And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before’ Prosperity, enjoyment, happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the name by which we designate that state in which life is to our own selves pleasant and delightful, as long as they are sought or prized as things essential, so far have a tendency to disennoble our nature, and are a sign that we are still in servitude to selfishness. Only when they lie outside of us, as ornaments merely to be worn or laid aside as God pleases only then may such things be possessed with impunity. Job’s heart in early times had clung to them more than he knew, but now he was purged clean, and they were restored because he had ceased to need them.
Froude.
References. XLII. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1262. Ibid. vol. vii. No. 404.
Job 42:13
‘This Mother of George Herbert,’ says Izaak Walton, ‘was the happy mother of seven sons and three daughters, which she would often say was Job’s number and Job’s distribution; and as often bless God that they were neither defective in their shapes nor in their reason; and very often reprove them that did not praise God for so great a blessing.’
Job 42:15
‘Are you still heretic enough to think that only the manifestations of the devil are alluring? Has God then made nothing fair? Can He show nothing attractive? Is all the loveliness, and joy, and ecstasy in Babylon, and all the ugliness and desolation and pain in the kingdom of God?’ ‘Oh no; I never meant that. Don’t we know that Job, after his trial, was blessed by the Lord, and was given, besides seven sons and an enormous amount of cattle, three daughters? “And in all the land,” we are told, “were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job.” In some creatures, therefore, beauty is clearly meant to be a blessing.’
John Oliver Hobbes, The School for Saints, chap, XXVII.
After the Storm
Job 42:1-6
What does it all come to? We have been much excited by the process, what is its consummation? Is the end worthy of the beginning? Is the literary structure well put together, and does it end in domes and pinnacles worthy of its magnitude and original purpose? Or is this a lame and impotent conclusion? Let us deal frankly with the facts as they are before us.
It is difficult to avoid the feeling of some disappointment as we come to the conclusion of the Book of Job. On first reading, the last chapter seems to be the poorest in all the work. If the writer was a dramatist, he seems to have lost his cunning towards the close. This chapter appears, when first looked at, to have been written by a wearied hand. The writer seems to be saying, I would I had never begun this drama of Job: parts of it were interesting enough to me, but now I have come to sum it all up I find a want of glory; I have not light enough to set above the whole tragedy; I thought to have ended amid the glory of noontide, and I find myself writing indistinctly and feebly in the cool and uncertain twilight. Should any man so express himself he must vindicate his position by the chapter as it stands at the close of the Book of Job. Is Job alive? Did we not expect him to go down under the cataract of questions which we had been considering? Does he not lie a dead drowned man under the tremendous torrent? To what shall we liken the course of Job? Shall we say, A ship at sea? Then verily it was a ship that never knew anything but storms: every wind of heaven had a quarrel with it; the whole sky clouded into a frown when looking upon that vessel; the sea was troubled with it as with a burden it could not carry, and the lightnings made that poor ship their sport. Did the ship ever come into port? or was it lost in the great flood? Shall we compare Job to a traveller? Then he seems to have travelled always in great jungles. Quiet, broad, sunny, flowery roads there were none in all the way that Job pursued: he is entangled, he is in darkness, the air is rent by roars and cries of wild beasts and birds of prey. It was a sad, sad journey. Is there anything left of Job? The very weakness of the man’s voice in this last chapter is the crowning perfection of art. If Job had stood straight up and spoken in an unruffled and unhindered voice, his doing so would have been out of harmony with all that has gone before. It was an inspiration to make him whisper at the last; it was inspired genius that said, The hero of this tale must be barely heard when he speaks at last; there must be no mistake about the articulation, every word must be distinct, but the whole must be uttered as it would be by a man who had been deafened by all the tempests of the air and affrighted by all the visions of the lower world. So even the weakness is not imbecility; it is the natural weakness that ought to come after such a pressure. Old age has its peculiar and sweet characteristic. It would be out of place in youth. There is a dignity of feebleness; there is a weakness that indicates the progress and establishment of a moral education. Job, then, is not weak in any senile or contemptible sense; he is weak in a natural and proper degree.
Let us hear every word of his speech. What a deep conviction he has of God’s infinite majesty “I know that thou canst do every thing.” These words might be read as if they were the expression of intellectual feebleness. They are the words of a shattered mind, or of undeveloped intellect; they are more like a repetition than an original or well-reasoned conviction. “I know that thou canst do every thing,” words which a child might say. Yet they are the very words that ought to be said under the peculiar circumstances of the case. There must be no attempt to match God’s eloquence; that thunder must roll in its own heavens, and no man must attempt to set his voice against that shock of eloquence. Better that Job should speak in a stifled voice, with head fallen on his breast, saying, “I know that thou canst do every thing.” He said much saying little. He paid God, so to say, the highest tribute by not answering him in the same rhetoric, but by contrasting his muffled tone with the imperious demands that seemed to shatter the air in which they were spoken. Who can be religious who does not feel that he has to deal with omnipotence? Who can be frivolous in the presence of almightiness in the presence of him whose breath may be turned towards the destruction of the universe, the lifting up of whose hand makes all things tremble. Without veneration here is no religion. That veneration may be turned into superstition is no argument against this contention. Not what may be done by perverting genius, but what is natural and congruous is the question now before the mind. There should be a place, therefore, for silence in the church: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” We may not stare with audacity. If we catch any hint of the light of his garment, it must be by furtive glances. See, then, Job overpowered, convinced at least of omnipotence, assured that he has to deal with almightiness. That assurance will determine all that he says afterwards. But omnipotence is, so to say, objective; it is outside of us, beyond us, something to be looked at, perhaps admired, perhaps appealed to in servile tones.
Is there no attribute of God which corresponds with this but looks in the other direction? Job has discovered that attribute, for he adds “and that no thought can be withholden from thee.” The God of Job’s conception, then, was first clothed with omnipotence, and secondly invested with omniscience. Job is now upon solid ground. He is no dreaming theologian. He has laid hold of the ideal God in a way which will certainly and most substantially assist him. If omnipotence were the only attribute of God, we should feel a sense of security, because we could exclude him from the sanctuary of our being; we could keep him at bay; we could do with him as we could do with our nearest and dearest friend, we could look loyalty and think blasphemy. Who can not smile, and yet in his heart feel all the cruelty of murder? But here is a God who can search thought, and try the reins of the children of men; from whose eye nothing is hidden, but who sees the thought before it is a thought, when it is rising as a mist from the mind to shape itself into an imagining, a dream or a purpose. There is not a word upon my tongue, there is not a thought in my heart, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. God is a searcher of hearts. God uses this word “search” again and again in talking to Job: Hast thou searched the depths of the sea, the treasures of the hail, the hiding-place of wisdom? hast thou penetrated it, taken away fold after fold, and probed the infinite secret to its core? A wonderful revelation of God is this, which invests him with the attribute of searching, piercing to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow. There is nothing hidden from the eye of God. “All things,” we read in this book, “are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” God is all secret: to God secret is impossible. The thing we have hidden in our hearts lies under the blaze of noonday burning light Is it nothing to have come to this conclusion on practical grounds as Job has done? We may come into religious conceptions in one of two ways: we may be instructed in them, they may be communicated to us by the friendly voice of father or teacher or pastor, and we may hold them with some realisation of their sacredness; or we may be scourged into them, driven into our religious persuasions and conclusions; we may be caused to flee into them by some pursuing tempest: when that is the case, our religion cannot be uprooted, for it is not something we hold lightly or secure by the hand; it is part of our very souls, it is involved in our identity. So there is a difference between intellectual religion and experimental religion; there is a difference between the Christianity of the young heart and the Christianity of the old heart: in the first instance there must be more or. less of high imagination, ardent desire, perhaps a touch of speculation, perfectly innocent and often most useful; but in the case of the experienced Christian all history stamps the heart with its impress; the man has tested the world, and has written “lie and vanity” on its fairest words; he knows that there is something beyond appearances, he has been afflicted into his religion, and he is now as wrought iron that cannot be bent or broken; the whole process has been completed within himself, so that suggestion and fact, conjecture and experience, joy and sorrow, high strength and all-humbling affliction, have co-operated in the working out of a result which is full of sacred trust, and which is not without a certain stimulus to pure joy.
So what was supposed to be weakness was in reality strength. The subduing of Job as to his mere attitude and voice, is the elevation of Job as to his highest conceptions and experiences. What a thorough conviction he had of his finite condition! “Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not” It is something to know that there are some spaces we cannot reach. The eye can do more than the hand. The hand would sometimes follow the eye, but it follows it at an immeasurable distance. The eye sees the fair blue arch of summer, but the spoiling hand cannot stain that fair disclosure of God’s almightiness. The mind is the better for knowing that it is pursued by a law of trespass. Imagination is none the worse, but all the better, for seeing written here and there all round the horizon: No thoroughfare No road Private. What if we could see everything, handle everything, explain everything? Who would not soon tire of the intolerable monotony? It is the surprise, the flash of unexpected light, the hearing of a going in the tops of the trees, the shaking of the arras, that makes one feel that things are larger than we had once imagined, and by their largeness they allure us into broader study, into more importunate prayer. “Things too wonderful for me” in providence, in the whole management of human history, in the handling of the universe that easy, masterly handling by which all things are kept in attitude and at duty, that secret handling, for who can see the hand that arranges and sustains all nature? Yet there nature stands, in all security and harmony and beneficence, to attest that behind it there is a government living, loving, personal, paternal. Is it not something to know, then, that we are not infinite? It is easy to admit that in words. Nothing is gained, however, by these easy admissions of great propositions in metaphysics and theology. We must here again, as in the former instance, be driven into them, so that when we utter them we may speak with the consent and force of a united life. We accept the position of creaturedom, and must not attempt to seize the crown of creatorship.
What dissatisfaction Job expresses with mere hearsay in religious inquiry! “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear.” That is superficial. There is nothing in it that can profoundly and savingly affect the life. Who has not heard thousands of sermons, and forgotten them by the easy process of turning aside from their appeals and practically disobeying them? Yet, who has heard aright heard with his soul, heard with his unblunted and undivided attention, heard with the eagerness of men who must hear or die? Alas, there is but little such hearing. Even when the Scripture is read in the public assembly, who can hear all its music, who can reply to its sweet argument? Is there not much mere hearsay in religion? We may hear certain truths repeated so frequently that to hear anything to the contrary would amount to a species of infidelity. In reality, there may be no infidelity in the matter at all, for what we have been hearing may be all wrong as we shall presently have occasion to note. There is a mysterious, half-superstitious influence about repetition. Things may be said with a conciseness and a frequency which claim for the things said a species of revelation. Hence many false orthodoxies, and narrow constructions of human thought and human history, because other things do not balance with what we have always heard. But from whom have we heard these things? It may be that the fault lies in the speaker and in the hearer, and that the new voice is not a new voice in any sense amounting to mere novelty, but new because of our ignorance, new because we were not alive to our larger privileges.
“But now,” Job continues, “mine eye seeth thee.” “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear” is equal to, I have heard of thine omnipotence: “but now mine eye seeth thee” amounts to a balancing of the omniscient power of God. Man is allowed to see something of God, as God sees everything of man. The vision is reciprocal: whilst God looks we look, “mine eye seeth.”
“Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” No man can imagine light. Looking upon the grey landscape before the sun has fully risen, a man says I can imagine what it will be when the sun shines upon it He is wrong. No man can imagine sunlight. He can do so in a little degree; he can imaginatively increase the light that is already shining, but when the sun, so to say, chooses to come out in all the wizardry of his power, touching and blessing what he will and as he will, he startles the most diligent devotee at his altar with new displays of unsuspected splendour. So it is, only in infinitely higher degree, with the living God. Could we but see him even in his goodness, it should be unto us like glory; were his glory to pass before us, we should never see it more, for we should be blinded by the excess of light.
Here, then, we find the patriarch once so eloquent abhorring himself in dust and ashes. That is a condition to which we must come before we can be right with God. Whilst we are mere controversialists, we can never be penitents; whilst we are “clever,” we can never pray; whilst we think that there is one poor little rag upon our nakedness, God will not command the blessed ones to bring forth the white robe of adoption and restoration. We must be unmade before we can be re-made. We must be dead before we can live. Thou fool, that which thou sowest must die before it can bring forth fruit. That is the explanation of our want of real religion. We have never experienced real contrition for sin. We have never seen that we are sinners. If we could see that, all the other prayers of Scripture would gather themselves up in the one prayer God be merciful to me a sinner! So long as we can ask questions we are outside the whole idea of redemption; by these questions we mean merely intellectual inquiries, not the solemn moral inquiry, “What shall I do to be saved?” but the vain intellectual inquiry which assumes that the mind retains its integrity and is willing to converse with God upon equal terms. From the Pharisee God turns away with infinite contempt. We may know something of the full meaning of this by looking at it in its social relations. Take the case as it really stands in actual experience. A man has misunderstood you, robbed you; has acted proudly and self-sufficiently toward you; has been assured of one thing above all others, and that is that he himself is right whoever else may be wrong: he has pursued his course; that course has ended in failure, disappointment, mortification, poverty: he returns to you that he may ask favours, but he asks them with all the old pride, without a single hint that he has done anything wrong, or committed a single mistake. You cannot help that man; you may feed him, but he can never rise above the position of a mendicant, a pauper for whom there is no help of a permanent kind. He speaks to you as if he were conferring a favour upon you in asking for the bread he wants to eat. What must that man do before he can ever be a man again in any worthy sense? He must get rid of his pride, his self-sufficiency, his self-idolatry; he must come and say, if not in words yet in all the signification of spirit I am a fool, I have done wrong every day of my life; I have mistaken the bulk, proportion, colour, value of everything; I have been vain, self-sufficient, self-confident; I have duped myself: O pity me! Now you can begin, and now you can make solid work: the old man has been taken out of him; the sinning, the offending Adam has been whipped out of him, and he comes and says in effect, Help me now, for I am without self-excuse, self-defence; my vanity, my pride are not dead only, but buried, rotten, for ever gone. Now you may open your mind, open your heart, open your hand; now you may buy a ring for his fingers and shoes for his feet; now you may bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; now he begins to be a son. But without this there is no possible progress. If we go to God and say that we are men of great intellect, men even of genius, we can understand thee, show thyself to us; we are equal to the occasion; if we have made any mistakes, they are mere slips, they have not affected the integrity of our character or the pureness of our souls; we will climb the range of creation; we will demand to exercise the franchise of our uninjured manhood. Nothing will come of such high demand. The heavens will become as lead when such appeals are addressed to them. We must come in another tone, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner! Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? “A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, on thy kind arms I fall.” Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make as one of thy hired servants. Now the house will be full of light, full of music; a house almost heaven.
