Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 19:1
Then Job answered and said,
1. Job 19:7-12. A dark picture of the desertion of God and His terrible hostility to him.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Job 19:1-29
Then Job answered and said.
Complaints and confidences
I. Job bitterly complaining.
1. He complains of the conduct of his friends, and especially their want of sympathy.
(1) They exasperated him with their words.
(2) With their persistent hostility.
(3) With their callousness.
(4) With their assumed superiority.
Nothing tends more to aggravate a mans suffering than the heartless and wordy talk of those who controvert his opinions in the hour of his distress.
2. He complains of the conduct of his God. God had overthrown and confounded him: had refused him a hearing and hedged up his way. He complains that he was utterly deprived of his honours and his hope. God had even treated him as an enemy, and sent troops of calamities to overwhelm him. God had put all society against him. These complainings reveal–
(1) a most lamentable condition of existence;
(2) considerable imperfections in moral character.
II. Job firmly confiding. He still held on to his faith in God as the vindicator of his character.
1. His confidence arose from faith in a Divine vindicator.
2. A vindicator who would one day appear on the earth.
3. Whom he would personally see for himself,
4. Who would so thoroughly clear him that his accusers would be filled with self-accusation. But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XIX
Job complains of the cruelty of his friends, 1-5.
Pathetically laments his sufferings, 6-12.
Complains of his being forsaken by all his domestics, friends,
relatives, and even his wife, 13-19.
Details his sufferings in an affecting manner, calls upon his
friends to pity him, and earnestly wishes that his speeches
may be recorded, 20-24.
Expresses his hope in a future resurrection, 25-27.
And warns his persecutors to desist, lest they fall under
God’s judgments, 28, 29.
NOTES ON CHAP. XIX
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Then Job answered and said. Having heard Bildad out, without giving him any interruption; and when he had finished his oration, he rose up in his own defence, and put in his answer as follows.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1 Then began Job, and said:
2 How long will ye vex my soul,
And crush me with your words?
3 These ten times have ye reproached me;
Without being ashamed ye astound me.
4 And if I have really erred,
My error rests with myself.
5 If ye will really magnify yourselves against me,
And prove my reproach to me:
6 Know then that Eloah hath wronged me,
And hath compassed me with His net.
This controversy is torture to Job’s spirit; enduring in himself unutterable agony, both bodily and spiritually, and in addition stretched upon the rack by the three friends with their united strength, he begins his answer with a well-justified quousque tandem . (Norzi: ) is fut. energicum from ( ), with the retention of the third radical., Ges. 75, rem. 16. And in (Norzi: with quiescent Aleph) the suff. is attached to the n of the fut. energicum, Ges. 60, rem. 3; the connecting vowel is a, and the suff. is ani, without epenthesis, not anni or aneni, Ges. 58, 5. In Job 19:3 Job establishes his How long? Ten times is not to be taken strictly (Saad.), but it is a round number; ten, from being the number of the fingers on the human hand, is the number of human possibility, and from its position at the end of the row of numbers (in the decimal system) is the number of that which is perfected (vid., Genesis, S. 640f.); as not only the Sanskrit daan is traceable to the radical notion “to seize, embrace,” but also the Semitic is traceable to the radical notion “to bind, gather together” (cogn. ). They have already exhausted what is possible in reproaches, they have done their utmost. Renan, in accordance with the Hebr. expression, transl.: Voil ( , as e.g., Gen 27:36) la dixime fois que vous m’insultez . The . . is connected by the Targ. with (of respect of persons = partiality), by the Syr. with (to pain, of crvecoeur), by Raschi and Parchon with (to mistake) or (to alienate one’s self), by Saadia (vid., Ewald’s Beitr. S. 99) with (to dim, grieve);
(Note: Reiske interprets according to the Arabic kr , denso et turbido agmine cum impetu ruitis in me .)
he, however, compares the Arab. hkr , stupere (which he erroneously regards as differing only in sound from Arab. qhr , to overpower, oppress); and Abulwalid (vid., Rdiger in Thes. p. 84 suppl.) explains Arab. thkrun mn – n , ye gaze at me, since at the same time he mentions as possible that may be = Arab. khr , to treat indignantly, insultingly (which is only a different shade in sound of Arab. hkr ,
(Note: In Sur. 93, 9 (oppress not the orphan), the reading Arab. tkhr is found alternating with Arab. tqhr .)
and therefore refers to Saadia’s interpretation). David Kimchi interprets according to Abulwalid, ; he however remarks at the same time, that his father Jos. Kimchi interprets after the Arab. , which also signifies “shamelessness,” . Since the idea of dark wild looks is connected with Arab. hkr , he has undoubtedly this verb in his mind, not that compared by Ewald (who translates, “ye are devoid of feeling towards me”), and especially Arab. hkr , to deal unfairly, used of usurious trade in corn (which may also have been thought of by the lxx , and Jerome opprimentes ), which signifies as intrans. to be obstinate about anything, pertinacious. Gesenius also, Thes. p. 84, suppl., suggests whether may not perhaps be the reading. But the comparison with Arab. hkr is certainly safer, and gives a perfectly satisfactory meaning, only must not be regarded as fut. Kal (as , Psa 74:6, according to the received text), but as fut. Hiph. for , according to Ges. 53, rem. 4, 5, after which Schultens transl.: quod me ad stuporem redigatis . The connection of the two verbs in Job 19:3 is to be judged of according to Ges. 142, 3, a: ye shamelessly cause me astonishment (by the assurance of your accusations). One need not hesitate because it is instead of ; this indication of the obj. by , which is become a rule in Arabic with the inf. and part.) whence e.g., it would here be muhkerina li ), and is still more extended in Aramaic, is also frequent in Hebrew (e.g., Isa 53:11; Psa 116:16; Psa 129:3, and 2Ch 32:17, cheereep, after which Olsh. proposes to read in the passage before us).
Much depends upon the correct perception of the structure of the clauses in Job 19:4. The rendering, e.g., of Olshausen, gained by taking the two halves of the verse as independent clauses, “yea certainly I have erred, I am fully conscious of my error,” puts a confession into Job’s mouth, which is at present neither mature nor valid. Hirz., Hahn, Schlottm., rightly take Job 19:4 as a hypothetical antecedent clause (comp. Job 7:20; Job 11:18): and if I have really erred ( , as Job 34:12, yea truly; Gen 18:13, and if I should really), my error remains with me, i.e., I shall have to expiate it, without your having on this account any right to take upon yourselves the office of God and to treat me uncharitably; or what still better corresponds with : my transgression remains with me, without being communicated to another, i.e., without having any influence over you or others to lead you astray or involve you in participation of the guilt. Job 19:6 stands in a similar relation to Job 19:5. Hirz., Ew., and Hahn take Job 19:5 as a double question: “or will ye really boast against me, and prove to me my fault?” Schlottm., on the contrary, takes conditionally, and begins the conclusion with Job 19:5: “if ye will really look proudly down upon me, it rests with you at least, to prove to me by valid reasons, the contempt which ye attach to me.” But by both of these interpretations, especially by the latter, Job 19:6 comes in abruptly. Even (written thus in three other passages besides this) indicates in Job 19:5 the conditional antecedent clause (comp. Job 9:24; Job 24:25) of the expressive ( ): if ye really boast yourselves against me (vid., Psa 55:13., comp. Psa 35:26; Psa 38:17), and prove upon me, i.e., in a way of punishment (as ye think), my shame, i.e., the sins which put me to shame (not: the right of shame, which has come upon me on account of my sins, an interpretation which the conclusion does not justify), therefore: if ye really continue (which is implied by the futt.) to do this, then know, etc. If they really maintain that he is suffering on account of flagrant sins, he meets them on the ground of this assumption with the assertion that God has wronged him ( short for , Job 8:3; Job 34:12, as Lam 3:36), and has cast His net ( , with the change of the of from , to search, hunt, into the deeper in inflexion, as from , , Eze 4:8, from ) over him, together with his right and his freedom, so that he is indeed obliged to endure punishment. In other words: if his suffering is really not to be regarded otherwise than as the punishment of sin, as they would uncharitably and censoriously persuade him, it urges on his self-consciousness, which rebels against it, to the conclusion which he hurls into their face as one which they themselves have provoked.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Reply of Job to Bildad. | B. C. 1520. |
1 Then Job answered and said, 2 How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words? 3 These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me. 4 And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself. 5 If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach: 6 Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net. 7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
Job’s friends had passed a very severe censure upon him as a wicked man because he was so grievously afflicted; now here he tells them how ill he took it to be so censured. Bildad had twice begun with a How long (Job 8:2; Job 18:2), and therefore Job, being now to answer him particularly, begins with a How long too, v. 2. What is not liked is commonly thought long; but Job had more reason to think those long who assaulted him than they had to think him long who only vindicated himself. Better cause may be shown for defending ourselves, if we have right on our side, than for offending our brethren, though we have right on our side. Now observe here,
I. How he describes their unkindness to him and what account he gives of it. 1. They vexed his soul, and that is more grievous than the vexation of the bones, Psa 6:2; Psa 6:3. They were his friends; they came to comfort him, pretended to counsel him for the best; but with a great deal of gravity, and affectation of wisdom and piety, they set themselves to rob him of the only comfort he had now left him in a good God, a good conscience, and a good name; and this vexed him to his heart. 2. They broke him in pieces with words, and those were surely hard and very cruel words that would break a man to pieces: they grieved him, and so broke him; and therefore there will be a reckoning hereafter for all the hard speeches spoken against Christ and his people, Jude 15. 3. They reproached him, (v. 3), gave him a bad character and laid to his charge things that he knew not. To an ingenuous mind reproach is a cutting thing. 4. They made themselves strange to him, were shy of him now that he was in his troubles, and seemed as if they did not know him (ch. ii. 12), were not free with him as they used to be when he was in his prosperity. Those are governed by the spirit of the world, and not by any principles of true honour or love, who make themselves strange to their friends, or God’s friends, when they are in trouble. A friend loves at all times. 5. They not only estranged themselves from him, but magnified themselves against him (v. 5), not only looked shy of him, but looked big upon him, and insulted over him, magnifying themselves to depress him. It is a mean thing, it is a base thing, thus to trample upon those that are down. 6. They pleaded against him his reproach, that is, they made use of his affliction as an argument against him to prove him a wicked man. They should have pleaded for him his integrity, and helped him to take the comfort of that under his affliction, and so have pleaded that against his reproach (as St. Paul, 2 Cor. i. 12); but, instead of that, they pleaded his reproach against his integrity, which was not only unkind, but very unjust; for where shall we find an honest man if reproach may be admitted for a plea against him?
II. How he aggravates their unkindness. 1. They had thus abused him often (v. 3): These ten times you have reproached me, that is, very often, as Gen 31:7; Num 14:22. Five times they had spoken, and every speech was a double reproach. He spoke as if he had kept a particular account of their reproaches, and could tell just how many they were. It is but a peevish and unfriendly thing to do so, and looks like a design of retaliation and revenge. We better befriend our own peace by forgetting injuries and unkindnesses than by remembering them and scoring them up. 2. They continued still to abuse him, and seemed resolved to persist in it: “How long will you do it?” Job 19:2; Job 19:5. “I see you will magnify yourselves against me, notwithstanding all I have said in my own justification.” Those that speak too much seldom think they have said enough; and, when the mouth is opened in passion, the ear is shut to reason. 3. They were not ashamed of what they did, v. 3. They had reason to be ashamed of their hard-heartedness, so ill becoming men, of their uncharitableness, so ill becoming good men, and of their deceitfulness, so ill becoming friends: but were they ashamed? No, though they were told of it again and again, yet they could not blush.
III. How he answers their harsh censures, by showing them that what they condemned was capable of excuse, which they ought to have considered. 1. The errors of his judgment were excusable (v. 4): “Be it indeed that I have erred, that I am in the wrong through ignorance or mistake,” which may well be supposed concerning men, concerning good men. Humanum est errare—Error cleaves to humanity; and we must be willing to suppose it concerning ourselves. It is folly to think ourselves infallible. “But be it so,” said Job, “my error remaineth with myself,” that is, “I speak according to the best of my judgment, with all sincerity, and not from a spirit of contradiction.” Or, “If I be in an error, I keep it to myself, and do not impose it upon others as you do. I only prove myself and my own work by it. I meddle not with other people, either to teach them or to judge them.” Men’s errors are the more excusable if they keep them to themselves, and do not disturb others with them. Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself. Some give this sense of these words: “If I be in an error, it is I that must smart for it; and therefore you need not concern yourselves: nay, it is I that do smart, and smart severely, for it; and therefore you need not add to my misery by your reproaches.” 2. The breakings out of his passion, though not justifiable, yet were excusable, considering the vastness of his grief and the extremity of his misery. “If you will go on to cavil at every complaining word I speak, will make the worst of it and improve it against me, yet take the cause of the complaint along with you, and weigh that, before you pass a judgment upon the complaint, and turn it to my reproach: Know then that God has overthrown me,” v. 6. Three things he would have them consider:– (1.) That his trouble was very great. He was overthrown, and could not help himself, enclosed as in a net, and could not get out. (2.) That God was the author of it, and that, in it, he fought against him: “It was his hand that overthrew me; it is in his net that I am enclosed; and therefore you need not appear against me thus. I have enough to do to grapple with God’s displeasure; let me not have yours also. Let God’s controversy with me be ended before you begin yours.” It is barbarous to persecute him whom God hath smitten and to talk to the grief of one whom he hath wounded, Ps. lxix. 26. (3.) That he could not obtain any hope of the redress of his grievances, v. 7. He complained of his pain, but got no ease–begged to know the cause of his affliction, but could not discover it–appealed to God’s tribunal for the clearing of his innocency, but could not obtain a hearing, much less a judgment, upon his appeal: I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. God, for a time, may seem to turn away his ear from his people, to be angry at their prayers and overlook their appeals to him, and they must be excused if, in that case, they complain bitterly. Woe unto us if God be against us!
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
JOB – CHAPTER 19
JOB’S REPLY TO BILDAD
Verses 1-29:
Verses 1-3 is Job’s rebuttal to Bildad and his two false friend’s attacks against his life and character. He asks just how long they will hang around to attack his integrity, vexing his soul, and break him in pieces, hardening their souls against him, Job 18:2; Job Verse3 asserts that they did not hesitate to harden themselves against him, without shame, showing no compassion. They stunned him ten times (the number of heathens in rebellion against God), Gen 27:36; Gen 31:7.
Verse 4 recounts Job’s concession that he has erred, done wrong, but also allows that he will bear the consequence in his own conscience, Rom 14:11-12. He, however, denies guilt of any wickedness of which he is conscious, Eze 18:4.
Verses 5, 6 continue Job’s appeal that if his fake friends, would magnify themselves (make themselves to appear great) against him proudly, as saints against an obstinate sinner, and plead against him his reproach, Oba 1:12; Eze 35:13; Psa 38:16. They should know that it was the living God who had overthrown him and compassed him with his net, Mic 7:8; La 1:13. They could not make themselves heroes by hiding behind the half-truth that God chastens the wicked for their sins, while ignoring the corollary, that he also tests men by afflictions for his glory, Joh 9:2-3; Joh 11:4; 1Pe 4:12-16. Job was encompassed in the will of God’s net, not that of Bildad’s for retribution, Job 2:6-10.
Verses 7, 8 relate Job’s feeling that he had cried, out of being violently or wrongfully accused, but has not been heard, even cried aloud, but no judgment had fallen on his false accusers, a thing that was a part of Satan’s testing, for God’s glory, Job 2:6-10. Job declared that the Lord had fenced up his way, that he could not pass from it, having set darkness in his path, Job 3:23; Psa 88:8; La 3:7, 8; Hos 2:6.
Verse 9 witnesses that the Lord had stripped him of his glory or dignity and removed the crown of royal or ruling dignity from his head. This indicates that he had, before his affliction, been an Arab emir, highly respected, with all but royal dignity, that was now departed, La 5:16; Pro 4:9; Psa 89:39; Psa 89:44. Job was now like a deposed king, bowed with humiliation, confessing it, to be lifted up, Luk 18:14.
Verse 10, 11 declare that the Lord had destroyed him on every side, like a tree uprooted in a storm, shaken on every side, removing his hope of this life, like an uprooted tree, Jer 1:10; Job 11:18; His hope in the after life was not gone, v. 19; Job 14:15. the tree cut down may have hope of sprouting again, but not the uprooted one. Job complains that the Lord had kindled his wrath against him, accounting him as if he were an enemy, Deu 32:22; Psa 89:46; Psa 90:7; Job 13:24; La 2:5.
Verse 12 adds that his troops, (calamities and afflictions) that came against him, Isa 40:3; As also set forth, Job 16:11; Psa 34:19; Isa 10:5-6; Isa 51:23. His tabernacle or residence had been encircled and overrun by his plaque of afflictions.
Verse 13 continues that it was the Lord who had put his brethren, his kinsmen, far from him. Even his acquaintances had become estranged from him, turned away in disgust. This language prefigured the desertion of Jesus Christ by his own brethren and friends, Job 16:10; Psa 38:11; Luk 23:49. See also Psa 31:11; Mat 26:56; 2Ti 4:16.
Verse 14 declares that even his kinsfolk had forgotten him, let him down. And his former familiar friends had forgotten him, failed to come to his aid, as described, Psa 18:11; Pro 18:24; Mic 7:5-6; Mat 10:21.
Verse 15 further discloses that Job’s household members, or sojourners in his house, and maids yet alive, considered him as a stranger and alien in their sight; He was forlorn and lonely. Though not forsaken of the Lord, Heb 13:5.
Verse 16 adds that he had called his servant, born in his own household, belonging to his family, and he gave him no answer. He disobeyed and dishonored him. Though he entreated him with his mouth, nodded to him, no longer for obedience but for him to show compassion; but he did not help him, Job 1:15-16; Pro 30:21-22.
Verse 17 states his odorous breath caused his wife to turn away. His body and breath both stank, as he entreated for his brothers and grandchildren’s sake, Psa 69:8. He again foreshadows Jesus Christ, Joh 7:5.
Verses 18, 19 add that young children (the wicked) despised Job and rose up and spoke against him. All his inward friends, his inner circle or closest friends, had come to abhor and turn against him; though they had once been his intimate confidants, Psa 25:14.
Verse 20 states that Job was so emaciated that his bones came up against his skin and clave to it through the flesh, so that the bone might be seen through the skin, Psa 102:5; La 4:8. He was saved by the “skin of his teeth,” with speech to curse God, Satan hoped, Psa 22:17; Job 1:11; Job 2:5-6; Job 2:9-10.
Verses 21, 22 area direct appeal of Job to Bildad the Shuhite and his colleagues in accusing Job of concealed wickedness and hypocrisy. He asks that they have pity or compassion on him because the hand of God had touched him heavily. He desired to be spared of any further speeches of cruelty. That God afflicts men is no just ground for men to afflict, torment, or abuse them too, Zec 1:15; He asks if they are not satisfied with his flesh. Must they gnaw on or chew on him as polluting worms, maggots did, he asks! Such also prefigured abuse our Lord should endure, Psa 69:26; Psa 27:2; Gal 5:15.
Verses 23, 24 laments Job’s longing for his words, his testimony, to be written, recorded, engraved, or preserved in a book, for future generations. He desired to be vindicated, recognized, remembered as innocent of the false charges of his friends. He yearned to have his words, not merely written on a scroll or slate, that might be destroyed, but engraved by an iron hammer that pounded lead characters into a rock, to be preserved, imperishably, even forever, even as the word of God, Psa 119:89; Mat 24:35; 1Pe 1:23-25.
Verse 25 relates Job’s emphatic faith, hope, and assurance that his Goel, Redeemer, Vindicator, or Advocate was alive, living on and on, and that he should stand, stand up, or arise out of the earth, and stand upon it at the last (latter day), Gen 22:5. In this redeemer he would himself be redeemed by his kinsman redeemer, as his near kinsman, out of the dust of death into a glorified body of his own, Rom 8:11; Job 16:19; Num 35:27; Joh 5:21; Joh 5:26; 1Co 15:23-24; 1Co 15:45; 1Co 15:51-58; 1Pe 1:11-12; Heb 2:14; Rth 4:3-5; Rom 8:23; Eph 1:14.
KINSMAN-REDEMPTION BY (HEB GOEL)
Job’s “Goel,” Kinsman-Redeemer, was Jesus Christ. He is preshadowed in the ancient law of kinsman redemption in four ways as follows:
1) Kinsman Redemption related to: a) persons and things to be inherited by kinsmen of the deceased, the near of kin, as set forth Lev 25:25; Lev 25:48; Gal 4:4-5; Eph 1:7; Eph 1:11; Eph 1:14.
2) The Redeemer must be a near kinsman, as certified Lev 25:48-49; Rth 3:12-13; Gal 4:4; Heb 2:14-15.
3) The Redeemer had to have the price required for redemption, as set forth Rth 4:4-6; Jer 50:34; Joh 10:18; Joh 10:18.
4) The Redemption transaction was completed by the (Goel’s) paying the just demand in full, Lev 25:27; 1Pe 1:18-19; Gal 3:13; See also Exo 14:30; Rom 3:24.
Verse 26 adds that Job believed that even though skin-worms, maggots, destroyed his body, brought it to the dust in death, yet he would see God in his flesh, even in his own body, be totally vindicated against charges by his friends that he was a wicked, unregenerated hypocrite. His faith and hope are certified in the scriptures repeatedly, Rom 8:11; 1Co 15:21; 1Co 15:35; 1Co 15:38; 1Co 15:44; 1Co 15:52-53; 1Jn 3:1-3.
Verse 27 adds further that Job knew (comprehended) that he would live again to see his kinsman-redeemer, face to face, and look upon Him who had redeemed him, vindicated him from all his former calamities. The term “and not another” means “and not a stranger,” shall see Him, nor would He be a stranger to Job. This hope was steadfast even as he pined away under suffering, Psa 84:2; Psa 119:8; Num 25:17; Mat 2:2.
Verse 28 foretells what they will say (as pretended friends), when the hour of his vindication and vindicator does come, Heb 10:36-37; Each of them will say at the judgment hour, “why did I do it?” For the wrong was in me. Yes, men often judge others, without the facts or on a basis of partial facts that lead to erroneous conclusions. His detractors knew just enough truth to make them vicious critics, not compassionate friends of one in sorrow. Note while 1) afflictions may be because of personal sins, or inherent from wicked relatives, Exo 20:4-5. They may also 2) be testings from the Lord to His glory, Joh 9:23; Joh 11:4; 1Pe 4:12-16.
Verse 29 recounts Job’s warning his friends of the consequence of their lying attacks against him, his character, and his integrity. There is a sword, an instrument of judgment for wrong, and God may even send it upon you fellows; If you do not turn away from your slanderous assaults on me, Job warned Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar; of such he was not ignorant, and against such they were not immune; The wrath of God, later expressed against Job’s detractors, is but a foretaste of future judgment of wrong and vindication of the righteous, Job 42:7; Psa 7:10-13; Isa 25:8; 2Th 1:6-10.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
JOBS SUBLIME REPLY
Job 19:1-29.
OFTENTIMES the best thing in the world for a debater to do is to acknowledge the truth of some statement of his opponent, and then by conceding what is fact, he puts himself in a stronger position with his auditors, while he shows clearly what is false.
He confesses both his sin and just judgment.
Then Job answered and said,
How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself.
If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach;
Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with His net.
Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and He hath set darkness in my paths.
He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope hath He removed like a tree.
He hath also kindled His wrath against me, and He counteth me unto Him as one of His enemies.
His troops come together and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle (Job 19:1-12).
He grieves the contempt of kindred and friends.
He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me,
They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.
I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I entreated him with my mouth.
My breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the childrens sake of mine own body.
Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me.
All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me (Job 19:13-19).
This language is truly pathetic. Human history is replete with illustrations of the awful truth that a mans days of prosperity multiply his friends, and oftentimes in his adversity even his bosom companions and very kith and kin quit him.
He asked the pity of men, but pleads the help of God.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.
But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?
Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment (Job 19:20-29).
His language indicates that he hardly expects the first, but truly hopes for the second.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
Notes
Job. 19:23. O that my words were now written! The words understood as either
(1) Those now to be uttered. So JEROME, PISCATOR, CARYL, HENRY, &c. As an everlasting monument of his faith in the resurrection.MAYER. Such as would come within the inscription on a rock; therefore, those contained in Job. 19:25-27.SCOTT. Or
(2) Those which he had already uttered in defence of his innocence. So MERCER, NOYES, &c. All the declarations he had already made of his integrity, together with his solemn appeals to God.WEMYSS. BARTH, in his Bible Manual, combines both: The words of his lamentation and sorrow misunderstood by his friends, as well as those of his hope, which he was now about to utter. GREGORY understood not so much his words, as his sufferings. Words put for the things themselves.POLYCHROMIUS. Instead of written, WEMYSS and KITTO would read recorded. CAREY: Engraven. SCOTT says: Written, perhaps, on linen: painting on linen very ancient among the Egyptians; the use of papyrus a later invention.
O that they were printed in a book! (basspher) in the, or a, book; (spher) from (sphar) to shave, engrave, write. (veyukhkoo) and were printed, or engraved; Hophal form of (khkak) to cut, make an incision, engrave. So GESENIUS. PISCATOR, however, thinks that the verb does not mean to engrave, but to delineate or paint, and refers to Isa. 30:8; Isa. 19:16; Eze. 6:1. MERCER observes that the order of the words is inverted, and translates: That they might be engraven in a book. JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS: Carved out. PAGNINUS: Written out. SCULTETUS thinks that the first clause indicates simple writing; the second, writing in an entire book, or among histories or public records. So SCHULTENS understands : in a public record, in which more remarkable events were registered. J. H. MICHAELIS translates: Who will put them into the book, that they may be engraven? GRYNUS: Engraven for eternal remembrance in all time to come. ADAM CLARKE: Fairly traced out in a book, formed either of the leaves of the papyrus or on a sort of linen cloth. KITTO: Engraven on a tablet of wood, earthenware, or bone. SCOTT observes that letters were supposed by Sir Isaac Newton to have been invented by the Edomites, from whom Moses learned them when he fled into Midian. NOYES renders the words: O that they were marked down in a scroll! CONANT: In the book, where all might read them, as indicated by the presence of the article. CAREY thinks some particular book intended, perhaps that part of the Bible then extant, containing the records of the Creation and the history of the Antediluvian World. ZCKLER, however, thinks this unnecessary, and translates: In a book,any book, or skin prepared for writing.
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! (yekhatsebhoon), Niphal, or passive form of (khatsable), to cut, or cut out; were cut. So GESENIUS and J. H. MICHAELIS. KITTO: Graven. WEMYSS: Sculptured. BOOTHROYD: Cut deep. (la-adh) from (adhah, to pass); (adh), primarily, a passage or progress; then perpetuity. GROTIUS conjectures the reading to have been (le-edh) for a testimony, which agrees with the version of the Septuagint. (be-et), with a pen; (t) being, according to Gesenius, a pen for writing on stone or metal. And with lead, i.e., poured into the letters carved with the iron pen for greater distinctness. So JARCHI, PISCATOR, BOCHART, JUNIUS, SCHULTENS, UMBREIT, and most of the moderns. The TIGURINE version, however: In lead. So the VULGATE: With a plate of lead. LUTHER: Upon lead. A. CLARKE: On leaden tablets. WEMYSS, BOOTHROYD, and KITTO: On rolls of lead. TOWNSEND quotes PAUSANIAS, who says that near Helicon he was shown some leaden tablets, on which were engraven the works of HESIOD. TIRINUS observes that writing tablets among the ancients were made not only with wax, but lead, as is seen in the ancient tombs of Fabricius and Valesius, near Naples. It is known that with the Romans public acts were inscribed on leaden plates, as well as brazen ones. PLINY (Nat. Hist., xiii. 11) says: Formerly people wrote on the leaves of the palm and the inner bark of certain trees: afterwards, public monuments were written on reals of lead; and soon after, private ones on linen and wax. SCULTETUS observes that for security against fire, Job wishes the inscription to be also in a rock. So MERCER, PISCATOR, JUNIUS, and TREMELLIUS. PAGNINUS and MONTANUS, however, translate: In stone. PINEDA: On a pillar of stone. CODURCUS and SCHULTENS think the allusion is to sepulchral pillars, with epitaphs inscribed on them. SEB. SCHMIDT translates: On tables of stone. POCOCKE remarks that hieroglyphical characters are cut in the rock in the tombs of the kings at Thebes. SCOTT observes, from GREAVES, that an inscription of one line in the same characters is found in the second pyramid. LEE, after SCHULTENS and HALES, notices that it was customary with the ancient Arabs of Yemen to inscribe their precepts of wisdom on the rocks, in order 10 preserve them. HUFNAGEL observes that Orientals appear to have been accustomed to make inscriptions on the rocks. NIEBUHR saw such in his travels. Those high up on the rocks, at the Nahr el Kelb, near Beyroot, now pretty well known. A. CLARKE remarks that all the modes of writing then in use are apparently alluded to in this passage.
Job. 19:25. For I know, &c. Various opinions as to the nature and object of Jobs present declaration. It has been viewed
(1) as a confession of his faith, in opposition to the calumnies of his friends So DRUSIUS, &c. More especially of his faith in the promised Redeemer. So SCHULTENS, MICHAELIS, ROSENMLLER, HALES, GOOD, PYE SMITH, &C. Of his faith in a future judgment for the vindication of his character. So SCOTT. Of his faith and hope in reference to the resurrection of the body. So CAREY, &C. Of his faith in the Redeemer, and an assured expectation of a happy resurrection.CARYL. M. HENRY calls it Jobs creed or confession of his faith, declaring that he sought a better country (Heb. 11:14), and appealing to the coming of the Redeemer. A. CLARKE says: Job speaks prophetically; pointing out the future redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ, and the general resurrection of the human race. Dr. CHALMERS observes that To the consolations of a good conscience, Job adds those of a far-seeing faith. Others view it as
(2) the declaration of an expectation which the close of the book thorns to have been fulfilled. So KITTO. An expression of the conviction that he should himself see the restoration of his honour and health; and that, although reduced to a perfect skeleton, he should be gladdened by an appearance of God on his behalf, and not on that of the others. So CHRYSOSTOM, JOHN of Damascus, and some of the early Greek Fathers; also some of the Reformed, as MERCER, GROTIUS, LE CLERC; those on the Continent with rationalistic tendencies, as JUSTI, KNOBEL, HIRZEL, STICKEL; supernaturalists, as DATHE, DDERLEIN, BAUMGARTEN-CRUSIUS, KNAPP, AUGUSTI, UMBREIT; even some of the directly orthodox, as v. HOFFMANN and HAHN; and in our own country WEMYSS, STUART, BARNES. Some regard it as
(3) the expression of his hope of seeing God in a spiritually glorified condition beyond the grave. So EWALD, SCHLOTTMANN, DELITZSCH, DILLMANN, ZCKLER, DAVIDSON in his Introduction; and of Jewish interpreters, ARNHEIM and LOWENTHAL.
The force of the Copula at the beginning of the sentence has been variously understood. For: as in our English version. So the VULGATE, DUTCH, GENEVA, COVERDALE, and SCHULTENS. Since, or because:the older Hebrew interpreters. Indeed: so the SYRIAC, ARABIC, CASTALIO, PISCATOR, COCCEIUS, JUNIUS, and TREMELLIUS. But: LUTHER, DE WETTE, EWALD, LEE, CONANT, &C. DIODATI has: Now. MERCER and PAGNINUS: ALEB. MONTANUS: And truly. SCULTETUS: Yetnotwithstanding my complaints. MENOCHIUS and DRUSIUS: Yet,whatever you object to me, and although you continue wicked. DELITZSCH: But yet. COLEMAN: Verily. PYE SMITH: Surely. FRY: That. ZCKLER: And. PINEDA observes: The expression (yadhati) I know, excludes all doubt, as in Gen. 48:19. SCULTETUS: Implies the faith which is both knowledge and trust. GRYNUS and HIRZEL: The conviction that will not be shaken by opponents. The I, emphaticI know, if you do not, So FAUSSET, HIRZEL: I, for my part, in opposition to those who deny him. GRYNUS: I, in whom the arrows of God and man are now sticking, as in a wicked person.
My Redeemer liveth. (goali) from (gaal) to redeem, deliver; my Re-deemer. So GEEINIUS. COCCEIUS: From (gaal) to claim as ones own, as Psa. 119:154; Isa. 43:1; Rth. 4:6; Psa. 74:2; Isa. 48:20; used also of things sold and consecrated: hence to redeem; (goel), a relative who can claim or vindicate the honour, life, goods, &c., of another as his own (Lev. 25:25; Rth. 3:13). SCULTETUS: Properly, a blood relation, who claims or recovers the alienated goods of a near relative, or himself from slavery, or demands his blood, if slain at the hands of the slayer (Num. 35:12). GROTIUS: A deliverer, in a general sense. SCULTENS and ROSENMLLER: An avenger. GRYNUS and PYE SMITH: A deliverer or avenger; here pointing to the Messiah. UMBREIT: A blood-avengermeaning God who should appear as his avenger before his death. LEE and HALES: An avenging Redeemer; viz. God, who should clear him of all charges. TOWNSEND: His Redeemer,
(1) As the restorer of his temporal prosperity;
(2) The vindicator of his innocence;
(3) The redeemer of his soul from sin and death: the several offices of the Goel united in the person of Jesus Christ, who took our nature and become our Kinsman. (goel) originally applied to a person whose duty it was to maintain the rights, interests, and reputation of a near relative, either by repurchasing his mortgaged inheritance, by marrying his widow and saving his family from extinction, by redeeming him from servitude, or by avenging his blood; applied elsewhere to God as a Deliverer from any kind of calamities. This believed, by some, to be the application here, without any reference to Christ. So MERCER, CALVIN, GROTIUS, LE CLERC, PATRICK, WARBURTON, HEATH, KENNICOTT, DATHE, DODERLEIN, Dr. WETTE, BARNES, &c. GESENIUS: (goali khai), my Redeemer liveth,God Himself will deliver me from these calamities. STICKEL observes; (goel) here used without (haddam), of blood; hence employed in the more general sense of a judicially valid intercessor and deliverer of life and property. So OLSHAUSEN and CONANT. Here a deliverer, not an avenger of blood. On the other hand, FAUSSET observes: Job uniformly despairs of restoration and vindication in this life (chap. Job. 17:15-16); therefore the allusion here to a vindication in a future life. According to MERCER, the Redeemer here is God the Father. So called as delivering the godly from their troubles. GROTIUS: The view of the Jews and Socinians; but the office only appropriately ascribed to God the Son, mans Kinsman; and so always understood elsewhere. Redemption peculiarly ascribed to Christ. Jobs Redeemer the God-man, the living one, yet standing on the earth. SFEIFFER: The Incarnate Word. PINEDA, TIRINUS, SCULTETUS, &c.: The opinion of the fathers as well as of the earlier and modern evangelical interpreters in general. EPHREM SYRUS: A prediction of the incarnate Emmanuel. MUNSTER: Of the Messiah, as the first-fruits of them that slept. COCCEIUS: Christ is Redeemer, as
(1) Near of kin,
(2) Redeeming by that right;
(3) Taking the prey from the unrighteous possessor, and that without paying him any price;
(4) Paying a price to the true proprietor. All redemptions and deliverances of the Church and people of God ascribed to Christ, as Zec. 9:11; Isa. 43:9; Gen. 48:16. TOWNSEND observes: Job, in the age of error, may be considered as the faithful witness in his day to the hope of the Messiah. BARTLE, in his Bible Manual, remarks: Though having no well-defined conception of the Messiah as his Redeemer, Job yet expresses his expectation that God would prove a Redeemer to him, and the Vindicator of his innocence. PINEDA: In the expression My Redeemer, Job declares his singular love to Christ, as in the expression My brother (1Ki. 20:32). CARTWRIGHT: Job appropriates Christ to himself, and calls Him his own.
(khai) liveth or living; always lives, is immortal and eternal. So DRUSIUS and MENOCHINS. CARTWBIGHT: Liveth, without distinction of time as past or future; God the Eternal I am: Christ, as God, lives from eternity, while, as man, believes to eternity: Liveth,hath life in Himself as the Prince of life; also denotes His strength and power, as Psa. 38:19. COCCEIUS: Job opposes the Redeemers life to his own death: perhaps, also, alludes to the death of the Redeemer Himself (Rev. 1:18). SCULTFTUS; Although he shall die for me, yet is He the true and living God; the faith of the Old Testament saint is a true and saving faith in Christ (Gen. 48:16; Act. 4:12; Act. 15:11). JUNIUS: My Redeemer liveth; therefore, though men may bury my cause in oblivion, it remains safe with God. Others read: My Redeemer is the Living One. So SCOTT, PYE SMITH, DR. HENDERSON. HALES translates: My Redeemer is living. DR. THOMAS, in the Homilist: My living Redeemer; like the living God,having life in Himself.
And that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. A clause very variously interpreted and understood. (akharon) from (akhar, to remain, tarry, or be behind; here rendered at the latter day; properly the last, but may be used adverbially, with or understood, as in Isa. 9:1; Isa. 30:8, &c.; and then meaning at last. At length he shall stand (or appear) on the dust, i.e., on the earth. So GESENIUS, HEILIGSTEDT, MAURER, NOYES. Or Over the tomb, as EWALD, ZCKLER, and others. To witness for him: DELITZSCH. To protect him: FAUSSET. To deliver him: ZCKLER. Ancient translators seem to have read the verb variously; as I shall rise. So the VULGATE: At the last day I shall rise from the earth. He shall raise up. So the SEPTUAGINT: He shall raise up my skin on the earth. He shall stand up or appear. So the SYRIAC and ARABIC: In the end he shall appear on the earth. The TARGUM: And afterwards his redemption shall rise upon the earth. In this way THEODORET read the word: The last one shall rise upon the dust, or the tomb. So most of the translators at and since the Reformation. LUTHER, however, following the Septuagint, has: He shall hereafter awaken me out of the earth. But the Dutch and French (MARTINS) versions: He shall remain the last on the earth. DIODATIS Italian: At the last day he shall stand over the dust. VATABLUS: He shall stand over the earth, i.e., in heaven. GROTIUS, CASTALIO, LE CLERC: At the last he shall stand over the dust, or earth. MERCER, COCCEIUS, SCULTETUS: The latter or last One, he shall stand over the dust, i.e., on the earth, as being to remain for ever. The TIGURINE: In the last time he shall stand over the dust, applying his power over it. BROUGHTON: He shall rise upon the dust, i.e., from death. JUNIUS The latter one or last man, &c.,living again in the resurrection and at the coming of Christ, compared with the former or first man, as in 1Co. 15:42; perhaps Christ understood. MONTANUS: The last one shall rise again from the dead, alluding to Christ, the first-fruits of them that slept; or, He shall stand over the dust, i.e., those lying in the dust. COCCEIUS: The last, as never leaving us, or as remaining after all enemies are destroyed; or, last in life, alone immortal, ruling over death and the dust; or, as my deliverer, demanding me from the dust, having abolished the claim of death. SCULTETUS and GROTIUS: Shall stand over the dust, as conqueror, raising it to life. CODURCUS: The last shall stand over the dust, at the last judgmentthe Son of God and the goel of our race. DRUSIUS and CARYL: The last one, viz., the Redeemer. So SCHULTENS: The last manan epithet of ChristHe shall stand over dust,the dust of the grave, to claim this flesh from the spoiled prison of death; shall come as the avenger of a good cause and of oppressed innocence, and will put the crown of righteousness upon my head. GRYNOEUS: The last, for, At the last day. So WEMYSS, GOOD, DATHE, DDERLEIN: At last he shall appear on the earth. HALES: At the last day he shall stand over the dust, i.e., over mankindshall rise in judgment. FRY: At the end he shall stand upon the earth. LEE: In the last age or hereafter (the last days of the prophets and apostles). CONANT: In after time. So NOYES, BARNES, HENDERSON. KITTO: Hereafter or at last. Many of the moderns, however, prefer the other rendering of viz., the last one. So both the MICHAELISES, STICKEL, MAURER, HEILIGSTEDT, DE WETTE, DELITZSCH, SCOTT, PYE SMITH, Dr. ALEXANDER, FAUSSET. ZCKLER says: As the last one, surviving all, with special reference to Job himself. ROSENMLLER: He shall stand to assist or avenge the dust, i.e., the dead. HUFNAGEL, viewing (aphar) as from i.e., an enemy, has: He shall stand over or overcome my enemies. A. CLARKE: He shall be manifest in the flesh, and shall stand over them who sleep in the dust, or who have been reduced to dust, CONANT: He shall stand up, &c as a judge, and will decide the case in my favour, as Psa. 12:5; Psa. 44:26; or, On the dust, i.e., on (he earth, including the sense of vileness. NOYES: Dust, probably emphatic, as constrasted with heaven, the residence of the Creator. DDERLEIN understands by dust the patriarch himself reduced to dust and ashes. So ZCKLER: The dust of my decayed body or of my grave. KENNICOTT: Over this dust. Dr. ALEXANDER: By my dust.
The drift of this sublime declaration thus variously understood. By most the sentence is viewed as declarative of Jobs assurance regarding the promised Redeemer and future resurrection of the body. CASTALIO. The reference is to the resurrection of Christ, to be followed by that of all men. The arguments in favour of this view, as given by COCCEIUS, SCHULTENS, and others: (l) The sublime preface;
(2) A final judgment threatened by Job to his friends (Job. 19:26);
(3) His thoughts obviously lifted above this world, and the tone of his discourse now and henceforth more hopeful than before;
(4) All hope in this life already given up (Job. 17:5);
(5) The opinion of the fathers, as Jerome, Augustine, Cyprian, Gregory, &c.;
(6) The interpretation of the Targum and the Septuagint;
(7) The wish that this testimony should be read after his death, perhaps on a sepulchral pillar;
(8) The certainty expressed by him as resting on the immovable foundation of faith, that his Redeemer would come;
(9) The simplicity of this interpretation;
(10) Its agreement with the argument and scope;
(11) The truth of the thing itself;
(12) The majesty of the words;
(13) The joyful hope exhibited by the patriarch;
(14) The oneness of the Spirit in patriarchs, apostles, and all the faithful. TOWNSEND observes: These words have always been interpreted by the Church as expressive of the patriarchs faith and hope in a spiritual Redeemer, who should restore him after the death of his body; hence embodied by the Churches of Rome and England in their offices for the dead. LEE speaks of the passage as a recognition of the first promise made to Eve, and therefore a prediction of the Messiah. JEROME, in his Epistle to Pammachus, says: None speaks so plainly of the resurrection after Christ, as Job does before Him The passage was also applied by some of the Rabbis to the Messiah. Thus R. Hakkodesh: God shall be seen in our flesh; as Job testifies. Out of my flesh I shall see God. The reference to an existence beyond the grave, apart from the resurrection of the body, understood by some modern interpreters, as SCHLOTTMANN, ZCKLES, CONANT, &c.
According to an opposite view, the reference is to a figurative resurrection of Job, and his restoration to a better condition in this life. So GROTIUS, MERCER, CALVIN, (who yet fluctuates between the two opinions,) CHRYBOSTOM, AMBROSE. THEOPHYLACT, &c. The argument in favour of this view, as given by MERCER, ROSENMLLER, BARNES and others:
(1) Its agreement with the history;
(2) Its harmony with other passages of Scripture where a resurrection is spoken of, as Ezekiel 37;
(3) The views of the Hebrew writers, who, in searching for proofs of the resurection, never mention this passage;
(4) The doctrine of the resurrection not likely to be found in this place of the Old Testament alone, nor in the Old Testament at all;
(5) Jobs restoration to prosperity and happiness solves the difficulty of suffering innocence;
(6) The expectation of restored health naturally kept by the poet before Jobs mind;
(7) The assurance of restoration natural to one conscious of suffering innocently;
(8) The language fairly interpreted not necessarily implying a reference to a future and literal resurrection;
(9) Such a view inconsistent with the argument, and with many other places in the book;
(10) The resurrection never referred to as a topic of consolation either by Job or his friends;
(11) Such a view wholly in advance of his age;
(12) All that the words fairly convey met by the supposition that they refer to the events at the end. STICKEL observes, that the decision of the mystery is given in the Epilogue without the immortality of the spirit being in the remotest manner touched; and adds, that Jobs vindication required to be on the earth, and before those who were acquainted with the matter, or the inscription would be meaningless. NOYES: The idea of the resurrection inconsistent with the general design, the course of the argument, the connection of the discourse, and several express declarations, as Job. 7:7-8; Job. 10:20-22; Job 14, passim. EWALD however, on the contrary, asserts: That through the certainty of that truth alone could the contest be victoriously carried on; while the more respectable of the reformed Biblical interpreters essentially agreed with the Vulgate in understanding the passage of a literal resurrection. So many Orientalists and Hebraists, as SCHULTEES, both the MLCHAELISES, WELTHAUSEN, ROSENMULLER, GOOD, &c. CONANT observes, that the views of early Christian fathers, who differed in their interpretation of the passage, are of little account on either side, having been based on the defective translations of the Septuagint, the Itala, and the Vulgate.