Prayer
We bless thy name, thou loving One, for thinking of our need of rest. Thou knowest our frame, thou rememberest that we are dust; thou hast set among the days one whose name is Rest. This is the Sabbath of the Lord. We hear thy voice saying unto us, Rest awhile. Thou dost cause us to rest that we may gather strength; thou dost not lull us into stupor; thou dost in sleep make us again, yea, thou dost create us in thine own image and likeness, so that when we come back from the land of forgetfulness we are ready for duty, for service, for suffering, and we expend the Lord’s rest in doing the Lord’s work. We bless thee for the Sabbath day. It is a day of triumph, the grave was robbed of its victory by the rising Christ He is not in the grave, he is risen: we behold the place where the Lord lay, but he himself has gone forth free for ever. Teach us the meaning of death; show us that we must all die, but that being in Christ we die into greater life; we do not die into darkness and extinction, we die into light and immortality. Jesus Christ brought this great truth to light in the gospel: now we say, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? We triumph in the Lord’s victory, we rise again in the Lord’s resurrection. Help us to understand more of our relation to Jesus Christ; enable us to feel it more vitally; may we be in him, rooted, stablished, built up, yea may we be made one with the Son of God. Then shall Christ’s triumph be ours, and the peace of Christ shall be our peace, and because he is in heaven we shall be very near him there. Fill us with all the fulness of Christ. In him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily: may we partake of that fulness fulness of God, fulness of Christ, fulness of life, and light, and love; yea, may Christ: overflow in us, so that we may the more abundantly and earnestly desire him, knowing how rich is his grace, and how tender the touch of his love. We bless thee for all sense of new life; thou art writing the story of the resurrection upon the face of the whole earth; every opening flower preaches the good news of rising again, every green little bud upon hedge and tree tells us that God liveth, and he will bring up, from the winter of our sorrow and sin and overthrow, the spring immortal, the spring of celestial beauty. Every morning preaches the gospel of resurrection, every night the old enemy is overthrown and buried, and new-born light shines upon all the awakening and rejoicing earth. May we not be beguiled from our faith by aught that men can say of nature misread and misunderstood; may we rather read the parable of divine action in nature, and see in every dawn, in every spring, in every new opportunity, a hint of recreation, and a guarantee of immortality. Help us to bring the power of an endless life to bear upon the action of the present day; then shall little things be made great, and things of no account shall stand up invested with importance. Every word shall fall into the music of Thine own utterance, and every aspiration shall lift us nearer thy throne. Pity those who have no Sabbath day, who toil, and wear themselves, and fall as victims under crushing anxieties; pity those who have no Eastertide, no vernal springtide, no occasion of realized life, in which death flees away, and the grave, ashamed of its emptiness, seeks to fill itself with flowers. Look upon those who are dying, and tell them that death is overthrown; may there be joy in the chamber of affliction, may there be triumph in the house of bereavement, may they who sit in darkness see a great light, and say, Christ the Lord is risen today, and his name is great in Zion. Amen.
(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).
IX
ELIHU’S SPEECH, GOD’S INTERVENTION AND THE EPILOGUE
Job 32-42
The author’s introduction to Elihu’s speech consists of the prose section (Job 32:1-5 ), the several items of which are as follows:
1. Why the three friends ceased argument, viz: “Because he was righteous in his own eyes” (Job 32:1 ).
2. Elihu’s wrath against Job, viz: “Because he justified himself rather than God” (Job 32:2 ).
3. Elihu’s wrath against Job’s friends, viz: “Because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job” (Job 32:3 ; Job 32:5 ).
4. Why Elihu had waited to speak unto Job, viz: “Because they were older than he” (Job 32:4 ).
Elihu’s introduction (Job 32:6-22 ) consists of two sections as follows:
1. Elihu’s address to the three friends.
2. His soliloquy.
Now, an analysis of part one of this introduction consists of Elihu’s address to his three friends, with the following items:
1. He waited because he was young, and considered that days should speak and that years should teach wisdom (Job 32:6-7 ).
2. Yet there is individual intelligence, a spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty which gives understanding (Job 32:8 ).
3. And greatness, and age are not always wise, therefore, I speak (Job 32:9-10 ).
4. He had waited patiently and had listened for their reasonings while they fumbled for words (Job 32:11 ).
5. They had failed to answer Job’s argument, and therefore had failed to convince him (Job 32:12 ).
6. Now beware; do not say that you have found wisdom, for God can attend to his case, but not man (Job 32:13 ).
7. I will not answer him with your speeches (Job 32:14 ). Now let us analyze his soliloquy which is found in Job 32:15-22 and consists of the following items:
1. They are amazed and silent; they have not a word to say (Job 32:15 ).
2. Shall I wait? No; I will speak and show my opinion (Job 32:16-17 ).
3. I am full of words, and must speak or burst, therefore I will speak and be relieved (Job 32:18-20 ).
4. His method was not to respect persons nor give flattering titles, because he did not know how to do so and was afraid of his Maker (Job 32:21-22 ).
Elihu’s address to Job in 33:1-7 is as follows:
1. Hear me for the integrity and sincerity of my speech, since I have already begun and am speaking to you right out of my heart (Job 33:1-3 ).
2. I also am a man, being made as a man and since we are on a common level, answer me or stand aside (Job 33:4-5 ).
3. I will be for God, and being a man, I will not terrify you, for I will not bring great pressure upon you (Job 33:6-7 ).
The point of issue now is a general charge that Job’s heart attitude toward God is not right in view of these afflictions (Job 33:8-12 ). It will be seen that Elihu’s charge is different from that of the three friends, viz: That Job was guilty of past sins.
Elihu charged first that Job had said that God giveth no account of any of his matters (Job 33:13 ).. In his reply Elihu shows that this is untrue.
1. In that God reveals himself many times in dreams and visions in order to turn man from his purpose and to save him from eternal destruction (Job 33:14-18 ).
2. In that in afflictions God also talks to man as he often brings him down into the very jaws of death (Job 33:19-22 ). [Cf. Paul’s thorn in the flesh as a preventive.] None of the speakers before him brought out this thought. This is very much like the New Testament teachings; in fact, this thought is nowhere stated more clearly than here. It shows that afflictions are to the children of God what the storm is to the tree of the forest, its roots run deeper by use of the storm.
3. In that he sends an angel sometimes to interpret the things of God, to show man what is right for him (Job 33:23-28 ).
4. Therefore these things ought to be received graciously, since God’s purpose in it all is benevolent (Job 33:29-33 ). Elihu charged, in the second place, that Job had said that God had taken away his right and that it did not profit to be a righteous man (Job 34:5-9 ; Job 35:1-3 ).
His reply is as follows:
1. The nature of God disproves it; -he is not wicked and therefore will not pervert justice (Job 34:10-15 ).
2. Therefore Job’s accusation is unbecoming, for he is by right possessor of all things and governs the world on the principles of justice and benevolence (Job 34:21-30 ).
3. What Job should have said is altogether different from what he did say because he spoke without knowledge and his words were not wise (Job 34:31-37 ).
4. Whether Job was righteous or sinful did not affect God (Job 35:4-8 ).
Elihu charged, in the third place, that Job had said that he could not get a hearing because he could not see him (Job 35:14 ). His reply was that this was unbecoming and vanity in Job (Job 35:15-16 ).
Elihu’s fourth charge was that Job was angry at his chastisements (Job 36:18 ). He replied that such an attitude was sin; and therefore he defended God (36:1-16).
Elihu’s fifth charge was that Job sought death (Job 36:20 ). He replied that it was iniquity to suggest to God when life should end (Job 36:21-23 ).
Elihu discusses in Job 37 the approaching storm. He introduces it in Job 36:24 and in Job 36:33 he gives Job a gentle rebuke, showing him how God even tells the cows of the coming storm. Then he describes the approaching storm in Job 37 , giving the lesson in Job 36:13 , viz: It may be for correction, or it may be for the benefit of the earth, but “stand still and see.”
Elihu makes a distinct advance over the three friends toward the true meaning of the mystery. They claim to know the cause; he, the purpose. They said that the affliction was punitive; he, beneficent. His error is that he, too, makes sin in Job the occasion at least of his sorrow. His implied counsel to Job approaches the final climax of a practical solution. God’s first arraignment of Job is found in Job 38:1-40:2 . Tanner’s summary is as follows:
It is foolish presumption for the blind, dependent creature to challenge the infinite in the realm of providence. The government of the universe, physical and moral, is one; to question any point is to assume understanding of all. Job, behold some of the lower realms of the divine government and realize the absurdity of your complaint.
Job’s reply follows in Job 40:3-5 . Tanner’s summary: “I see it; I hush.”
God’s second arraignment of Job is recorded in Job 40:6-41:34 . Tanner:
To criticize God’s government of the universe is to claim the ability to do better. Assuming the role of God, suppose Job, you try your hand on two of your fellow creatures the hippopotamus and the crocodile.
Job’s reply is found in Job 42:1-6 , Tanner’s summary of which is: This new view of the nature of God reveals my wicked and disgusting folly in complaining; I repent. Gladly do I embrace his dispensations in loving faith.
There are some strange silences in this arraignment and some people have been disappointed that God did not bring out all the questions of the book at the close, as:
1. He says nothing of the heaven scenes in the Prologue and of Satan.
2. He gives no theoretic solution of the problems of the book.
3. He says nothing directly about future revelation and the Messiah.
The explanation of this is easy, when we consider the following facts:
1. That it was necessary that Job should come to the right heart attitude toward God without any explanation.
2. That to have answered concerning future revelation and the Messiah would have violated God’s plan of making revelation.
3. That bringing Job to an acceptance of God’s providence of whatever form without explanation, furnishes a better demonstration of disinterested righteousness.
This is true of life and the master stroke of the production is that the theoretical solution is withheld from the sufferer, while he is led to the practical solution which is a religious attitude of heart rather than an understanding of the head. A vital, personal, loving faith in God that welcomes from him all things is the noblest exercise of the human soul. The moral triumph came by a more just realization of the nature of God.
Job was right in some things and he was mistaken in other things. He was right in the following points:
1. In the main point of difference between him and the three friends, viz: That his suffering was not the result of justice meted out to him for his sins.
2. That even and exact justice is not meted out here on the earth.
3. In contending for the necessity of a revelation by which he could know what to do.
4. In believing God would ultimately vindicate him in the future.
5. In detecting supernatural intelligence and malice in his affliction.
He was mistaken in the following particulars:
1. In considering his case hopeless and wishing for death.
2. In attributing the malice of these things to God instead of Satan.
3. In questioning the mercy and justice of God’s providence and demanding that the Almighty should give him an explanation.
The literary value of these chapters (Job 38:1-42:6 ) is immense and matchless. The reference in Job 38:3 to “The cluster of the Pleiades” is to the “seven stars” which influence spring and represents youth. “Orion” in the same passage, stood for winter and represents death. The picture of the war horse in Job 39:19-25 has stood the challenge of the ages.
The lesson of this meeting of Job with God is tremendous. Job had said, “Oh, that I could appear before him!” but his appearing here to Job reveals to him his utter unworthiness. The man that claims sinlessness advertises his guilty distance from God. Compare the cases of Isaiah, Peter, and John. The Epilogue (Job 42:7-17 ) consists of three parts, as follows:
1. The vindication of Job and the condemnation of his three friends.
2. Job as a priest makes atonement and intercession for his friends.
3. The blessed latter end of Job: “So Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.”
The extent and value of the Almighty’s vindication of Job and his condemnation of the three friends are important. In extent it applies to the issues between Job and the three friends and not to Job’s heart attitude toward God. This he had correct-ed in Job by his arraignment of him. In vindicating Job, God justifies his contention that even and exact justice is not meted out on earth and in lime, and condemned the converse which was held by his friends. Out of this contention of Job grows his much felt need of a future judgment, a redeemer, mediator, interpreter, and incarnation, and so forth. Or if this contention is true, then man needs these things just mentioned. If the necessity of these is established, then man needs a revelation explaining all these things.
Its value is seen in God’s confirming these needs as felt by Job, which gives to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come, implicit confidence in the revelation he has given us, pointing out the fact that Job’s need of a redeemer, umpire, interpreter, and so forth has been supplied to the human race with all the needed information upon the other philosophic discussions of the book.
The signification of the Almighty’s “turning the captivity of Job” just at the point “when he prayed for his friends” is seen in the fact that Job reached the point of right heart attitude toward God before the victory came. This was the supreme test of Job’s piety. One of the hardest things for a man to do is to invoke the blessings of heaven on his enemies. This demand that God made of Job is in line with New Testament teaching and light. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for them,” and while dying he himself prayed for his executioners. Paul who was conquered by the prayer of dying Stephen often prayed for his persecutors. This shows that Job was indeed in possession of God’s grace, for without it a man is not able to thus pray. The lesson to us is that we may not expect God to turn our captivity and blessings if we are unable to do as Job did.
The more thoughtful student will see that God does not ex-plain the problem to Job in his later addresses to him, nor in the Epilogue, because to give this would anticipate, out of due time, the order of the development of revelation. Job must be content with the revelation of his day and trust God, who through good and ill will conduct both Job and the world to proper conclusions.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the author’s introduction to Elihu’s speech and what the several items of it?
2. What is Elihu’s introduction (Job 32:6-22 ) and what the two sections?
3. Give an analysis of part one of this introduction.
4. Give an analysis of his soliloquy?
5. Analyze Elihu’s address to Job in Job 33:1-7 .
6. What is the point al issue?
7. What did Elihu charge that Job had said and what Elihu’s reply?
8. What did Elihu charge, in the second place, that Job had said and what Elihu’s reply?
9. What did Elihu charge in the third place, that Job had said, and what Elihu’s answer to it?
10. What was Elihu’s fourth charge and what was Elihu’s answer?
11. What Elihu’s fifth charge and what his reply?
12. What does Elihu discuss in Job 37 ?
13. What the distinct advances made by Elihu and what his error?
14. What God’s first arraignment of Job?
15. What Job’s reply?
16. What God’s second arraignment of Job?
17. What Job’s reply?
18. What the strange silences in this arraignment and what your explanation of them?
19. What the character of the moral solution of the problem as attained by Job?
20. In what things was Job right and in what things was he mistaken?
21. What can you say of the literary value of these chapters (Job 33:1-42:6 )?
22. Explain the beauties of Job 38:31 .
23. What of the picture of the war horse in Job 39:19-25 ?
24. What the lesson of this meeting of Job with God?
25. Give an analysis of the epilogue.
26. What the extent and value of the Almighty’s vindication of Job and his condemnation of the three friends?
27. What the signification of the Almighty’s “turning the captivity of Job” just at the point “when he prayed for his friends”?
28. Does God give Job the explanation of life’s problem, and why?
Job 42:1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said,
Ver. 1. Then Job answered the Lord, and said ] After that he had been so plainly and plentifully convinced by Almighty God, 1. That he was far short of him in eternity, wisdom, power, providence, &c.; 2. That he could not stand before behemoth and leviathan, the works of his hands; Job yieldeth, submitting to God’s justice, and imploring his mercy: so effectual is the word of God’s grace in the hearts of his elect. It had need to be an elaborate speech that shall work upon the conscience, such as was this before going. Vide etiam quid afflictio faciat, saith Mercer. See here also the happy fruit of an affliction sanctified. “By this shall the iniquity of Jacob” (of Job) “be purged; and this is all the fruit, to take away his sin,” Isa 27:9 . To make his works full, Rev 3:2 . Job had repented before, Job 40:4-5 , but not so completely. Dico hic narrari poenitentiam Iobi plenam, saith Piscator. Here he doth it thoroughly, by a deep and downright repentance, such as was never to be repented of.
Job Chapter 42
We have now the great object of God manifested. It would not at all have been so well for Job to have heard it before; but he had to walk very simply, and to learn to confide in God; to be perfectly sure that God could not fail to be faithful and gracious. Yet the trial was severe; and we knew that Job broke down, as every one since the world began has done except the Lord Himself. And indeed, it is very instructive to contrast where the Lord speaks of His suffering, with the irritation that was shown by even so admirable a man as Job. But still we have had the whole case out; and nothing can be more beautiful and striking and instructive than the book locked at as a whole.
You will observe that it is only in the closing chapter that we have the story and bringing in of “Jehovah” in the dealings with Job. No doubt in what the Lord said to Job, we have it too, but that is coming to the conclusion of the book. In the parts of the book that precede we have nothing of the kind except in the first two chapters. There we have Jehovah the moral Governor, and that not in the way of a nation, but applied to one single soul, yet no doubt other people were tried and brought into blessing; or, at any rate, they had mercy shown to them, as in the case of the three friends. But what we find is that everyone concerned, except Elihu, has to be truly humbled. Elihu is very peculiar, because he takes no part, and we should not have known there was such a person; and he only, and suddenly, appears when the friends of Job had all been silenced, and Job had nothing more to say; for when Elihu spoke, Job was silent still, he could not answer. Still all was not yet wrought completely in his soul till Jehovah appears.
But now it is very striking to see that in this Book we have all the great elements that appear in the rest of the Old Testament. We should not have known there was an Israel from this book. We have no reference to the law that was given by Moses, nor to the peculiar place in which the sons of Abraham were set. The very object of the Book is to show that God remains God, and more than that, that “Jehovah” (the covenant name of God) would skew He had intimate personal dealings with a pious man, and in point of fact one that was chosen by God for this great trial – the most faithful man then found upon the earth. Even Jacob was not one fit for such a trial, even supposing Jacob and Job had been contemporaries. For although there was a great deal that came out very beautifully as Jacob grew older in the way, there was an immense deal that had to be sifted; there was a great deal that he had to be sorry for, and that he was chastised for at various times of his life, from early days comparatively till his later ones. So that Jacob was not at all as suitable a person as Job.
Job seems to have been a man sheltered (if I might so say) by God, so that he knew very little of the corruption that was in the world through lust. As far as he was concerned he seems to have been prospered in a way that very few men have been; for although he was a pious man, and therefore liable to be imposed upon by the wicked men of that generation, as such men usually are, yet he was really a prince among men. But the sorrowful thing was that Job thought a great deal of it; he admired himself a great deal too much; and further he liked his “nest.” He hoped that he would never have that nest disturbed, and that he would die in his nest, as he said. But God intended to teach him a very severe lesson before that came to pass. In point of fact he became more blest than ever; and there we find ourselves very much upon Old Testament ground. He got large flocks and greater herds; and he had possessions too in the way of love; everybody could not do too much for him after he came into prosperity. That is the way of this world, and that was the way of even Job’s friends. But he had more camels, more horses, more herds, and fairer daughters at the end than at the beginning. That is all entirely outside what we know.
In short, we do not find suffering with Christ, or suffering for Christ, throughout the Old Testament. Nor is it the ordinary way in which God acted then. I was only reading this morning in a little paper that came from Spain; and the great object of the person who wrote that paper – who has been seen in this room, too, though not in communion with us – was that the ways of God were always the same. That is where our good sister is altogether wrong. The ways of God differ greatly; the ways of God were quite different in paradise from what they were outside paradise; and they were different after the flood from what they were before; and they were different in Israel again from what they had been before the law was given; and they are still more different now that Christ is come and that redemption is accomplished. I suppose people mean by it that God’s character is always immutable. Certainly that is all right; God does not change; but God in His sovereign wisdom takes different ways in dealing with every one of us. At the same time there are general ways that subsist at particular times. There are deeper ways now than ever, since Christ came, and we are expected to enter into the ways of God, as well as His counsels which are now revealed for the first time. Heavenly counsels they did not know anything about in Old Testament times. They knew the purpose of God for the earth; they gradually knew that better and better as things went on, and as the regular prophets who wrote their prophecies began to appear. But the ways of God are always according to what occupies Himself, and what He is doing in a general way. Yet at the same time He carries on a moral government with every one of us, so that we have to do with Him.
And that was what Job had to learn – that there was, unknown to himself, what was inconsistent with the presence of God. It was not that he doubted a Redeemer; he fully believed in one; but that was a different thing. And people may believe in the Saviour now, and yet may never have been brought personally into the presence of God as a practical thing. It is quite a different thing to have it, as the philosophers say, “objectively,” from what it is to make it our own “subjectively.” That was just exactly where Job was. He had no subjective knowledge of it; he had not appropriated it to himself. He rejoiced in the goodness of God. He was a faithful man. We see him acting as a priest, but not as a king; and we have it in a more glorious manner at the end of the book than at the beginning; because we find he had certain fears about his sons and his daughters, but when he had gone through all, he had no fear at all. There was no reserve; he was not at all afraid of anything coming. But he was put into the extreme suffering that might belong to any man. At first the sufferings were such as were common to man. It is not an uncommon thing for a very rich man to become very poor. It is not an uncommon thing for a man to lose all his property. It may be not merely by robbery, but by other means sometimes through lack of wisdom and other people taking advantage, and so on; there are many ways in which there may be a very great reverse; and further, a person might be suddenly changed from glowing health to be the most miserable object possible.
But I do not call these spiritual sufferings; they are what are common to man. It might be so with an unconverted man; only there was this peculiarity about Job, which he did not know at first – that God was allowing Satan to bring all these things. Satan’s pleasure and hope was to entangle Job’s feet and cast him down, and that he would curse God. That was what Satan dearly longed to bring about. God allowed him to have his way, but not to kill Job. That would have been agreeable to Job; but it would not have brought out the great moral of the tale, which is, blessing brought into his soul by the very things that seemed to be against him, and not merely by the things that he experienced. When he began to find fault, he had to learn that that very God was One who never could swerve from what was excellent, and that in all this He had a purpose of blessing for Job. Not merely in his having outward blessings, i.e., of a temporal kind, but blessing for his soul.
And all this is very striking in so early a book as this of the Old Testament. For there is no reason to doubt that it is quite as early as the Book of Genesis, and very probably written by the same man. It is earlier, I do not hesitate to say, than the Book of Exodus. It may have followed Genesis or not; that I cannot say. They may have been comparatively together. It might even have been before Genesis, as far as that is concerned; but it is extremely early, and before Israel’s history as a nation began. There is, in the book, no coming out of Egypt, crossing the wilderness, and going into the land – not even the slightest allusion to any of them. Had these things then taken place an allusion would have been very highly appropriate; but there is nothing of the kind.
Still, there we have the great elements that we find elsewhere in the Old Testament. The place of sacrifice – you know how very early that came in – from the Fall; and how the first great action of Adam’s sons was decided by faith or the lack of faith – Cain bringing a mere offering which would have been all very well after a sacrifice, but showing a total lack of sense of sin, and also of what-was due to God. Abel on the contrary brought his sacrifice; there was death brought in between him and God. That looked onward to the death of Christ; but I am speaking now simply of the sacrifice; and Abel’s faith, therefore, offered that sacrifice. That answers to the death of Christ now. Any attempt to stand before God without that now, shows that I have no proper sense of sin, or of God’s holiness. I neither know myself nor Him; else I should surely lock to the one great sacrifice that completes and terminates all others – the sacrifice of Christ.
Well, then again, we find another very important truth from the beginning of it, and that is, the connection of heaven with man upon the earth, and that which is about to take place in man on the earth, arranged in heaven before it reaches the man himself. Well, that is true now; that is going on still. We find that is carried on afterwards. We see it in David – another phase of it – Satan’s opposition, in the last chapter of 2 Samuel (and in 1 Chronicles, repeated in another form); and, further, in the Book of Kings we have it. But this Book of Job was written hundreds of years before. So that it was perfectly original in Job’s case. It had not been written in any other book until long after. And there we find another terrible personage; not only the angels, familiar with the presence of God, and God telling out before them what is going to be upon the earth; but the devil, man’s great enemy; yet withal the perfect supremacy of God in His love and in His power. He particularly brings Job’s case before Satan; and He (what we may call) glories in Job before the devil; and the devil, of course, is excited to every kind of spite and jealousy because of that very thing; and God allows all this to be, knowing perfectly well, but always working by His own grace, that in due time all would be set right. It might require His own personal intervention, and that is one of the great peculiarities of the Book of Job.
But we find the same thing in Zechariah – Jehovah speaking to Joshua, and Satan resisting; and this in one of the latest books of the Old Testament. So that here we find that Job has the same great truth in an earlier form – at the beginning of the Old Testament – of what afterwards is found near its end. Because Zechariah was only just before Malachi, and in fact they may have been contemporaries. They were post-captivity prophets. And then comes the great trial. And the remarkable thing is, first of all, Satan was entirely defeated. Satan could do nothing with Job. He did his worst, and all that time Job was seen at his best.
But there was that in Job’s heart that must be got out somehow; and it is remarkable that the friends of Job, not the enemy, seem to have been the means. And God has a very humbling lesson for them, as He has a humbling lesson for Job. They got it all round; and, in point of fact, Job’s friends were more ignorant of God’s ways than Job; and they took a very bad view of his case, and this, when it is about a good man, is always a danger. There may be something that the Lord has to chastise; but very often those who try to do it only show their own shallowness, and also that they are very unspiritual – that they do not enter into the mind of God about it. That was the case with the three friends of Job. I have no doubt that they were highly respectable, and that they were also thought to be very pious men indeed. And I do not doubt it. But pious men have to find their level.
And so it was with Job and his three friends, and the great debate goes on; and they are sitting, who had come to sympathise; and the end of their looking at him and seeing the terrible state in which he was, was that they had not a word to say to him; and Job could not understand that. If they had not been there he might have stood it. But sometimes we can bear alone what we cannot bear in the presence of other people, and that was the case with Job. And Job accordingly, after bearing this for seven days and nights, their sitting demure, judging him all the time, with not a word of sympathy – this aroused Job, and he broke forth into expressions that were certainly very unlike his habit, and anything but glorifying to God. And then came their doubts of him, growing more and more passionate, until they began to think he must be a very wicked man. They went upon the ground that what occurs now is according to the absolute character of God.
Why, it is not so at all. If things were according to God’s mind now, there would be no such thing as war; there would be no such thing as intriguing; there would be no such thing as people taking advantage one of another; there would be no such thing as robbery or drunkenness or any other kind of wickedness allowed. There will be a day when that will be the case, and when the state of things on earth will answer to the mind of God in heaven. Why, that is what is expressed in what is called “The Lord’s Prayer” – “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” That will never be till the Lord reigns. And these men had the very foolish notion that no pious man walking properly could ever suffer, and that if a person came into very great suffering it was because he was a very great sinner, and, if nobody knew it, he must be a hypocrite.
That was the “amiable,” or “loving,” or whatever you call it – self-righteous really – -the “self-righteous” judgment, with gross ignorance of both God and man, of the three friends of Job. Well, he resisted it and resented it; and he accordingly told them very plainly that they were physicians of no value at all; that they, instead of giving him comfort, on the contrary cauterised his wounds, and that they only inflamed them – in point of fact, that they were comforters of no value whatever, at the same time that they thought they were the wise men; and so he stopped, and whenever they uttered a word, he uttered a better; and so at last compelled them to silence. Then it was that we find Elihu, who appears very opportunely, and in what is very beautiful to a spiritual mind who would understand it, for he was a young man, and they were old – he had kept silence until they had not a word to say – not only the three men, but Job also, for he had come to the end of his long parley; and until that was the case Elihu never opened his mouth. But when he did, he told them plainly that he was obliged, young man as he was, to speak for God; and that he was indignant, first that the three men had entirely misinterpreted Job, and secondly that Job had misinterpreted God; and therefore that Job deserved to be rebuked, and that he must tell him plainly where he was wrong. But after he did that, he disappeared. So that he plays the part of an interpreter, one of a thousand. This is what Job had wanted at the beginning because he was terrified when he thought of the majesty of God; and he wanted some one that was of clay like himself.
‘Well,’ says Elihu, ‘I am a man of clay like you; and there is nothing to frighten you in me, and therefore I will tell you the truth, that you have been speaking in a way altogether unbecoming a saint of God. You have allowed yourself to be roused and inflamed by the bitter reproaches of others and you have vented it upon God; your proper place was to remember that God was carrying on His discipline – that He does that even with the unconverted, and still more with the converted, that they might walk consistently. This is what He was doing with Job; and Job’s place should have been to judge himself, and submit to God.’ Well, that was exactly true. And the Lord then intervenes in the case; and He overwhelms Job by a succession of questions that one of the most scientific men that ever lived could not answer.
One of the things in which the Germans have been successful – not about the Bible; there they are nowhere; but about matters of science on this earth; they have had some very able men of late years, and nobody perhaps was a greater oracle in science and in knowledge of the world generally than the famous Baron Alexander Humboldt; and these words of Jehovah astonished him; and he acknowledged that what Job could not answer, the men of science cannot answer yet. It is overwhelming to them; because although men of science are very clever about secondary causes, they are always stopped by primary causes. They never can arrive at the great cause, and they do not want the great cause. The reason is this – that nobody ever learns God by knowledge or by wisdom. We learn God by our want of Him. We learn God when we are poor sinners overwhelmed in our souls. And who can meet us but God? Repentance, therefore, is always toward God; and repentance means that I take the place of nothing but a sinner; for God will show me mercy; and God shows it in our Lord Jesus. However, Job did not know and could not know the Lord Jesus as we know Him; but he was waiting, for Him. That is another grand truth that comes out.
No doubt the way in which Job looked for the Lord was rather as a Kinsman-redeemer who would also be an avenger on the enemy. Well that is very natural. “The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” That is the proper Old Testament idea. But he could not enter into it as yet. It was not given for a great while after. There is a most remarkable Psalm of David – Psa 22 , and the most remarkable in the Book of Psalms in that way. And it is not the only one. We have a companion one particularly in Psa 102 . And we have another that is more with reference to the Avenger in Psa 69 . And there are two others that I need not dwell upon now; but at any rate, in the Old Testament there is One that is coming to avenge. And therefore Israel looks, at the coming of the Lord, for their enemies to be destroyed at the same time that they themselves are delivered. That is not our faith at all of the Lord’s Second Coming. We look to go up to heaven as the Lord went up to heaven. It will make no difference to the earth, and men will not see it; they will know that we are gone somehow or other, as they knew about the Lord.
That was a nine days’ wonder, and was soon forgotten. And so it will be then. One would think that it would make a great impression all over the world as to the saints disappearing; but it will be a day when they are given up to hardness of heart, and when judicial blindness will fall upon them, so that God will not therefore be working to awaken their souls. He will, by converted Jews, send out the everlasting gospel to the Gentiles, and there will be a very great gathering of converts, Jews as well as of the Gentiles too; but that is during the time that we are up in heaven before the Lord appears. But the view of the Saviour as dying for us, and consequently giving the meaning of all the sacrifices – all this was very much hidden from the Old Testament saints. Why, even the apostles did not understand it till the Lord rose. They had no idea of it, and did not believe He was going to die; and I have very little doubt that Judas flattered himself, when he was getting the money for selling the Lord, that the Lord would escape out of their hands; and when he found that the Lord was going to die, he committed suicide. He gave himself up entirely to despair and to the devil.
But in Isa 53 we have a very luminous prophecy. Yes, it is all very luminous to us now; but what was it in Isaiah’s day? It is very doubtful whether any of them understood it. Look at that good treasurer that came up from Ethiopia to worship at Jerusalem, reading from that very chapter, and not understanding what it meant. He did not know at all. It is very possible that the treasurer had heard of the death of the prophet of Nazareth, but he did not connect it with the chapter at all. And as I have said, the apostles themselves were never clear about it till the fact had taken place. And it was only after the Holy Ghost was given that there was any power to proclaim it; but after the Lord breathed upon them, they do seem to have entered into it during those forty or fifty days – forty while the Lord was with them, and ten days later before the Holy Ghost was given. So much as there is even of types of it in Scripture, so little does man put things together; and so much are we beholden to the Spirit of God for giving us to understand the Scriptures.
Now, I refer to that because we have again, let me mention, another thing very remarkable, as showing how far they had got – the two resurrections. Job 14 , as I have already pointed out, is with reference to the resurrection of man, and this is only when the heavens are no more. But in Job 19 it is the resurrection of the saint; and there is brought in the Redeemer, and the Redeemer standing upon the dust of the earth; that is before the heavens are no more. You see that exactly agrees with the two resurrections in Rev 20 ; the resurrection of the saints while the earth is still going on, and the resurrection of the wicked after heaven and earth are all completely dissolved, and are to reappear as the new heaven and the new earth. But Job does not speak about that. Isaiah does, but applies it to Israel. He takes a very contracted view; he was not allowed to see it fully. But 2Pe 3 brings it out fully as a matter of doctrine; and John, in Rev 21 , has a heavenly vision that manifests it to us and makes all plain.