And though after my skin worms destrey this body on nikkepkoo zotk.) These words variously rendered and understood. (nikke-pkoo from to strike, or cut; Piel from, to destroy; or, according to some, from = to surround. GESENIUS, in 1829, rendered the passage: After they have destroyed my skin (equivalent to, After my skin has been destroyed), this shall be, viz., that God shall appear. In 1840, he preferred to render it: After my skin, which they shall have destroyed, this shall be. The SEPTUAGINT has: he shall raise up my skin on the earth, which has endured such things. The VULGATE, followed by COVERDALE and LUTHER: Again I shall be surrounded with my skin. TARGUM: After my skin shall have been taken away, or burnt up, this shall be, viz., that my Redeemer shall remain the last. SYRIAC: After this has spread all over and around my body. DIODATI: However, after my skin, this body be corroded. MARTIN: When, after my skin, this shall have been devoured. DUTCH: After my skin has been eaten. TIGURINE: After they (the Trinity) have surrounded this with my skin. CASTALIO: After this (my body) shall be surrrounded with my skin. MONTANUS and PAGNINUS: After they have bruised this my skin. MUNSTER: After [worms] shall have gnawed this body. JUNIUS: After [worms] shall have pierced this, when I wake up,reading (oori) instead of (ri) PISCATOR: Although after my skin they (worms) pierce this,supplying (chi), or (im). MERCER: After my skin (corroded and consumed with my whole body), they (the worms in my ulcers, or my extreme pains) have shaken this (viz., his body,not named, as so deformed, but pointed to). COCCEIUS: After they have stripped this that remains of my skin, or this my skin,the whole of it, even to this particle; or, after my skin has burst, there shall be this,pointing to his body. VATABLUS: After my skin (has been perforated,) pains have broken this [mass of bones]. GROTIUS: Although not only my skin, but also this (the fat that is under it), disease has consumed. DE DIEU: After my skin has been consumed, they (my redeemer) shall make this to follow, viz., that I shall see God. SEB. SCHMIDT: After my skin has ceased to be, viz., after my death. CALOVIUS, and GERHARD: After my being raised up, this (all I see with my bodily eyes) shall be destroyed. J. H. MICHAELIS: When, therefore, after my skin worms, shall have despatched this. LE CLERC: If after my skin they have crushed this to pieces. HALES: After my skin has been mangled thus. SCHULTENS: After they (my pains and ulcers) have bruised my skin in this manner. STOCK: After they shall have swathed my skin, even this. KENNICOTT: After they (my adversaries) have mangled me thus. J. D. MICHAELIS, and SCOTT the translator: My skin, which is thus torn, shall become another, i.e., shall be renewed. DDERLEIN: I shall cast away my skin, understanding for . WEMYSS: Though this skin of mine is thus corroded. GOOD: After the disease has destroyed my skin. PYE SMITH: Has cut down my skin. ADAM CLARKE: After my skin they (diseases and afflictions) destroy this [wretched composition of misery and corruption]. ROSENMLLER: When after my skin this [body] has been broken into fragments. BOOTHROYD: If after my skin this [body] be destroyed. DE WETTE: After my skin, which has been mangled, even this here. So EWALD, HIRZEL, and ZCKLER. NOYES: Though with my skin this body be wasted away. DELITZSCH: After my skin, which is thus mangled. CONANT, SCHLOTSMANN, and CAREY: After this my skin shall be destroyed. BARNES: Though after my skin the flesh be destroyed; or, after my skin has been pierced through thus. FAUCETT: Though after my skin (is no more), this [body] is destroyed,the body not deserving to be named. FRY: After I awake shall this be brought to pass,reading, like Junius and Calovius, instead of .
Yet in my flesh shall I tee God. (mibbesari),literally, from my flesh,variously translated and understood. The VULGATE has: in my flesh. The TARGUM: Out of my body. MARTIN (French): From my flesh. DIODATI (Italian): With my flesh. PAGNINUS, MONTANUS, MERCER, PISCATOR, JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS: Out of my flesh. CASTALIO: From my body. VATABLUS: After my flesh has been wasted, or, After the affliction endured in my flesh. So R. NACHMANN. MERCER: Out of so great affliction of my flesh. COCCEIUS: Out of my flesh, not put off, but received. CALVIN: In my flesh,after I have been restored to a new state,uncertain what. So GRYNOEUS: Out of my revivified flesh. BROUGHTON From my flesh,I being raised and clothed with flesh. GUSSET: Out of my flesh, as my abode. J. H. MICHAELIS: From out of my flesh. KENNICOTT: Even in my flesh. ADAM CLARKE: Either, See Him in my renewed body, or, See Him as my kinsman in my flesh and blood, FRY: Of my flesh, i.e., of my nature and kindred, as Gen. 2:23. LEE: From or out of my flesh, i.e., while still in it. KITTO: In his flesh before he died, or in his flesh restored to soundness. BARTH (Bible Manual): When the flesh is raised upin the re-animated glorified body. FAUSSET and ROSENMULLER (Second Edition): From my renewed body, as the starting point of vision, as Son. 2:9,the next clause proving bodily vision to be meant. STICKEL: Without my flesh,as a mere skeleton; Job now comes to the point in which God, according to Satans desire, touched his bone and his flesh; with only his life spared. MAURER: After my flesh has been all wasted away, yet still in the body. So CHRYSOSTOM, UMBREIT, HIRZEL, HEILIGSTEDT, HAHN, NOYES, BARNES: Yet even without my flesh, COLEMAN: Apart from my flesh. EWALD: Without my flesh, i.e., as a glorified spirit. So VAIHINGER, SCHLOTTMANN, DILLMANN, DELITZSCH, ZOCKLER.
I shall see God. According to PISCATOR, CODURCUS, and others, Job foretells the incarnation of the Divine Word. MERCER: I shall contemplate him,discern His power, providence, and goodness in preserving me. GROTIUS: Shall experience him propitious to me. So HUFNAGEL and ROSENMULLER. COCCEIUS: Shall behold him in beatific vision, as Psa. 16:11; Psa. 17:15; Mat. 5:8; 1Jn. 3:2. MENOCHIUS: Shall see Christ with bodily eyes, but his Divine Esssence with the eyes of the mind. SCHULTENS: Shall then see God face to face, since access to him is denied me in this life; shall see God in glory,not the God-man who is the Goel. SEB. SCHMIDT: Shall see God incarnate as the Messiah. DODERLEIN: From my condition, I shall understand that God wishes well to me and approves my life. LE CLERC: The expectation fulfilled when God spoke to him out of the whirlwind. STICKEL: Expresses the expectation of a vindication of his innocence before his death, though it should be only in the last moments of his life. So HOFMANN. NOYES: Shall see God interposing in my favour. DELITZSCH: Shall sec God spiritually after death; Jobs hope, not that of a resurrection, but of a life beyond the grave, and so a breaking through the idea of Hades. EWALD: Refers to the immortality of the soul in the spirit-world. Dr. THOMAS, in the Homilist: Refers to bodily, not mental, vision; the resurrection of the dead found taught here as resulting upon the advent of the Messiah. So AUGUSTINE: Job prophesies of the resurrection; I shall be in my flesh when I see God. So CLEMENS ROMANUS, ORIGEN, CYRILL of JERUSALEM, EPHREM SYRUS, AMBROSE, EPIPHANIUS, JEROME, LUTHER, &c.
Job. 19:27. Whom I shall see for myself. See, repeated for emphasis: LEE. (li), literally for me or myself, variously understood. The SEPTUAGINT renders the passage: Which things I know in myself. VULGATE: Whom I myself shall see. MERCER: Whom I shall discern to be for me, by His kindness in preserving me. SCULTETUS, For me, i.e., for my good. So MONTANUS, PISCATOR, PAGNINUS, and COCCEIUS. JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS: The same that I shall see for me. CASTALIO: Whom I indeed myself shall see. VATABLUS: I shall enjoy the sight of Him to my salvation. COCCEIUS: Whom I shall see, not angry but abounding in love, to my life and joy, or as mine. MUNSTER: On my side. So KENNICOTT, HALES, SCOTT, WEMYSS, BOOTHROYD, CODURCUS: Whom I even contemplate as standing by me. GROTIUS: I, I say, with these eyes shall see him, being emphatic. GRYNUS: Whom I shall see as favourable to me, or as eternally mine. J. D. MICHAELIS: For myself. So GOOD, BARNES, Dr. ALEXANDER. Dr. CHALMERS: For myself and my own comfort. Dr. THOMAS: In my proper personality. COLEMAN: As my own. NOYES: As my friend. KITTO: Interposing on my behalf. FAUSSET: For my advantage. SO HEILIGSTEDT, MAURER, PYE SMITH. ZOCKLER: For my salvation. DELITZSCH: Whom I shall see, I, for my salvation. DE WETTE: Yea, I shall see Him myself. CONANT: Whom I, for myself, shall see. So SCHLOTTMANN. SCOTT: Expresses more explicitly and emphatically his faith that in a disembodied state be should see God. CAREY: Whom that I may see as my own, the object of the desire in the last clause. BARTH: Anticipates partly his justification, and partly compensation for his sufferings. ADAM CLARKE: Speaks as having a personal interest in the resurrection as in the Redeemer.
And my eyes shall behold. The Septuagint translates (raoo) as past: Which things mine eye hath seen. So MONTANUS, CODURCUS and COCCEIUS: My eyes have seen. The latter explains by saying: The eyes of my mind have seen and tasted beforehand in my heart the vision of God by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. CODURCUS translates: I myself have seen with these eyes; and adds, applying to himself the resurrection common to all the saints. MERCER renders the verb as present: Whom my eyes seenot corporcally but spiritually: I contemplate His power with the eyes of my mind. JUNTUS, followed by CARYL, has: Whom I myself shall see with these eyes, being restored, though now I be entirely dissolved. MUNSTER has: Inasmuch as I myself shall behold him, SCHULTENS views the words as equivalent toI believe the resurrection especially of myself. ROSENMULLER: I shall see with the eyes of my renewed body. HUFNAGEL: I shall yet experience that God makes me happy. Dr. THOMAS, in the Homilist, observes that (raah) implies bodily vision.
And not another. (zar) from (zoor) to turn aside; a stranger. The word differently understood. GESENIUS readers it here an adversary. So PINEDA, BOLDUC, STICKEL, CAREY. MERCER, MONTANUS, and PAGNINUS: A stranger. So DE WETTE and MICHAELIS. CONANT observes that denotes only a national enemy, and translates: Another. So SCHLOTTMANN. VATABLUS has: Another, with for me understood. So DRUSIUS, COCCEIUS, GROTIUS, MERCER: I who know my pain and grief and not a stranger. OSIANDER: Not a hypocrite, a stranger in faith and hope. SCULTETUS and CODURCUS: In this body and not another, as Isa. 26:19. HENRY: He and not another for him shall be seen; or, I and not another for me. CARYL: I myself, the very man who now speaks, and not changed into another; intimating a personal resurrection. So GREGORY and BEZA. MAYER: TO show that as Christ lives again after death, so shall all the faithful, and that in the same bodies in which they lived before. GRYNUS: Not only your eyes, who in this might think you had a precedency over me. HALES: Not estranged from me. So KENNICOTT, DATHE, UMBREIT, WEMYSS, SCOTT, PYE SMITH. A. CLARKE: Not a stranger, who has no relation to human nature. BOOTHROYD: Not anothers [eyes]. DELITZSCH: I and not another person.
Though my reins be consumed within me, (caloe chilyothai bekheki) literally: My reins are consumed in my bosom. So GESENIUS and others; understanding: From desire and longing for this consummation. The SEPTUAGINT has: All things hare been fulfilled to me in my bosom. VULGATE: This my hope has been laid up in my bosom. TARGUM: My reins are consumed in my bosom. SYRIAC: My reins are consumed on account of my cause. COVERDALE: My reins are consumed within me, when ye say, &c. GENEVA version: My strength has been consumed and destroyed. VATABLUS: My bowels have failed from affliction. SCULTETUS: From sorrow and pain. LE CLERC: From indignation. MERCER: My reins have been consumed in my bosom (in my bosom) expressing the greater violence of his pain. PISCATOR and others supply, as in our authorized version: Although. CODURCUS has: My desires have been fulfilled in my bosom. The TIGURINE translators view the expression as equivalent to: Which alone is my desire. Similarly, CARYL and HENRY: I have nothing more to desire. DE DIEU: My reins are consumed with desire in my bosom, as Psa. 84:3. So SCULTETUS: I also faint with desire of seeing him. COCCEIUS and SCHCLTENS: With desire of seeing him clearly and openly. Dutch annotators: With desire of obtaining so great a blessing. SEB. SCHMIDT connects with what follows: Because ye say, &c. SCHULTENS regards the words as part of the desired inscription. J. H. MICHAELIS: From desire of him, or of it, my reins are consumed in my bosom. So GREGORY: I burn with desire of enjoying that wished-for time. To the same effect, J. D. MICHAELIS, DATHE, ROSENMULLER, DE WETTE, PATRICK, WEMYSS, SCOTT, and ZOCKLER. A. CLARKE: My reins, i.e., my desires are spent; equivalent to: Though now apparently at the point of death. KENNICOTT: All this have I made up in my own bosom. PYE SMITH: The thoughts of my bosom are accomplished. BOOTHROYD: Accomplished shall be the desires of my breast. LEE: When my reins, &c.; connecting with the preceding. HOMILIST: Should my reins have been consumed, &c.
Job. 19:18. Seeing He root of the matter is found in me For (bi) in me, upwards of a hundred of MSS. have (bo) in him. The expression (shoresh dabhar), literally, the root of a word or matter, very variously understood. The interpretations reduceable to four:
(1) A ground of accusation;
(2) A ground of dispute;
(3) The true faith;
(4) A holy life. The first and second are the most probable, and now generally adopted: [How] shall we find the root of the dispute or ground of accusation in him? So GESENIUS, DELITSZCH, NOYES, CAREY, ZOCKLER, and others, reading (nimlsa) as first person plural in Kal. The SEPTUAGINT has: And find the root of the word in him. VULGATE and TARGUM: And let us find the root of a word against them. LUTHER: And find a matter against him. COVERDALE: We have found an occasion against him. MARTIN (French): Since the foundation of my words is found in me. DIODATI (Italian): Since the root of the word is found in me. So MONTANUS, MERCER, VATABLUS, PAGNINUS, PISCATOR, JUNIUS, and TREMELLIUS. COCCEIUS: And the root of the matter has been found in me, or is in me; change of person for in him. Mercer understands the expression as implying Jobs innocence. CODURCUS: And that the cause of the quarrel is in me. So DE DIEU, POOLE, and SCHULTENS. GRYNUS: The cause, &c. viz., that I am a wicked man, and so deserving the calamities. HUFNAGEL: Why sought we the cause of his misfortune in himself. AQUINAS, JEROME, BEDE, SANC-TIUS, understand by The root, &c, the words which Job had spoken, or some other charge which the friends brought against him. According to TIRINUS: An occasion of calumniating him. OSIANDER: Of chiding him. The Dutch annotators regard it as the affliction he endured, or the confession he had just made. COCCEIUS: The ground of speaking boldly. VATABLUS: Truth and innocence. PISCATOR: Solid arguments. GROTIUS: A good foundation. CODURCUS translates: The root of the question; and understands it of the faith and hope of the resurrection. According to the Assemblys Annotations: The root of the Divine Word, or promise of a Redeemer. J. H. MICHAELIS and SEB. SCHMIDT understand the expression as: The foundation of his faith. KENNICOTT and SCOTT have: The truth of the matter. HALES, with the Dutch annotators: The strength of the argument. The TIGURINE: The foundation of the matter of salvation. CARTWRIGHT: Integrity of heart; the grace of God; true faith. So MAYER, SIMON, J. D. MICHAELIS, BARNES, and FAUSSET. LE CLERC: The Word of God. BARTH: The assurance he has just expressed. GOOD translates: When the root of the matter is disclosed in me. WEMYSS: Since there is no ground of accusation in me. FRY: A ground of accusation is invented against me.
JOBS REPLY. BILDADS SECOND SPEECH
This chapter the crowning part of the controversy. Both in form and in fact the centre of the whole book. Like the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the jewel in the ring. Jobs faith soars like an eagle through clouds and tempests into the open heaven, and gazes for a few moments on the sun. The culmination of all the preceding conflict. What follows of a considerably different character. Job afterwards descends again into the arena, but much more tranquillised in spirit.
I. His complaint of his friends continued reproaches and unkind treatment
Their treatment of him was
1. Distressing (Job. 19:2). How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces (bruise or pound me as in a mortar) with words (unkind and reproachful words, or with speeches and recitations which contain only words instead of arguments)? The bruising of Jobs sorrowful spirit the natural effect of his friends speeches; especially of their long-drawn and highly-coloured quotations about the late of the wicked. Job put down in them for a wicked man, suffering the righteous consequence of his sins, and threatened with still more dreadful ones. Bruised in soul by his friends words, as in body by Satans blows. His internal afflictions thus made to rival his external ones. More grievously robbed by his friends than by either Chaldeans or Sabeans. Worse to be robbed of our peace and good name than of our property. Who steals my purse steals trash. The experience of David, or whoever wrote Psalms 119 : Bands of the wicked robbed me (Psa. 119:61). Reproach the bitterest of Christs sufferings, next to the hiding of His Fathers face (Psa. 69:20). Jobs affliction reaches its height in this chapter, as also his faith and his consolation. Observe
(1.) Truth misapplied as mischevious as error.
(2.) A sin not to soothe affliction; a still greater one to aggravate it. A high offence in Gods sight to talk to the grief of those whom God has wounded (Psa. 69:26). The part of the wicked to help forward the affliction of Gods suffering people (Zec. 1:15).
2. Persistent (Job. 19:3). These ten (many) times have ye reproached me. Each of the three friends had now attacked him, and two of them a second time. Their speeches all partaking of the same reproachful character Their harshness and vehemence only increased as they advanced. The complaint of David as typical of the Messiah, Reproach hath broken mine heart (Psa. 69:20).
3. Shameless. Ye are not ashamed. A sin to act harshly to any; a shame to act harshly to the afflicted; still more shameful when the afflicted one is a friend. An aggravation of any sin when it is committed without shame.
4. Their treatment was cruel. Ye make yourselves strange to me, margin, harden yourselves against me; or, treat me cruelly; or, stun me [with your reproaches]. Unfeeling conduct towards a friend held base even among the heathen. The light of nature teaches that he who hath friends, must show himself friendly. The effect of false religious views to render men cruel and unfeeling towards others. Religious persecutions especially malignant. True religion a religion of gentleness and love. The more of it, the more gentle and loving. The more of a false religion, the more cruel and unfeeling. Herod put one or two of Christs disciples to death because it pleased the Jews: Saul, with more religion, kept breathing out threatenings and slaughter against them (Act. 12:1-3; Act. 9:1).
II. He wards off their reproaches
Does so with three considerations
1. That he suffers, alone, the effect of his error, if he has committed any (Job. 19:4). And be it indeed that I have erred (gone astray from God and His commandments), mine error (in the consequences of it) remaineth with myself. Sufficient to a man to suffer the effect of his error, without his having to bear the additional pain of reproach. The reproach of friends often harder to bear than the violence of enemies.
2. That his offence, if committed, was an unconscious one. Mine error. Marked difference made in the law between sins committed presumptuously or deliberately and those committed in error or ignorance. Jobs among the latter. Such found in the best, Who can understand his errors? Yet even then calling for humiliation, and requiring the blood of atonement. One object of affliction to bring sins of ignorance to our consciousness in order to their confession. Many, perhaps most, of our sins, like letters, written with invisible ink, requiring the fire to bring them to view; or, like the characters traced with phosphorous, only made visible in the dark chamber of trouble. Cleansing to be sought from secret faults (Psa. 19:12).
3. That his afflictions were from the hand of God (Job. 19:5). If, indeed, ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me, my reproach (make my calamities which you reproach me with an argument to prove my guilt; or, prove to me my reproach, that I am guilty and suffer deservedly), know now (on the contrary, or, as a thing I fully admit, but which ought to move your pity), that God hath overthrown me (hath thrust me down and brought me low, doing it of His own free will and pleasure, without reference to any guilt of mine as the cause), and hath compassed me with His net, (as a hunter the animal that he wishes to take). Bildad had said the wicked are entangled in a net: Job admits he was taken in a net; but that net was Gods. Observe:
(1.) A Godly man sees and acknowledges God in his troubles, as well as in his triumphs. In the friends view, as well as Jobs, his afflictions from God; the difference, that in theirs, they were retributive; in his, arbitrary and mysterious. This pleaded by Job as a reason for their pity and more gentle treatment. Enough for God to lay on His hand, without man adding his also.
(2.) That our afflictions are from God may be either an alleviation or an aggravation. An alleviation, when there is faith in His Fatherly love; an aggravation, when there is only apprehension of His wrath. The hand of a loving Father seen in our trouble takes away its sting; the apprehension of His anger exasperates the wound.
(3.) Sin, and not suffering, in itself a reproach. Suffering no reproach, but as the effect of sin. Sin, a reproach to any people.
4. That he can obtain no redress from God (Job. 19:7). Behold, I cry out of wrong (of violence done to me in these afflictions sent without any guiltiness as the cause), but I am not heard: I cry aloud (from intensity of suffering and earnestness to be heard), but there is no judgment (no impartial trial afforded of my case, and no redress of my wrongs). One of the hardest things spoken by Job in regard to God. Seemed to charge God foolishly. Even Moses, the meekest man on earth, spake unadvisedly with his lips. One of the sayings for which Job was at last reproved by God, and for which he humbled himself in dust and ashes. Yet the language in a sense true, though both rash and irreverent. According to Gods own testimony, Job was destroyed without cause (ch. Job. 2:3). Job correct as to the fact itself; not correct as to the conduct he ascribes to God in the matter. God might have, as He actually had, the holiest, kindest, wisest, best reasons for treating, or allowing others to treat, him as He did. But to ascribe wrong or violence to his Creator was only the suggestion of his adversary, and enough to bring Job, as it did afterwards bring him, to the dust. Jobs language sinfully presents God in the view of the unjust judge in the parable. Observe
(1.) Gods outward dealings not always the criterion of His character or His heart. Seems at times to wink at the sins of His enemies and to disregard the cry of His friends. May, however, bear long with His people, but in the end will avenge them. Their part to believe this, and still to cry and wait on (Luk. 18:1-8).
(2.) Gods silence to His peoples cry one of their greatest trials. Experienced by David and by Davids Antitype (Psa. 22:1-2).
III. Enlarges on Gods severe treatment of him (Job. 19:8-19). Specifies
1. His bringing him into inextricable straits (Job. 19:8). He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. Describes his troubles
(1) Externally; as of the nature of ah impassable fence. By the character of his disease, excluded from society and confined to his ash-heap. His disease an incurable one. All his troubles apparently irremediable.
(2) Internally; his mind full of darkness and confusion. Saw no way of escape. Acknowledges that the steps of his strength were straitened, but straitened by God, for what cause he knew not. ObserveOne usual way in which God afflicts and tries His people is to bring them into straits, out of which they can find no escape. Hedges up their way that they cannot find their paths (Hos. 2:6; Lam. 3:7; Psa. 88:8). Thus shuts them up to Himself(i.) to humble submission to Him; (ii.) to entire dependence upon Him.
2. His so deeply humbling and abasing him (Job. 19:9). He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. Similar complaint in ch. Job. 16:15. The change in his circumstances here ascribed directly to God. The Chaldeans and Sabeans, the fire and the whirlwind, and finally, the loathsome leprosy itself, only Gods instruments. Observe
(1) The part of faith and piety, to view all our adversities, whatever the instruments, as coming from God himself (Psa. 66:11-12; Psa. 71:20).
(2) All earthly glory, such as a man can be stripped of by Divine Providence,children, friends, wealth, fame, influence, rank. That only the true glory of which a man cannot be stripped, even by death itself. God himself the believers unfading glory (Isa. 40:19).
(3) The brightest earthly crown such as may, like Jobs, be suddenly laid in the dust. The poorest believer the heir of a crown that fadeth not away (1Pe. 5:4). A mans crown, whatever is his ornament and honour. For Jobs earthly crown, read ch. 29.
3. His utterly extirpating him and blighting his hopes (Job. 19:10). He hath destroyed me (plucked me up) on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope he hath removed like a tree. The figure that of a tree thoroughly torn up by the roots. Jobs case, both in regard to person and progeny, property and position. All his expectation of comfort, prosperity, and usefulness hopelessly blasted. For his hope, see chap. Job. 29:18. The frustration of his hopes, a part of his trial (chap. Job. 14:19; Job. 17:11). Hard to give up our hopes and see our expectations blasted. All earthly hopes liable to disappointment. Jobs previous condition and character such as might warrant such hopes, if any could.
4. His treating him as an enemy (Job. 19:11). He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies. Job had lived, like Abraham, as the friend of God; had experienced his friendship and familiarity (chap. Job. 29:4-5); had, like Enoch, walked with God, and sought to please Him (chap. Job. 6:10). Intensely trying to be now treated by Him as an enemy (chap. Job. 13:24). Yet Gods secret testimony of him: My servant Job. The same borne openly at the close of the trial. Observe
(1) Love and hatred, on the part of God, and His estimate of individuals, not known from His dealings with men in this world (Ecc. 9:1).
(2) Apprehended wrath on the part of God, the believers greatest trial.
5. His appearing to employ His creatures for his destruction (Job. 19:12). His troops (His creatures whom He employs as a general does his troops) come together (as if summoned from different quarters to the siege), and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle. The Sabeans and Chaldeans, lightning and whirlwind, hostile friends and neighbours, good and bad angels, all viewed as Gods armies, employed by Him for his destruction. All nature, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational, visible and invisible, capable of being employed as His forces, either for mercy or judgment. The Roman troops besieging Jerusalem spoken of as Gods armies (Mat. 22:7). So the swarms of locusts devastating Juda (Joe. 2:25). Creation but a reservoir of means made ready for the Creators use. Man being in rebellion against God,
The very elements, though each be meant
The minister of man to serve his wants,
Conspire against him.
Holy angels especially Gods troops (Psa. 103:21). These pitch their tent around Gods servants for their protection (Psa. 34:7; Psa. 91:10-11). Appeared now to do so around Jobs tabernacle for his destruction. Blind unbelief is sure to err, &c. Jobs affliction now apparently chronic. The ministers of destruction had not only raised up their way, as troops advancing to the siege, but had sat down around the beleaguered fortress.
6. His alienating from him his friends, domestics, and others (Job. 19:13-15). He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed (ceased from their kind offices as such), and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house (servants and dependents, or strangers partaking, according to Arab custom, of his hospitality and protection, ch. Job. 31:17-18), and my maids (from whose sex more tenderness and respect might have been expected) count me for a stranger. I am an alien in their sight,instead of being regarded as the master in my own dwelling. A painful aggravation of adversity and affliction when relations are more kin than kind. Job enlarges on this distressing change in his domestic and social relations (Job. 19:16). I called my servant and he gave me no answer (thus treating me not only with disrespect but contempt): I entreated him (instead of commanding him, as a master) with my mouth (with my own mouth instead of anothers, or with a loud call instead of a mere whisper; or rather, instead of summoning him with my hands,servants in the East being summoned, not by the voice, but by clapping the hands). A still greater trial, however, than this humiliation in his own house, was his (Job. 19:17). My breath (or my spirit) is strange (odious and disgusting) to my wife (causing her to withdraw from all nearness to me and intercourse with me), though I entreated for the childrens sake of mine own body (or, and I stink in the nostrils of the children of my womb; i.e. of the womb that bare me, viz. my own brothers and sisters; or the children of my own bodyeither grandchildren, or the children of concubines; or, my prayer is loathsome to the children, &c.). The contemptuous treatment extended beyond his own house (Job. 19:18). Yea, young children (possibly those of his slaves or domestics, or according to margin, the wicked, the idle rabble, drawn from curiosity to such a spectacle of misfortune and disease) despise me; I arose (or I rise or stand up to speak, treating them with courtesy and respect, or commanding them away), and they spake against me. Sad contrast with his former treatment (chap. Job. 29:8-10; Job. 29:21-23). One of the greatest indignities in the East to be treated by young persons and inferiors with disrespect. Deference to seniors and superiors a prominent feature in Oriental manners. Job. 19:19.All my inward friends (Heb. the men of my secret, my most intimate and confidential friends) abhorred me; and they whom I loved are turned against me. Jobs treatment by his three friends a specimen of this part of his affliction, and probably now alluded to. Their feeling, instead of sympathy, one of abhorrence. Their abhorrence from
(1) His loathsome disease;
(2) The appearance of his being treated as a wicked man and a hypocrite, whom Divine justice was only now overtaking and bringing his secret wickedness to light. A duty suggested by the light of Nature to withdraw from such. This treatment one of Jobs keenest sufferings. The bitter complaint of David and of Davids Antitype, Messiah. (Psa. 41:9; Psa. 55:13-14; Psa. 55:20). This treatment, like his other trials, ascribed by the patriarch to God. So with DavidLover and friend hast thou put far from me (Psa. 38:11; Psa. 31:11; Psa. 69:8). The Lord hath said unto him, Curse David (2Sa. 16:10). Observe
1. The sinful and undutiful conduct of men to be ascribed to God only as secretly permitted, and for wise and holy ends providentially appointed, but neither as commanded nor instigated by Him. So Josephs treatment by his brethren, and the Crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews.
2. The bonds of affection and friendship in Gods hands. These He has but to loose and friends turn foes. The social as well as physical system under His control, and dependent on His will.
3. Satan a willing and powerful agent in producing evil as soon as he obtains permission. His part that of the tale-bearer, to separate chief friends, and sow discord among brethren. His name Diabolus, or Devil, the slanderer, indicative of his character and employment.
4. Evil latent in every heart, and only requiring the removal of restraints in order to its breaking forth. These restraints in Gods hand, who makes the wrath of man to praise Him, while the remainder of that wrath He restrains (Psa. 76:10).
5. Civil and domestic concord, and the dutiful conduct of subjects and inferiors, due to Gods overruling Providence. The sins of rulers and heads of families often punished by the removal of Providential restraints, and the abandonment of the heart of subjects and children to its own corruption. Hence insubordination, alienation, disobedience, discord. On the other hand, when a mans ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him (Pro. 16:7).
6. Job, in these verses, a manifest type of Gods Righteous Servant, the Messiah, in His last sufferings. (Read Matthew 26, 27).
IV. Touching appeal to his friends (Job. 19:20-22).
1. Describes his reduced condition (Job. 19:20). My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh (or as to my flesh,his flesh gone, and his bones adhering to and appearing through his skin); and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth (with only the skin about the teeth and gums left free from ulcers,proverbial expression denoting extreme emaciation and peril of life). Satan goes the utmost length of his permission (ch. Job. 2:6). Jobs emaciation already alluded to (ch. Job. 16:8). The result partly of his disease, partly of his continued grief. Mans beauty soon made to consume away under Gods rebukes (Psa. 39:11).
2. Entreats the pity of his friends (Job. 19:21). Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me. Jobs spirit calmer and more humble. The heart a flinty rock that could resist his appeal. Yet resisted by his friends. Left to himself man has no flesh in his obdurate heart. Pity no less his duty, and the want of it his sin (ch. Job. 6:14). Jobs appeals for pity on the ground
(1) Of their relation to him as his friends. Natural for a man in trouble to cast himself on the sympathy of his friends. Even an enemy will pity in deep distress. A brother born for adversity. Men bearing the name and profession of friends to be careful to act as such (Pro. 18:24). Jesus the Friend of sinners (Mat. 11:19); a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother (Pro. 18:24). Appropriated by believers as their Friend (Son. 5:16). Touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15). Precious privilege to possess a true and tried friend. Such to be grappled to our soul with hooks of steel.
Poor is the friendless master of a world;
A world in purchase for a friend is gain.
(2) On the ground of his great affliction. The hand of God hath touched me. When God smites, man should pity, not reproach. The heavier the blow, the more tender the sympathy. ObserveAll Jobs afflictions but the touch of Gods hand. That touch all that Satan craved. Able in a moment to turn our joy into sorrow, our comeliness into corruption. Can in a few days strip us of our property, bereave us of our children, alienate our friends, deprive us of our health, and render us an object of loathing to all who see us. A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
3. Deprecates their severity (Job. 19:22). Why do ye persecute me as God (adding your groundless severity to His), and are not satisfied with my flesh (which you see mangled and consumed, but will add your reproaches and thus lacerate my spirit as well). Appeals to conscience and humanity as well as to friendship and pity. Gods apparent severity towards any of His creatures no reason for mans severity to his suffering fellow-creature. In all circumstances God makes humanity mans duty. To love mercy one of the three grand requirements on the part of man (Mic. 6:8). Mercy twice blessed. Neither mans sins nor Gods strokes intended to turn the milk of human kindness into gall. The more God wounds in His Providence, the more mans duty to heal with his pity, his prayers, and if need be, his purse. Christs parable of the Good Samaritan to be the Christians practice as it was His own.
V. An impassioned wish (Job. 19:23-24). O that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book (or public register)! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! Observe
1. Reference made to the various modes of writing then practiced
(1) On linen or papyrus;
(2) On leaden tablets;
(3) On rocks or stone pillars, the characters formed with an iron graver and filled up with lead for greater preservation and distinctness. Papyrus rolls still exist from the remotest age of the Pharaohs. Such mode of writing common in the age of Cheops, the founder of the Great Pyramid, 2000 years before Christ. Montfaucon, in 1699, purchased a book in Rome entirely of lead. Wady Mokatteb, along the route of the Israelites in the Desert, full of inscriptions cut in the rocks. At Hisn Ghorab, on the shores of South Arabia, on a high rock terrace, is a large inscription of ten lines in Himyaritic characters, the letters four inches long by one-third of an inch broad, and one-tenth deep, cut in notches, and having apparently been graven with an iron pen. The inscription is made on a very light grey or lead-coloured stone, a vein of the quarry coming out on the face of the cliff. It is as follows: We believed in the miracle-mystery, and in the resurrection-mystery, and in the nostril-mystery. The name of Aws at the foot of the inscription indicates it to be a relic of the long-lost tribe of Ad, the son of Aws or Uz, the son of Aram and grandson of Shem, and connects it closely with the country in which Job lived.(Sermons in Stones).
2. Reference to writing as already well known. Practised long anterior to the time of Moses. Originally in hieroglyphics; then in letters formed from these. Three kinds of writing practised among the ancient Egyptiansthe hieroglyphic, the hieratic (used by the priests), and the demotic, used by the people. Printing originally by carving in stone. Printing by blocks long practised in China. Printing by types only invented in 1440 A.D.; the art begun at Haarlem, in Holland, and perfected at Mainz, in Germany. The first printed book, with a date, a Psalter printed by John Faust in 1457. The first printed Bible with a date, produced by the same person, in 1460.
3. Jobs spirit elevated to a high pitch of sublimity and faith. Looks into the future with calmness and triumph. His language that of conscious integrity, and of certainty as to his ultimate vindication. Desires the perpetuation of his words to all generations. His words either those in which he had already declared his innocence, or those in which he was about to declare the certainty of his faith in his Divine Redeemer and Vindicator. Wished to tell out his confidence and confession of Him, without the fear of having a single word to efface.
4. Jobs wish fulfilled to an extent undreamt of at the time. His words written in the imperishable records of Holy Scripture. Printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society fifty millions of times in more than a hundred languages, and spread over all the earth, during the last seventy years. The last language in which they have been printed, viz., in this present year 1875, by the Pilgrim-Mission Printing Press at St. Chrischona, near Bale, is the Amharic, the modern Ethiopic or Abyssinian, nearly related to the language which Job spoke. The Himyaritic, already mentioned, is closely allied to the Ethiopic and Hebrew; and the Amharic has chiefly helped to interpret it. May contain the remains of the language of the earlier races of Arabia, as the Adites and Amalekites, and is considered a form of Arabic which preceded the Ishmaelitic, the Kufic, and of course the ordinary Arabic of the Koran. Hmyar, from whom it has its name, was a grandson of Kahtan or Joktan, the brother of Peleg; and from him were all the princes descended who reigned in Yemen or Arabia Felix, till the time of Mahomed. His father Yarab is said to have been the inventor of the Arabic language and the progenitor of all the Arabs of Yemen. Abyssinia, whose language is the Amharic, is called by the natives Habesh, or mixture, from the united descendants of Shem and Ham who peopled it, Ham having probably fled at once from his fathers presence across the Desert into Egypt, his posterity multiplying in the valley of the Nile and in Abyssinia.
All our words graven as in a rock for ever as a testimony either for us or against us. By our words, as well as by our deeds, we shall be justified or condemned at the final assize (Mat. 12:36-37; Jud. 1:15).
VI. Jobs triumphant testimony and joyful assurance (Job. 19:25-27). For I know (Heb. And,even, or also, I know,) that my Redeemer liveth (or, is living, or is the living One), and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth (or, that He at last,hereafter, or as the last One,shall arise upon the dust or earth,or shalt stand over the dust, viz., my dust, or the dust of the grave, or mankind); and though after my skin worms destroy this body (or, and after my skin shall be mangled thus; or, even this, pointing to it), yet in my flesh (Heb. out of my flesh, i.e., as my habitation or point of vision,or, without my flesh, i.e., in a disembodied state) shall I see God; whom I (emphatic, Even I myself shall see for myselfto my advantage, on my side, or as my own), and mine eyes shall behold and not another (or, not estranged as he now appears to be); though my reins he consumed within me (Heb. my reins,without thoughare consumed in my bosom, viz., either from disease, or, as margin, with desire for that day). One of the most remarkable and magnificent passages in the Bible. Observe
(1) the solemnity with which in the previous verses it has been introduced;
(2) The place which it holds in the Book as the climax in Jobs speeches. Jobs faith here rises to its loftiest triumph. The words uttered when, to outward sense, all was cheerless despair. A glorious example of Christian faith. Jobs faith the substance of (or what gives reality to) things hoped for, the evidence (or certain conviction) of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Believes what it sees not. Hopes even against hope, or contrary to all appearances against it. His faith and hope the cordial in his trouble. All calumny and suffering easily borne in the certain possession of a personal Redeemer and the assured hope of a blessed deliverance. The passage early incorporated in the Churchs burial service, as the expression of her faith and hope of a glorious resurrection. The opening words
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
Among the most memorable sayings of Scripture. Worthy to be written in gems and gold. Perhaps more familiar to Christians than any other text either in the Old or New Testament. Repeated over the open sepulchre for hundreds of years, proclaiming death a conquered foe, and the grave rifled of its spoils. A cheering and joyous light to millions in the dark valley of trouble and of death itself. Job amply compensated for all his suffering in being made thereby the author of these blessed and imperishable words. Consider under the passage
1. The assured knowledge which Job asserts: I know. The language of absolute certainty. The thing no mere guess, or conjecture, or vague hope. No hesitation or doubt about the matter. Known by Job as certainly as that the sun was shining in the heavens. His faith neither to be shaken by his terrible losses, nor his wifes reproaches, nor his friends suspicions and accusations. Like the life-boat, which buried for a few moments in the surging billows, comes again to the surface. Christian faith is certain knowledge (Heb. 2:1).
Job glories in his knowledge. I know. The I emphatic. I, who am so reduced in body and in circumstances, so despised, so wretched, so loathsome. I, who am standing on the very brink of the grave. I know, whatever you may do, and whatever your unfavourable opinion concerning me. I know it, as my unspeakable comfort and my glorious privilege. The believers knowledge of Christ something to glory in. I know whom I have believed.
The grounds and sources of this assurance. Both internal and external. Internally
(1) Divine enlightenment. All true and saving knowledge of God as our Redeemer the result of Divine teaching (Isa. 54:13). No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas; for flesh and blood hath not revealed this [knowledge of me] unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. It pleased God to reveal his Son in me. We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true (Mat. 11:27; Mat. 16:17; Gal. 1:15-16; 1Jn. 4:20).
(2) Previous personal acquaintance with God, experience of His grace, and habitual walking with Him (Hos. 6:3).Externally:
(1) The original promise in Eden. That promise one of a Redeemer who should avenge on the serpent, the devil, the injuries he had inflicted on the human race, to be claimed therefore by Job as his Redeemer. This promise the germ of all redemption acts and offices performed by Jehovah towards mankind. Handed down from father to son and extended through the world. Found in various tribes and nations in a distorted form. Preserved pure in the line of Shem. The Fall through the Serpent represented on the temple of Osiris at Phyle, in Upper Egypt. The resurrection exhibited on the tomb of Mycerinus in one of the Pyramids four thousand years ago.
(2) Enochs prophecy, preserved by tradition and quoted by Jude in his epistle (Job. 19:14-15).
(3) Enochs translation to heaven before the Flood.
(4) The preservation of Noah and his family in the Ark.
(5) The continually offered sacrifices, which told of a Redeemer who by death should destroy him that had the power of death (Heb. 2:14). Observe
(1) Jobs certainty as to a living Redeemer in that early age more than 2000 years before his appearance on the earth, a solemn witness against all unbelief in our own, nearly 2000 years after it.
(2) Jobs happiness and comfort in the knowledge of a personal Redeemer before he came, rather to be exceeded by our own so long after he has done so.
(3) The sweetest and surest knowledge of God as in Christ our own gracious Redeemer obtained in the time of trouble and affliction. At eventide light.
2. The contents of Jobs knowledge, or the thing asserted to be known. Has reference
(1). To God. I know that my Redeemer liveth, &c. Regarding God, he knew
(i.) That He was his Redeemer. The name (Heb. Goel), applied(a) To the kinsman, whose duty under the law, was, as next-of-kin, to redeem a captive or enslaved relative; to buy back his sold or forfeited inheritance; to marry his childless widow if unmarried himself; and to avenge his innocent blood. The institution recognised and established in the Mosaic law, but doubtless in existence long before. Still existing more or less in the East. Like others under the law, typical of the Messiah and His redemption-work. The name applied(b) To God as the Redeemer and Deliverer of His people, especially of Israel from Egyptian bondage and Babylonian captivity. Peculiarly applied(c) To God the Son, who, as the promised Deliverer of the human race, should become incarnate as the womans seed, and through His own death bruise the Serpents head. The name not expressly applied to Him in the New Testament, but the thing every where. (See Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:7; Gal. 3:13; Gal. 4:5; Tit. 2:14; Heb. 9:12; Rev. 5:9). The name proper to a kinsman. Under the law, only such had the right to redeem. Pointed to the fact that He who was to be mans Redeemer was to be also his Brother. The human kinsmanship of the Divine Redeemer, a subject of express prophecy: Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man that it my fellow (Zec. 13:7). Such kinmanship ascribed to Him by the Apostle as necessary for His undertaking. Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he likewise himself also took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, and deliver them, &c. (Heb. 2:14). God the Son the Author of all redeeming acts towards Israel. (Psa. 68:17-18, compared with Eph. 4:8-10).
God the Son regarded by Job more or less distinctly as his Redeemer, in(a) Delivering him from troubles (so Jacob, Gen. 48:16); (b) Vindicating his character and avenging his wrongs; (c) Delivering him from death and the grave; (d) Delivering him from the hand of the great adversary, the devil. His words uttered under a deep sense of his wants and necessities. His spirit at the time more than ordinarily elevated and illuminated. His language, perhaps, primarily referring to the divine vindication of his character, out extending much beyond it. Appears to triumph over death and the grave, of which he had the nearest prospect. The language only understood in its fullest sense in New Testament times. Words uttered by the prophets with a meaning not fully apprehended at the time by themselves (1Pe. 1:10-12). Redemption the term most generally employed in the New Testament to designate the Saviours work. Viewed as redemption from the curse or condemning sentence of the Divine law (Gal. 3:13); the power of Satan, who had acquired a right over us through that sentence (Heb. 2:14); death and hell, as the punishment awarded by the Divine law to transgression (1Co. 15:56-57); and very specially from sin itself (Tit. 2:14; 1Pe. 1:18-19; Eph. 5:25-27; Mat. 1:21). Israels national and external redemption typical of that of mankind as sinners, by Jesus Christ. The great redemption by the Son of God effected
(1) By purchase;
(2) By power. The price of human redemption the blood of Christ, His substituted suffering and death. The power employed in it that of the Holy Ghost, sent in virtue of the price paid upon the Cross. His power required
(1) In quickening the soul to a new spiritual life;
(2) Preserving and perfecting it in the image of God.
Job declares his personal interest in the Redeemer: My Redeemer. The language
(1) Of appropriation;
(2) Of faith;
(3) Of choice;
(4) Of love;
(5) Of knowledge and past experience;
(6) Of satisfaction. Something to say the Redeemer; more to say our Redeemer; most and best to say my Redeemer. Devils able to say the first; unsaved men the second; only saved believers the last. My the word that links the lost sinner to the dying Saviour. I may well rejoice that Christ is a Redeemer; immensely more that He is my Redeemer. This little word, like the honey on the point of Jonathans staff, enlightens the eyes and puts strength into the soul. Inexpressibly more sweetness and satisfaction in two such words as My God, &c., than in all the pleasures of the world since its creation [John Brown of Haddington]. His last words were: My Christ. My does not engross the Redeemer, but claims its share in Him with others. Faiths first act is to believe Christ to be a Redeemer; the second to take Him as my Redeemer The privilege as well as duty of each human soul thus to appropriate Christ as his Redeemer. The worlds as well as Israels sin and condemnation not to do so. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God (Joh. 1:11-12).
(ii.). Job asserts that this, his Redeemer, was living, or the living One. My Redeemer liveth. The Redeemer thus viewed as(a) Personally living. (b) Continuing to exist beyond the bounds of time. Able, therefore, to redeem him from death and the grave. Lived to vindicate His character after his body had mingled with the dust. Able to save to the uttermost, or to the end. (c) The Mighty One. Life the expression of strength and power. Mine enemies are lively, and they are strong. Jobs Redeemer and ours possessed of all power in heaven and earth. Has power over all flesh to give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given Him (Joh. 17:3). (d) The Author and Giver of life. Having life in Himself and able to communicate it to others. The living and life-giving Redeemer set over against Jobs state as dying, or virtually dead. The epithet one proper to God. Called the living God; He that liveth for ever and ever. Appropriated by Christ: I am He that liveth and was dead, and am alive for evermore. Christ the Resurrection and the Life. The Way, the Truth, and Life. The true God and eternal life (Rev. 1:18; Joh. 2:25; Joh. 14:16; 1Jn. 5:20). A living and life-giving Redeemer our comfort in a dying body in a dying world, and with the remains of death in our soul. Christ, as our Redeemer, lives(a) To plead our cause in heaven (Heb. 7:25); (b) To send down supplies of needed grace (2Co. 12:9); (c) To prepare a place for us in Paradise (Joh. 14:2); (d) To attend to all our concerns (Heb. 4:14-16); (e) To overcome all our enemies; (f) To deliver us out of all our troubles; (g) To give victory over temptation and sin; (h) To make us partakers of his life; (i) To receive us to Himself; (j) To come again in glory. Christ as an ever-living Redeemer, the hope and trust of the believer. That our Redeemer lives, an antidote against the fear of man, of troubles, of death, of judgment (Isa. 51:12-13; Isa. 43:2-3; Rev. 1:17-18). Our case safe in the hands of a living Redeemer. Enough for a dying saint that his Redeemer lives. One at least whom death cannot remove from us. His life a pledge of His peoples (Joh. 14:19).
(iii.) That He should stand (or rise up) at the last day (or as the last one) upon (or over) the earth. Job elevated by the Holy Spirit to the place and office of a prophet. The book a part of those Scriptures which testify of Christ, and out of which Christ expounded to the disciples the things concerning Himself. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The prophets testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow (1Pe. 1:11). The testimony of Moses and the prophets that Christ should suffer, and should be the first that should rise from the dead (Act. 26:22-23). Jobs present language a prophecy, as well as the expression of his faith and assurance. Declares
(1) That God as his Redeemer would one day appear on behalf of his suffering servant. Standing or rising up the Scripture expression for a a Divine appearance as the deliverer and avenger of His people (Psa. 7:6; Psa. 10:12; Psa. 12:5; Isa. 33:10).
(2) That he would appear on or over the earth. Appears to be a double prophecy, viz., of the Redeemers incarnation and His coming to judgment. These often united in the prophets, being, as here, viewed together as one event. The first necessary to the second, the second the compliment of the first. His coming to suffer necessary in order to His coming to reign. His second coming completes what His first began. Christ called by the apostle, speaking of the resurrection of the dead, the last Adam, or second Man, as apparently here, the last or latter One (1Co. 15:21-22; 1Co. 15:45; 1Co. 15:47). The first Adam brought mans body to the dust; and second comes to raise it from it. Observe
(1) Faith comforts by turning the sufferers eye from Gods present dealings with him to his future ones.
(2) The consolation of the Church is(i.) That Christ has suffered for our sins, the Just One in the room of the unjust; (ii.) That he has risen as the first-fruits of them that slept; (iii.) That to them that look for Him He will appear the second time without sin unto salvation; (iv.) That them that sleep in Jesus God will bring with Him (1Pe. 3:18; 1Co. 15:20; 1Co. 15:23; Heb. 9:28; 1Th. 4:14).The knowledge asserted by Job has reference also
(2) To himself (Job. 19:27). And though after my skin, &c., yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, &c. The centre of his faith and hope, not only that his Redeemer lives, and should one day appear, but that as the result of it he should
See God
Two ways of seeing God(i.) Mentally and spiritually; (ii.) Physically and corporeally. God seen(i.) In His character and works; (ii.) In His person. The former only our privilege here, while in the body; the latter, hereafter, out of the body and after the resurrection. God seen in His Person in His Son Jesus Christ. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. In Christ is seen all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Isaiah, in vision, beheld the Lord (Jehovah) sitting on His throne in the temple (Isa. 6:1). He beheld the glory of Christ (Joh. 12:41). As distinct from the glorified Redeemer, at the right hand of the Father, Stephen beheld the glory of God (Act. 7:55). In heaven the angels always behold the face of the Father (Mat. 18:10). The vision of God, anticipated by Job, generally understood to be a corporeal one in His restored body. Appears to emphasize it in this viewWhom mine eyes shall behold. Christ, at His second appearing, the object of bodily vision. Every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him.
The prospect re-asserted and dwelt upon from its sweetness and certainty. I shall see Godsee Him for myselfmine eyes shall behold Him. Contrasted with his present experience,unable to perceive God. God hiding Himself from him, his greatest trial (ch. Job. 13:24; Job. 9:11; Job. 23:8-9). Observe(i.) The vision of God the blessedness of the glorified (Psa. 17:15; Mat. 5:8; 1Jn. 3:2; Rev. 22:4). Implies
(1) A much higher and clearer knowledge of God (1Co. 13:9-12).
(2) Enjoyment of immediate and uninterrupted fellowship with Him.
(3) More blissful consciousness of His favour and love.
(4) Fuller understanding of His providential dealings here.(ii.) The nature of faith to believe that though God now hides His face, yet we shall again behold it (Mic. 7:8; Hab. 3:17-19). Faith trusts in the dark and hopes for what it sees not.(iii.) Joyful anticipation of seeing God the peculiar privilege of a believer. Implies
(1) A conscious state of peace and reconciliation with God.
(2) A renewed nature, capable of delighting in God and in His fellowship.
(3) Purity of heart, and conscious integrity of character. Only the pure in heart capable of seeing God (Mat. 5:8). Evil cannot dwell with Him. A hypocrite shall not come before Him. To see Gods face, coupled with serving Him, the blessedness of the glorified (Rev. 22:4). The sight of God and the Lamb at His second appearing, the worlds greatest dread (Rev. 6:15-17). The comfort of believers that when God shall appear, it will be for them, as their Friend and Redeemer, for their full and everlasting salvation (Heb. 9:28).
The appearing of his Redeemer, and the future sight of God as his friend, the object of Jobs intense longing. My reins are consumed in my bosomwith desire for that day (margin). Contrasted with the object of desire held forth by his three friendshealth and prosperity in this life. The salvation of God, perfected at the Saviours second appearing, the Churchs desire both in the Old and New Testament. Jacobs experience: I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. Davids: My flesh shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell (wilt not leave me in the grave). I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. Isaiah, and the Church in his day: With my soul have I desired thee in the night; the answer: Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead (Isa. 26:9; Isa. 26:19). The last words of the spouse in the Song: Make haste, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart upon the mountain of spices. Christs glorious appearing the blessed hope and desire of the early Christians, exposed as they were to death and all kinds of suffering for the truths sake. The Spirit and the Bride said, Comethe Spirit in the Bride (Rev. 22:17; Rom. 8:23). In reply to the promise: Behold, I come quickly; the Churchs last recorded prayer is: Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The cry of the souls under the altar: How long, O Lord, wilt thou not avenge our blood on the earth.
The Lords second appearing, and the resurrection consequent on it, to be desired and longed for, as
(1) The time of full redemption and salvation in body and soul to believers themselves;
(2) The same to their brethren in Christ, whether living or long departed;
(3) The time of deliverance to the whole creation from the bondage of corruption entailed upon them by mans sin;
(4) The time when Christ shall be manifested in glory, and the kingdom of God shall fully come;
(5) The period for the creation of the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (Rom. 8:19-23; 1Th. 4:16-17; 2Th. 1:10; 2Ti. 4:1; 2Pe. 3:12-13).
He whose car the winds are, and the clouds
The dust that waits upon his sultry march,
When sin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,
Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love;
And what his storms have blasted and defaced
For mans revolt, shall with a smile repair.
Come then, and, added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth,
Thou who alone art worthy!
VII. Addresses remonstrance and warning to his friends (Job. 19:28-29).
1. The Remonstrance (Job. 19:28). But ye should say (or, because ye say) why persecute we him? (or, how shall we persecute him,) seeing the root of the matter is found in me, (margin and what root of matter is found in me?or, and how shall we find a ground of accusation [Heb. the root of a word or thing] against him?) The great offence of Jobs friends their persecution of a suffering brother. Their desire and aim to prove him a wicked man and deserving the calamities sent upon him. Sought therefore to find ground of accusation against him. Hence Jobs name: the persecuted one. In this, as in other things, a type of Christ. Jobs friends the representatives of the Scribes and Pharisees, priests and elders of the Jews (Mat. 12:13; Luk. 11:54; Joh. 8:6).
Persecution
Bequeathed to all Christs members (Joh. 15:20; 2Ti. 3:12). Its endurance by the Church a characteristic of the reign of Antichrist (Rev. 11:2-5; Rev. 12:11-17). Satan the great persecutor. Persecution in accordance with the original promise of a Saviour (Gen. 3:15). May be either bloody or unbloodyfrom the openly profane or the professedly godly. Petty persecution in the family or the workshop often as trying as that of the dungeon and the scaffold. Almost one continued persecution of the Church from Jews and Pagans during the first three hundred years of its existence. The Church nursed in blood. That blood made the means of its increase. Like Israel in Egypt (Exo. 1:12). Ten great persecutions enumerated before the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Persecution frequently that of one part of the professing Church by another. The dominant section often a persecutor of the rest. The spirit and ground of persecution
(1) Enmity to the truth;
(2) Desire for supremacy;
(3) Intolerance of opposition;
(4) Blind and misguided zeal (Gal. 4:29; 3Jn. 1:9-10; Joh. 16:2-3). Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, the mystical seven-hilled city, drunk with the blood of the saints (Rev. 17:6). Note in Rhemish Testament on this passage (Rev. 17:6),Their blood, viz., that of heretics, is not called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of thieves, mankillers, and other malefactors; for the shedding of which by order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer. More blood shed in Christian persecutions than in Pagan ones. A long blood-stained history of Inquisitions, Crusades, Massacres, and Star-chambers. Between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, about a million of non-conforming Albigenses and Waldenses put to death by armies sent for that purpose with the Popes blessing and the promise of eternal salvation. Nearly a million more suffered death on the same grounds, within fifty years after the institution of the order of the Jesuits in 1540. In the Netherlands, the Duke of Alva boasted that thirty-six thousand heretics had been put to death by the common executioner. Within thirty days from the Massacre of St. Bartholomews day (1572), thirty thousand at least calculated to have been butchered in Paris and throughout France. Public thanks ordered by the Pope to be given in one of the churches at Rome, and a medal to be struck for its commemoration.
2. The threatening (Job. 19:29). Be ye afraid of the sword; for wrath (such as you manifest against me) bringeth the punishments of the sword (or, is one of the iniquities [deserving and meeting with the punishment] of the sword), that ye may know that there is a judgment. The sword, the symbol of justice, here the justice of God (Rom. 13:4; Deu. 23:21). An invisible avenger takes the part of the persecuted and oppressed. Persecutors especially threatened in the New Testament. Christs second appearing especially terrible to such as smite their fellow servants (Mat. 24:49). A righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble His people (2Th. 1:6-10). The judgments of the last days especially inflicted on the persecutors of the saints (Rev. 18:6; Rev. 18:24). Observe:
(1) Persecution a hard and terrible enterprise. Pagan persecutors noted as having generally died by horrible deaths. Charles IX., who authorized the Parisian massacre of 1572, died in despair in a bloody sweat. Christs words to Saul addressed to all persecutors: It is hard for thee to kick. against the pricks.
(2) The part of charity and piety to seek to turn persecutors from their sin, and so avert their doom.
(3) Anger against the servants of God, though shewn only in words, viewed by God as a sin equivalent to murder. The sin of Jobs friends. Hence to be atoned for by sacrifice at the close of the controversy.
(4) Men not secured from Divine judgment by a religious profession.
(5) The treatment given to Christss servants and brethren one great criterion by which men will hereafter be judged (Mat. 25:34-46).
(6) The comfort of Gods people that they can appeal from mans judgment to Gods.
(7) A day coming when mens character and doings will be clearly revealed (Mal. 3:18). Men to be brought out in their blacks and whites [S. Rutherford].
(8) A day of judgment terribly certain. (i.) From the testimony of Scripture. The first recorded inspired declaration such a testimony (Jud. 1:14, Jud. 1:15). Enochs prophecy doubtless known to Job. Such testimony greatly accumulated since then (Ecc. 2:9; Ecc. 12:14; Mat. 12:36; Act. 2:30-31; Rom. 2:16; Rom. 14:10; Rom. 14:12; 1Co. 4:5; 2Co. 5:10. (ii.) From the universal voice of conscience. (iii.) From Gods providential dealings in the world. Sin punished here so far as to shew that God marks and punishes it; left unpunished, so far as to shew that there is a judgment to come.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
D.
HOPE IN TIME OF ABANDONMENTVINDICATED BY HIS VINDICATOR (GOEL) (Job. 19:1-29)
1.
He condemns the friends for shameless abuse. (Job. 19:1-4)
TEXT 19:14
1 Then Job answered and said,
2 How long will ye vex my soul,
And break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times have ye reproached me:
Ye are not ashamed that ye deal hardly with me.
4 And be it indeed that I have erred,
Mine error remaineth with myself.
COMMENT 19:14
Job. 19:1Jobs comforters show no development in their encounter with him. In contrast, Job has analyzed his position as the result of their criticism. Job thus becomes our great paradigm of growth through suffering. We either see our troubles through God, or God through our troubles. What alternatives are available? In this, Jobs central discourse, he achieves a profound faith, which enables him to triumph over his destructive despair. He truly attained hope in time of abandonment. New power and pathos enter Jobs literary style. This new power retouches themes which are set forth in his earlier speeches, egs.: (1) validity of a clear conscience, Job. 6:30; Job. 9:29; Job. 10:7; Job. 16:17, which the righteous judge would ratify if only He would hear themJob. 10:2; Job. 10:7; Job. 13:23; Job. 16:21; (2) knowledge that God must yearn for him as he does for GodJob. 7:8; Job. 7:21; Job. 10:8-9; Job. 14:15; and (3) his hope that God will finally vindicate himJob. 14:13-15; Job. 16:19-20. Jobs response to Bildad contains four parts: (1) His impatience with his friendsJob. 19:2-6; (2) Gods abandonment and attackJob. 19:7-12; (3) Laments his forsaken condition and appeals to his friends once moreJob. 19:13-22; and (4) His certainty concerning his vindicationJob. 19:23-29. Does the speech present Gods attitude change toward Job? Is He his enemy? The change is only apparent and temporary. Though Jobs friends are uncharitable, and God is silent in the presence of his agonizing cries, Job waits for vindication. But until then!
Job. 19:2His friends have grievously wounded (tormented) Job by their insinuations. Vex is not strong enough for the Hebrew word; the same verb is used in Isa. 51:23 of Israels tormentors. In Lam. 1:5; Lam. 1:12, the same word is used to describe the suffering which God inflicted on Israel. The verb (dk) translated as break me in pieces is used of the penitent in Isa. 57:15 and Psa. 51:17. It means crush and is here employed to describe the effects of the charges from Jobs friends. I am crushed by your insinuations, not led to repentance.
Job. 19:3The figure 10 is to be understood as a round number and not as Rashi took it as referring to the number of speechesfive for Job and five for friendsGen. 31:7; Gen. 31:41; Num. 14:22. His friends have wronged him. The verb is found only here and does not call for endless proliferation of emendations. Job is enduring Gods silence; need they add their inhumane treatment to his already overburdened life?
Job. 19:4This is a very difficult verse whose meaning is not self-evident. Perhaps the best understanding is found in the R. S. V. There it is translated as a hypothetical sentence, though there is no hypothetical particle present. This move enables us to understand the verse without it being an admission of guilt of secret sin, which Job has consistently denied. Taking the verse to mean Even if I have sinned, I have not injured you (Rowley, Job, p. 167).
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
Job 19:22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
Job 19:23-29
Within the context of Job’s declaration of faith in God providing a redeemer (Job 19:25-29), Job prays that his words would be written down for an everlasting testimony (Job 19:23-24). God certainly answered this servant’s prayers by having the book of Job written, and by including it in the eternal Holy Scriptures.
Job 19:23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
Job 19:24 Job 19:23-24
Psa 119:89, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”
Job 19:25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
Job 19:25
Joh 17:5, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”
Job 19:25 “he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth” – Comments – This is a reference to Jesus’ first and second coming.
Job 19:26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Job 19:26
1Co 15:42, “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Job’s Dialogue with Three Friends – Job 3:1 to Job 31:40, which makes up the major portion of this book, consists of a dialogue between Job and his three friends. In this dialogue, Job’s friends engage in three rounds of accusations against Job, with him offering three defenses of his righteousness. Thus, Job and his friends are able to confirm each of their views with three speeches, since the Scriptures tell us that a matter is confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses (2Co 13:1). The underlying theme of this lengthy dialogue is man’s attempt to explain how a person is justified before God. Job will express his intense grief (Job 3:1-26), in which his three friends will answer by finding fault with Job. He will eventually respond to this condemnation in a declaration of faith that God Himself will provide a redeemer, who shall stand on earth in the latter days (Job 19:25-27). This is generally understood as a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ to redeem mankind from their sins.
Job’s declaration of his redeemer in Job 19:23-29, which would be recorded for ever, certainly moved the heart of God. This is perhaps the most popular passage in the book of Job, and reflects the depth of Job’s suffering and plea to God for redemption. God certainly answered his prayer by recording Job’s story in the eternal Word of God and by allowing Job to meet His Redeemer in Heaven. I can imagine God being moved by this prayer of Job and moving upon earth to provide someone to record Job’s testimony, and moving in the life of a man, such as Abraham, to prepare for the Coming of Christ. Perhaps it is this prayer that moved God to call Abraham out of the East and into the Promised Land.
The order in which these three friends deliver their speeches probably reflects their age of seniority, or their position in society.
Scene 1 First Round of Speeches Job 3:1 to Job 14:22
Scene 2 Second Round of Speeches Job 15:1 to Job 21:34
Scene 3 Third Round of Speeches Job 22:1 to Job 31:40
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Job Reproaches his Friends for their Suspicions
v. 1. v. 2. How long will ye vex my soul, v. 3. These ten times, v. 4. And be it indeed that I have erred, v. 5. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Job 19:1-29
Job begins his answer to Bildad’s second speech by an expostulation against the unkindness of his friends, who break him in pieces, and torture him, with their reproaches (verses 1-5). He then once more, and more plainly than on any other occasion, recounts his woes.
(1) His severe treatment by God (verses 6-13);
(2) his harsh usage by his relatives and friends (verses 14-19): and
(3) the pain caused him by his disease (verse 20); and appeals to his friends on these grounds for pity and forbearance (verses 21, 22). Next, he proceeds to make his great avowal, prefacing it with a wish for its preservation as a perpetual record (verses 23, 24); the avowal itself follows (verses 25-27); and the speech terminates with a warning to his “comforters,” that if they continue to persecute him, a judgment will fall upon them (verses 28, 29).
Job 19:1, Job 19:2
Then Job answered and said, How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words? Job is no Stoic. He is not insensible to his friends’ attacks. On the contrary, their words sting him, torture him, “break him in pieces,” wound his soul in its tenderest part. Bildad’s attack had been the cruellest of all, and it drives him to expostulation (verses 2-5) and entreaty (verses 21, 22).
Job 19:3
These ten times have ye reproached me. (For the use of the expression “ten times” for “many times.” “frequently.” see Gen 31:7, Gen 31:41; Num 14:22; Neh 4:12; Dan 1:20, etc.) Ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me; rather, that ye deal hardly with me (see the Revised Version). The verb used does not occur elsewhere, hut seems to have the meaning of “ill use” or “ill treat”.
Job 19:4
And be it indeed that I have erred; or, done wrong. Job at no time maintains his impeccability. Sins of infirmity he frequently pleads guilty to, and specially to intemperate speech (see Job 6:26; Job 9:14, Job 9:20, etc.). Mine error remaineth with myself; i.e. “it remains mine; and I suffer the punishment.”
Job 19:5
If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me. If you have no sense of justice, and are disinclined to pay any heed to my expostulations; if you intend still to insist on magnifying.yourselves against me, and bringing up against me my “reproach;” then let me make appeal to your pity. Consider my whole conditionhow I stand with God, who persecutes me and “destroys” me (Job 19:10); how I stand with my relatives and such other friends as I have beside yourselves, who disclaim and forsake me (Job 19:13-19); and how I am conditioned with respect to my body, emaciated and on the verge of death (Job 19:20); and then, if neither your friendship nor your sense of justice will induce you to abstain from persecuting me, abstain at any rate for pity’s sake (Job 19:21). And plead against me my reproach. Job’s special “reproach” was that God had laid his hand upon him. This was a manifest fact, and could not be denied. His “comforters” concluded from it that he was a monster of wickedness.
Job 19:6
Know now that God hath overthrown me; or, perverted me”subverted me in my cause” (see Lam 3:6). And hath compassed me with his net. Professor Lee thinks that the net, or rather noose, intended by the rare word is the lasso, which was certainly employed in war (Herod; 7.85), and probably also in hunting, from ancient times in the East. Bildad had insinuated that Job had fallen into his own snare (Job 18:7-9); Job replies that the snare in which he is taken is from God.
Job 19:7
Behold, I cry out of wrong; i.e. “I cry out that I am wronged.” I complain that sufferings are inflicted on me that I have not deserved. This has been Job’s complaint from the first (Job 3:26; Job 6:29; Job 9:17, Job 9:22; Job 10:3, etc.). But I am not heard; i.e. “I am not listened tomy cry is not answered.” I cry aloud, but there is no judgment; or, no decision“no sentence.” All Job’s appeals to God have elicited no reply from him. He still keeps silence. Job appears from the first to have anticipated such a theophany as ultimately takes place (ch. 38-41.) and vindicates his character.
Job 19:8
He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass (comp. Job 3:25; Job 13:27; Hos 2:6), and he hath set darkness in my paths. Job complains of the want of light; in his heart he cries, . Nothing vexes him so much as his inability to understand why he is afflicted.
Job 19:9
He hath stripped me of my glory. The glory which he had in his prosperity; not exactly that of a king, but that of a great sheikh or emirof one who was on a par with the noblest of those about him (see Job 1:3). And taken the crown from my head. Not an actual crown, which sheikhs do not wear, but a metaphor for dignity or honour.
Job 19:10
He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; or, broken me down. Job compares himself to a city, the walls of which are attacked on every side and broken down. His ruin is completehe perishes. And mine hope hath he removed like a tree; rather, torn up like a tree. Job’s “hope” was, no doubt, to lead a tranquil and a godly life, surrounded by his relatives and friends, in favour with God and man, till old age came, and he descended, like a ripe shock of corn (Job 5:26), to the grave. This hope had been “torn up by the roots” when his calamities fell upon him.
Job 19:11
He hath also kindled his wrath against me. It is not what has happened to him in the way of affliction and calamity that so much oppresses and crushes the patriarch, as the cause to which he, not unnaturally, ascribes his afflictions, vie. the wrath of God. Participating in the general creed of his time, he believes his sufferings to come direct from God, and to be proofs of God’s severe anger against him. He is not, however, prepared on this account to renounce God. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15) is still his inward sustaining thought and guiding principle. And he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies. Job felt himself treated as an enemy of God, and supposed that God must consider him such. He either had no glimpse of the cheering truth, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Heb 12:6), or he could not imagine that such woes as his were mere chastenings.
Job 19:12
His troops come together (comp. Job 16:13, “His archers compass me round about”). It seems to Job that God brings against him a whole army of assailants, who join their forces together and proceed to the attack. Clouds of archers, troops of ravagers, come about him, and fall upon him from every side. And raise up their way against me; rather, and cast up their bank against me. Job still regards himself as a besieged city (see verse 10), and represents his assailants as raising embankments to hem him in, or mounds from which to batter his defences (compare the Assyrian sculptures, passim). And encamp round about my tabernacle; i.e. “my tent,” or “my dwelling.”
Job 19:13
He hath put my brethren far from me. Job had actual “brothers” (Job 42:11), who forsook him and “dealt deceitfully” with him (Job 6:15) during the time of his adversity, but were glad enough to return to him and “eat bread with him” in his later prosperous life. Their alienation from him during the period of his afflictions he here regards as among the trials laid upon him by God. Compare the similar woe of Job’s great Antitype (Joh 5:5, “For neither did his brethren believe on him”). And mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me (comp. Psa 38:11; Psa 69:9; Psa 88:8, Psa 88:18). The desertion of the afflicted by their fair-weather friends is a standing topic with the poets and moralists of all ages and nations. Job was not singular in this affliction.
Job 19:14
My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me (see Psa 41:9).
Job 19:15
They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger. Even the inmates of his house, male and female, his servants, guards, retainers, handmaids, and the like, looked on him and treated him as if unknown to them. I am an alien in their sight. Nay, not only as if unknown, hut “as an alien,” i.e. a foreigner.
Job 19:16
I called my servant, and he gave me no answer. Astounding insolence in an Oriental servant or rather slave (), who should have hung upon his master’s words, and striven to anticipate his wishes. I intreated him with my mouth. Begging him probably for some service which was distasteful, and which he declined to render.
Job 19:17
My breath is strange to my wife. The breath of a sufferer from elephantiasis has often a fetid odour which is extremely disagreeable. Job’s wife, it would seem, held aloof from him on this account, so that he lost the tender offices which a wife is the fittest person to render. Though I intreated for the children’s sake of mine own body. This translation is scarcely tenable, though no doubt it gives to the words used a most touching and pathetic sense. Translate, and I am loathsome to the children of my mother‘s wench; i.e. to my brothers and sisters (comp. Job 42:11). It would seem that they also avoided Job’s presence, or at any rate any near approach to him. Under the circumstances, this is perhaps not surprising; but Job, in his extreme isolation, felt it keenly.
Job 19:18
Yea, young children despised me. (So Rosenmuller, Canon Cook, and the Revised Version.) Others translate, “the vile,” or “the perverse” (comp. Job 16:11). But the rendering of the Authorized Version receives support from Job 21:11. The forwardness of rude and ill-trained children to take part against God’s saints appears later in the history of Elisha (2Ki 2:23, 2Ki 2:24). I arose, and they spake against me; or, when I arise, they speak against me (compare. the Revised Version).
Job 19:19
All my inward friends abhorred me; literally, all the men of my counsel; i.e. all those whom I was accustomed to consult, and whose advice I was wont to take, in any difficulty, by keeping aloof, have shown their abhorrence of me. And they whom I loved are turned against me (comp. Psa 41:9; Psa 55:12-14 : Jer 20:10). The saints of God in all ages, and however differently circumstanced, are assailed by almost the same trials and temptations. Whether it be Job, or David, or Jeremiah, or One greater than any of them, the desertion and unkindness of their nearest and dearest, as the bitterest of all sufferings, is almost sure to be included in their cup, which they must drink to the dregs, if they are to experience to the full “the precious uses of adversity.”
Job 19:20
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh. Here the third source of Job’s misery is brought forwardhis painful and incurable disease. This has brought him to such a pitch of emaciation that his bones seem to adhere to the tightened skin, and the scanty and shrunken muscles, that cover them (comp. Job 33:21 and Lam 4:8). Such emaciation of the general frame is quite compatible with the unsightly swelling of certain parts of the body which characterizes elephantiasis. And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. The expression is, no doubt, proverbial, and signifies “barely escaped;” but its origin is obscure.
Job 19:21
Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O my friends. On the enumeration of his various woes, Job’s appeal for pity follows. We must not regard it as addressed merely to the three so-called “friends” (Job 2:11) or “comforters” (Job 16:2), Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. It is an appeal to all those who are around him and about him, whose sympathies have been bither to estranged (verses 13-19), but whose regard he does not despair of winning back. Will they not, when they perceive the extremity and variety of his sufferings, be moved to compassion by them, and commiserate him in his day of calamity? For the hand of God hath touched me. To the “comforters” this is no argument. They deem him unworthy of pity on the very ground that he is “smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isa 53:4); since they hold that, being so smitten, he must have’ deserved his calamity. But to unprejudiced persons, not wedded to a theory, such an aggravation of his woe would naturally seem to render him a greater object of pity and compassion.
Job 19:22
Why do ye persecute me as God? i.e. Why are ye as hard on me as God himself? If I have offended him, what have I done to offend you? And are not satisfied with my flesh? i.e. “devour my flesh, like wild beasts, and yet are not satisfied.”
Job 19:23
Oh that my words were written! It is questioned what words of his Job is so anxious to have committed to writingthose that precede the expression of the wish, or those that follow, or both. As there is nothing that is very remarkable in the preceding words, whereas the latter are among the most striking in the book, the general opinion has been that he refers to these last. It is now universally allowed, even by those whose date for Job is the most remote, that books were common long before his time, and so that he might naturally have been familiar with them. Writing is, of course, even anterior to books, and was certainly in use before b.c. 2000. The earliest writing was probably on stone or brick, and was perhaps in every case hieroglyphical. When writing on papyrus, or parchment, or the bark of trees, came into use, a cursive character soon superseded the hieroglyphical, though the latter continued In be employed for religious purposes, and for inscriptions on stone. Oh that they were printed in a book! rather, inscribed, or engraved. The impression of the characters below the surface of the writing material, as in the Babylonian and Assyrian clay-tablets, seems to be pointed at.
Job 19:24
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! A peculiar kind of rock-inscription, of which, so far as I know, no specimens remain, appears to be here alluded to. Job wished the characters of his record to be cut deep into the rock with an iron chisel, and the incision made to be then filled up with lead (compare the mediaeval “brasses”).
Job 19:25
For I know that my Redeemer liveth. Numerous endeavours have been made to explain away the mysterious import of this verse. First, it is noted that a goel is any one who avenges or ransoms another, and especially that it is “the technical expression for the avenger of blood” so often mentioned in the Old Testament. It is suggested, therefore, that Job’s real meaning may be that he expects one of his relatives to arise after his death as the avenger of his blood, and to exact retribution for it. But unless in the case of a violent death at the hands of a man, which was not what Job expected for himself, there could be no avenger of blood. Job has already expressed his desire to have a thirdsman between him and God (Job 9:32-35), which thirdsman can scarcely be other than a Divine Personage. In Job 16:19 be has declared his conviction that” his Witness is in heaven.” In Job 16:21 of the same chapter he longs to have an advocate to plead his cause with God. In Job 17:3 he calls upon God to be Surety for him. Therefore, as Dr. Stanley Leathes points out, “he has already recognized God as his Judge, his Umpire, his Advocate, his Witness, and his Surety, in some eases by formal confession of the fact, in others by earnest longing after, and aspiration for, some one to act in that capacity.” After all this, it is not taking a very long step in advance to see and acknowledge in God his Goel, or “Redeemer.” And that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; rather, and that at the last he shall stand up over my dust. is not “one who comes after me;” but, if a noun, “the last one,” as is “the first one “(Isa 44:6); if intended adverbially, “at the last”i.e, at the end of all things. “At the latter day” is not an improper translation.
Job 19:26
And though after my skin worms destroy this body. The supposed ellipsis of “worms” is improbable, as is also that of “body.” Translate, and after my skin has been thus destroyed“thus” meaning, “as you see it before your eyes.” Yet in my flesh shall I see God; literally, from my fleshscarcely, as Renan takes it, “without my flesh,” or “away from my flesh””prive de ma chair;” but rather, “from the standpoint of my flesh “”in my body,” not “out of my body”shall I see God. This may be taken merely as a prophecy of the theophany recorded in ch. 38-42. (see especially Job 42:5). But the nexus with verse 25, and the expressions there used”at the last,” and “he shall stand up over my dust”fully justify the traditional exegesis, which sees in the passage an avowal by Job of his confidence that he will see God “from his body” at the resurrection.
Job 19:27
Whom I shall see for myself. Not by proxy, i.e.‘ or through faith, or in a vision, but really, actually, I shall see him for myself. As Schultens observes, an unmistakable tone of exultation and triumph pervades the passage. And mine eyes shall behold, and not another; i.e. “not the eyes of another.” I myself, retaining my personal identity, “the same true living man,” shall with my own eyes look on my Redeemer. Though my reins be consumed within me. There is no “though “in the original. The clause is detached and independent, nor is it very easy to trace any connection between it and the rest of the verse. Schultens, however, thinks Job to mean that he is internally consumed by a burning desire to see the sight of which he has spoken. (So also Dr. Stanley Leathes.)
Job 19:28
But ye should say, Why persecute we him? rather, if ye shall say‘ How shall we persecute him? That is to say, “If, after what I have said, ye continue bitter against me, and take counsel together as to the best way of persecuting me, then, seeing the root of the matter (i.e. the essence of piety) is found in me, be ye afraid,” etc.
Job 19:29
Be ye afraid of the sword; i.e. “the sword of God’s justice, which will assuredly smite you if you persecute an innocent man.“ For wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword; rather, for wrath is among the transgressions of the sward; i e. among the transgressions for which the sword is the fit punishment. It is “wrath” which leads Job’s “comforters” to Persecute him. That ye may know there is a judgment; or, so that ye will know there is a judgment‘ When the blow comes upon them they will recognize that it has come upon them on account of their ill treatment of their friend.
HOMILETICS
Job 19:1-22
Job to Bildad: 1. A reply, an appeal, a complaint.
I. JOB‘S WRATHFUL REPLY TO HIS FRIENDS. Job accuses his three friends of:
1. Irritating words. (Verse 2.) Their solemn addresses and eloquent descriptions were an exquisite torture, harder to endure than the miseries of elephantiasis. The cruel insinuations and unkind reproaches contained in their speeches crushed him more deeply and lacerated him more keenly than all the sharp strokes of evil fortune he had lately suffered. Wounds inflicted by the tongue are worse to heal than those given by the hand. “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword’ (Pro 12:18); and to “talk to the grief of those whom God has wounded” (Psa 69:26) is the severest of all kinds of persecution to sustain, as it is the wickedest of all sorts of crimes to commit.
2. Persistent hostility. (Verse 3.) Not once or twice simply had they charged him with being a notorious criminal, but they had harped upon this same string ad nauseam; they had carried their insulting behaviour to the furthest limits; the force of their acrimonious opposition could not further go. Their reproaches had well-nigh broken his great heart; cf. the language of David, who in his sufferings was a type of Messiah (Psa 69:20).
3. Astounding callousness. (Verse 3.) Job was simply amazed at the cool indifference with which they could behold his sufferings, the unfeeling ease, if not the manifest delight, with which they could hurl their atrocious impeachments against him, and the utter insensibility which they displayed to his piteous appealsamazed that one who claimed to be a friend of his should so completely show himself to be
“A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch
Incapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy.”
(‘The Merchant of Venice,’ act 4. sc. 1.)
4. Unnecessary cruelty. (Verse 4.) There was no “firm reason to be rendered” why they should thus remorselessly pursue him with their hate. They would not be called upon to expiate any of his unpunished crimes. Their theology and their saintly virtues would combine to shield them from that. Believing, as they did, that “the son shall not hear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son,” but that “the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him” (Eze 18:20), there was no occasion to dread that any portion of the Divine retribution due to him would recoil on them. Hence they might have spared him any wanton aggravation of his woes. Job’s language reminds us
(1) that men may be guilty of sins of which they are unconscious;
(2) that the only thing in which man can claim a true proprietorship on earth is his sin;
(3) that in the ultimate issues of Divine government every man must bear his own burden; and
(4) that this consideration should move a good man rather to commiserate than condemn the wicked.
5. Arrogant assumption. In “pleading against him his reproach,” i.e. in urging the intolerable miseries he suffered as a proof of his guilt, they were” magnifying themselves against him” (verse 5), i.e. tacitly boasting of their superior goodness. And as much perhaps as by anything in their language, the soul of Job was stung by the solemn Pharisaic aspect which sat upon their marble visages, and the atmosphere of awful sanctity in which they wrapt their holy persons. But true piety is ever meek and humble, never vaunteth herself, and is never puffed up, certainly never gloats over either the sins or the sufferings of others. A good man may magnify the grace of God that is in him (1Co 15:10), or the office that has been entrusted to him (Rom 11:13), but of himself he ever thinks with lowliness of mind, esteeming others better than himself (Php 2:3), whom he regards but as “less than the least of all saints” (Eph 3:8), if not as “the chief of sinners” (1Ti 1:15).
6. Conspicuous falsehood. Bildad had alleged that Job, by his incorrigible wickedness, had been the author of his own misfortunes, that he had been cast into a net by his own feet (Job 18:8), that his calamity had come upon him as the recompense of his own crime; and to this Job replies with a direct contradiction, insisting that it was God who had flung his net about him, and that, if their theory of retribution was correct, God had wrested his cause and wronged him in so doing (verse 6). That Job’s feet were entangled in a net, the testimony of Job’s senses proclaimed. That this net had been cast around him by God, the eye of his faith could see. That God could not have done so on account of his wickedness, the inner witness of Job’s spirit cried aloud. Hence this theory of the friends, which sometimes lay across his soul like a nightmare, was a blunder, and the allegation of the friends that he was being punished for his iniquity was a lie.
II. JOB‘S DOLEFUL COMPLAINT AGAINST GOD.
1. Treating him like a criminal And that in respect of two particulars.
(1) Assailing him with violence: “Behold, I cry out of wrong;” literally, “I cry out Violence 1” (verse 7), “like a wayfarer surprised by brigands” (Cox). A strong metaphor, which may describe the suddenness and severity of the saint’s affliction, but never can apply to the Divine motive or purpose in afflicting, since God doth not afflict the children of men willingly, but for their profit (Lam 3:33; Heb 12:10); never rushes on his people like a giant (Job 16:14), or overpowers them like a highwayman, but chastises and corrects them as a father (Heb 12:7); and in all his inflictions never does them wrong or evinces hate, but confers on them a blessed privilege and manifests towards them the purest love (Heb 12:6)
(2) Disregarding his outcries, withholding from him sympathy and succour: “Behold, I cry, but I am not heard;” extending to him neither hearing nor redress: “I cry aloud, but there is no judgment” (verse 7). A complaint, again, which may sometimes receive colour from the saint’s own thoughts and feelings, but which never can be really true of God, who never fails to sympathize with his people in affliction (Psa 103:18; Isa 63:9; Heb 4:15), never disregards the prayer of the destitute (Psa 102:17), never declines to aid them in distress (Isa 41:10; Isa 43:2; 2Co 12:9), and certainly never denies them justice unless to give them mercy.
2. Punishing him as a convict. (Verses 8-10.) And that by:
(1) Consigning him to prison (verse 8). The image that of a cell, or narrow space, bounded by a high wall or fence, shutting out the light of heaven, and shutting in the captive it confines (cf. Job 3:23; Job 13:27). Two frequent effects of affliction: to darken the soul’s lookits inward look by bringing sin to remembrance (1Ki 17:18), its upward look by hiding God’s face (Job 13:24; Psa 42:3, Psa 42:10), its onward look by beclouding the path of duty (Isa 50:10); and to shorten the soul’s way, so that it can neither escape from its misery nor enjoy its wonted freedom in religious exercises or in ordinary duties, but feels itself shut up, first to absolute submission, and then to cheerful resignation.
(2) Arraying him in prison robes (verse 9). Job’s robe and crown were his righteousness and integrity (Job 29:14). Of these he had been divested, and clothed in the unsightly as well as humiliating garment of affliction, which was to him, what a prison dress is to a convict, an outward badge of guilt. Job in this, however, doubly erred, first in thinking that affliction was either a proof of condemnation or a mark of degradation, and secondly in supposing that he had really lost either his crown or his robe. If by these latter he alluded merely to his former prosperity, that was certainly taken from him; and so whatever of an earthly nature man may glory inwealth, honour, friendsGod can strip him of at any moment. But the crown of righteousness which God sets upon a saint’s head is never wantonly displaced, and the garment of salvation which God wraps round a saint’s person can never, without his own fault, be removed.
(3) Extinguishing his hope of liberty (verse 10). Like a ruined house whose stones lie scattered on every side, like a great tree plucked up by the roots, Job had no further expectation of seeing the splendid edifice of his prosperity rebuilt, or the expiring life of his sad heart revived. Like the prisoner of Chillon, he had no earthly hope of returning to freedom.
“I had no thought, no feelingnone;
Among the stones I stood a stone,
And was scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist,” etc.
(Byron, ‘ Prisoner of Chillon,’ 9)
Such a picture is true, not of the saint in the correction-house of affliction (Psa 34:17), not even of the sinner in the prison-house of condemnation, who is yet a prisoner of hope (Zec 9:12), but only of the lost in the dungeon of everlasting death.
3. Counting him for an enemy.
(1) Regarding him with anger (verse 11). Against this conclusion, however, Job manfully struggled, especially when replying to the friends, and ultimately triumphed; but at such times as he fell back to brood upon his inward misery, or turned his weary face upward to God, the thought threatened to overmaster him (cf. Job 13:24; Job 16:9). Yet all the while God was his real Friend, and regarded him with tenderest affection, which shows that God’s dealings with his people are often fur of painful and inexplicable mystery (Psa 73:16; Psa 77:19), that “behind a frowning providence” God frequently “hides a smiling face” (Rev 3:19), that God’s people cannot always see the bright light which is in the cloud (Job 37:21; Joh 13:7), and that God only is a competent Expounder of his own acts.
(2) Besieging him with trouble (verse 12). The magnificent imagery here employed is borrowed from the operations connected with a siege (vide Exposition). God’s armies were the calamities that had befallen Job. Afflictions and the causes that produce them, diseases and the germs from which they spring, misfortunes and the instruments that bring them about, are all under God’s command (Exo 8:8; Exo 9:6; Exo 11:4; 2Ki 19:1-37 :85; Luk 7:7), advancing and retiring as he directs.
4. Cutting him off from human sympathy. (Verses 13-19.) A pitiful picture of abject degradation, even worse than that which Bildad predicted for the wicked man who should be chased from the world (Job 18:19). Surrounded by kinsmen and relatives, and still attended by wife and servants, he is to one and all an object of supreme contempt.
(1) Those immediately outside the circle of his household (verses 13, 14), his “brethren” and “acquaintance,” meaning probably his neighbours, with his “kinsfolk’ and “familiar friends,” who were, as distinguished from the former, his relatives, had abandoned him.
(2) Those within the circle of his household, from whom better things might have been expected, had followed their example. His domestics, not excepting the tender maidens whose sex might have “touched” them “with human gentleness and love,” gave him no more obedience than a stranger. His body-servant, who was to him as Eliezer to Abraham (Gen 24:2), and the centurion’s servant to his master (Luk 7:3), must now be entreated for what was formerly performed at the slightest glance or gesture. Even his wife, the mother of his noble sons and fair daughters, now dead, had forsaken him, her delicate sensibilities unable to endure the offensive exhalations from his body. His own brothers, sons of the same womb, turned away from the intolerable stench.
(3) In short, all who saw him poured on him supreme contempt. The boys, probably of neighbouring families or clans, laughed at his feeble efforts to raise himself or stand upon his ash-heap. His “inward friends,” those to whom he confided his secret thoughts and plans, now abhorred him. His very friends, to whom he had given his love, meaning probably Elipbaz, Bildad, and Zophar, had turned against him.
III. JOB‘S PITEOUS APPEAL FOR HIMSELF.
1. A pathetic representation. (Verse 20.) Indicating the ground of Job’s appeal. Bodily disease and mental anguish had reduced him to a skeleton, so that his bones appeared through his skin; the second clause, a cruz interpretum (vide Exposition), probably depicting extreme emaciation. His condition may remind us of the value of physical health, of its instability, and of the ease with which it can be made to consume away like a moth (Psa 39:11).
2. A melting supplication. (Verse 21.) Expressive of the fervent of Job’s appeal. It was not much he cravedonly pity, and that on two pleas:
(1) The bond of friendship that subsisted between them. His terrible emaciation was enough to
“Pluck commiseration of his state
From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint”
Much more, then, from those who were united to him by ties of affection (cf. Job 6:14, homiletics).
(2) The severe affliction that had been laid upon him. “The hand of God hath touched me.” The phrase descriptive of the source of Job’s affliction, but pointing chiefly to its intensity.
3. A tender expostulation. (Verse 22.) Were the miseries he was suffering at God’s hand not enough to satisfy their insatiable appetites or was God not able to exact retribution for his supposed iniquities, that they must assist him to crush the poor emaciated skeleton who had become his victim? Was it really come to this, that they were less merciful than God; that God’s thirst for vengeance, if so be it was that he was being punished, was more easily slaked than theirs? So, alas! it has been found that man’s tender mercies are cruel (2Sa 24:14), and in particular that when bigots turn persecutors they never cry, “Enough!”