Well, Jehovah overwhelms Job; but even He does not speak of the sacrifice of Christ. What Job confesses is, his impropriety, the forgetfulness of his own ignorance and of God’s omniscience – for Job had pretended to understand what God had not yet revealed to him. It was not yet revealed. It was after this. But what is a man to do when he does not understand? Why, to look up confidingly to God; and secondly, to judge himself, lest he might allow any thoughts that were wrong. Job was wrong in these two ways, but is completely set right; for these wonderful questions of the Almighty laid Job in the dust for the first time. And the Lord stopped in the middle of it and addressed himself to Job, and even then Job said, “Behold I am vile.” He now had come down to a thought of himself. It is not merely that ‘I was vile before I knew anything of Thee,’ but, ‘In spite of all that Thou hast been to me, and in spite of all the grace shown me, I am obliged to come to this, “Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer Thee?” Well, nothing at all. That man that was such a fine answerer of others, and particularly eloquent about himself! For there is as grand a description as you can have of an admirable saint, in Job 31 . But the misfortune is, it was Job talking about himself. Now, it is a fine thing to be eloquent about other people’s goodness; but it is not a fine subject for oneself, and there is what betrayed Job. He had the greatest pleasure in thinking of the great honour showed him, and how the nobles held their tongues when Job uttered a word, and how everyone bowed down to Job. And now it had come to this! that he was the ridicule of all the naughty little boys, and that the bigger boys tried to entangle his feet and push him down – and all the rascally ways of a wretched world – just such things as would be now if people saw a grandee that had come down to be going in filthy rags in the street, and all his body a mass of corruption!
Oh, it is a terrible plight, and an awful thing! But how good the result was! Well, now, he says, “I will lay mine hand upon my mouth” – that mouth that talked so well! “Once have I spoken; but I will not answer; yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.” That was one good sign. But now after the Lord had brought it fully out, what He dwells upon are two things in particular – His supremacy, and also His power, accompanied by the most tender care; not merely of good animals, such as sheep and lambs, or the like, but of lions and lionesses, which certainly are very redoubtable. And the eagle – an object of interest to God particularly; yea, and further, He had chosen to make the ostrich; and although the ostrich is no bird of flight, but simply a very fast runner, still, there it was, and could beat a racehorse for a good while. Who is it? – was it you, Job, that managed all these things? Was it you that cared for them all, provided for them all? Were you born when they began? In fact, Job was thoroughly laid low on every point, and, in every possible way, overwhelmed with the sense of his ignorance and presumption in talking about the far more wonderful ways of a God dealing with a man’s heart, man’s soul, man’s circumstances now. The Lord does not express that last part. It was God showing His majesty, power, wisdom and goodness in outward things. If that were true of God, how much more in spiritual things? And this is the great lesson of the Book that Job had to apply. And it had its effect.
“I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.” Not only no word; he had spoken wrongly. “Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge?” Why, it was himself; he owns it. This is his great confession, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear” – I knew it objectively; but now that I have made it my own, applied it to my own soul, my own circumstances, my own state – “now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ There was the great moral victory that God had accomplished in the face of Satan and in the face of the three friends of Job, and in the face of Job himself. For what he had said might have provoked anyone but God. And so it is that we see the wonderful goodness of the Lord in the midst of it all.
“And it was so, that after Jehovah had spoken these things unto Job, Jehovah said to Eliphaz the Temanite” – why did He speak to him? He observed that none of these three men said a word. They did not profit by it like Job. If they had properly profited by it they would have joined Job and said, ‘O Lord, forgive our folly; we have sinned not only against Thee, but against our dear friend Job.’ But no, they held their tongues, as so many people do when they are very wrong. They say nothing. They ought to speak out. “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” When was it that Job spoke the thing that was right? The first statement which I have just now read from Job 40 , after the Lord had first spoken; and then the second statement that the Lord added. It was not his fine speeches. That was not the thing at all that the Lord valued. It was his humbling himself and taking the true place. And the Lord put the others in their place. They did not humble themselves. But the Lord threatened them, and told them – not that they had spoken now, for they had not spoken – “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. Therefore take unto you new seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, and my servant Job shall pray for you” (vers. 7, 8). He had to become an intercessor for them. “For him will I accept.”
It was all perfectly clear now; so clear, that he could act for those who were wrong. “Lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job.” Now they were bowed; and accordingly they that were sitting in judgment upon Job, took the place of being offenders against God, and looked to Job to entreat the Lord for them.
“And Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends.” There was the returning them good for evil. He prayed for his friends. “Also Jehovah gave Job twice as much as he had before.” Then we find everybody turning round (ver. 11). “So Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep” – just twice what he had before. Now that will be accomplished – what answers to that – on the earth.
This is not heavenly recompense at all, but what will be the case with man on the earth. The Old Testament does not take you off that ground, and even in Job, who was not a Jew, we find the same thing. The time when Israel will be blessed will be the time when the nations will be blessed. Israel is the first-born of the nations, and they will come in subordinately to the Jew. But that time is not arrived, and it will be the perfect contrast of this time. Our place is in Christ, just as, figuratively speaking, mankind was in Adam, as being the one who was the father of them all. Now there is another head, and we are spoken of as being in Him – in Christ. And another thing is true “At that day, ye shall know.” The great truth of the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, is that in Ephesians we are in Christ for all our blessing; and in Colossians it is Christ in us in order that we may fulfil our responsibility of manifesting Him who is in us. So that if the one is the great comfort of the Christian, the other is the solemn reminder to the Christian. “Ye in Me” – there God was blessing; “I in you” – that you may count upon Me, to fulfil your responsibility here below. Well, we have nothing of that kind here; but we have everything that heart could wish here below. Job was a far greater man than ever – if you count that to consist in the vast things that he possessed; and, further, he was blessed in his family particularly.
“After this lived Job an hundred and forty years.” I do not mean by that, and I do not think the words are intended to convey, that Job lived 140 years after this was over, but that the whole life of Job was 140 years; a very respectable age – very. It was not so long as that of Abraham or Isaac; but it was, I think, something about as much as Jacob’s, thereabout in a general way, and greater than that of Moses. So it was before Moses, who in his psalm (Psa 110 ) tells us, that “the days of our years are threescore years and ten,” etc. Moses seems to have been the writer of the Book. He and his brother Aaron did not arrive at 140, but Job did. But if you suppose him to have lived 80 years before the 140, it would make him far older than any of the patriarchs. I do not mean some of the elders before the Flood, but after the Flood people did not live to such great ages – except immediately. And so the Book ends with Job dying full of years.
W. K.
Job
‘THE END OF THE LORD’
Job 42:1 – Job 42:10 The close of the Book of Job must be taken in connection with its prologue, in order to get the full view of its solution of the mystery of pain and suffering. Indeed the prologue is more completely the solution than the ending is; for it shows the purpose of Job’s trials as being, not his punishment, but his testing. The whole theory that individual sorrows were the result of individual sins, in the support of which Job’s friends poured out so many eloquent and heartless commonplaces, is discredited from the beginning. The magnificent prologue shows the source and purpose of sorrow. The epilogue in this last chapter shows the effect of it in a good man’s character, and afterwards in his life.
So we have the grim thing lighted up, as it were, at the two ends. Suffering comes with the mission of trying what stuff a man is made of, and it leads to closer knowledge of God, which is blessed; to lowlier self-estimation, which is also blessed; and to renewed outward blessings, which hide the old scars and gladden the tortured heart.
Job’s final word to God is in beautiful contrast with much of his former unmeasured utterances. It breathes lowliness, submission, and contented acquiescence in a providence partially understood. It does not put into Job’s mouth a solution of the problem, but shows how its pressure is lightened by getting closer to God. Each verse presents a distinct element of thought and feeling.
First comes, remarkably enough, not what might have been expected, namely, a recognition of God’s righteousness, which had been the attribute impugned by Job’s hasty words, but of His omnipotence. God ‘can do everything,’ and none of His ‘thoughts’ or purposes can be ‘restrained’ Rev. Ver.. There had been frequent recognitions of that attribute in the earlier speeches, but these had lacked the element of submission, and been complaint rather than adoration. Now, the same conviction has different companions in Job’s mind, and so has different effects, and is really different in itself. The Titan on his rock, with the vulture tearing at his liver, sullenly recognised Jove’s power, but was a rebel still. Such had been Job’s earlier attitude, but now that thought comes to him along with submission, and so is blessed. Its recurrence here, as in a very real sense a new conviction, teaches us how old beliefs may flash out into new significance when seen from a fresh point of view, and how the very same thought of God may be an argument for arraigning and for vindicating His providence.
The prominence given, both in the magnificent chapters in which God answers Job out of the whirlwind and in this final confession, to power instead of goodness, rests upon the unspoken principle that ‘the divine nature is not a segment, but a circle. Any one divine attribute implies all others. Omnipotence cannot exist apart from righteousnes’s Davidson’s Job , Cambridge Bible for Schools. A mere naked omnipotence is not God. If we rightly understand His power, we can rest upon it as a Hand sustaining, not crushing, us. ‘He doeth all things well’ is a conviction as closely connected with ‘I know that Thou canst do all things’ as light is with heat.
The second step in Job’s confession is the acknowledgment of the incompleteness of his and all men’s materials and capacities for judging God’s providence. Job 42:3 begins with quoting God’s rebuke Job 38:2. It had cut deep, and now Job makes it his own confession. We should thus appropriate as our own God’s merciful indictments, and when He asks, ‘Who is it?’ should answer with lowliness, ‘Lord, it is I.’ Job had been a critic; he is a worshipper. He had tried to fathom the bottomless, and been angry because his short measuring-line had not reached the depths. But now he acknowledges that he had been talking about what passed his comprehension, and also that his words had been foolish in their rashness.
Is then the solution of the whole only that old commonplace of the unsearchableness of the divine judgments? Not altogether; for the prologue gives, if not a complete, yet a real, key to them. But still, after all partial solutions, there remains the inscrutable element in them. The mystery of pain and suffering is still a mystery; and while general principles, taught us even more clearly in the New Testament than in this book, do lighten the ‘weight of all this unintelligible world,’ we have still to take Job’s language as the last word on the matter, and say, ‘How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!’
For individuals, and on the wider field of the world, God’s way is in the sea; but that does not bewilder those who also know that it is also in the sanctuary. Job’s confession as to his rash speeches is the best estimate of many elaborate attempts to ‘vindicate the ways of God to man.’ It is better to trust than to criticise, better to wait than to seek prematurely to understand.
Job 42:4 , like Job 42:3 , quotes the words of God Job 38:3 ; Job 40:7. They yield a good meaning, if regarded as a repetition of God’s challenge, for the purpose of disclaiming any such presumptuous contest. But they are perhaps better understood as expressing Job’s longing, in his new condition of humility, for fuller light, and his new recognition of the way to pierce to a deeper understanding of the mystery, by illumination from God granted in answer to his prayer. He had tried to solve his problem by much, and sometimes barely reverent, thinking. He had racked brain and heart in the effort, but he has learned a more excellent way, as the Psalmist had, who said, ‘When I thought, in order to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I.’ Prayer will do more for clearing mysteries than speculation, however acute, and it will change the aspect of the mysteries which it does not clear from being awful to being solemn-veils covering depths of love, not clouds obscuring the sun.
The centre of all Job’s confession is in Job 42:5 , which contrasts his former and present knowledge of God, as being mere hearsay before, and eyesight now. A clearer understanding, but still more, a sense of His nearness, and an acquaintance at first hand, are implied in the bold words, which must not be interpreted of any outward revelation to sense, but of the direct, full, thrilling consciousness of God which makes all men’s words about Him seem poor. That change was the master transformation in Job’s case, as it is for us all. Get closer to God, realise His presence, live beneath His eye and with your eyes fixed on Him, and ancient puzzles will puzzle no longer, and wounds will cease to smart, and instead of angry expostulation or bewildered attempts at construing His dealings, there will come submission, and with submission, peace.
The cure for questionings of His providence is experience of His nearness, and blessedness therein. Things that loomed large dwindle, and dangers melt away. The landscape is the same in shadow and sunshine; but when the sun comes out, even snow and ice sparkle, and tender beauty starts into visibility in grim things. So, if we see God, the black places of life are lighted; and we cease to feel the pressure of many difficulties of speculation and practice, both as regards His general providence and His revelation in law and gospel.
The end of the whole matter is Job’s retractation of his words and his repentance. ‘I abhor’ has no object expressed, and is better taken as referring to the previous speeches than to ‘myself.’ He means thereby to withdraw them all. The next clause, ‘I repent in dust and ashes,’ carries the confession a step farther. He recognises guilt in his rash speeches, and bows before his God confessing his sin. Where are his assertions of innocence gone? One sight of God has scattered them, as it ever does. A man who has learned his own sinfulness will find few difficulties and no occasions for complaint in God’s dealings with him. If we would see aright the meaning of our sorrows, we must look at them on our knees. Get near to God in heart-knowledge of Him, and that will teach our sinfulness, and the two knowledges will combine to explain much of the meaning of sorrow, and to make the unexplained residue not hard to endure.
The epilogue in prose which follows Job’s confession, tells of the divine estimate of the three friends, of Job’s sacrifice for them, and of his renewed outward prosperity. The men who had tried to vindicate God’s righteousness are charged with not having spoken that which is right; the man who has passionately impugned it is declared to have thus spoken. No doubt, Eliphaz and his colleagues had said a great many most excellent, pious things, and Job as many wild and untrue ones. But their foundation principle was not a true representation of God’s providence, since it was the uniform connection of sin with sorrow, and the accurate proportion which these bore to each other.
Job, on the other hand, had spoken truth in his denials of these principles, and in his longings to have the righteousness of God set in clear relation to his own afflictions. We must remember, too, that the friends were talking commonplaces learned by rote, while Job’s words came scalding hot from his heart. Most excellent truth may be so spoken as to be wrong; and it is so, if spoken heartlessly, regardless of sympathy, and flung at sufferers like a stone, rather than laid on their hearts as a balm. God lets a true heart dare much in speech; for He knows that the sputter and foam prove that ‘the heart’s deeps boil in earnest.’
Job is put in the place of intercessor for the three-a profound humiliation for them and an honour for him. They obeyed at once, showing that they have learned their lesson, as well as Job his. An incidental lesson from that final picture of the sufferer become the priest requiting accusations with intercession, is the duty of cherishing kind feelings and doing kind acts to those who say hard things of us. It would be harder for some of us to offer sacrifices for our Eliphazes than to argue with them. And yet another is that sorrow has for one of its purposes to make the heart more tender, both for the sorrows and the faults of others.
Note, too, that it was ‘when Job prayed for his friends’ that the Lord turned his captivity. That is a proverbial expression, bearing witness, probably, to the deep traces left by the Exodus, for reversing calamity. The turning-point was not merely the confession, but the act, of beneficence. So, in ministering to others, one’s own griefs may be soothed.
The restoration of outward good in double measure is not meant as the statement of a universal law of Providence, and still less as a solution of the problem of the book. But it is putting the truth that sorrows, rightly borne, yield peaceable fruit at the last, in the form appropriate to the stage of revelation which the whole book represents; that is, one in which the doctrine of immortality, though it sometimes rises before Job’s mind as an aspiration of faith, is not set in full light.
To us, living in the blaze of light which Jesus Christ has let into the darkness of the future, the ‘end of the Lord’ is that heaven should crown the sorrows of His children on earth. We can speak of light, transitory affliction working out an eternal weight of glory. The book of Job is expressing substantially the same expectation, when it paints the calm after the storm and the restoration in double portion of vanished blessings. Many desolate yet trusting sufferers know how little such an issue is possible for their grief, but if they have more of God in clearer sight of Him, they will find empty places in their hearts and homes filled.
the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.