Learn:
1. There is a limit beyond which even good men are not expected to endure aspersions against their character.
2. It is a shame for professors of religion to indulge in suspicions, or utter slanders, against their brethren.
3. The greatest safeguard a suffering saint has, if also one of his acutest pains, is to connect his afflictions with God.
4. It is better to direct the soul’s plaint to God than to utter aloud the soul’s complaint against God.
5. The man has fallen low indeed who, besides being deserted by God (or appearing to be so), is also abandoned by man.
6. The woman who forsakes her husband in his hour of sorrow, not only violates her marriage vow, but proves herself unworthy of the honour of wifehood, and brings disgrace upon the name of woman.
7. It is an infinite mercy that God’s heart is not so little pitiful as man’&
8. A man’s flesh is all that a persecutor can devour.
Job 19:23-29
Job to Bildad: 2. The inscription on the rock; of Job’s faith in a redeemer.
I. THE PREFACE TO THE INSCRIPTION; OR, THE FERVENT WISH OF A DYING MAN.
1. The culture of Job‘s times. The origin of writing is lost in the mists of antiquity. The earliest known mode of writing was by means of a sharp-pointed instrumentstylus, or engraving tool, made of iron or steel. The first materials used for writing on were leaves of trees, skins, linen cloths, metal or wax plates, stone columns or rocks. Egyptian papyrus rolls and cuneiform tablets, dating from periods antecedent to the times of Abraham, have been recovered by the labours of modern archaeologists. Numerous inscriptions of the kind alluded to by Job have been found by Oriental travellers in Arabia. On the smoothed surface of a solid rock at Hish Ghorab at Hadramut, in Southern Arabia, an inscription of ten lines exists, dating, according to some, from the times of the Adites, the most ancient inhabitants of Arabia Felix, Ad the tribe-father having flourished cotemporaneously with the building of the Tower of Babel. The cliffs of the wady Mokatta, on the route of the Israelites, and in the vicinity of the Sinaitic mountains, contain many such inscriptions (on ancient stone inscriptions, see the Exposition). The knowledge of the art of writing at that early period confirms the belief, which other traces of primeval man also suggest, that humanity was not then a babe wrapt in swaddling-clothes, but a vigorous and intelligent adult, already far advanced in civilization.
2. The certainty of Job‘s knowledge. What Job wished engraven on the rock was no mere probable conjecture, happy guess, philosophical speculation, or even secret aspiration, but a firm and certain personal conviction. If it be inquired how Job arrived at this immovable persuasion, it may be answered
(1) that the lofty ideas here articulated were perhaps already in the air when Job lived, in confirmation of which may be cited a line from the Adite inscription above referred to: “We proclaimed our belief in miracles, in the resurrection, in the return into the nostrils of the breath of life;”
(2) that the superior capacity of Job, manifestly the seer of his time, standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries in respect of intellectual power and poetic genius as well as moral and spiritual intuition, enabled him to discern and formulate the thoughts after which common minds were only dimly groping;
(3) that the solemn proximity of Job to death, enabling him to realize the unseen with vividness, may have contributed to his extraordinary mental illumination on this occasion;
(4) that the insoluble enigma of Job’s own experience appeared to drive him towards the entertainment of such a lofty hope as is here expressed;
(5) that over and above all Job enjoyed the inward inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
3. The importance of Job‘s words.
(1) The time when they were uttered. They were, to all intents and purposes, his last dying testimony.
“Oh, but they say, the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention, like deep harmony, etc.
(‘King Richard II.,’ act 2. sc. 1.)
(2) The significance of the words themselves. They formed the last and loftiest utterance of Job’s religious consciousness, struggling to embody to itself in well-defined ideas, and to express for others in intelligible language, the great hope which had arisen in his soul, and by which he had been secretly sustained throughout his terrible conflict with bodily affliction, personal calumniation, spiritual apprehension, seeming Divine desertion. They set forth the ground on which he based his assured expectation of an ultimate complete vindication against the misrepresentations of his friends, the accusations of his own affrighted conscience, ay, the apparently hostile assaults of God himself.
(3) The value of the words to future times. Job had a clear presentiment that the truth he was about to utter would prove of value to all succeeding ages. Like a new star, it had shot out upon the dark firmament of his soul; and he wished it inscribed in the most permanent form of ancient literatureeither engrossed in the state records, or chiselled upon the mountain rock, and filled in with lead to defy the ravages of time, that it might shine on for ever, like a bright particular star of hope, all through the night of time, irradiating the darkness of a sinful world, and cheering the hearts of dying men.
4. The fulfilment of Job‘s prayer. In a sense, and to an extent undreamt of at the time, has the patriarch’s desire been granted. His words have been inscribed in the state records of the King of heaven. They have been engraved by the printing-press in a form more imperishable than could have been derived from the sculptors chisel. They have now been published in well-nigh every language under heaven. One of the latest to receive them was the modern Ethiopic or Abyssiaian, which possesses an affinity to the language which Job spoke. They will now be transmitted to the end of time,
II. THE CONTENTS OF THE INSCRIPTION; OR, THE LOFTY FAITH OF A PROPHETIC SOUL. Up to this point five striking passages appear in the Book of Job. In the first (Job 9:32-35) Job expresses his ardent longing for a Daysman or Mediator who might lay his hand upon both him and God; in the second (Job 13:15, Job 13:16), his confident expectation of acceptance with God, or the strong inward assurance of his salvation; in the third (Job 14:13-15), his deeply seated hope of a resurrection-life beyond the grave and the Hadeau world; in the fourth (Job 16:18-21), his belief in the existence of a heavenly Witness who recognized his sincerity, and his earnest prayer that God might become man’s Advocate against himself (God); the fifth, the present passage, seems to gather all the preceding up into one triumphant shout of faith in a living, personal, divinely human Goel, or Redeemer, who should appear in the end of time to vindicate and save Job, and all who, like him, should have died in the faith, by a bodily resurrection from the grave. Analyzed, Job’s proposed inscription should contain a declaration of the following sublime truths.
1. The existence of a personal Redeemer. The goel, in the Mosaic code, was the next of kin, whose duty it was to redeem a captive or enslaved relative (Gen 14:14-16); to buy back his sold or otherwise alienated inheritance (Le 25:25, 26); to avenge The death of a murdered kinsman (Num 35:12); to marry his childless widow (Deu 25:5). Obviously, the office of the goel, or vindicator, existed in pre-Mosaic times, and was doubtless derived from primeval tradition. It was in accordance with the natural instincts of humanity, and was probably sanctioned by God, both at the first and under the Mosaic institutions, to strengthen the ties of natural affection among mankind, and also, perhaps chiefly, to suggest the hope and foreshadow the advent of the already promised Kinsman Avenger (Gen 3:15). Hence Jehovah, the Deliverer of Israel from Egyptian bondage, was styled their Goel (Psa 19:14; Psa 78:35; Isa 41:14; Isa 43:14). Hence the heavenly Witness, to whom Job looked for deliverance from his troubles, vindication of his aspersed character, emancipation from the power of the grave, and protection against his unseen adversary, whether God or Satan, was styled by him his Goel. And so is Christ the believer’s Goel, who redeems him from guilt and condemnation (Rom 3:24; Gal 3:13; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:7; Tit 2:14), delivers him from the fear of death (Heb 2:14, Heb 2:15; Rom 8:23), and shields him from the wrath to come (1Th 1:10). Nay, of Christ, Job’s Redeemer was a type in respect of being
(1) a living Redeemer, i.e. a Redeemer who did not require to come into existence, but even then was, and would continue to be, even though Job himself should disappear amid the shadows of the tomb;
(2) a Divine Redeemer, being called here expressly “God” (verse 26), as indeed Job’s language throughout, in the above-cited passages, assumes; and
(3) a human Redeemer, since he was not only to be a Daysman (Job 9:33), but to appear or stand upon the earth (verse 25), and be visible to the eye of flesh;all of which characteristics belong by preeminence to him who, while the Son of man (Joh 1:51; Heb 2:14), was yet “the true God and the Eternal Life” (1Jn 5:20), “in whom was Life” (Joh 2:3), and who still claims to be “the First and the Last and the Living One” who “was dead,” but is now “alive again for evermore” (Rev 1:18).
2. The advent of this heavenly Redeemer to the earth.
(1) Job’s language points unmistakably to a visible manifestation of this Divine-human Goel: “He shall stand,” or “rise up'” i.e. to vindicate the cause of his people, the verb being that usually employed to designate the standing forth of a witness (Deu 19:15; Psa 27:12), or the rising up of a helper or deliverer (Psa 12:6; Psa 94:16; Isa 33:10).
(2) The scene of this interposition is said to be “on the earth;” literally, “upon the dust,” meaning either of the ground or of the grave. As we cannot think Job believed himself to be the only individual in whose behalf the conquering Goal would arise, it is not to be supposed that he expected the apparition would take place exactly over his own particular tomb. Hence it is immaterial whether we supply “grave” or “ground.” The phrase seems to point to a terrestrial appearance.
(3) The time of this epiphany is declared to be “in the latter days.” The word means “the last one;” and the sense of the clause is that “he,” the Goel, “shall arise upon the earth as the last one,” as the great Survivor who stands forth when the human family has run its course, and pronounces the finally decisive word upon all time’s controversies. Or, the word may be taken adverbially, as signifying “at last,” at length, at some future date (in which sense some propose to read the clause, “upon the dust,” i.e. over my dust, when I am dead), and as intimating Job’s faith that in the last age (cf. the New Testament phrases, “the ends of the world” (1Co 10:11), “the, last time” (1Jn 2:18), for the whole period of the gospel dispensation) this Goel, or Kinsman Redeemer, should appear for the salvation of his people. Job’s language will thus include a reference to both the first and second advents of Christ, which, rightly viewed, are not disconnected events, but rather two related acts or scenes, the first and the last, in one great manifestation or epiphany of God’s eternal Son for the redemption of a lost world.
3. The saint‘s return to an embodied existence on the earth beside his Redeemer. The phrase, “in my flesh [literally, ‘from, or out of, my flesh’] shall I see God” (verse 26), may mean no more than that after Job’s “skin” or body was destroyed, i.e. after he had passed into the Hadean world, he would enjoy a spiritual vision of God, and it may readily be granted that such a rendering accords with the prevailing tone and current of Job’s theology and Job’s mind, neither of which was familiar with the idea of a resurrection-life beyond the unseen world of disembodied spirits. But Job at this moment was raised above the ordinary level of his spiritual consciousness. As already (Job 14:13-15) he had had a glimpse, transient but real, of such a life, so here it returns upon him once again with equal suddenness, but greater brightnessa glimpse of the happy land beyond the tomb, when, recalled to a physical existence on the earth, to which already his heavenly Goal had descended, looking out from his flesh he should see God; as if to emphasize which he adds, “Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another” (verse 27)words which in themselves may not necessarily involve the resurrection of the body, but which, when taken in connection with the other considerations mentioned, tend not a little to confirm that interpretation. What Job only momentarily saw, and withal only dimly understood, has now been completely unveiled and expounded in the gospel, viz. the doctrine of a future resurrection.
4. The saint‘s beatific vision of God in the person of his Kinsman Redeemer. Job expected to see God in the Hadean world, according to some; on the earth, in the flesh, according to the interpretation just given. Such a vision of God meant for Job exactly what it means for the Christiansalvation, i.e. acceptance before God, protection by God, likeness to God, fellowship with God. In fullest measure such a vision of God will be enjoyed only in the resurrection-life (Joh 14:3; Joh 17:24; Php 3:20; Heb 9:28; 1Jn 3:2). In measure and degree only second to this will the saint behold God in the intermediate state (Luk 23:43; Php 1:23). Even now, in a real though spiritual sense, such a vision is enjoyed by believers (Mat 5:8).
5. The saint‘s earnest longing for this future vision of his heavenly Friend. Job describes his reins, i.e. his heart, as pining away or languishing for the coming of this glorious apocalypse. Job’s friends had directed him to set his hopes on a return to temporal prosperityto health, wealth, friends; in return, Job informs them that his soul desired nothing so much as God and his salvation. So the pre-Christian saints longed for the first advent of the Saviour, e.g. Abraham (Joh 8:56), Jacob (Gen 49:18), David (Psa 45:3, Psa 45:4), Simeon (Luk 2:25), Anna (Luk 2:38). So Christian believers anticipate his second coming (Rom 8:23; Rev 22:17).
III. THE APPENDIX TO THE INSCRIPTION; OR, THE EARNEST REMONSTRANCE OF A PERSECUTED SAINT. On two grounds Job dissuades his friends from attempting further to prove him guilty.
1. The wickedness of their conduct. Job’s language (verse 28) points to the studied and systematic character of their attacks upon his integrity. “But ye say, How shall we persecute him, seeing that the root of the matter [i.e. the ground or occasion of such persecution] is in me?” Thinking they could discern in Job’s guilt ample justification for such invective and condemnation as they hurled against him, they wickedly exercised their ingenuity in devising means to punish him, or at least to make him feel their displeasure. Another rendering, “How shall we find o, round of persecution in him?” presents their behaviour in a light extremely odious, recalling the sleepless malignity of Daniel’s accusers (DanielDan 6:4, Dan 6:5). To take “the root of the matter” as signifying the fundamental principles of piety is to make their conduct absolutely diabolic, and on a par with that of the scribes and Pharisees towards the Saviour (Mat 12:14; Mat 22:15; Luk 11:54; Joh 8:6).
2. The danger of their conduct. It would inevitably involve them in retribution. “Be ye afraid of the sword” (verse 29), the sword being a symbol of such judicial recompense, an overwhelming retribution, the absence of the article pointing to what is “boundless, endless, terrific'” (Delitzsch), a certain retribution, such crimes as have incurred the vengeance of the sword, literally, the expiations of the sword, ever being, or carrying along with them, wrath, i.e. the glow of the Divine anger, a prophetic retribution, foreshadowing a still more awful punishment in the future world, “that ye may know there is a judgment.”
Learn:
1. The duty of thankfulness to God for the blessings of civilization, especially for the invention of printing.
2. The illuminating power of sorrow, especially to a child of God.
3. The immortality that belongs to great ideas, especially to such as come through inspiration.
4. The sustaining influence of a good hope, especially the hope of a Redeemer.
5. The value of Christ’s advents to the world, especially of his second advent in glory.
6. The greater light enjoyed by the gospel Church, especially since the resurrection of the Saviour.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Job 19:1-29
Unconquerable convictions.
Job feels bitterly hurt by the speeches of Eliphaz and Bildad, and pleads, in face of their harsh constructions, for compassion in his unutterable sufferings. At the same time, he raises himself to bolder confidence in God’s help than ever before. He expresses the definite hope that, if not on this side the grave, then on the other side, a justification awaits him by the personal appearance of God.
I. INTRODUCTION: INDIGNANT CENSURE OF HIS FRIENDS AS MALICIOUS SUSPECTERS OF HIS INNOCENCE. (Verses 1-5.) “How long will ye trouble my soul, and crush me with words?” “Ten times,” he says, speaking in round numbers, i.e. again and again, have they slandered him by attacks on h-is innocence; they are not ashamed to deafen him with their revilings. It is true, he again confesses (Job 6:24), he has sinned, but his sin remains with him alone; he is answerable to God alone, not to their unfeeling judgment. Is it their desire to magnify themselvesto play the part of great speakers and advocates, and bring home to him his disgrace by ingenious pleas? Vanity and self-conceit are at the bottom of much censoriousness; and Job here lays his finger upon the moral weakness of his self-constituted judges.
II. LAMENT OVER THE SUFFERING CAUSED HIM BY GOD. (Verses 6-12.) God has wronged him, and surrounded him with his nets, as a hunter takes his prey, depriving it of all means of escape (verse 6). The sufferer cries out, “Violence!” but no answer is given; and there is no justice in response to his cry for help (verse 7). His way is fenced in, and darkness is on his paths (verse 8; comp. Job 3:23; Job 13:27; Lam 3:7, Lam 3:9; Hos 2:6). God has stripped him of his honour and of his fair esteem in the eyes of men, and taken away the crown from his head (verse 9; comp. Job 29:14; Lam 5:16). “Honour ‘ and the “crown” are two expressions for the same thing (Isa 61:10; Isa 62:3). God pulls him down on every side, like a building devoted to destruction; roots out the hope of his restoration, like a tree (verse 10). His warlike bandswounds, pains, and woes of every kindcome on, and make their way against him as against a besieged fortress (verses 11, 12; comp. Job 16:14). All this is a true description of the thoughts of the heart from which Divine help has been withdrawn. It is a sore conflict, none sorer, when the mind is driven in its agony to view God as an end my, treating us unmercifully, willing neither to hear nor to help. Job is tempted to think God unjust; one who promises the forgiveness of sins, yet does not remove the penalty; promises his presence to the suffering, yet seems not to be touched by our woesnay, even to delight in them. “In so great and glowing flames of hell we must look to Christ alone, who was made in all things like to his brethren, and was tempted, that he might succour them that are tempted” (Brenz).
III. LAMENT OVER THE SUFFERING CAUSED HIM BY MAN. (Verses 13-20.) In such crises we turn to friendship for solace. But to Job this is denied. In six different forms he mentions his kindred and friends, only to complain of their coldness and alienation (verses 13, 14). His domestics, too (verse 15), to whom he had doubtless been a kind master, are become strange to him. His servant does not answer when he calls so that he is obliged to change parts with him, and beg his help as a favour (verse 16) His breath and diseased body make him offensive even to his wife, and sons, or “brethren’ (verse 17). The impudent little boys of the street, like those who mocked Elisha (2Ki 2:23, sqq.), make a butt of him, indulging in sarcastic taunts when he rises to speak (verse 18). His bosom-friends abhor him, and those whom he had lovedEliphaz, Bildad, and Zopharturn against him as violent opponents (verse 19). His bones cleave to his skin and flesh, can be seen and felt through his emaciated flesh, and only the skin of his teeth, the thin film, has escaped the ravages of his fearful mainly. He can only just speak still, without his mouth being filled with boils and matter, as in the last stage of the disease (verse 20) Friends often fail in the time of sorest distress; they are summer-birds, and pass away when the colder weather sets in. Men are liars, fickle as the wind. Their alienation is ascribed to God, because he has caused the distress; if he had not caused the distress, they would have remained. Here, again, we are reminded that the child of God may be called to be conformed to the image of the Saviour’s sufferings. He knew what it was to be deserted by all men, even his dearest disciples and closest adherents. So we are to learn to build no confidence on man, but on the living God alone, whom faith can hold eternally fast.
IV. RISE TO A BLESSED HOPE IN GOD, HIS ONLY REDEEMER AND AVENGER. (Verses 21-27.) This section is introduced by a woeful petition to his friends for compassion, “for the hand of God has touched him,” alluding to the disease, which from its fearfulness was regarded as a stroke of God’s hand; and is it not the office of friendship to lend its hand to heal or soothe (verse 21)? Why, on the contrary, do they persecute him as God, assuming an authority that is superhuman, and so behaving unnaturally to him? They are not “satisfied with his flesh,” continually piercing and ploughing it with the envenomed tooth of slander (verse 22). The appeal seems to be in vain, and he turns once more to God (verse 23, sqq.). Oh that his words were written down, inscribed in a book or roll, that those to come might read the fervent, repeated protestations of his innocence! That they were engraven with an iron pen, or cast with lead, so as to remain an indelible and eternal record! And, so long as there is a God, this wish for the perpetuation of his testimony cannot be in vain. It has been fulfilled. “In a hundred languages of the earth it announces to this day. to all peoples this truth: the good man is not free from sufferings, but in the consciousness of his innocence and in faith in God, providence, and immortality, he finds a consolation which suffers him not to fail; and his waiting for a glorious issue of God’s dark leadings will certainly be crowned” (Wohlforth). Verse 25, “And I know that my Redeemer lives.” “Redeemer” is probably to be taken, not in the sense of blood-avenger, but in that of restorer of my honour, avenger of my honour; but the two meanings are connected. “And as Last One will he rise upon the dust.” God is here viewed as he who will outlive all, especially in contrast to Job, now sinking into death. He will rise, stand up for Job’s defence and deliverance, on the dust in which he shall soon be laid. Verse 26, “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall behold Eloah.” He is thinking of the time when he shall be treed from his wretched suffering and lacerated “flesh,” and shall see God as a glorified spirit. Verse 27, “Whom I shall behold for myself,” i.e. in my own person, “and my eyes shall see, and not a stranger.” “My reins be consumed within me,” in longing after this glorious view. It is an expression of the desire of the deepest, tenderest part of the man for this high consummation. To discuss the different theological interpretations of this passage does not come within the scope of this part of the Commentary. Perhaps the best is that which steers between two extremes, and is adopted by many eminent expositors of the present day. It is that Job does not here express the hope of a bodily resurrection after death, but of a contemplation of God in the other world in a spiritually glorified state. It is the hope of immortality, rather than that of resurrection, to which he rises, with such clearness and definiteness, above that ancient Israelitish idea of Sheol, which he himself has admitted in earlier discourses. It is a glorious confession of faithone that, in a fuller sense, may well be that of the catholic Church. And once more the property and power of faith are exhibited in all their lustre. It cleaves to life in the very jaws of death; believes in heaven, even when hell is yawning at its feet; looks to God as the Redeemer even amidst anger and judgment; detects beneath seeming wrath his mercy; sees, under the appearance of the condemner, the Redeemer. Faith is here the “substance of things hoped for” (Heb 11:1). The best consolation in the trouble of death is that Christ is risen from the dead, and therefore we shall rise (Rom 8:11; 1Co 15:1-58.). God gives more to his servant, who shows himself inspired by such firm confidence towards him, than he could ask or understand.
V. SOLEMN WARNING TO HIS FRIENDS TO DESIST FROM THEIR ATTACKS. (Verses 28, 29.) “If ye think, How shall we persecute him? and (if ye think) the root of the ‘matter is found in me”that is, if you think the reason fur my sufferings is solely to be found in myself, in my sin”be afraid of the sword,” the avenging sword of God, “fur wrath falls in with the offences of the sword,” which may mean either that wrath is a punishment of the sword, or that the punishments of the sword are with wrathwrath overtakes them. “That ye may know there is a judgment!” They knew this already, and upon this expectation their own warnings had been founded. But Job gives the thought an application to themselves. “That you may know that Gas exercises judgment on all the offences of the sword, which you do not own nor fear in your case, and that he severely punishes them.” Thus Job opens that wider view of the future, of that day of discrimination, when the first shall be last, and the last firstthe innocent shall be justified, and the hypocrite exposedwhich corrects the narrow dogmatism of the friends. God punishes many sins in this life; but many are reserved for the last judgment. Temporal suffering may be escaped, and yet sure punishment may be in store. On the other hand, temporal suffering may be innocently endured, but for the true servant of God there will be final acknowledgment and eternal honour.J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN
Job 19:1-21
An appeal for pity.
Job is brought lower and lower By the words of those from whom he might have expected a true consolation. He at length declares they “vex” his “soul,” and “break” him “in pieces with words” He appeals for freedom. He would be let atone, for, as he had sorrowfully said, “miserable comforters are ye all.“ The great underlying teaching is the insufficiency of those views of human suffering which find its cause only in judgment upon wrong-doing. Job, the typical sufferertypical for all future sufferersundergoes the painfulness of being assailed by helpers who have but a partial and very imperfect view of all the circumstances of his case. And he appeals to them for ease. His cry to them is also a cry to Heaven for relief.
I. His appeal for pity is based ON THE GROUND OF THE WRONGFULNESS OF HIS ACCUSATION. “Behold, I cry out of wrong.” His friends have set themselves against him. They have become his judges rather than his consolers or vindicators. They “reproach” him and make themselves “strange” to him; they “magnify” themselves against him. They try to plead his reproach against him. It is the way of the imperfectly instructed human helper, and more and more clearly makes plain the necessity for a voice to be raised on behalf of the sufferer that shall be of one better instructed.
II. But the appeal is urged ON THE GROUND OF THE SEVERITY OF HIS SUFFERINGS Job acknowledges his affliction to be of God, and he most tenderly and touchingly refers to the several features of his suffering. He cries out of wrong; he has no impartial and just hearing. He is encompassed by darkness from which he cannot escape; his honour is beclouded; his substance is destroyed; his hope has perished; he is dealt with as an enemy; his acquaintances are estranged; he is forgotten by his best friends; he is treated with indignity in his own home; he is offensive even to his wife; even young children despise him and speak against him”they whom I loved are turned against me.” Through the severity of his disease he is wasted to a skeleton; his “bone cleaveth” to his “skin.” Surely this is a call for pity. Yet professed friends can stand by and argue with such a sufferer, seeking to prove his guiltiness and affirming all this to be the just punishment of his sin.
III. He makes his further appeal to their pity ON THE GROUND OF FRIENDSHIP. “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends!” It is reasonable to expect that professed friends will at least show pity to him for whom they have declared their great friendship.
IV. His final appeal to them is ON THE GROUND OF HIS AFFLICTION BEING THE STROKE OF GOD. “The hand of God hath touched me.” Against the Almighty he cannot hope to contend. He is crushed under the Almighty’s power. This lowly confession does not abate the calm inward assurance of personal integrity. But the solution of the mysterious Divine ways is wanting. He endeavours to abide in patience. But human sympathy should strengthen the sufferer under the pressure of the Divine hand, and not add to the already excessive weight of his calamities. “Why do ye persecute me as God?”
To whom should a sufferer turn if not to his friends? How obvious the office of friendship at such a time:
1. To sympathize.
2. To seek to ease the burden of the sufferer.
3. To strengthen by kindness and pity.R.G.
Job 19:23-29
The Divine Vindicator.
Job awaits a final “judgment,” of which he reminds his friends (verse 29). At present he is the accused one; and all appearances go to condemn him. True, his “record is on high.” He knows that he has held fast his integrity. But he looks forward to a final vindication. He would, therefore, have his words “written,” “printed in a book,” “graven with an iron pen and lead in the rook for ever.” This is the final cry of the consciously upright one. It is the triumph of integrity over false accusation. He can wait for judgment. He has turned his tearful eyes to God, who has delivered him for a time to the ungodly, but who will appear for him yet in due time. It is here that Job makes the noble boast in confidence of a Divine justification. It is one of the grandest utterances of faith. It has become the watchword of hope to succeeding generations. The interpretations of the words have been various. Job may have uttered words the full meaning of which he did not himself wholly perceive. In the Vindicator of his honour he may not have seen the Redeemer of the race; or have guessed that the God in whose redemption he trusted would appear in human flesh to redeem the race from the accuserto redeem, not Item human condemnation merely, but from the Divine, just condemnation. We have the highest warrant for finding in “Moses and all the prophets,” and “in all the Scriptures,” references to “things concerning” the Christ (Luk 24:27). The passage is an illustration of this progressive character of the revelation. Buried in the old Scriptures were “the things concerning” the Christ; but it was needful they should be “expounded.” Even the prophets did not all know “what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify.” Thus unconsciously Job, with others, ministers to the faith of the world.
I. In Job’s avenger, vindicator, or redeemer, is to be seen THE HIDDEN TYPE AND PROMISE OF THE UNIVERSAL REDEEMER. That for which one looked all may look. Not only the Vindicator of the innocent and the upright, but the “Justifier of the ungodly.”
II. In the redemption of Job’s honour may be hidden THE WORK OF HIM WHO SHALL BRING BACK THE FORFEITED HONOUR AND RIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN. As the Person, so the work of the Divine Redeemer is here foreshadowed. The next of kin, to whom “the right of redemption belongs,” shall restore the alienated possession. He who shall appear for Job shall spear on behalf of the sinful world, shall make intercession for the transgressors, shall vindicate by his own substitutionary offering the “justification” of “the ungodly.”
III. In Job’s vision of the appearance of his vindicator at the latter day upon the earth is to be seen THE HIDDEN PROMISE OF THE FINAL APPEARANCE OF THE WORLD‘S REDEEMER for judgment, vindication, and salvation of him who “shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation.”
IV. In Job’s assured final vision of God, after the destruction of his body, lies THE COMFORTING PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD; not in a frail body of flesh, liable to be torn, consumed, destroyed, but in “a spiritual body.” So the Church in confident hope chants at the side of the tomb. Thus are the germs of the future and final revelation held in the earlier; thus is laid the ground for faith and thankfulness; thus is the suffering one cheered; thus shall patience and faith and untarnished integrity, though afflicted, be vindicated; and thus shall the faith of the justified ungodly find its vindication in him who is the Vindicator, the Saviour, the Redeemer of sinful, suffering man.R.G.
Job 19:29
A final judgment.
There is a judgment always proceeding, to be finally manifested when the ultimate rewards and punishments of human conduct will be assigned. A final judgment is
I. A UNIVERSAL BELIEF.
II. TESTIFIED BY THE CONSCIENCE.
III. NECESSARY ON ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT INVOLVED CONDITION OF HUMAN AFFAIRS. Conditions are unequal; wickedness seems to triumph, and the wicked to prosper. The good suffer. The reward of faithful service is not attained. The Divine ways are not justified. Human conduct does not meet with due retribution.
IV. To BE DREADED BY THE UNFAITHFUL. V. ANTICIPATED BY THE RIGHTEOUS.
VI. LIFE TO BE HELD IN THE LIGHT OF A FUTURE JUDGMENT.R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Job 19:4-6
The erring soul and its God.
Job replies to the intrusive censures of his friends with the indignation of outraged privacy. Granted that he has erred, as his friends assume, that is his own business, not theirsit is a matter between himself and God only; they have no occasion to meddle in it.
I. THERE IS A PRIVACY IN RELIGION. Each soul has to deal with God alone. Although we may help one another by sympathy, and although our internal religion must show itself in external conduct, still the roots and inner springs of religion are not for public Investigation. The breach of reserve on the deepest matters of the soul is like an offence against decency. The language of love is sacred, and is reserved for the ears of one only. When love has been wounded by wrong, the error is still a private concern, and one which strangers have no right to interfere with. No doubt there are ways in which our deepest experiences may be made serviceable to others. We ought to confess our faith, for the honour of Christ and for the encouragement of others. Too often a false shame keeps Christians back in this respect. We ought also to confess our faults one to another. But these faults are deeds in which we have injured one another. No one has a right to expose the secret sins of his brother, or to pry into the inner conflicts of his soul. The religion that is turned inside out in the light of day fades or coarsens. The roots that are dragged from their secret dwelling-place and exposed to the sun, wither and perish. The spiritual experience that is bandied by the multitude loses its finer character, if not its very life. We cannot help our brother by destroying his delicacy of feeling. Even if we think him too reserved, though it might be well for him to be more communicative, we cannot be justified in tearing down the veil which he has chosen to wear.
II. THERE MUST BE THE UTMOST OPENNESS WITH GOD IN RELIGION. Here the reserve ceases. Here the most retiring soul must be completely frank. God claims our confidence. To attempt to hide anything from God is foolish, for he knows all our most secret thoughts. But we need to go further, and make our confessions consciously and willingly. The reasons for reserve among men do not apply to our relations with God. As God knows all, so he rightly understands everything. He will never misjudge us. Moreover, his love secures his perfect sympathy with us. Man’s prying curiosity subjects the quivering nerves of its victim to a process of vivisection; but God’s searching gaze of love and sympathy heals and saves. It is necessary that we should receive this willingly if we are to profit by it. A foolish shyness of God leaves us without the cheering of his presence. It is always a bad thing when one has to say, as a son exclaimed of his lately deceased father whom everybody was praising, “It may be all true; but I cannot say, as I never knew him.” It is not our Father’s fault if we do not know him. He rewards confidence with an exchange of confidence. Now, our first and most necessary duty is to fling aside all reserve before God, to own that “we have erred and strayed from his ways like lost sheep,” to confess ourselves utterly helpless and worthless, and, trusting our emptiness to him, to be ready to welcome tile fulness which he always bestows on his trusting children.W.F.A.
Job 19:7
The cry unheard.
I. IT MAY BE REALLY UNHEARD. That is to say, while of course God knows everything, he may not respond, may not heed. Why?
1. Because the cry is not addressed to the true God. The heathen priests on Mount Carmel screamed, “O Baal, hear us!” from morning till evening. “But there was no voice, nor any that answered” (1Ki 18:26). Men have their false gods now, i.e. their false ideas of God. A god who ignores sin, a god who is only amiable compliance, is not the true God. One who addresses such a god will not be heard.
2. Because the cry is not true. It is a formal petition, not a heartfelt prayer. The words may be loud, but the soul is silent. Christ says, “When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Mat 6:7).
3. Because the cry is not trustful. We may cry to God in wild despair; the prayer may be wrung out of an agony of the soul; it may be just the expression of a natural instinct; but it may carry with it no real confidence in God. The Divine response is according to our faith.
4. B cause the cry is not accompanied by penitence. If we hold to our sin we cannot be saved from our trouble. While we excuse ourselves before God we make his ear deaf to our call. Nothing so effectually seals the gates of prayer as an impenitent heart.
5. Because the pity sought from God is not given to a brother man. The prayer of the selfish is not heard. Every time we repeat the Lord’s Prayer we remind ourselves that our trespasses are forgiven in proportion as we forgive those who trespass against us. This is the one, the only thing in the prayer that Christ selected for emphatic comment, adding, “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mat 6:15).
II. IT MAY BE ONLY APPARENTLY UNHEARD.
1. Because there is no audible response. Our voice goes out into the silence. We strain our ears for one word of reply, but no sound reaches us. Though we spread out our hands and cry aloud, the calm heavens are still and apparently irresponsive. But, then, we are foolish if we expect an answer that shall be audible to our bodily ears, for God is a Spirit. Moreover, if we trust him, we should not think that he does not hear when he does not speak. Silence is not deafness.
2. Because there is no immediate relief. At present all seems as it was before we prayed. Does it not appear as though the cry had been wasted on the air? We have to learn patience. It may be well that the trial should last a little longer. In the end God will deliver his suffering children who trust themselves to him, but he may not give them sudden and immediate relief.
3. Because the response is not what we expected. God will not be dictated to. He will use his own judgment in his reply to us. He may give the very thing we ask for. But if that be not fitting he will reply in some other way. Assuredly he will reply. Therefore we must take a wider view of his action, and be prepared to receive God’s response in new and unlooked-for forms. Instead of removing the trouble he may give strength to bear it, Instead of prosperity he may give peace. Then we have no right to think our cry lost and neglected. It is heard.W.F.A.
Job 19:8
The fenced way.
I. GOD HAS A RIGHT TO FENCE UP OUR WAY. Job’s complaint is sad, but it does not here indicate an injustice. It is hard to be checked and thwarted. Still God is our Master, and he has a right to choose our inheritance for us, setting us in a large place, or in a narrow way, as he thinks best. When we complain, we forget that our will is not the supreme arbiter of our destiny. If God stops our path we have to remember that we are on his land, and have no right of way across it. When, in his bounty, he sets us free to roam over his domain, this is a favour for which we may well give thanks; it is no privilege that we can demand. The opportunities of life, and our freedom to use them, are given by God; and he who gives may withhold.
II. GOD MAY FENCE UP OUR WAY TO PREVENT US FROM STRAYING. We blunder in the darkness. There are precipices over which we may fall, jungles in which we may become victims to prowling enemies, By-path Meadows that may lead us to Doubting Castle. Therefore God shuts us in. We are annoyed at the restraint, but it is for our soul’s preservation. Liberty is not always good. God sees when it may be abused; then in his great mercy he withdraws it. Thus the ambitious man fails to reach the giddy height from which he would soon be flung headlong to ruin. Business does not bring one in the wealth that was expected, for God sees that money is becoming an idol. Mary delights are shut off, and a man looks over the fence with great envy towards them; but God knows that they would be poison and death to him.
III. GOD SOMETIMES FENCES UP OUR WAY FOR DISCIPLINE OR PUNISHMENT. We feel ourselves checked and hindered on every side. Our busy activity is stopped. Even our good designs are frustrated. We find it hard to account for such treatment. Possibly it is just the punishment of our sins. This has come not as direct pain and loss, but as hindrance and failure. We feel like the Egyptians when their chariot-wheels stuck in the bed of the sea. But it may be that the cause lies not so much in sin as in a need of wholesome discipline. Perhaps we can serve God better by patient endurance than by vigorous activity. Then what looks like failure is really the divinely chosen method of success. He fences up our way that we quay learn to serve by waiting.
IV. GOD WHO FENCES UP OUR WAY ALSO OPENS IT. The fence is but a temporary structurenot a wall. God checks us for a season that we may use our liberty, when it is restored, with the more enthusiastic energy. While he is fencing up one way he is opening out a new way. We wonder why we are hindered, but if we would but lift up our eyes we might see another path, leading us to a far more noble and Christ-like service than any the path that has been stopped pointed to. Meanwhile let us not complain that our way is hopelessly fenced up till we are quite brought to a standstill. Our fears are premature. The Norwegian fiord seems to be completely locked in by the mountains, and the ship appears to be making straight for the cliffs till a point is reached which suddenly reveals a new expanse of water. We must proceed with the duty within our power, and then the future will open out as we approach it.W.F.A.
Job 19:21
Touched by the hand of God.
Job appealed to the commiseration of his friends. His was no ordinary trouble coming from external circumstances. The hand of God was upon him. Therefore his case was most pitiable.
I. THE HAND OF GOD MAY HURT. His hand holds his children even in the depths of trouble (Psa 139:10). It is a creative, sustaining, blessing hand. Yet it may also be used to smite and bruise. The coming of God is not always for the happiness of his children. He must chastise their sin and folly. Then the trouble is irresistible and overwhelming. It is the contemplation of the Divine source of his trouble that makes Job appeal to his friends as from the depths of an unfathomable misery.
II. GREAT EFFECTS ARE PRODUCED BY THE MERE TOUCH OF GOD‘S HAND. Job does not say that God’s hand had stricken him; he only complains that it had touched him. But that was enough to plunge him into an agony of soul. A touch of the “Traveller unknown” put Jacob’s thigh out of joint (Gen 32:25). God is so strong and great that his slightest action is irresistible, and pregnant with tremendous consequences. But if his touch is so powerful, how terrible must be his wrathful smiting! A man could not exist for one moment if God really roused himself in anger against him.
III. THE TOUCH OF GOD‘S HAND SHOULD HOUSE OUR COMPASSION. The trouble is so great that all thoughts of blame should be swallowed up in a deep feeling of sympathy. Job here seems to reverse his previous conduct. Before this he had appealed from the unfairness of man to the justice of God. Now he appeals from the heavy hand of God to the brotherly compassion of a fellow-creature. Even if the contention of the three friends had been well founded, and Job had been the great sinner they assumed him to be, his sufferings were now so severe that all other thoughts should have been swallowed up in commiseration for them. It is only human to feel sympathy with suffering. The censure that hardens itself against the distresses that it regards as the just punishment of sin is harsh and cruel, and unworthy of any disciple of Jesus Christ.
IV. THE HAND THAT HURTS HEALS. Even the touch of chastisement is meant in love, and if it is received in a right spirit, it will be followed by quite another touch. We ought not to be afraid of the hand of God. As it has sheltered us from the first, so it will protect and save us at last. Job was ultimately blessed by the hand of God. We have God with us in Christ, and Christ’s hands bear the nail-prints that tell of love unto death. When he touches us it is with a pierced hand. We may feel pain, but he felt more for us, and the record of his suffering is the pledge of the saving grace which he extends to all who truly seek him. When John was dismayed at his vision of the glorified Christ, the Lord laid his hand on him, and that gracious touch of sympathy dispelled his fears (Rev 1:17). The healing touch of Christ is with us now, and it really conies from the same hand as that which hurts in our trouble. God only hurts to heal.W.F.A.
Job 19:23
Written words.
Job is supposed to sigh for the very thing that the poet has done for him. His words are written, and they have acquired a permanence and a publicity of which the patriarch could have had no conception.
I. THE DESIRE FOR WRITTEN WORDS. Job is about to set forth a great conviction. He thinks it so important that he would have it recorded in the state chronicle, even chiselled and leaded in the face of the rock, like some great historic inscription.
1. Conviction of truth. Job would not want a lie to be recorded against him for ever. It is natured to desire that the truth which we hold should be maintained.
2. Weight and importance. Many true words are but of limited and temporary interest. The ordinary talk of social intercourse certainly neither needs nor merits a permanent record. It is natural for it to disappear like the successive waves that break on the beach. But weighty words should endure. There are truths the discovery of which is a permanent boon to mankind. These truths should be carefully treasured and transmitted.
3. Craving for justice. Job is concerned with a personal feeling in his desire. If what he says makes no impression on his immediate circle, it may bring conviction to a wider area of less prejudiced persons, or to a later age.
II. THE USE OF WRITTEN WORDS.
1. Distinctness. Job’s thought is clearly before us. The Scriptures afford a definite revelation. With written words we are not left to vague surmises. We do not only depend on the inward impulses of the Divine Spirit. The inner light may be very real and precious. But we are in danger of misinterpreting it if we neglect the written Word of the Bible.
2. Permanence. Job’s great thought of the future life has permanence by being recorded in Scripture. It is fearful to think how the Christian truth would in all probability have been perverted and lost among the shifting currents of tradition if there had been no “New Testament” in which to preserve it. Now we can go back to the very fountain of the gospel. We can leave all the errors of the ages and take our stand on the pure teaching of Christ and his apostles; or if, as is only reasonable, we believe that the course of Christian thought has contributed to the development of the understanding of truth, still we can test that development, and distinguish it from the degeneration that mocks it, by keeping close to the New Testament. So long as the written words of revelation are in our hands there is a grand security for purity of doctrine.
3. Publicity. Job desired that the great, new truth he was about to utter should go abroad. No doubt his first wish was that it might lead to the justification of his misunderstood character. But much larger consequences follow. When the voice of the prophet is silent, his written word speaks to the ages and spreads far and wide to multitudes that could never have been affected by his personal presence. The Bible is a means of making God’s truth widely known. That truth is not for an elect few of the initiated, but for mankind at large. Therefore it is our duty to do what we can to circulate the Divine Word. At the same time, let us not forget to pray for the enlightening Spirit to interpret this written Word to ourselves and to others; “for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life” (2Co 3:6).W.F.A.
Job 19:25-27
The great hope.
These monumental words are what Job desired to be written, noted in a book, “graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever.” Certainly few words are more worthy of permanent publicity.
I. THE ASSURANCE OF THE GREAT HOPE. Job says, “I know.” He is not vaguely feeling after truth. He has it, and he holds it firmly. How different is this great passage from Job 3:1 In what way can we account for the new triumphant tone of the sufferer? How does Job know that his Redeemer liveth, etc.?
1. By inspiration. This passage bears its own evidence to its Divine origin in its tone and spirit and exalted thought. The patriarch is carried out of himself. He is almost like St. Paul in the third heavens (2Co 12:2). Yet he is in no wild ecstasy; his tone is one of calm, solemn, glad assurance. The greatest truths of redemption and resurrection are from God.
2. Through the discipline of suffering. Job did not see all this at first. But sorrow has given him a marvellous power of intuition. It has trained him to see the highest truth. Thus God’s revelation comes to the prepared soul. Suddenly the black clouds are rent asunder, and the much-suffering man looks right up to the eternal blue, while the very light of God illumines and transfigures his countenance.
II. THE GROUNDS OF THE GREAT HOPE. The living Redeemer. Job has a Goel, an Avenger, who will plead his cause and deliver him from his trouble.
1. Divine. Clearly he is thinking of God. He has no idea of another being who shall be his friend while God remains his persecuting Enemy. He flees from God to God. He knows that, though he cannot understand God’s present treatment of him, he will be ultimately delivered if he trusts in God. Although it was not given to Job to see further in this direction, we now know that his great hope and prophecy is fulfilled in Christ, who has come to be the sinner’s Goel, the great Redeemer of man.
2. Personal. Job says, “my Redeemer.” Each must know Christ for himself. But all may know and own him. Christ not only redeems the innocent by vindicating themwhich was what Job expected. We now see that he goes further, and redeems the guilty by saving them even from their sin and doom.
3. Living. The Redeemer lives, though for a while we do not see him, We have a living Saviour.
III. THE SUBSTANCE OF THE GREAT HOPE.
1. A future life. Though some suppose that Job is only thinking of the cure of his diseased skin and flesh, and a vindication of him in health during his earthly life, it is difficult to see how his words could be satisfied with this simple meaning. Taking them as prophetic of a future life when the worm-eaten body is left behind, we have a grand picture of the triumph of hope in Old Testament times. Here is the answer to Job 14:14. There will be a future life when the tabernacle of this body is laid aside.
2. A vision of God. Job had been longing to meet God. His prayer was lost in silence (verse 7). God’s hand was only upon him for chastisement. Now he foresees the great apocalypse.
(1) This is for the vindication of righteousness. God will then explain the mysteries and put an end to the wrongs of earth.
(2) This is itself a g, eat joy. The beatific vision is an adequate compensation for all the sufferings of earth.
IV. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE GREAT HOPE.