Chapter 42
Then Job answered the LORD, and said, I know that you can do everything, and that no thought can be withheld from thee ( Job 42:1-2 ).
Pretty important: “I know God can do everything.” Secondly, “I know that you can’t hide a single thought from God.”
The Bible says concerning Jesus that He didn’t need anyone to come and tell Him of other people because He knew man and He knew what was in man. You can’t hide any thoughts from God. The Bible tells us that some day our very thoughts are to be judged, for God is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of a man’s heart. We are going to be judged not so much by what we do but by what motivated us to do the things that we did. Now you may be doing many right things but with a wrong motivation. Jesus said, “Take heed to yourself that you do not your righteousness before men to be seen of men” ( Mat 6:1 ) to be looked upon by men as righteous and holy, and therefore you’re doing your deeds in order to get this accolade of man is wrong. God’s going to judge the motivation. Our works are to be tried by fire and many of them will be burned like wood, hay and stubble. Those that remain will be rewarded for, but much of our works, done out of wrong motivation, will not endure the testing of fire. God is a searcher of the thoughts, the intents of a man’s heart.
So Job says, “Lord, I know that I can’t hide any thought from You.”
Who is he that hides the counsel without knowledge? therefore I have uttered what I ( Job 42:3 )
Now Job is confessing.
I have uttered what I did not understand; things that were too wonderful for me, which I did not know ( Job 42:3 ).
I’ve been talking, Lord, out of my hat. I don’t even know what I was talking about.
Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, declare thou unto me. For I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye seeth thee ( Job 42:4-5 ).
And so Job, the discovery of God. “God, I’ve heard of You. I’ve been talking about things that I’ve heard, but now I see. My eye seeth Thee.” It’s always a glorious day in our lives when God is moved from our heads to our hearts. From just a knowledge to an experience. “I’ve heard of Thee, God, with my ears. I’ve heard people talk about You. I’ve talked about You. But, God, I was talking about things I didn’t really know, I didn’t really understand, I didn’t really see. I’ve heard about You with the hearing of my ears, but now I really see You.” And what a difference it makes when our eyes are open and we actually begin to see God. “Blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God” ( Mat 5:8 ). And how glorious when our eyes behold, when the spiritual eyes are opened and I really begin to have a real experience with God in my life. And the scriptures are suddenly opened up. A whole new dimension of spiritual life is open to me as I am born again by the Spirit and come into the spiritual dimension. No longer just hearing about God, but now actually seeing, comprehending God. And in the discovery of God there comes the resultant discovery of self.
Wherefore I abhor myself, I repent in dust and ashes ( Job 42:6 ).
Daniel spoke about when God gave to him this revelation when he saw the glory of God in this revelation, he said, “Then was my comeliness turned into ugliness within me” ( Dan 10:8 ). When Peter saw Jesus, he said, “Depart from me. I am a sinful man” ( Luk 5:8 ). When Isaiah saw the Lord, he said, “Woe is me, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell amongst people of unclean lips” ( Isa 6:5 ). Seeing God gives you the greatest insight on yourself you’ve ever had. So many times a person is, “Oh, I’m pretty good. I’m, you know… ” Once they see God, that’s all it takes to bring a man down to his knees begging for mercy, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” When I can see me as God sees me, a sinful, hopeless wretch, no longer looking at myself, deceiving myself, justifying myself, but seeing me as God sees me. But that can’t happen until I first see God. “Lord, I’ve heard of You, now I see You, now I see me. I abhor myself.”
And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD turned to his friends, to Eliphaz the Temanite, and he said, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against your two friends: for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has. Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that which ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job ( Job 42:7-8 ).
Now, let me say that God doesn’t like you going around saying false things about Him. He doesn’t appreciate that at all. Or going around speaking for Him things that He has not said. Now there are many people who are guilty of spreading false concepts about God. God does not look kindly upon that at all. And He told Eliphaz, “You guys haven’t been speaking right about Me. Now, you offer, and you ask Job to pray for you. I’m going to listen to him; I won’t listen you because you have not spoken things that are true about Me. And so you’d better get Job to pray for you.”
So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: and the LORD also accepted Job. And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all of his brothers, and all of his sisters ( Job 42:9-11 ),
Where were they, I wonder, when he was in affliction?
and all of they that had been his acquaintance before, and they did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemima ( Job 42:11-14 );
Which means “a dove.”
and the name of the second was Kezia ( Job 42:14 );
Which is a sort of a spice.
and the name of the third was Kerenhappuch ( Job 42:14 ).
Which means “a horn of paint.” Now I don’t know why they would call a girl “a horn of paint.”
And in all of the land there were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. And after this Job lived for a hundred and forty years ( Job 42:15-16 ),
Now if Job indeed was a contemporary to Abraham as is thought, 180 years is not unusual. Abraham lived to be 180 years old. This was actually just about two generations after the flood. And so longevity was still common in those days. And so after this experience, Job lived for another 140 years.
and he saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even to four generations. ( Job 42:16 )
So he had his great great grandkids all around him.
So Job died, being old and full of days ( Job 42:17 ).
The interesting story of Job. A story that deals with the problems of pain, the problems of suffering. Why do the righteous suffer? Why are the ungodly oftentimes prosperous? And yet, though it deals with the issues, it doesn’t come up with any firm answers. Righteous people often suffer, and what we know is we don’t know the reason. Good people often experience pain; we don’t know the reason. Godly people sometimes die young; we don’t know the reason. Righteous people are often sick; we don’t know the reason. Sinners are many times prosperous; we don’t know the reason. Now because we don’t know the reasons, we should not draw false conclusions as Job did. “It doesn’t pay to try to live right. It doesn’t pay to try to be good, because you’re going to get afflicted anyhow.” Those were wrong conclusions that Job drew from his experiences.
What we need to realize is that this present suffering is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is going to be revealed in us when Jesus comes for us. So if we do experience hardship or suffering or disappointment, you can’t compare it with the glory that God is going to bestow upon us eternally. “For this present suffering, which is but for a moment, worketh an exceeding eternal weight of glory” ( 2Co 4:17 ). Now, it is important that we remember that as God deals with us He always has eternity in mind. I always have today and tomorrow in mind. And I am oftentimes concerned with my present comfort, with my present ease, with my present prosperity. God is interested in my eternal comfort, in my eternal prosperity and He’s dealing with me over the eternal things, where I am so often only thinking in the time things. But when God is working in your life, He’s always got eternity in mind, for He wants you to enjoy the blessings of His kingdom forever.
Now, there may be things right now that are stumbling you and could drag you into the pit. And so God, because He loves you and wants you to be with Him eternally, will oftentimes take away something that could deter you or turn your mind from Him or to deter you from the path that He wants you to walk. And it isn’t that God doesn’t love you, it isn’t that God is angry with you, it isn’t that God is actually punishing you. God is looking out for your welfare because He knows so much better than you know about your life and about the world around you and about your weaknesses, and God is trying to shield you and protect you.
I can remember when my boys were small. They were fascinated with my shaving. And I would lather up my face and say, “Ho, ho, ho.” You know. And they used to love to watch me shave. And as I would change the blades in the razor, they tried to grab the blade and I slapped their hands. And I said, “No, you can’t play with that.” “Oh, we want to play with it, Daddy.” “No, you can’t.” “Ohhhhhh, mean Daddy.” No, I wasn’t mean. I love them. I knew the dangers of their playing with the razorblade; they didn’t. It looked like it would be fun to take that and cut things with it. That would be a lot of fun. What they didn’t realize is that they would be cutting their fingers, their hands. I knew that. I restrained them.
I think that many times we’re yelling at God and angry with God, “Oh, God, I wanted that. Oh, Lord, You know I wanted that.” You know, “Why don’t You let me play with that?” And God knows that it could hurt you. God knows that it could destroy you. And God is always, always looking at you with the eternity in mind. And He deals with us with eternity in mind and thereby we do not always understand the present inconveniences or deprivations. But God, looking at the eternal, is working in you His eternal purposes. And if you keep that in mind, then you won’t be troubled when you see the ungodly prospering, because you know they’re going to be cut down in a moment. Then you won’t be troubled when you may be going through a hard experience, because you know that God is working in your life in more exceeding, abundant reward in the kingdom. That is why we are told, “Count it all joy when you have these tribulations” ( Jas 1:2 ). “Oh, praise the Lord, I had the worst tribulation this week!” God’s working; He must love me, putting me through the fire. Better that I go through the fire now, better that I be purified now that I might have remaining works rather than to watch all of my works go up in a puff of smoke and enter into heaven by the skin of my teeth. God loves you and God has eternity in His mind and He’s dealing with you in light of eternity.
Father, we thank You for Your dealings with us. Forgive us, Lord, for our complaints, for our folly, for the foolish charges that we make against Thee. God, they are done out of the rashness of our own immaturity, our own lack of understanding. Help us to know Thy ways. Lead us in Thy paths. Lord, may we also have eternity in mind. In Jesus’ name. Amen. “
Job 42:1-6
Job 42
JOB’S REPENTANCE AND THE EPILOGUE
“Then Job answered Jehovah, and said, I know that thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of thine can be restrained.
Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?
Therefore have I uttered things which I understood not,
Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak;
I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.”
“I know that thou canst do all things … etc.” (Job 42:2). “Job acknowledges that God can achieve all that he plans, and that He plans, knowing that he can do all things.” Van Selms elaborated this somewhat, writing, “I sense, from the examples you have cited, the behemoth and the leviathan, that you are able to realize all your plans for your creation, however far these may go beyond human conception. You have reasons for what you do, of which we are totally ignorant”
“Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge” (Job 42:3). “In this Job repeats the question which God had asked in Job 38:2, admitting that he spoke out of limited knowledge, too confidently of things too wonderful for him to understand.” In our interpretation of Job 38:2, we applied the words to the speech of Elihu; but we do not believe that Job’s accepting the application of the words to himself in this verse is a contradiction of that which we alleged earlier. As a matter of fact, all of the speakers in the Book of Job fall under the same blanket indictment, but Job is to be blamed far less than any of the others. Job’s knowledge of God has been greatly expanded; and he has a new appreciation of the extent, complexity and marvelous wonder of God’s creation.
“Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak” (Job 42:4). Earlier, Job had been unwilling to speak (Job 40:4-5); but now, in the light of his greater understanding, he is willing to respond to God’s invitation. “He can now accept the fact that God and his government of man’s life, and even his distribution of rewards and retributions, are ultimately beyond man’s power to comprehend.” Job’s willingness to speak should not be interpreted as evidence that he then understand all about God. He didn’t; nor, in this life, would he ever do so.
“I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5). This must not be understood as a contradiction of the great truth that “No man may see God.” What Job referred to here was God’s revelation to him in the form of a voice out of the whirlwind. Van Selms’ comment on this was, “(My knowledge) was based on hear-say; but now I have been confronted by yourself, although you wrapped yourself in a thunder-cloud as in a garment; and in that form of concealment you did appear to me.”
“But now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5). This cannot mean that Job then knew more about God. Perhaps, he knew even less; but he had found an utterly new conception of God, not as some kind of an impersonal law, but God as a Person, a Person infinitely concerned with human affairs, a Person who would even speak to Job! that being the most wonderful and most incredible thing in the whole book. It revealed a love of God for man as nothing else could possibly have done.
“Now that thou hast revealed thyself unto me, my spiritual eyes are opened; and I begin to see thee in thy true might, thy true greatness, and thy true inscrutableness. I now recognize the distance that separates us.” The same realization came to Job in this marvelous experience that was expressed by the Psalmist: “He (God) remembereth that we are dust” (Psa 103:14). God, of course, holds this remembrance of men continually; and happy indeed is the man who himself finds the grace also to remember it. This grace was given to Job, as revealed in the following verse.
“Wherefore, I abhor myself” (Job 42:6 a). The underlined word here is not in the text, having been supplied by the translators; and, as indicated in the margin, “I loathe my words” is also a legitimate rendition. “Godly hatred of one’s own defilement is the natural accompaniment of a believer’s confrontation with the Holy God.”
“And repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6 b). Of what did Job repent? “Certainly, he did not repent of such sins as his friends had alleged against him; and neither is it enough to say that Job repented of his pride. Repentance here is the mood of a man who realizes his creaturehood and that God is eternally God.”
Here in Job 42:5-6, we have, “The supreme lesson of the book. No new theoretical knowledge of God and his ways has been given to Job; but he has come face to face with God, and that is enough”!
As we come to the end of Job, we are amazed that no answer whatever has been provided for the overriding question regarding the reason behind human suffering. “God is not so much concerned with strengthening man’s faith by giving him answers to his questions, as he is with encouraging the kind of faith that does not demand answers.” As the great Apostle to the Gentiles stated it, “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” (2 Corinthians 3:19). The person who waits till he knows the answers to all his questions will never even begin to serve God.
“Job is a titanic figure of sinful man, standing at midpoint between the Garden of Eden and the New Testament.” God’s manifesting such concern for Job, his unworthy creature, is a pledge of God’s love for all men, and a symbol of that eventual revelation to all mankind in Jesus Christ. He ranks along with Moses, Abraham, Melchizedek, and Jethro the priest of Midian as one of the great monotheists of the Old Testament.
E.M. Zerr:
Job 42:1-6. We should not lose sight of the thoughts expressed at Job 38:3 and Job 40:7. This book as a whole is inspired of God and Job was the human instrument through whom the document was given to man. However, in conducting the great drama, it was necessary for Job to take the role of an uninspired man and do his best to meet the inquiries put to him like a man, or from a human standpoint. This whole paragraph must be considered in the light of these comments. Full acknowledgment was made of the great power and wisdom of God. Uninspired man had exposed his ignorance by pretending to contend with the Lord. Hear, I beseech thee, etc., was a confession that man ought to let God speak while man hears and accepts the teaching. Eye seeth thee could not be literal in view of Exo 33:20, but refers to the arguments that had been made from the works of God in creation. By having the eyes turned to those things they would actually see the evidence of God’s existence. In view of such a forceful situation, the arrogance of man would call for a practical reformation. Job acted as a representative of such a man by making the humble acknowledgment and by prostrating himself in dust and ashes.
Job’s answer is full of the stateliness of a great submission. As he speaks the words of surrender he appears mightier in his submission than all the things into the presence of which he has been brought. In his confession of the sufficiency of God, of the folly of his own past speech, of his present repentance in the light of God’s glory, there is revealed a glory of God not manifest in any other part of the universe described. This surrender is God’s victory of vindication. There has been no explanation of pain, but pain is forgotten, and all the circumstances of trial against which the spirit of the man has rebelled are out of sight. He has found himself in relationship to God. What Eliphaz asked him to do, but could not teach him how, he now has done. Acquainted with God, his treasure is laid in the dust, and he has found Jehovah to be his all-sufficient wealth.
The victory being won in the soul of Job, Jehovah deals with his friends. His wrath is kindled against them, and yet it is mingled with mercy. Their intention was right, but their words were wrong. In their attempt to explain God, they had not said of Him “the thing that was right.” Notwithstanding all his murmuring, nay, in the very affirmation of his inability to comprehend, Job had spoken profounder truth concerning God than they. God’s vindication of him to them is marked by the fact that He speaks of him as “My servant,” the same term He used at the beginning. It is also marked in His appointment of His servant as intercessor on their behalf. They had attempted to restore Job to God by philosophy. He is now to be the means of restoring them by prayer. As at the beginning there were things to be said in their favor, so at the close. Their sincerity is shown in the fact that they submit, bring their offerings, and make confession.