1. Apart from the earthly body. This is no trouble to Job. His body has become a loathsome, tormenting encumbrance. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (1Co 15:50).
2. With personal identity. Job would not be content to be dissolved into the universe. The future life is one of personal existence. It must be linked by memory to the present life. Every one who knows Christ as his living Redeemer on earth will enjoy the personal fellowship of God in heaven.W.F.A.
Job 19:28
The root of the matter.
Job’s friends think that the explanation of the patriarch’s singular experience lies in himself. It is not to be explained by the laws of the universe, by the opposition of a foe, etc.; it is to be explained by Job’s own character and conduct. The root of this matter, his affliction, is in Job himself. That, says Job, is their idea, and that Job of course repudiates. The prologue shows that Job was right. The root of the matter was not in him; it was in Satan. The great accuser had originated the whole trouble.
I. WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND A MATTER UNTIL WE DISCOVER THE ROOT OF IT. Job’s friends were quite wrong; all their conclusions were invalid, all their accusations were unjust, all their admonitions were irrelevant, because they mistook the root and cause of Job’s afflictions. Their conduct is a warning against judging with superficial knowledge. In their assurance of infallibility they inferred the existence of the root when they had not been able to see it. In all branches of knowledge we need to bore down to the root of our subject. The greatest task of science is the search for causes. The mere collection and classification of facts is but the first step. Real science aims at accounting for its facts. So in religion we are not content to receive certain impressions; we want to get behind and beneath them and find their roots. We must find the root of poverty and social trouble before we can understand these evils.
II. IT IS DIFFICULT TO DISCOVER THE ROOT OF A MATTER. The root is underground. It hides itself in darkness. Possibly it runs far for its nourishment, like that of the famous Hampton Court vine, which is said to reach to the river Thames. In human affairs it is very hard to find the roots, because men do not generally expose their inmost thoughts. History searches for causes, but it is a very tentative and precarious science. One historian will see, or thinks he sees, the cause of an event in something of which another denies the existence. We cannot even see the roots of the conduct of our daily acquaintances. In particular this difficulty is increased when there is lack of sympathy. A mean and selfish man can never discover the roots of generous action, and a noble-minded man is slow to suspect the roots of the conduct of a person of lower character. We must beware of the attempts of hot-headed philanthropy to cure evils the roots of which have not yet been discovered. Else we may do more harm than good.
III. THERE ARE EVILS WHICH ARE NOT ROOTED IN THE MAN WHO SUFFERS FROM THEM. This was the truth which Job’s friends, blinded by prejudice, could not see. They assumed that the root was in Job, but their assumption was an error. Now, the admission of this idea should not only check hasty judgment; it should encourage faith and teach patience. The roots are much deeper than we suspect. We cannot understand providence, for we cannot see its roots.
IV. THE WORST EVIL IS THAT WHICH HAS ITS ROOT IN THE MAN WHO SUFFERS FROM IT. If Job’s friends had been right, his position would have been far more dreadful than it was. Often we must confess to ourselves that we have brought trouble upon our own heads. Our folly or our sin is its primary cause. Then it is wholly our own. It is well to search ourselves and see if the root of the matter be in us. If it is, there is no hope of salvation while it remains there. To cut down the superficial growth will do no good. The deep-seated root will sprout again. Evil must be eradicated from the heart. We want a cure that goes to the root of the matter.
V. THE ROOT OF DIVINE GRACE IS A SURE SOURCE OF DIVINE LIFE, There are good things as well as evil things that have their roots in a man. The root of the better life may be in a man when we do not see it.
1. It is within the individual man. Otherwise the external grace is not his.
2. It may be hidden.
3. The growth above may be checked.
4. Still, if the root of the matter is in the soul, there must be some growth visible in the outer life.W.F.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. XIX.
Job complains of his friends’ cruelty, pathetically laments his sufferings, and implores their pity: he appeals to God, and expresses his faith and hope in a future resurrection.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 19:1. Then Job answered and said Disgusted by the little regard paid by the three friends to his defence, and finding them still insisting on their general maxims, Job desires them calmly to consider his case; to reflect that his failings, whatever they were, had not been at all prejudicial to them; but if, on the strength of their general principle, they thought themselves warranted from his sufferings to infer his guilt, he desires them to take notice that this was God’s particular infliction: Job 19:2-7 that he insisted on his integrity, and desired nothing but to bring his cause to an issue, which was as yet denied him: Job 19:8-20 that God’s inflictions were indeed very grievous; and, to excite their compassion, he gives here a very moving description of them; but tells them, that that should be a reason why they should pity him, and not add to the load by their unkind suspicions and cruel treatment: Job 19:21-22 that he was so far from retracting his plea, that he was desirous it should remain for ever on record: Job 19:23-24. Heath. For he was assured that a day was coming, in which all his afflictions would be fully recompensed, and in which they would wish that they had treated him in a more friendly manner; though he questioned whether that would suffice to avert God’s judgments from them.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
B.Job: His misery is well-deserving of sympathy; it will, however, all the more certainly end in his conspicuous vindication by God, although not perchance till the life beyond
Job 19:1-29
(Introduction: Reproachful censure of the friends for maliciously suspecting his innocence:)
Job 19:1-5
1Then Job answered, and said:
2How long will ye vex my soul,
and break me in pieces with words?
3These ten times have ye reproached me;
ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
4And be it indeed that I have erred,
mine error remaineth with myself.
5If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,
and plead against me my reproach:
1. Sorrowful complaint because of the suffering inflicted on him by God and men:
Job 19:6-20
6Know now that God hath overthrown me,
and hath compassed me with His net.
7Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard;
I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
8He hath fenced up my way, that I cannot pass,
and He hath set darkness in my paths.
9He hath stripped me of my glory,
and taken the crown from my head.
10He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone;
and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
11He hath also kindled His wrath against me,
and He counteth me unto Him as one of His enemies.
12His troops come together,
and raise up their way against me,
and encamp round about my tabernacle.
13He hath put my brethren far from me,
and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
14My kinsfolk have failed,
and my familiar friends have forgotten me.
15They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger;
I am alien in their sight.
16I called my servant, and he gave me no answer;
I entreated him with my mouth.
17My breath is strange to my wife,
though I entreated for the childrens sake of mine own body.
18Yea, young children despised me;
I arose, and they spake against me.
19All my inward friends abhorred me;
and they whom I loved are turned against me.
20My bone cleaveth to my skin and my flesh,
and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
2. A lofty flight to a blessed hope in God, his future Redeemer and Avenger
Job 19:21-27
21Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends!
for the hand of God hath touched me.
22Why do ye persecute me as God,
and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23O that my words were now written!
O that they were printed in a book!
24that they were graven with an iron pen
and lead in the rock for ever!
25For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26and though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in my flash shall I see God;
27whom I shall see for myself,
and mine eyes shall behold, and not another,
though my reins be consumed within me.
3. Earnest warning to the friends against the further continuance of their attacks:
Job 19:28-29
28But ye should say, Why persecute we him,
seeing the root of the matter is found in me?
29Be ye afraid of the sword;
for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword,
that ye may know there is a judgment.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Deeply grieved by the warnings and threatenings of Bildads discourse, which in these respects was but an echo of that of Eliphaz, Job, on the one side, advances his complaint even to the point of imploring pity from his opponents in view of his inexpressible misery; on the other hand, for the very reason that he, being innocent, finds himself deprived, of all human help and sympathy, he lifts himself up to a more courageous confidence in Gods assistance than he has ever yet exhibited. He expresses the well-defined hope of a vindication awaiting himif not on this side of the grave, then at least beyond itthrough the personal intervention of God, appearing to him in visible form. That anguished complaint concerning his unspeakably severe suffering (Job 19:6-20) is preceded by a sharp word, addressed by way of introduction to the friends, as having maliciously suspected his innocence (Job 19:2-5). That inspired declaration of his hope in the divine vindication which was to take place in the Hereafter (Job 19:21-27) is in like manner followed by a short but forcible and impressive warning to the friends in view of their sinning against him (Job 19:28-29). The whole discourse, accordingly, which is characterized by vivid emotion and decided contrarieties of feeling, contains four principal parts, which embrace five strophes of unequal length. The three longest of these strophes, each being of 78 verses, fall into the second and third parts, of which the former contains two strophes, the latter one. The short introductory and concluding strophes are identical with the first and fourth parts.
2. Introduction: Reproachful censure of the friends for their malicious suspicion of his innocence (Job 19:2-5).
Job 19:2. The discourse beginslike that of Bildad, with a Quousque tandem (), which, however, is incomparably more emphatic and significant than that of his accuser, because it has more to justify it How long will ye vex my soul and crush me with words? is fut. energicum of , with the third radical retained (Gesen. 75 [ 74], Rem. 16). In regard to the form (with suffix appended to the of the fut. energ. and with the union-vowel a), see Gesen. 60 [ 59], Rem. 3 [Green, 105 c].
Job 19:3 gives the reason for the . Now already ten times is it that ye reproach me, viz., by assailing my innocence here in the sense of already, now already, comp. Ewald, 183 a [Gesen. 122, 2, Rem.; Lex. 3. It may, however, be equally well regarded as a pronoun, in its usual demonstrative sense, in the singular with , with perhaps an interjectional forceLo! these ten times do ye reproach me. So Renan: Voil, la dixime fois que vous m insultez. Comp. Gen 27:36.E.] Ten times stands naturally for a round number, or ideal perfection; Gen 31:7; Lev 26:26; Num 14:22, etc. [Ten, from being the number of the fingers on the human hand, is the number of human possibility, and from its position at the end of the row of numbers (in the decimal system), is the number of that which is perfected; as not only the Sanskrit dacan is traceable to the radical notion to seize, embrace, but also the Semitic is traceable to the radical notion, to bind, gather together (cogn. ). They have already exhausted what is possible in reproachesthey have done their utmost. Del.]. Comp. my Theologia Naturalis, p. 713 seq.; also Leyrers Art. Zahlen bei den Hebrern in HerzogsReal-Encyclop. XVIII. p. 378 seq.). Are not ashamed to stun me.The syntax of (ye stun [me] without shame, shamelessly), as in Job 6:28; Job 10:16. Comp. Gesen. 142 [ 139], 3 b [Green, 269]. is a shortened Imperf. Hiph. for (Gesen. 53 [ 52], Rem. 4, 5 [see also Green, 94 c]), of a verb , which does not appear elsewhere, which, according to the Arabic, signifies to stun, obstupefacere. The rendering to maltreat, to abuse grossly, which rests on the authority of the ancient versions (LXX.: , Vulg. opprimentes), and which is adopted by Ewald, Hirzel, Dillmann, etc., gives essentially the same sense. [The rendering of E. V.: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me seems to have been suggested by the use of in the sense of not to know. The Hiph. form of the verb, however, is not found in that sense, which is, moreover, less suitable to the context than the renderings given above.E.]
Job 19:4. And verily even if I have erred (comp. Job 6:24) [, double intensive, yea, verily, comp. Job 34:12], my error remains (then) with me, i. e., it is then known only to me (, with me=in my consciousness, comp. Job 12:3; Job 14:5), and so does not fall under your jurisdiction, does not call for your carping, unfriendly criticism; for such a wrong, being known to myself alone (and for that reason being of the lighter sort), I have to answer only to God. [I shall have to expiate it, without your having on this account any right to take upon yourselves the office of God, and to treat me uncharitably; or what still better corresponds with : my transgression remains with me, without being communicated to another, i. e., without having any influence over you or others to lead you astray, or involve you in participation of the guilt. Del.]. So in substanceand correctlyHirzel, Schlottmann, Hahn, Delitzsch, Dillmann [Renan, Carey, Rod-well], while Ewald and Olshausen, failing to perceive the relation of the first member as a hypothetical antecedent to the second member as its consequent and opposite, translate: I have erred, I am fully conscious of my error. [If this be understood as a confession by Job of moral guilt, it is premature and out of place. According to Ewald, it is a confession of intellectual error (to wit, that he had vainly put his confidence in the justice of God), uttered with the view of softening the hostility of the friends, by the indirect admission, on the one hand, that their charges had some justification in the non-appearance of God; by the reminder, on the other hand, that his complaint was against God rather than them. But such a thought would be too obscurely expressed, and would imply too sudden a change from the tone of bitter reproach which pervades this opening strophe.E.]
Job 19:5. Will ye really boast yourselves against me, and prove against me my reproach? is to be taken, with Schultens, Ewald, Hirzel, Dillmann [Renan: By what right do you dare to speak insolently to me, and do you pretend to convince me of disgrace?], as an interrogative particle (=an), and the whole verse as a question, with the chief emphasis resting on the verbs (will you [magnify] boast yourselves, exhibit yourselves against me as great rhetoricians and advocates, by your elaborate accusations?) and (will you judicially prove, demonstrate my disgrace [ against me]? comp. Job 13:3; Job 13:15, and often). This is the only construction which properly completes Job 19:4. There is no such completing of the sense obtained, if we take as a conditional particleif, whether we take the whole of the fifth verse as a hypothetical protasis, and Job 19:6 as apodosis (so Clericus, Olshausen, Delitzsch) [E. V., Lee, Carey, Rodwell, Merx], or regard Job 19:5 a as protasis, and b as apodosis (so Umbreit, Stickel, Schlottmann [Noyes, Wemyss, Conant], etc. [Schlottmann exhibits the connection as follows: In Job 19:4 Job saysGranted that I have erred, you need give yourselves no concern about the matter. In Job 19:5 he addsIf, nevertheless, you will concern yourselves about it, and in pride look down on me, it is at least incumbent on you not to assume without further proof that I have brought disgrace on myself by such an error, but to prove it against me with good arguments. The repetition of seems to correlate Job 19:4-5, so that if, as all agree, the first and second members of Job 19:4 are related to each other as protasis and apodosis, the same would seem to be true of Job 19:5.E.]
First Division: First Strophe. Job 19:6-12. Lamentation over his sufferings as proceeding from God.
Job 19:6. Know then ( as in Job 9:24) [elsewhere in questions, here strengthening the exclamationSchlott.] that Eloah has wrested me, i. e., has treated me unjustly, done me wrong, . for , comp. Job 8:3; Job 34:12; Lam 3:36. And compassed me round about with His netlike a hunter who has entirely robbed a wild beast of its liberty by the meshes of the net which envelop him around, so that he can find no way of escape.The expression describes the unforeseen and inexorable character of the dispensations which had burst on Job as the object of the Divine persecution; comp. Bildads description, Job 18:8 seq. [Bildad had said that the wicked would be taken in his own snares. Job says that God had ensnared him. Elzas.]
Job 19:7. Lo! I cryViolence! ( as an interjectional exclamation, found also Hab 1:2; comp. Jer 20:8) and am not heard (Pro 21:13); I call out for help, and there is no justicei. e., no justice shown in an impartial examination and decision of my cause., lit. to cry aloud for help, to send forth a cry for deliverance (comp. Psa 30:3 [Psa 30:2]; Psa 72:12; Psa 88:14 [Psa 88:18]), from , or =, to be wide, to be in a prosperous situation.
Job 19:8. He has hedged up my way, that I cannot pass, and He has set darkness on my paths.Comp. Job 3:23; Job 13:27; also, as regards , to fence up, to hedge up, Lam 3:7; Lam 3:9; Hos 2:8 [6].
Job 19:9. He has stripped me of mine honor;i. e., of my righteousness in the eyes of men; comp. Job 29:14. The crown of my head in the parallel second member signifies the same thing; comp. Lam 5:16. The same collocation of a raiment of honor, and a crown of the head, occurs also in Isa 61:10; Isa 62:3; and suggested by these passages we find it often in evangelical church hymns [e. g., in the following from Watts:
Then let my soul march boldly on,
Press forward to the heavenly gate,
There peace mid joy eternal reign,
And glittering robes for conquerors wait.
There shall I wear a starry crown,
And triumph in Almighty grace,
While all the armies of the skies
Join in my glorious Leaders praise].[1]
Job 19:10. He breaks me down on every side: like a building doomed to destruction, for such is the representation here given of Jobs outward man together with his state of prosperity; comp. Job 16:14; [so that I pass away], and uproots, like a tree, my hope: i. e., he takes entirely away from me the prospect of a restoration of my prosperity, leaves it no foundation or bottom, like a plant which is uprooted, and which for that reason inevitably withers (comp. Job 14:19; Job 17:15). As to , lit. to tear out, to pluck up wholly out of the ground, comp. Job 4:21, where the object spoken of is the tent-stake.
Job 19:11. [He makes His anger burn against me, and He regards me as His foes], comp. Job 13:24. The Imperfects alternating with Imperfects consecutive are, as above in Job 19:10, and in what follows, used for the present, because present and continuous sufferings are described; comp. Job 16:13-14. [The plural in , either for the class, of which Job is one; or, as Delitzsch suggests, perhaps the expression is intentionally intensified here, in contrast with Job 13:24; he, the one, is accounted by God as the host of His foes; He treats him as if all hostility to God were concentrated in him].
Job 19:12. Together all His troops advance., armies, synonymous with , Job 10:17, and denoting here, as there, the band of calamities, sufferings, and pains, which rush upon him.And cast up their way against me., lit. to heap up their way, which is at the same time a rampart for carrying on the attack, a mound for offensive operations (, comp. 2Sa 20:15; 2Ki 19:32; Eze 4:2) against Job, who is here represented as a besieged fortress. In regard to this figure comp. above Job 16:14; also in regard to the technics of siege operations among the ancient orientals, see Keils Bibl. Archol. 159.
First Division: Second Strophe: Job 19:13-20. Lamentation over his sufferings as proceeding from man.
Job 19:13. My brethren He drives far away from me: to wit God, to whom here, precisely as in Job 17:6, even the injustice proceeding from men is ascribed. For this reason the reading is perfectly in place, and it is unnecessary after the of the LXX. to change it to . To the term brethren (which as in Psa 69:9 [Psa 69:8], is to be understood literally, not in the wider sense of relatives), who are described as turning away from him, corresponds in Job 19:14 a the term , kinsmen (Psa 38:12 [11]). In like manner we find as parallel to the , i. e., knowers, confidants, in Job 19:13 b, the , i. e., those familiarly known, intimate friends, in Job 19:14 b (comp. in regard to it Psa 31:12 [Psa 31:11]; Psa 88:9 [Psa 88:8]. As synonyms in the wider sense there appear in the sequel , house-associates, or so-journers in Job 19:15 (Vulg., inquilini domus me) and finally (Job 19:19), those who belong to the circle of closest intimacy, bosom-friends, (comp. Job 29:4; Psa 55:15 [14]), so that the notion of friendship is here presented in six different phases and gradations, comp. on Job 18:8-10.As for the rest Job 19:13 b is lit., are become only [or, nothing but] strange to me, i. e., entirely and altogether strange; and , Job 19:14 a, means they cease, i. e., to be friends, they leave off, fail (comp. Job 14:7), withdraw from me.
Job 19:15. My house associates [= they that dwell in mine house, E. V.], and my maids (this doubled expression denoting all the domestics, including hired servants and the like; comp. above) are become strange to me[properly, count me for a stranger, E. V.]. The verb is governed as to gender by the subject next preceding: comp. Gesen. 60; Ewald, 339 c [Green, 276, 1].
Job 19:16. I call to my servant, and he answers not.Whether this disobedient servant is to be viewed as the overseer, or house-steward, like Eliezer in the house of Abraham, Genesis 24. (Del.), is in view of the simplicity of the language at least doubtful.With my mouth must I entreat him.For the Imperf. in the sense of must, comp. Job 15:30; Job 17:2. (comp. Psa 89:2 [Psa 89:1]; Psa 109:30), expresses here not, as in Job 16:5, a contrast with that which proceeds out of the heart, but with a mere wink, or any dumb intimation of what might be desired of him.
Job 19:17. My breath is offensive to my wife., from , to be strange, to be estranged, expresses simply by virtue of this signification the idea of being repugnant, repulsive, so that we need not derive it from a particular verb , to be loathsome; and assuredly signifies here the breath (stinking according to b), having the same meaning as in the partly parallel passage Job 7:15; hence not my discontent (Hirzel) [my spirit, as agitated, querulous Gesen.; depression, Frst]; nor my sexual impulse Arnh.; nor my spirit (Starke, [Carey] and ancient commentators); nor my person (Pesh., Umbreit, Hah) [Renan].Jerome already correctly: halitum meum exhorruit uxor mea, and in the same sense most of the moderns [so E. V.], and my ill savor to the sons of my body., can neither signify: my prayers, my entreaties (Gesen., with a reference to his Gram., 91, 3against which however compare Ewald, 259) [Noyes, Lee, Words., Elzas]; nor my caresses (Arnh.) [Bernard, Rodw., Green, Chrestom., and Gram. 139, 2Kal Inf. of (with fem. termination ) to be gracious]; nor my lamentations, my groanings (Hirzel, Vaih.) [Frst]; nor yet finallyand I pray to the sons of my body (LXX., Vulg., Luth., etc. [E. V., with different construction of the though I entreated for the childrens sake of my own body]; for all these constructions are alike opposed to the language and to the context. The word is rather (with Schr., Rosen. Ew., Hahn, Schlott., Del., Dillm.), to be derived from the root , to stink, which does no appear elsewhere indeed in Heb., but which is quite common in Arab, and Syr., and is to be construed either as first pers. sing. Perf. Kal (and I smell offensively to the sons of my body), or, which is better suited to the parallelism, as Infinitive substantive, in a being still the predicate. This stench suggests in particular the fetid matter which issues from the festering and partially rotting limbs of the victim of elephantiasis. Comp. on Job 2:7; Job 7:14.That by the sons of my body ( ) we are not of necessity to understand the legitimate sons of Job, and hence that there is no contradiction between this passage and the prologue, has already been shown in the Introd., 8, 3. We need not therefore follow the critics who are there refuted in deciding that the prologue is not genuine; nor assume (with Eichhorn and Olsh.) that the poet has here for once forgotten himself, and lost sight of his scheme as set forth in Job 1:18-19. We are rather to suppose (with Ewald, 1st Ed., Hirz., Heiligst., Hahn, Dillmann, etc.), that the reference is to grandchildren, the offspring left behind by the unfortunate sonsin favor of which may be cited the similar use of in a wider sense in Gen 29:5; Gen 31:28, etc.: or else (with the LXX., Symmachus, J. D. Michaelis, Schr., Rosenm., Dathe, Ewald, 2d Ed.) to his children by concubines ( , LXX.) a supposition however with which Job 31:1 seems scarcely to agree, however true it may be that in the patriarchal age, to which our poet assigns Job, rigid monogamistic views did not prevail. The explanation of Stuhlm., Gesen., Umbr., Schlott., Del., [Noyes, Conant, Elzas, Merx] is also linguistically possible, that stands for (after Job 3:10), so that would mean accordingly Jobs natural brothers. This theory however is inconsistent with the circumstance that Job has already made mention above, Job 19:13, of his brothers; and that immediately following the mention of his wife, the mention of his descendants would be more suitable than that of his brothers. [To which add this from Bernard, that above, in Job 3:10, no ambiguity whatever could arise from the employment of in the sense of mothers womb, whereas here, by using it in this sense, Job would have run such risk of having his meaning misunderstood, as might fairly be considered synonymous with , my loins, or , my bowels, that we find it quite impossible to believe that if he had really wished to speak here of his brethren, he would have applied to them such a very ambiguous epithet. It has also been suggested as a relief of the difficulty that children had been born to Job in the interval between the first series of calamities, and the infliction of the disease, but such a conjecture is too precarious. Others regard the expression as general. So Wordsworth: He is speaking of the greatest wretchedness in general terms].
Job 19:18. Even youngsters act contemptuously towards me., plur. of , puer (root , comp. Job 21:11) are little children, such namely as are rude and impudent mockers, like those children of Bethel, 2Ki 2:23 seq, which may be expressed by the word youngsters [Germ. Buben: Bernardwicked-little-children], here as also above in Job 16:11.It will also guard in particular against the mistake of supposing that Jobs grandchildren are intended by these , (Hahn).If I rise up (conditional clause, as in Job 11:17 [not as E. V., I arose]), they speak about me, make me the butt of jeering talk ( , as in Psa 50:20; Num 12:1; Num 21:5).
Job 19:19. My bosom friends abhor me:(comp. above on Job 19:13 seq.), and those whom I loved( relative, as in Job 15:17) have turned against me.This verse points particularly at Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, the once trusted friends, who are now become his violent opponents.
Job 19:20. My bone cleaves to my skin and my flesh (comp. Job 10:11), i. e., through my skin and my extremely emaciated flesh may be seen my bones, which seem to cleave, as it were, to that poor and loathsome integument. Comp. Lam 4:8; Psa 102:6 [5], and I am escaped only with the skin of my teeth:i. e., thus far only my gums (the flesh of my teeth, here called the skin of my teeth, because of their skinlike thinness and leanness of muscle) have been spared by this fearful disease,so that I am able at least to speak, without having my mouth full of internal boils and sores (as is wont to be the case in the extreme stages of elephantiasis). This is the only satisfactory explanation, to which most moderns give in their adherence (Rosenm., Umbreit, Ewald, Hirzel, Vaih., Heil., Schlottm., Dillm.). This explanation of the skin of the teeth as the gums, is undoubtedly the most obvious, simple, and natural. [Yet simpler, perhaps, is the view of Umbreit, Wordsworth, Noyes, Renan, Elzas, that it is a proverbial expression, describing a state in which one is stripped to the very minimum of possession, or emaciated to the last point. Wordsworth: A proverbial paradox. I am reduced to a mere shadow, I am escaped with nothing, or next to nothing, so that my escape is hardly an escape. I am escaped with the skin of what has no skin, the skin of bone; comp. the Latin proverbs, Lana caprina (Horat., 1 Ep. xviii. 15), and Totum nil (Juvenal 3, 209). To which may be added the humorous English proverb: As fat as a hen in the forehead.E.]. Other explanations are in part against the language, in part too artificial: such as a. That of Jerome, and many Catholic commentators, that by the skin of the teeth we are to understand the lips. b. That of Delitzsch, which explains it to mean particularly the periosteum (in distinction from the gumsas if such a distinction could have been known to the ancient Hebrews! [and as though the poet had written for doctors! Dillm.]).c. That of Stickel and Hahn, who translate: I am escaped with the nakedness of my teeth, [i. e., with naked teeth].d. That of Le Clerc, who understands it of the gums as alone remaining, when the teeth have fallen out.
5. Second Division: Job 19:21-27. A lofty flight to a blessed hope in God, his future Redeemer and Avenger, introduced by a pathetic appeal to the friends, that they would be mercifully disposed towards him, as one who had been so deeply humiliated, and so heavily smitten by the hand of God.
Job 19:21. [Job here takes up a strain we have not heard previously. His natural strength becomes more and more feeble, and his tone weaker and weaker. It is a feeling of sadness that prevails in the preceding description of suffering, and now even stamps the address to the friends with a tone of importunate entreaty which shall if possible, affect their hearts. They are indeed his friends, as the emphatic affirms; impelled towards him by sympathy, they are come, and at least stand by him while all other men flee from him. Del. Pity me, pity me (pathetically repeated) O ye my friends!] For the hand of Eloah hath touched me.An allusion to the nature of his frightful disease, being a species of leprosy, i. e., of a (2Ki 15:5), a plaga Dei wherefore the suffering Messiah also bears the significant name , the leprous one from the school of Rabbi, in the Talmud, after [Isa 53:4; Isa 53:8.]. One who is already treated with enough severity through the infliction of such a plague from God, ought not to be smitten also by men through the exercise of a merciless disposition, unfriendly words, etc.
Job 19:22. Why do ye persecute me as God, by which he means not merely that they add their persecution to Gods, but that they take upon themselves Gods work, that they usurp to themselves a judicial divine authority; they act towards him as if they were superhuman, and therefore inhumanly. Del. And are not satiated with my flesh?i. e., continually devour my flesh, figuratively speaking, by false accusations, slanders, suspicions of my innocence, etc., gnaw me incessantly with the tooth of slander [comp. Engl. backbiting]. Comp. the equivalent figurative expression slander () in the Aram. of the book of Daniel (Job 3:8; Job 6:25) [to eat the pieces of any one], in the Syriac, where the devil is called ochel–karso = , and in Arab. where to eat the flesh, or a piece of any one is equivalent to slandering, backbiting.
Job 19:23 seq. As though despairing of the possibility of influencing the friends to withdraw from their attacks on his innocence, he now turns with ardent longing for the final vindication of the same to God, first of all uttering the wish that his own asseverations of the same might be preserved to the latest generations. [Ewald imagines a pause after Job 19:22. Job waits to see what response the friends would make to his pitiful appeal. They are silent, show no signs of relenting. Job sees that he has nothing to hope for either from men, or the God of the present. But in his extremity he obtains a glimpse of the far-distant future, after his death, which fills him with a new and wonderful courage]. Oh that my words were but written ( here followed by consec. before the voluntative [future], on account of the intervening , comp. Deu 5:26), that they were but inscribed (, pausal form for [see Ewald, 193, c, and Gesen., 67 ( 66) Rem. 8], Hoph. of ) in a book!, with the Art., as this expression is always writtencomp. Exo 17:14; 1Sa 10:25, etc.although no particular book is meant, but only in general a skin of an animal prepared for writing [], a writing-roll). These words of his, which he thus desires to see transmitted for remembrance by after generations, are, as it is most natural to suppose, not those contained in Job 19:25 seq.. (Hahn, Schlottm.) [Scott, Good, Bernard, Words., Rodwell, Barnes], but the sufferers former protestations of innocence, the assurances which from Job 6. on he has continually put forth, that he suffers innocently. [In favor of this view, and against the other, Delitzsch argues: (1) It is improbable that the inscription would begin with .(2) It is more likely that Job would wish to see inscribed that which was the expression of his habitual consciousness, than that which was but an occasional and transient flash of light through the darkness].
Job 19:24. That with an iron pen [or style] and with leadi. e., in letters engraved by means of an iron style, or chisel, and then filled in with lead, in order to make them more imperishablethey might be graven in the rock forever! Instead of the LXX. read here, as also in Isa 30:8 : , for a witness, as testimony, ( ), an emendation however which is unnecessary, for the rendering forever gives here a meaning that is quite suitable. The monumental inscription is indeed preferred to that on parchment just because of its greater durability, which is the reason why Job wishes for it here. In regard to the use of both methods of writing already in the Pre-Mosaic age, see Introd., 2, No. 4, p.. [For accounts of such inscriptions see RobinsonsBibl. Researches in Palestine, I., 169, 188 seq., 552; WilsonsLands of the Bible, I., 184 seq.; Princeton Review, 1870, page 533 seq. This wish was not in truth too high on Jobs part; for we now know sufficiently well that of old in those lands it was sought to perpetuate by means of inscriptions in stones and rocks not only short legal precepts, but also longer documents, memorable historical events, public requests, prayers, etc. Such costly works it is true could in general be completed only by kings and princes; Job was however a man of power in his age, who might well express such a wish. Ewald].
Job 19:25. Not because he despairs of the possibility of realizing this last wish (Dillm.), but because he knows for a certainty that God will not allow his testimony to his innocence to pass down to posterity without His absolute confirmations of it, and hence because he regards that wish for the eternal perpetuation of his testimony as by no means a vain one, he continues:And I know my Redeemer lives, etc. The in is thus not used in an adversative sense (Luther, Ewald, Vaih., Dillm. [Conant, Noyes, Lee], etc., but simply continuative, or, if one prefers it, ascensive, introducing the end to which the realization of the preceding wish is to lead. [The progressive rendering seems to be preferable (to the adversative), because the human vindication after death, which is the object of the wish expressed in Job 19:23 seq. is still not essentially different from the Divine vindication hoped for in Job 19:25, which must not be regarded as an antithesis, but rather as a perfecting of the other, designed for posterity. Job 19:25 is, however, certainly a higher hope, to which the wish in Job 19:23 seq. forms the stepping stone. Del.] The causal rendering (LXX., Vulgate, Stickel [E. V., Good, Carey, Renan],) is less probable, although not altogether meaningless, as Dillmann affirms. [The rendering: yea, verily, adopted by Schlottm., Words., Elzas, Merx, etc., is probably designed to express the ascensive meaning referred to above.] Forasmuch as is wanting after (as in Job 30:23; Ps. 9:21), we should translate simply in the oratio directa: My Redeemer lives. , which according to Job 3:5 means literally reclaimer, redeemer, acquires a meaning that is entirely too special, when it is taken by Umbreit and some others [Renan, Rodwell, Elzas] to be = , the blood-avenger (Num 35:12; Num 35:19), for the previous discourse was not of Job in the character of one murdered in his innocence, and Job 16:18 is too remote. After the analogy of Pro 23:11; Lam 3:58; Psa 119:154, we are to think in general of the restitution of the honor and right of one who has been oppressed, and are accordingly to take in the sense of a defender, an avenger of honora meaning indeed which approaches that of a blood-avenger in so far as the expected deliverance [or vindication] is conceived of as taking place only after the sufferers death. For the Goel is , is absolutely living (, he lives, incomparably stronger than , for instance would have been) [ reminding us of that name of God, , Dan 12:7, after which the Jewish oath per Anchialum in Martial is to be explained, Del., and indicating here the contrast between Him, the Living One, and Job, the dying one, Dillm.], while the object of His redemptive activity is , dust, and as b shows, at the time when He arises, has long been dust.And as the Last will He arise upon the dust. cannot possibly with Bttcher and others [so E. V., Lee, Conant, Renan, Elzas] be construed in the adverbial sense hereafter, in the latter time [or day]. It is clearly a substantive, used either in apposition to , the subj. of the first member, or as the independent subj. of the second member, identical in meaning with this . The word signifies neither Next-man [Next-of-kin, Ger. Nachmann] in the sense of Avenger (vindex: Ewald, Hirzel), nor the Follower [Germ. Hintermann, backer], second (Hahn), but according to Isa 44:6; Isa 48:12, simply the Last, he who survives all, an expression which is used here not with eschatological universality, but with particular reference to Job, who is no longer living (Job 17:11 seq.). [Delitzsch, however, and in a way which seems more suitable to the sublimity and scope o the passage: as the Last One, whose word shall avail in the ages of eternity, when the strife of human voices shall have long been silent.] Of this Last One, or this One who is hereafter to come, Job says: He will stand up, He will arise (), viz. for his protection and his deliverance (, the customary term for the favorable intervention of a judge to help one: Psa 12:6 [5]; Isa 2:19; Isa 2:21; Isa 33:10, or also of a witness). He is thus to appear , upon the dust; i. e., according to Job 17:16; Job 20:11; Job 21:26, indisputablyon the dust to which I shall soon return (Gen 3:19; Ecc 3:20), or in which I shall soon be made to lie down, on the dust of my decayed body, or of my grave. This is the only meaning of the expression which suits the context (so Rosenm., Ewald, Vaih., Welte, Del., Dillmann [Conant, Elzas, Merx], etc.). Any other explanation does more or less violence to the language, whether with Umbreit we translate in a way altogether too classic, in the arena; or with Hahn, altogether too freely: above the earth, i. e. in heaven! or with Jerome, Luther, and most of the ancients, altogether too dogmatically, and withal against the usage of the language, we find expressed an awakening out of the earth; or finally with Hirzel and others, we understand it in a way altogether too rationalistic of an appearing of God on the earth, in the sense of Job 38., rejecting any reference to the continuance of life hereafter [this last rendering, however, being adopted by not a few of the commentators who refer the passage to the final resurrection: so e. g. Scott, Lee]. In opposition to all these views, Dillmann says truly: [Had Job intended here simply to express the hope of an appearance of God for the purpose of deciding the controversy in favor of Job, would have been unnecessary (comp. e. g.Psa 12:6), and instead of he would have said rather, for it is not said elsewhere that God arises on the dust when He appears; besides that God does not appear in Job 38. on the earth, but He speaks His final decision out of the storm. Rather do] the words express the expectation of a who lives, even when Job lives no longer, who comes after him, and who for the open vindication of his right arises on the dust in which he is laid, or stands above his grave. (Analogies from Arabic usage compel us thus to understand the phrase of the grave, or the dust of the grave; see Delitzsch.) The words thus lead us without doubt into the circle of thought indicated in Job 16:18 (although at the same time beyond the same). He does not yet say whom he intends by this , because the main thought here is the certainty that such an one lives; not until Job 19:26, after he has explained himself further, does he surprise the friends and himself by saying that the object of his hope is Eloah Himself.
Job 19:26. And after my skin, which is broken in pieces, even this. is not a conjunction belonging to , after that (Targ., de Dieu, Gesenius [Schlott., Con., Word., Rod.], etc.), but as its position immediately before shows, a preposition [a prepos. when used as a conjunc. being always followed immediately by the verb; see Job 42:7; Lev 14:43. Rendered as a prepos. the meaning of the phrase after my skin will be after the loss of it. Comp. Job 21:21, , after him, to wit, after his death]. , however (which is not to be taken [with Hofmann, Schriftbeweis II., 2, 503] as a Chaldaizing variation of = an envelope, Germ. Umspannung), is an appositional relative clause, referring to . It is found in the third plur. perf. Piel of , to break off (in Piel used particularly of the hewing down of trees, Isa 10:34. Hence the third plur. here being used impersonally (comp. Job 4:19; Job 7:3; Job 18:18), after my skin, which is broken off, i. e. cut off piecemeal, mutilated, broken in pieces [E. V. unnecessarily supplies worms as subject]. The reference is to the skin together with the tender parts of the flesh [] adhering to it, which gradually rot away, so that the meaning is similar to that of Job 18:13. The added at the end of this member of the verse cannot possibly be interpreted as equivalent to , this shall be (Targ.; Gesen.) [for in that case should have stood at the head of the clause]. We must either, with Arnheim, Stickel, Hahn, Delitzsch [Lee, Rodwell, and preferred by Green], explain it to mean so, in this manner, connecting it in this sense adverbially with thus torn to pieces, Del.), or else explain it deictically, as pointing to the skin, or, since is strictly masc., as pointing to the body as here represented by that term, the totality of Jobs members and organs. [The distinction which the E. V. makes between the skin and the body, the destruction of the latter being after that of the former seems not sufficiently warranted. Such a distinction must have been more clearly indicated. The construction is indeed a peculiar one, and yet exceedingly pathetic in its broken irregularity. And after my skinwhen it is all fallen off by decaythis tattered thing which you now see!E.] In respect to the various renderings of the ancients, especially those of the Targ., of Jerome, of Luther, etc., see below [Doctrinal and Ethical] the history of the exposition of the passage.And free from my flesh, shall I behold Eloah.If be explained out of my flesh [or, as in this sense it is rendered by many, in my flesh, either referring it to his resurrection-body, E. V., Good, Lee, etc.; or] with a reference to the restored body of the sufferer (Eichh. 5. Clln, Knapp, Hofmann) [Noyes, Wemyss, Elz., Rod., who render by in], it would form an inappropriate antithesis to in a, which would be all the more strange, seeing that only a little before, in Job 19:20, they had been used as in substance synonymous. Neither can the expression signify exactly from behind, or within my flesh (against Volck); this meaning would require , or (after Son 4:1; Son 4:3; Son 6:7). Hence is to be rendered privatively, away from, without, free from (comp. Job 11:15; Job 21:9). In that case, however, the reference is not to the last point of time in Jobs earthly life, when he would be relieved of all his flesh, i. e., would be completely reduced to a skeleton (Chrysost., Umbr., Hirz., Stickel, Heiligst., Hahn, Renan, etc.), but to his condition after departing from this earth, a condition which if not absolutely incorporeal, is at least one of freedom from the body. It refers to the time when, freed from his suffering, miserable, decayed , he shall behold God as a glorified spirit (Ewald, Vaihinger, Schlottm., Arnheim, Delitzsch, Dillmann [Con., Green]). This latter interpretation is favored decidedly by the Imperf. , which is not to be rendered in the present (as by Mercier, Hahn, H. Schultz [Bibl. Theol. des A. T., Vol. II., 1870], etc.) : I behold God even now in the spirit; for then the circumstantial particulars, and , would appear meaningless, and almost unintelligible, but which is certainly to be construed in the future, expressing the hope in a joyful beholding of God hereafter, (comp. the similar meaning of in Psa 17:15, also of in Psa 11:7), that is to say, as the following verse shows yet more clearly, in such a beholding of God in a glorified state after death (Mat 5:8; 1Jn 3:2, etc ). The expression of such a hope here does not, after Job 14:13-15; Job 16:18-21, come unexpectedly; and it is entirely in accordance with the inner progress of the drama, that the thought of a redemption from Hades, expressed in the former passage, and the demand expressed in the latter passage for the rescue of the honor of his blood, which is even now guaranteed him by his witness in heaven, are here united together into the confident assurance that his blood and his dust will not be declared by God the Redeemer as innocent, without his being in some way conscious of it, though freed from this his decaying body. (Delitzsch).
Job 19:27 describes, in triumphant anticipation of the thing hoped for, how Job will then behold God. Whom I shall behold for myself, to wit, for my salvation; the , for me (emphatic Dat. commodi, as in Psa 56:10; Psa 118:6) being decidedly emphasized, as also , I, by the use of which Job makes prominent the thought that he, who was so grievously persecuted, and delivered over to certain death, was destined some day to enjoy a blessed beholding of God. And whom mine eyes shall see, and not a stranger. after the Fut. is the Perf. of certainty, or of futurity (prt. propheticum s. confidenti), and , can only be nominative, synonymous with (et non alius, Vulg.; so also LXX., Targ. [E. V.], and most), not accusative, as held by Gesenius in Thes., Vaih., Umbreit, Stickel, Hahn, v. Hofm. [Noyes, Wemyss, Carey, Elzas, Green], who take the rendering which they assume, et non alium, in the sense of et non adversarium, and not as an enemywhich is decidedly at variance with the universal use of , which never signifies an enemy [never at least except indirectly, and in a national connection, a hostile alien: it can scarcely be regarded as the word which Job would most naturally use in describing Gods personal relations to himself,E.], and also at variance with the clause , which ought not to stand without an object, if were an appositional accusative. It is undoubtedly to be taken as a nominative [in cor-relation to and , Imy eyes] and not a stranger, not another (with which comp. Pro 27:2), containing an allusion to Jobs three opponents, who could not share in this future joyful beholding of God the Vindicator, at least not in the same blessed experience of it as himself. Moreover the very fact that Job here so obviously glances aside at his opponents, with their hostile disposition, precludes the supposition of Hirzel and others, who put the time of the beholding here prophesied in this life, and regard Job 38:1 seq. as the fulfillment of the prophecy; for comp. Job 42:7 seq. [Zcklers argument seems to be that the vindication recorded at the close of the book could not be the vindication here anticipated by Job for the reason that in the former case God did really appear to the friends, as well as to Job, whereas they were to be excluded (so also Delitzsch) from the appearance to which Job looked forward. But it is unnatural to suppose that the Theophany and the Vindication in which Job here exults, would be limited either to himself or to his sympathizing adherents. The very object of it presupposes the presence, as witnesses, of those who had wronged him. When Job accordingly says: I shall see Himmy eyes shall behold Himand not a strangerhe is not so much intimating that they would be excluded, as denying that he himself would be excluded. The vindication was not to be in his own absence, and before a stranger, who would feel no interest in the matter, butin some strange, unaccountable wayhe would be there, participating in the awful glory and the blessed triumph of the scene. This view of the meaning also gives the most satisfactory explanation of , not an enemy, as shown above, which would be inappropriate, nor another, which would be too general, but a stranger, who would have no interest in the result. The jubilant tone of Jobs mind is strikingly exhibited in the repetition of the pronoun: Ifor memy eyes, the climax being reached in .E.]Finally, the fact that Job here hopefully promises this future beholding of God not only to himself as the personal subject, but in particular to his eyes, may certainly with perfectly good right be appealed to in proof that the condition in which he hopes to enjoy it, viz. disembodied, freed from the earthly , is to be understood not as one of abstract incorporeality, or absolute spiritualityfor this is a representation which is decidedly opposed to the concrete pneumatico-realistic mode of thought found in the Old Testament Scriptures, which does not even represent God as abstractly incorporeal.My reins pine (therefore) in my bosom:viz. with longing for such a view. , lit. they are consumed, waste away, languish; elsewhere used of the soul pining away with longing (Psa 84:3 [Psa 84:2]; Psa 119:81), or of the eyes (Psa 69:4 [Psa 69:3]; Psa 119:123; comp. above Job 11:20; Job 17:5), here of that inner organ which is regarded as the seat of the tenderest, inmost and deepest affections, being used also in this sense in Psa 16:7; Psa 7:10 [Psa 7:9] (Del., Biblical Psychology, p. 268 [Clark, p. 317]). Comp. also the Arabic phrase culaja tadhbu, my reins melt. Essentially the same meaning is given to the phrase in the various renderings which on other accounts are objectionable, e. g. the Syriac: my reins waste away completely by reason of my lot; that of Hahn: if my reins perish in my bosom. [E. V. and Good: though my reins be consumed within me; Lee and Conant: when my reins are (or shall have been) consumed within me; either of which renderings is far less expressive as limiting the description to Jobs physical sufferings, now, or in death, and failing to bring out the pathetic emotion with which the passage expresses Jobs ardent longing for the day of his vindicationa meaning which is not only far more in accordance with the general usage of the words (see reff. above), but also most touchingly appropriate here. As Dillmann also remarks: These words indicate that what Job has said just before expresses something altogether extraordinary.E.]
6. Third Division: Conclusion: Earnestly warning the friends against the further continuance of their attacks: Job 19:28-29. [It is worthy of note how lofty the tone which Job, inspired by the vision of his future vindication, here assumes towards the friends. No longer a suppliant for pity (Job 19:21), or trembling before their threats of the Divine vengeance, he now threatens them with that vengeance in case they persevere in their unjust treatment of him.E.]
Job 19:28. If ye think [lit. say] How will we pursue him! is neither causal (Stick.) [Rodwell], nor affirmative, truly (Umbreit, Hirzel, Vaih.), [nor adversative but (E. V.), which requires an untenable rendering of the clauses which follow; nor temporalthen (Wemyss, Renan, Elzas, who refer it to Jobs restoration in this life; Good and Lee, who refer it to the resurrection), for this is inconsistent with the future ]; but, as the analogy of Job 21:28 teaches, a conditional particle if [when Ewald; since, Noyes], so that Job 19:28 is the protasis of which Job 19:29 is the apodosis. in that case is neither an interrogative how? (Bttcher) [Carey], nor why? (Umbreit, Hirzel [E. V., Rodmann, Elz.], etc.), but exclamatory: how! how much! comp. Job 26:2-3; Son 7:2.In regard to the construction of with , found only here, comp. that with in Jdg 7:25. With this exclamation of the friends there is connected in b the expression of an opinion, or a thought on their part in the oratio obliqua:and (if you think): the root of the matter is found in me, i. e. the cause of my suffering lies only in me, viz. in my sin. As regards this connection of an oratio obliqua with an oratio recta, especially with exclamatory clauses, comp. Job 22:17; Job 35:3; Ewald, 338. According to the reading of the ancient versions (LXX., Targ., Vulg.), and of some MSS., which have instead of , this interchange of the direct and conditional form of expression is removed, assuredly against the original construction. [According to another view, followed by the translators of the E. V., the root of the matter is to be taken in a good sense of Jobs piety (Barnes), or the justice of his cause (Renan). The expression has indeed become in English a proverbial one for religious sincerity, and we who have become accustomed to it in this sense may find a little difficulty in releasing our minds from the power of that association. It will be found difficult, however, to harmonize such a thought with the connection. In the E. V., for example, no one can help feeling that the connection between Job 19:28 and the preceding passage has an unsatisfactory abruptness and lameness about it, and even this connection, such as it is, rests on a forced rendering of which is properly adversative only after an expressed or implied negative. And in general it may be said, that whether we regard Job 19:28 b as a declaration of Jobs sincerity by himself or by his friends, it will be found next to impossible to put it into proper and natural relations to Job 19:28 a on the one hand, and to Job 19:29 on the other. The most intelligible, tenable and forcible construction is that given above by Zckler (and adopted by Ewald, Dillmann, Schlottmann, Delitzsch, Conant, Green), which regards Job 19:28-29 as a lofty warning to the friends, inspired by the triumphant anticipation of Job 19:25-27, bidding themif they continued to persecute him, and to charge him with harboring within himself the root of the calamities which had befallen himto beware of the sword!E.]
Job 19:29. Apodosis: Be ye afraid ( for yourselves, as in Hos 10:5) before the sword, i. e. the avenging sword of God; comp. in Job 15:22; Job 27:14; Deu 32:41; Zec 13:7, etc. [a sword, without the art. in order to combine the idea of what is boundless, endless and terrific with the indefinite, Del.]. This sufficiently distinct threat of Divine punishment is confirmed by that which follows: for wrath (befalls) the transgressions of the sword, that ye may know that (there is) a judgment., glow of wrath, rage, can scarcely be regarded as the subject, with the meaning: for wrath (against friends) is one of the crimes of the sword (Schultens, Stickel, Schlottmann), [Conant, Noyes, who with less than his usual accuracy renders by malice]. Apart from the difficulty that can by no means, without modification be = the partitive , the meaning is not at all suited to the true position of Job as regards the friends, who might rather reproach him with anger, than he them. Rather is a noun in the predicate, the meaning being: wrath are the swords crimes, i.e. they carry wrath as a reward in themselves, they cause wrath; they are infallibly overtaken by it (Rosenm., Hahn, Delitzsch, Dillmann, etc.). [Crimes of the sword are not such as are committed with the swordfor such are not treated of here, and, with Arnh. and Hahn, to understand of the sword of hostilely mocking words is arbitrary and artificialbut such as have incurred the sword. Job thinks of slanders and blasphemy. Delitzsch]. This explanation is better than that of Hirzel, Ewald [Rodwell], etc.:for wrath, i.e. something to be dreaded, are the punishments of the sword, for can scarcely be taken in the sense of punishments, chastisements; even in Psa 31:11; Psa 38:5; Lam 4:6, signifies not so much punishment, as rather evil-doing, sin together with its mischievous consequences. The above interpretation is not, it is true, altogether satisfactory; nevertheless, if we should attempt to amend the passage, it would be better to introduce a before , than either to change to (Gesenius: for such, i. e. such transgressions as yours, are crimes of the sword) or to introduce the constr. state before , which is the construction given by the Pesh. and Vulg., the latter of which reads: quoniam ultor iniquitatum gladius est. A difficulty is also presented in the word (Kthibh) or (Kri) at the end of the last member, occasioned by the fact that = does not elsewhere occur in the Book of Job, as also by the fact that the rendering of the LXX. (or according to the Cod. Alex, ) probably points to another text in the original. The above rendering, however: that ye may know that there is a judgment, is in general accord with the context, and corresponds well to the meaning of these closing verses. It is not necessary with Heiligst., Dillmann, Ewald (2d Ed.), to read : that ye may know the Almighty; nor (which is moreover linguistically inadmissible) to regard as a variation of (Eichhorn, Hahn, Ewald, 1st Ed.), which would yield the same meaning, [ has everywhere else the signification judicium, e. g. by Elihu, Job 36:17; and also often in the Book of Proverbs, e. g. Job 20:8 (comp. in the Arabizing supplement, Job 31:8). The final judgment is in Aramaic ; the last day in Heb. and Arabic, , jaum ed–din. To give to , that (there is) a judgment, this dogmatically definite meaning, is indeed, from its connection with the historical recognition of the plan of redemption, inadmissible; but there is nothing against understanding the conclusion of Jobs speech according to the conclusion of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which belongs to the same age of literature. Delitzsch.]
[Thus does this lofty tragical discourse combine in itself the deepest humiliation and depression with the highest Divine elevation, the most utter despair with the most animated overflowing hope and the most blissful certainty. Not only does it occupy the lofty centre of the human controversy and of the whole action, but it also causes the first real and decisive revolution in Jobs favor, because in it Jobs two ruling thoughts and tendencies, the unbelief springing from superstition, and the higher genuine faith just forming itself come into such sharp and happy contact that the latter rushes forth out of its insignificance with irresistible might, and although the discord is not as yet harmonized, from this time on it maintains itself, gradually prevails more and more, until at last it remains supreme and alone. Ewald.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The history of the interpretation of Job 19:25-27, the passage of greatest theological importance in this chapter, exhibits three principal views of the meaning. Of these the two oldest rest on the texts of the ancient versions, and particularly of the LXX. and Vulg., which are more or less erroneous, and yield results which are one-sided and partially perverted. It is only the latest of these which, resting on the original text, avoids these one-sided results, and sets forth the poets thought with unprejudiced objectivity.
a. A rigidly orthodox, or if the phrase be preferred, an ultra-orthodox (ultra-eschatological) view, which can be traced back into the earliest periods of the church, assumes that the passage predicts a resuscitation of the body by Christ on the last day. This assumption rests on the rendering of Job 19:25 b, and Job 19:26 a by the LXX., partly indeed also on the Targum, but more especially on the rendering of the passage in the Vulgatea rendering which flows out of the older version, and which pushes still further its misinterpretation. The LXX. presents a version of the words which for the most part indeed is opposed, rather than otherwise, to the eschatological view, which limits Jobs expectations to the present earthly life, which in fact almost wholly precludes the reference to the future. But the Words beginning with , Job 19:25 b, (instead of which it read ), and ending with , Job 19:26 a, which it combines together so as to form one sentence, it renders thus: (Cod. Alex.: ). According to this rendering a future resuscitation after death of the sorely afflicted body of Job is as distinctly as possible expressed. The Targumist expresses essentially the same meaning: I know that my Redeemer lives, and hereafter my redemption will arise (i. e. be made, actual, become a reality) over the dust, and after that my skin is again made whole (oraccording to another readingis swollen up) this will happen, and out of my flesh shall I behold God. On the basis of these interpretations, which were rooted in the hopes of a resurrection cherished by the Jews after the exile, and especially on the basis of the former [that of the LXX.], Clemens Romanus (1 Cor. 26), Origen (Comm. in Mat 22:23 seq.), Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. XVIII.), Ephraem, Epiphanius (Orat. Ancorat), and other fathers before Jerome, found in the passages a proof of the church doctrine of the . Still more definitely and completely did the passage acquire the character of a Scriptural proof of this doctrine from Jerome, as the author of the authorized Latin translation, which was adopted by the Western Church during the Middle Ages, as well as by the Catholic Church of recent times. While the predecessor of his work, the Itala, had somewhat indefinitely expressed a meaning approximating that of the LXX. (super terram resurget cutis mea, etc.), the Vulgate set aside the last remnant of a possibility that the passage should be understood of a restitution or a restoration of Job in this life. This it did by introducing into the text of Job 19:25-26 three inaccuracies of the most glaring sort. For (or ) it substituted without more ado , surrecturus sum; it rendered, in novissimo die! and rendering as Niphal of = , to surround, to circle, it gave to it no less arbitrarily the meaning of circumdabor, so that the whole passage is made to read thus: Job 19:25 : scio enim, quod redemptor meus vivit et in novissimo die de terra surrecturus sum; Job 19:26 : et rursum circumdabor pelle mea et in came mea videbo Deum meum; Job 19:27 : quem visurus sum ego ipse et, oculi mei conspecturi sunt et non alius; reposita est hc spes mea in sinu meo.This interpretation, which was emphatically approved and recommended by Augustine (De Civ. Dei XXII., 29), held its ground through the Middle Ages among all Christian expositors, and all the more necessarily that a revision of the same after the Hebrew could not be undertaken by any one of them. Neither does Luthers translationBut I know that my Redeemer liveth, and He will hereafter raise [or quicken] me out of the earth, and I shall thereupon be surrounded with this my shin, and shall see God in my fleshbreak through the spell of this doctrinally prejudiced interpretation; and just as little as Luther do the distinguished Reformed translators of the Bible, e. g., Leo Juda, Joh. Piscator, the authors of the English Version, etc., exhibit any substantial departure from the meaning or phraseology of the Vulgate. Thus the rendering under consideration succeeded in acquiring the most important influence even in the evangelical theological tradition. It came to be cited in Church symbols (e. g., Form. Conc. Epit., p. 375 R.) [Westminster Conf. of Faith XXXII. 2], catechisms and doctrinal manuals as a cardinal proof-text for the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and occasionally even for the divinity of Christ (on account of the of Job 19:26). It became a leading theme of sacred poets (e. g., of Louisa Henrietta v. Brandenburg, who wrote Jesus, meine Zuversicht [Jesus, my Trust], of P. Gerhard, the author of Ich weiss dass mein Erlser lebt [of Charles Wesley: I know that my Redeemer lives]), and in general it has received the most manifold application alike in the domain of speculative theology, and in that of practical and ascetic piety. Even such thorough exegetes as Cocceius, Seb. Schmidt, Starke, while in subordinate details occasionally departing from the traditional ecclesiastical version, advocate strenuously the direct christological and eschatological reference of the passage (comp. also Jablonsky, De Redemptore stante super pulverem, Francof. ad V. Job 1772: Gude and Rambach: De Jobo Christi incarnationis vate, Hal 1730, etc.). A number even of able Orientalists, and independent Hebrew scholars since the last century, such as Schultens, J. H. and J. D. Michaelis, Velthusen, Rosenmller. Rosengarten, the English writers Mason, Good, Hales, J. Pye Smith [Scott, Lee, Carey, Wordsworth],2 and quite recently the Catholic Welte, think that notwithstanding the various amendments which following the original text they make to the version of the Vulg., or in a measure to that of Luther, the passage must still be held to teach, at least in general, the Church doctrine of the resurrection, in that they favor the inadmissible rendering of as = neque ego alius (and truly I not as another, I as unchanged), or understand the appearing of the Redeemer on the dust as having for its object the quickening of the dead, and hence as referring to the Second Advent of Christ, or find denoted in the glorified flesh of the resurrection body, or adopt other explanations of a like character (against which see above in the Exegetical and Critical Remarks).
b. A one-sided anti-eschatological view which limits the object of Jobs hope and longing wholly to this life, which may also be called the skeptical or hypercritical rationalistic view has for its precursors in the Ancient Church Chrysostom, John of Damascus, and other fathers of the Oriental Church. By an allegorizing interpretation of the language of the LXX. , these writers refine away the eschatological meaning which undoubtedly belongs to the passage as pointing to the hereafter, and refer it to the removal of his disease which Job hoped for, and the rehabilitation of his disfigured body; and they saw that the phraseology of the Septuagint in the remaining verses of the passage favored this interpretation. Most of the Jewish Exegetes during the Middle Ages adhered to their view so far as the principle was concerned, the principle, to wit, of excluding from the passage any messianic and eschatological application while in respect to many of the details they hit upon novel expedients, which were in part of a most wonderful and arbitrary character. The more freely inclined theologians of the Reformed Churches also, such as Mercier, Grotius, Le Clerc, substantially adopted this view. After the time of Eichhorn (Allg. Biblioth der Bibl. Literatur I. 3, 1787) it acquired even a temporary ascendency over the opposite opinions, and that not only with commentators of rationalistic tendencies, such as Justi, v. Clln, Knobel, Hirzel, Stickel, etc., but even with supra-naturalists, such as Dathe, Dderlein, Baumgarten-Crusius, Knapp, Augusti, Umbreit, and even with Hahn, strictly orthodox as he is elsewhere (De spe immortalitatis sub V. T. gradatim exculta, 1845, and his Comm. on the passage), with v. Hofmann (concerning whose peculiar rendering of see above on Job 19:26), with the English theologians Wemyss, Stuart, Barnes [Warburton, Divine Legation, Book VI., Sec. 2; Patrick, Kennicott, Noyes, Rodwell; to whom may be added Elzas and Bernard], and others. Almost all the advocates of this view agree in holding that in Job 19:25 seq. Job, having just before expressed the wish that he might see his protestation of innocence perpetuated, utters his conviction that such a perpetuation for posterity would not be necessary, that he himself would yet live to see the restoration of his honor and of his health, and that even though he should waste away to a most pitiful skeleton, he would be made to rejoice by the appearance of God to benefit him and none others.
c. An intermediate view, or one exhibiting a moderate eschatology, which resting on the most exact philological and impartial treatment of the original text, avoids the one-sided conclusions of the two older interpretations, has been advanced and defended by Ewald (Die Dichter des Alten Bundes, 1st Ed., Vol. III., 1836), and substantially adopted by Vaihinger, Schlottman, v. Gerlach, Hupfeld (Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1850, No. 35 seq.), Oehler (Grundzge der alt-testamentlchen Weisheit, 1854), Knig (Die Unsterblichkeitsidee im B. Job, 1855, Hoelemann (Schs. Kirchenund Schulbl. 1853, No. 48 seq.), Del. (Art. Job in Herzogs Real-Encycl., and in his Commentary), Dillmann, Davidson (Introduction II. 224 seq.) [Conant, Canon Cook in Smiths Bib. Dict. Art. Job; MacClintock & Strongs Cyclop. Art. Job], and even by the Jewish expositors Arnheim and Lwenthal. According to the unanimous opinion of these investigators, Job here expresses the hope, not indeed of a bodily resuscitation from death, but nevertheless of a future beholding of God in a spiritual glorified state. It is not the hope of a resurrection; it is, however, the hope of immortality, to which he is here lifted up, and that too with great clearness and the most vivid definiteness, above the ordinary popular conception of the ancient Israelites, as it has been previously declared even by himself.
2. We have, in our Exegetical Remarks above, expressed our concurrence in this modified eschatological or futuristic exposition of the passage, because, on the one side, the unmodified doctrinal orthodox rendering presents too many linguistic errors and arbitrary constructions to have any scientific value whatever attached to it, and because on the other side the view which excludes every reference to the hereafter can be established only by allegorically or rationalistically refining away the obvious phraseology of the passage. The latter interpretation, which Hirzel in particular has attempted to support with great argumentative acuteness, cannot be successfully maintained.
a. The connection with Job 19:23-24 cannot be urged in its favor, for Job by no means contradicts the wish here expressed that the protestation of his innocence might be preserved for posterity, when in Job 19:25 seq. lie declares the assurance of his triumphant justification by God hereafter; rather in proclaiming this assurance he but takes a new step upward in the inspired conviction that God will at last interpose as the Avenger of his innocence.
b. Jobs former hopelessness, as he contemplates the mournful lot of him who goes down into Sheol, cannot be used as an argument in favor of that view; for Jobs former discourses are by no means wanting in preparatory intimations of a clear and well-defined hope in future retribution and a blessed immortality: see especially Job 14:1815, and Job 16:18-21.
c. Nor finally can the fact that neither by Jobs friends, nor in the historical issue of the colloquy in the Epilogue is there any direct reference made to this expression of Jobs hope of immortality, be urged against our interpretation; for it is a general characteristic of all the discourses of the friends, that theyspellbound as they are within the circle of their external, legal viewsscarcely enter at all in detail upon the contents of Jobs discourses; and in Job 38 seq. God does not undertake the task of a critic, who passes judgment, one by one, on all the propositions of the contending parties. That the poet, however, should have framed for the drama a different issue from that which it has, is not to be desired, for the theme of the poem is not the question touching the immortality of mans spirit, but the question: how is the suffering of the righteous to be harmonized with the Divine justice (Dillmann)? Such a change of the issue, moreover, would be undesirable for the reason that the very contrast between the deliverance and exaltation which Job here hopes for as something which lies after death, and the favor which God visits upon him even in this life, a favor infinitely surpassing all that he hopes and waits for, prays for or understandsthis is one of the most striking beauties of the poem, constitutes indeed the real focus of its splendor and its crowning close (comp. 5. Gerlach in the Homiletical Remarks on Job 19:25 seq.). Such a sudden unexpected blazing up of the bright light of the hope of immortality, without frequent references to it afterwards, and without other preparations or antecedent steps leading to it than a wish (in Job 14:13 seq.), and a demand of similar meaning (Job 16:18 seq.)corresponds perfectly to the style of our poet, who, having assigned his hero to the patriarchal age, does not ascribe to him his own settled certainty of faith, representing him as possessing such a certainty in the same clear, complete measure as himself; he aims rather to represent him as striving after such a possession. To this it may be added that Hirzels view, which places the object of the sufferers hope altogether in this life is contradicted by the fact that Job in what he has already said has repeatedly described his end as near, his strength as completely broken, his disease as wholly incurable, his hope of an earthly restoration of his prosperity as having altogether disappeared (Job 6:8-14; Job 7:6; Job 13:13-15; Job 14:17-22; Job 17:11-16). With such extreme hopelessness, how would it be possible to reconcile the expression in Job 19:25 seq. of the very opposite, as is assumed to be the case by the interpretation which refers that passage to this life? And why again hereafter, in Job 30:23, does the gloomy outlook of a near and certain death find renewed expression in a way which cuts off all possibility of cherishing any hopes in regard to this life (see on the passage)? Wherefore such an unseemly wavering between the solemnly emphasized certainty of the hope in an appearance of Eloah, and the not less emphatic expression of the certainty that he has no hope in such an appearance? What would the artistic plan of the poem in general gain by allowing the hero in the middle of it to predict the final issue, but afterwards to assume, even as he had already done before, that the exact opposite of this is the only possible issue?
3. Seeing then that every consideration favors most decidedly the view which interprets the passage in accordance with a moderate eschatology, the question still remains: whether that beholding of God after this earthly life, which Job here anticipates as taking place concurrently with the vindication of his honor and his redemption, is conceived of by him as something that is to be realized in the sphere of abstract spirituality, or whether his conception of it is more concrete, realistic, in analogy with the relations of this earthly life? In other words, the question is: whether his idea of immortality is abstractly spiritualistic, or one which up to a certain point approximates the New Testament doctrine of a resurrection? We have already declared above (on Job 19:27 b) in favor of the latter opinion; because (1) The mention of the eyes with which he expects to see God admits only of that pneumatico-realistic meaning, under the influence of which the Old Testament speaks even of eyes, ears, and other bodily organs as belonging to God, and in general furnishes solid supports to the proposition of Oetinger touching corporeity as the end of the ways of God. To this it may be added that (2) the absolute incorporealness of Jobs condition after death is in no wise expressed by the phrase , notwithstanding the privative meaning which in any case belongs to , that this expression merely indicates the object of Jobs hope to be a release from his present miserable body of flesh, and that accordingly what Job here anticipates is (gradually accomplished to be sure, but) not specifically different from that which the Apostle calls (Rom 8:23; comp. Rom 7:25), or what on another occasion he expresses in more negative form by the proposition: (1Co 15:50).Still further (3) the concluding verse of Job 14. shows that Job conceives even of mans condition in Sheol as by no means one of abstract incorporeality, but rather invests this gloomy and mournful stage of his existence after death with two factors of being ( and ), conceiving of them as existing in conjunction, and as standing in some kind of a relation to each other (see above on the passage). Finally (4): The perfected realistic hopes of a resurrection, found in the later Old Testament literature from the time of Ezekiel and Daniel on, would be absolutely inconceivable, they would be found drifting in the air without attachment or support, they would be without all historical precedent, if in the passage before us the hope of immortality be understood in the light of an abstract spirituality. What Job says here is certainly nothing more than a germ of the more complete resurrection creed of a later time, but it must indubitably be regarded as such a germ, as such a seminal anticipation of that which the Israel of a later period believed and expected in respect to the future state. Its relation to the perfected eschatology of those prophets of the exile, as well as to the post-exilic literature of the Apocrypha (for example the II. Book of Maccabees) is like that of the protevangelium to the perfected soteriology of revelation; it presents only the first lines of the picture, which is worked up in detail later on, but also an outline, sketched in such a way that all the knowledge of later times may be added to it (Delitzsch)as from of old the Church has been doing, and still is doing, in her epitaphs, hymns, liturgies, and musical compositions, and this too with some degree of right, although largely in violation of the law of exegetical sobriety.
[The following additional considerations, suggested by the passage, and the context, may be urged in favor of the view here advocated. (1) Job, as the context shows, is, while uttering this sublime prediction, painfully conscious of what he is suffering in the body. Note the whole passage, Job 19:13-20, where the estrangement of his most intimate friends and kindred is associated with the loathsome condition into which his disease has brought him. Note again how in the heart of the prophecy itself (Job 19:26), he is still unable to repress the utterance of this same painful consciousness of his bodily condition. If now he anticipates here a Divine Intervention which is to vindicate him, is it not natural that he should include in that vindication, albeit vaguely and remotely, some compensation for the physical wrong he was suffering? If God would appear to recompense the indignity to his good name, would He not appear at the same time to recompense the indignity from which his body had so grievously suffered? In a word, would not the same experience which here blossoms so gloriously into the prophetic assurance of a justification of his spiritual integrity, bear at least the bud of a resurrection-hope for the body, although the latter would be, ex necessitate rei, less perfectly developed than the former? Surely the Day of Restitution, which he knows is to come, will bring with it some compensation for this grievous bodily ill, the dark shadow of which flits across even this bright vision of faith! This presumption is still further heightened when we note that he himself, with his own eyes, is to witness that restitution.
(2). The phrase is not without significance. It certainly means something more specific than on the earth. The Goel is to stand on dust (or on the dustarticle poetically omitted), the place where lies the dust of the body gathered to the dust of the earth. This is the only exegesis of that is either etymologically admissible, or suited to the context. The Vindication is thus brought into local connection with the grave. And this can mean only one thing. It shows at least that Job could not conceive of this future restitution as taking place away and apart from his dust. His body, his physical self, was in some wayhe has no conception howto be interested in it.
(3). The expression is no objection to this view, even with the privative sense which our Commy. (and correctly I think) attaches to . It does not mean,it is doubtful, as Zckler remarks, whether for a Hebrew it could mean,an abstract unqualified spirituality. At all events the connection shows that here, as often elsewhere in Job (comp. Job 7:15; Job 14:22; Job 34:21, etc.), is used specifically of the body as the seat of suffering and corruption, the of Paul. Twice indeed in this immediate connection it is used in this sense, to wit, in Job 19:19, and Job 19:22 (figuratively, however). Observe particularly that in Job 19:19, as in Job 19:26 the flesh is associated with the skin in describing his emaciated condition. When therefore he describes his physical condition at the time of his ultimate restitution first by the clause after my skin, which shall have been destroyedeven this! and then by the clause, and without my flesh, what he means evidently is, when skin and flesh are both no more, when the destruction, the decay, begun by disease, and to be continued in the grave, has finished its course; then would he behold God.After my skinand without my flesh are thus parallelistic equivalents, of which still another equivalent is found in dust, the last result of bodily decay.These elements of the passage thus fix the place and the time of the coming restitution; the placethe grave, the timethe remote future, when his body should be dust.
It seems clear therefore that the passage cannot be regarded on the one hand as a distinct formal enunciation of a literal resurrection, for the last view which he gives us of his body is as that which is no more, as dust. Just as little on the other hand is it a mere vindication of his memory, a declaration of the integrity of his cause, an abstract spiritual beholding of God, for he is conscious of physical sufferinghe anticipates a complete restitutionone therefore which will bring some reparation of the wrong which he has suffered in the body, the grave where his dust lies is to be the scene of his vindication, and he, the now speaking, the personal I contrasted with a stranger, as complete realistic a personality, therefore, as any then living,he is to be there, seeing with his own eyes, and exulting in the sight. This necessarily implies a rehabilitation of the man, as well as of his cause, a rehabilitation after death, as the terms and internal scope of the passage prove, as well as the external plan and scope of the book; and if not a resurrection, it at least carries us a long way forward in the direction of that truth. It is, as Delitzsch says above, an outline of that doctrine which needs but a few touches to complete the representation. Indeed it may be said that if the passage had contained one additional thought, more definitely linking the dust of Jobs body with that future , that vaguely foreshadowed organism with the eyes of which he was to see God, the enunciation of a resurrection would be almost complete. But that thought is wanting. It is not in the Book of Job. That which is given, however, points to the resurrection; and the pan of the Old Testament saint, this old song of the night, breathing forth faiths yearning towards the glorious appearing of Him who is The Last as He is The First, of which, though the singer understands it not, he is yet triumphantly assured, may be chanted by the Christian believer with no less confidence, and with a truer and more precious realization of what it means.
(4) The interpretation which refers the vindication of Job to this life is sufficiently refuted above. The argument, urged by Zckler as by others, that such an anticipation of a vindication before death is inconsistent with Jobs frequent declarations that he had no hope, and that he was near his grave, is perhaps fairly enough answered by Noyes: As if a person, who is represented as agitated by the most violent and opposite emotions, could be expected to be consistent in his sentiments and language. What can be more natural than that Job, in a state of extreme depression, arising from the thought of his wrongs, the severity of his afflictions, and the natural tendency of his disease, should express himself in the language of despair, and yet that he should be animated soon after by conscious innocence and the thought of Gods justice, goodness and power, to break forth into the language of hope and confidence? Jobs utterances are in fact marked by striking inconsistencies, as he is swayed by this feeling or by that. The following considerations are, however, decisive against this view.
a. It furnishes a far less adequate explanation of the remarkable elevation and ardor of feeling which Job here exhibits than the other view, which refers it to the hereafter.
b. However well it may harmonize with some of the expressions used, there are others with which it is altogether irreconcilable. This is especially true of and the preposition in . It may also be said that which is best explained as a preposition before implies a state wherein the skin has ceased to be, in like manner as before . Both these prepositions carry us forward to an indefinitely remote period after death, and are thus inconsistent with the idea of a physical restoration before death. It is especially inconceivable that the poet should have used to describe the place where the God should appear, if the appearance was to be before death, when it is remembered how invariably elsewhere, when mentioned in connection with Job, it is associated with the grave. Comp. Job 7:21; Job 8:19; Job 10:9; Job 17:16; Job 20:11; Job 21:26; Job 34:15.3
c. It would be, as Zckler well argues, a serious artistic fault, were Job at this point to be introduced predicting the actual historical solution of the drama in language so definite, and this while the evolution of the drama is still going on, and the logical entanglement is at its height. According to the eschatological theory, the passage before us is a momentary gleam of brightness from the Life Beyond, which lights up with preternatural beauty the lurid centre of the dark drama before us, which, however it may modify the development which follows, leaves it essentially unchanged, moving on towards its historic consummation, according to the plan which our poet has so grandly conceived and so steadfastly pursued thus far. The light which here breaks through the clouds is from a source much further than the setting of Jobs earthly day. It is a light even which sends forward its reflection to the final earthly consummation, and which rests on the latter as an ineffable halo, giving to the radiant eve of the patriarchs life a sacred beauty such as without this passage could not have belonged to it. If, on the other hand, it were an anticipation of Jobs earthly restoration, it would be a sudden, violent, inexplicable thrusting of the solution into the heart of the conflict, leaving the conflict nevertheless to struggle on as before, and the solution itself to be swallowed up and forgotten, until it reappears at the close, having lost, however, through this premature suggestion of it, the majesty which attends its unexpected coming. It is true that the poet, with that rare irony which he knows so well how to use, introduces the friends as from time to time unconsciously prophesying Jobs restoration. But those incidental and indirect anticipations have a very different signification from what this solemn, lofty, direct, and confident utterance from the hero himself would have, if it were referred to the issue of the poem.
(5) Per contrathe view advocated in the Commentary and in these Remarks has in its favor the following considerations:
a. It furnishes by far the most satisfactory explanation of the more difficult expressions of the text. See above.
b. It is most in harmony with the representations of the future found elsewhere in the book, especially Job 14:13-15, of which this passage is at once the glorious counterpart and complement;that being a prophetic yearning for the recovery of his departed personality from the gloom of Sheol, a recovery which is to be a change into a new life, even as this is a prophetic pan of a Divine interposition which is not only to vindicate his cause, but also to realize his restored personality as a witness of the scene.
c. It is most in harmony with the doctrinal development of the Old Testament. It carries us beyond the abstract idea of a disembodied immortality to an intermediate realistic conception of the resuscitation of the whole personality, a conception which is an indispensable stepping-stone to the distinct recognition of the truth of the resurrection. The development of the doctrine would be incomplete, if not unintelligible, without the Book of Job, thus understood.E.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
In the treatment of this chapter for practical edification, the passage in Job 19:25-27 will of course be the centre and the goal of our meditations. It must not, however, be separated from its surroundings in such a way that on the one side the preparation and immediate occasion for the upsoaring of his soul in yearning and hope to God, to be found in the sorrowful plaint of Job 19:6-20, and on the other side the stern and earnest warning to the friends, with which the whole discourse closes (Job 19:28-29), will fail of being set forth in the proper light and in their organic connection. It is fitting accordingly to show that it is one who feels himself to be forsaken by God and men, to be cast out by this world, and even by all that he held dearest in it, who here suddenly leaps up to that hope out of the most painful agitation and the profoundest depression of spirit, being supported in this flight by the train of thought developed in Job 19:21-24 :that when his contemporaries refuse to hear his appeals for compassion, and when the acknowledgment of his innocence, which he has reason to expect from posterity, presents itself as something which he can by no possibility live to see for himself, God, the Everlasting One, who is above all time, still remains to him as his only consolation, although, indeed, a consolation all the more sure and powerful. Not less is it to be shown how Job, feeling himself to be, as it were, sanctified and lifted high above this lower earthly sphere by the thought of this God and the joy of future union with Him, which he waits for with such longing, immediately after the utterance of his hope turns all the more sharply against the friends, in order thatbeing filled as yet by the thought of Gods agency in judicial retribution, through which he hopes one day to be justifiedhe may warn them still more urgently than before against becoming, through their continued harshness and injustice towards himself, the objects of Gods retributive interposition, and of His eternal wrath. Essentially thus, only more briefly and comprehensively, does v. Gerlach give the course of thought in the entire discourse: The pronounced sharpness, visible in the speeches of the friends, intensifies also in Job the strong and gloomy descriptions which he gives of his sufferings. But the wonderful notable antithesis which he presentsGod Himself against God!God in His dealings with him showing His anger, and inflicting punishment, but at the same time irresistibly revealing Himself to the inmost consciousness of faith as all-gracious, bringing deliverance and blessednessthis gives to the sufferer the clear light of a knowledge in which all his former faint, yearnings shape themselves into fixed certainty. God appears to him as the holy and merciful manager of his cause, and even, after a painful end, as the Giver of a blessed eternal life. To the friends, however, he declares finally with sharp words, that although their legal security and rigor has already made them sure of victory, Gods interposition in judgment will so much the more completely put them to shame.
Particular Passages
Job 19:6 seq. Brentius: When conscience confronts the judgment, when it cries out to God in trouble, and its prayer is not answered, it accuses God of injustice. But the thoughts of a heart forsaken by the Lord are in this passage most beautifully described; for what else can it think, when all aid is withdrawn, than that God is unjust, if, after first taking sin away, He nevertheless pays the wages of sin, even death? and if again, after promising that He will be nigh to those who are in trouble, He seems not only not to be affected, but even to be delighted by our calamities? When the flames of hell thus rage around us, we must look to Christ alone, who was made in all things like to His brethren, and was tempted that He might be able to succor those who are tempted.Zeyss: There is no trial more grievous than when in affliction and suffering it seems as though God had become our enemy, has no compassion upon us, and will neither hear nor help.Idem (on Job 19:13 seq.): To be forsaken and despised by ones own kindred and household companions is hard. But herein the children of God must become like their Saviour, who in His suffering was forsaken by all men, even by His dearest disciples and nearest relations: thus will they learn to build on no man, but only on the living God, who is ever trueEgard: Friends do not (usually) adhere in trial and need; with prosperity they take their departure, forgetful of their love and troth. Men are liars; they are inconstant as the wind, which passes away. But because trial and need come from God, the withdrawal of friends is ascribed to God, for had He not caused the trial to come, the friends would have remained.
Job 19:23 seq. Wohlfarth: The wish of the pious sufferer that his history might be preserved for posterity, was fulfilled. In hundreds of languages the truth is now proclaimed to all the people of the earththat even the godly man is not free from suffering, but in the consciousness of his innocence, and in faith in God, Providence and Immortality, he finds consolation which will not permit him to sink, and his patient waiting for the glorious issue of Gods dark dispensations, is crowned without fail.
Job 19:25 seq. Oecolampadius: These are the words of Jobs faith, nay, of that of the Church Universal, which desires that they may be transmitted to all ages: And I know, etc. We, taking faith for our teacher, and remembering what great things Job has declared beforehand he is about to set forth here, understand it of the resurrection. We believe that we shall see Christ, our Judge, in this body which we now bear about, and in no other, with these eyes, and no others. For as Christ rose again in the same body in which He suffered and was buried, so we also shall rise again in the same body in which we now carry on our warfare.Brentius: A most clear confession of faith! From this passage it may be seen what is the method of true faith, viz., in death to believe in life, in hell to believe in heaven, in wrath and judgment to believe in God the Redeemer, as the Apostle, whoever he may have been, truly says in writing to the Hebrews: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, etc. (Heb 11:1). For in Job nothing is less apparent than life and the resurrection; rather is it hell that is perceived. Nevertheless, he says, I know that my Redeemer liveth, however He may now seem to sleep and to be angry; nevertheless I know and by faith I behold beneath this wrath great favor, beneath this condemner a redeemer. You will observe in this place how despair and hope succeed each other by turns in the godly.Starke (after Zeyss and Joach. Lange): As surely as that Christ, our Redeemer, is risen from death by His power, and is entered into His glory, so. surely will all who believe in Him rise again to eternal life by His divine power. The Messiah is in such wise the Living One, yea more, the Life itself (Joh 14:6; Joh 11:25), in that he proves Himself to be the Living One, by making us alive. This is the best comfort in the extremity of death, that as Christ rose again from the dead, therefore we shall arise with him (Rom 8:11; 1 Corinthians 15.).V. Gerlach: It is remarkable in this passage that Job, after indulging in those most gloomy descriptions of the realm of the dead, which run through his discourses from Job 3. on, should here soar up to such a joyous hope touching his destiny after death. Precisely this, however, constitutes the very kernel of the history that through his fellowship with God Jobs sufferings become the means, first, of overcoming in himself that legal stand-point, with which that gloomy, cheerless, outlook was most closely united, and thereby of gaining the victory over the friends with their legalistic tendencies.Moreover, we must not be led astray by the fact that in the end Jobs victory is set even for this life, and that he receives an earthly compensation for his losses. The meaning of this turn of events is that God gives to His servant, who has shown himself to be animated by such firm confidence in Himself, more than he could ask or think.
Job 19:28 seq. Seb. Schmidt: Jobs friends knew that there is a judgment, and they had proceeded from this principle in their discussions thus far. Job accordingly would speak of the subject here not in the abstract, but in connection with the matter under consideration: in order that ye may know that God will administer judgment in respect to all iniquities of the sword, which you among yourselves imagine to be of no consequence, and not to be feared, and that He will punish them most severely.Cramer: God indeed punishes much even in this life; but much is reserved for the last judgment. Hence he who escapes temporal punishment here, will not for that reason escape all divine punishment.
Footnotes:
[1]The above extract from Watts will supply for the English reader the place of the extract given by our author from P. Gerhards hymn: Ein Lmmlein geht und trgt die Schuld.
[2][Among other prominent English theological writers who interpret the passage of Christ and the final resurrection, may be mentioned Owen, Vol. XII., Stand. Lib. of Brit. Divines, p. 508 seq.; Bp. Andrew Sermons, Vol. II., p. 251 seq. in Lib. of Ang.Cath. Theol.; Bp. Sherlock, Works 1830, Vol. II., p. 167 seq.; John Newton, Works, Vol. IV., p. 435 seq.; Bp. Pearson on the Creed, Art. XI.; Dr. W. H. Mill, Lent Sermons, Cambridge, 1845; Dr. W. L. Alexander, Connec. and Harm. of O. and N. Tests., p. 153 seq.E.]
[3]Even in Job 41:25 [33] it suggests, as Umbreit correctly observes, earth as a transitory state of activity for leviathan.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
Considered with an eye to CHRIST and Job’s faith in him, this Chapter is one of the most interesting in the whole subject of Job’s contest with his friends. Job maketh answer to Bildad; begs that he and his companions would spare their unjust censures; still urgeth his present misery, as an apology for his groanings, and concludes with professing his strong confidence in a Redeemer, and everlasting life in him.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(1) Then Job answered and said, (2) How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
Job’s account of being broken in pieces with hard words, serves to lead the mind to the recollection of JESUS. Psa 109:1-3 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job 19:9-10
Compare the use of this passage by Scott in the affecting interview between Jeanie Deans and her sister, when the latter ( Heart of Midlothian, chap. xx.) upbraids herself for having forgotten ‘what I promised when I faulded down the leaf of my Bible. “See,” she said, producing the sacred volume, “the book opens aye at the place o’ itsell. O see, Jeanie, what a fearfu’ scripture!” Jeanie took her sister’s Bible, and found that the fatal mark was made at this impressive text in the book of Job: ‘He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath He removed like a tree.’ “Isna that ower true a doctrine?” said the prisoner “Isna my crown, my honour removed? and what am I but a poor wasted, wan-thriven tree, dug up by the roots, and flung out to waste in the highway, that man and beast may tread it under foot? I thought o’ the bonny bit thorn that our father rooted out o’ the yard last May, when it had a’ the flush o’ blossoms on it; and then it lay in the court till the beasts had trod them a’ to pieces wi’ their feet I little thought, when I was wae for the bit silly green bush and its flowers, that I was to gang the same gate mysell!”‘
Job 19:21
‘Men,’ wrote Luther in 1527, ‘who ought to have compassion on me are choosing the very moment of my prostration to come and give me a final thrust. God mend them and enlighten them!’
Job 19:24
How insignificant, at the moment, seem the influences of the sensible things which are tossed and fall and lie about us, so, or so, in the environment of early childhood. How indelibly, as we afterwards discover, they affect us: with what capricious attractions and associations they figure themselves on the white paper, the smooth wax, of our ingenuous souls, ‘as with lead in the rock for ever’!
Pater, Miscellaneous Studies, p. 176.
Job 19:25
Yes, the Redeemer liveth. He is no Jew, or image of a man, or surplice, or old creed, but the Unnamable Maker of us, voiceless, formless within our own soul, whose voice is every noble and genuine impulse of our souls. He is yet there, in us and around us, and we are there. No eremite or fanatic whatever had more than we have; how much less had most of them?
Carlyle.
‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ is a state of mind of which ordinary men cannot reason; but which in the practical power of it, has always governed the world, and must for ever.
Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (XCII).
In Faraday’s journal for 1841 he describes a Swiss graveyard at Oberhofen, where ‘one who had been too poor to put up an engraved brass plate, or even a painted board, had written with ink on paper the birth and death of the being whose remains were below, and mounted on the top of a stick at the head of the grave, the paper being protected by a little edge of roof. Such was the simple remembrance, but Nature had added her pathos, for under the shelter by the writing a caterpillar had fastened itself, and passed into its death-like state of chrysalis, and having ultimately assumed its final state, it had winged its way from the spot, and had left the corpse-like relics behind. How old and how beautiful is this figure of the resurrection!’
References. XIX. 25. J. L. Moody, The Fullness of the Gospel, p. 62. Spurgeon, Sermons, No. 2909. XIX. 25, 26. G. W. Bethune, American Pulpit, p. 320. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2747. XIX. 25-27. A. B. Davidson, The Waiting God, p. 79. J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 305. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 504.
Job 19:26-27
When Madame de Gasparin, author of The Near and Heavenly Horizons, lay dying, her faith was strengthened, after a transient crisis of doubt, by the words of this passage. She pronounced with a calm, strong, and confident voice the text: ‘Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold and not another’.
La Comtesse Agnor de Gasparin et sa Famille, p. 379.
References. XIX. 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 105. Ibid. vol. xxvii. No. 1598.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Job’s Reply to the Second Speech of Bildad
Job 19
The patriarch touched the reality of the case when he described the speeches which had been addressed to him as “words,” saying, “How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?” (Job 19:2 .) Words are different in their meaning according to the difference of the tone in which they are uttered. Every speaker should be heard in his own personality, and hardly any one who has not heard him should be entrusted with the pronunciation of his words. You may take the meaning out of a letter of love; you may turn the Bible itself into a mere gathering up of words: the heart is the reader, and the heart is the listener; he who listens only with his bodily ear cannot pay attention; the heart must be on the alert, the spirit must be alive. Has not the Church too long dealt in the useless medicine of words? Has not the Church indeed often been the victim of phrases that are now obsolete? Is it not time to adopt the language of the current day and to serve up the wine of the Gospel in goblets which people prefer? The wine will be the same, and the bread from the heart of Christ charged with the elements of immortal health. Why insist upon always adopting the same words and being bound by the same formularies? Why not rather consider the reality and vitality of the case, and subordinate everything to the supreme purpose of bringing men back from ways forbidden, and setting their wandering feet in roads that lie upwards toward the sky? But Job might have pitied the men if they had confessed that they were uttering only words. A speaker draws to himself our confidence when he assures us that he would do better if he could. The moment the speaker says, I am aware that I cannot go the whole distance covered by this necessity, but I will tell you all I know; I will offer you the advantage of my own experience; if you care to accept such brotherly sympathy and guidance, I shall be thankful; but I am well aware that when all my words have been uttered there lies beyond a pain I cannot touch, a necessity I cannot satisfy, to such a man we listen, we repay him with our gratitude, because we know he would have done more if he could, that he only ceased because he was conscious he had nothing more to deliver by way of helpful message. But Job’s friends were not so; they spoke out all their words as if they were all the words that could be spoken; hence Job reproves them thus: “Ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me” ( Job 19:3 ). If you blushed with shame, I could forgive you; if you halted or faltered in your poor message, I should pity you, and believe you up to a given point; but ye are proud, self-conscious, loaded with vanity, and ye stand before me as if ye were the men, and wisdom would die with you. The Church ought to be ashamed when it separates itself from the necessities of the world. The Church must not be allowed to luxuriate and philosophise and poetise and dream as if it were doing God’s holy service. The world is a dying world, and all messages delivered to it must be accommodated to its weakness, or must be measured out in their energy according to the pressure of the exigency. But the Church has separated itself from the world; made itself strange to the world; has adopted a language of its own; might indeed have a dictionary peculiarly belonging to itself; all this is mischievous, all this is anti-Christian: the Church should speak the language of the whole world, and should breathe a spirit which all men can understand. Sad beyond all sadness is it that the Church has made a profession of the great word Theology! Sad that men should be examined in Epictetus, when they ought to be examined in the condition of the next slum! Unpardonable that men should be qualified in the classics, and know nothing about the state of the men, women, and children dying around the very environs of the Church. If the one should be done the other should not be left undone. It was said of Daniel O’Connell, the great agitator and the great leader, “Other orators studied rhetoric, Daniel O’Connell studied man.” That is what the Church must do; then the Church will no longer make itself strange to the people, but it will sit down beside them, and talk about the debt that cannot be paid, the illness that is hard to bear, the prodigal son who is far away, and will converse upon all the heartbreak that makes up life’s daily tragedy: who then will be so welcome to the family circle as the minister of Christ, the gentle, gracious, genial, tender soul, the outgoing of whose breath is like the outgoing of a benediction? We do not want men to stand apart from us and talk at us; the world needs men who understand it, and will come down to it, or go up to it; who will confess all that is good, really or apparently, in it, and then begin the mighty and redeeming work which is associated with the name of Christ. In this way the Church will reclaim a great deal of property. When men say they are Agnostics, the Church will say, So am I. The Church is the very place for Agnostics for men who know nothing, but who are perfectly willing to know all that can be known. A man who calls himself an Agnostic and shuts all the windows, and bars all the doors, and lives in the darkness he creates, is not an Agnostic he is a fool. We know nothing, but we want to know so much; we are very ignorant, but we put out our hand like a prayer; we can answer few questions, and oftentimes the answer is as great a mystery as the original enigma: still, we grope, and inquire, and hope, for at any moment all heaven may come down to rest with us, and give us peace. We cannot, therefore, allow the Agnostics to form themselves into a body, peculiar and distinct from the Christian Church; we claim them all, in so far as they are reverent, self-renouncing, and docile. When men say they are Secularists, the Church should say, So am I. You cannot go off on that ground. In short, we give the enemy all his points, and then demolish him as an antagonist. The great heaven of truth lies beyond all the prickly fences which men have planted, and in which they take an unspeakable and unwholesome pride.