Up to this point it would seem as if there had been no change in Job’s circumstances. The bands of his captivity were broken in the activity of prayer on behalf of others. All the rest is told in brief sentences. Job had been in the fire, and now he emerged from it, and his latter days on earth were characterized by even greater prosperity than his earlier ones.
In ending our consideration of this great Book, let us not attempt to formulate a philosophy which includes a solution of the problem of pain. This much at least we know, that through it this man gained, and there we leave it.
Restored to Right Relations with God
Job 42:1-17
In complete surrender Job bowed before God, confessing his ignorance and owning that he had spoken glibly of things which he understood not. He had retorted to his friends that he was as good as they, but now he confessed, as did the Apostle after him, that he was of sinners the chief. It is one thing to hear of God, another to see and know Him close at hand. Well may we loathe our proud words and repent in dust and ashes, Job 42:6, r.v., margin.
When Job was right with God, the Almighty took his side against his accusers and silenced them. It was through Jobs intercessions that they were forgiven. He himself was not fully forgiven till he could pray for them with loving forgiveness. But immediately he had done so God turned the shadow of death into the morning and gave him the double portion of the first-born. Thus men, when forgiven and restored, are heirs of riches greater than they had forfeited.
Job 42:5-6
These words indicate two stages in acquaintance with God and spiritual things, the one defined by the hearing of the ear, and the other by the seeing of the eye. But it is the latter which is attended by thorough contrition and change of character.
I. Every man may be said to hear of God by the hearing of the ear to whom the Gospel is preached or who has in his hand the book of revelation. And if this hearing of the ear do not involve or ensure a change of heart or conduct, there are great advantages which it does bestow. Revelation is effectual in transforming the face of society even where it does not as a spiritual leaven pervade the inner life of a people. It is something-it is a great deal-to be able to say, “We have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear.”
II. When the patriarch speaks of “abhorring himself,” he indicates his sense of his own utter deficiency and worthlessness, his consciousness of being debased and very far gone in original sin. Our text involves an assertion that no clothing which men can weave for themselves without the disclosures and directions of the Bible will be of any use before God.
III. Great emphasis should be laid on these words, “Mine eye seeth Thee.” Faith is that act of the soul which corresponds most nicely to the act of sight in the body. The passing from the possession of revelation to the exercise of eyesight is the mighty transition from being a nominal to being a real Christian. We need light from God in order to our seeing light. There is an incalculable difference between listening to a sound and having an eye in the heart.
IV. We may account for much of the slow progress of real Christians in piety on the principle that they are but seldom occupied with contemplations of the invisible world. Without these glimpses of futurity, piety will languish, and hope lose its vigour. There is nothing like a glimpse of heaven to make a man a humble, self-denying Christian.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2207.
I. These words may indeed be applied to any manifestation of God to His sinful creatures, but with a peculiar force and propriety may we consider them as applicable to “God manifest in the flesh” in Christ crucified. Nothing like this can set before us these two points combined together: God’s hatred of sin and love for mankind. Other things might teach us these separately, but then either of these separately would profit us little without the other. Whatever therefore most humbles us and gives us low opinions of our own condition brings us nearer to Christ’s Cross; whatever exalts and puffs us up with pride puts us farther from it. All the blessings which the Gospel holds out to faithful Christians are connected with the Cross of Christ, and may be best attained by meditating on it.
II. They who are made conformable unto the great doctrine of “Christ crucified” will receive the blessings of the kingdom both now and hereafter; but they who are not, Scripture declares in many ways, will not be admitted into that kingdom. All things preach this doctrine to the eye and ear of faith-the disappointment, the vexation, the vanity, and heavy judgments attending all that is good in this world; but when Jesus Christ is Himself brought before us on the Cross, it teaches us as none of these can do. “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Plain Sermons by Contributors to “Tracts for the Times,” vol. iv., p. 169.
References: Job 42:5, Job 42:6.-E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life, p. 13; C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 21. Job 42:7.-J. Jackson Wray, Light from the Old Lamp, p. 263. Job 42:7-17.-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. xii., p. 245; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 542. Job 42:10.-R. Glover, Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 290; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 404, and vol. xxi., No. 1262; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 2.
VI. THE CONFESSION OF JOB
CHAPTER 42:1-6
Critics claim that Jobs answer is misplaced and that it really ought to be put in connection with chapter 41:3-5. This is another evidence of the lack of spiritual discernment of these great scholars. They treat the Word of God as literature only and criticise it as such. We have seen that the additional words of Jehovah were needed to bring Job completely into the dust and bring from his lips the confession which alone could satisfy Jehovah and be the great blessing for himself. This confession we have now before us.
Then Job answered the Lord and said:
I know that Thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of Thine can be withstood.
Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?
Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not.
Hear I beseech Thee and I will speak,
I will demand of Thee, and I will speak and declare Thou unto Me.
I heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eyes seeth Thee,
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
Here we have his full answer, his complete prostration before Jehovah. He acknowledgeth first Jehovahs supreme power. He is omnipotent and can do all things. Then he quotes Jehovahs own words (Job 38:2; Job 40:2). Thou hast asked me, Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? It is strange that some expositors can misapply these words as if the Lord again rebuked Elihu. No, as we have shown before, He rebukes Job for his wild and audacious charges he had made against the Lord. And now Job acknowledgeth that Jehovahs rebuke is right. It is all true, he saith, I uttered things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, beyond my ken. Hear me now, Jehovah, I will speak. Once more he quotes Jehovahs word. Thou hast said (40:2), I ask of thee, answer ME. Here then is MY answer, he replies–I heard of Thee by hearing of the ear; but now mine eyes hath seen Thee–this is my answer now–I abhor myself in dust and ashes I repent.
Face to face with Jehovah, His power and His holiness prostrate Job in the dust. No creature can stand and boast in His presence. His plea of innocence, of righteousness, of philanthropy and all the boastings of his former greatness is gone. He seeth himself stripped of all; he stands in Jehovahs presence in nakedness and shame. Nor does he say that he abhors now what his mouth hath spoken, but it is himself, his wicked, proud self, which he abhors. He has taken the place of greatness. Now Jehovah can come forth and lift him up and raise him to blessing and glory. This great scene corresponds with the vision of Isaiah when he beheld the Lord and cried out Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am of unclean lips (Isa 6:5). And Daniel also! (Dan 10:1-21). Peter on the Lake of Galilee was face to face with Him, who hath spoken to Job, the same and not another, and when he seeth His power and realizeth this is Jehovah, Peter falls at His feet and like Isaiah, Daniel and Job, acknowledges his nothingness. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
The enigma of the book of Job is solved. God permitted the afflictions to come upon His servant Job, not only to manifest His power, but for Jobs good, to draw him into the place of nearness and of blessing. And that place is the dust, in dust and in ashes.
This is the place which all Gods saints must own. And blessed are we, beloved reader, if we follow the wooings of grace, if we let His Spirit put us daily into that place, so that the Lords hand may be prevented from putting us there by suffering and affliction.
Reciprocal: Jam 4:7 – Submit
God Speaks to Job
Job 38:1-41 to Job 42:1-17
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
God’s words to Job do not carry much by way of the explanation of redemption. Job was a child of God, and well-instructed on those lines. When, however, God refers to Job’s three friends, who had not spoken of God, as they should have spoken, then the Lord commands, at once, that a burnt offering of seven bullocks, and of seven rams should be made. In the first chapter of job we learn how Job, continually, offered up burnt offerings.
As we see it, God is teaching Job to think less of himself, and more of his Lord. God wants Job to know Jehovah’s greatness and power, so he may learn to trust Him implicitly, and without misgivings and fault-findings.
It is delightful to see the immediate effect of God’s speech upon Job. In this Job’s true greatness and faith shines out in a wonderful way. The forty-second chapter of Job gives us Job’s reaction to God’s words.
1. Job acknowledged God’s power and supremacy. In verse two Job said, “I know that Thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from Thee.”
2. Job acknowledged his own nothingness and shame. Job said (Job 42:5-6): “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Thank God for the ready response which Job gave to God’s correction. The man who, in the first part of the Book of Job, was acclaimed by God as “perfect and upright”; and who, in the second chapter is acclaimed as, “none like him in all the earth,” is made even purer and better by reason of his sore testings and trials. The result of all this is plainly seen in this statement, “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12).
Let the result of our study of this wonderful Book of Job be the obtaining of a better knowledge of God in His own all-glorious Person; as well as a deeper trust in God in His personal care for His people.
Christians need an unwavering trust in the Eternal and Great I Am. He who watches over the sparrow will surely watch over us. He who clothes the grass of the field will surely clothe us.
Christians likewise need that quality of faith which will trust in Jehovah, even when there is no light in their sky. They need to know that God cares for them when they cannot see His face, the same as when He graciously manifests to them the glory and grace of His countenance.
I. A QUESTION AS TO GOD’S ETERNITY (Job 38:4)
Sometimes we have wished that those men and women who deny God’s creative acts, and seek to undo the Genesis account of creation, could sit for a moment in Job’s place as God thunders out question upon question to Job, in order to bring him to a realization of his own utter ignorance.
Great men are not always wise. After all, how little do any of us mortals know of the works of the eternal God!
What we would do, is to drive us all back to God as the One who existed before anything that is made, was made. There, in the might and power and love of His Eternity, God, the Solitary One, stood. He stood “glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders.”
Where was man? He was uncreated; he had not yet appeared on the scene of human activities. “In the beginning God”-these are the words to which we all must bend the knee, as we worship Jehovah. He it is who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.
II. A QUESTION AS TO INTELLIGENCE (Job 38:16; Job 38:18)
God proceeds to ask Job questions that quickly reveal unto Job the utter incapacity of his intellectual vision.
Through countless labyrinths of mystic suppositions, through innumerable contradictions of scientific deductions, they have made shipwreck concerning the faith. A “thus saith investigation” (not inspiration, not revelation) may be final to the philosopher, but, let a “thus saith the Lord” remain final to a child of God. The Word of God must ever surpass man’s investigation simply because it is the Word of God. With humble, worshipful mien, let us cry, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.” “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.” “How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them?”
III. A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY (Job 38:31-35)
Job in chapter twenty-nine had said, “When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street! The young men saw me, and hid themselves: the aged arose, and stood up. The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth. The nobles held their peace.” “Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel. Alter my words they spake not again.”
We do not wonder that Job, after God had spoken, said, “I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.” At Job’s presence others had done this very thing; now the sage among men confesses his utter folly of words, and he is ready to cease speaking.
Ah, Job, thou art not the only one who speaketh words without knowledge, darkening counsel thereby. One of the signs of our own day is the prating of men, who go about speaking evil of those things which they know not; they speak great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration. God will come upon them one of these days, and convince them of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.
Let us all stand before God, acknowledging our ignorance and weakness. One man may say to another, “Come, and he cometh”; and he may say to another man, “Go, and he goeth”; but God can say, “Let there be light,” and “there is light.” He can say, “Lazarus, come forth”; and, “he that was dead came forth.”
There is a place where the authority of God alone can speak. Let vain man, then, like Job, put his hand on his mouth, and be still.
IV. A QUESTION OR PROVISION (Job 38:39)
God now comes to Job with another matter for his thought. Job had spoken of having provided for the widow and the orphan. In this Job did well.
God, in speaking to Job, did not discount his philanthropic spirit; but God asked Job some questions which showed him how his beneficence was circumscribed.
Thus did God show to Job His care for the animals that rove the earth, or nest in the clefts of the mountains. Job had cared for the poor who were at his steps; God had cared for the innumerable hosts of otherwise helpless beasts and birds upon which no man had ever looked.
Did not our Lord speak of this very thing, when He said? “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet * * Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field.” “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them.”
We are reminded of that verse in Jonah wherein God said, “And should not I spare Ninevah, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle.”
Let us acknowledge that the God of creation, the One who holds the planets in His hand, is also the One who cares for the least of His creatures.
V. A QUESTION OF POWER (Job 40:9-10)
Job had boasted his power in the gates. He had told with glowing colors of how he had been robed. Now Job sat in the dust, and wore sackcloth. He who knew so much of the plaudits of men, had become their byword, and their scorn.
God stands before the downcast, undone man who was bemoaning the days of his former glory, and the helplessness of his present condition. God said to Job: “Wilt thou condemn Me, that thou mayest be righteous?” “Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?”
Then, in order to show Job his utter dependence upon Him, God said to Job, “Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.”
We wonder if God did not permit Satan to seek Job’s undoing, because God saw, in spite of Job’s integrity and greatness that he was self-righteous. Of one thing we know,-God taught Job his helplessness when shut off from the good hand of God. How could Job deck himself with majesty and excellency, and array himself with glory and beauty, when his body was foul with disease? God continued to ask Job to consider the power of the beasts before which men cowled in fear. God said: “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee.” “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?”
God’s description of these massive creatures and their mighty power was given to cause Job to sense his own weakness; and to show him that his own hand could not save him.
VI. JOB’S CONFESSION (Job 40:4-5; Job 42:2-6)
1. Job said, “Behold I am vile.” He who had, under the maledictions of his false friends, steadfastly upheld his righteousness, now quailed before God, realizing his own overwhelming vileness and sin.
When men compare themselves among themselves, and measure themselves by themselves they may boast their goodness. When the same men come into the presence of the holy God, they immediately abhor themselves.
2. Job said, “I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.” He also said, “I uttered that I understood not.” It is so easy for men to make their boast of knowledge; but when God comes to them and opens up to them their ignorance, they can do no more than abhor themselves.
The men of this world, who have not retained God in their knowledge, have been given over to reprobate minds. Here is the Divine picture of such men: “But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption” (2Pe 2:12). Consider these words: “To convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
3. Job said, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” What a confession was this from the man of whom God said, “There is none like him in the earth.” Surely none of us will ever again desire to go around parading our own goodness or greatness. Let us walk in all lowliness of mind.
Some there are who delight to speak of their own prowess. Let us own no righteousness but His, and claim no comeliness excepting that which He has placed upon us.
Remember that Paul said, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.”
VII. THE END OF THE LORD (Jam 5:11)
We now come to the closing scenes of the Book of Job. We are about to behold the “end of the Lord.” Why all the suffering, all the pain which befell Job? Was it to establish Job’s faith and faithfulness, pursuant to Satan’s challenge? No doubt. Was it to correct certain things in Job’s character which demanded just such an experience as befell Job? No doubt.
There is, however, another side to all of this. God was preparing the way for Job’s enrichment and enlargement. Satan’s purpose was the undoing of Job; God’s purpose was the uplifting of Job. Mark “the end of the Lord.”
1. Job was restored to the place of an intercessor. The Book opens with Job making a sacrifice, and praying for his children. The Book closes with Job making a sacrifice, and praying for his three friends.
2. Job was given twice as much as he had before. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.
3. Job’s friends and kindred were restored to him, and he feasted with them in joy and gladness, while they brought to him gifts of gold and silver.
4. Job was given seven sons and three daughters; and in all the land there were no daughters as fair as Job’s.
5. Job was given a long and useful life. So Job died, “Being old and full of years.”
Beloved, we should never judge the artist’s picture while it is yet unfinished, on the easel. Sometimes we may feel deserted and forgotten of God. Sometimes the task may be heavy, and disappointments may be severe. Let us wait on the Lord and renew our hope. God will surely lead us out and lead us in-out of our poverty, and into His wealth; out of our travail, and into His rest.
AN ILLUSTRATION
“Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?” (Job 38:22).