Now Job will talk another language. He has found that there is a great gulf between him and his friends; they are friends no longer in the deepest sense of the word. He is my friend who knows my soul, and can say to me with sweet frankness, You are wrong; stop that; turn round. Or, otherwise, You are right; stand to it; play the man; be courageous; do not be laughed down or talked down. The time will come when friendship will be redefined; then he will be the true friend who knows most of the soul, the thought, the purpose, and the right way of doing things, the royal road to life and joy.
What, then, is Job’s new position? He assumes it in the sixth verse: “Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.” Now he will be a better man. He has turned away from human comforters: he has ventured to pronounce the right word, that word being God, as if he said, Now I know who made this wound; God made it: now I understand who has taken away all my children and all my property; God has taken them: I should have said so theoretically, Job might have continued, But now I know it experimentally; when the first blow fell upon me, I said, “The Lord hath taken away,” but I did not know that truth then as I know it now, then I uttered it as part of a creed, but now I declare it as the sum-total of my faith. Thus Job was driven back upon the truth by the emptiness of human interpretation. So many men have been driven to God by incompetent teachers; the needy souls have listened to the word that was spoken, and they have said, No: that is not it, that is mere composition; that is mere make-up of words and phrases; the speaker seemed to be afraid of his subject, and did not tell all that was in him in the common open speech of the time: now I must go to God face to face, and make the whole of my experience known to him, and we must talk it out together in awful solitude.
See from Job’s description, beginning at the seventh verse and going onward, what God can do to man, or permit to be done. “He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass:” yet the road seems open enough. That is the difficulty. We say to some men, Why do you not go forward? And they reply, My way is fenced up so that I cannot pass; and we ridicule the idea; we say, There is no fence: what mania is this, what foolish delusion? the road is wide open, pass on! But every man sees his own road as no other man can see it. Every traveller on life’s perilous journey sees lights, images, fences, boundaries, which no other traveller can see in just the same way. Is not God doing this in reality? Our answer must be a decided affirmative. We know there are things we cannot do, and yet there seems to be absolutely no obstruction in the way of our doing them. What is this which makes a man unable to reach just one inch farther? Is there some one at the end of his arm taunting him, saying, Reach higher: you ought to be able to do so? Is there some sprite that laughs at our limitation? There, however, is the fact of the boundary. We come to a given point, and say, Why not go ten points higher? That the sea has been asking in every rolling billow which ventured on the shore, and the answer was: “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther.” Who is it that speaks that limiting word? What voice is it that says, I have set the boundaries, and no man may trespass them? This we could dismiss as a theory if we could get rid of it as a fact. Then again: “He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.” Can a man not keep on the diadem by laying his hands upon it? No. You cannot bind the diadem to your brow when God has meant to take it off, and leave you bereaved of every aureole and halo, and sign of glory. Then again: “He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone.” Is not that true of life? We are not able to do the things we wished to do, and we cannot tell why. We are not always conscious of this loss; of personal power: “Grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not;” decay comes on imperceptibly; we are destroyed on every side: we used to speak authoritatively, and now we have to make requests; the royal voice has gone down into a whisper that cannot be heard; the power that never tired is now unconscious of energy. What is this? Call it “law of nature.” You have not explained the mystery. What is “law”? What is “nature”? Why not rather face the fact that after a given point in life we go down? Why not say, It is with life as with the clock once twelve is struck, the rest is after noon? Truly it is a law. If it came and went and varied its operations, we should call it a whim, a play of haphazard, a variety of fortune; but it comes so subtly, proceeds so steadily, moves so silently and majestically, and has everything its own way. They who wish to be content with the word “law,” are content to live upon ice; they who say, “This is the law of the living God,” feed upon the bread of life. Then again: “I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I entreated him with my mouth:” I am thrown down into contempt; my words come back again upon me. Yet man thought he could be as God. There is a mounting time in life, an upgoing time, when we say, All the rest is ascension. But suddenly we find that the rest is going down, passing along the other part of the circle. We cannot go beyond a certain point. To-day those are masters who yesterday were servants; tomorrow they will be servants who today are masters. This is how God keeps society in some measure sweet. There is a self-adjusting power in society. Aristocracies come for a day when they come aright, and no man is an aristocrat today because his father was one yesterday. The Son of man shall come, and men will be valued for what they are, and can do, and they will go down and go up, and thus society will be kept in motion: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first not by the operation of any arbitrary law, but just to sweeten and fraternise the world.
Job turns back to his friends and says: “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me” ( Job 19:21 ). We must be just to the friends. How do we know what action God has permitted to take place upon the minds of the three comforters? May not God have said, Hitherto shall ye come, but no farther; I will touch you, as well as touch Job; I will bring you to intellectual poverty that ye may cry unto me as ye have never cried before; I will riddle your wisdom through and through, so that it shall be useless to you; I will make you as men who are trying to draw water with a sieve? God does a great deal of collateral work. The whole of his action may not exercise itself in the personality of Job; the whole outlying world may be touched by the mystery of Job’s education. We ought to learn something from great sufferers; and we ought to learn something about prayer from the pointlessness of our own. When we utter the prayer and receive no answer, we should fix ourselves upon the prayer and say, The fault is there. Instead whereof we have fixed ourselves upon the answer and said, Behold the inutility of prayer. “Ye have not, because ye ask not, or because ye ask amiss.”
Now we see how to agony we are indebted for many a bright word. Suddenly Job exclaims:
“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another” ( Job 19:25-27 ).
There is no need to push these words too far. We lose a great deal by attempting to find in a passage like this what in reality is not in it. Suppose that Job is referring to the Goel, the elder brother of the family, whose business it was to redeem, and protect, and lead onward to liberty suppose that this is an Oriental image, that is no reason for saying that it is nothing more. There have been unconscious prophecies; men have uttered words, not knowing what they were uttering; thus Caiaphas said to the council, “Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient: for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not,” not knowing himself what he said. We must allow for the unconscious region of life, the mysterious belt that is round about so-called facts and letters; we must allow for that purple horizon, so visible, so inaccessible. He would be an unwise teacher who said Job knew all that we understand by Christ, Resurrection, and Immortality; but he would be unwiser still who said that when his soul had been wrought up to this high pitch of enthusiasm in the ardour of his piety he knew nothing of the coming glory. Let Job speak literally, and even then he leaves a margin. Here we find a man at the utmost point of human progress; figure him to the eye; say the progress of the world, or the education of the world, is a long mysterious process; and here, behold, is a man who has come to the uttermost point: one step farther and he will fall over: there however he stands until vacuity is filled up, until vaticination becomes experience, until experience has become history, until history, again, by marvellous spiritual action, shapes itself into prophecy, and predicts a brighter time and a fairer land. There have been men who have stood on the headlines of history: they dare not take one more step, or they would be lost in the boundless sea. Thus the world has been educated and stimulated by seer, and dreamer, and prophet, and teacher, and apostle. There have never been men wanting who have been at the very forefront of things, living the weird, often woeful, sometimes rapturous, life of the prophet. What was a dream to Job is a reality to us. We can fill up all Job would have said had he lived in our day; now we can say I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. When these words are sung, do not think they are the words of Job that are being sung; they are Job’s words with Christ’s meaning. Yes, we feel that there must be a “Redeemer.” Things are so black and wrong, so corrupt, so crooked, so wholly unimaginable, with such a seam of injustice running through all, that there must be a Goel, a Firstborn, an elder Brother, a Redeemer. It is the glory of the Christian faith to proclaim the personality and reality of this Redeemer. I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the almightiness of God, the very omnipotence of the Trinity, to every one that believeth. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Nor can we consent to change his name: what word sweeter than “Redeemer”? what word mightier? A poem in itself; an apocalypse in its possibilities; divine love incarnated. Oh, come thou whose right it is! “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” That same Son of Mary, Son of man, Son of God. Accept him as thy Redeemer!
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).
VI
THE SECOND ROUND OF SPEECHES
Job 15-21.
In this chapter we take up the second round of speeches, commencing with the second speech of Eliphaz. This speech consists of two parts, a rejoinder to Job’s last speech and a continuation of the argument.
The main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16 ) are as follows:
1. A reflection on Job’s wisdom (Job 15:1-3 ). A wise man would not answer with vain knowledge, windy words, nor reason with unprofitable words.
2. An accusation of impiety (Job 15:4-6 ). Job is irreverent, binders devotion, uses a serpent tongue of craftiness whose words are self-condemnatory. (Cf. what Caiaphas said about Christ, Mat 26:65 .)
3. A cutting sarcasm (Job 15:7-8 ). Wast thou before Adam, or before the creation of the mountains, and a member of the Celestial Council considering the creation, that thou limitest wisdom to thyself?
4. An invidious comparison (Job 15:9-10 ). What knowest thou of which we are ignorant? With us are the gray-headed, much older than thy father.
5. A bigoted rebuke (Job 15:11-16 ). You count small the consolation of God we offered you in gentle words [the reader may determine for himself how much “comfort” they offered Job and note their conceit in calling this “God’s comfort,” and judge whether it was offered in “gentle” words]. Your passions run away with you. Here a quotation from Rosenmuller is in point: Quo te tuus animus rapit? “Whither does thy soul hurry thee?” Quid oculi qui tui vibrantes? “What means thy rolling eyes?” It turns against God; this is presumptuous: A man born of woman, depraved, against God in whose sight angels are imperfect and the heavens unclean. How much more an abominable, filthy man drinking iniquity like water.
The points in the continuation of the argument are as follows:
1. Hear me while I instruct thee (Job 15:17 ). I will tell you what I have seen.
2. It is the wisdom of the ancients handed down (Job 15:18-19 ). Wise men have received it from their fathers and have handed it down to us for our special good.
3. Concerning the doom of the wicked (Job 15:20-30 ). This is a wonderful description of the course of the wicked to their final destruction, but his statements, in many instances, are not true. For instance, in his first statement about the wicked (Job 15:20 ), he says, “The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,” which is in accord with his theory, but does not harmonize with the facts in the case. The wicked does not travail with pain “all his days.” They are not terrified “all the time” as Eliphaz here pictures them. In this passage Eliphaz intimates that Job may be guilty of pride (Job 15:25 ) and of fatness (Job 15:27 ).
4. The application (Job 15:31-35 ). If what he said about the wicked was true, his application here to Job is wrong. It will be seen that Eliphaz here intimates that Job was guilty of vanity and self-deception; that he was, perhaps, guilty of bribery and deceit, and therefore the calamity had come upon him.
The following is a summary of Job’s reply (Job 16-17) :
1. Your speech is commonplace. I have heard many such things. Ye are miserable comforters (Job 16:2 ).
2. You persist when I have urged you to desist. It is unprovoked. Your words are vain, just words of wind (Job 16:3 ).
3. If our places were changed, I could do as you do, but I would not. I would helo and comfort you (Job 16:4-5 ).
4. You ask me to cease my complaint, but whether I speak or forbear, the result is the same. I have not ensnared my feet, but God has lassoed me (Job 16:6 ).
5. He gives a fearful description of God’s assault (Job 16:7-14 ): (1) as a hunter with hounds he has harried me; (2) he has abandoned me to the malice of mine enemies; (3) as a wrestler he has taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces; (4) as an archer he has bound me to the stake and terrified and pierced me with his arrows; (5) as a mighty conqueror he opened breach after breach in my defenses with batteringrams; and (6) as a giant he rushes on me through the breach in the assault.
6. As a result, I am clothed in sackcloth and my dignity lies prone in the dust; my face is foul with weeping, my eyelids shadowed by approaching death, although no injustice on my part provoked it and my prayer was pure (Job 16:15-17 ).
7. I appeal to the earth to cover my blood and to the heavenly witness to vouch for me. Friends may scorn my tears, but they are unto God. (See passages in Revelation and Psalms.) Note here the messianic prayer, “that one might plead for a man with God, as a son of man pleadeth for his neighbor.” But my days are numbered and mockers are about me (Job 16:18-17:2 ).
8. The plea for a divine surety (messianic) but God has made me a byword, who had been a tabret. Future ages will be astonished at my case and my deplorable condition (Job 17:3-16 ).
There are several things in this speech worthy of note, viz: 1. The messianic desire which finds expression later as David and Isaiah adopt the words of Job to fit their Messiah. 2. Job is right in recognizing a malicious adversary, but wrong in thinking God his adversary; God only permitted these things to come to Job, but Satan brought them.
There are two parts of Bildad’s second speech (Job 18 ), viz: a rejoinder (Job 18:1-4 ) and an argument (Job 18:5-21 ). The main points of his rejoinder are:
1. Job hunts for words rather than speaks considerately.
2. Why are the friends accounted as beasts and unclean in your sight?
3. Job was just tearing himself with anger and altogether without reason.
4. A sarcasm: The earth will not be forsaken for thee nor will the rock be moved out of its place for thee (Job 18:1-4 ).
The argument (Job 18:5-21 ) is fine and much of it is true, but it is wrong in its application. The following are the points as applied to the wicked:
1. His light shall be put out.
2. The steps of his strength shall be straightened.
3. His own counsel shall be cast down.
4. There shall be snares everywhere for his feet.
5. Terrors of conscience shall smite him on every side.
6. He shall be destroyed root and branch and in memory.
There are also two parts to Job’s great reply: His expostulation with his friends (Job 19:1-6 ) and his complaint against God (Job 19:7-29 ). The points of his expostulation are:
1. Ye reproach me often without shame and deal hardly with me.
2. If I have sinned, it is not against you but my error remains with myself.
3. The snares you refer to are not because of my fault but they are from God, for he has subverted me and compassed me with his net.
The items of his complaint against God are as follows:
1. He will not hear me, though I am innocent; surely there is no justice.
2. He has walled me up and set darkness in my path.
3. He has stripped me of my glory and he has broken me down on every side.
4. He has plucked up my hope like a tree and his fiery wrath is against me.
5. He has counted me an adversary and I am besieged by armies round about.
6. He has put away from me my brethren, friends, kindred, family, servants, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
7. I appeal to you, O ye my friends, for pity instead of persecution.
8. Oh that my words were written in a book or were engraved with a pen of iron in the rock forever, but I know that my redeemer liveth and will at last stand upon the earth, and I shall behold him in my risen body, then to be vindicated by him.
9. Now I warn you to beware of injustice to me lest the sword come upon you, for there is a judgment ahead. Here it may be noted that Job 19:23-24 refer to the ancient method of writing and that Job expresses in Job 19:25-27 a great hope for the future. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer:
1. Does Job intend to convey the idea that he will see God apart from his body) i.e., when death separates soul and body?
2. Or does he mean that at the resurrection he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body?
3. If you hold the latter meaning, which version, after all, is the least misleading, the King James, the Revised, the American Standard Version, or Leeser’s Jewish translation? The answer is, Job here means that he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body, as the King James Version conveys.
Zophar’s second speech is harsher than his first, and consists of a rejoinder (Job 20:1-3 ) and an argument (Job 20:4-29 ).
The points of his rejoinder are:
1. Haste is justified because of his thoughts;
2. The reproach of Job 19:28-29 , “If ye say, How may we pursue him and that the cause of the suffering is in me, then beware of the sword. My goel [redeemer] will defend me,” he answers thus: “Thus do my thoughts answer me and by reason of this there is haste in me; I hear the reproof that puts me to shame and the spirit of my understanding gives answer.
The points of his argument are:
1. Since creation the prosperity of the wicked has been short, his calamity sure and utter, extending to his children.
2. The very sweetness of his sin becomes poison to him.
3. He shall not look on streams flowing with milk, butter, and honey.
4. He shall restore and shall not swallow it down, even according to all that he has taken.
5. In the height of his enjoyment the sword smites him and the arrow pierces him,
6. Darkness wraps him, terrors fright him, and heaven’s supernatural fires burn him.
7. Heaven reveals his iniquity and earth rises up against him. This is the heritage appointed unto him by God. Certain other scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, viz: Exo 3:8 ; Exo 13:5 ; Exo 33:3 ; 2Ki 18:32 ; Deu 31:20 ; Isa 7:22 ; Joe 3:18 , and several classic authors refer to them, also, as Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. It will be noted that Zophar intimates that Job might be guilty of hypocrisy (Job 19:12 ), of oppressing the poor (Job 19:19 ) and of greediness (Job 19:20 ).
Job’s reply (Job 21 ) is more collected than the former, and the points are as follows:
1. Hear me and then mock. This is only fair and may afterward prove a consolation to you.
2. Do I address myself to man for help? My address is to God and, because I am unheard, therefore I am impatient?
3. Mark me and be astonished. What I say even terrifies me.
4. The prosperity of the wicked who defy God is a well known fact.
5. How seldom is their light put out. They are not destroyed as you say.
6. Ye say God visits it on his children. What is that to him?
7. Here are two cases, one prosperous to the end and the other never so. The grave is sweet to both.
8. God’s reserved judgment is for the wicked. Do you not know this?
9. In conclusion I must say that your answers are falsehoods.
In this second round of speeches we have observed that Job has quieted down to a great extent and seems to have risen to higher heights of faith, while the three friends have become bolder and more desperate. They have gone beyond insinuations to intimations, thus suggesting certain sins of which Job might be guilty. While Job has greatly improved in his spirit and has ascended a long way from the depths to which he had gone in the moral tragedy, the climax of the debate has not yet been reached. Tanner says, “While the conflict of debate is sharper, Job’s temper is more calm; and he is perceptibly nearer a right attitude toward God. He is approaching a victory over his opponents, and completing the more important one over himself.”
QUESTIONS
1. Of what does the second speech of Eliphaz consist?
2. What the main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16 )?
3. What the points in the continuation of the argument?
4. What summary of Job’s reply Job 16:16-17 )?
5. What things in this speech are worthy of note?
6. What the two parts of Bildad’s second speech Job 18:18 )?
7. What the main points of his rejoinder?
8. What can you say of his argument and what the points of it?
9. What the two parts to Job’s great reply?
10. What the points of his expostulation?
11. What the items of his complaint against God?
12. Explain Job 19:23-24 ,
13. What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27 ?
14. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer: What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27 ?
15. How does Zophar’s second speech compare with the first and what the parts of this speech?
16. What the points of his rejoinder?
17. What the points of his argument?
18. What scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, and what classic authors refer to this?
19. What can you say of Job’s reply (Job 21 ) and what his points?
20. What have we found in the second round of speeches?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Job 19:1 Then Job answered and said,
Ver. 1. Then Job answered and said ] He replied as followeth to Bildad’s bitter and taunting invective. His miseries he here setteth forth graphically and tragically, granting to Bildad that he was dealt with no otherwise than if he were that wicked man described in the foregoing chapter, and yet denying himself to be any such one, by his lively hope of a joyful resurrection, such as would make a plentiful amends for all, Job 19:26-28 . For though Mercer make question of it yet I am out of doubt, saith Beza, that this is the true meaning of this place. And surely the whole Scripture doth not yield us a more notable or a more clear and manifest testimony, to confirm unto us the resurrection of our bodies, than this. This confession of his faith, saith Lavater, is the chief thing in this chapter, and therefore challengeth our best attention.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job Chapter 19
“Then Job answered and said (Job 19 ), How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.” And now he takes this ground – Be it that I have sinned without knowing; be it that I have done something displeasing to God! – “mine error,” he says, “remaineth with myself. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach; know now that God hath overthrown me” – that was his faith. He takes it all as from God, without knowing what had taken place in heaven. He was to be made to pass through the deepest trouble; but the man that was to be proverbial for patience broke out in a total impatience. There came about the total failure of even a pious man; not merely of a man; not merely of Adam – for Adam fell; he was not born after Job, but Job was born after Adam; and yet after all, that a man so noted for his patience should fail when he was tried! Ah! in Christ there is the contrast. That is where people are so wrong to make this one the type of Christ. No, it is a specimen failing, and a man born of God failing. We want Christ, and cannot do without Christ. That is the true moral of the Book of Job.
“Know now that God hath overthrown me” – it is perfectly true it must have been God allowing all this.” Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard; I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.” All this he felt very deeply. What right has any believer to a crown now? What right has any believer to glory now? Has he not an evil nature to be judged constantly, every day? Does this deserve a crown? Or a man that has that nature to contend with; does that deserve a crown? The day when we shall be crowned is when we have nothing but what is of Christ, every bit of the old man completely passed away. There is where Job had much to learn. “He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope hath he removed like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath against me -” – there he was wrong – “and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies. His troops come together and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle. He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.” You know what that is to the heart if you have ever tasted it. “My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends” – he now gets closer – “have forgotten me. They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight. “I called my servant” – his man, as we call it, or in modern language, his ‘valet’ – “and he gave me no answer” (vers. 1-20).
How pitiable! He had come down very low to call upon his dear friends to have pity, and they had nothing but bad suspicion which wounded him to the quick. “Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?” Have not I suffered enough to satisfy you? “Oh that my words were,” etc., not exactly, printed in a book – but that they were impressed upon stone, or whatever might be the way in which writing was accomplished in those days. He refers to a very permanent form – “That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth; and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.” This is a most wonderful expression of faith, and the more so when we compare it with what we had last Wednesday evening in the 14th chapter – the resurrection of “man” – not the resurrection of “the righteous,” but the resurrection of man. Job, you remember, begins, “Man that is born of a woman” – not a word of any one born of God. Man without God, man without Christ, and what is the end of all that? A tree cut down to the very root may sprout, but not man; and so long will that sleep be that man will not awake – and the resurrection of man will not be – “till the heavens be no more.”
Is that the case with the resurrection of the righteous? No. That is what he says here. He says, “I know that my [Kinsman or] Redeemer” – the One that will avenge the wrongs of God’s people on their enemies; the One that will care for them in the face of every difficulty and every enemy – “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter” – He “the last” is probably the meaning of it, not “at the latter day.” He is the One that when all has failed will appear. The First will be the Last, as it were, to take up not “man,” but the saint, the believer. “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter [or, last] day” – as “last” is the word – “upon the earth.” This last word is a little stronger too. It is the “dust” – quite a different thing from the heavens being no more. There will be no dust to stand upon then. The heavens and the earth will all be dissolved, and it will be a question of fire destroying everything, as we are told in more scriptures than one, particularly by Peter. Everything will be dissolved – the very elements. There will be no dust at all. But here He will stand upon it; His power may reach it; and it may for aught I know refer to the dust of his people. He is going to raise them. But at any rate the word is rather vague; and we must not expect more than just a little gleam of light made known in those days. It is reserved for Christ to bring out the life of the resurrection.
“And though after my skin worms destroy this [body]” – i.e., after the skin is destroyed – meaning all the frame of the body. It is better to omit than supply the word “body.” “Yet in my flesh shall I see God.” That is, it will be a real resurrection – not indeed “flesh and blood” – but you recollect it was really Himself when Christ rose. He asked them to feel and know that there were flesh and bones, but not “flesh and blood,” which is the natural life of man now. When the resurrection comes there will be still the flesh in a glorious way, and there will be bone in a glorious way; and instead of it being blood as the source of life, it will be spirit; a divine character of existence will then be. While there is life, blood can be shed, and the man dies. The shedding of blood is the great figure of death by violence, and the blessed Lord knew all that, and passed through it all. But risen from the dead, the body possessed is a tangible body and can be felt; and although that need not always be, there is a power of change in this form; and I have no doubt the same thing will be true of every power. But there is the power. Now we are all limited; so limited that even a powerful man can be stopped by an oak board of only an inch, or two, thick. It stops him. And certainly a granite wall could stop anybody. But when that day is come we shall pass through everything just as our Lord did. Our Lord purposely came in when the doors were shut. You may tell me the stone was removed from the sepulchre; but it was not to let the Lord out; it was to let the disciples in to see that He was gone. What is all the thickness of the earth to Him? The glorified body has a power of its own. and can pass through anything.
This is not the case with man now. He is very limited and feeble; a little thing stops or even kills him. But not so when the body is raised in power and incorruption and glory; and here then the Lord comes to claim, and stand upon, the dust as it were. That is the figure, of course, of dealing with the lower state. The body is destroyed; not merely the skin, but everything belonging to man in the natural state. But what then? “Yet in my flesh shall I see God?” Job was to be raised and live again, and to live in a glorious way, and in the way of power and incorruption. “Whom I shall see for myself.” Ah, he was not in the least afraid of the Lord. He loved to think of Him, and looked for His intervention with certainty. “And mine eyes shall behold, and not another.” What a contrast with Balaam! Balaam could not see except prophetically, but not for himself. He had no part nor lot. But Job, with every part and lot, knew it perfectly. “Though my reins be consumed within me.” That will not hinder it at all.
So then you see this was a resurrection of the righteous; it is before the heavens are no more. And though the earth subsists, it will, when it is in a state of ruin, give place to a complete change – not only one affecting the condition of the bodies of the millennial saints, but also the earth itself. All creation meanwhile awaits its deliverance from the bondage of corruption from which it now suffers. And Christ will accomplish it, for this will be His work. No one need wonder, therefore, that when that day comes, there will be righteous government on the earth. No one need wonder that then Satan will be allowed no power. He will be shut up, and not be allowed to deceive another moment until the end of the thousand years, and then it will be to act as a kind of sieve, to separate those that are not born of God from those that are. He will be allowed to do that, and then will be cast into the lake of fire for ever. But the righteous will have been reigning for a thousand years before, while the earth still goes on. You see the great force of it there, and of the Lord coming upon that earth in a state as low as it can possibly be reduced to under the power of Satan, just before He comes and delivers it. Oh, may our hearts rest upon Him entirely, beloved brethren. Let us cleave to the Lord now! and let us remember that the Lord is served and magnified by simple faith day by day, having to do with Himself about each thing, and with implicit trust in Him, and judgment of ourselves! Amen.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
answered = replied. See note on Job 4:1.
my soul = me. Hebrew. nephesh.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 19
Then Job answered and said, How long will you vex my soul, and break me in pieces with your words? These ten times you have reproached me: and you’re not ashamed that you made yourself like a stranger to me. And be it indeed that I have erred, my error remaineth with myself. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach: Know now that God hath overthrown me, encompassed me in his net ( Job 19:1-6 ).
Now this is the thing that upsets them, that he is blaming God for the calamities. This is the thing that really ires his friends, but Job repeats it. “Look, I don’t care what you say, fellas. God has overthrown me.” Now God allowed Job to be overthrown. So Job doesn’t understand it fully himself.
Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there’s no judgment. He’s fenced up my way, I cannot pass, he has set darkness in my paths. He’s stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and my hope hath he removed like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath against me, he counts me unto him as one of his enemies. His troops have come together, and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tent. He has put my brothers far from me, mine acquaintance are estranged from me. My kinsfolk [my family] have failed, and my familiar [close] friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house, and my maids, count me as a stranger: I am an alien in their sight. I called to my servant, and he doesn’t even answer me; I beg with him with my mouth. My breath is strange to my wife, though I begged her for the children’s sake of my own body. Yea, the young children despise me; I arose, and they spake against me. All my inward friends abhor me: and they whom I have loved have turned against me. My bone cleaves to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped [I’m only living] by the skin of my teeth. Have pity on me, have pity on me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me. Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? ( Job 19:7-22 )
So Job is, oh man, you talk about misery and you talk about everything going against you. Everybody turning against you. “My servants, they won’t even listen to me. I call them and they won’t even answer. I beg them to come and help me and they’re my servants, but they won’t even listen. My wife, the one who bore my children, she’s turned against me. I beg her, and she doesn’t even listen. My friends, my close friends, they’ve all turned. Here I am, all alone. Nobody understands me.” Have you ever thought that? Nobody understands. Boy, Job was really in the pit.
Now, you can’t get any lower than this. There’s no way. I don’t care how bad you’ve had it; you can’t get any lower than Job was. I mean, he is at the bottom. But so many times it is when we get to the bottom that we look up. And Job can’t go any lower than the cry that he’s just made. I mean, this is it. This is bottoming out. And at this point of total despair, hopelessness, “God has turned against me, my family has turned against me, my friends have turned against me, my nephews have turned against me, the little kids hate me. Nobody loves me. I haven’t a friend in the world left,” yet Job said,
Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! ( Job 19:23 )
Well, Job, they are.
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! ( Job 19:24 )
“Oh, that I could carve these words in the rock.” What words?
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin the worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me ( Job 19:25-27 ).
Out of the midst of the darkest despair, this cry of glorious victory. “I know.” You see, I don’t know much at this point, I don’t understand anything at this point, but I do know this: the foundation upon which I stand. My Redeemer liveth.
Now remember that Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible. Job perhaps lived about the time of Abraham. At this point, they had not had the prophets to testify to the people of the coming Messiah, the Deliverer. Job’s revelation was very limited, but yet he knew that his Redeemer lived. He believed in the Messiah. And in the latter days, He’s going to stand upon the earth. And though the worms and all eat this body, yet I’m going to see Him. I’m going to see Him for myself. What a glorious hope. And this is the sustaining hope. Though I may not understand a lot of things, I know this: my Redeemer lives. Someday He’s going to come again and establish His kingdom upon earth and I’m going to see Him. Peter said, “Whom having not seen, yet you love and even though you do not see Him now, still we rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory” ( 1Pe 1:8 ). I’m glad for the knowledge and the assurance that my Redeemer lives.
Now, Job has the capacity of coming out with these bright things and then jumping right back down in the pit.
But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment ( Job 19:28-29 ). “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Job 19:1-2. Then, Job answered and said, How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
They struck at him with their hard words, as if they were breaking stones on the roadside. We ought to be very careful what we say to those who are suffering affliction and trial, for a word, though it seems to be a very little thing, will often cut far more deeply and wound far more terribly than a razor would. So Job says, How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
Job 19:3. These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
He means that they had reproached him several times over, and hints that they ought to have been ashamed to act so strangely, so coldly, so untenderly, towards him.
Job 19:4. And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself.
I have done you no harm. The error, if error there be, is within my own bosom, for you cannot find anything in my life to lay to my charge. Happy is the man who can say as much as that.
Job 19:5-6. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach: Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.
Job seems to say, I did not bring this trouble upon myself; it is God who has laid it upon me. Take heed lest, in reproaching me because of my trouble, you should reproach God also. I suppose that we cannot, all of us, see into the inner meaning of these words, but if we are in very sore trouble, and those who ought to comfort us are bringing cruel accusations against us, we shall read the language of Job with no small sympathy and satisfaction.
Job 19:7. Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
Poor Job! When our prayer is not heard, or we think it is not, then the clouds above us are dark indeed. You who are passing through a season of unanswered prayer, do not imagine that you are the first to traverse that dreary way! You can see the footprints of others on that desolate sandy shore. Job knew what that experience meant, so did David, and so did our blessed Lord. Read the 2nd verse of the 22nd Psalm, and hear Jesus say, O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
Job 19:8. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths.
God had done this, and done it to Job, whom he called a perfect and an upright man. Then, how can you and I expect to escape trial and difficulty when such a man as the patriarch of Uz found his road blocked up, and darkness all around him?
Job 19:9-10. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
That is, torn up by the roots, and carried down the stream, to be forgotten by the people who once knew it, and rejoiced in its welcome shade.
Job 19:11. He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies.
Does God ever act like that towards his own children? Yes; there are times when, without any anger in his heart, but with designs of love toward them, he treats his children, outwardly, as if he were an enemy to them. See the gardener going up to that beautiful tree. He takes out a sharp knife, feels its edge to be sure that it is keen, and then he begins pruning it here, gashing it there, and making it to bleed in another place, as if he were going to cut it all to pieces. Yet all that is not because he has any anger against the tree, but, on the contrary, because he greatly values it, and wishes it to bring forth more fruit than it has ever done. Do not think that Gods sharpest knife means death to his loved ones; it means more life, and richer, fuller life.
Job 19:12. His troops come together, and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle.
Troops of trouble, troops of Chaldeans and Sabeans, troops in which Job counted the stormy winds as terrible allies of the Most High, all these had come up against Job, and he seemed to be like a country that is beaten down and devoured by powerful invaders.
Job 19:13. He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
He looks on those so-called friends of his, and, remembering the bitter things they had said, he tells them that they are estranged from him.
Job 19:14-15. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.
What a long way a child of God may be permitted to go in trouble! Ah, brethren! we do not know how those, who are most dear to Gods heart, may suffer all the more for that very reason: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.
Job 19:16-17. I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I entreated him with my mouth. My breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the childrens sake of mine own body.
He mentioned to his wife those whom death had taken away, and asked her to speak kindly to him; but even she had hard words to throw in his teeth.
Job 19:18-20. Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me. All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me. My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
There is no skin upon the teeth, or scarcely any, and, therefore, Job means that there was next to nothing of him left, like the skin of his teeth.
Job 19:21. Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
How pitiful it is that he has thus to beg for sympathy! This strong man this most patient man this perfect and upright man before God has to ask for sympathy. Do you wonder that it was so? HE, who was far greater than Job, ran back thrice to his sleeping disciples as if he needed some help from them, yet he found it not, for he had to say to them, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Let this be a lesson to us to try and possess bowels of compassion towards those who are in sorrow and distress.
Job 19:22. Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
If God smites me, why do you, who are round about me, do the same? Is it not enough that God seems to be turned against me? Why should you also be my enemies?
Job 19:23-24. Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
Inscriptions have been found, graven in the rocks, that may have been done in the time of Job, and it was common, in ancient days, to write on tablets of lead or brass; so Job desired that what he was saying might be recorded for future reference, for he was persuaded that he was being hardly dealt with, and unjustly judged.
Job 19:25. For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
For I know, What a splendid burst of confidence this is, right out of the depth of his sorrow, like some wondrous star that suddenly blazes upon the brow of the blackest night, or like the sudden rising of the morning sun!
Job 19:26-28. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?
Job seems to say, speaking about himself, though in the third person, He is a devout man, can you not see that? He has faith in God, my friends, can you not perceive that? Wherefore, then, do you persecute him so?
Job 19:29. Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment.
Now Job carries the war into the enemys camp; and he says, You charge me with all sorts of sin, und yet you cannot deny that the root of the matter is in me. Would it not be much wiser for you to be yourselves afraid lest God should cut you off for falsely accusing me, and slandering me, in the time of my sorrow? There we may confidently leave Job for the man who can truly say what he has said about his Redeemer, will come out all right at the last.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Job 19:1-6
Introduction
Job 19
JOB’S SIXTH DISCOURSE:
KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH; AND THAT HE SHALL STAND AT THE LATTER DAY UPON THE EARTH
There are just two parts of this marvelous chapter:
(1) In Job 19:1-22, Job described his pitiful condition, accepting all of it as being, for some unknown and mysterious reason, the will of God, pleading for mercy from his friends who refused to extend it, and bewailing the abhorrence and persecution heaped upon him by the whole society in which he lived. His kinsmen, his friends, his family, his servants, and his acquaintances – all alike, despised and rejected him, brutally heedless of his cries for understanding and pity. There is no sadder section of the Word of God than this.
(2) And then (Job 19:23-29), rising to the very pinnacle of Divine Inspiration, above the wretchedness of his mortal pain and sorrow, he thundered the sublime words that have blessed humanity throughout the ages of multiple Dispensations of the Grace of God!
I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH; AND THAT
HE SHALL STAND AT THE LATTER
DAY UPON THE EARTH
These sacred words adorn and glorify that incredibly beautiful soprano solo from George Frederick Handel’s oratorio, The Messiah, honored by the standing ovation led by Queen Victoria at its initial presentation. Where is the man who can hear it without tears of emotion and joy?
In our discussion of this chapter, we shall concentrate our attention upon this immortal second section.
Job 19:1-6
JOB’S IMPATIENCE WITH HIS FRIENDS
“Then Job answered and said,
How long will ye vex my soul,
And break me in pieces with words?
These ten times have ye reproached me:
Ye are not ashamed that ye deal hardly with me.
And be it indeed that I have erred,
Mine error remaineth with myself,
If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me,
And plead against me my reproach;
Know now that God hath subverted me in my cause,
And compassed me with his net.”
“These ten times” (Job 19:3). “These words are not to be understood literally.” This is an idiomatic expression meaning `often’ or frequently.
“Mine error remaineth with myself” (Job 19:4). “This verse is not a confession of sin by Job.” It states merely that whatever error Job might have committed, it had not injured or hurt his friends in any manner whatever.
“God hath subverted me in my cause” (Job 19:6). The exact meaning here is ambiguous; but we reject Watson’s rendition of the passage, “God has wronged me.” The marginal substitute for `subverted’ is ‘overthrown’; but whatever the passage means, Job does not assert that God has wronged him. Clines gives the true meaning: “God Himself has made me seem like a wrongdoer by sending entirely undeserved suffering upon me.”
E.M. Zerr:
Job 19:1-2. The suffering that Job was undergoing was severe enough without being tormented with the misapplied words of these friends.
Job 19:3. Ten times is just a figure of speech referring to the many times Job had been reproached by the false speeches forced upon his ears.
Job 19:4. If Job had been as sinful as they charged against him, no one was injured by it and therefore they should keep still. That is the meaning of his words error remaineth with myself.
Job 19:5-6. If their charges were admitted they should even then be willing to keep still. What more could they ask Job to do in the way of amends since God had overthrown him with afflictions.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
To this terrible accusation Job replied first with a rebuke and a complaint. He demanded how long they would vex him, and declared that if he had erred, his sin was his own. If they would continue, let them know that all his suffering was God’s doing.
He then passed into a most terrible description of his condition. He cried for help, but had no answer from on high. As he found no answer in judgment from God, so he received no answer in pity from men.
It is out of the depth of this darkness that another &ash of light breaks. Conscious that in his own day he was misjudged and misunderstood, Job expressed a longing that the story could be so written as to make its appeal to the future. In this cry there is evidence of the underlying conviction of the man, that right must ultimately triumph. This deep conviction then expressed itself in words the profoundest value of which in all likelihood Job himself did not at the moment realize. He was certain that his vindicator lived, that somewhere in the future he would come into the midst of earthly surroundings. This led him deeper yet, and he declared his assurance that even though the flesh be destroyed, without it he should see God, and that God would be on his side, for such is the meaning of, “Whom I shall see for myself.”
It is impossible for us to read this without seeing how these almost unutterable convictions and strivings were fulfilled. The Vindicator came in the process of time, and His words were written, and human consciousness pronounces for Him today.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
I Know That My Redeemer Liveth
Job 19:1-29
In Jobs melancholy condition his friends seemed only to add vexation and trial. The hirelings who sojourned in his household looked on him with disdain; his kith and kin were alienated; it seemed as if the Almighty had an antipathy against him. So great was his physical suffering that the only sound part of his body seemed to be the skin of his gums and his teeth, Job 19:20 (that is, all he could do was to speak). Then he suddenly breaks into the majestic utterance of Job 19:25-26.
Among the Bedouins the institution of the goel-or kinsman representative-still exists for the avenging of wrong done to a kinsman: and Job believed that his divine Goel would one day stand on the earth for his vindication. Yes, and more, he felt that somehow he, too, would arise from the very grave to hear that vindication spoken by those just and true lips. Above all, he would see God Himself standing with him-whom I shall see, on my side, Job 19:27, r.v.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Job 19:25-27
I. Consider what were Job’s supporting convictions. (1) Nothing could be more decisive in tone or positive in assertion than the words, “I know.” It is a bold challenge made by a suffering man to the ages. The ring of conviction resounds in every line, and fills the air with its thrilling music. (2) Three distinct assertions follow this quickening preface. First, he declares that God is the Vindicator of right-seeking and right-doing men. Of the fact he is sure; of the how, and when, and where he says nothing; but an invincible faith that before the “last” moment in his history comes God will be his Redeemer from all the ills of which he is now the victim animates and sustains his suffering spirit. (3) Job is sure that he himself, in his own conscious person, will be the rejoicing witness of that Divine vindication. “Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, not another.” (4) The chief, the conquering, the most meritorious, quality in Job’s mood of mind is his clear and steadfast recognition of the real but dimly revealed law that the suspension of the accepted and outward manifestations of the Divine care and regard is not the suspension of the Divine sympathy, nor the withdrawal of the Divine love and help.
II. Notice the fruitful origin of these strengthening convictions in the mind of Job, and to what uses he would have them put. (1) First in the genealogy of Job’s convictions comes his passion to set the great controlling and cleansing faith of his life in the spotless excellence and living sympathy of God directly over against all the seeming contradictions, chaotic perplexities, and bewildering entanglements of his experience. (2) From the spirit Job displays in his intercession for his friends, we may fairly credit him with the desire to guide them to the perception of the one true principle in the criticism of life. (3) The deepest reason and strongest motive of all with Job must have been the yearning that the truth he had lived, and felt, and suffered might secure an immortal career of enlightenment and benediction.
J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 305.
Reference: Job 19:23-27.-Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 331.
Job 19:25
I. Faith is most sorely tried when the hand of God touches ourselves. Yet even then the patriarch Job believed in the coming of Christ “I know,” he said. True faith is solid, sure as knowledge. The senses know what will pass away and be no more; faith sees and knows what will abide for ever.
II. He contrasts, not only life with death, but life as the product of death. The glory of Christ began with the grave. What is the end of all earthly glory, and greatness, and wisdom and power is but the beginning of the heavenly. As to Him, so to us, the grave is the vestibule to glory. “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
III. This change and transformation must begin here. Christ rose that thou mightest rise, but first from sin to grace, from vice to virtue, from things earthly to things spiritual, from love of self to the love of God. The road lies, not in feeling, but in acting, not in longing, but in obeying.
E. B. Pusey, Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, p. 406.
References: Job 19:25.-R. Glover, Homiletic Magazine, vol. x., p. 243; G. D. Boardman, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 345; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs, p. 126; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 112.
Job 19:25-26
I. The first point to notice is the use of the present tense by Job in speaking of his Redeemer: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” There is thus in the prophecy a distinct testimony to the pre-existence of Christ. In speaking of a Redeemer as already alive and yet as not to appear until ages had rolled away, Job displayed faith in the most mysterious truth of all, that the Being who was to stand in human form upon the earth existed in some other form, whether that of angel or of God.
II. The word here rendered “redeemer” frequently occurs in the writings of Moses, and is sometimes translated “kinsman.”
The restriction of the office of the goel to the nearest of kin was itself a kind of prophecy that our Redeemer would be our Brother. In the circumstances of each case which called for his interference we have a most accurate picture of the person and office of Christ.
III. In the last clause of the text Job refers to the resurrection of the body. His closely connecting the facts of his having a Redeemer and his own resurrection sufficiently shows that he viewed in the one the cause or Author of the other. He may be said to have gathered into the resurrection the whole work or achievement of redemption, as though in announcing the deliverance of his body from the grave he announced all that was to be effected by the Goel, the Kinsman, of the alienated race.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2747.
References: Job 19:25, Job 19:26.-Old Testament Outlines, p. 95. Job 19:25-27.-F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 1st series, p. 167; Expositor, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 430; J. G. Murphy, Book of Daniel, p. 25; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 504; A. W. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 188; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 387. Job 19:26.-Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 10.
Job 19:26-27
The happiness of heaven is the seeing God; and because our Lord and Saviour is God incarnate, therefore to see Christ was to faithful men a kind of heaven upon earth; and losing sight of Him, as they did at His Passion, was like being banished from heaven.
I. The sight of God was the very blessing which Adam forfeited in Paradise, and which poor fallen human nature, so far as it is not utterly corrupt, has ever been feeling after and longing for. Adam, oppressed and alienated in his mind by sin, hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden, and he was cast out from the nearer vision of God; but both he and his posterity retained still a blind consciousness of what they had lost, and a blind hope of recovering it. All the holy men before the time of our Lord’s first coming in the flesh looked on by faith to the happiness of seeing God. The Apostles and those who were about Him when He came enjoyed in their lifetime that privilege which Job had to wait for till he came to the other world.
II. The Apostles and disciples had one thing wanting to their joy: they saw and touched Christ outwardly, but were not as yet made members of Him. We are members of His body, but we do not yet see Him. These two things, which are now separated, are to be united in the other world; and being united, they will make us happy for ever.
III. Hitherto we have seen Jesus Christ, as it were, with other men’s eyes; but the hour is coming when we shall see Him for ourselves. He will appear to each one of us with a different countenance according as we have behaved to Him here. As we see Him then, in wrath or mercy, such He will be to us for ever and ever; and His countenance will be according to our works.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to “Tracts for the Times” vol. viii., p. 87 (see also J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day, pp. 14-24).
References: Job 19:26, Job 19:27.-J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 117. Job 19:28.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 505, and vol. xxvii., No. 1598. Job 19-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. vii., pp. 264, 321; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 230.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 19 Jobs Reply to Bildad
1. How long will ye vex my soul? (Job 19:1-6)
2. And I am not heard! (Job 19:7-12)
3. Forsaken of men he pleads to be pitied (Job 19:13-24)
4. Faith supreme (Job 19:25-27)
5. The warning to his friends (Job 19:28-29)
Job 19:1-6. Bildads scathing speech did not bring Job into the dust. He acknowledges the words vexed his soul and broke him in pieces, but he does not change his viewpoint. He repudiates the guilt with which they charged him and continues to blame God.
Job 19:7-12. Afresh he breaks forth in accusing God. He charges Him with not answering his prayers. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath broken me down on every side, and I am gone. He imagines that His wrath is kindled against him. But what a display of divine mercy and patience! God looked upon the worm in the dust and pities him, as He still pities His children.
Job 19:13-24. Then the description of his forsaken condition. Read it in these verses. His brethren, his kinsfolk, his wife, all have turned against him. His servants look upon him as an outcast. Young children even despise him. Then the wail for pity: Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O, ye my friends.
Job 19:25-27. But what a change! Suddenly light breaks in. He does not speak by himself, but the Spirit of God enlightens his soul and utters words which stand in striking contrast with all his previous wailings. The witness he bears is not without difficulties in point of translation. Darbys translation is as follows:
And as for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth
And at the Last, He shall stand upon the earth;
And if after my skin this shall be destroyed
Yet from out of my flesh I shall see God.
Whom I shall see for myself.
And mine eyes shall behold and not another.
Though mine eyes be consumed within me.
The Companion Bible paraphrases the text in an excellent way:
I know that my Redeemer ever liveth,
And in the latter day on earth shall stand;
And after worms this body have consumed,
Yet in my flesh I shall Eloah (God) see,
Whom I, een I, shall see upon my side,
Mine eyes shall see Him–stranger now no more:
For this my inmost soul with longing waits.
And the Redeemer of whom he speaks, enabled to utter these words of faith by the power of another, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen, living, coming Redeemer, the victor over death and the grave. Here is the testimony of the book of Job to the hope of the coming of the Lord, the resurrection of the body and the glorification of the saints.
Job 19:28-29. How astonished his friends must have been at this wonderful outburst from his lips, which but a few moments ago almost blasphemed God. He asks them why they persecute him, inasmuch as the root of true faith is in him. He warns them that there is judgment.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Job 19:1. Then Job answered and said Tired with the little regard paid by the three friends to his defence, and finding them still insisting on their general maxims, Job desires them calmly to consider his case; to reflect that his failings, whatever they were, had not been at all prejudicial to them; but if, on the strength of their general principle, they thought themselves warranted from his sufferings to infer his guilt, he desires them to take notice that this was Gods particular infliction, Job 19:2-7; that he insisted on his innocence, and desired nothing but to bring his cause to an issue, which was, as yet, denied him, Job 19:8-20; that Gods inflictions were indeed very grievous; and, to excite their compassion, he makes here a very moving description of them; but tells them that should be a reason why they should pity him, and not add to the load by their unkind suspicions and cruel treatment, Job 19:21-22; that he was so far from retracting his plea, that he was desirous it should remain for ever on record, Job 19:23-24. Heath. For he was assured a day was coming in which all his afflictions would be fully recompensed, and in which they would wish that they had treated him in a more friendly manner; though he questioned whether that would suffice to avert Gods judgments from them. Dodd.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 19:3. These ten times have ye reproached me. A form of speech which puts a certain number for one less certain. Job had no doubt noticed about ten principal arguments levelled against him.
Job 19:6. Know now that God hath overthrown me. Cease then from your asperities, and leave me in his hands. So is the sense of Job 19:21-22.
Job 19:12. His troops came against me; the Sabeans and Chaldeans, to take away my cattle, as in chap. 1. He sent them to strip me of my patriarchal glory and crown.
Job 19:17. I entreated for the childrens sake of mine own body. The LXX, children by concubines. Others say, the grandchildren of Job.
Job 19:23-24. Oh that my words were printed in a bookthat they were graven with a pen of iron, and lead in the rock. Pliny, lib. Job 13:11, mentions the ancient method of writing on the leaves of the palm tree. The Egyptians wrote much on the leaf of the papyrus. In India they write on the prepared leaves of the tallypot: all imperfect, when compared with European manuscripts. Dr. Dyer, a physician of Bristol, lent me Fasciculos, a Latin work on Swedish antiquities, Stockholm 1746, in which I found that a Swedish prince of the seventh century had caused the actions of his father to be cut in a prominent rock. But Jobs prayer seems to be, that his grand and full assurance of faith in a living Redeemer might be cut on his sepulchre.
Job 19:25. For I know that my Redeemer liveth. Ve-ani yadaati goli chai ve-acheron l phar yakum, which Schultens thus translates. Enimvero ego novi, vindicem meum vivum; eumque novissimum supra pulverem staturum. Ostervald has judiciously observed, that prophecies respecting the Messiah are expressed with great brevity, and therefore are more obscure than historic passages. The veil of futurity was uplifted sufficiently for the support of faith, and no further. As this hope was Jobs last and best refuge, let us give his words a particular consideration, as sent down to us by the above translator, and others. The connecting particle is variously read. Ve-ani yadaati, for I know; but Cocceius prefers, truly I know; Goli chai, that my Redeemer liveth. We find three other readings of this word.
(1) It is joined with Jehovah. Isa 40:14; Isa 43:1. Exo 3:6. Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
(2) In Hos 13:14, I will redeem them from death. Jacob, in blessing Joseph and his two sons, said, The Angel which redeemed me from all evil bless the lads. Gen 48:16. The idea of a deliverer or Saviour, as often repeated in the psalms, is understood chiefly here.
(3) In the following words it designates affinity, to which the right of redemption belonged: Boaz said to Ruth, there is a nearer Goel [kinsman] than I. Job 3:9-13; Job 4:4; Job 4:6; Job 4:14. The word Vindicator, in the above version of Schultens, is equally proper, for the nearest kinsman was the avenger of innocent blood; and Job, conscious of his innocence, felt a confidence in his breast, that God would avenge his wrongs, and grant him his righteousness in the land of the living. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Ambrose seem to coincide, that Job expected restoration to his former splendour in the present life, as well as a resurrection from the dead in the world to come.
The Hebrew, ve-acheron, the latter time or day, being used by the prophets for the Messiahs time or days, fully demonstrates the meaning of Job.See Deu 4:30; Deu 31:29. Joe 2:28-29. Jer 23:20; Jer 33:16. Eze 38:16. Dan 2:28; Dan 10:14.l phar yakum, upon or over the dust he shall stand. Job foresaw that his Redeemer should be clothed with flesh, being the seed of Abraham, and walk on earth in humble life, as in Psa 85:11. Isa 53:2. Others say, as Grotius, He shall stand in the camp, and avenge the wrongs of his saints. Others again, understanding dust in the sense of Psa 30:9, Shall the dust (the dead) praise thee, refer this immediately to the resurrection.
Job 19:26-27. And though after my skin be thus broken, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me. SCHULTENS.Worms, used as an expletive in the English, is destitute of ancient authority, and derogatory to the text. Two or three German reformers have inferred worms, from the Hebrew nikpoo, ulcers, which waste the body. On this most important prophecy, the grand pillar of Jobs support, and of christian hope, the critics, conformably to their notions and creeds, have indulged in much variation of opinion. But the general succession is one full and decided consent, that Job speaks here of the Redeemers incarnation, and also of the resurrection of the dead at the final advent. What else can comfort the afflicted and the dying, from whom all earthly hope is for ever fled?
The second opinion is that of Mercer, Drusius, and other Arians, that Job here makes a confession of faith, and firm belief and trust in God, Bildad having tacitly reproached him with a species of atheism in not knowing God: Job 18:21. They therefore allow him to say, I do indeed believe in God, and in his providence, though he hath thus afflicted me. By consequence, though Job was the fifth from Abraham in Ishmaels line, he knew little of the grand promise of Abrahams covenant, that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed; or if he knew of it, his rational christianity was so cold that he did not think proper to trust his cause into the avengers hands. These expositions totally lose sight of Jobs words concerning the latter day, a hope ever brightening on the church.
The concluding opinion of all the faithful has been, a general consent that Job had a perfect knowledge of the person of Christ, as his Gol, always rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth. The Christ, the Son of God, whose goings forth were of old from everlasting: the Messiah, who from the womb of the morning had the dew of his youth. He viewed the glorious person of Christ as the , God and man, the WORD made flesh, and standing upon the dust, as introductory to his death and resurrection, and his advent on the clouds of heaven.
These are the comments which the church of Rome, as in Biblia Magna, and other writings, and which the most learned men of the Lutheran communion have sent down to us. These are coincident with confessions of faith, which the learned and pious bishop Bull has collected out of the christian fathers of the first three centuries. First, of the pre-existence of Christ before the virgin Mary, and consequently before the world. Secondly, that he is one substance with the Father. Thirdly, that he is co- eternal with the Father. Fourthly, that the subordination of the Son to the Sire, refers merely to God the Father as the fountain of Deity. These four points are demonstrated beyond all the subtleties of modern apostasy. The faith of the ancient church was the foundation and the unshaken rock of the christian temple.
Job 19:29. Be ye afraid of the sword. Satan had done all he was allowed to do to the body of Job; and now he had set those religious and public characters most grievously to afflict his mind. But to kill Job with grief might have been to them a sin unto death by sickness, or by the sword.
REFLECTIONS.
From Jobs glorious confession of faith, and full assurance of hope, we see the certainty of the truth of religion, and the confidence which good men may attain in the present life. Holy men knew that the Redeemer lived, by his frequent appearances, by his inspirations and gifts of the covenant, and by the fulfilment of his promises; as he said to the Jews in Babylon, Then shall ye know that I am the Lord, when I have opened the grave of your captivity, and brought you into your own land, oh my people.
We cannot but remark the great delicacy of Job in reserving this refuge and confession of faith till the height of argument came to extremities. Here was the golden shield of victory; here also was the sword by which he threatened his misguided opposers. In like manner the christian in time of tribulation, shall not be ashamed to confess his hope, because the love of God, in trying times, shall be peculiarly shed abroad in his heart. It shall come with instantaneous emanations, with an unction, with seals and earnests of heaven, as stated by St. Paul, 2Co 1:20; and in the sixth collect after Trinity Sunday. Oh Lord, while we read of so much grace, let our souls taste of the hidden manna.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 19. Jobs Answer.Here the gradual progress of Jobs soul towards faith reaches its climax (Job 19:25 f.). It is to be remembered that Jobs problem is in reality twofold: it has a personal side, the problem of his individual relation to God, but also a more general aspect, the problem of the Divine providence. In this chapter we read the solution of the first half on the basis of a great venture of faith; the second half is really never fully solved.
Job 19:1-6. Job sorrowfully remonstrates with his friends. Even if he has sinned, his sin cannot hurt them (Job 19:4). But the truth is that it is God who is responsible for Jobs calamity (Job 19:6).
Job 19:7-20. Complaint of Gods dealings. In Job 19:17 it is better to follow RV text and supply mothers than mg., and translate instead of womb, body. Jobs children were all dead, unless he had others by concubines; Job 31:1, however, is against this. In Job 19:20 b the exact meaning of the skin of my teeth is not certain.
Job 19:21 f. Appeal to the friends. They, however, fail the suppliant. In Job 19:23 accordingly he turns to posterity and anticipates that history will justify him. Let his words be written in a book, or better still for durability, graven in the rock with an iron stylus and then filled in with lead.
Job 19:25-27. This, however, is impracticable. So Job turns to God. But I know that my Vindicator lives, and that as my successor he shall stand up (i.e. appear for me) upon the dust (i.e. my grave). When Job dies as a martyr, there will be One to vindicate him. So far the sense is clear. In Job 19:26, however, most unfortunately the text is badly corrupt. The literal translation of the first line is and, after my skin, they have destroyed, this. All translations are more or less guesses. The second line may bear quite opposite meanings. The word translated from may mean without or it may mean in, since from may mean away from or from the standpoint of (Peake). Probably we should translate without, referring the passage to an experience after death. Job expresses his confidence that not only will God appear as his vindicator, but that he will see Him. Not only will his character be cleared, but he will know it.
Job 19:27 a is put best taken as mg. It will be the old familiar Friend, not the present Enemy, whom Job will see. In Job 19:27 b Job says I faint either with longing for or anticipation of the Divine vision. (Cf. Dante in Paradise, Paradiso, xxxiii. 132).
Job 19:28-29. The last two verses bring us back from heaven to earth. They are difficult and probably corrupt (Peake). Job warns the friends to beware of punishment (Job 19:29). Read in Job 19:28, If ye say, How will we persecute him, and find the root of the matter in him (i.e. the real cause of his affliction). In Job 19:29 the general sense only is clear: the text requires emendation.
Job 19 is the watershed of the book. Here is solved the first great problemhow Job in his misery can maintain faith in God. He does it by drawing upon the future. After his death God will vindicate him and he himself will be permitted to see his Vindicator. Sheol cannot finally hold one who on earth has enjoyed communion with God. The stages by which Job reaches this conclusion are marked in Job 7:8-21, Job 14:13-15, Job 16:18-21, Job 19:25 f. After Job 19 we descend, as Christian descended from the house Beautiful into the Valley of Humiliation, once more into the region of doubt and perplexity. The second great problem still remains unsolved. Is there a possible justification of Gods providence in general?
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
JOB’S REPLY TO BILDAD
(vv.1-6).
Though Job did not lose his temper at the unjust accusations of Bildad, he shows here that the reproaches of his friends have struck deeply into his soul. “How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words?” (v.2). He is appealing to the fact that the best he can say of their words is that they are unfair. Ten times they had reproached him. Should they not be ashamed that they had actually wronged him? They had accused him of evil without knowing anything on his part that was evil. If he had erred, therefore, his error was only known to himself. They were only making thrusts in the dark.
They pleaded the fact that Job was disgraced as evidence of guilt on his part, so that they felt themselves secure in taking an exalted position over him (v.5). But he insists that God has wronged him and virtually bound him in a net (v.6). This is strong language against God, but he felt that his troubles were not deserved, and since he had the same misconception as his friends that God meted out suffering according to man’s measure of guilt, he concluded that in his case God had been unfair
JOB FEELS GOD IS AGAINST HIM
(vv.7-11)
God does not deal with man on a legal basis, as men generally think; thus Job speaks of crying out of wrong and being ignored by God. Where was the justice in this? (v.7). Job felt so constricted as to be a virtual prisoner unable to find any way out, with darkness hedging him in (v.8). His prosperity and dignity had been stripped from him, and he says God has broken him down on every side, leaving him not even an avenue of hope (vv.9-10).
Thus, he considers he is the subject of God’s bitter anger and that God counts him as His enemy (v.11). How totally wrong Job was in all this. But when one is bound up in “self” he will always think of God in this accusatory way. Yet in all the trouble Job was experiencing, God was acting toward him in genuine love and compassion. At the moment Job could not see this, as later he would.
PEOPLE ALSO AGAINST JOB
(vv.12-20)
Since people generally live by a legal principle, it is understandable that they had the same attitude toward Job as did his friends. But Job counted them as God’s troops come together, “building roads” against him. Of course Job’s surmise was wrong. God did not move these people against him, though no doubt Satan did so. Job’s brothers had removed themselves from him, and Job blamed God for this. His acquaintances, relatives and close friends had distanced themselves from him (vv.12-14). Even those living in his own house, including maid servants, acted toward him as though he had been a stranger, a foreigner not to be considered (v.15).
At least Job’s three friends did sit with him, and listened to him, but his servants would not even answer when he called. His breath was offensive to his wife, which was no doubt literally true. His wife was evidently no help to him in his sufferings (vv.16-17). Also he says, “I am repulsive to the children of my own body Even young children despise me.” Of course he was not speaking of his sons and daughters, who had before been taken in death, so it is likely his grandchildren of whom he speaks. We can understand what children’s feelings would be in seeing him sitting in an ash heap covered with sore boils, yet Job felt the fact of their recoiling from him in contrast to their former respect for him. But if he arose, he said, they would speak against him. At least, however they felt, even young children should not be so callous as to speak against a sufferer.
“All my close friends abhor me, and those whom I love have turned against me.” Certainly anyone who has experienced such rejection cannot but feel the pain of it, yet Job’s friends seem not to have even considered how deeply Job must be affected. His body must have been emaciated – his bones clinging to his flesh – and he feels he has barely escaped death, as by the skin of his teeth, – a metaphor indicating the finest margin.
JOB’S PLEA FOR PITY
(vv.21-24)
If no one else will have pity on Job, at least he feels that his friends who have come to comfort him should manifest some measure of pity rather than of accusation. He pleads with them therefore, for as he says, “the hand of God has struck me.” Should they add to his suffering, thinking it right to do so because God had made him suffer? He felt God was persecuting him, which was not true, but it was true that his friends were persecuting him, being not satisfied that his flesh had suffered enough.
At this point Job expresses his longing that his words were indelibly written (vv.23-24), for he was sure he was speaking truthfully. In fact, what he has said is inscribed in the Word of God for eternity, more lasting than if engraved in rock with an iron pen with lead inserted in the letters. Job however will not for eternity consider all those words as true, for after this he learned that God was indeed not a persecutor, but One who in everything sought the greatest good of his servant.
FAITH’S BEAUTIFUL TRIUMPH
(vv.25-27)
In the midst of Job’s deep depression it is wonderful to hear him speak so positively in these three verses, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Thus his faith is seen to surmount his feelings, which he had allowed to discourage him. Notice, he says “my Redeemer.” The Lord would therefore certainly redeem him from all the adversities he was experiencing. How could he then have spoken so critically of the Lord before? But such is the inconsistency of our fleshly nature. Also, “He shall stand at last on the earth.” Thus Job becomes a prophet, for this could have been revealed to him only by the Lord Himself. We know it is true because scripture subsequent to Job has revealed it, but it appears that God virtually put these words into Job’s lips for his own encouragement. Of course it was true when the Lord Jesus came by way of the virgin Mary, and again it will be true when He returns in glory (Zec 14:4).
But more than this, Job says, “And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God” (v.26). How amazing it is that Job could say this. Only by divine revelation could he know this, for he recognised that though he was destroyed by death, yet in his flesh he would see God. This certainly means resurrection. Also, the only way he (or anyone) will see God is in the person of the Lord Jesus (Joh 1:18).
He adds, “Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (v.27), that is, it would not be by proxy, but a personal, vital matter. No wonder he is moved to say, “How my heart yearns within me!” This should have been enough to lift him high above the trauma of his bitter experiences, and perhaps for the moment he was lifted up, but his history at this time was very generally a conflict between faith and feelings.
A CLOSING APPEAL
(vv.28-25)
In verses 28 and 29 Job returns to admonish his friends, whom he considered were seeking means or words to persecute him, because they thought the root of Job’s troubles was really in himself. But he tells them to be afraid in having such an attitude, afraid of a punishing sword. For God’s wrath would bring such punishment, that they might know there is a judgment. Such words from Job ought to have made his friends to consider seriously at least whether or not they might be persuaded by them.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
4. Job’s second reply to Bildad ch. 19
This speech is one of the more important ones in the book, because in it, Job reached a new low and a new high in his personal experience. He revealed here the extent of his rejection by his friends, relatives, and servants, but he also came to a new confidence in God. Bildad had spoken of the terrors of death, and now Job described the trials of life, his own life. He did so by using seven figures to describe himself: an animal trapped (Job 19:6), a criminal in court (Job 19:7), a traveler fenced in (Job 19:8), a king dethroned (Job 19:9), a structure destroyed (Job 19:10), a tree uprooted (Job 19:10), and a city besieged (Job 19:11-12). [Note: Wiersbe, pp. 39-40.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The hostility of Job’s accusers 19:1-6
Job began this reply to Bildad as Bildad had begun both of his speeches: "How long . . .?" (Job 19:2; cf. Job 8:2; Job 18:2). How long would his friends torment him? The ten times (Job 19:3) may have been ten actual occurrences, not all of which the writer recorded, or Job may have used ten as a round number meaning often. Job claimed that God had not been just in his case (Job 19:5-6; cf. Job 8:3). Rather than snaring himself in his own net, as Bildad insinuated (Job 18:8-10), Job claimed that God had trapped him in His net. God had driven him into a hunter’s net. [Note: Rowley, p. 134.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
XVI.
“MY REDEEMER LIVETH”
Job 19:1-29
Job SPEAKS
WITH simple strong art sustained by exuberant eloquence the author has now thrown his hero upon our sympathies, blending a strain of expectancy with tender emotion. In shame and pain, sick almost to death, baffled in his attempts to overcome the seeming indifference of Heaven, the sufferer lies broken and dejected. Bildads last address describing the fate of the godless man has been deliberately planned to strike at Job under cover of a general statement of the method of retribution. The pictures of one seized by the “firstborn of death,” of the lightless and desolate habitation, the withered branches and decaying remembrance of the wicked, are plainly designed to reflect Jobs present state and forecast his coming doom. At first the effect is almost overwhelming. The judgment of men is turned backward and like the forces of nature and providence has become relentless. The united pressure on a mind weakened by the bodys malady goes far to induce despair. Meanwhile the sufferer must endure the burden not only of his personal calamities and the alienation of all human friendships, but also of a false opinion with which he has to grapple as much for the sake of mankind as for his own. He represents the seekers after the true God and true religion in an age of darkness, aware of doubts other men do not admit, labouring after a hope of which the world feels no need. The immeasurable weight this lays on the soul is to many unknown. Some few there are, as Carlyle says, and Job appears one of them, who “have to realise a worship for themselves, or live unworshipping. In dim forecastings, wrestles within them the Divine Idea of the World, yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. The Godlike has vanished from the world; and they, by the strong cry of their souls agony, like true wonder workers, must again evoke its presence. The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas, the New appears not in its stead, the Time is still in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid the sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness, and tong watching till it be morning. The voice of the faithful can but exclaim: As yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night: birds of darkness are on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead. walk, the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn.'”
As in the twelfth hour of the night, the voices of men sounding hollow and strange to him, the author of the Book of Job found himself. Current ideas about God would have stifled his thought if he had not realised his danger and the worlds danger and thrown himself forward, breaking through, even with defiance and passion, to make a way for reason to the daylight of God. Limiting and darkening statements he took up as they were presented to him over and over again; he tracked them to their sources in ignorance, pedantry, hardness of temper. He insisted that the one thing for a man is resolute clearness of mind, openness to the teaching of God, to the correction of the Almighty, to that truth of the whole world which alone corresponds to faith. Believing that the ultimate satisfying object of faith will disclose itself at last to every pure seeker, each in his degree, he began his quest and courageously pursued it, never allowing hope to wander where reason dared not follow, checking himself on the very brink of alluring speculation by a deliberate reconnaissance of the facts of life and the limitations of knowledge. Nowhere more clearly than in this speech of Job does the courageous truthfulness of the author show itself. He seems to find his oracle, and then with a sigh return to the path of sober reality because as yet verification of the sublime idea is beyond his power. The vision appears and is fixed in a vivid picture-marking the highest flight of his inspiration-that those who follow may have it before them, to be examined, tried, perhaps approved in the long run. But for himself, or at any rate for his hero, one who has to find his faith through the natural world and its revelations of Divine faithfulness, the bounds within which absolute certainty existed for the human mind at that time are accepted unflinchingly. The hope remains; but assurance is sought on a lower level, where the Divine order visible in the universe sheds light on the moral life of man.
That inspiration should thus work within bounds, conscious of itself, yet restrained by human ignorance, may be questioned. The apprehension of transcendent truth not yet proved by argument, the authoritative statement of such truth for the guidance and confirmation of faith, lastly, complete independence of ordinary criticism-are not these the functions and qualities of inspiration? And yet, here, the inspired man, with insight fresh and marvellous, declines to allow his hero or any thinker repose in the very hope which is the chief fruit of his inspiration, leaving it as something thrown out, requiring to be tested and verified; and meanwhile he takes his stand as a prophet on those nearer, in a sense more common, yet withal sustaining principles that are within the range of the ordinary mind. Such we shall find to be the explanation of the speeches of the Almighty and their absolute silence regarding the future redemption. Such also may be said to be the reason of the epilogue, apparently so inconsistent with the scope of the poem. On firm ground the writer takes his stand-ground which no thinker of his time could declare to be hollow. The thorough saneness of his mind, shown in this final decision, gives all the more life to the flashes of prediction and the Divine intuitions which leap out of the dark sky hanging low over the suffering man.
The speech of Bildad in chapter 18, under cover of an account of invariable law, was really a dream of special providence. He believed that the Divine King, who, as Christ teaches, “maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,” really singles out the wicked for peculiar treatment corresponding to their iniquity. It is in one sense the sign of vigorous faith to attribute action of this kind to God, and Job himself in his repeated appeals to the unseen Vindicator shows the same conception of providence. Should not one intent on righteousness break through the barriers of ordinary law when doubt is cast on His equity and care? Pardonable to Job, whose case is altogether exceptional, the notion is one the author sees it necessary to hold in check. There is no Theophany of the kind Job desires. On the contrary his very craving for special intervention adds to his anxiety. Because it is not granted he affirms that God has perverted his right; and when at last the voice of the Almighty is heard, it is to recall the doubter from his personal desires to the contemplation of the vast universe as revealing a wide and wise fidelity. This undernote of the authors purpose, while it serves to guide us in the interpretation of Jobs complaints, is not allowed to rise into the dominant. Yet it rebukes those who think the great Divine laws have not been framed to meet their case, who rest their faith not on what God does always and is in Himself, but on what they believe He does sometimes and especially for them. The thoughts of the Lord are very deep. Our lives float upon them like skiffs upon an unfathomable ocean of power and fatherly care.
Of the treatment he receives from men Job complains, yet not because they are the means of his overthrow.
How long will ye vex my soul
And crush me utterly with sayings?
These ten times have ye reproached me;
Ye are not ashamed that ye condemn me.
And be it verily that I have erred,
Mine error remaineth to myself.
Will ye, indeed, exult against me
And reproach me with my disgrace?
Know now that God hath wronged me
And compassed me about with His net.
Why should his friends be so persistent in charging him with offence? He has not wronged them. If he has erred, he himself is the sufferer. It is not for them to take part against him. Their exultation is of a kind they have no right to indulge, for they have not brought him to the misery in which he lies. Bildad spoke of the snare in which the wicked is caught. His tone in that passage could not have been more complacent if he himself claimed the honour of bringing retribution on the godless. But it is God, says Job, who hath compassed me with His net.
“Behold, of wrong I cry, but I am not heard;
I cry for help, but there is no judgment.”
Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death draws nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one neglected, outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way fenced in so that he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by the hand of God.
Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless. He would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought him near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God? Might they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against providence in his mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy reacts on his language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than in previous speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood.
He hath stripped me of my glory
And taken my crown from my head.
He hath broken me down on every side,
Uprooted my hope like a tree.
He hath also kindled his wrath against me
And counted me among His adversaries.
His troops come on together
And cast up their way against me
And encamp around my tent.
So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of it? Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt though he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man, stricken with disease unable to help himself, the heavens frowning upon him-why should they harden their hearts?
And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are clouded. They must be on Gods side against Job. Yea, God Himself has moved them to this.
He hath put my brethren far from me,
And my confidants are wholly estranged from me.
My kinsfolk have failed
And my familiar friends have forgotten me.
They that dwell in my house and my maids count me for a stranger,
I am an alien in their sight.
I call my servant and he gives me no answer,
I must entreat him with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife,
And my ill savour to the sons of my body.
Even young children despise me;
If I would arise, they speak against me.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected by all who once loved him, forced to entreat his servants, become offensive to his wife and grandsons, jeered at even by children, of the place. The case appears to us unnatural and shows the almost fiendish hardness of the Oriental world: that is to say, if the account is not coloured for dramatic purposes. The intention is to represent the extremity of Jobs wretchedness, the lowest depth to which he is reduced. The fire of his spirit is almost quenched by shame and desolation. He shows the days of his misery in the strongest shadow in order to compel, if possible, the sympathy so persistently withheld.
“Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,
For the hand of God hath touched me.
Why do ye persecute me as God,
And are not satisfied with my flesh?”
Now we understand the purpose of the long description of his pain, both that which God has inflicted and that caused by the alienation and contempt of men. Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has entered, that he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory perishes from the earth, whose name is driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. Is it to be so with him? That were indeed a final disaster. To bring his friends to some sense of what all this means to him-this is what he struggles after. It is not even the pity of it that is the chief point, although through that he seeks to gain his end. But if God is not to interpose, if his last hour is coming without a sign of heavens relenting, he would at least have men stand beside him, take his words to heart, believe them possibly true, hand down for his memorial the claim he has made of integrity. Surely, surely he shall not be thought of by the next generation as Job the proud, defiant evildoer laid low by the judgments of an offended God-brought to shame as one who deserved to be counted amongst the offscourings of the earth. It is enough that God has persecuted him, that God is slaying him-let not men take it upon them to do so to the last. Before he dies let one at least say, Job, my friend, perhaps you are sincere, perhaps you are misjudged.
Urgent is the appeal. It is in vain. Not a hand is stretched out, not one grim face relaxes. The man has made his last attempt. He is now like a pressed animal between the hunter and the chasm. And why is the author so rigorous in his picture of the friends? It is made to all appearance quite inhuman, and cannot be so without design. By means of this inhumanity Job is flung once for all upon his need of God from whom he had almost turned away to man. The poet knows that not in man is the help of the soul, that not in the sympathy of man, not in the remembrance of man, not in the care or even love of man as a passing tenant of earth can the labouring heart put its confidence. From the human judgment Job turned to God at first. From the Divine silence he had well nigh turned back to human pity. He finds what other sufferers have found, that the silence is allowed to extend beneath him, between him and his fellows, in order that he may finally and effectually direct his hope and faith above himself, above the creaturely race, to Him from whom all came, in whose will and love alone the spirit of man has its life, its hope. Yes, God is bringing home to Himself the man whom He has approved for approval. The way is strange to the feet of Job, as it often is to the weary half-blinded pilgrim. But it is the one way to fulfil and transcend our longings. Neither corporate sympathy nor posthumous immortality can ever stand to a thinking soul instead of the true firm judgment of its life that waits within the knowledge of God. If He is not for us, the epitaphs and memoirs of time avail nothing. Mans place is in the eternal order or he does indeed cry out of wrong and is not heard.
From men to the written book, from men to the graven rock, more enduring, more public than the book-will this provide what is still unfound?
“Oh that now my words were written,
That they were inscribed in a book;
That with an iron stylus and with lead
They were graven in the rock forever.”
As one accustomed to the uses of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be and passes to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he, the Emeer of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was accused by men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this befell him unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would stand there in the way of the caravans of Tema for succeeding generations to read. It would stand there till the ages had run their course. Kings represent on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of royal dignity Job would use the same means of continuing his protest and his name.
Yet, so far as his life is concerned, what good, -the story spread northward to Damascus, but he, Job, lost in Sheol? His protest is against forms of death: his claim is for life. There is no life in the sculptured stone. Baffled again he halts midway. His foot on a crumbling point, there must be yet one spring for safety and refuge.
Who has not felt, looking at the records of the past, inscriptions on tablets, rocks and temples, the wistful throb of antiquity in those anxious legacies of a world of men too well aware of mans forgetfulness? “Whoever alters the work of my hand,” says the conqueror called Sargon, “destroys my constructions, pulls down the walls which I have raised”-may Asshur, Nineb, Raman and “the great gods who dwell there pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe.” Invocation of the gods in this manner was the only resource of him who in that far past feared oblivion and knew that there was need to fear. But to a higher God, in words of broken eloquence, Job is made to commit his cause, seeing beyond the perishable world the imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a Hebrew poet breathed into the wandering air of the desert that brave hope which afterwards, far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be fulfilled. Had he been exiled from Galilee? In Galilee was to be heard the voice that told of immortality and redemption.
We must go back in the book to find the beginning of the hope now seized. Already Job has been looking forth beyond the region of this little life. What has he seen?
First and always, Eloah. That name and what it represents do not fail him. He has had terrible experiences, and all of them must have been appointed by Eloah. But the name is venerable still, and despite all difficulties he clings to the idea that righteousness goes with power and wisdom. The power bewilders-the wisdom plans inconceivable things-but beyond there is righteousness.
Next. He has seen a gleam of light across the darkness of the grave, through the gloom of the underworld. A man going down thither, his body to moulder into dust, his spirit to wander a shadow in a prison of shadows, -may not remain there. God is almighty-He has the key of Sheol-a star has shown for a little, giving hope that out of the underworld life may be recovered. It is seen that Eloah, the Maker, must have a desire to the work of His hands. What does that not mean?
Again. It has been borne upon his mind that the record of a good life abides and is with the All-seeing. What is done cannot be undone. The wasting of the flesh cannot waste that Divine knowledge. The eternal history cannot be effaced. Spiritual life is lived before Eloah who guards the right of a man. Men scorn Job, but with tears he has prayed to Eloah to right his cause, and that prayer cannot be in vain.
A just prayer cannot be in vain because God is ever just. From this point thought mounts upward. Eloah forever faithful-Eloah able to open the gate of Sheol-not angry forever-Eloah keeping the tablet of every life, indifferent to no point of right, -these are the steps of progress in Jobs thought and hope. And these are the gain of his trial. In his prosperous time none of these things had been before him. He had known the joy of God but not the secret, the peace, not the righteousness. Yet he is not aware how much he has gained. He is coming half unconsciously to an inheritance prepared for him in wisdom and in love by Eloah in whom he trusts. A man needs for life more than he himself can either sow or ripen.
And now, hear Job. Whether the rock shall be graven or not he cannot tell. Does it matter? He sees far beyond that inscribed cliff in the desert. He sees what alone can satisfy the spirit that has learned to live.
“Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.”
Not dimly this great truth flashes through the web of broken ejaculation, panting thought.
“But I know it: my Redeemer liveth;
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And after my skin they destroy, even this,
And without my flesh shall I see Eloah,
Whom I shall see FOR ME,
And mine eyes shall behold and not the stranger-
My reins are consumed in my bosom.”
The Goel or Redeemer pledged to him by eternal justice is yet to arise, a living Remembrancer and Vindicator from all wrong and dishonour. On the dust that covers death He will arise when the day comes. The diseases that prey on the perishing body shall have done their work. In the grave the flesh shall have passed into decay; but the spirit that has borne shall behold Him. Not for the passing stranger shall be the vindication, but for Job himself. All that has been so confounding shall be explained, for the Most High is the Goel; He has the care of His suffering servant in His own hand and will not fail to issue it in clear satisfying judgment.
For the inspired writer of these words, declaring the faith which had sprung up within him; for us also who desire to share his faith and to be assured of the future vindication, three barriers stand in the way, and these have successively to be passed.
First is the difficulty of believing that the Most High need trouble Himself to disentangle all the rights from the wrongs in human life. Is humanity of such importance in the universe? God is very high; human affairs may be of little consequence to His eternal majesty. Is not this earth on which we dwell one of the smaller of the planets that revolve about the sun? Is not our sun one amongst a myriad, many of them far transcending it in size and splendour? Can we demand or even feel hopeful that the Eternal Lord shall adjust the disordered equities of our little state and appear for the right which has been obscured in the small affairs of time? A century is long to us; but our ages are “moments in the being of the eternal silence.” Can it matter to the universe moving through perpetual cycles of evolution, new races and phases of creaturely life arising and running their course-can it matter that one race should pass away having simply contributed its struggle and desire to the far-off result? Conceivably, in the design of a wise and good Creator, this might be a destiny for a race of beings to subserve. How do we know it is not ours?
This difficulty has grown. It stands now in the way of all religion, even of the Christian faith. God is among the immensities and eternities; evolution breaks in wave after wave; we are but one. How can we assure our hearts that the inexterminable longing for equity shall have fulfilment?
Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the individual life. To enjoy the hope, feel the certainty to which Job reached forth, you or I must make the bold assumption that our personal controversies are of eternal importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in a very narrow circle. He has done little, he knows little. His sorrows have been keen, but they are brief and limited. He has been held down, scorned, afflicted. But after all why should God care? To adjust the affairs of nations, to bring out the worlds history in righteousness may be Gods concern. But suppose a man lives bravely, bears patiently, preserves his life from evil, though he have to suffer and even go down in darkness, may not the end of the righteous King be gained by the weight his life casts into the scale of faith and virtue? Should not the man be satisfied with this result of his energy and took for nothing more? Does eternal righteousness demand anything more on behalf of a man? Included in this is the question whether the disputes between men, the small ignorances, egotisms, clashing of wills, need a final assize. Are they not trifling and transient? Can we affirm that in these is involved an element of justice which it concerns our Maker to establish before the worlds?
The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How is our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and consciously we shall have our share in the clearing up of the human story and be gladdened by the “Well done, good and faithful servant” of the Judge? That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the faithful servant live to hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite the resurrection of Christ, despite the words He has spoken, “I am the resurrection and the life,” even to Christians the vision is often clouded, the survival of consciousness hard to believe in. How did the author of Job pass this barrier-in thought, or in hope? Are we content to pass it in hope?
I answer all these questions together. And the answer lies in the very existence of the idea of justice, our knowledge of justice, our desire for it, the fragmentariness of our history till right has been done to us by others, by us to others, by man to God, and God to man-the full right, whatever that may involve.
Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who made us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human life and everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth all depends, and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the mind of man lies that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more it unsettles him, keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme of ethic and society. He is ever making compromises, waiting for evolutions; but nature knows no compromises and gives him no clue save in present fact. Is it possible that He who made us will not overpass our poor best, will not sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in our imperfect economy? The passion for righteousness comes from him; it is a ray of Himself. The soul of the good man craving perfect holiness and toiling for it in himself, in others, can it be greater than God, more strenuous, more subtle than the Divine evolution that gave him birth, the Divine Father of his spirit? Impossible in thought, impossible in fact.
No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science has taught us very little if it has not banished the notion that the small means the unimportant, that minute things are of no moment in evolution. For many years past science has been constructing for us the great argument of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the small details into the vast evolutionary design. The micoscopist, the biologist, the chemist, thee astronomer, each and all are engaged in building up this argument, forcing the confession that the universe is one of inconceivably small things ordered throughout by law. Finish and care would seem to be given everywhere to minutiae as though, that being done, the great would certainly evolve. Further, science even when dealing with material things emphasises the importance of mind. The truthfulness of nature at any point in the physical range is a truthfulness of the Overnature to the mind of man, a correlation established between physical and spiritual existence. Wherever order and care are brought into view there is an exaltation of the human reason which perceives and relates. All would be thrown into confusion if the fidelity recognised by the mind did not extend to the mind itself, if the sanity and development of the mind were not included in the order of the universe. For the psychological student this is established, and the working of evolutionary law is being traced in the obscure phenomena of consciousness, subconsciousness, and habit.
Is it of importance that each of the gases shall have laws of diffusion and combination, shall act according to those laws, unvaryingly affecting vegetable and animal life? Unless those laws wrought in constancy or equity at every moment all would be confusion. Is it of importance that the bird, using its wings, shall be able to soar into the atmosphere; that the wings adapted for flight shall find an atmosphere in which their exercise produces movement? Here again is an equity which enters into the very constitution of the cosmos, which must be a form of the one supreme law of the cosmos. Once more, is it of importance that the thinker shall find sequences and relations, when once established, a sound basis for prediction and discovery, that he shall be able to trust himself on lines of research and feel certain that, at every point, for the instrument of inquiry there is answering verity? Without this correspondence man would have no real place in evolution, he would flutter an aimless unrelated sensitiveness through a storm of physical incidents.
Advance to the most important facts of mind, the moral ideas which enter into every department of thought, the inductions through which we find our place in another range than the physical. Does the fidelity already traced now cease? Is man at this point beyond the law of faithfulness, beyond the invariable correlation of environment with faculty? Does he now come to a region which he cannot choose but enter, where, however, the cosmos fails him, the beating wing cannot rise, the inquiring mind reaches no verity, and the consciousness does flutter an inexplicable thing through dreams and illusions? A man has it in his nature to seek justice. Peace for him there is none unless he does what is right and can believe that right will be done. With this high conviction in his mind he is opposed, as in this Book of Job, by false men, overthrown by calamity, covered with harsh judgment. Death approaches and he has to pass away from a world that seems to have failed him. Shall he never see his right nor Gods righteousness? Shall he never come to his own as a man of good will and high resolve? Has he been true to a cosmos which after all is treacherous, to a rule of virtue which has no authority and no issue? He believes in a Lord of infinite justice and truth; that his life, small as it is, cannot be apart from the pervading law of equity. Is that his dream? Then any moment the whole system of the universe may collapse like a bubble blown upon a marsh.
Now let us clearly understand the point and value of the argument. It is not that a man who has served God here and suffered here must have a joyful immortality. What man is faithful enough to make such a claim? But the principle is that God must vindicate His righteousness in dealing with the man He has made, the man He has called to trust Him. It matters not who the man is, how obscure his life has been, he has this claim on God, that to him the eternal righteousness ought to be made clear. Job cries for his own justification; but the doubt about God involved in the slur cast upon his own integrity is what rankles in his heart; from that he rises in triumphant protest and daring hope. He must live till God clears up the matter. If he dies he must revive to have it all made clear. And observe, if it were only that ignorant men cast doubt on providence, the resurrection and personal redemption of the believer would not be necessary. God is not responsible for the foolish things men say, and we could not look for resurrection because our fellow creatures misrepresent God. But Job feels that God Himself has caused the perplexity. God sent the flash of lightning, the storm, the dreadful disease; it is God who by many strange things in human experience seems to give cause for doubt. From God in nature, God in disease, God in the earthquake and the thunderstorm, God whose way is in the sea and His path in the mighty waters-from this God, Job cries in hope, in moral conviction, to God the Vindicator, the eternally righteous One, Author of nature and Friend of man.
This life may terminate before the full revelation of is made; it leave the good in darkness and the evil flaunting in pride; the believer may go down in shame and the atheist have the last word. Therefore a future life with judgment in full must vindicate our Creator; and every personality involved in the problems of time must go forward to the opening of the seals and the fulfilment of the things that are written in the volumes of God. This evolution being for the earlier stage and discipline of life, it works out nothing, completes nothing. What it does is to furnish the awaking spirit with material of thought, opportunity for endeavour, the elements of life; with trial, temptation, stimulus, and restraint. No one who lives to any purpose or thinks with any sincerity can miss in the course of his life one hour at least in which he shares the tragical contest and adds the cry of his own soul to that of Job, his own hope to that of ages that are gone, straining to see the Goel who undertakes for every servant of God.
“I know it: my Redeemer liveth,
And afterward on the dust He will stand up;
And without my flesh I shall see Eloah.”
By slow cycles of change the vast scheme of Divine providence draws toward a glorious consummation. The believer waits for it, seeing One who has gone before him and will come after him, the Alpha and Omega of all life. The fulness of time will at length arrive, the time fore, ordained by God, foretold by Christ, when the throne shall be set, the judgment shall be given, and the aeons of manifestation shall begin.
And who in that day shall be the sons of God? Which of us can say that he knows himself worthy of immortality? How imperfect is the noblest human life, how often it falls away into the folly and evil of the world! We need one to deliver us from the imperfection that gives to all we are and do the character of evanescence, to set us free from our entanglements and bring us into liberty. We are poor erring creatures. Only if there is a Divine purpose of grace that extends to the unworthy and the frail, only if there is redemption for the earthly, only if a Divine Saviour has undertaken to justify our existence as moral beings, can we look hopefully into the future. Job looked for a Redeemer who would bring to light a righteousness he claimed to possess. But our Redeemer must be able to awaken in us the love of a righteousness we alone could never see and to clothe us in a holiness we could never of ourselves attain. The problem of justice in human life will be solved because our race has a Redeemer whose judgment when it falls will fall in tenderest mercy, who bore our injustice for our sakes and will vindicate for us that transcendent righteousness which is forever one with love.