When the soft, pure flakes fall noiselessly, we instinctively shiver; they are associated in our minds only with hard frosts, leafless trees, and long wintry days; but what about the underground work, hidden roots, and bulbs covered up and kept warm till spring welcomes them? Does life look like a snowcovered plain? Do you feel icebound? Wait-there are treasures there, hidden under the chilliest circumstances and surroundings; and the great Gardener will reveal them in time. Treasures of snow and hail! Not by chance do the “chills” touch our life and work. It may be that God allows them, to drive us nearer to Himself-the ever-warming center of love; and also, doubtless, that, having gone through the trials ourselves, we may be able to help others afterwards by an enriched experience and sympathy. Let the rays of the Sun of Righteousness so warm your heart that He can reach and thaw other ice-bound souls through you.-Laura Barter Snow.
Job 42:5. But now mine eye seeth thee. I have seen thee in thy works, and heard the voice of nature. I have heard all those speeches of my friends, circumscribed in knowledge, and erroneous in judgment; but now the clouds depart; now the sun at length shines. Now, I see thy righteousness in dealing thus with a worm, to make my case alike instructive to angels and to men. Assuredly, thou hast a right to resume thy gifts, according to thy good pleasure, and to take from man his mortal breath, in such ways as thy wisdom shall approve. Oh how holy art thou! How sinful am I, to contend so long against correction! Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Now therefore I shall rise above all clouds, and walk forever in the light of thy countenance, and in the joys of thy salvation.
Job 42:8. Seven bullocks. This is called the heptarchial sacrifice; or a perfect oblation to the Lord, like Balaams offering. See on Num 23:1. Go to my servant Job. Surely he now came forth as gold, after he was tried. Estius the jesuit notes here; Go to my servant the Pope, for him will I accept! He puts Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin in the dark shade of Jobs three friends. This is Rome! Rather let us say, Go to my servant Messiah, the only Mediator.
Job 42:14. Keren-happuch: a word equivalent to the horn of plenty; for this third daughter was born as Job was growing rich.
Job 42:16. After this lived Job a hundred and forty years. The talmudists say he lived in all two hundred and ten years. The LXX say he lived in all two hundred and forty years. Terah lived but two hundred years, and his son Abraham only a hundred and seventy five. How weak then is the conjecture that Job lived in later times, for the gradual scale on which the Almighty was pleased to shorten the age of man, is equivalent to demonstration that Job was contemporary with Terah, and probably his senior patriarch. Be that as it may,
Job was a type of Christ.
(1) Job was a king in the land of Uz: Christ is king of heaven and earth.
(2) Job was deprived of all his wealth: Christ laid aside all his glory, and lots were cast for his vesture. (3) In one hour Job lost all his children: and in one sad night the apostles all forsook the Saviour and fled.
(4) Job was smitten with sores: Christ was scourged and crowned with thorns.
(5) Jobs soul was afflicted with the sorest anguish and grief: Christ in the garden drank the bitter cup, and was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.
(6) Jobs anguish was augmented by princes and priests, and those who should have comforted him: Christs afflictions came from priests and rulers.
(7) Job held fast his integrity to the end: the Saviour fainted not, but died commending his spirit to the Father.
(8) Job had a hundredfold reward in this life: Christ had glory after the cross, beyond all that language can declare. Thus we see the end of the Lord, that he is very pitiful and tender hearted. Jas 5:11.
Job 42:1-6. Jobs final speech (continuation of Job 40:3-5).
Job 42:1 is to be removed as a gloss: as are also Job 42:3 a, Job 42:4 b, which are quoted from Job 38:2 f., and probably came in from the margin. Job abases himself before the Almightiness of God as displayed in the creation, and acknowledges that he has spoken ignorantly.
Job 42:5 contains the supreme lesson of the book (Peake). No new theoretical knowledge concerning God and His ways has been given to Job, but in direct intuition he has seen God face to face, and that is enough. This mystical solution is the only solution the author of the poem has to give to the mysterious problem of the Divine Providence.
Job 42:7-17. The Epilogue, taken from the old Volksbuch, which must also have contained, after the debate between Job and his friends, a Divine speech. These words (Job 42:7) will refer to this, and not to the speech of the Almighty we have just been studying. In the original Divine speech of the Volksbuch Job was not reprimanded, as in the poem, but on the contrary Yahweh must have praised Job because he held fast to his integrity and blessed God, whether He sent good fortune or bad. Then (Job 42:7-9) Yahweh turns upon the friends, and severely reprimands them. They must offer sacrifice and Job must intercede for them. Finally in Job 42:10-17 we have Jobs restoration and happy end. God turned the fortune of Job (Job 42:10). Before, Jobs sacrifices had not availed for his children, now they avail both for his friends and himself. Whoever, when God sends suffering, maintains his obedience without a murmur, wins for himself a position of honour and also becomes a mediator between God and his fellow-men. So Duhm sums up the lesson of the Epilogue. We may compare the position of the Servant of God in Isaiah 53, that of the Goel martyrs in the later Judaism, and that of the early Christian martyrs and confessors. In Job 42:11 we read how the friends and acquaintances of Job come to congratulate him and give him, as a congratulatory present, each a piece of money and a ring of gold (Jdg 8:24). Jobs possessions are all doubled (Job 42:10-12); cf. Isa 61:7, Zec 9:12. Only the children remain the same in number as before (Job 42:13). The names of Jobs daughters were Jemima (dove), Keziah (cassia), Keren-happuch (horn of eye-paint). Job gave them inheritance among their brethren, which was contrary at least to the post-exilic practice, which allowed the daughters to inherit only when there was no son (Num 27:1-11). From Jobs great age (Job 42:16) we infer that his history is assigned to primitive times. With the Epilogue as a whole, cf. Jas 5:11.
(See also Supplement)
JOBS REPENTANCE AND PRAYER
(vv.1-9)
Who would not be totally subdued after hearing God speak such things as He did to Job? What a change took place in Job’s attitude and in his words! He was humbled to the dust, as he says, “I know You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (vv.2-3). He now realises that his words before had been moved by ignorance of God, who “can do everything.” This expression reminds us of Peter’s words to the Lord Jesus, “Lord, You know all things” (Joh 21:17). Peter needed to learn the same lesson that Job needed, for Peter too had expressed too much confidence in the flesh when he insisted that he would not deny the Lord Jesus though all others did. Job fully admits to the Lord that he had spoken without knowledge of what he was saying, – things too wonderful for him, that is, he sought to deal with matters that were wonderful beyond his understanding and found himself humiliated.
Now Job speaks because the Lord had told him to answer what the Lord said (v.4). His answer was, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (vv.5-6). Though Job had heard something about the Lord, it was not enough to meet Job’s actual need. Now he was brought face to face with the greatness and glory of the Lord, with the result, “I abhor myself.” It was not simply a matter of what he had done that he abhorred, but himself. This was the root of what he may have done, and it was this root that God was dealing with, that is, the pride of Job’s very character. Every believer needs to be brought down to this very point.
What a contrast was this to the way in which Job had persistently sought to defend himself in all his words to his friends! However strong may be the pride of any person, absolutely everyone will eventually be humbled down to the dust. Unbelievers may all their life persist in this proud arrogance, but after death their humiliation will be all the more traumatic for them. How much better for us to be humbled before God in sober self-judgment before God must bring to bear the humiliation of a person’s being cast into the lake of fire!
The Lord had then to deal with Job’s three friends, telling them his anger had been aroused against them for what they had spoken when thinking they were speaking for God. They had misrepresented Him, not speaking for Him what was right, “as My servant Job has” (v.7). Job’s speaking right of course refers to Job’s words to God in verses 2-6.
God told these friends to go to Job and in his presence offer up to God a burnt offering of seven bulls and seven rams (v.8) The burnt offering pictures the offering of the Lord Jesus as that which brought glory to God. These friends would be humbled too in thus acknowledging their pathetic failure before Job. But Job was not to reproach them then, but to pray for them, which we may be sure he was glad to do! Apart from a sacrifice God would have to deal with them according to their sin, but He saw fit to use Job as an intermediary and the sacrifice a necessary provision for their forgiveness. In this way God made both Job and his friends to feel the shame of the way they had previously spoken. Job was to pray for them and they were to learn through Job’s praying for them that their previous criticism of Job had been totally wrong.
Job’s friends obeyed the Lord in this matter, and it is added, “for the Lord accepted Job” (v.9). This is an illustration of Jam 5:16, “the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much”.
JOB’S FULL RESTORATION
(vv.10-17)
Wonderful was the result of Job’s praying for his friends! Because his attitude was so changed, the Lord restored all his losses, and added much more (v.10), giving him twice as much in possessions as he had previously owned. Of course, he would no longer have his sore boils or other physical afflictions, and his brothers and sister and many previous acquaintances came to him on friendly terms, eating with him and giving him presents of silver and gold. Those who had avoided him became the most friendly. The restoration of his possessions was as rapid as his previous losses had been. The number of his livestock is astonishing. Besides this he was blessed with the same number of sons and daughters he had previously had (v.13). Thus he had twice as many children, though the first ten were then in heaven.
Today those who know the Lord Jesus cannot expect to be blessed with material blessings, but rather are “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph 1:3). Job’s children too were highly favoured, his daughters being the most beautiful in all the land. After this experience of Job he lived 140 years (v.16), so that perhaps his age at death was similar to that of Abraham (175 years); but believers today are blessed with the knowledge of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
4. Job’s second reply to God 42:1-6
Job’s words reveal the changes that God’s revelations had produced in him. He was aware as never before that God had all power and all wisdom. This resulted in an attitude of awe and submission (Job 42:2). He saw that it was foolish for him to question God’s actions. God knew what He was doing even though Job did not.
By quoting God’s first question back to Him (Job 42:3 a; Job 38:2), Job meant: "You were exactly right in asking, ’Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ That is just what I have been doing." He admitted having spoken presumptuously (Job 42:3 b-c).
Job also repeated what God had said when He began each of His speeches (Job 42:4; Job 38:3; Job 40:7). God had asked for Job’s reply. Now Job gave it. However, it was not the courtroom accusation he had said he wanted to deliver to God. It was instead a confession of his own folly.
"He has not only realized his folly in passing judgment on things that were beyond his understanding. He has found the answer to his problem. For at bottom this was not a problem of theodicy, but a problem of fellowship. He has not learned the cause of his sufferings or the explanation of the apparent injustices in the world, but he has found God again. For hitherto he, no less than his friends, had believed that his sufferings meant that God had cast him off and that he was isolated from him who had been his friend in days gone by. But now God had come to him and spoken to him, and he knew that he could have fellowship with God even in his sufferings. Therefore Job declares that he has found a new understanding of God, compared with which his former knowledge was but as the knowledge of rumour [sic] compared with sight. This is the climax of the book, as we should expect to find at the end of the poetic portion, for which the Prologue and Epilogue are but the setting." [Note: Rowley, p. 265.]
"To Job the supremely important thing is that God has come to him in his suffering, showing him that he is not isolated from God by his suffering. He has cried for God again and again, and God has come to him, not to enter into debate with him on the issues he has thrashed out with his friends, but to show him that now, when he most needs God, God is with him. . . . It is of the essence of its [the book’s] message that Job found God in his suffering, and so found relief not from his misfortunes, but in them." [Note: Ibid., p. 20.]
Job had heard of God from others previously. This limited secondhand knowledge had led him to some false conclusions. Now, after more revelation, he saw God more clearly. He had greater spiritual insight (Job 42:5). This greater understanding of God enabled Job to understand himself better. He saw both God and himself more realistically. [Note: See William Lillie, "The Religious Significance of the Theophany in the Book of Job," Expository Times 68:11 (August 1957):355-58.] "Retract" (Job 42:6) means to "despise" or "reject." Job evidently not only withdrew his charges against God but also despised and rejected his attitude of pride. Job had previously expressed remorse over his losses, but now he grieved over his sins. Job’s repentance seems to have been more than turning from his sorrowful condition. He changed his mind and abandoned his rebellious pride and arrogance toward God. [Note: Patrick, p. 369-71.]
"He does not repent of sins that have allegedly brought on the suffering; he repents of his arrogance in impugning God’s justice, he repents of the attitude whereby he simply demands an answer; as if such were owed him. He repents of not having known God better . . ." [Note: D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, p. 174.]
"From now on he will locate his self-worth in his relationship with Yahweh, not in his own moral behavior or innocence." [Note: Hartley, p. 537.]
Job admitted sinning because he suffered, but he did not admit that he was suffering because he had sinned. [Note: Zuck, Job, p. 185.] Job forgot his cry for vindication since he had received something much better: a revelation of the person of God and renewed fellowship with God. He had lost all, but he had found God and was now content. He had stopped asking, "Why?" since he had come to know God. We do not need to know why if we know God. This is one of the great lessons of this book.
"Suffering is sometimes a mystery. We must affirm both the mystery and God. . . . The God speeches remind us that a Person, not a principle, is Lord." [Note: Bullock, pp. 108-9.]
Temptation to become distressed overtakes us all when bad things happen to us. We want to know why things happen as they do. If we know that God is in control and that in His loving wisdom He has permitted our suffering and controls it, we do not need to know why we are in pain. That is not to say we should stop trying to discover reasons. Our suffering may be due to our sin, as Job’s three friends said, or because God wants to teach us something, as Elihu affirmed. However, suffering may not be our lot for these reasons. When we cannot determine why we are suffering, we can still rest in God and continue to trust and obey Him, because we know He is sovereign and loving. This is a very important perspective to help other people who are suffering to see. By sharing it, we can be genuine comforters, not miserable comforters like Job’s friends.
"Sometimes the best answers to life’s most baffling and troubling questions lie not in what God says but in who He is. When believers recognize that truth, they begin to see that God does not just know the answers but, in fact, is the answer. To know Him is to know all one needs to know. The rest may come later but is unnecessary for now (1Co 2:9; 1 John 2 [sic 3]:2-3)." [Note: Merrill, p. 400.]
1
XXVIII.
THE RECONCILIATION
Job 38:1 – Job 42:6
THE main argument of the address ascribed to the Almighty is contained in chapters 38 and 39 and in the opening verses of chapter 42. Job makes submission and owns his fault in doubting the faithfulness of Divine providence. The intervening passage containing descriptions of the great animals of the Nile is scarcely in the same high strain of poetic art or on the same high level of cogent reasoning. It seems rather of a hyperbolical kind, suggesting failure from the clear aim and inspiration of the previous portion.
The voice proceeding from the storm cloud, in which the Almighty veils Himself and yet makes His presence and majesty felt, begins with a question of reproach and a demand that the intellect of Job shall be roused to its full vigour in order to apprehend the ensuing argument. The closing words of Job had shown misconception of his position before God. He spoke of presenting a claim to Eloah and setting forth his integrity so that his plea would be unanswerable. Circumstances had brought upon him a stain from which he had a right to be cleared, and, implying this, he challenged the Divine government of the world as wanting in due exhibition of righteousness. This being so, Jobs rescue from doubt must begin with a conviction of error. Therefore the Almighty says:-
“Who is this darkening counsel
By words without knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man;
For I will demand of thee and answer thou Me.”
The aim of the author throughout the speech from the storm is to provide a way of reconciliation between man in affliction and perplexity and the providence of God that bewilders and threatens to crush him. To effect this something more than a demonstration of the infinite power and wisdom of God is needed. Zophar affirming the glory of the Almighty to be higher than heaven, deeper than Sheol, longer than the earth, broader than the sea, basing on this a claim that God is unchangeably just, supplies no principle of reconciliation. In like manner Bildad, requiring the abasement of man as sinful and despicable in presence of the Most High with whom are dominion and fear, shows no way of hope and life. But the series of questions now addressed to Job forms an argument in a higher strain, as cogent as could be reared on the basis of that manifestation of God which the natural world supplies. The man is called to recognise not illimitable power only, the eternal supremacy of the Unseen King, but also other qualities of the Divine rule. Doubt of providence is rebuked by a wide induction from the phenomena of the heavens and of life upon the earth, everywhere disclosing law and care cooperant to an end.
First Job is asked to think of the creation of the world or visible universe. It is a building firmly set on deep-laid foundations. As if by line and measure it was brought into symmetrical form according to the archetypal plan; and when the cornerstone was laid as of a new palace in the great dominion of God there was joy in heaven. The angels of the morning broke into song, the sons of the Elohim, high in the ethereal dwellings among the fountains of light and life, shouted for joy. In poetic vision the writer beholds that work of God and those rejoicing companies: but to himself, as to Job, the question comes-What knows man of the marvellous creative effort which he sees in imagination? It is beyond human range. The plan and the method are equally incomprehensible. Of this let Job be assured-that the work was not done in vain. Not for the creation of a world the history of which was to pass into confusion would the morning stars have sung together. He who beheld all that He had made and declared it very good would not suffer triumphant evil to confound the promise and purpose of His toil.
Next there is the great ocean flood, once confined as in the womb of primeval chaos, which came forth in living power, a giant from its birth. What can Job tell, what can any man tell of that wonderful evolution, when, swathed in rolling clouds and thick darkness, with vast energy the flood of waters rushed tumultuously to its appointed place? There is a law of use and power for the ocean, a limit also beyond which it cannot pass. Does man know how that is?-must he not acknowledge the wise will and benignant care of Him who holds in check the stormy devastating sea?
And who has control of the light? The morning dawns not by the will of man. It takes hold of the margin of the earth over which the wicked have been ranging, and as one shakes out the dust from a sheet, it shakes them forth visible and ashamed. Under it the earth is changed, every object made clear and sharp as figures on clay stamped with a seal. The forests, fields, and rivers are seen like the embroidered or woven designs of a garment. What is this light? Who sends it on the mission of moral discipline? Is not the great God who commands the dayspring to be trusted even in the darkness? Beneath the surface of earth is the grave and the dwelling place of the nether gloom. Does Job know. does any man know, what lies beyond the gates of death? Can any tell where the darkness has its central seat? One there is whose is the night as well as the morning. The mysteries of futurity, the arcana of nature lie open to the Eternal alone.
Atmospheric phenomena, already often described, reveal variously the unsearchable wisdom and thoughtful rule of the Most High. The force that resides in the hail, the rains that fall on the wilderness where no man is, satisfying the waste and desolate ground and causing the tender grass to spring up, these imply a breadth of gracious purpose that extends beyond the range of human life. Whose is the fatherhood of the rain, the ice, the hoar frost of heaven? Man is subject to the changes these represent; he cannot control them. And far higher are the gleaming constellations that are set in the forehead of night. Have the hands of man gathered the Pleiades and strung them like burning gems on a chain of fire? Can the power of man unloose Orion and let the stars of that magnificent constellation wander through the sky? The Mazzaroth or Zodiacal signs that mark the watches of the advancing year, the Bear and the stars of her train-who leads them forth? The laws of heaven, too, those ordinances regulating the changes of temperature and the seasons, does man appoint them? Is it he who brings the time when thunderstorms break up the drought and open the bottles of heaven, or the time of heat when the dust gathers into a mass, and the clods cleave fast together? Without this alternation of drought and moisture recurring by law from year to year the labour of man would be in vain. Is not He who governs the changing seasons to be trusted by the race that profits most of His care?
At Job 38:39 attention is turned from inanimate nature to the living creatures for which God provides. With marvellous poetic skill they are painted in their need and strength, in the urgency of their instincts, timid or tameless or cruel. The Creator is seen rejoicing in them as His handiwork, and man is held bound to exult in their life and see in the provision made for its fulfilment a guarantee of all that his own bodily nature and spiritual being may require. Notable especially to us is the close relation between this portion and certain sayings of our Lord in which the same argument brings the same conclusion.
“Two passages of Gods speaking,” says Mr. Ruskin, “one in the Old and one in the New Testament, possess, it seems to me, a different character from any of the rest, having been uttered, the one to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a man whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other as the first statement to all men of the principles of Christianity by Christ Himself-I mean the 38th to 41st chapters of the Book of Job and the Sermon on the Mount. Now the first of these passages is from beginning to end nothing else than a direction of the mind which was to be perfected, to humble observance of the works of God in nature. And the other consists only in the inculcation of three things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking for eternal life; 3rd, trusting God through watchfulness of His dealings with His creation.”
The last point is that which brings into closest parallelism the doctrine of Christ and that of the author of Job, and the resemblance is not accidental, but of such a nature as to show that both saw the underlying truth in the same way and from the same point of spiritual and human interest.
“Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lioness?
Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
When they couch in their dens
And abide in the covert to lie in wait?
Who provideth for the raven his food,
When his young ones cry unto God
And wander for lack of meat?”
Thus man is called to recognise the care of God for creatures strong and weak, and to assure himself that his life will not be forgotten. And in His Sermon on the Mount our Lord says, “Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?” The parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke approaches still more closely the language in Job-“Consider the ravens that they sow not neither reap.”
The wild goats or goats of the rock and their young that soon become independent of the mothers care; the wild asses that make their dwelling place in the salt land and scorn the tumult of the city; the wild ox that cannot be tamed to go in the furrow or bring home the sheaves in harvest; the ostrich that “leaveth her eggs on the earth and warmeth them in the dust”; the horse in his might, his neck clothed with the quivering mane, mocking at fear, smelling the battle afar off; the hawk that soars into the blue sky: the eagle that makes her nest on the rock, -all these, graphically described, speak to Job of the innumerable forms of life, simple, daring, strong, and savage, that are sustained by the power of the Creator. To think of them is to learn that, as one among the dependants of God, man has his part in the system of things. his assurance that the needs God has ordained will be met. The passage is poetically among the finest in Hebrew literature, and it is more. In its place, with the limit the writer has set for himself, it is most apt as a basis of reconciliation and a new starting point in thought for all like Job who doubt the Divine faithfulness. Why should man, because he can think of the providence of God, be alone suspicious of the justice and wisdom on which all creatures rely? Is not his power of thought given to him that he may pass beyond the animals and praise the Divine Provider on their behalf and his own?
Man needs more than the raven, the lion, the mountain goat, and the eagle. He has higher instincts and cravings. Daily food for the body will not suffice him, nor the liberty of the wilderness. He would not be satisfied if, like the hawk and eagle, he could soar above the hills. His desires for righteousness, for truth, for fulness of that spiritual life by which he is allied to God Himself, are his distinction. So, then, He who has created the soul will bring it to perfectness. Where or how its longings shall be fulfilled may not be for man to know. But he can trust God. That is his privilege when knowledge fails. Let him lay aside all vain thoughts and ignorant doubts. Let him say: God is inconceivably great, unsearchably wise, infinitely just and true; I am in His hands, and all is well.
The reasoning is from the less to the greater, and is therefore in this case conclusive. The lower animals exercise their instincts and find what is suited to their needs. And shall it not be so with man? Shall he, able to discern the signs of an all-embracing plan, not confess and trust the sublime justice it reveals? The slightness of human power is certainly contrasted with the omnipotence of God, and the ignorance of man with the omniscience of God; but always the Divine faithfulness, glowing behind, shines through the veil of nature, and it is this Job is called to recognise. Has he almost doubted everything, because from his own life outward to the verge of human existence wrong and falsehood seemed to reign? But how, then, could the countless creatures depend upon God for the satisfaction of their desires and the fulfilment of their varied life? Order in nature means order in the scheme of the world as it affects humanity. And order in the providence which controls human affairs must have for its first principle fairness, justice, so that every deed shall have due reward.
Such is the Divine law perceived by our inspired author “through the things that are made.” The view of nature is still different from the scientific, but there is certainly an approach to that reading of the universe praised by M. Renan as peculiarly Hellenic, which “saw the Divine in what is harmonious and evident.” Not here at least does the taunt apply that, from the point of view of the Hebrew, “ignorance is a cult and curiosity a wicked attempt to explain,” that “even in the presence of a mystery which assails and ruins him, man attributes in a special manner the character of grandeur to that which is inexplicable,” that “all phenomena whose cause is hidden, all beings whose end cannot be perceived, are to man a humiliation and a motive for glorifying God.” The philosophy of the final portion of Job is of that kind which presses beyond secondary causes and finds the real ground of creaturely existence. Intellectual apprehension of the innumerable and far-reaching threads of Divine purpose and the secrets of the Divine will is not attempted. But the moral nature of man is brought into touch with the glorious righteousness of God. Thus the reconciliation is revealed for which the whole poem has made preparation. Job has passed through the furnace of trial and the deep waters of doubt, and at last the way is opened for him into a wealthy place. Till the Son of God Himself come to clear the mystery of suffering no larger reconciliation is possible. Accepting the inevitable boundaries of knowledge, the mind may at length have peace.
And Job finds the way of reconciliation:
“I know that Thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of Thine can be restrained.
Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?
Then have I uttered what I understood not,
Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”
“Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me.
I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee,
Wherefore I repudiate my words and repent in dust and ashes.”
All things God can do, and where His purposes are declared there is the pledge of their accomplishment. Does man exist?-it must be for some end that will come about. Has God planted in the human mind spiritual desires?-they shall be satisfied. Job returns on the question that accused him-“Who is this darkening counsel?” It was he himself who obscured counsel by ignorant words. He had only heard of God then, and walked in the vain belief of a traditional religion. His efforts to do duty and to avert the Divine anger by sacrifice had alike sprung from the imperfect knowledge of a dream life that never reached beyond words to facts and things. God was greater far than he had ever thought, nearer than, he had ever conceived. His mind is filled with a sense of the Eternal power, and overwhelmed by proofs of wisdom to which the little problems of mans life can offer no difficulty.
“Now mine eye seeth Thee.” The vision of God is to his soul like the dazzling light of day to one issuing from a cavern. He is in a new world where every creature lives and moves in God. He is under a government that appears new because now the grand comprehensiveness and minute care of Divine providence are realised. Doubt of God and difficulty in acknowledging the justice of God are swept away by the magnificent demonstration of vigour, spirit, and. sympathy, which Job had as yet failed to connect with the Divine Life. Faith therefore finds freedom, and its liberty is reconciliation, redemption. He cannot indeed behold God face to face and hear the judgment of acquittal for which he had longed and cried. Of this, however, he does not now feel the need. Rescued from the uncertainty in which he had been involved-all that was beautiful and good appearing to quiver like a mirage-he feels life again to have its place and use in the Divine order. It is the fulfilment of Jobs great hope, so far as it can be fulfilled in this world. The question of his integrity is not formally decided. But a larger question is answered, and the answer satisfies meantime the personal desire.
Job makes no confession of sin, His friends and Elihu, all of whom endeavour to find evil in his life, are entirely at fault. The repentance is not from moral guilt, but from the hasty and venturous speech that escaped him in the time of trial. After all ones defence of Job one must allow that he does not at every point avoid the appearance of evil. There was need that he should repent and find new life in new humility. The discovery he has made does not degrade a man. Job sees God as great and true and faithful as he had believed Him to be, yea, greater and more faithful by far. He sees himself a creature of this great God and is exalted, an ignorant creature and is reproved. The larger horizon which he demanded having opened to him, he finds himself much less than he had seemed. In the microcosm of his past dream life and narrow religion he appeared great, perfect, worthy of all he enjoyed at the hand of God; but now, in the macrocosm, he is small, unwise, weak. God and the soul stand sure as before; but Gods justice to the soul He has made is viewed along a different line. Not as a mighty sheik can Job now debate with the Almighty he has invoked. The vast ranges of being are unfolded, and among the subjects of the Creator he is one, -bound to praise the Almighty for existence and all it means. His new birth is finding himself little, yet cared for in Gods great universe.
The writer is no doubt struggling with an idea he cannot fully express; and in fact he gives no more than the pictorial outline of it. But, without attributing sin to Job, he points, in the confession of ignorance, to the germ of a doctrine of sin. Man, even when upright, must be stung to dissatisfaction, to a sense of imperfection-to realise his fall as a new birth in spiritual evolution. The moral ideal is indicated, the boundlessness of duty and the need for an awakening of man to his place in the universe. The dream life now appears a clouded partial existence, a period of lost opportunities and barren vainglory. Now opens the greater life in the light of God.
And at the last the challenge of the Almighty to Satan with which the poem began stands justified. The Adversary cannot say, -The hedge set around Thy servant broken down, his flesh afflicted, now he has cursed Thee to Thy face. Out of the trial Job comes, still on Gods side, more on Gods side than ever, with a nobler faith more strongly founded on the rock of truth. It is, we may say, a prophetic parable of the great test to which religion is exposed in the world, its difficulties and dangers and final triumph. To confine the reference to Israel is to miss the grand scope of the poem. At the last, as at the first, we are beyond Israel, out in a universal problem of mans nature and experience. By his wonderful gift of inspiration, painting the sufferings and the victory of Job, the author is a herald of the great advent. He is one of those who prepared the way not for a Jewish Messiah, the redeemer of a small people, but for the Christ of God, the Son of Man, the Saviour of the world.
A universal problem, that is, a question of every human age, has been presented and within limits brought to a solution. But it is not the supreme question of mans life. Beneath the doubts and fears with which this drama has dealt lie darker and more stormy elements. The vast controversy in which every human soul has a share oversweeps the land of Uz and the trial of Job. From his life the conscience of sin is excluded. The author exhibits a soul tried by outward circumstances; he does not make his hero share the thoughts of judgment of the evildoer. Job represents the believer in the furnace of providential pain and loss. He is neither a sinner nor a sin bearer. Yet the book leads on with no faltering movement toward the great drama in which every problem of religion centres. Christs life, character, work cover the whole region of spiritual faith and struggle, of conflict and reconciliation, of temptation and victory, sin and salvation; and while the problem is exhaustively wrought out the Reconciler stands divinely free of all entanglement. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Jobs honest life emerges at last, from a narrow range of trial into personal reconciliation and redemption through the grace of God. Christs pure heavenly life goes forward in the Spirit through the full range of spiritual trial, bearing every need of erring man, confirming every wistful hope of the race, yet revealing with startling force mans immemorial quarrel with the light, and convicting him in the hour that it saves him. Thus for the ancient inspired drama there is set, in the course of evolution, another, far surpassing it, the Divine tragedy of the universe, involving the spiritual omnipotence of God. Christ has to overcome not only doubt and fear, but the devastating godlessness of man, the strange sad enmity of the carnal mind. His triumph in the sacrifice of the cross leads religion forth beyond all difficulties and dangers into eternal purity and calm. That is through Him the soul of believing man is reconciled by a transcendent spiritual law to nature and providence, and his spirit consecrated forever to the holiness of the Eternal.
The doctrine of the sovereignty of God, as set forth-in the drama of Job with freshness and power by one of the masters of theology, by no means covers the whole ground of Divine action. The righteous man is called and enabled to trust the righteousness of God; the good man is brought to confide in that Divine goodness which is the source of his own. But the evildoer remains unconstrained by grace, unmoved by sacrifice. We have learned a broader theology, a more strenuous yet a more gracious doctrine of the Divine sovereignty. The induction by which we arrive at the law is wider than nature, wider than the providence that reveals infinite wisdom, universal equity and care. Rightly did a great Puritan theologian take his stand on the conviction of God as the one power in heaven and earth and hell; rightly did he hold to the idea of Divine will as the one sustaining energy of all energies. But he failed just where the author of Job failed long before: he did not fully see the correlative principle of sovereign grace. The revelation of God in Christ, our Sacrifice and Redeemer, vindicates with respect to the sinful as well as the obedient the Divine act of creation. It shows the Maker assuming responsibility for the fallen, seeking and saving the lost; it shows one magnificent sweep of evolution which starts from the manifestation of God in creation and returns through Christ to the Father, laden with the manifold immortal gains of creative and redeeming power.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
he eateth grass as an ox.
41. [40.]
things too wonderful for me which I knew not;
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary