Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 29:1
Moreover Job continued his parable, and said,
Moreover, Job continued his parable – See the notes at Job 27:1. It is probable that Job had paused to see if anyone would attempt a reply. As his friends were silent, he resumed his remarks and went into a more full statement of his sufferings. The fact that Job more than once paused in his addresses to give his friends an opportunity to speak, and that they were silent when they seemed called upon to vindicate their former sentiments, was what particularly roused the wrath of Elihu and induced him to answer; Job 32:2-5.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XXIX
Job laments his present condition, and gives an affecting
account of his former prosperity, having property in
abundance, being surrounded by a numerous family, and enjoying
every mark of the approbation of God, 1-6.
Speaks of the respect he had from the young, 7, 8;
and from the nobles, 9, 10.
Details his conduct as a magistrate and judge in supporting
the poor, and repressing the wicked, 11-17;
his confidence, general prosperity, and respect, 18-25.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXIX
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
1. Job pauses for a reply. Nonebeing made, he proceeds to illustrate the mysteriousness of God’sdealings, as set forth (Job28:1-28) by his own case.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Moreover, Job continued his parable,…. Or “added to take [it] up” q, that is, he took it up again, and went on with his discourse; he made a pause for awhile, waiting to observe whether any of his three friends would return an answer to what he had said; but perceiving they were not inclined to make any reply, he began again, and gave an account of his former life, in order to show that he was far from being the wicked man, or being so accounted by others, as his friends had represented him:
and said; as follows.
q “addidit assumere”, Montanus, Bolducius, Mercerus; “addidit tollere”, Drusius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1 Then Job continued to take up his proverb, and said:
2 O that I had months like the times of yore,
Like the days when Eloah protected me,
3 When He, when His lamp, shone above my head,
By His light I went about in the darkness;
4 As I was in the days of my vintage,
When the secret of Eloah was over my tent,
5 When the Almighty was still with me,
My children round about me;
6 When my steps were bathed in cream,
And the rock beside me poured forth streams of oil.
Since the optative (comp. on Job 23:3) is connected with the acc. of the object desired, Job 14:4; Job 31:31, or of that respecting which anything is desired, Job 11:5, it is in itself possible to explain: who gives (makes) me like the months of yore; but since, when occurs elsewhere, Isa 27:4; Jer 9:1, the suff. is meant as the dative (= , Job 31:35), it is also here to be explained: who gives me (= O that one would give me, O that I had) like ( instar) the months of yore, i.e., months like those of the past, and indeed those that lie far back in the past; for means more than ( ) . Job begins to describe the olden times, that he wishes back, with the virtually genitive relative clause: “when Eloah protected me” (Ges. 116, 3). It is impossible to take as Hiph.: when He caused to shine (Targ. ); either (Olsh.) or even (Ew. in his Comm.) ought to be read then. On the other hand, can be justified as the form for inf. Kal of (to shine, vid., Job 25:5) with a weakening of the a to i (Ew. 255, a), and the suff. may, according to the syntax, be taken as an anticipatory statement of the object: when it, viz., His light, shone above my head; comp. Exo 2:6 (him, the boy), Isa 17:6 (its, the fruit-tree’s, branches), also Isa 29:23 (he, his children); and Ew. 309, c, also decides in its favour. Nevertheless it commends itself still more to refer the suff. of to (comp. Isa 60:2; Psa 50:2), and to take as a corrective, explanatory permutative: when He, His lamp, shone above my head, as we have translated. One is at any rate reminded of Isa 60 in connection with Job 29:3; for as corresponds to there, so corresponds to in the Job 29:3 of the same: by His light I walked in darkness ( locative = ), i.e., rejoicing in His light, which preserved me from its dangers (straying and falling).
In Job 29:4 is not a particle of time, but of comparison, which was obliged here to stand in the place of the , which is used only as a preposition. And (to be written thus, not with an aspirated ) may not be translated “(in the days) of my spring,” as Symm. , Jer. diebus adolescentiae meae , and Targ. , whether it be that here signifies the point, (from , Arab. hrf , acuere ), or the early time (spring time, from , Arab. chrf , carpere ). For in reference to agriculture can certainly signify the early half of the year (on this, vid., Genesis, S. 270), inasmuch as sowing and ploughing time in Palestine and Syria is in November and December; wherefore Arab. chrf signifies the early rain or autumn rain; and in Talmudic, , premature (ripe too early), is the opposite of , late, but the derivatives of only obtain this signification connotative , for, according to its proper signification, (Arab. chrf with other forms) is the gathering time, i.e., the time of the fruit harvest (syn. ), while the Hebr. ( ) corresponds to the spring in our sense. If Job meant his youth, he would have said , or something similar; but as Job 29:5 shows, he meant his manhood, and this he calls his autumn as the season of maturity, or rather of the abundance of fruits (Schult.: aetatem virilem suis fructibus faetum et exuberantum ),
(Note: The fresh vegetation, indeed, in hotter districts (e.g., in the valley of the Jordan and Euphrates) begins with the arrival of the autumnal rains, but the real spring (comp. Son 2:11-13) only begins about the vernal equinox, and still later on the mountains. On the contrary, the late summer, , which passes over into the autumn, , is the season for gathering the fruit. The produce of the fields, garden fruit, and grapes ripen before the commencement of the proper autumn; some (when the land can be irrigated) summer fruits, e.g., Dhura (maize) and melons, in like manner olives and dates, ripen in autumn. Therefore the translation, in the days of my autumn (“of my harvest”), is the only correct one. If were intended here in a sense not used elsewhere, it might signify, according to the Arabic with h, “(in the days) of my prosperity,” or ”my power,” or even with Arab. ch, “(in the days) of my youthful vigour;” for charafat are rash words and deeds, charfan one who says or does anything rash from lightness, the feebleness of old age, etc. (according to Wetzst., very common words in Syria): or , therefore the thoughtlessness of youth, Arab. jahl , i.e., the rash desire of doing something great, which (Jdg 5:18). But it is most secure to go back to , Arab. chrf , carpere , viz., fructus.)
which, according to Olympiodorus, also with (perhaps ) of the lxx, is what is intended. Then the blessed fellowship of Eloah ( , familiarity, confiding, unreserved intercourse, Psa 55:15; Pro 3:32, comp. Psa 25:14) ruled over his tent; the Almighty was still with him (protecting and blessing him), His were round about him. It certainly does not mean servants (Raschi: ), but children (as Job 1:19; Job 24:5); for one expects the mention of the blessing of children first of all (Psa 127:3, Psa 128:3). His steps ( , . . ) bathed then = , Job 20:17 (as = , 1Sa 1:17, and possibly = ), and the rocks poured forth, close by him, streams of oil (a figure which reminds one of Deu 32:13). A rich blessing surrounded him wherever he tarried or went, and flowed to him wonderfully beyond desire and comprehension.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Former Prosperity of Job. | B. C. 1520. |
1 Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, 2 Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; 3 When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; 4 As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; 5 When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me; 6 When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil;
Losers may have leave to speak, and there is nothing they speak of more feelingly than of the comforts they are stripped of. Their former prosperity is one of the most pleasing subjects of their thoughts and talk. It was so to Job, who begins here with a wish (v. 2): O that I were as in months past! so he brings in this account of his prosperity. His wish is, 1. “O that I were in as good a state as I was in then, that I had as much wealth, honour, and pleasure, as I had then!” This he wishes, from a concern he had, not so much for his ease, as for his reputation and the glory of his God, which he thought were eclipsed by his present sufferings. “O that I might be restored to my prosperity, and then the censures and reproaches of my friends would be effectually silenced, even upon their own principles, and for ever rolled away!” If this be our end in desiring life, health, and prosperity, that God may be glorified, and the credit of our holy profession rescued, preserved, and advanced, the desire is not only natural, but spiritual. 2. “O that I were in as good a frame of spirit as I was in then!” That which Job complained most of now was a load upon his spirits, through God’s withdrawing from him; and therefore he wishes he now had his spirit as much enlarged and encouraged in the service of God as he had then and that he had as much freedom and fellowship with him as then thought himself happy in. This was in the days of his youth (v. 4), when he was in the prime of his time for the enjoyment of those things and could relish them with the highest gust. Note, Those that prosper in the days of their youth know not what black and cloudy days they are yet reserved for. Two things made the months past pleasant to Job:–
I. That he had comfort in his God. This was the chief thing he rejoiced in, in his prosperity, as the spring of it and the sweetness of it, that he had the favour of God and the tokens of that favour. He did not attribute his prosperity to a happy turn of fortune, nor to his own might, nor to the power of his own hand, but makes the same acknowledgment that David does. Ps. xxx. 7, Thou, by thy favour, hast made my mountain stand strong. A gracious soul delights in God’s smiles, not in the smiles of this world. Four things were then very pleasant to holy Job:– 1. The confidence he had in the divine protection. They were the days when God preserved me, v. 2. Even then he saw himself exposed, and did not make his wealth his strong city nor trust in the abundance of his riches, but the name of the Lord was his strong tower; in that only he thought himself safe, and to that he ascribed it that he was then safe and that his comforts were preserved to him. The devil saw a hedge about him of God’s making (ch. i. 10), and Job saw it himself, and owned it was God’s visitation that preserved his spirit, ch. x. 12. Those only whom God protects are safe and may be easy; and therefore those who have ever so much of this world must not think themselves safe unless God preserve them. 2. The complacency he had in the divine favour (v. 3): God’s candle shone upon his head, that is, God lifted up the light of his countenance upon him, gave him the assurances and sweet relishes of his love. The best of the communications of the divine favour to the saints in this world is but the candle-light, compared with what is reserved for them in the future state. But such abundant satisfaction did Job take in the divine favour that, by the light of that, he walked through darkness; that guided him in his doubts, comforted him in his griefs, bore him up under his burdens, and helped him through all his difficulties. Those that have the brightest sun-shine of outward prosperity must yet expect some moments of darkness. They are sometimes crossed, sometimes at a loss, sometimes melancholy. But those that are interested in the favour of God, and know how to value it, can, by the light of that, walk cheerfully and comfortably through all the darkness of this vale of tears. That puts gladness into the heart enough to counterbalance all the grievances of this present time. 3. The communion he had with the divine word (v. 4): The secret of God was upon my tabernacle, that is, God conversed freely with him, as one bosom-friend with another. He knew God’s mind, and was not in the dark about it, as, of late, he had been. The secret of the Lord is said to be with those that fear him, for he shows them that in his covenant which others see not, Ps. xxv. 14. God communicates his favour and grace to his people, and receives the return of their devotion in a way secret to the world. Some read it, When the society of God was in my tabernacle, which Rabbi Solomon understands of an assembly of God’s people that used to meet at Job’s house for religious worship, in which he presided; this he took a great deal of pleasure in, and the scattering of it was a trouble to him. Or it may be understood of the angels of God pitching their tents about his habitation. 4. The assurance he had of the divine presence (v. 5): The Almighty was yet with me. Now he thought God had departed from him, but in those days he was with him, and that was all in all to him. God’s presence with a man in his house, though it be but a cottage, makes it both a castle and a palace.
II. That he had comfort in his family. Every thing was agreeable there: he had both mouths for his meat and meat for his mouths; the want of either is a great affliction. 1. He had a numerous offspring to enjoy his estate: My children were about me. He had many children, enough to compass him round, and they were observant of him and obsequious to him; they were about him, to know what he would have and wherein they might serve him. It is a comfort to tender parents to see their children about them. Job speaks very feelingly of this comfort now that he was deprived of it. He thought it an instance of God’s being with him that his children were about him; and yet reckon amiss if, when we have lost our children, we cannot comfort ourselves with this, that we have not lost our God. 2. He had a plentiful estate for the support of this numerous family, v. 6. His dairy abounded to such a degree that he might, if he pleased, wash his steps with butter; and his olive-yards were so fruitful, beyond expectation, that it seemed as if the rock poured him out rivers of oil. He reckons his wealth, not by his silver and gold, which were for hoarding, but by his butter and oil, which were for use; for what is an estate good for unless we take the good of it ourselves and do good with it to others?
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
JOB – CHAPTER 29
JOB REBUTTS ELIPHAZ’S FALSE CHARGE
Verses 1-25:
Job Relates His Former Prosperity and Rank
Job paused, after relating the sovereignty of the Lord and His wisdom and ways in dealing with men, but neither of his friends made reply. He then proceeded, through chapter 29, to relate and lament the passed days of his former fame and prosperity, as follows:
Verses 1, 2 continue Job’s parabolic address, lamenting, longing to live again, as in past months and years, “as in the days when God preserved him,” from Satan’s mighty trials, from calamities long since fallen upon him, Job 2:6-10.
Verse 3 states that in those former days when he was preserved in God’s care, God’s candle shined upon his head and by Divine light he walked through darkness, as described Job 18:6; Psa 18:28; Pro 24:20; Psa 119:105; Psa 119:130. Job attributed his former caravan travels by night to the safeguard of the Lord who provided him with plenty of torches and candles to light his way.
Verses 4, 5 add that he longed again to be as in the days of his youth when the secret (intimate friendship) of God hovered over his tabernacle or his tent to give him rest, protection and peace of mind; Then the Almighty was yet with him and his children were the joy and pride of his life about him, Pro 3:32; Psa 31:20; Psa 25:14; Gen 18:17; Joh 15:15. Days pass that never come back again.
Verse 6 state that in those former. days Job washed his steps with butter, rich milk, ,or cream. Wherever he went or turned, pastoral life blessed him with the richest of milk and abundance of oil. As it is stated, “the rocks poured me out rivers of oil!” Olives bear the best oil, as they grow among the rocks, Deu 32:13-14. Oil is used, treasured for four things in the east: 1) For food, 2) For medicine, 3) For light, 4) For anointing the skin, Gen 49:11; Deu 33:24; Job 20:17; Psa 81:16.
Verses 7-10 describe the esteemed honor and awe in which Job had once been held. Verse 7 relates that as he passed from his residence through the street to the place where he set up his judicial-seat in the market place he was honored by the young, the old, and the noblemen; Verse 8, the young saw him and withdrew, hid themselves, stepped back respectfully; The aged arose, stood up with oriental respect, when he came into their presence; Verse 9, the princes (rulers) refrained from talking, in the middle of a speech, and laid their hand on their mouth, to give ear at Job’s approach; Verse 10 the nobles or emirs held their peace so that their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.
But, now, when God had permitted Satan to bring calamities on him, to test him for God’s glory, these pretended friends had pounced on him to tear and devour like a vulture on a dying calf, like a lion on a lonely lamb, like an hawk on a baby chicken, Isa 49:14; Psa 55:11; Psa 127:5; Job 4:2; Job 21:5; Eze 3:26. Even the emirs or shieks were silent, in former days, when Job moved among them, Psa 137:6.
Verses 11,12 relate that both those who heard reports of Job and those who had seen him in his former days of prosperity praised or extolled him for his virtue of human kindness to the needy and his fellowman, Luk 4:22; Psa 72:12. He delivered the poor that cried, the fatherless, and those so impoverished that they had no one to help meet their bills. As a compassionate judge, he refused to imprison any for failing to pay his pledge on time, Neh 5:2; Pro 21:13; Pro 24:11-12; Jer 22:16.
Verse 13 witnesses that Job counted it a blessing to help the widow who was impoverished and ready to perish, to sell herself and her children into slavery to pay bills and have food and shelter; He helped her, let her go free, filling her heart with a song of joy, Job 22:9; Pro 31:6.
Verse 14 adds that Job put on righteousness, was dressed or clothed in holy conduct, so that his presiding decisions of judgment of others was like a robe and diadem, of oriental-like. grandeur, that adorned his reputation as a good man, Isa 41:10; 1Ch 12:18; Zec 3:5; See also Deu 24:13; Psa 132:9; Rom 13:14; Eph 6:14.
Verses 15, 16 relate that he was: 1) eyes to the blind. 2) feet, or support, to the lame, to strengthen and help them, Num 10:31; Numbers 3) he was a father to the poor, the orphans, and 4) he knew not the strangers, he conscientiously helped when he found them in need, Pro 29:7; Heb 12:13; Num 10:31; Psa 41:1.
Verse 17 declares that he broke the jaws of the wicked, a term used regarding the controlling of a wild beast, Job 4:11; Psa 3:7. He was of compassionate help to the oppressed, but terrible in judgment against the oppressor. In breaking the jaw of the wicked oppressor plucking the spoil out of his teeth, his devouring, he broke his jaws so that he would oppress no more.
Verse 18 relates that Job then said, in his heart, “I shall die in my nest,” or with his family gathered around him; His days did multiply or increase “as the sand,” as his health was restored and he lived to be 140 years of age, Job 42:16; Psa 30:6; Num 24:21; Gen 22:17; Hab 1:9.
Verse 19 states that Job had been blessed so that his root, life support, was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay fresh all night on his branch, continually fed or irrigated by them, as opposed to “his roots shall be dried up beneath,” Job 18:16. Prior to this affliction, Job, God’s perfect man, had had vigorous health, Job 1:1; Job 1:8; Job 2:3; Job 2:6-10. See also Psa 1:3; Jer 17:8; Hos 14:5; Hos 14:7.
Verse 20 witnesses that at that time Job’s glory or renown was fresh, current, very good, like his bodily health. His bow, or strength was continually renewed and strong in his control, a thing that supported his renown, esteem, or prominence, in the earth, Jer 49:35; Gen 49:24.
Verse 21 recounts Job’s former dignity and respect in public and in public assemblies, as recounted v.7-10, as young men would step back at his approach, the aged arose and stood in his presence until he was seated in oriental respect, other rulers would stop talking at his presence, and the nobles, emirs, and arab sheiks kept silent with their tongues cleaving to the roof of their mouth.
Verse 22 explains that when he would speak in former days his speech fell on them like wanted rain. None contradicted him as his feigned friends now did in his afflictions, Amo 7:16; Deu 22:2; Son 4:11.
Verse 23 adds that the masses once waited for his counsel and judgments as dry soil waits for rain; and they opened their mouths wide, as panting, waiting for the “latter rains,” that came in March and brings forth the harvest to ripen in May or June, Psa 119:131. Between March and October little or no rain fell in that Arab land, Deu 5:7.
Verse 24 states that if Job laughed the masses did not believe he had put aside his virtue of gravity, esteemed so highly in the east. They understood his pleasant serenity of countenance that followed from his trust in God, even in the days of his reigning prosperity and vigorous health, Pro 16:15; Psa 104:15; This was the opposite of the “fallen countenance” of sinful Cain, Gen 4:5-6.
Verse 25 concludes Job’s brief autobiographical testimony of his pre-calamity days of life. He chose out the ways of the people, as a counselor to them in former days, seeking their best interest in life, Gen 41:40; Jdg 11:8. He sat as a king supreme in the midst of his army, respected and loved, as one who continually comforts the mourning; Even as he foreshadowed Jesus Christ, Isa 1:4; Heb 2:18.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
JOBS RETROSPECT
Takes a calm retrospective view of his past experience and life. Thus disproves the suspicions and accusations of his friends, and shows that his complaints were sufficiently well-grounded. The character secretly given him by God thus affirmed out of his own mouth. Does this not from a feeling of vanity and pride, but, like Paul, as compelled to it, for self-vindication. Probably resumes his speech (Job. 29:1, continued his parable) after pausing for a reply which was not forthcoming.
Commences in a tone of lamentation as he looks back upon his former happiness and prosperity, now apparently for ever fled. Job. 29:2.O that I were, &c. Natural to look back with regret from a state of protracted suffering and depression to one of happiness and comfort, and to long, however vainly, for its return. The believer, in a state of spiritual darkness under the loss of Gods sensible presence, often unable to refrain from similar language. How sweet the hours I once enjoyed. &c. Better and safer to long for the return of spiritual than of temporal prosperity and comfort.
I. Jobs past happiness (Job. 29:2-11). Embraced
1. His enjoyment of the Divine favour and fellowship. Job. 29:2-4.O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me! when His candle (or lampsymbol of favour and blessing, chap. Job. 18:6; Psa. 18:28; Psa. 132:17) shined upon (or over) my head (the lamp in Arab tents and dwellings being usually suspended from the top or ceiling, and kept burning all night), and when by his light I walked through darkness (by his protection and guidance escaping dangers, and overcoming difficulties and trialslike the caravans travelling through the desert by night with lights burning in their front). NoteAll a believers present comfort and blessing only candle-light compared with the future.As I was in the days of my youth (or full prosperity; Heb., My autumn, the time of ripe fruits; the reference to his circumstances rather than to his age), when the secret (or intimate friendship) of God was upon (or in) my tabernacle; when the Almighty was yet with me (present with me, or on my side; or, when my vigour, &c., the clause in this case belonging rather to the next head). Observe
(1) No blessing so great or enjoyment so sweet, as that of communion with God and the friendship of our Maker. These placed by Job at the head of his list of mercies and the retrospect of his happiness. The madness of the world seen in neglecting and despising this. True wisdom in making the enjoyment of it our first concern. Its re-enjoyment by man the object of Christs mission into the world.
(2). The favour of God the fountain of all real blessing and true happiness. The blessing of the Lord maketh rich, &c.
(3) Intimate fellowship and personal friendship with God to be enjoyed in this life. Abraham the friend of God. Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? (Gen. 18:17). Henceforth I call you not servants but friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you (Joh. 15:15). The Lord God will do nothing; but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets (Amo. 3:7). The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant (Psa. 25:14; Pro. 3:32).
(4) Gods presence and favour sweeten every blessing.
Happy who walks with Him! Whom what he finds
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.
His presence who made all so fair, perceivd,
Makes all still fairer. As with Him no scene
Is dreary, so with Him all seasons please.
2. His enjoyment of outward mercies (Job. 29:5-11). These were
(1) Domestic comfort. Job. 29:5.When my children (perhaps including servants) were about me. Jobs children now dead, and his servants partly killed (ch. Job. 1:15; Job. 1:17), and partly fleeing from him in his affliction (chap. Job. 19:15-16). Jobs home once a snug and well-feathered nest, with an abundant brood of happy young ones in it (Job. 29:18). Mentions his family before his fortune. A happy home a greater treasure than a wide domain. A healthy and happy family one of the greatest of earthly comforts. A home, when what it ought to bethe sweetner of life. Mercifully preserved to man alter the Fall. Domestic happiness impaired by sin. Restored by grace. Realized in the enjoyment of Gods favour and blessing in Christ (Psa. 118:15). Jobs home a happy one, because a holy one (chap. Job. 1:5). Blest, that home where God is felt.
(2) Outward prosperity. Job. 29:6; Job. 29:19-20.When I washed my steps with butter (cream, or thick milk), and the rock poured me out rivers of oil (Heb. poured out, &c., with me, i.e., alongside of me, wherever I wentlike the rock that followed Israel with its refreshing stream all through the desert). Abundance of milk and oil Oriental emblems of plenty (Deu. 32:13-14). Canaan a land flowing with milk and honey. Rocky land, as in Arabia and Syria, most favourable for the cultivation of the olive. Oil a great part of Oriental produce. Job. 29:19My root was spread out by the waters (imbibing their moisture, as Psa. 1:3) and the dew (abundant in the East, and compensating for the scarcity of rain) lay all night upon my branch (or crops,thus nourished both above and beneath the soil). My glory (reputation for wisdom, piety and justice; or simply, my prosperous estate) was ne in me (Heb., with me, always new, like a flourishing evergreen), and my bow was renewed in my hand (my strength always renewing itself after exhaustion, and acquiring fresh vigour (Isa. 40:31), as a bow, after shooting its arrow, returns to its former position and strength).Observe
(1) Jobs riches ascribed by him to Gods blessing. The lamp of Gods favour was over his head before the rocks poured out oil at his feet. The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich. The Lord giveth thee power to get wealth.
(2) Riches a blessing when from God, with God, and to God. When rich I enjoyed God in all; now when poor, I enjoy all in God.
3. Public honour I respect. Job. 29:7-11; Job. 29:21-25When I went out(from his residence which was probably in the country) to the gate through the city (or up to the city,Oriental cities being usually on an eminence, and the city-gate the place of justice, deliberation and business, Rth. 4:12; Pro. 31:23); when I prepared my seat(sending his servant before with his cushion, according to Oriental manners, to spread it for him) in the street (or broad open space in front of the gate, used both for court and market, such as is found in the remains of Persepolis and Nineveh, and still exists in eastern cities). The young men (in the forum or market-place) saw me and hid themselves (from modesty and reverence retiring back out of immediate sight); the aged men (the elders of the city composing the court or senateRth. 4:2; Pro. 31:23) arose and stood up (from respect, as to one of superior wisdom and standing). The princes (sheikhs, or chiefs of their tribes) refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth (a token of silence and expression of the greatest deference). The nobles (men of wealth and position in the country) held their peace, and their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth. When the ear heard me [while addressing the assembly], then it blessed me(pronounced him blessed for the wisdom, justice, and benevolence that shone in his speech); when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me [as the friend and benefactor of my country and my race]. Job. 29:21Unto me men gave car (listening to my opinion or counsel) and waited; and kept silence at my counsel (having nothing either to add, correct, or gainsay). After my words they spake not again (not even replying, much less contradicting,-satisfied with the wisdom of what had been advanced); and my speech dropped upon them (as the dew, easy-flowing, pleasant and beneficial, Deu. 32:2). And they waited for me as [the parched earth waits] for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as [the earth does] for the latter rain (the rain in those eastern countries falling at two seasons in the year; the former rain in September or October, the latter rain in February or March). NoteSalutary instruction frequently represented in Scripture and Oriental poetry under the figure of rain and dew. Copious rain or dew the Egyptian hieroglyphic for learning and instruction. Job. 29:24If I laughed (or smiled) on them (relaxing my gravity, and showing a token of pleasure or recognition), they believed it not (as too great an honour; or, did not thereby become bold and familiar); and the light (smile or serenity) of my countenance they cast not down(grieving or displeasing him by their undutiful or disrespectful behaviour). I chose out their way (as their counsellor and guide; or, [If] I joined their society), and sat chief (occupied the first place, and presided in all their public deliberations), and dwelt [in my settled residence] as a king (or, a very king) in the army (or troop, in whom his presence inspires life and courage, and to whom his word is law), as one that comforteth the mourners [who hang upon his lips, and drink in his every word]. Observe
(1) Goodness often the shortest as well as the safest way to greatness. Gods standing promise,Them that honour me I will honour (1Sa. 2:30). In wisdoms left handonly her left handare riches and honour.
(2) A good man sure, sooner or later, to gain the esteem and confidence of his fellows. A wise head, a warm heart, and a willing hand likely to secure love and respect. Christs promise,He that believeth on me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water (Joh. 7:37). Job, from his piety, benevolence, and wisdom, both the darling and the oracle of his country.
(3) A mans noblest ambition(i.) To excel others in virtue, piety, and benevolence. (ii.) To act as the counsellor and guide of his fellows. (iii.) To comfort the mourners while commanding the multitude.
II. Jobs character (Job. 29:11-17). His reputation not without just grounds. The fruit not of his riches or power, but of his benevolent and upright character.
1. His benevolence and compassion as a private individual. Job. 29:11; Job. 29:13; Job. 29:15-16.Because I delivered the poor that cried [under suffering or oppression], and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish [from want or oppression] came upon me [as his deliverer], and I caused the widows heart to sing for joy (by comforting, relieving, or delivering her). I was eyes to the blind (as an instructor, counsellor, and guide to the ignorant, inexperienced, and erring), and feet was I to the lame (doing for the weak, infirm, and helpless, what they were unable to do for themselves). I was a father to the poor (counselling, defending, and providing for them); and the cause which I knew not (or, the cause of those I knew not, i.e., of the stranger), I searched out (or into, in order to his relief and defencedoing this as well in the capacity of a private individual as of a magistrate or judge). Observe
(1) Jobs religion not one of mere contemplation, still less one of mere profession or outward observance. His the pure and undefiled religion before God the Fatherto visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world (Jas. 1:27).
(2) Jobs character an exemplification of the wisdom that is from abovefirst pure, then peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and of good fruits.
(3) In Job, the fear of God evinced by active love to man. To be so always.
First daughter to the love of God
Is charity to man.
He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (1Jn. 4:20).
(4) The nature of that love which the law requires, and which verifies a mans religion. A love not in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth (1Jn. 3:18). True charity is kind and seeketh not her own (1Co. 13:4-5).
(5) Jobs faith, like Abrahams, made perfect by his works (Jas. 2:22).
(6) Wealth and high position no hindrance to the exercise of compassion and benevolence. Should rather be a help to it.
2. His faithfulness and justice as a magistrate. Job. 29:13-14.The cause which I knew not I searched out (careful
(1) that before giving sentence, he thoroughly understood the case;
(2) That none, even the stranger, should have his case neglected). I put on righteousness(practising it in his daily conduct, and especially as a magistrate and judge), and it clothed me (or, put on me,wholly filled me, made me righteous,both without and within). My judgment (or upright dealing) was [to me] as a robe and a diadem (or turban, worn as a headdress by kings and nobles, Isa. 62:3; by the high priest, Zec. 3:5; and even by Jewish ladies of fashion in the days of Isaiah, Isa. 3:20; the flowing robe and turban still the prominent articles of a wealthy Arabs dress). Jobs character as a magistrate the opposite of that ascribed to him by Eliphaz (chap. Job. 22:5-9). Job not less just than generous. Observe
(1) Justice and benevolence the brightest ornament either of public or private life. Wisdom an ornament of grace and a crown of glory to all her possessors. Knowledge is a youths diademArab Proverb.
(2) Uprightness of character and life to be worn as our dress; cleaving to us and accompanying us at all times and in all places. To be our habit in both senses of the word. Patent to the eyes of the world like our outer garments.
(3) Upright conduct to be regarded as our honour. To be neither ostentatiously paraded nor pusillanimously ashamed of.
(4) A better righteousness than our own given us in Christ as our ground of confidence before God (Rom. 4:2-6; Gal. 6:14; Php. 3:7-9).
3. His boldness in opposing the wicked and oppressive. Job. 29:17.Perhaps also belonging to his character as a magistrate. I broke the jaws (or jaw-teeth) of the wicked (especially the rich and powerful oppressor, often represented us a beast of prey, chap. Job. 4:10), and plucked the spoil out of his teeth. The opposite of the unjust judge in the Gospel (Luk. 18:3-4). Observe
(1) A truly good man a comfort to the oppressed and a terror to the oppressor. They that forsake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with him (Pro. 28:4).
(2) A good man not deterred from duty by the fear of consequences. Job did good and executed justice at the riski. Of being unpopular with the great. ii. Of incurring personal danger. iii. Of much trouble to himself.
III. Jobs anticipation. Job. 29:18.Perhaps continued to the end of the chapter. Then I said [within myself, while reflecting upon my prosperity and character], I shall die in my nest (in comfort and security, neither by a violent nor untimely, but a natural and peaceful death); I shall multiply my days as the sand (or, according to another reading, as the Phnixa fabulous bird, said to spring from a nest of myrrh made by the parent bird before his death, living to the age of a thousand years, and coming from Arabia to Egypt once in five hundred years, and then burning his father,a hieroglyphical mode with the Egyptians of representing a particular chronological era or cycle). Natural in Jobs circumstances to cherish bright anticipations of the future. The tendency of continued prosperity and honour to beguile into false security and confidence. Davids error (Psa. 30:6-7). Jobs anticipations to be soon apparently blasted. Yet in the end abundantly realized (chap. Job. 42:16). Observe
1. A good old age, and a comfortable death in the bosom of ones family and home, among the appointments of a favouring Providence. The opposite threatened as a punishment (Isa. 22:17-18; Jer. 22:18-19). These, however, not proofs of pardoning mercy, nor necessarily belonging to the children of God. Ishmael, out of the covenant, dies in the midst of all his brethren; Moses; in it, dies alone on a solitary mountain (Gen. 25:18; Deu. 32:49-50). Best to have the circumstances of our death as well as of our life chosen for us by our heavenly Father. The everlasting covenant of Gods grace in Christ the softest and safest nest in which either to live or die (2Sa. 23:5).
(2) To multiply our days a blessing; to make right use of them a greater. Days often multiplied only to multiply shame and sorrow (Isa. 51:11). The longest life, if ill-spent, is short; the shortest, if well-spent, is long. Life not to be measured by the number of its days, but by the character of its deeds.
(3) Jobs anticipation, a long life and a comfortable death; that of the believer under the Gospel dispensation, an eternal blessedness reserved for him in heaven (2Co. 4:18).
IV. Lessons suggested by the retrospect as a whole
1. Evidence of the statement that the fear of the Lord is wisdom. Jobs piety the fountain both of his happiness and honour. None ever exhibited more of the former or enjoyed more of the latter. His life and experience a verification of the truth that length of days is in wisdoms right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour (Pro. 3:16).
2. Proof that true piety towards God is accompanied with the purest morality and love to men. Job as much distinguished for the one as the other. The fear and love of God the only and sure guarantee of faithfulness and love to men. True piety the natural fountain both of a pure morality and a disinterested benevolence. Integrity of life and love to our neighbour only branches of that tree whose root is the love of God. Love to God the first table of the Decalogue; love to man the second. The two twin sisters of the same parent, the nature and image of God who is love. He who loves and fears God cannot be regardless of Gods will or Gods offspring.
3. An example afforded of what grace can effect in restoring and renewing fallen humanity. Job a specimen of the power of that grace of God which teaches us to deny ungodliness, and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. His virtues not the product of fallen nature but of renewing grace. Though in the older dispensation and before the full effusion of the Holy Spirit, his character and life the fruits of that Spirit, viz., love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith (Gal. 5:17). Exhibits the features of the new man created in the believer by the Holy Ghost after the image of God. The object and effect of Divine grace to produce the lineaments of Christ, the perfect man in the renewed soul. The polluted but believing Corinthians not only justified but washed and sanctified (1Co. 6:11). The converted cannibals of Fiji risk health and life to communicate their blessings to the cannibals of New Guinea.
4. A pattern for Christians both in public and private life. Jobs daily life a scattering of seeds of kindness. Might have sat for the picture of the Good Samaritan. Jobs goodness, if not his greatness, within everyones reach. The poor always with us. No large estate required in order to be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and a father to the poor. A kind word or a trifling gift often able to make the widows heart sing for joy. More grace provided and attainable for the exercise of Jobs virtues in the Christian dispensation than in that under which the patriarch himself lived. The follower of Jesus both required and enabled to practise every virtue and every praise that adorned Jobs character (Php. 4:8).
5. The retrospect of a holy and useful life a source of pure and elevated comfort in sickness and adversity. Jobs comfort in his afflictions not in looking back on his wealth and honours, but on the way he employed them. The seeds of scattered kindness in the time of health and prosperity often bear their fruit in this life in the season of trouble and adversity. Friends made of the Mammon of unrighteousness, both for time and eternity (Luk. 16:9). A man may be richer in the retrospect of the manner in which he spent his money than others who selfishly hoard it are in its continued possession.
6. Example of the uncertainty of earthly comforts and riches. None ever enjoyed more of these than Job, and none ever more thoroughly stripped of them. The comfortable nest in which he hoped to end his days now rifled and torn in pieces, and himself sitting, a loathsome leper, on an ash-heap. Boast not thyself of to-morrow. Madness to pursue a fleeting and neglect an enduring substance. Means and opportunities of doing good to be faithfully employed while they last. Riches not for ever, nor the crown to all generations.
7. The experience of believers in respect to the sensible enjoyment of the Divine presence and fellowship liable to fluctuation. Not only Jobs outward and temporal but his inward and spiritual comfort now in an eclipse. The sin of Gods countenance may for wise reasons be hidden behind a cloud. No proof of Gods anger that His favour is not sensibly enjoyed. The shining of the sun to be believed, though not seen. The path of a believer through the world like that of the moon among sailing clouds. Darkness and light the experience of a believer till he reaches the land where there is no more night.
8. An exemplification of the requirements of the moral law in respect to our neighbour. Love to man, verified in continual acts of varied benevolence, the characteristic of Jobs life. Such love the requirement of the second part of the Decalogue. Jobs life and character no more than is required by the law of God from each individual according to his means and opportunities. Every shortcoming of it, sin. Hence the universal character of men as transgressors of the Divine law (Rom. 3:23). Job himself, with all his integrity and benevolence, still a sinner as coming short of that law. Every mouth stopped, and the whole world guilty before God (Rom. 3:19). An example of perfect obedience to the law of love found only in one of Adams children.
9. Job exhibited in this chapter as a type of Jesus Christ the Righteous. The picture Job draws of himself only fully and perfectly realized in him who did no sin, and who went about, doing good (Isa. 11:1-5; Isa. 61:1-3). Christ, the second Adam, the only perfect man. His life, even more than Jobs, an exhibition of the beauty and excellence of the moral law, as well as a fulfilment of it. Christ fitted, therefore, to be our representative and head in a new covenant (Rom. 5:12-19). His perfect fulfilment of the law, for our sakes
(1) As a pattern for our imitation.
(2) As a proof that He was what He professed to bethe Son of God and Saviour of men.
(3) To give value to His death as a sacrifice and satisfaction for sin, Himself being without spot, and a sweet savour to God.
(4) As a substitution for the perfect obedience required of each individual.
(5) As the image and character to be reproduced in all who are united to Him by faith, as the members of that family of which He is the head and representative.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
D. THE SOLILOQUY OF A SUFFERER (Job. 29:1Job. 31:40)
1. Reminiscencehis former happy life (Job. 29:1-25)
a. The outward aspect (Job. 29:1-10)
TEXT 29:110
1 And Job again took up his parable, and said,
2 Oh that I were as in the months of old,
As in the days when God watched over me;
3 When his lamp shined upon my head,
And by his light I walked through darkness;
4 As I was in the ripeness of my days,
When the friendship of God was upon my tent;
5 When the Almighty was yet with me,
And my children were about me;
6 When my steps were washed with butter,
And the rock poured me out streams of oil!
7 When I went forth to the gate unto the city,
When I prepared my seat in the street,
8 The young men saw me and hid themselves,
And the aged rose up and stood;
9 The princes refrained from talking,
And laid their hand on their mouth;
10 The voice of the nobles was hushed,
And their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.
COMMENT 29:110
Job. 29:1Jobs debate with his friends[293] is at an end. Now we will listen to his final soliloquy. The speech is divided into three sections, one chapter each: A: (1) His former happinessJob. 29:2-10; (2) His past graciousness to the needyJob. 29:11-17; (3) His confidenceJob. 29:18-20; (4) The esteem in which he was heldJob. 29:21-25; B: (1) His present sufferingthrough the nobodys that despise himJob. 30:1-8; (2) The indignities he is presently enduringJob. 30:9-15; (3) His present dreadJob. 30:16-23; (4) Contrast between his past and presentJob. 30:24-25; C: His vindication: (1) His integrity sustainedJob. 31:1-12; (2) Denial of abuse of powerJob. 31:13-23; (3) Reaffirmation of his pietyJob. 31:24-25; (4) Appeal that specific charges be made against himJob. 31:25-25; and (5) Invocation of a curse upon himself if he has not been telling the truthJob. 31:28-30 (compare with Job. 27:1).
[293] For Traditionsgeschichte analysis of Jobs friends, see H. P. Muller, Hiob und seine Freunde. Theo. Studien 103, 1970; and P. W. Skehan, Jobs Final Plea (Job 29-31) and The Lords Reply (Job 38-41), Biblica, 1964, pp. 5162.
Job. 29:2His thoughts move back into a happier time in his life. For the moment, the harsh realities of his existential situation[294] are suppressed. Nostalgia enthralls him. He is confronted by thinking of the time when God watched over himPsa. 91:11; Psa. 121:7 ff; and Mi. Job. 6:24. The same verb is used of Gods hostile surveillance of his lifeJob. 10:14; Job. 13:27; and Job. 14:16.
[294] See J. Faur, Reflections on Job and Situation Morality, Judaism, 1970, pp. 219225.
Job. 29:3The lamp and light are metaphors of Gods blessings and presencePsa. 18:28; Psa. 36:9; 2Sa. 22:29. There is no word in Hebrew for the through of the A. V.; perhaps the reference is to Gods glory, the kobad (Greek, doxa) which later developed into the Shekinah. The sense being if God is not present, there is nothing but spiritual darkness.
Job. 29:4The word rendered ripeness in the A. V. symbolizes prosperity and maturity rather than decline. The root meaning of -hrp is be early, young.[295] Earlier in Jobs life Gods protective hedge was about (not upon as A. V.) his householdJob. 1:10 and Job. 31:31.[296]
[295] For analysis of this root, see A. C. M. Blommerde, Northwest Semitic Grammar and Job, 1969, p. 109.
[296] D. W. Thomas, JBL, 1946, pp. 63ff, for meaning of protection rather than friendship; also see Dhorme on the preposition, p. 416.
Job. 29:5Job places his relationship with God about his most intimate human companionshipGen. 28:20; Gen. 31:5; Psa. 23:4; Psa. 44:7. Job poignantly refers to the loss of his own children (Heb. naar means young menGen. 22:3 and 2Sa. 18:29). Numerous children was a sign of Gods favorPsa. 127:3-5; Psa. 128:3-4.
Job. 29:6When Job was prosperous, his herds were fertile; butter flowed like mighty waters. Butter in the A. V. would better be rendered curdsJob. 21:17. The olive-tree grows profusely in rocky soil,[297] and the olive presses are cut in the rockDeu. 32:13; Deu. 33:24; Psa. 81:16 b; and Son. 5:12. The rocks poured out for me (rather than lit. with me or poured me out of the A. V.). The line says in essence, when God watched over my household, blessings came from the most unexpected sources.
[297] See M. Dahood, Biblica et Orientalia, suggestion that rock should rather be bakam, 1965, p. 60.
Job. 29:7The city gate was the central meeting place for the distribution of administrative justiceDeu. 21:19; Rth. 4:1; Rth. 4:11; and 2Ki. 7:1; Job. 7:18. Jobs social prestige is clearly emphasized in that he has a prominent seat. The broad open place (Heb. rehobis street in A. V.) stood at the entrance of the city gate1Ki. 22:10. Jobs former happiness was based on three relationships: (1) Fellowship with God; (2) Companionship of his own children; and (3) The respect of his community.
Job. 29:8Jobs public influence is projected by two images in this verse: (1) The young men withdrew (as hid in A. V.); and (2) While the older men remained standing in respect, until Job was settled in a prominent place. In this manner both showed respect for a righteous man.
Job. 29:9Another image reveals the overt expression of respect for Job. The princes stopped in the midst of their conversations and waited respectfully to hear this evaluation. The Qumran Targum confirms this reading [And] nobles became silent of speech, and put hand [to their mouth].
Job. 29:10Their voice became veiled (nehbauhushed and is same as in verse eight for hid), quiet is deferential respect. The image in line two expresses nervousness (tongue cleaved to the roof of the mouth) in the presence of JobLam. 4:4; and Jesus on the cross.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XXIX.
(1) Job continued his parable.In this chapter he recounts wistfully his past happiness. In his case it was indeed not without cause, though in point of fact he was then passing through a time of trial which was itself bringing fast on his time of deliverance, and which was to make his name famous throughout the world and in all time. And in most similar cases we have need to bear in mind the words of Solomon (Ecc. 7:10): Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Job’s Monologue
FIRST PART, chap. 29.
1. Some interval may have elapsed since the close of the tribute to wisdom, during which fond memory had dwelt upon years of prosperity and bliss, recalling the care and friendship of God, domestic joys, and the highest love and veneration of his people. But the remembrance of these, instead of lighting up the present, according to a strange law of the mind, served rather to deepen the gloom. He feels that his present wretched condition is but an instance of the mysteriousness of God’s ways which he adduces in elucidation of the preceding chapter, and thus “continues his parable.” Job seemingly intimates that he thought his righteousness a claim upon God; and that he thence postulated a kind of right to temporal prosperity: which sentiment would have been in keeping with the temporal idea of religion prevailing in ancient times an idea that led to the trial of Job. But now he rises to the mature conception that God’s favour is in itself a sufficient reward, and that this is the greatest of blessings to be desired an important stage in the transition to the unravelment of the entanglement. While apparently unconscious of the presence of the friends, in the kindest and most courteous spirit he refutes some of their cruel charges, and displays the noblest traits of character. “The commemoration of former blessings,” says the Oriental proverb, cited by Ali Hazin, “is the possession of the wretched.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 29:13 The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.
Job 29:13
Job 29:21-23 Comments The Baptism of the Holy Spirit – Job 29:21-23 refers to the baptism Holy Ghost.
Job 29:21 – “kept silence” – You cannot drink and talk at same time, nor speak English and in tongues at same time.
Job 29:22 – This refers to the speech the Holy Spirit will drop upon us. Act 2:4, “as the Spirit gave them utterance,”
Job 29:23 – Open your mouths and be ready to receive an utterance. The latter rain is the Holy Ghost.
Scripture References – See:
Hos 6:3, “Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.”
Zec 10:1, “Ask ye of the LORD rain in the time of the latter rain; so the LORD shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.”
Jas 5:7, “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.”
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 Describes his Former Prosperity
v. 1. Moreover, Job continued his parable, v. 2. Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, v. 3. when His candle shined upon my head, v. 4. as I was in the days of my youth, v. 5. when the Almighty was yet with me, v. 6. when I washed my steps with butter, v. 7. when I went out to the gate through the city, v. 8. The young men saw me and hid themselves, v. 9. The princes refrained talking, v. 10. The nobles held their peace, v. 11. When the ear heard me,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Job 29:1-25
From these deep musings upon the nature of true wisdom, and the contrast between the ingenuity and cleverness of man and the infinite knowledge of God, Job turns to another contrast, which he pursues through two chapters (Job 29:1-25; Job 30:1-31.)the contrast between what he was and what he isbetween his condition in the period of his prosperity and that to which he has been reduced by his afflictions. The present chapter is concerned only with the former period; and gives a graphic description of the life led, in Job’s time and country, by a great chieftain, the head of a tribe, not of mere nomads, but of perseus who had attained to a considerable amount of civilization. The picture is one primitive in its features, but not rude or coarse. It is entirely un-Jewish, and has its nearest parallel in some of the early Egyptian records, as the Stele of Beka, and the Instructions of Amen-em-hat.
Job 29:1
Moreover Job continued his parable, and said (see the comment on Job 27:1).
Job 29:2
Oh that I were as in months past! or, in the months of old. To Job the period of his prosperity seems long, long agosome-thing far away in the mist of time, which he recalls with difficulty. As in the days when God preserved me. Job never forgets to refer his prosperity to God, or to be grateful to him for it (see Job 1:21; Job 2:10; Job 10:8-12, etc.).
Job 29:3
When his candle shined upon my head (comp. Psa 18:28, “For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness”). A “candle,” or “lamp,” is a general symbol in Scripture for life and prosperity. God is said to light men’s candles when he blesses them and maizes his countenance to shine upon them; conversely, when he withdraws his favour he is said to put their candles out (Job 18:6; Job 21:17). And when by his light I walked through darkness. The light of God’s countenance shining about a man’s path enables him to walk securely even through thick darkness, i.e. through trouble and perplexity.
Job 29:4
As I was in the days of my youth; literally, in the days of my autumnby which Job probably means the days of his “ripeness” or “full manhood”which he had reached when his calamities fell upon him. When the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; or, the counsel of God; when, i.e; in my tent I held sweet counsel with God, and communed with him as friend with friend (comp. Psa 25:14, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant;” and Pro 3:32, “For the froward is abomination to the Lord: but his secret is with the righteous”).
Job 29:5
When the Almighty was yet with me. These are terribly sad words. Job, in his afflictions, has come to look on the Almighty as no longer “with him “no longer on his side; but rather against him, an enemy (see Job 6:4; Job 7:19; Job 9:17; Job 10:16, etc.). When my children were about me (comp. Job 1:2, Job 1:4, Job 1:5).
Job 29:6
When I washed my steps with butter. Trod, as it were, upon fatness, moved amid all that was gladsome, joyful, and delicious. And the rock poured me out rivers of oil. “The rock” is probably the ground, rugged and stony, on which his olives grew. “Olives,” says Dr. Cunningham Geikie, “flourish best on sandy or stony soil” They brought him in so great a quantity of oil that the rock seemed to him to flow with rivers of it.
Job 29:7
When I went out to the gate through the city; rather, by the city, or over against the city. The “gate” was the place where justice was administered, and public business generally despatched. It would be “over against” the city, separated from it by a large square or place (), in which a multitude might assemble (sue Neh 8:1). Hither Job was accustomed to proceed from time to time, to act as judge and administrator. When I prepared my seat in the street. On such occasions a seat would be brought out and “prepared,” where the judge would sit to hear causes and deliver sentences (comp. Neh 3:7).
Job 29:8
The young men saw me, and hid themselves; retired, i.e. withdrew to corners, that they might not obtrude themselves on one so much their superior. Compare the respect paid to age by the Spartans. And the aged arose, and stood up. Here the respect paid was not to age so much as to dignity. Men as old as himself, or older, paid Job the compliment of standing up until he was seated, in consideration of his rank and high office. So. in many assemblies, as in our own courts of justice, in Convocation, and elsewhere, when the president enters, all rise.
Job 29:9
The princes refrained talking. The other head-men of the tribe, recognizing Job’s superior rank and dignity, refrained from words as soon as he made his appearance, and in silence awaited what he would say. Perhaps we are scarcely to understand literally the further statement that they laid their hand on their mouth, which is probably as much an idiom as our phrase, “they held their tongues “(comp. Job 21:5).
Job 29:10
The nobles held their peace. The other leading men followed the example of the “princes,” and equally kept silence till Job had spoken. And their tongue cleaved to the roof of their month. A pleonastic repetition. The meaning is simply they said nothing, they stood in rapt attention.
Job 29:11
When the ear heard me, then it blessed me. Job, having described his reception by the nobles and chief men of the city, proceeds to speak of the behaviour of the common people. The former were respectful and attent, the latter rejoiced and made acclamation. Being of the class most exposed to oppression and wrong, they hailed in the patriarch a champion and a protector. They were sure of redress and justice where he was the judge. And when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me. The eye of the poor man lighted up with joy and rejoicing as Job sat down upon the seat of judgment, thus hearing witness to his fairness, candour, and integrity.
Job 29:12
Because I delivered the poor that cried. And again the Inscription of Ameni-Amenemha: “No little child have I injured; no widow have I oppressed; no fisherman have I hindered; no shepherd have I detained; no foreman have I taken from his gang to employ him in forced labour” (ibid; vol. 12.63). And the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. Championship of the poor was anciently regarded as characteristic of the wise, good, strong ruler.
Job 29:13
The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me (comp. Job 29:11). Oppression in the East sometimes drives its victims to actual starvation or to suicide. Isaiah calls the oppressors against whom he inveighs “murderers” (Isa 1:21). These “perishing” ones Job often saved, and they “blessed” him. And I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. How cold are the words of Ameni, “No widow have I oppressed,” compared with these! Job was not content with mere abstinence from evil, mere negative virtue. He so actively and effectually relieved distress that affliction was turned into happiness, and lamentation into rejoicing.
Job 29:14
I put on righteousness, and it clothed me (comp. Isa 61:10; Psa 132:9, etc.). Job “put on righteousness;” i.e. made it as the garment wherewith he clothed himself withal (Psa 109:18, Psa 109:19), covered up with it all his own natural imperfections, and made it part and parcel of his being. It was a beautiful covering, and, when once he had put it on, it clung to him, and could not be removed. It “clothed him,” or rather, if we translate the Hebrew literally, “clothed itself with him.” putting him on, as he had put it on. It was not merely external; it was internal, a habit of his soul and spirit. My judgment was as a robe and a diadem; rather, my justice (see the Revised Version). My “justice,” or “righteousness” (for the words are synonymous), was at once my robe and my crown, my necessary clothing and my ornament.
Job 29:15
I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. The Persian kings had officials, whom they called their “eyes” and their “ears”observers who were to inform them of all that went on in the provinces. Job acted as “eyes” to the blind of his time, giving them the information which their infirmity hindered them from obtaining. He was also feet to the lame, taking messages for them, going on their errands, and the like. He was kind and helpful to his fellow-men, not only in great, but also in little matters.
Job 29:16
I was a father to the poor (comp. Job 29:12, and see below, Job 31:16-22): and the cause which I knew not I searched out; rather, the cause of him that I knew not I searched out (see the Revised Version). When men were quite unknown to him, Job still gave to their causes the utmost possible attention, “searching them out,” or investigating them, as diligently as if they had been the causes of his own friends.
Job 29:17
And I brake the jaws of the wicked (comp. Psa 58:6). It is scarcely meant, as Canon Cook supposes, that Job was himself the executioner. “Quod facit per allure facit per so.” Job would regard as Age doing what he ordered to be done. And plucked the spoil out of his teeth. Either by disappointing him of a prey which he was on the verge of making ms own, or by compelling him to make restitution of a prey that he had actually laid hold of.
Job 29:18
Then I said, I shall die in my nest. The metaphor of “nest” for “dwelling-place” occurs in Num 24:21; Jer 49:16 : Oba 1:4; and Hab 2:9. It is also employed by Healed (‘Op. et Di.,’ 1.301). And I shall multiply my days as the sand. Some translate, “I shall multiply my days as the phoenix,” the fabulous bird which was supposed to live for five hundred years (Herod; 2:72), to burn itself on a funeral pile of spices, and then to rise again from its ashes. But the view seems to be a mere rabbinical tradition, and is unsupported by etymology. Khol () means “sand” in Gen 22:17; Jer 33:22; and elsewhere. It is taken in this sense by Rosenmuller, Schultens, Professor Lee, Canon Cook, and our Revisers.
Job 29:19
My root was spread out by the waters (comp. Psa 1:3; Jer 17:8); rather, to the watersso that the waters reached it and nourished it. And the dew lay all night upon my branch. Job compares himself, in his former prosperous state, to a tree growing by a river-side, which receives a double nourishmentfrom the actual water of the stream, which reaches its roots, and from the moisture evaporated from the stream, which hangs in the air, and descends in the shape of dew upon its leaves and branches. Both sources of refreshment represent the grace and favour of God.
Job 29:20
My glory was fresh in me; i.e. “my glory remained fresh”received no tarnish, continued as bright as it had been at the first. And my bow was renewed in my hand. My strength did not fail. When it seemed on the point of failing, it was secretly and mysteriously “renewed.” Some commentators regard Job 29:19 and Job 29:20 as a portion of the speech begun in Job 29:18, and view the verbs, not as past tenses, but as futures (compare the translation of the Revised Version). The general meaning is much the same, whichever of the two views we take.
Job 29:21
Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel (comp. Job 29:9, Job 29:10). Job, however, does not repeat himself, sines in the previous passage he is speaking of his work and office as judge, whereas now he declares the position which he had occupied among his countrymen as statesman and counsellor.
Job 29:22
After my words they spake not again. When Job had spoken, the debate commonly came to an end. It was felt that all had been said, and that further remark would be superfluous. And my speech dropped upon them (comp. Deu 32:2, “My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew”). The silent, penetrating influence of wise counsel is glanced at.
Job 29:23
They waited for me as for the rain; i.e. “they were as eager to heat’ me speak as the parched ground is to receive the winter rain, which it expects and waits for and absorbs greedily.” And they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain. They drank in my discourse as the spring vegetation drinks in the spring showers, known in the East generally as “the latter rains.”
Job 29:24
If I laughed on them, they believed it not; rather, if I smiled on them. If, as a mark of favour, I smiled on any, they thought it such graciousness and condescension that they could scarcely believe it possible. And the light of my countenance they cast not down. They never put me out of countenance, or made me sad and gloomy, by opposing my views and ranging themselves against me.
Job 29:25
I chose out their way, and sat chief. Though not an absolute monarch, but only a patriarchal head, I practically determined the course which the tribe took, since my advice was always followed. I thus “sat chief”nay, dwelt as a king in the army (or, in the host, i.e. among the people), as one that comforteth the mourners; i.e. as one to whom all looked for comfort in times of distress and calamity, as much as for counsel and guidance at other times (Job 29:21-23).
HOMILETICS
Job 29:1-25
Job’s second parable: 1. Regretful memories of bygone days.
I. DAYS OF RELIGIOUS HAPPINESS. In tender elegiActs strains Job resumes his monologue of sorrow, casting a pathetic glance upon “the times of yore,” already faded in the far past and gone beyond recall; not the days of his youth (Authorized Version), hut the autumn season of his mature manhood, when, like a field that the Lord had blessed (Gen 27:27), groaning beneath the exuberance of its harvest fruits, he was loaded with an abundance of good things (Psa 103:1-5). Heaven’s blessings were so many and so varied, so ripe and so ready, that it seemed to him like a very time of vintage for his soul. But, alas! these bright days of golden sunshine were departed, carrying with them all the treasures of felicity they had brought; and of these that which by its loss now struck the keenest pang of anguish into his melancholy soul was the blessed fellowship, the familiar, confiding, unreserved intercourse which he then enjoyed with Eloah, who, in the threefold capacity of Guardian, Guide, and Friend, was an habitual Visitor at his tent.
1. As a Guardian. Then Eloah preserved, or protected, him, as Satan, in the cloning of the fundamental controversy of the poem, complained (Job 1:10), and as Eliphaz (Job 5:11-21; Job 22:25), followed by Zophar (Job 11:18), assured him God would again do, if he returned in penitential submission to Eloah’s ways. This Divine guardianship must not be limited to the setting up of a fence around the patriarch’s estate, but extended to that of which it was a symbol, the casting of a shield around the patriarch’s soul. In the happy days of old Job nestled beneath the shadow of the Almighty’s wings (Rth 2:12; Psa 91:1), body, soul, and spirit, feeling himself secure against calamity of every sort, inward or outward, spiritual or material. What God was to Job he likewise proved himself to be to David and other Old Testament saints, and to-day offers himself to be to all Christ’s believing followersa Defender against the charges of the Law, of conscience, or of Satan (Psa 32:1-5; Psa 65:3; Psa 85:2, Psa 85:3; Isa 44:22; Rom 8:1, Rom 8:31, Rom 8:33); a Protector against the ills and temptations of life (Psa 46:1; Psa 48:3; Psa 121:3; Pro 3:6, Pro 3:23, Pro 3:24; Isa 54:14 17; Zec 9:8; 2Th 3:3; 1Pe 3:13).
2. As a Guide. Job also recollects that, in the bright days whose departure he laments, Eloah’s candle (or lamp) shone above his head, enabling him to walk with perfect safety even in nights of thickest darkness. The allusion probably is to the custom of suspending lamps in rooms or tents over the head (Carey); and the meaning is that, while rejoicing in Heaven’s favour and fellowship, Job’s feet never stumbled in the path of duty. If perplexities arose around or before him, through Divine grace he was always able to resolve them, threading his way through the deepest intricacies, and moving straight on in an even path. This was no doubt owing partly to the circumstance that his consciousness of inward peace and sincerity permitted him to make the best possible use of his natural faculties, and partly to the fact that he enjoyed the special illumination of Heaven. If piety does not confer new powers, it enables old ones to be turned to the best advantage Then the singleness of aim which a good man possesses largely facilitates the discovery of light in times of darkness. And, finally, saints have special promises guaranteeing providential guidance when placed in situations of perplexity m’ peril (Psa 25:8, Psa 25:9; Psa 32:1-11; Psa 37:23; exit. 4).
3. As a Friend. More particularly Job mentions that, in the times of blessedness referred to, “the secret,” or favour (Cox), or blessed fellowship (Delitzsch), or counsel (Fry) of Eloah was upon his tent. Whether Job was honored like Abraham to receive theophanies (Gen 18:1, Gen 18:2), so that he might actually speak of God being a Visitor at his tent (Carey), the language (literally, “in the seat or cushion of God being at my tent”) obviously points to an intercourse of the most friendly and familiar kind between him and Godsuch a dwelling together as Eliphaz affirmed should take place (Job 22:21) if Job and God were to be at peace. The friendship here depicted as having existed between Job and Eloah was realized in the case of Abraham and Jehovah (2Ch 20:7; Isa 41:8; Jas 2:23), and is in a certain sense still realized in the experience of Christians and the Saviour (Joh 15:15). As one result of this friendly intercourse between Eloah and Job, Job became acquainted with Eloah’s counsel or secret purpose, as Abraham was informed of Jehovah’s determination concerning Sodom (Gen 18:17), as the prophets generally were afterwards instructed about the mind of God (Amo 3:7), as “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him” (Psa 25:14; Pro 3:32), and as on believers is conferred an unction from the Holy One, enabling them to know all things (1Jn 2:20, 1Jn 2:27; 1Jn 5:20), but more particularly the mind of Christ (Joh 16:13-15; 1Co 2:16).
II. DAYS OF DOMESTIC FELICITY. It is a special mark of piety in Job that, enumerating his lost blessings, he begins with what the worldly or wicked man would have plied last, viz. the Divine friendship. As to David (Psa 63:3) and to Asaph (Psa 73:25), so to Job the favour and fellowship of God constituted the principal ingredient in his full cup of blessing. But next to fellowship with a God of mercy and salvation, no earthly happiness can be compared to a home illumined by the sunshine of genuine religion, and gladdened by the cheery voices of loving and obedient children. Job cannot recall the time when the Almighty was still with him (verse 5) without remembering that then also his children (his young men, his boys) were about hima numerous, happy, loving, united, and, it may be hoped, a pious family (Job 1:1-5; vide homiletics). It is contrary to religion for a good man, or any man, to prize his wife and children above his Saviour and his God (Mat 10:37); it is contrary to nature to behold them taken from his side by the hand of death without weeping (Gen 23:2; Joh 11:1-57 :81, 83, 35); it is contrary to neither nature nor religion to cherish them with loudest affection, and to mourn for their death with sincere lamentation.
III. DAYS OF MATERIAL PROSPERITY. Guarded by Divine care and guided by Divine light, like Jacob in Padan-aram (Gen 31:5, Gen 31:7, Gen 31:11, Gen 31:12, Gen 31:42), Job attained to extensive wealth, the poetic imagery employed (verse 6) to depict it meaning, when converted into unadorned prose, that his flocks became so abundant, and their yield of milk so rich and plentiful, that he might almost be said to wash his steps in butter, which among the Arabs was mostly a liquid preparation, and that everywhere throughout his domain the crags were clothed with olive trees so prolific that the very rocks appeared to pour forth oil It was another mark of Job’s fervent piety and well-balanced judgment that he preferred his children to his flocks and trees, giving these latter only the third place in his esteem, and that he ascribed his material prosperity, no less than his domestic felicity, to the circumstance that then the Almighty was with him. So did Jacob when serving with Laban (Gen 31:5), and Joseph when ruling for Pharaoh (Gen 45:8), recognize God as the Author of their temporal advancement. So does Scripture habitually trace to God every blessing which the saint enjoys (Psa 75:6, Psa 75:7; Jas 1:17).
IV. DAYS OF CIVIC HONOUR. A saint of eminent piety, the father of a numerous family, and the proprietor of vast possessions, Job had likewise been the chief magistrate, or supreme dispenser of law and justice, in his clan. Passing beyond the bounds of his own private domain, and entering the adjacent city, when he took his seat among the elders in the broad way, i.e. in the open space usually reserved in Oriental cities, either in front of the gate (2Ch 32:6; Neh 8:1, Neh 8:8, Neh 8:16), or in the vaulted recesses beneath the archway (Gen 19:1; 1Ki 22:10), for the transaction of business (Rth 4:1), the dispensing of justice (Pro 31:23), or the conducting of other negotiations, he was saluted with marked tokens of respect. The younger men, conscious of his greatness, retired into the background; the old men amongst the councillors received him standing; the voice of the greatest magnate amongst them was silent until he had uttered his opinion. A remarkable testimony to the high esteem in which Job was held for his personal qualities and commanding abilities.
V. DAYS OF PUBLIC PHILANTHROPY. What Eliphaz once admitted (Job 4:3, Job 4:4), Job is now constrained to avow, that his whole by-past career had been one of unwearied benevolence. In his magisterial capacity he had:
1. Espoused the cause of the poor and needy. In conspicuous contradiction to Eliphaz, who had charged him (Job 22:5-9) with intolerable oppression and cruelty, with robbing the poor, and inhumanly suffering the naked and hungry to perish, he had taken, it might be said, the whole family of the unfortunate under his protection. When a poor man oppressed by his neighbour had cried out for help, when an orphan had poured into his ear a tale or pitiful distress, when a miserable outcast half-dead through cold and nakedness, or through hunger and thirst, had found the way to his door, when a broken-hearted widow had appealed to him for assistance, he had had an ear for every cry, a heart for every sorrow, and a hand for every need. Job’s sympathies had inclined him to feel for the defenceless and the poor. And in this Job had shown himself to be a good man (Psa 40:1), and an eminent type of Christ (Psa 72:4; Mat 8:16, Mat 8:17). Nay, Job had considered no care or trouble too much to expend on behalf of his clients. He had both taken pains to understand their complaint, and had not been satisfied till he had rectified their grievance. And with such skill, energy, and perseverance had he conducted their causes, that he commonly carried them forward to success, delivering the poor and fatherless who cried to him (verse 12), causing the widow’s heart to sing for joy (verse 13), breaking the jaws of the wicked and plucking the spoil out of his teeth (verse 17). And in all that Job had said or done in his magisterial capacity he had:
2. Acted with the most scrupulous regard to justice. He had not met chicanery and oppression by resorting to the same dishonest weapons. If he had stood forth for justice to the poor, he had not attempted to withhold it from the rich. So unchallengeably just had been his decisions, and so unimpeachable the principles of equity by which these were guided, that he felt himself entitled to say he had literally clothed himself in righteousness, and assumed integrity as a robe and turban; in this, again, typifying strikingly the Lord Jesus Christ (Psa 72:2; Psa 96:13). And so successful had Job been in his determination to combine “mercy and truth, righteousness and peace,” in his magisterial capacity, that he had:
3. Gained the good opinion and respect of all. Unlike Aristides, whom his fellow-countrymen ostracized because they could not longer bear to hear him called the “just” the fellow-citizens of Job had saluted him on every side with words and looks of commendation and esteem (verse 11).
VI. DAYS OF UNANTICIPATED EVIL. Pious, rich, honoured, useful, trusted, revered, Job was unconscious of a single gloomy foreboding. All round him, above him, before him, the prospect was clear and exhilarating. Not a speck of cloud lay upon the bright horizon that encompassed him. Job had no thought but that he should live a long, prosperous, and honoured life, multiplying his days like the sand, or like the phoenix, the fabulous bird of Egyptian mythology, or, perhaps, like the. palm tree, and at last dying calmly in his nest, i.e. like Abraham (Gen 25:8), m the bosom of his family. Two things contributed to foster such a pleasing anticipation in the mind of Job.
1. The apparent stability of his outward or material prosperity. Comparing himself to a tree planted by the rivers of watersa frequent biblical emblem of a good man (Psa 1:3; Psa 92:12; Jer 17:8)he had hoped that, since his roots were open to the waters, whence they could always draw a plentiful supply of moisture, and since his branches were nightly laden with dew (verse 19), nothing ever would or even could occur to interrupt the outward course of his temporal greatness. The sources of his wealth appeared so permanent and inexhaustible that he never imagined they could either be diminished or dried up. His honours were so fresh upon him (cf. ‘Henry VIII.,’ act 3. sc. 2) that he dreamt not of their decline. And his manly vigour, his capability of warding off danger, represented by the bow which he carried in his hand, was so full and so easily renewed that he feared not an overthrow to his unexampled fortune, or an eclipse to the shining splendour of his honourable name.
2. The unlimited extent of his authority and influence. The autobiographical fragment introduced in verses 21-25 is not designed as a continuation or resumption of the theme treated of above (verses 7, 8), but is intended to explain how dark forebodings never crossed the mind of Job when reposing in the brilliant sunshine of his earthly glory. The profound veneration in which his countrymen held him, causing them with patient silence and eager expectation to wait for his counsel (verses 21, 23); the awful respect in which they held his words, regarding them as final on every subject they handled (verse 22); the effect which his decisions never failed to produce upon those who heard them, his speech distilling upon them with reviving and enlivening influences, and being welcome to their hearts as the early and the latter rains (verse 23); the influence he wielded over them by his kindly manners, his very smile being regarded as an act of gracious condescension which they could hardly believe was meant for them, but which, nevertheless, they were loth to lose, and which seemed to have a talismanic power in dispelling their sadness (verse 24); and the unquestioning, nay, joyous, submission with which they hailed his instructions, his position among them being at once that of a monarch and a friend (verse 25);all these considerations rendered it difficult for Job to think that ever for him an evil day should dawn.
Learn:
1. The propriety and profit of recalling and reviewing the past.
2. In enumerating blessings, much depends upon assigning to each its exact place in the order of importance.
3. To a good man the things of God ever stand in the front rank.
4. Having flint obtained Heaven’s favour, a man may legitimately aspire to acquire the riches of the world and the good opinions of his fellow-men.
5. An upright and useful life seldom fails to meet its recompense, even upon earth.
6. He whom God has enriched with wealth, ability, and influence should devote them to the service of the poor and needy.
7. The blessings of those whom a good man relieves are greater riches than accumulated gold and silver.
8. The retrospect of a well-spent life is a great consolation in the season of adversity.
9. It is dangerous to look for permanence in anything on earth.
10. It is well when great men can combine love with authority, and sympathy with power.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Job 29:1-25
Wistful retrospect of past happy days.
I. PICTURES OF MEMORY; HAPPINESS FOUNDED ON THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD. (Job 29:1-10.)
1. Friendship with God the source of happiness. (Job 29:1-5.) This is beautifully indicated in figurative expressions. He thinks of the days when God’s light beamed upon his brow, by God’s light he walked through the darkness; the days of his ripe and mellow age (rather than of his “youth”), when the secret, i.e. the intimacy, of the Almighty was a shelter and a blessing to his home. The word “secret” means “intimacy,” confidential intercourse (see Job 19:19; Psa 25:14; Psa 55:15; Pro 3:32). God was near to him, and the next greatest blessing to that favour of God, viz. the blessing of children, was granted to him. (Compare on the blessing of children, Psa 127:3, sqq.; Psa 128:3.) The outward blessings of life are chiefly to be valued as signs of the deeper, the inward good; the constant nearness of God, the consciousness of his approval, the certainty of his guidance.
2. Features of outward happiness. (Job 29:6-10.)
(1) Abundance of means. Here the favourite Oriental figures are employed. He bathed his steps in butter, and the rock at his side gushed with streams of oil (comp. Deu 32:13).
(2) Respect and dignity. When he went to the gate of the city, the great public place of assembly in Oriental cities, corresponding to the agora of the Greeks, the forum of the Romans, and the market-place of Our old towns (Job 5:4; Job 31:21; Pro 1:21; Pro 8:3); when he placed his seat in the marketthe wide open place close by the gatesthe young men retired in reverential respect before him, and the old men rose and remained standing until he had taken his seat; while princes ceased their conversation, laying the hand upon the mouth (Job 21:5); the voice of persons of consideration was hushed, their tongue cleaving to the roof of their mouth. The possession of the respect of others is one of the noblest kinds of wealth, as the consciousness of being despised, looked down upon, scouted, and flouted is an element of the deepest misery. Out of the dark present Job looks back to those sunny days. His life is “in the sere and yellow leaf,” and his is “the crown of sorrow,” the “remembering happier things.” “It is the pensive autumn feeling, the sensation of half-sadness that we experience when the longest day of the year is past, and every day that follows is shorter, and the light fainter, and the feebler shadows tell that Nature is hastening with gigantic footsteps to her winter grave.” As Christians, we should learn to look forward, and forget the past, in so far as its recollection paralyzes or depresses (Php 3:13, Php 3:14). (Read F. W. Robertson’s sermon on this: ‘Christian Progress by Oblivion of the Past.’)
“Not backward are our glances bent,
But onwards to our Father’s home.”
The past is gone for ever; but there is a present and a future which is still our own.
II. THE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS IN GOODNESS. (Verses 11-17.) His benevolence and his strict integrity were mediately the cause of his prosperity. For although God is the one and only Cause of all things, the gracious Author of our bliss, yet his dispensations are not arbitrary. Blessing is conditioned by faith; and faith is proved by conduct. Job’s public and private life was known and seen and elicited approval from all. He was the succourer of the poor and the helpless orphan; the blessing of the forlorn and the wretched was breathed forth on his behalf. He had clothed himself with rectitude (compare for this figure, Isa 11:5; Isa 51:9; Isa 59:17; Psa 132:9). It was to him like a robe and a turban. He was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame; a father to the needy. He searched out the cause of unknown men, to help them as surety or otherwise if their cause was good. He put down men of violence and oppression, and recovered their ill-gotten booty from them, as one snatches the prey from the jaws of the wild beast. Despite the mournful mood of Job, what solace is there not, even in the greatest affliction, through the memory of having been permitted to do some good and reap some reward of affection from others in the world? And, looking to the sequel of the story, let us remember that God is not unrighteous to forget the labour of love. Every cause has its effect; every act of benevolence will be followed in due time by its bright flowers of peace and joy in the conscience and the memory. Go on, then, in the work of doing good, steadfast and immovable in the work of the Lord. Be like fountains watering the earth and spreading fertility. “Subdue discord, mutiny, widespread despair by manfulness, justice, mercy, and wisdom. Chaos is dark, deep as hell; let light be, and there is instead a green, flowery world. Oh, it is great, and there is no other greatness! To make some work of God’s creation a little more fruitful, better, more worthy of God; to make some human hearts a little wiser, more manful, happier, more blessed; it is a work for God!” (Carlyle).
III. THE MEMORY OF BRIGHT HOPES; THE RESPECT AND INFLUENCE IN FORMER DAYS. (Verses 18-25.)
1. Everything in that happy period pointed with seeming prophetic power to a long life‘ to a blessed old age. He thought within himself that he should end his days in his nest. in the besom of his family, in peace and security; and like the sand (or the days of the phoenix) would be their number. If the word be taken as denoting the phoenix, then the allusion is to the legend of the bird living five hundred years, then burning in its nest, and rising from the ashes. Peace and prosperity bred in his mind great hopes. Like a well-watered tree, he thought his life would spread, the refreshing dew resting by night upon its branches, and that his honour would ever freshly remain with him; that his bowthe symbol of lusty manhood and strength (1Sa 2:4; Psa 46:9; Psa 76:3; Jer 49:35; Jer 51:56)would renew itself in his hand. We learn here, in passing, the lesson not to build on the constancy of earthly things, not to lay up treasures of hope here. If it be well with us now, let us be prepared for reverses (Sirach 11:25). This lesson comes back to us from many a saying of the ancient world, mixed no doubt with much of superstition, and ignorance of the nature of God, but still in the main expressed with the truth of experience. “There is nothing secure in the world, no glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all life into confusion, mix everything with its reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more worship and reverence”. “God hath power to change the lowly for the lofty; he weakens the distinguished, he brings the obscure to the light; Fortune with shrill sound here removes the towering crest, and here she sets it up” (Horace, ‘Od.,’ 1:35). The brief sum of life’s days forbids us to cherish a long hope (ibid; Job 1:4). We must learn in a Christian sense to “pluck the day, and have the smallest confidence in what is to come” (ibid; Job 1:11). What the morrow may bring we should shun to inquire, and count as a gain every day that may be given us (ibid; Job 1:9). “Too late is the life of to-morrow; live to-day!” (Martial).
2. A further picture of the social esteem and respect in which his past days had been spent. The members of his tribe or clan all looked up to him, listened in silence to his address, and had nothing to add alter he had spoken. His speech fell upon them like the refreshing rain for which the thirsty pastures longthe late rain which in March or April blesses the ripening crops (comp. Deu 11:14; Jer 3:3; Jer 5:24; Joe 2:23; Hos 6:3). His cheerful smile dismissed men’s rising fears, the light of his countenance was like the sun dispelling the clouds of doubt or alarm. He sat in the midst of the assembly of his tribe, guiding, commanding, directing, like a king in the midst of his battle-host; or, as if this picture were too warlike and remote from the peaceful scenes of the patriarch’s life, he sat among them as a general consoler, a comforter of the mourners. Thus
“Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Sucks at his breast, and turns the past to pain?
But we have a power over this “bosom-spring,” and may cheer or sadden ourselves with retrospect, according as we take the golden key of faith or the iron key of despondency wherewith to unlock the door of the past. Do not these bright memories of a well-spent past afford solace to the afflicted hero, though they also touch the nerves to pain? Let it be ours so to use memory that it still yield instructive joy and hope. As we turn over her mixed records, let us say to ourselves, “The joys we have possessed are ever oursout of the reach of chance and change. Let past years, so far as they are marked with the greatness of God, with acts of piety, works of love, breed in us perpetual benedictions.”J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN
Job 29:1-25
A mournful reflection upon a happy past.
Job had lived in honour and great respect. He was “the greatest of all the men of the East.” The Divine testimony concerning him was, “There is none like him in the earth.” Job’s was an enviable condition, and his own words indicate how sensible he was of it. In his mournful utterance, made as he looks back upon a dead past, we see wherein consisted his happiness; and we learn what arc the elemental conditions of the highest felicity in human lifeat least at that period of the world’s history. Nor can we think of loftier conditions to-day. The conditions of happiness on the loss of which Job mournfully reflected are
I. THE ASSURED FAVOUR OF JEHOVAH. The proof of this to Job was in his abounding prosperity.
II. DOMESTIC FELICITY. If the joy of home be destroyed, all joy must wither.
III. THE RESPECT OF SURROUNDING SOCIETY. It is always painful to a right-minded man not to be held in respect by his fellow-men; and although it may minister to pride in the unwary, it is to the prudent a source of the greatest satisfaction, especially when it is subordinated to the honour that cometh from God only.
IV. THE HONOURABLE REGARD EVEN OF THE GREAT. The very princes and nobles held silence when he spake. He who is so highly honoured cannot but honour himself. Happy the man whose self-respect so ripens.
V. THE EXERCISE OF CHARITY, without which the heart would become selfish.
VI. THE RESPONSIVE BLESSINGS OF MEN, sweet as nard of great price.
VII. CONSCIOUSNESS OF INTEGRITY AND RIGHTEOUSNESSa conscience void of offence.
VIII. THE EXERCISE OF HIS POWER AND WEALTH FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE NEEDY AND OPPRESSED. Every kind act leaves a fragrance on the hand of him who does it.
IX. THE POSSESSION OF HOPE. It might be said the hope of the permanence of these precious possessions.
X. A CAUSE OF BLESSING TO OTHERS. In these lies the secret of the truest happiness, but many deserve them not, and having them are not able to retain their integrity and simplicity. Hence how often are they withdrawn! The absence of these Job is called to mourn. To hold fast his integrity in the loss as truly as amidst the possession of these things marks the true greatness and goodness of the man, and ultimately brings him the highest honour.R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Job 29:2-4
Regrets for the happy past.
I. IT IS NATURAL TO LOOK BACK WITH REGRET ON THE HAPPY PAST. The memory of past joy is not wholly pleasant. If the joy is gone, the memory only adds pain to the present sense of loss. Several things contribute to give intensity to the feeling of regret.
1. Many of the best blessings are not appreciated while we possess them. We have to lose them to learn their value. This is especially true of great common blessings, such as the buoyancy of youth, health, affluence. When all goes well with us we do not consider how many gifts of God we are enjoying. The charm of summer is appreciated when dull November makes us look back on the lost days of brightness. We wake up to the value of our loved ones when they have been taken from us by the hand of death. Adversity reveals the privileges of prosperity. Declining years teach the value of youth.
2. Reflection grows with years. It has been remarked upon as a misfortune that so many of the best things in life seem to be lavished upon an age that is carelessly negligent of them. Strength, energy, health, happiness, in abundance are enjoyed in youth without a thought. When these treasures are more scarce they are carefully economized and highly valued. In later years the habit of looking backward grows upon us, and reflection takes the place of heedless activity. Thus we consider find appreciate with regret in the later years of life what we disregarded in the earlier times of possession.
3. Memory throws a delusive glamour over the past. The distant hills are beautiful; we see their purple shadows, we do not observe their stony paths. Youth is not so sunny as age paints it. Keen pains of youth are forgotten in after-years, especially if those years have brought with them the fortitude that despises such sufferings. For there is a gain in years, and this very gain leads to an over-valuation of youth. Patience and self-control are acquired by experience, and while they help us to bear much that would be intolerable to youth, they also lead us to smile at and under-estimate the wild distresses of earlier years.
IX. IT IS GOOD TO APPRECIATE THE DIVINE BLESSINGS OF THE HAPPY PAST. Job acknowledged that God had preserved him in past days. The candle of the Lord had then shone upon his head. He enjoyed God’s friendship when he came to maturity.
1. This adds poignancy to the grief of regret. God has not been sufficiently appreciated. His blessings have not been acknowledged with merited gratitude. Or if no self-accusations arise on these points, still the loss of God’s favour seems to accompany the loss of his gifts. The regret has deeper thoughts than those concerning earthly good things. Apparently deserted by God, the troubled man cries, with poor Cowper
“Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his Word?”
2. This should really inspire hope. God is not fickle. His constancy is deeper than appearances. We may have lost hold of his goodness through our own sin or distrust. Perhaps, however, we are deluding ourselves; he is really nearer to us in adversity than he was in prosperity, only we cannot understand the mysteries of his providence. Assuredly, if God once loved and cared for his children, he will never forsake them.
3. This should urge the young to appreciate their privileges. It is not desirable that any should reflect overmuch on their present happy condition, because the charm of it is its unconscious freedom and activity. But it is only right to acknowledge the goodness of God with thankfulness; and to so use early privileges that we shall not afterwards look back with regret on a misspent youth.W.F.A.
Job 29:8-12
The character that wins respect.
Job paints a glowing picture of his honoured condition in past days. Then he was more than prosperous. He was treated with great deference. Let us gather up the traits of the character that wins respect, and in order to do so let us distinguish them from false grounds of deference.
I. FALSE GROUNDS OF DEFERENCE.
1. Power. Multitudes cringe before mere power, either in fear of giving offence or with a hope of gaining some advantage. The Oriental makes his humble salaam to the infidel whom in his heart he despises. This deference is no credit to either party.
2. Wealth. The worship of mammon may be less visibly cruel than the worship of Mars, and yet in some respects it is more degrading, for it calls out no heroic qualities. The deference shown to the rich simply because they are rich is one of the most unworthy characteristics of human weakness. It is not peculiar to our own age; this miserable sycophantic spirit was ridiculed by Roman satirists and reprobated by New Testament writers (e.g. Jas 2:2). Its sordid meanness humiliates all who are enslaved by it.
3. Self-assertion. The world is often too easy in taking men at their own valuation of themselves. Because a great claim is made it is often tacitly assented to, simply because people are too indolent or too cowardly to question it. But self-importance is not greatness.
4. Success. There is more in this when it is not merely a business matter, when it indicates sterling qualities of ability and energy. Still, good fortune may have much to do with it, and conscientious scruples may have been trampled down in the fierce determination to win it at any cost. Then the failure that would not stoop to the lower and more easy means of success is infinitely more worthy of honour.
II. THE TRUE CHARACTER THAT WINS RESPECT. it is portrayed in Job’s description of his own happy past. Why was this hushed deference of old men as well as young, of princes and nobles? The answer is to be found in the conduct of Job.
1. Active benevolence. “Job delivered the poor that cried,” etc. Here was more than princely generosity. It costs a man absolutely nothing to leave a big legacy to the poor, and it does not hurt him much to give freely during his lifetime out of his superfluous cash. On the contrary, the money may be profitably laid out, even from a purely worldly and selfish point of view, in the honour of standing well in subscription-lists. But the greater honour is due to those who exert themselves for the good of their brother-men. Lord Shaftesbury was a man of small means. His fame is not founded on money gifts; it rests on the more solid foundation of self-denying labours.
2. Integrity. Job put on righteousness, and it clothed him. Without this, benevolence is of little value. We must be just before we are generous. A Christian man of business should see to it that his name is without reproach in the commercial world. Truth and honesty are primary conditions of respect.
3. Wisdom. “Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel” (verse 21). Had Job been a foolish, though a well-meaning man, deference to his counsel would have been asign of weakness on the part of others. But he proved himself to be a man of strong mental power and of true wisdom. We owe respect to the “men of light and leading” when their leading is determined by their light.W.F.A.
Job 29:13
The blessing of him that was ready to perish.
I. WHY IT IS VALUABLE. We cannot but be struck with this beautiful trait in Job’s autobiographical sketch. It is better than all renown. The clamours of the multitude are poor plaudits compared with the blessing of the poor. Many people may be indifferent to it. They may be satisfied if only they can grasp power, and compel the homage of the great, although their path is followed by “curses not loud, but deep.” Cruel conquerors, ruthless tyrants, hard-hearted men of the world, know nothing of the blessing Job here describes. Yet it is solid and real.
1. It springs from true appreciation. This is no superficial praise required by custom or prompted by shallow motives. It arises out of a genuine perception of goodness.
2. It is characterized by gratitude. Thus it con-talus warmer feelings than those of admiration. An element of awakening affection enters into it. Now, it is better to be loved by the obscure than to be merely honoured by the great; it is better to be loved by a few than to be applauded by a multi-rode.
3. It is accompanied by the approval of Christ. He tells us that what we do to one of the least of his brethren we do to him. He commends the good Samaritan to us as an approved example. Therefore the gratitude of the humble poor carries with it the smile of Heaven.
4. It is powerful for good. Men try to win the favour of the great who can do much for them, and selfishly disregard the opinions of the poor who seem to have power to do them but little good or harm. Yet the blessings of the helpless are prayers to the great Friend of the helpless. They bring down the blessings of God. Happy is the man who lives under these conditions!
II. HOW IT IS EARNED.
1. By means of genuine goodness. Clamours of applause may be won by very equivocal conduct. Superficial things may excite extraordinary admiration. People rush to stare and shout after any celebrity. But they want to know more before they will bless one. This devout well-wishing and praying for a person which we call blessing can only be earned by real and solid goodness.
2. Through the exercise of sympathy. The helpless and perishing may be constrained to avail themselves of favours tossed to them from a distance by a hand of proud patronage, and perhaps even of scornful contempt, But if there is no grace in the gift there will be little gratitude in the reception of it. If we would earn the blessing of the helpless we must win their love, and in order to do that we must manifest love to them. Sympathy unlocks the fountains of the heart.
3. In deeds of active helpfulness. If the sympathy is genuine it will lead spotaneously to such deeds. We cannot truly sympathize with a person in trouble without desiring to help him. Now, the active helpfulness will be the sign and seal of the sympathy. This it was that secured Job’s place in the heart of the poor. Men have heaped honours on the head of the “Happy Warrior.” The time has come when we should revive the better glories of Job’s days. If we desire to win a position in the world, let us save our ambition from sordid or even wicked aims. Let him be first in love and service who would be first in honour. This is Christ’s rule (Mar 9:35).W.F.A.
Job 29:14
Clothed with righteousness.
I. RIGHTEOUSNESS CLOTHES A MAN AS WITH A GARMENT.
1. It covers. If a man has but a good character, we can pardon much else in him. He may be weak, foolish, unfortunate. He may have failed in the world, and have come down to poverty. Yet he is not in rags. A royal robe covers him, and, in the eyes of those who can appreciate true worth, this is the one thing seen about him.
2. It protects. The garment is to keep off the chill winds and damping mists and scorching sun. Righteousness is more than a stout garment. It is a piece of armoura breastplate, protecting the heart (Eph 6:14). When once a man is assured of the integrity of his cause he can look the whole world in the face; he can dare to go through fire and water; he is strong and safe where one with an evil conscience may well tremble and cower.
3. It adorns. This righteousness is not only decent and comforting, like a thick, warm, homespun garment; it is more beautiful than a king’s clothing of purple and silk and gold embroidery. There is no beauty so fair as that of goodness.
4. It cannot be hidden. It is not a secret confined to the heart. It must be there first, it must spring from the heart. But it is not hidden within. Character is visible, like a garment worn in the street.
II. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH THUS CLOTHES MUST BE REAL. It is only the perversity of an erroneous theology that could ever make it necessary to utter so obvious a sentence as this. There is a way of referring to the imputed righteousness of Christ as though this dispensed with the necessity of our being ourselves righteous. Surely such a doctrine would be immoral. In what respects could this so-called robe of righteousness be distinguished from the hypocrite’s cloak? If Christ’s righteousness were only to hide our unrighteousness without curing it, not only would a great deception be practised, but no real good would be done. The result would be an unmitigated evil. For what is our curse and our ruin? Is it not our sin? If so, nothing can benefit us that does not destroy that sin. Therefore an attempt to cover it up and leave it unaltered will do us no good, but will injure us by drugging our conscience and giving us a false assurance. In Eastern cities an open drain runs down the middle of the street, and is not so offensive as one might think, because it is always being oxidized and purified by the fresh air. We cover over our drains, but make ventilating holes in our streets, through which gases of concentrated foulness, unmixed with pure air, are continually rising among the passers-by. Have we gained much?
III. ONLY CHRIST CAN CLOTHE US WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS. Self-righteousness is a delusion. We cannot make ourselves righteous, nor can any law put us right with God. St. Paul demonstrated this in the opening chapters of his Epistle to the Romans. But he also showed that God had given us righteousness in Christ (Rom 3:21, Rom 3:22). Now, this comes first of all in forgiveness. We are then put in a right relation with God, before we have overcome all the sin that dwells within us. Christ is the promise of our future righteousness. In this way his righteousness means much to us. God cannot be taken in by any fiction. He can only regard us just as we are. But he can treat us for Christ’s sake better than we deserve. So through Christ we are placed in right relations with God, and those right relations are the channels through which real righteousness comes into us.W.F.A.
Job 29:18
The phoenix.
Accepting the rendering that is now adopted by most of the abler commentatorsthat which is given in the margin of the Revised Versionwe see Job comparing himself in his earlier days to the phoenix, which, “according to the Egyptian legend, lived five hundred years, and then, setting fire to its nest, renewed its youth in the funeral pyre.” Youth cannot believe in death, unless, indeed, it falls into a sentimental mood, or is startled by the ugly fact itself. Naturally, when health is unbroken, and all goes well, life seems to open up an endless vista of days to the young man. This view contains both a foolish delusion and a Divine truth.
I. THE FOOLISH DELUSION. The phoenix was only a fabulous bird; no such creature exists in nature. No one has ever found the elixir of life. The idea that life is long is a delusion of youth. It springs in part from the freshness of things, and in part from the overflowing vitality of youth. In his address to a butterfly, Wordsworth says
Sit near us on the bough!
We’ll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.”
Perhaps there is no reason to shatter this delusion. Why should we spoil the sunshine of youth with the shadow of coming years? The world could not go on without young enthusiasm, and hope is essential to young enthusiasm. Yet it is possible to be led into practical mistakes by this delusion. The young may think that there is plenty of time before them, and the thought may be used as an excuse for indolence, negligence, and the postponement of duty. Then a sudden awakening comes with a shock of alarm, as it is perceived only too late that the golden opportunities of youth are gonefor ever!
II. THE DIVINE TRUTH. Clement of Rome appealed to the phoenix as a witness for the resurrection. We smile at his credulity. But may we not appeal to the legend of the phoenix as an evidence of the instinct of immortality? Why is it so natural to us to believe that life will go on for ever? Shall we put this idea down entirely to the delusion of circumstances and of our own vitality? Does it not spring from something deeper in our nature? Be that as it may, however, Christ has come to satisfy the desire and to confirm the hope. Job confessed the foolishness of his youthful dreams, yet even he in those old-world days had occasional glimpses of the life beyond the grave, and we have a grand assurance of that life in Christ and his resurrection. The mistake is to dream of an earthly immortality. The old man who cherishes fond hopes of living a little longer is not much better off than the drowning man catching at a straw. But he who has a hold on the life eternal can afford to see the years rushing away, swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. He must make the best of them while he has them; for this life is with him but once, and he will have to give an account of it hereafter; for there is a hereaftera great day of God’s eternity that knows no sunset.W.F.A.
Job 29:21-23
Welcome counsel.
Among the happy circumstances of Job’s sunny days of prosperity, he recalls the welcome that was accorded to his words of advice. Too often advice is more freely offered than thankfully received. Let us, then, consider the quality, the utility, and the acceptance of welcome counsel.
I. THE QUALITY OF WELCOME COUNSEL. What conditions must be fulfilled to make advice worthy of acceptation?
1. It must be full of knowledge. A glib tongue is ready enough to offer gratuitous advice, but we want to ascertain whether a full mind is inspiring it. Religious teachers must know for themselves before they can safely lead others. The doubt that is pardonable in the private person may be fatal to the public instructor.
2. It must be based on experience. Evidently Job was a man of wide experience. He spoke out of the fulness of his own observation of the world. Armchair counsellors are not much valued. An apprenticeship must be served to the affairs on which we would give advice.
3. It must be accompanied by practical wisdom. Knowledge and experience may find a man very foolish, and leave him so. We have to learn how to apply our acquisitions. We need practical tact in dealing with men and affairs.
4. It must be offered in sympathy. It is very little good to give preaching advice. We must talk to a man as a brother. We must let people see that we care for them, and that we are truly studying their good. A suspicion that the advice is not disinterested vitiates it entirely.
II. THE UTILITY OF WELCOME COUNSEL. Bushels of advice have to be thrown on one side as so much burdensome rubbish. Nevertheless, the rare value of really good advice is beyond all reckoning.
1. Right living is supremely important. Counsel deals with life rather than with opinions. It touches conduct. Now, as Matthew Arnold quaintly says, “conduct is three parts of life.” Anything that really helps conduct must be valuable.
2. Right living is not easy. We are often perplexed and in uncertainty. Our prejudices and interests warp our judgments.
3. External advice brings new light. It may not be better than what we already possess; but it is an addition. The wise counsellor helps us to look at our affairs from a fresh point of view. At the same time, he comes with a certain calmness and detachment that enable him to take a fair view of the situation.
III. THE ACCEPTANCE OF WELCOME ADVICE.
1. It needs humility to receive it. We are all ready to receive the advice that concurs with our previous opinions; but that advice is scarcely needed. The difficulty is to accept the advice that contradicts our notions or wishes. Pride resents it; yet it may be most needful to us.
2. It should be taken with discrimination. Well-meant advice may be very foolish; even wise advice is not infallible. We have to select what commends itself to our judgment.
3. It ought not to supersede independent thought and choice. We may be advised by counsellors; but we have no business to let ourselves be ruled by them. After all, it is we and not they who will be responsible for what we do. Let us, then, preserve independence of judgment, and cultivate strength of will.
4. It deserves to be treated with gratitude. For the sake of its value. Also because, if it is worth much, it must have cost our counsellor time and pains. Too often giving advice is a very thankless task. N.B.All earthly counsel is useful only in so far as it follows the heavenly, of which it is a type. The most welcome counsel should be that which comes through the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.W.F.A.
Job 30:1-31
EXPOSITION
Job 30:1-31
The contrast is now completed. Having drawn the portrait of himself as he was, rich, honoured, blessed with children, flourishing, in favour with both God and man, Job now presents himself to us as he is, despised of men (verses 1-10), afflicted of God (verse 11), a prey to vague terrors (verse 15), tortured with bodily pains (verses 17, 18), cast off by God (verses 19, 20), with nothing but death to look for (verses 23-31). The chapter is the most touching in the whole book.
Job 30:1
But now they that are younger than I have me in derision. As Job had been speaking last of the honour in which he was once held, he beans his contrast by chewing how at present he is disgraced and derided. Men who are outcasts and solitary themselves, poor dwellers in caves (verse 6), who have much ado to keep body and soul together (verses 3, 4), and not men only‘ but youths, mere boys, scoff at him, make him a song and a byword (verse 9). nay, “spare not to spit in his face” (verse 10). There seem to have been in his vicinity weak and debased tribes, generally contemned and looked down upon, regarded as thieves (verse 5) by their neighbours, and considered to be of base and vile origin (verse 8), who saw in Job’s calamities a rare opportunity for insulting and triumphing over a member of the superior race which had crushed them, and thus tasting, to a certain extent, the sweetness of revenge. Whose fathers I would have disdained (rather, I disdained) to have set with the dogs of my flock. Job had not thought their fathers worthy of employing even as the lowest class of herdsmen, those reckoned on a par with the sheep-dogs.
Job 30:2
Yes, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me? Men, who had no such strength in their hands as to yield an employer any profitpoor, weak creatures, in whom old age (rather, manly vigour) was perished. An effete race seems to be pointed at, without strength or stamina, nerveless, spiritless, “destined to early decay and premature death;” but how they had sunk into such a condition is not apparent. Too often such remanents are merely tribes physically weak, whom more powerful ones have starved and stunted, driving them into the least productive regions, and in every way making life hard for them.
Job 30:3
For want and famine they were solitary; rather, they were gaunt (see the Revised Version). Compare the descriptions given to us of the native races of Central Africa by Sir S. Baker, Speke, Grant, Stanley, and others. Fleeing into the wilderness; rather, gnawing the wilderness; i.e. feeding on such dry and sapless roots and fruits as the wilderness produces. In former time desolate and waste; or, on the eve of wasteness and desolation.
Job 30:4
Who cut up mallows by the bushes. One of the plants on which they feed is the malluch, not really a “mallow,” but probably the Atriplex halimus, which is “a shrub from four to five feet high, with many thick branches; the leaves are rather sour to the taste; the flowers are purple, and very small; it grows on the sea-coast in Greece, Arabia, Syria, etc; and belongs to the natural order Chenopodiace“. And juniper roots for their meat. Most moderns regard the rothen as the Genista monosperma, which is a kind of broom. It is a leguminous plant, having a white flower. and grows plentifully in the Sinaitic desert, in Palestine, Syria, and Arabia. The root is very bitter, and would only be used as food under extreme pressure, but the fruit is readily eaten by sheep, and the roots would, no doubt, yield some nourishment.
Job 30:5
They were driven forth from among men. Weak races retreat before strong ones, who occupy their lands, and whose will they do not dare to dispute. They are not intentionally “driven out,” for the strong raecs would gladly make them their drudges; but they retire into the most inaccessible regions, as the primitive population has done in India and elsewhere. They cried after them as after a thief. Outcast tribes naturally, and almost necessarily, become robber-tribes. Deprived of their productive lands, and driven into rocky deserts, want makes them thieves and marauders. Then those who have made them what they are vilify and decry them.
Job 30:6
To dwell in the cliffs of. the valleys; of in the clefts (Revised Version). Western Asia is full of rocky regions, seamed with deep gorges and clefts, the walls of which rise abruptly or in terraces, and are themselves pierced with caves and cracks. The tract about Petra is, perhaps, the most remarkable of these regions; hut there are many others which closely resemble it. These places afford refuges to weak and outcast tribes, who hide in them, either in caves of the earth, or in the rocks. The Greeks called these unfortunates “Troglodytes”, the Hebrews “Horim,” from “a hole.”
Job 30:7
Among the bushes they brayed. The sounds which came from their mouths sounded to Job less like articulate speech than like the braying of asses. Compare what Herodotus says of his Troglodytes: “Their language is unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats.” Under the nettles (or, wild vetches) they were gathered together; rather, huddled together.
Job 30:8
They were children of fools. The physical degeneracy whereof Job has been speaking is accompanied in most instances by extreme mental incapacity. Some of the degraded races cannot count beyond four or five; others have not more than two or three hundred words in their vocabulary. They are all of low intellect, though occasionally extremely artful and cunning. Yea, children of base men; literally, children of no name. Their race had never made for itself any name, but was unknown and insignificant. They were viler than the earth; rather, they were scourged out of the land. This must not be understood literally. It is a rhetorical repetition of what had been already said in verse 5. The expression may be compared with the tale in Herodotus, that when the Scythian slaves rebelled and took up arms, the Scythians scourged them into subjection (Herod; 4.3, 4).
Job 30:9
And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword (see above, Job 17:6; and comp. Psa 69:12).
Job 30:10
They abhor me, they flee far from me; rather, they abhor me, they stoat aloof from me (see the Revised Version). And spare not to spit in my face. This has generally been taken literally, as it seems to have been by the LXX. But it, perhaps, means no more than that they did not refrain from spitting in Job‘s presence.
Job 30:11
Because he hath loosed my cord. “He,” in this passage, can only be God; and thus Job turns here to some extent from his human persecutors to his great Afflicter, the Almighty. God has “loosened his cord,” i.e. has relaxed his vital fibre, taken away his strength, reduced him to helplessness. Hence, and hence only, do the persecutors dare to crowd around him and insult him. And afflicted me. God has afflicted him with blow after blowwith impoverishment (Job 1:14-17), with bereavement (Job 1:18, Job 1:19), with a sore malady (Job 2:7). They have also let loose the bridle before me. This has given his persecutors the courage to east aside all restraint, and lead him with insult after insult (verses 1, 9, 10).
Job 30:12
Upon my right hand rise the youth; literally, the brood; i.e. the rabblea crowd of half-grown youths and boys, such as collects in almost any town to hoot and insult a respectable person who is in trouble and helpless. In the East such gatherings are very common and exceedingly annoying. They push away my feet; i.e. they try to throw me down as I walk. They raise up against me the ways of their destruction. They place obstacles in my way, impede my steps, thwart me in every way that they find possible.
Job 30:13
They mar my path; i.e. interfere with and frustrate whatever I am bent on doing. They set forward my calamity, Professor Lee translates, “They profit by my ruin.” They have no helper. If the text is sound, we must understand, “They do all this, they dare all this, even though they have no powerful men to aid them.” But it is suspected that there is some corruption in the passage, and that the original gave the sense which is found in the Vulgate,” There is none to help me.”
Job 30:14
They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters; i.e. with a force like that of water when it has burst through a bank or dam. In the desolation they relied themselves upon me. Like the waves of the sea, which follow one after another.
Job 30:15
Terrors are turned upon me Job seems to pass here from his human persecutors to his internal sufferings of mind and body. “Terrors’ take hold upon him. He experiences in his sleep horrible dreams and visions (see Job 7:14), and even in his waking hours he is haunted by fears. The “terrors of God do set themselves in array against him” (Job 6:4). God seems to him as One that watches, and “tries him every moment” (Job 7:18), seeking occasion against him, and never leaving him an instant’s peace (Job 7:19). These terrors, he says, pursue my soul as the wind; literally, pursue mine honour, or my dignity. They flutter the calm composure that befits a godly man, disturb it, shake it, and for a time at any rate, cause terrors and shrinkings of soul. Under these circumstances, my welfare passeth away as a cloud. It is not only my happiness, but my real welfare, that is gone. Body and soul are equally in sufferingthe one shaken with fears and disturbed with doubts and apprehensions; the other smitten with a sore disease, so that there is no soundness in it.
Job 30:16
And now my soul is poured out upon me (comp. Psa 42:4). My very soul seems to be gone out of me. “I faint and swoon away, because of my fears” (Lee). The days of affliction have taken hold upon me. All my prosperity is gone, and I am come to “the days of affliction.” These “take hold on me,” and, as it were, possess me.
Job 30:17
My bones are pierced in me in the night season. In Elephantiasis anaesthetics‘ says Dr. Erasmus Wilson, “when the integument is insensible, there are deep-seated burning pains, sometimes of a bone or joint, and sometimes of the vertebral column. These pains are greatest at night; they prevent sleep, and give rise to restless,less and frightful dreams”. And my sinews take no rest; rather, my gnawings, or my gnawing pains (see the Revised Version; and comp. Job 30:3, where the same word is properly rendered by “gnawing [the wilderness]”).
Job 30:18
By the great force of my disease is my garment changed; or, disfigured. The purulent discharge from his ulcers disfigured and made filthy his garment, which stiffened as the discharge dried, and clung to his frame. It bindeth me about as the collar of my coat. The whole garment clung to his body as closely as it is usual for a mall’s collar, or “neck-hole” (Professor Lee), to cling about his throat.
Job 30:19
He (i.e. God) hath cast me into the mire. “The mire” here is the lowest depth of misery and degradation (comp. Psa 40:2; Psa 69:2, Psa 69:14). Job feels himself cast into it by God, but nevertheless does not forsake him nor cease to call upon him (verses 20-23). And I am become like dust and ashes; i.e. unclean, impure, offensive to my fellow-men, an object of dislike and disdain.
Job 30:20
I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me. It is the worst of all calamities to be God-forsaken, as Job believed himself to be, because he had no immediate answer to his prayers. The bitterest cry upon the cross was “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” But no good man is ever really God-forsaken, and no rightful and earnest prayers are ever really unheard. Job “had need of patience” (Heb 10:36), patient as he was (Jas 5:11). He should have trusted God more, and complained less. I stand up, and thou regardest me not; rather, I stand up, as the manner of the Jews usually was in prayer (Luk 18:11), and thou lookest at me (see the Revised Version). Job’s complaint is that, when he stands up and stretches out his hands to God in prayer, God simply looks on, does nothing, gives him no help.
Job 30:21
Thou art become cruel to me; literally, thou art turned to be cruel to me. In other words, “Thou art changed to me, and art become cruel to me.” Job never forgets that for long years God was gracious and kind to him, “made him and fashioned him together round about,” “clothed him with skin and flesh, and fenced him with bones and sinews,” “granted him life and favour, and by his visitation preserved his spirit” (Job 10:9-12); but the recollection brings, perhaps, as much of pain. as of pleasure with it. One of our poets says
“Joy’s recollection is no longer joy;
But sorrow’s memory is a sorrow still.”
At any rate, the contrast between past joy and present suffering adds a pang to tile latter. With thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me; literally, with the might of thy hand dost thou persecute me (see the Revised Version). “Haec noster irreverentius” (Schultens); comp. Job 19:6-13.
Job 30:22
Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou tensest me to ride upon it; i.e. thou makest me to be storm-tossed. I am as it were a straw caught up by a whirlwind, and borne hither and thither in the wide regions of space, unknowing whither I go. I am treated as I have described the wicked man to be treated (Job 27:20, Job 27:21). And dissolvest my substance. “Dissolvest me entirely“ (Professor Lee); dissolvest me in the storms (Revised Version).
Job 30:23
For I know that thou wilt bring me to death. Job has all along expressed his conviction that he has nothing to look for but death. He feels within himself the seeds of a mortal malady; for such, practically, was elephantiasis in Job’s time. He is devoid of any expectation of recovery. Death must come upon him, he thinks, ere long; and then God will bring him to the house appointed for all living. This, as he has already explained (Job 10:21, Job 10:22), is “the land of darkness and the shadow of death, a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.” It is a melancholy prospect; but we must regard it as cheered by the hope of an ultimate resurrection, such as seems indicated, if not absolutely proclaimed, in Job 19:25-27 (see the comment on that passage).
Job 30:24
Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave, though they cry in his destruction. This is one of the most obscure passages in the entire Book of Job, and scarcely any two independent commentators understand it alike. To give all the different renderings, and discuss them, would be an almost endless task, and one over-wearisome to the reader. It will, per-Imps, suffice to select the one which to the present writer appears the most satisfactory. This is the rendering of Professor Stanley Leathes, who suggests the following: “Howbeit God will not put forth his hand to bring a man to death and the grave, when there is earnest prayer for them, not even when he himself hath caused the calamity.” The same writer further explains the passage as follows: “I know that thou wilt dissolve and destroy me, and bring me to the grave (verse 23), though thou wilt not do so when I pray to thee to release me by death from my sufferings. Thou wilt surely do so [some time or other], but not in my time, or according to my will, but only in thine own appointed time, and as thou seest fit.”
Job 30:25
Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? i.e. do I claim a sympathy which I do not deserve? When men wept and entreated me, did not I do my best to give them the aid which they requested? Did not I weep for them, and intercede with God for them? Was not my soul grieved for the poor? (comp. Job 29:12-17; Job 31:16-22).
Job 30:26
When I looked for flood, then evil came unto me. Job was “looking for good,” expecting fully the continuance of his great wealth and prosperity, when the sudden shock of calamity fell upon him It was wholly unexpected, and therefore the harder to bear. And when I waited for light, there came darkness. This may refer to periods, after his calamities began, when he had hopes that his prayers would be answered, and a rest or pause, an interval of repose, be granted him (Job 9:34; Job 10:20), but when his hopes were disappointed, and the darkness closed in upon him thicker and murkier than ever.
Job 30:27
My bowels boiled, and rested not; rather, boil and rest not (see the Revised Version). It is his present condition of which Job speaks from verse 27 to verse 31. His “entrails,” i.e. his whole innermost nature, is disturbed, tormented, thrown into confusion. The days of affliction prevented me; rather, are come upon me (comp. verse 16).
Job 30:28, Job 30:29
I went mourning without the sun; rather, I go about blackened, but not by the sun. Grief and suffering, according to Oriental notions, blackened the face (see Lam 4:8; Lam 5:10; Psa 119:83; and below, Psa 119:30). I stood up, and I cried in the congregation; rather, I stand up in the assembly‘ and cry for help (see the Revised Version). Job feels this as the most pitiable feature in his ease. He is broken down; he can no longer endure. At first he could sit in silence for seven days (Job 2:13); now he is reduced to uttering complaints and lamentations. He is a brother, not to dragons, but to jackals. His laments are like the long melancholy cries that those animals emit during the silence of the night, so well known to Eastern travellers. He adds further that he is a companion, not to owls, but to ostriches; which, like jackals, have a melancholy cry.
Job 30:30
My skin is black upon me (see the comment on Job 30:28, Job 30:29, ad init.), and my bones are burned with heat. The “burning pains” in the bones, which characterize at least one form of elephantiasis, have been already mentioned (see the comment on Job 30:17). In ordinary elephantiasis there is often “intense pain in the lumbar region and groin,” which the patient might think to be in his bones.
Job 30:31
My harp also is turned to mourning. The result of all is that Job’s harp is laid aside, either literally or figuratively. Its music is replaced by the sound of mourning (see verses 28, 29). And my organ (or rather, my pipe) into the voice of them that weep. The pipe also is no longer sounded in his presence; he hears only the voice of weeping and lamentation. Thus appropriately ends the long dirge in which he has bewailed his miserable fare.
HOMILETICS
Job 30:1-15
Job’s second parable: 2. A lamentation over fallen greatness.
I. THE CHARACTER OF JOB‘S DERIDERS.
1. Juniors in respect of age. (Verse 1.) These were not the young princes of the city (Job 29:8), by whom he had formerly been held in reverential regard, but “the young good-for-nothing vagabonds of a miserable class of men” (Delitzsch) dwelling in the neighbourhood. Job’s inferiors in point of years, they should have treated him with honour and respect (Le 19:32), especially when they beheld his intense wretchedness and misery. That they failed to accord him such veneration as was due to seniority in age, and much more that they made him the butt of their contemptuous derision, was not only an express violation of the dictates of nature and religion, but a special mark of depravity in themselves, as well as a certain index to the social and moral degradation of the race to which they belonged. The good qualities of an advancing and the bad qualities of a retrograding people, infallibly discover themselves in the moral characteristics of the youthful portion of the community.
2. Base in respect of ancestry. (Verses 1, 8.) The foregoing inference from the ribald behaviour of the younger men Job confirms by describing them as “children of fools, yea, children of base men,” literally, “of men without a name,” and as men “whose sires” he “would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock.” It is doubtful if Job does not in this and other expressions of this passage (verses 1-8) repay the contempt of his scornful assailants with fourfold liberality, thereby failing to evince that meekness in resenting injuries which good men should study to display, and perpetrating the same offence which he imputes to others, as well as talking about his fellow-men (God’s creatures and God’s children no less than himself) in a way that was scarcely excusable even in a patriarchal sage. Nevertheless, what he purposes to convey through the medium of his heated, if also poetic, language is that his revilers were the offspring of a vile, worthless, degraded, brutalized race, who had well-nigh sunk to the level of the beasts that perish.
3. Worthless in respect of service. (Verse 2.) Like their fathers whom Job would have disdained to rank with the dogs of his flock, i.e. whom he regarded as not worthy of being compared to these wise and faithful animals who watched his sheep, they (i.e. these younger vagabonds) were idle and effeminate triflers, lazy, worthless rascals, as little able to work as willing, the ethnic deterioration they were undergoing revealing itself in enervated physical constitutions no less than in depraved moral dispositions. The truth here enunciated with regard to nations and communities is also true of individuals, that sin, vice, immorality, has a tendency to impair the bodily strength, mental vigour, and moral power of such as yield to its fatal fascinations.
4. Furnished in respect of food. (Verses 3, 4.) Strangely blending pity with scorn, Job informs us that in great part the feebleness of those wretched creatures, who “could bring nothing to perfection” (Cox), and were not worth employing to do the work of a shepherd’s dog, was due to the difficulty they had in finding nourishment. Lean and haggard, benumbed from want and hunger, they literally gnawed the desert, picking up such scanty sustenance as the barren steppe afforded, plucking mallows in the thicket, i.e. “the salt-wort from off the stalk” (Fry), the salt-wort, or sea-purslain,- being a tall shrubby, plant which thrives in the desert as well as on the coast, “the buds and young leaves of which” also “are gathered and eaten by the poor” (Delitzsch); and taking the roots of broom for their bread, the broom abounding in the deserts and sandy places of Egypt and Arabia, and growing to a height sufficient to afford shelter to a person sitting down. A melancholy picture of destitution, which has its counterpart not only among expiring races, effete desert tribes, and wretched Troglodytes, but also in many a centre of modern civilization. It is hardly questionable that in the lower strata of society in our large cities there are thousands for whom the physical conditions of life are as severe as those just depicted by the Poet.
5. Outcasts in respect of society. (Verse 5.) In consequence of their pilfering and marauding habits, they were banished forth from the pale of the organized community Nay, when it happened that they ventured near the precincts of civilized life, they at once became the objects of a hue and cry, men hallooing after them as they did after a thief, and chasing them away to their own miserable haunts of poverty and vice. It is clear they were the criminal classes of patriarchal times, and were regarded with much the same abhorrence as the pariahs of modern society, who wage war against all constituted authority, prey upon the industry of the virtuous and law-abiding, and as a consequence live in a perpetual state of social ostracism.
6. Troglodytes in respect of habitation. (Verse 6.) Driven beyond the pale of civilized society, they were compelled “to dwell in the cliffs of the valleys,” literally, “in the horror of glens,” i.e. in dismal and gloomy gorges, like the Horites (or cave-men) of Mount Seir (Gen 14:6), betaking themselves for shelter to the caves of the earth and the holes in the rocks. According to modern scientific theory, they would exemplify man in the earliest or lowest stage of his development; according to the testimony of revelation, the Troglodytes would attest man’s degeneracy from a primeval standard of perfection. And so persistent is this downward tendency in man apart from Divine grace, that almost every civilized community has its social and moral Troglodytes, who dwell in dismal valleysits wretched outcasts, children of sin and shame, whose lurking-places are dens of infamy and haunts of vice.
7. Dehumanized in respect of nature. (Verse 7.) Having previously (Job 24:5) described these evicted aborigines as leading a gregarious life, like wild asses roaming the desert under the guidance of a leader (Job 39:5), Job recurs to the comparison to indicate, not the eager ferocity with which they scour the steppe for fodder, but how near to the brutes they have been brought by their misery, representing them as huddling themselves together under the bushes, and croaking out, in unintelligible jargon like the brayings of an ass, a doleful lamentation over their miserable condition. Herodotus compares the language of the Troglodyte Ethiopians to the screeching of bats. The speech of savage races is mostly composed of “growling gutturals and sharp clicks” (Cox). As a nation advances in civilization its tongue purifies and refines. Like the cave-men of Western Asia and Ethiopia, the moral Troglodytes of society have a jargon of their own; e.g. the language of thieves.
II. THE BEHAVIOUR OF JOB‘S DERIDERS.
1. Mockery and contempt. (Verses 1, 9, 10.) Physically and morally degraded, this worthless rabble of marauders, half men and half beasts, having fallen in with Job in their wanderings, were so little touched by sympathy for his misfortunes, that they turned his miseries into merry jests, and made bywords of his groans. It is a special mark of depravity when youth mocks at age (2Ki 2:3) and laughs at affliction. The experience of Job was reproduced in the eases of David (Psa 35:15; Psa 69:12), Jeremiah (Lam 3:14, Lam 3:63), and Christ (Mat 27:43; Luk 23:35).
2. Insult and outrage. (Verse 10.) They gave open and undisguised expression to the abhorrence with which they regarded him, by fleeing far from him, or standing at a distance, and making their remarks upon him. If they ventured to come near him it was either to spit in his presence, “the greatest insult to an Oriental” (Carey), or perhaps to spit in his face (cf. Num 12:14; Deu 25:9), thus carrying their contempt and scorn to the lowest depth of indignity. Job had fallen low indeed to be thus outraged by the vilest dregs of society; but not lower than did Christ, who was similarly treated by the rabble of Judaea (Mat 26:67; Mat 27:30), as long before it bad been predicted that he should be (Isa 1:6). No doubt in all this Job’s sufferings were typical of Christ’s.
3. Hostility and violence. (Verses 12-15.) Not content with words and gestures, the young vagabonds proceeded to acts of open violence. Having found the poor fallen prince groaning in wretchedness and misery upon the ash-heap outside his house, they abstained not from direct hostility. Like a crowd of witnesses starting up on his right hand, they overwhelmed him with accusations; like an army of assailants thrusting his feet away, they disputed with him every inch of ground, compelling him to retire ever further and further back; pressing on like a tumultuous besieging host, they cast up their ways of destruction, i.e. their military causeways, against him, tearing down his path so as to render escape impossible, breaking in upon him as through a wide breach, and causing him to flee in terror before their irresistible approach, so that his nobility was dispersed like the wind, and his prosperity swept away like a cloud.
III. THE MOTIVE JOB‘S DERIDERS.
1. Not Job‘s unkindness. It was true that these insolent vagabonds, with their fathers, had been summarily evicted from their pristine settlementshad been compelled, not without cruel oppression and intolerable hardship, to retire before the superior race who had dislodged them; it may also be that of that conquering Arab tribe Job was a conspicuous member, and might on that account be held responsible for the indignities and wrongs that had been heaped upon the wretched aborigines; but, in point of fact, Job disclaims having taken part in those ruthless acts of tyranny which caused the poor of the land to slink away and hide themselves, naked and shivering, in the dens and caves of the earth, in the holes and crevices of the rocks (Job 24:4-8), and rather indicates that he regarded their sorrowful lot with compassion, even while, with disgust and aversion, he shrank from any contact with themselves. But:
2. Their own wickedness. They simply saw that he, whom they once knew as a powerful prince, was overtaken by evil fortune, and they turned upon him accordingly. That they traced Job’s calamities, as Job himself did, to the hand of God (verse 11), was unlikely. Yet the result was the same. God, according to Jobaccording to them, fatehad unloosed iris bow and sent a shaft through the heart of this imperious autocrat, or had loosened the cord which upheld the tent of his hitherto vigorous body, and had laid him prostrate beneath a loathsome and painful disease; and so they, casting off restraint, assailed him with unbridled arrogance, acting out, in these early times, the familiar story of the kicking ass and the dead lion,
“But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.”
(‘Julius Caesar,’ act 3. sc. 2.)
Learn:
1. The certainty that man may decade himself beneath the level of the beasts.
2. The right of society to protect itself against the lawless and depraved.
3. The tendency of all wickedness to lead to misery even on earth.
4. The infallibility with which moral depravity perpetuates itself.
5. The instability which attends all human greatness.
6. The length to which wicked men will go in persecuting and oppressing others when God grants permission.
7. The inevitable approach of a nation’s doom when its youth has become corrupt and depraved.
Job 30:16-31
Job’s second parable: 3. A sorrowful survey of present misery.
I. JOB‘S BODILY AFFLICTION.
1. Overpowering. It was no trifling ailment that wrung from the heart of this fallen great man the exquisitely plaintive lament of the present section. The malady which had struck its fangs into his vitals was one that made his bowels boil, and rest not (verse 27); that caused his heart to melt like wax in the midst of his bowels (Psa 22:14); yea, that dissolved his soul in tears (verse 16). Most men have reason to be thankful that the afflictions they are called to endure are not absolutely intolerable; for which the praise is due to God’s mercy alone. Yet not unless the soul is suitably affected by the ills that assail the body do these latter bring forth their designed results, the peaceable fruits of righteousness. The case of Job suggests that through the union and sympathy of soul and body man possesses an almost infinite capacity for suffering pain; while the fact that pain may minister to man’s improvement is a testimony to man’s superiority over the creatures.
2. Sudden. This was one of the circumstances that rendered Job’s affliction so unmanning. It had sprung upon him unawares, apprehending him, and holding him fast as a detective might do a criminal (verse 16), at the very moment when he had been saying to himself, “I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand” ( Job 29:18), and offering congratulations to himself on the apparently permanent as well as inexhaustible sources of his wealth, and on the palpably stable and unfading character of his glory.
3. Wasting. A second circumstance which tended to dissolve the soul of Job as he reflected on his physical trouble was the revolting character of the disease by which he had been overtaken. According to one view, Job by a strong poetic figure personifies the night (verse 17; cf. Job 3:2) as a wild beast, which had leapt upon him in the darkness, and rent him limb from limbthe allusion being to the terrible nature of the Lepra Arabica, which “feeds on the bones and destroys the body in such a manner that single limbs are completely detached” (Delitzsch). To this, also, the wasting character of the disease (verse 18) is believed by the just-named commentator to refer.
4. Unsightly. An additional source of grief to the patriarch in thinking over his malady was the disfigurement of his person which it had occasioned. “By its great strength the garment (of his skin) was changed” (Gesenius), probably through frequent purulent discharge, or through the foul incrustations which covered his body; his skin also had become black, and was peeling off from his emaciated skeleton, while his bones within him were being consumed by a parching heat (verse 30). It is a special cross when God, through disease, readers a man of displeasing aspect to his fellows.
5. Incessant. The pain which Job suffered was seemingly continuous and without interruption. Already frequently insisted on in previous discourses (Job 3:24; Job 7:3, Job 7:4, Job 7:13, Job 7:15; Job 10:20, etc.), it is here presented in a fresh series of images, Job describing his sinews as taking no rest (verse 17), literally, “my gnawers,” meaning either his tormenting pains (Gesenius), or the gnawing worms formed in his ulcers (Delitzsch), “rest not,” and speaking of his disease as binding him fast, and sticking closely to him like the collar of his coat (verse 18), and finally adding that his bowels, as the seat of pain, boiled and rested not (verse 27).
6. Manifold. In this his last lament Job confines not his attention to the one point of his bodily ailment, but makes a survey of the whole course of his afflictionfrom the day when, bereft of his family and possessions, he went about the streets as a mourner, arrayed in sackcloth, without the sun (verse 28), i.e. in such a state of grief and dejection that even the gladdening sunshine failed to give him pleasure, to that moment when he had become as “a brother to dragons and a companion to owls” (verse 29).
7. Degrading. By reason of this terrible disease he had been cast into the mire, and had become like dust and ashes (cf. Job 16:15, Job 16:16); nay, lower even than that, he had been reduced to the level of jackals and ostriches, creatures whose dolorous howlings fill men with shuddering and dejection.
II. JOB‘S MENTAL ANGUISH. The thought which most keenly lacerated Job’s bosom was the fixed and immovable idea which had fastened on his soul, that the God whom he had loved and served had become to him a changed God, who treated him with unsparing cruelty (verse 21). Of this the proof to Job’s mind lay in several considerations.
1. That God was the real Author of Job‘s sufferings. It was he and no other who had cast Job into the mire (verse 19). In a very real sense this was true, since Job’s malignant and unsleeping adversary could have had no power over him, except it had been given him from above; but in the sense which Job meant it was a hideous misconception, Satan and not God having been the enemy who had touched his bones and his flesh. Saints should be careful not to impute to God the blame of what he only permits.
2. That God remained deaf to Job‘s entreaties. “I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me;” i.e. lookest fixedly at me (verse 20), meeting my earnest reverential upward glance with a stare of stony indifference, if not of hostile intent (cf. verse 24). A fearful perversion of the truth which Job’s prolonged misery cannot justify. God is the enemy of no man who does not first make himself an enemy of God. “The face of God is set against them that do evil;” but “God’s eyes are ever towards the righteous” with looks of love and benignant compassion. Even when he forbears to help, and seems to be deaf to the good man’s supplications, he hears and pities. If God answers not, it is in love rather than in hate. Whatever befalls a saint he should hold fast by the unchanging and unfaltering love of the Divine Father. Believers under the gospel should find this easier to do than Job did.
3. That God was insensible to Job‘s feebleness. With the strength of his omnipotent arm he Appeared to be making war upon one who was insignificant and frail, heedless of the agonies he inflicted or the terrors he inspired, lifting up his victim upon the fierce hurricane of tribulation, causing him to drive along before its howling blasts and to vanish in the crashing of the storm, as a thin cloud is caught by the whirling tempest, “blown with restless violence found about the pendent world,” and finally dispersed by the violent agitation it endures (verses 21, 22).
4. That God had fixedly resolved on Job‘s destruction. In Job’s anguish-laden mind it was a foregone conclusion that God had determined to pursue him to the grave, to bring him down to the dust of death; to shut him up in the house of assembly for all living (verse 23). Job’s conception of the grave was sublimely true. It was and is “the great involuntary rendezvous of all who live in this world.” Job’s belief that God would eventually conduct him thither was likewise correct. “It is appointed unto all men once to die.” Job’s apprehension that his immediate dissolution was decreed was wrong. The times of all are in the hand of God; and it is not given to any to anticipate with certainty the day and the hour of departure from this sublunary scene. So also was Job’s inference erroneous that prayer was unavailing when God had determined on a creature’s destruction (verse 24). It was not so in the case of Hezekiah, to whom God, in answer to his fervent supplication, added fifteen years (2Ki 20:1-7; Isa 38:1-5). But even should God decline to move the shadow on the dial backward, it is still not in vain for dying men to call aloud to him in prayer, inasmuch as he can help them by his grace to meet that which by his hand he will not avert.
5. That God took no account of Job‘s philanthropies. Job had wept for him that was in trouble or whose day was hard, and his soul had been grieved for the needy (Job 29:12, Job 29:13). Yet God was to all appearance indifferent. This, however, was only another misconception on the part of Job. The Almighty notes with loving eye every kind deed performed by his servants on earth, and will reward even a ernst of bread or a cup of cold water given in his name to a poor one. Only the time of recompense will be hereafter. Hence no one is entitled to expect, like Job, that his good actions shall be rewarded here. “Do good, hoping for nothing again,” is the maxim prescribed to Christ’s followers. Acted upon, it will save them from the disappointment which almost crushed the soul of Job (verse 26).
Learn:
1. The absolute impossibility of avoiding days of suffering.
2. The ease with which God can remove happiness from the lot of man.
3. The inability of any one to sustain the burden of affliction without Divine help.
4. The foolishness of glorying in either strength or beauty, since both can at a word be transformed into dust and ashes.
5. The extreme danger of allowing affliction to pervert the mind’s views of God.
6. The error of supposing that God can regard any creature, much less any child of his own, with hate.
7. The propriety of frequently considering where life’s journey terminates.
8. The certainty that death cannot be turned aside by either piety or prayers.
9. The evil case of him who can find no enjoyment in Heaven’s mercies.
10. The sinfulness of giving free course to one’s complaint, especially against God, in the time of affliction.
11. The inevitable tendency of trouble to deteriorate and debase those whom it does not exalt and refine.
12. The possibility of one who thinks himself a brother of jackals and companion of ostriches becoming a son of God and fellow of the angels.
13. The certainty that for all saints mourning will yet be turned into joy.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Job 30:1-31
The troubles of the present.
In contrast to the happy past of honour and respect on which he has been so wistfully dwelling in the previous chapter, Job sees himself now exposed to the scorn and contempt of the meanest of mankind; while a flood of miseries from the hand of God passes over him. From this last chapter we have learned the honour and authority with which it sometimes pleases God to crown the pious and the faithful. From the present we see how at other times he crucifies and puts them to the proof. They must be tried on “the right hand and on the left” (2Co 6:7; comp. Php 4:12). We are reminded, too, of the transiency of all worldly good. The heavens and the earth shall perish; how much more the glory, power, and happiness of the flesh (Isa 40:1-31.)!
I. THE CONTEMPT OF MEN. (Verses 1-10.) The young men, who were wont to rise in his presence, laugh him to scorn; youths whose fathers, the lowest of mankindthievish, faithless, and worthier, awere of leas value than the watch-dogs of his flock (verse 1). Themselves, the young men had been of no service to him; they had failed of the full strength of manhood; dried up with want and hunger, they had derived their scanty subsistence from the desolate and barren steppe (verses 2, 3); plucking up the salt herbs and bushes and juniper roots for food (verse 4). These wretches led the life of pariahs; driven forth from the society of men, the hunt-cry was raised after them as after thieves. Their place of dwelling was in horrid ravines and caves and rocks (verses 5, 6). Their wild shouts were heard in the bush; they lay and formed their plots of robbery among the nettles (verse 7). Sons of fools and base men, they were scourged out of the land (verse 8). A fearful picture of the dregs of human life! Perhaps those Troglodytes (comp. Job 24:4 🙂 were the Horites, the original inhabitants of the mountainous country of Seir, conquered by the Edomites (Gen 36:6-8; Deu 2:12, Deu 2:22). Of these degraded beings Job has now become the scoffing-song, the derisive byword (verse 9). They show towards him every mark of abhorrence, retreating from him, or only drawing near to spit in his face with the silent coarse language of contumely and disgust (verse 10; comp. Mat 26:67; Mat 27:30). Had Job in any way brought this treatment upon himself from the vilest of mankind? Certainly there is nothing in the story which leads us to cast the blame of haughty or heartless conduct upon the hero. Still, it is ever true that we reap as we sow; but the sower and the reaper may be different persons. The cruel measure meted out to these unfortunates is now measured to the innocent Job. It is not in human nature to requite love with hatred or to give loathing in return for kindness. The responsibility of society for its outcasts is a deep lesson which we have only begun in modern times to learn. All men, however fallen and low, must be treated as the creatures of God. If we treat them as wild beasts, we can but expect the wild-beast return. Said Rabbi Ben Azar, “Despise not any man, and spurn not anything. For there is no man that hath not his hour, nor is there anything that hath not its place.” Says our own Wordsworth
“He who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
That he hath never used, and thought with him
Is in its infancy.”
And again
“Be assured That least of all can aught that ever owned
The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime
Which man is born to, sink, howe’er depressed,
So low as to be scorned without a sin,
Without offence to God, cast out of view.”
“Condescend to men of low estate.” Gentleness and compassion to our inferiors is one of the chief lessons of our holy religion.
II. ABANDONMENT TO MISERY BY GOD. (Verses 11-15.) Health and happiness are ours when God holds us by his hand; sickness, languor, and mental misery when he loosens his grasp. Job’s nerves are relaxed. The war-bands of the Almighty have loosed the bridle; angels and messengers of ill, diseases and plagues, hunt the unhappy sufferer down (verse 11). This dark throng seems to rise up at his right handthe place of the accuser (Psa 109:6)and to push away his feet, driving him into a narrow space, laying open before him their ways of destruction, heaping up against him besieging ramparts, thus tearing down his own path, his formerly undisputed way of life. They help forward his ruin, needing no assistance from others in the pernicious work (verses 12, 13). On comes this terrible besieging host, as through a wide breach in the wall of liferolls on with loud roar, while the defences fall into ruin (verse 14). Terrors turn against him, sudden horrors of death (comp. Job 18:11, Job 18:14; Job 27:20) hunting after his honourthe honour depicted in Job 29:20, seq. His happiness, in consequence of these violent assaults, passes away suddenly and tracklessly as a cloud from the face of heaven (Job 29:15; comp. Job 7:9; Isa 44:22). If God lays his hand upon the body or outward happiness of his children, there will seldom be release without inward conflict, anguish, fear, and terror. It is with such persons as with St. Paul; without is conflict, and within is fear (2Co 7:5).
III. INCONCEIVABLE INWARD DISTRESS. (Job 29:16-23.) His soul is melted and poured out within him; his frame is dissolved in tears. Days of pain hold him in their grip, refuse to depart and leave him in peace (Job 29:16). The night racks and pierces his bones, and allows his sinews no rest (Job 29:17). By the fearful power of God he is so withered up that his garment hangs loose about him, wraps him like the collar of a coat, nowhere fitting his body (Job 29:18). God has cast him upon the ash-heapa sign of the deepest humiliation (Job 16:15)till his skin resembles dust and ashes in its hue (Job 29:19). In this nerveless condition prayer itself seems unable to stir its loftiest, most hopeful energies. He can but cry, grievously and in supplication, but without the hope of being heard. “I stand, and thou lookest fixedly at me”no sign of attention in thy glance, of favour in thine eye (Job 29:20). The aspect of the almighty Father, seen through the medium of intense suffering, becomes one of cruelty and horror (Job 29:21). Lifting him upon the storm-wind as upon a chariot, God causes him to be carried away, and dissolved as it were in the yeasty surging of the storm (Job 29:22). He knows that God is carrying him to death, the place of assembly for all the living (Job 29:23).
IV. FAILURE OF ALL HIS HOPES. (Job 29:24 -31.) According to human calculation, he must despair of life. But can the unhappy man be blamed if he stretches out his hand for help amidst the ruin of his fall, and sends forth his cry as he passes into destruction? Is not this a law for all living creatures (Job 29:24)? Did not Job show compassion in all the misfortunes of others, and has he not, therefore, a right to complain, and expect compassion in his own (verse 25)? All the suffering of Job is condemned in the thought that, after the happiness of former days had bred hopes of the like future, he was visited by the deepest misery, and cast into the lowest distress (verses 26-31). The light of former days glances upon him again, and so his address reverts to its beginning (Job 29:1-25.). Hoping for good, there ensued evil (Isa 59:9; Jer 14:19); waiting for the light, deeper darkness came on. There is an inward seething of the mind. Days of affliction have fallen upon him. He goes darkened, without the glow of the sun; his swarthy appearance is due to another causehe is smeared with dust and ashes. He stands in the assembly, giving loud vent to his lamentation amidst the mourning company who surround him. A “brother to the jackals, a comrade of the ostriches,” these desert creatures of the loud and plaintive cry, is be. His black skin parts and falls from him; his bones are parched by a consuming heat. And then, in one beautiful poetic touch, the whole description of his woe is summed up, “My harp became mourning, and my shalm mournful tones.” But he will yet learn to tune his harp again to gladness and praise. Now, however, his melancholy haunts him; and not one kindly glance pierces the gloom of his dark thoughts to give him comfort. But despair of self has never led Job to despair of God. There is still, therefore, a glimmering spark of hope amidst this wild storm. He carries in his hand a bud which will yet unfold into a flower. This is no example of the fatal sorrow of the world, but of the life-giving power of the sorrow that is after God (compare Robertson’s sermon on the ‘Power of Sorrow,’ vol. 2.).J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN
Job 30:1-31
A sorrowful contrast.
Job’s condition has become one of sorrowfulness, the humiliation of which stands in direct contrast to his former state. He graphically expresses it in a few words: “But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.” The picture of sorrowful humiliation, standing in contrast, to previous honour, wealth, and power, is very striking. It is a typical example, showing to what depths the loftiest may be reduced. The details are as follows.
I. THE CONTEMPTUOUS TREATMENT OF MEAN AND UNWORTHY MEN. “They were children of fools, yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth. And now am i their song, yes, I am their byword. They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my race.’ It requires the utmost strength of righteous principle, and the most complete self-command and self-restraint, to endure such treatment without violent outbreaks of passion.
II. GREAT MENTAL AFFLICTION. “Terrors are turned upon me;” “My soul is poured out in me.”
III. GREAT BODILY PAIN. a My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.”
IV. APPARENT INDIFFERENCE OF GOD TO HIS PRAYER. Saddest hour of all the sad hours of the human life is that when the one unfailing Helper closes his ear. The lowest depth of sorrow reached by the Man of sorrows found expression in “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
V. To this is added THE FEAR THAT GOD HIMSELF TURNS HIS HAND AGAINST HIM. “Thou art become cruel to me.’ His afflictions appear to him as Divine judgments; yet he knoweth not why he is afflicted.
VI. THE GLOOMY APPREHENSION THAT ALL WILL END IN DEATH. “Thou wilt bring me to death.” No brightness in the afar-off cheers the sufferer. There is no prospect of light at eventide.
VII. To all is added THE SITTER PAINFULNESS OF EXCLUSION. He is an outcast. There is no help for him in man. “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.” Bitter, indeed, is the cup mixed of such ingredients. Strong the heart that can thus suffer and not break.R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Job 30:1-10
The fall from honour to contempt.
I. MISFORTUNE BRINGS CONTEMPT, Job has just been reciting the honours of his happier days. With the loss of prosperity has come the loss of those honours. He who was slavishly flattered in wealth and success is cruelly scorned in the time of adversity. This is monstrously unjust, and Job feels it to be so. Nevertheless, it is only true to life. Men do judge by the outward appearance. Therefore any who experience in some proportion what Job experienced need not be taken by surprise. The judgment of the world is of little worth. The good opinion of men may shift like a weathercock. We need to look for a higher, more sure and true and lasting glory than that of man’s honour.
II. PRIDE PREPARES FOR CONTEMPT. There is a note of pride in verse 1, “Whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.” A relic of aristocratic hauteur creeps out in this utterance of the humiliated patriarch. If we treat men like dogs, we may expect that, when they get the chalice to do so, they will turn on us like dogs. They may cower and cringe when we are strong, but they waft be eager to snap at us when our time of weakness comes.
III. MEAN NATURES JUDGE SUPERFICIALLY. As Job describes them, the miserable creatures who turned upon him were the very dregs of the populace. They were outlaws and thieves and worthless people who had been driven to mountain-cavesidlers and degraded beings who grubbed up weeds to live on. Plainly these men are to be distinguished from the poor whose only defect is their want of means. Yet among them may have been some of those who in his more prosperous days blessed Job for helping them when they were ready to perish (see Job 29:13). Ingratitude is only too common among all men, and we cannot be surprised at finding it in persons of low and brutal habits.
IV. IT IS PAINFUL TO SUFFER FROM CONTEMPT. In his prosperity Job would have despised the opinion of those who now vex him with their insults. Yet he could never have been complacent under contempt. It has been well said that the greatest man in the world would receive some discomfort if he came to know that the meanest creature on earth despised him from the bottom of his heart. The pride that is quite indifferent to the good or ill opinion of others is not a virtue. Humility will set some value on the favour of the lowest. If we have a spirit of brotherliness we cannot but desire to live on good terms with all our neighbours.
V. IT IS POSSIBLE TO TURN FROM THE CONTEMPT OF MAN TO THE APPROVAL OF GOD. The Christian should learn to bear contempt, since Christ bore it. He was “despised and rejected of men” (Isa 53:3). Like Job, he was insulted and spat upon. Yet we feel that all the insults with which he was loaded did not really humiliate him. On the contrary, he never appears to us so dignified as when “he opened not his mouth” in the midst of contumely and outrage. In that awful scene of the night before the crucifixion, it is the enemies of Christ who appear to us as lowered and degraded. Now we know that the cross was the ground of Christ’s highest glory. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him” (Php 2:9). The Church crowned the memories of her martyrs with honour. Despised, suffering Christians may learn to possess their souls in patience if they are walking in the light of God’s countenance.W.F.A.
Job 30:16
The thraldom of affliction.
Job is not only passing through the waters of affliction; he feels that he is laid hold of and overpowered by his troubles. Let us see what this condition involvesthe stale of thraldom and its effects.
I. THE STATE OF THRALDOM. This simply results from the fact that the affliction has mounted to such a height that it has overpowered the sufferer.
1. The trouble cannot be thrown off. There are troubles from which we can escape. Often we can beat down our adverse circumstances. We can face our enemy and defeat him. But other troubles cannot be driven back. When the enemy comes in like a flood, no human effort can stem the torrent.
2. The distress cannot be calmly endured. Milder troubles may be simply borne in patience. We cannot drive them away, but we can learn to treat them as inevitable. There is a strength that is born of adversity. The oak grows sturdy in contending with the storm. The muscles of the wrestler are strong as iron. But distress may reach a point beyond which it cannot be mastered. Patience is broken down.
3. The affliction absorbs the whole life. The pain rises to such a height that it dominates consciousness and excludes all other thoughts. The man is simply possessed by his agony. Huge waves of anguish roll over his whole being and drown every other feeling. The sufferer is then nothing but a victim, Action is lost in fearful pain. The martyr is stretched on the rack. His torturer has deprived him of all energy and freedom.
II. THE EFFECTS OF THIS CONDITION. Such a state of thraldom must be an evil. It is destructive of personal effort. It excludes all service of love and submission of patience. And yet it may be a means to a good end.
1. It should be a wholesome chastisement. For the time being it is grievous. In its acutest stage it may not allow us to learn its less,ms. But when it begins to abate its fury, and we have some calmness with which to look back upon it, we may see that the storm has cleared the air and swept away a mass of unwholesome rubbish.
2. It should be a motive to drive us to God. Such a tremendous affliction requires the only perfect refuge for the distressed. So long as we can bear our troubles we are tempted to trust to our own strength; but the miserable collapse, the utter break-down, the humiliating thraldom, prove our helplessness and our need of One who is mightier than we are. Now, the very possibility of such overwhelming troubles is a reason why we should seek the refuge of God’s grace. It is hard to find the haven when the tempest is raving around us. We need to be fortified beforehand by the indwelling strength of God.
3. It should make us sympathetic with others. If we have escaped from the thraldom, it is our part to help those who are in it. We know its terrors and its despair.
4. It should lead us to make the best use of prosperous times. Then we can learn the way of Divine strength. Martyrs have triumphed where weaker men have been in bondage. The life of unselfish service, loyalty, and faith is a life of freedom. God will not permit such a life to be utterly enthralled by affliction. That awful late is the doom of the lost.W.F.A.
Job 30:21
Charging God with cruelty.
At the first onset of his afflictions it could be said of the patriarch, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (Job 1:22). But the aggravation of his troubles, followed by the vexatious advice of his friends, has since then more than once forced unwise words from his lips, and now he is directly charging God with becoming cruel to him.
I. GOD‘S ACTION MAY APPEAR CRUEL TO MAN. God permits or inflicts pain. When man cries for relief, relief does not comeat least in the way expected. It is not easy to see why the suffering is sent. To us it seems unnecessary. We think we could have done our duty better without it. There appears to be an iron fate bearing down upon us regardless of our needs, or deserts, or helplessness. This is brought home to us with peculiar poignancy, under the most trying circumstances.
1. An accumulation of troubles. One man has more than his share of them. Blow follows blow. The fallen is crushed. Tender wounds are chafed. This was Job’s experience.
2. The suffering of the innocent. Bad men are seen to be flourishing while good men are in distress. This looks like indifference to moral claims.
3. The overthrow of the useful. Job had been a most helpful man in his time; his downfall meant the cessation of his kind services for many people in trouble. We see valuable lives cut off or made useless, while mischievous people thrive and grow fat.
4. The refusal to deliver. Job had not been proud, unbelieving, self-contained. He had prayed. But God appeared not to hear or regard him (verse 20).
II. GOD IS NEVER CRUEL TO MAN. Job was now charging God foolishly. We have to judge of a man’s character by his deeds till we know him. Then, if we become fully assured that he is good, we reverse the process, and estimate any dubious-looking conduct by the clear character of the man In the same way, after we have come to know that God is a true Father, that his nature is love, our wisest course is not to fling off our faith, and charge God with cruelty when he deals with us in what looks to us like a harsh manner. He cannot be false to his nature. But our eyes are dim; our sight is short; our self-centred experience perverts our judgment. We have to learn to trust the constant character of God when we cannot understand his present conduct.
III. NARROW RELIGIOUS VIEWS LEAD TO UNJUST CHARGES AGAINST GOD. Job’s three friends were to a large extent responsible for the patriarch’s condition of mind, in which he was driven to charge God with cruelty. They had set up an impossible rule, and the evident falsehood of it had driven Job to desperation. A harsh orthodoxy is responsible for very much unbelief. Self-elected advocates of God have thus a good deal of mischief to answer for. In attempting to defend the Divine government some of these people have presented it in a very ugly light. Whilst they have been dinning their formal precepts into men’s ears on what they regard as the authority of revelation, they have been rousing a spirit of revolt, till what is most Divine in man, his conscience, has risen up and protested against their dogmas. From the days of Job till our own time theology has too often darkened the world’s idea of God. If we turn from man to God himself, we shall discover that he is better than his advocates represent him to be. When it is our duty to speak of religion, let us be careful not to fall into the error of Job’s friends, and generate hard thoughts of God by narrow, un-Christ-like teachings.W.F.A.
Job 30:23
The house of death.
Job expects nothing better than death, which he regards as “the house appointed for all living,” or rather as the house for the meeting of all living.
I. THE JOURNEY OF LIFE ENDS IS THE HOUSE OF DEATH. The living are marching to death. In a striking passage of ‘The City of God,’ St. Augustine, following Seneca, describes how we are always dying, because from the first moment of life we are drawing nearer to death. We cannot stay our chariot-wheels. The river will not cease to flow, and it is bearing us on to the ocean of death. It is difficult for the young and strong to take in the idea that they will not live for ever, and we come upon the thought of death with something of a shock. But this only means that we cannot see the end of the road while it winds through pleasant scenery that distracts our attention from the more distant prospect.
II. THE HOUSE OF DEATH IS IN DARK CONTRAST WITH THE JOURNEY OF LIFE. It is the living who are destined to enter this dreadful house. Here is one of the greatest possible contrastslife and death; here is one of the most tremendous transitionsfrom life to death. All our revolutions on earth are as nothing compared with this tremendous change. Death is only the end and cessation of life, while all other experiences, even the greatest and most upsetting, are but modifications of the life which we still retain. It is not wonderful, then, that this dark house of death has strongly affected the imagination of men. The surprising thing is that so many should be indifferent to it.
III. THE HOUSE OF DEATH IS FOR EVERY LIVING MAN. No truism is more hackneyed than the assertion that all men are mortal. Here is a commonplace which cannot be gainsayed, yet its very evident character should emphasize its significance. Death is the great leveller. In life we go many ways; at last we all go the same way. Now some pass through palace gates and others through dungeon-portals; at the end all must go through the same narrow door. Should not this commonness of destiny help to bring all mortals nearer together in life?
IV. THE HOUSE OF DEATH IS A PLACE OF MEETING. It is described by Job as a house of assemblage. Multitudes are gathered there. They who depart thither go to “join the majority.” There dwell many whom we have known on earth, some whom we have loved. Much mystery surrounds the house of death; but it cannot be an utterly strange place if so many who have been near to us on earth are awaiting us there. The joy of reunion should scatter the darkness of death. Every dear one lost to earth makes for us more of a home in the Unseen.
V. THE HOUSE OF DEATH LEADS TO THE REALM OF LIFE FOR ALL WHO SLEEP IN CHRIST. It is no gloomy prison. It is but a dark ante-chamber to a realm of light and blessedness. Indeed, death is not an abode, but a passage. We have no reason for thinking that death is a lasting condition in the case of those whose souls do not die in sin; for the impenitent, indeed, it is a fearful doom of darkness. But for such as have the new life of Christ in them death may be but the momentary act of dying. Certainly it is not their eternal condition. We talk of the blessed dead; we should think of the glorified living, born into the deathless state of heavenly bliss.W.F.A.
Job 30:26
Disappointment.
Job was disappointed in meeting with fearful evils when he was looking for good. Disappointment such as his is rare; yet in some form it is the frequent experience of all of us. Let us consider the significance of disappointment.
I. DISAPPOINTMENT IS ONE OF THE INEVITABLE TRIALS OF LIFE. We should not be overwhelmed with despair when we meet with it. It is part of the common lot of man, part of the common fate of nature. How many blossoms of spring fall to the ground frost-bitten and fruitless! How many hopes of men are but “castles in Spain”! If all we had dreamed of attaining bad become ours, earth would not be the world we know, but some rare paradise.
II. DISAPPOINTMENT AGGRAVATES TROUBLE. Its inevitability does not draw its sting. To be expecting good and yet to meet with ill is doubly distressing. It gives a shock like that which is experienced in coming upon a descending step where one was preparing to take an ascending step. All sense of security is lost, and a painful surprise is felt. Feeling is just experienced in the transition from one condition to another, and the violence of the transition intensifies the sensation. When the eye is adjusted to see a bright light, the gloom of a dark place is all the deeper. The sanguine suffer from pangs of distress which duller natures are not prepared to experience.
III. DISAPPOINTMENT SPRINGS FROM IGNORANCE. There must have been an error somewhere. Either we judged by mere appearances, or we trusted too much to the desires of our own hearts. God can never be disappointed, for God knows all and sees the end from the beginning. Hence his patience and long-suffering. It is well to see that God who thus knows everything is supremely blessed. No disillusions can dispel his perfect joy. Therefore not evil and pain, but good and gladness, must be ultimately supreme in the universe.
IV. DISAPPOINTMENT IS A WHOLESOME DISCIPLINE. God suffers us to be disappointed that we may profit by the painful experience. Sometimes we have been trusting to an unworthy hope; then it is best that the idol should be shattered. If any earthly hope has been idolized, the loss of it may be good, driving us to our true God. It is possible, however, to be the worse for disappointment, which may embitter the soul and lead to misanthropy and despair. We need a stout faith to stand up against the blows of unexpected trouble.
V. DISAPPOINTMENT WILL NEVER DESTROY THE TRUE CHRISTIAN HOPE. Earthly hopes may vanish in smoke, but the hope in Christ is sure. Even this may be lost sight of as the beacon-light is obscured by the driving storm; but it is not extinguished. For our Christian hope rests on the eternal constancy of God, and it concerns not fading and fragile earthly things, but the everlasting verities of heaven. Browning describes the man whose heart and life are strong against disappointment
“One who never turned his back,
but marched breast forward;
Never doubted clouds would break;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted,
wrong would triumph
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.”
W.F.A.
Job 30:31
The harp turned to mourning.
This is disappointing and incongruous. The harp is not like the pipes used at Oriental funerals for lamentation. It is an instrument for joyous music. Yet Job’s harp is turned to mourning.
I. MAN HAS A NATURAL FACULTY OF JOY. Job had his harp, or that in him of which the harp was symbolical. Some people are of a more melancholy disposition than others, but nobody is so constituted as to be incapable of experiencing gladness. We rightly regard settled melancholy as a form of insanity. Joy is not only our heritage; it is a needful thing. The joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh 8:10).
II. THE SAD WERE ONCE JOYOUS. Job’s harp is tuned to mourning. Then its use had to be perverted before it could be thought of as an instrument of lamentation. It was then put to a new, unwonted employment. This implies that it had been familiarly known as a joyous instrument. In sorrow we do not sufficiently consider how much gladness we have had in life, or, if we look back on the brighter scenes of the past, too often this is simply in order to contrast them with the present, and so to deepen our feeling of distress. But it would be more fair and grateful for us to view our lives in their entirety, and to recognize how much gladness they have contained as a ground for thankfulness to God.
III. LIFE IS MARKED BY ALTERNATIVE EXPERIENCES. Few lives are without a gleam of sunshine, and no lives are without some shadow of sorrow. The one form of experience passes over to the otheroften with a shock of surprise. We are all too easily accustomed to settle down in the present form of experience, as though it were destined to be permanent. But the wisest course is to take the vicissitudes of life, not as unnatural convulsions, as revolutions against the order of nature; but, like the changing seasons, as occurring i, the ordered and regular course of events.
IV. IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE MUSIC IN SADNESS. Job does not describe himself as like those captives of Babylon who hung their harps upon the willows (Psa 137:2). His harp is sounding still, but the music must agree with the feelings of the time, and gaiety must give place to plaintive notes. Therefore the tune is in a minor key. Still there is melody. The Book of Job, which deals largely with sorrow, is a poemit is composed in musical language. Sorrow is a great inspiration of poetry. How much music would be lost if all the harmonies that have come from sad subjects were struck out! If, then, sorrow can inspire song and music, it is natural to conclude chat suitable song and music should console sorrow. Feeble souls wail in discordant despair, but strong souls harmonize their griefs with their whole nature; and though they may not perceive it at the time, when they reflect in after-days they hear the echo of a solemn music in the memory of their painful experience. When the angel of sorrow takes up the harp and sweeps the strings, strange, awful, thrilling notes sound forth, far richer and deeper than any that leap and dance at the touch of gladness. The Divine mystery of sorrow that gathers about the cross of Christ is not harsh, but musical with the sweetness of eternal love.W.F.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. XXIX.
Job sets forth, in a pathetic manner, the happiness of his former prosperous state.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 29:1. Moreover, Job continued his parable Job now goes on to finish his defence; and, in order to it, he first sets out his condition in the time of his prosperity, in the present chapter; against which he places, by way of contrast, in the next chapter, his present unhappy situation, describing both with great beauty and elegance. He then proceeds, in the 31st chapter, to purge himself of the several crimes laid to his charge; imprecating on himself the divine vengeance, in various manners, in case he were guilty; and at last concludes, Job 31:35; Job 31:37 that this was his plea; on this he would rest his defence: he was desirous that it might be recorded, and prays that his cause might be brought to a decision, declaring that he was under no manner of apprehension as to the consequences.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
SECOND CHIEF DIVISION OF THE POEM
DISENTANGLEMENT OF THE MYSTERY THROUGH THE DISCOURSES OF JOB, ELIHU AND JEHOVAH
Job 29:1 to Job 42:6
First Stage of the Disentanglement
Job 29-31
Jobs Soliloquy, setting forth the truth that his suffering was not due to his moral conduct, that it must have therefore a deeper cause. [The negative side of the solution of the problem.]
1. Yearning retrospect at the fair prosperity of his former life
Job 29
a. Describing the outward appearance of this former prosperity
Job 29:1-10
1Moreover, Job continued his parable, and said:
2O that I were as in months past,
as in the days when God preserved me;
3when His candle shined upon my head,
and when by His light I walked through darkness;
4as I was in the days of my youth.
when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle;
5when the Almighty was yet with me,
when my children were about me;
6when I washed my steps with butter,
and the rock poured me out rivers of oil;
7when I went out to the gate through the city,
when I prepared my seat in the street!
8The young men saw me, and hid themselves;
and the aged arose, and stood up.
9The princes refrained talking,
and laid their hand on their mouth.
10The nobles held their peace,
and their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.
b. Pointing out the inward cause of this prosperityhis benevolence and integrity
Job 29:11-17
11When the ear heard me, then it blessed me;
and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me:
12because I delivered the poor that cried;
and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.
13The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me:
and I caused the widows heart to sing for joy.
14I put on righteousness, and it clothed me:
my judgment was as a robe and a diadem.
15I was eyes to the blind,
and feet was I to the lame.
16I was a father to the poor;
and the cause which I knew not I searched out.
17And I brake the jaws of the wicked,
and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.
c. Describing that feature of his former prosperity which he now most painfully misses, viz., the universal honor shown to him, and his far-reaching influence: Job 29:18-25
18Then I said, I shall die in my nest,
and I shall multiply my days as the sand.
19My root was spread out by the waters,
and the dew lay all night upon my branch.
20My glory was fresh in me,
and my bow was renewed in my hand.
21Unto me men gave ear, and waited,
and kept silence at my counsel.
22After my words they spake not again;
and my speech dropped upon them.
23And they waited for me as for the rain;
and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain.
24If I laughed on them, they believed it not;
and the light of my countenance they cast not down.
25I chose out their way, and sat chief,
and dwelt as a king in the army,
as one that comforteth the mourners.
2. Sorrowful description of his present sad estate
Job 30
a. The ignominy and contempt he receives from men: Job 30:1-15
1But now they that are younger than I have me in derision,
whose fathers I would have disdained
to have set with the dogs of my flock.
2Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me,
in whom old age was perished?
3For want and famine they were solitary;
fleeing into the wilderness
in former time desolate and waste.
4Who cut up mallows by the bushes,
and juniper roots for their meat.
5They were driven forth from among men,
(they cried after them as after a thief);
6To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys,
in caves of the earth, and in the rocks.
7Among the bushes they brayed;
under the nettles they were gathered together.
8They were children of fools, yea, children of base men;
they were viler than the earth.
9And now am I their song,
yea, I am their byword.
10They abhor me, they flee far from me,
and spare not to spit in my face.
11Because He hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me,
they have also let loose the bridle before me.
12Upon my right hand rise the youth;
they push away my feet,
and they raise up against me the ways of their destruction.
13They mar my path,
they set forward my calamity,
they have no helper.
14They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters;
in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me.
15Terrors are turned upon me:
they pursue my soul as the wind:
and my welfare passeth away as a cloud.
b. The unspeakable misery which everywhere oppresses him: Job 30:16-23
16And now my soul is poured out upon me;
the days of affliction have taken hold upon me.
17My bones are pierced in me in the night season;
and my sinews take no rest.
18By the great force of my disease is my garment changed:
it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.
19He hath cast me into the mire,
and I am become like dust and ashes.
20I cry unto Thee, and Thou dost not hear me:
I stand up, and Thou regardest me not.
21Thou art become cruel to me;
with Thy strong hand Thou opposest Thyself against me.
22Thou liftest me up to the wind;
Thou causest me to ride upon it,
and dissolvest my substance.
23For I know that Thou wilt bring me to death,
and to the house appointed for all living.
c. The disappointment of all his hopes: Job 30:24-31
24Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave,
though they cry in his destruction.
25Did not I weep for him that was in trouble?
was not my soul grieved for the poor?
26When I looked for good, then evil came unto me;
and when I waited for light, there came darkness.
27My bowels boiled, and rested not:
the days of affliction prevented me.
28I went mourning without the sun:
I stood up, and I cried in the congregation.
29I am a brother to dragons,
and a companion to owls.
30My skin is black upon me,
and my bones are burned with heat.
31My harp also is turned to mourning,
and my organ into the voice of them that weep.
3. Solemn asseveration of his innocence in respect to all open and secret sins
Job 31
a. He has abandoned himself to no wicked lust: Job 31:1-8
1I made a covenant with mine eyes;
why then should I think upon a maid?
2For what portion of God is there from above?
and what inheritance of the Almighty from on high?
3Is not destruction to the wicked?
and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?
4Doth not He see my ways,
and count all my steps?
5If I have walked with vanity,
or if my foot hath hasted to deceit;
6let me be weighed in an even balance,
that God may know mine integrity.
7If my step hath turned out of the way,
and mine heart walked after mine eyes,
and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands;
8then let me sow, and let another eat;
yea, let my offspring be rooted out.
b. He has acted uprightly in all his domestic life: Job 31:9-13
9If mine heart have been deceived by a woman,
or if I have laid wait at my neighbors door;
10then let my wife grind unto another,
and let others bow down upon her.
11For this is a heinous crime;
yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges.
12For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction,
and would root out all mine increase.
13If I did despise the cause of my man-servant, or of my maid-servant,
when they contended with me;
14what then shall I do when God riseth up?
and when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him?
15Did not He that made me in the womb make him?
and did not One fashion us in the womb?
c. He has constantly practised neighborly kindness and Justice in civil life: Job 31:16-23
16If I have withheld the poor from their desire,
or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail;
17or have eaten my morsel myself alone,
and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof:
18(for from my youth he was brought up with me, as with a father,
and I have guided her from my mothers womb;)
19if I have seen any perish for want of clothing,
or any poor without covering;
20if his loins have not blessed me,
and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep;
21if I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless,
when I saw my help in the gate;
22then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade,
and mine arm be broken from the bone!
23For destruction from God was a terror to me,
and by reason of His highness I could not endure.
d. He has not violated his more secret obligations to God and his neighbor: Job 31:24-32
24If I have made gold my hope,
or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence;
25if I rejoiced because my wealth was great,
and because mine hand had gotten much;
26if I beheld the sun when it shined,
or the moon walking in brightness;
27and my heart hath been secretly enticed,
or my mouth hath kissed my hand:
28this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge;
for I should have denied the God that is above.
29If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me,
or lifted up myself when evil found him:
30(neither have I suffered my mouth to sin
by wishing a curse to his soul:)
31if the men of my tabernacle said not,
O that we had of his flesh! we cannot be satisfied.
32The stranger did not lodge in the street:
but I opened my doors to the traveller.
e. He has been guilty furthermore of no hypocrisy, or mere semblance of holiness, of no secret violence, or avaricious oppression of his neighbor: Job 31:33-40
33If I covered my transgressions as Adam,
by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom:
34did I fear a great multitude,
or did the contempt of families terrify me,
that I kept silence, and went not out of the door?
35O that one would hear me!
behold, my desire is that the Almighty would answer me,
and that mine adversary had written a book.
36Surely I would take it upon my shoulder,
and bind it as a crown to me.
37I would declare unto Him the number of my steps;
as a prince would I go near unto Him.
38If my land cry against me,
or that the furrows likewise thereof complain;
39If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money,
or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life;
40Let thistles grow instead of wheat,
and cockle instead of barley.
The words of Job are ended.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Although introduced by the same formula as the discourse immediately preceding (comp. Job 29:1 with Job 27:1), this last long series of Jobs utterances exhibits decidedly a , a form and method esssentially new in comparison with the former controversial and argumentative discourses of the colloquy. They are not once addressed to the friends, who since Job 25. have been entirely silenced, and have not been provoked to further reply even by the elaborate instructions, which he imparts to them in Job 27-28. Instead of this they frequently appeal to God, and present, especially in the last section, a long series of solemn asseverations or adjurations uttered before God. They thus appear, in contrast with the interlocutory character of the discourses hitherto, as a genuine soliloquy by Job, which both by its contents and by its conspicuous length, forms a suitable transition to the following discourses, or groups of discourses by Elihu and Jehovah, which are in like manner of considerable length. The three principal sections are a yearning retrospect to the happy past (Job 29), a description of the sorrowful present (Job 30), and solemn asseverations of innocence in presence of the divine judge, or God of the Future (Job 31). These divisions are very obvious, and justify the divisions into chapters founded on them as corresponding strictly to that intended by the poet himself. Neither can there be much doubt in regard to the more special sub-division of these chief divisions. The first and the second contain respectively three long sub-divisions or strophes, of 89 verses each (once only, Job 30:1 seq. of 15 verses, which long strophe indeed may also be divided into two shorter ones of 8 and 7 verses. In the third part there appear quite distinctly five groups of thought of 78 (once of 9) verses each.
2. First Division: The prosperity of the past: Job 29. [It is very thoughtfully planned by the poet that Job, by this description of his former prosperity, unintentionally refutes the accusations of his friends, inasmuch as it furnishes a picture of his former life very different from that which they had ventured to assume. We have here the picture of a rich and highly distinguished chief of a tribe [or patriarch], who was happy only in spreading abroad happiness and blessing. Schlottmann].
First Strophe: Job 29:2-10 : The outward appearance of this former prosperity.
Job 29:2. Oh that it were to me [Oh that I were] as in months of yore! lit. who gives (makes) me like the months of the past, who puts me back in the happy condition of that time (so Rosenm., Welte, Vaih, etc.). Or, with the dative rendering of the suffix in (as in Isa 27:4; Jer 9:1), who gives to me like the months of the past, i. e. who makes me to live over such! (so usually). On the construction in b (the constr. state before the relative clause), comp. Gesenius, 116, [ 114], 3. [Green, 255, 2].
Job 29:3. When it (viz.) His lamp shone above my head., Inf. Kal of with the vowel a weakened to i (Ewald, 255, a) [Green, 139, 2], not Inf. Hiph. as Bttcher would render it, when after the Targ. he translates: when He caused His lamp to shine. This Hiphil rendering could only be justified if (with Ewald in his comm.) we should read (). [Probably alluding to the custom of suspending lamps in rooms or tents over the head. The language of this ver. is of course figurative, and implies prosperity and the divine favor. Carey]. On the anticipation of the subject by the suffix, comp. Ew., 309, c. Delitzsch quite too artificially refers the suffix in to God, and takes as a self-corrective, explanatory permutative: when He, His lamp shone, etc.
Job 29:4. As I was in the days of my harvest., as, according as, resumes the simple in and , Job 29:2. The days of the harvest are, as Job 29:5 b shows, a figurative expression for ripe manhood [the days of my prime Carey], the tas virilis suis fructibus fta et exuberans (Schultens): comp. Ovid Metam. XV. 200. [The rendering of E. V. in the days of my youth (after Symmach. and the Vulg.) is less correct, as is shown by the reference above to Job 29:5 b, the time referred to being that when he had his children about him, as well as by the word itself, which means the time when the ripe fruit is gathered]. When Eloahs friendship was over my tent;i. e. dispensed protection and blessing above my habitation. here meaning familiarity, confidential intercourse, (as in Job 19:19; Psa 25:14; Psa 55:15 [14]; Pro 3:22), not the celestial council of God, as in Job 15:8 (against Hirzel). [ either by ellipsis for or having the force of an active [verbal] noun, His being familiar. Dillm.Careys explanation, though pushing the literal rendering a little too far, is striking: lit. in the seat or cushion of God being at my tent; i. e., when God was on such terms of familiar intercourse with me that he had, as it were, his accustomed seat at my tent].
Job 29:5. On children as a most highly valued blessing, placed here next to God Himself, comp. Psa 127:3 seq.; Psa 128:3. Concerning ): in this sense (not in that of servants,) see above Job 1:19; Job 24:5.
Job 29:6. When my steps were bathed in cream (comp. Job 20:17, where however we have the full form ), and the rock beside me poured out streams of oil; that which elsewhere was barren poured out costly blessings, and that close by his side, so that he was not compelled to go far; comp. Deu 32:13.
Job 29:7-10. The honor and dignity which he then enjoyed. When I went forth to the gate up to the city. is equivalent to , towards the gate (comp. Job 28:11; Gen 27:3), not: out at the gate (as below, Job 31:34), for Jobs residence was in the country, not in the city with . For this same reason he speaks here of his going up , up to the city; for the city adjoining to him, was on an eminence, as was usually the case with ancient cities. [Comp. Abrahams relations to Hebron, as indicated in Genesis 23.]. In respect to the use of the space directly inside the gates of these cities as a place for assemblies of the people, comp. above, Job 5:4; also Job 31:4; Pro 1:21; Pro 8:3, and often. When I prepared my seat in the market. the open space at the gate, as in Neh 8:1; Neh 8:3; Neh 8:16, etc. On the construction (the change from the Infin. to the finite verb), comp. Job 29:3; Job 28:25.
Job 29:8. Then the young men saw me, and hid themselves;i. e. as soon as they came in sight of me, from reverential awe. And the gray-headed rose up, remained standinguntil I myself had sat. [A most elegant description, and exhibits most correctly the great reverence and respect which was paid, even by the old and decrepit, to the holy man in passing along the streets, or when he sat in public. They not only rose, which in men so old and infirm was a great mark of distinction, but they stood, they continued to do it, though the attempt was so difficult. Lowth]. On the construction, comp. Ewald, 285, b.
Job 29:9. Princes restrained themselves from speaking ( , as in Job 4:2; Job 12:15), and laid the hand on their mouth, imposed on themselves reverential silence; comp. Job 21:5. [What is meant is not that those who were in the act of speaking stopped at Jobs entrance, but that when he wished to speak, even princes, i. e. rulers of great bodies of men, or those occupying the highest offices, refrained from speech. Dillmann].
Job 29:10. The voice of nobles hid itself, lit. hid themselves, for the verb is put in agreement with the plur. dependent on as the principal term, as in the similar cases in Job 15:20; Job 21:21; Job 22:12. [Comp. Green, 277]. lit. those who are visible (from ) i. e. conspicuous, noble [nobiles]. On b comp. passages like Psa 137:6; Eze 3:26.
Continuation. Second Strophe: Job 29:11-17. Jobs active benevolence and strict integrity as the inward cause of his former prosperity.
Job 29:11. For if an ear heardit called me happylit. for an ear heard, and then called me happy; and similarly in the second member. The object of the hearing, as afterwards of the seeing, is neither Jobs speeches in the assembly of the people [if this ver. were a continuation of the description of the proceedings in the assembly, it would not be introduced by Dillm.], nor his prosperity (Hahn, Delitzsch), but as Job 29:12 seq. shows, his whole public and private activity. [For the reason mentioned by Dillmann is better translated for than when (E. V.)]. In regard to to pronounce happy, comp. Pro 31:28; Son 6:9. In regard to , to bear favorable testimony to any one, comp. Luk 4:22; Act 15:8.
Job 29:12. For I delivered the poor, that cried, and the orphan, who had no helper ( a circumstantial clause, comp. Ew., 331). [The clause is either a third new object (so E. V.)], or a close definition of what precedes: the orphan and (in this state of orphanhood) helpless one. The latter is more probable both here and in the Salomonic primary passage Psa 72:12; in the other case might be expected. Delitz.]. The Imperfects describing that which is wont to be, as also in Job 29:13; Job 29:16. As to the sentiment, comp. Psa 72:12.
Job 29:13. The blessing of the lost (lit. of one lost, perishing; as in Job 31:19; Pro 31:6) came upon me;i. e., as b shows, the grateful wish that he might be blessed from such miserable ones as had been rescued by him, hardly the actual blessing which God bestowed on him in answer to the prayer of such (comp. Hernias, Past. Simil. 2).
Job 29:14. I had clothed myself with righteousness, and it with me;i. e., in proportion as I exerted myself to exercise righteousness () toward my neighbor, the same [righteousness] took form, filled me inwardly in truth [it put me on as a garment, i. e., it made me so its own, that my whole appearance was the representation of itself, as in Jdg 6:34, and twice in the Chron., of the Spirit of Jehovah it is said that He puts on any one, induit, when He makes any one the organ of His own manifestation, Delitzsch. Righteousness was as a robe to me, and I was as a robe to it. I put it on, and it put me on; it identified itself with me. Words.] Not: and it clothed me, as Rosenmller, Arnh., Umbr. [E. V., Schlottm., Carey, Renan, Rod., Elz., etc.], arbitrarily render the second , thereby producing only a flat tautology. [Ewald also: it adorned me.The other rendering is adopted, or approved by Gesen., Frst, Delitzsch, Dillmann, Wordsworth, Noyes in his Notes]. The figure of being clothed with a moral quality or way of living to represent one as equipped, or adorned therewith, (comp. Isa 11:5; Isa 51:9; Isa 59:17; Psa 132:9), is continued in the second member, where Jobs strict righteousness and spotless integrity (this is what means; comp. Mic 3:8) are represented as a mantle and a tiara (turban); comp. Isa 61:10.
Job 29:15. Comp. Num 10:31. To be anybodys eye, ear, foot (here feet), etc., is of course to supply these organs by the loving ministration of help, and to make it possible as it were to dispense with them.
Job 29:16. On a comp. Isa 9:5; Isa 22:21. and seem to form a paronomasia here.And the cause of the unknown [the strangers, the friendless] I searched out, i. e., in order to help them as their advocate, provided they were in the right. , attributive clause, as in Job 18:21; Isa 41:3; Isa 55:5, and often. [E. V., the cause which I knew not is admissible, and gives essentially the same sense; but the other rendering is to be preferred, as furnishing a better parallel to the blind, lame, poor, preceding.The man whom nobody knew, or cared for, Job would willingly take for his client.E.].
Job 29:17. I broke the teeth of the wicked (the cohortative, , as in Job 1:15; Job 19:20), and out of his teeth I plucked the prey.For the description of hardhearted oppressors and tyrants (or unrighteous judges, of whom we are to think particularly here), under the figure of ravaging wild beasts, from which the prey is rescued, comp. Psa 3:8 [Psa 3:7]; Psa 58:7 [Psa 58:6], etc.
4. Conclusion: Third Strophe: Job 29:18-25. The honor and the influence which Job once enjoyed, and the loss of which he mourns with especial sorrow.
Job 29:18. And so then I thought [said]: With my neat [together with my nest, as implying a wish that he and his nest might perish together, would be unnatural, and diametrically opposed to the character of an Arab, who in the presence of death cherishes the twofold wish that he may continue to live in his children, and that he may die in the midst of his family, Delitzsch] (or also: in my nest) shall I die;i. e., without having left or lost my home, together with my family, and property (comp. Psa 84:4 [3]), hence in an advanced, happy old age.And like the phenix have many days: lit., make many, multiply my days. The language also would admit of our rendering sand, understanding the expression to refer to the multiplication of days like grains of sand; comp. as the sand of the sea in 1Ki 5:9 [1Ki 4:29 applying to Solomons wisdom] and often; also Ovid, Metam. XIV. 136 seq.: quot haberet corpora pulvis, tot mihi natales contingere vana rogavi. But against this interpretation, which is adopted by the Targ., Pesh., Saad., Luther, Umbreit, Gesenius, Stickel, Vaih., Hahn, [E. V., Con., Noy., Ber., Carey, Words., Renan, Rodwell, Merx], and in favor of understanding of the phenix, that long-lived bird of the well-known oriental legend (so most moderns since Rosenmller) may be urged: (1) The oldest exegetical tradition in the Talmud, in the Midrashim, among the Masoretes and Rabbis (especially Kimchi); (2) the versionsmanifestly proceeding out of a misconception of this phenix traditionof the LXX.: ; of the Itala: sicut arbor palm, and of the Vulg.: sicut palma; (3) and finally even the etymology of the word (or , as the Rabbis of Nahardearead, according to Kimchi) which it would seem must be derived (with Bochart) from torquere, volvere, and be explained circulation, periodic return, and even in its Egyptian form Koli (Copt.; alloe) is to be traced back to this Shemitic radical signification (among the ancient Egyptians indeed the chief name of the phenix was bni, hierogl. bano, benno, which at the same time signifies palm). The phraseto live as long as the phenix is found also among other people of antiquity besides the Egyptians, e. g., among the Greeks ( , Lucian, Hermot., p. 53); and the whole legend concerning the phenix living for five hundred years, then burning itself together with its nest, and again living glorified, is in general as ancient as it is widely spread, especially in the East. Therefore it can neither seem strange, nor in any way objectionable, if a poetical book of the Holy Scripture should make reference to this myth (comp. the allusions to astronomical and other myths in Job 3:9; 26:28). Touching the proposition that the Egyptian nationality of the poet, or the Egyptian origin of his ideas does not follow from this passage, see above, Introd., 7, b (where may also be found the most important literary sources of information respecting the legend of the phenix).
Job 29:19-20 continue the expression, begun in Job 29:18, of that which Job thought and hoped for. [According to E. V., Job 29:19 resumes the description of Jobs former condition: My root was spread out, etc. But these two verses are so different from the passage preceding, (Job 29:11-25), in which Job speaks of his deeds of beneficence, and from the passage following (Job 29:21-25) in which he describes his influence in the public assembly, and so much in harmony with Job 29:18, in which he speaks of his prospects, as they seemed to his hopes, that the connection adopted by Zckler, and most recent expositors, is decidedly to be preferred.E.].
Job 29:19. My root will be open towards the water:i. e., my life will flourish, like a tree plentifully watered (comp. Job 14:7 seq.; Job 18:16), and the dew will lie all night in my branches (comp. the same passages; also Gen 27:39; Pro 19:12; Psa 133:3, etc.)
Job 29:20. Mine honor will remain (ever) fresh with me ( = , consideration, dignity, honor with God and mennot soul as Hahn explains [to which is not appropriate as predicate, Del.], and my bow is renewed in my handthe bow as a symbol of robust manliness, and strength for action, comp. 1Sa 2:4; Psa 46:10 [Psa 46:9]; Psa 76:4 [Psa 76:3]; Jer 49:35; Jer 51:56, etc., to make progress, to sprout forth (Job 14:7); here to renew oneself, to grow young again. It is not necessary to supply, e.g., , as Hirzel and Schlottmann do, on the basis of Isa 40:31.
Job 29:21. seq., exhibit in connection with the joyful hopes of Job, just described, which flowed forth directly out of the fulness of his prosperity, and in particular of the honor which he enjoyed, a full description of this honor, the narrative style of the discourse by , Job 29:18, being resumed. Job 29:21-23 have for their subject others than Job himself, the members of his tribe, not specially those who took part in the assemblies described in Job 29:7-10; for which reason it is unnecessary to assume a transposition, of the passage after Job 29:10.
Job 29:21. They hearkened to me, and waited (, pausal form, with Dagh. euphonic for , comp. Gesen. 20, 2 c), and listened silently to my counsel (lit. and were silent for or at my counsel).
Job 29:22. After my words they spoke not againlit. they did not repeat (, non iterabant). On b comp. Deu 32:2; Son 4:11; Pro 5:3.
Job 29:23. Further expansion of the figure last used of the refreshing [rain-like] dropping of his discourse. They opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain.The , or latter rain in March or April, is, on account of the approaching harvest, which it helps to ripen, longed for with particular urgency in Palestine and the adjacent countries; comp. Deu 11:14; Jer 3:3; Jer 5:24; Joe 2:23; Hos 6:3, etc. On = , to gape, pant, comp. Psa 119:131.
Job 29:24. I laughed upon them when they despairedlit. when they did not have confidence (, absol. as in Isa 7:9; comp. Psa 116:10; and a circumstantial clause without this lacking , however, being supplied in many MSS. and Eds.). The meaning can be only: even when they were despondent, I knew how to cheer them up by my friendly smiles. This is the only meaning with which the second member agrees which cannot harmonize with the usual explanation: I smiled at them, they believed it not (LXX., Vulg., Saad., Luther [E. V., Noy., Rod., Ren., Merx], and most moderns). [The reverence in which I was held was so great, that if I laid aside my gravity, and was familiar with them, they could scarcely believe that they were so highly honored; my very smiles were received with awe Noyes]. And the light of my countenance (i. e., my cheerful visage, comp. Pro 16:15) they could not darken; lit. they could not cause to fall, cast down, comp. Gen 4:5-6 Jer 3:12.[However despondent their position appeared, the cheerfulness of my countenance they could not cause to pass away. Del.]
Job 29:25. I would gladly take the way to them (comp. Job 28:23); i. e., I took pleasure in sitting in the midst of them, and in taking part in affairs. This is the only meaning that is favored by what follows;the rendering of Hahn and Delitzsch: I chose out for them the way they should go [I made the way plain which they should take in order to get out of their hopeless and miserable state. Del This is the meaning also suggested by E. V.] is opposed by the consideration that , to choose, never means to prescribe, determine, enjoin. In the passage which follows, sitting as chief () is immediately defined more in the concrete by the clause, , like a king in the midst of the army; but then the I altogether too military aspect of this figure (comp. Job 15:24; Job 19:12) is again softened by making the business of the king surrounded by his armies to be not leading them to battle, but comforting the mourners. Whether in this expression there is intended a thrust at the friends on account of their unskilful way of comforting (as Ewald and Dillmann think), may very much be doubted.
Second Division: The wretchedness of the present. Chap. 30. First Strophe (or Double Strophe). Job 30:1-15. The ignominy and contempt which he receives from men, put in glaring contrast with the high honor just described. The contrast is heightened all the more by the fact that the men now introduced as insulting and mocking him are of the very lowest and most contemptible sort; being the same class of men whose restless, vagabond life has already been described in Job 24:4-8, only more briefly than here.
Job 30:1. And now they laugh at me who are younger than I in daysthe good-for-nothing rabble of children belonging to that abandoned class. What a humiliation for him before whom the aged stood up! [The first line of the verse which is marked off by Mercha-Mahpach is intentionally so disproportionately long to form a deep and long-breathed beginning to the lamentation which is now begun. Del.] They whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock ( , to make like, to put on a level with, not to set over, , prficere, as Schultens, Rosemn., Schlottm. explain). From this strong expression of contempt it does not follow that Job was now indulging in haughty or tyrannical inhuman thoughts [the considerate sympathy expressed by Job in Job 24:4-8 regarding this same class of men should be borne in mind in judging of Jobs spirit here also; yet it cannot be denied that the pride of the grand dignified old Emir does flash through the words.E.], but only that that rabble was immeasureably destitute, and moreover morally abandoned, thievish, false, improvident, and generally useless.
Job 30:2. Even the strength of their handswhat should it be to me?i. e. and even (LXX. ) as regards themselves, those youngsters, of what use could the strength of their hands be to me? Why this was of no use to him is explained in b:for them full ripeness is lost, i. e., enervated, miserable creatures that they are, they do not once reach ripe manly vigor ( as in Job 5:26). [Hence not old age, as in E. V., which is both less correct and less expressive.] Why they do not, the verses immediately following show.
Job 30:3. Through want and hunger (they are) starved; lit. they are a hard stiff rock , as in Job 15:34); they, who gnaw the dry steppe;i. e., gnaw away ( as in Job 30:17) what grows there; comp. Job 24:5; which have long been a wild and a wilderness.According to the parallel passages Job 38:27; and Zep 1:15 unquestionably signifies waste and devastation, or wild and wilderness (comp. , Gen 1:2; , Nah 2:11; and similar examples of assonance). The preceding however is difficult. Elsewhere it is an adverb of time: the past night, last evening [and so, yesterday], but here evidently a substantive, and in the constr. state. It is explained to mean either: the yesterday of wasteness and desolation, i. e., that which has long been wasteness, etc. (Hirzel, Ewald) [Schlott., Renan, to whom may be added Good, Lee, Carey, Elzas, who connect with the participle, translating who yesterday were gnawers, etc.], or: the night, the darkness of the wilderness (Targ., Rabbis, Gesen., Del.) [Noyes, Words., Barnes, Bernard, Rodwell, the last two taking ,and as three independent nouns,gloom, waste, desolation]. Of these constructions the former is to be preferred, since darkness appears nowhere else (not even in Jer 2:6; Jer 2:31) as a characteristic predicate of the wilderness, and since especially the gnawing of the darkness of the wilderness produces a thought singularly harsh. Dillmanns explanation: already yesterday a pure wilderness (where therefore there is nothing to be found to-day), is linguistically harsh; and Olshausens emendation arbitrary. [E. V. following the LXX. Targ., and most of the old expositors, translates fleeing, a rendering which besides being far less vivid and forcible, is less suitable, the desert being evipently their proper habitation. in the sense of gnawing reminds of , Job 24:5. It will be seen also that E. V. follows the adverbial construction of but the wilderness in former time desolate and waste suggests no very definite or consistent meaning. If a verbial, the force of must be to enhance the misery and hopelessness of their condition. They lived in what was not only now, but what had long been a deserta fact which made the prospect of getting their support from it all the more cheerless.E.].
Job 30:4. They who pluck the salt-wort by the bushesin the place therefore where such small plants could first live, despite the scorching heat of the desert sun; in the shadow, that is, of larger bushes, especially of that perennial, branchy bush which is found in the Syrian desert under the name sh, of which Wetzstein treats in Delitzsch. is the orach, salt-wort (also sea-purslain, atriplex halimus L. comp. LXX.: ), a plant which in its younger and more tender leaves furnishes some nourishment, although of a miserable sort; comp. Athenus, Deipnos. IV., 161, where it is said of poor Pythagoreans: .And broom-roots are their bread.That the root of the broom (genista monosperma) is edible, is indeed asserted only here; still we need not doubt it, nor read e. g., , in order to warm themselves (Gesenius), as though here as in Psa 120:4, or the use of the broom as fuel was spoken of, Comp. Michaelis. Neue orient. Bibl. V, 45, and Wetzstein in Del. [II., 143.And see Smiths Bib. Dic., Juniper, Mallows].
Job 30:5. Out of the midst (of men) they are hunted, e medio pelluntur. , lit. that which is within, i. e., here the circle of human social life, human society.They cry after them as (after) a thief. , as though they were a thief; comp. , Job 29:23.
Job 30:6. In the most horrid gorges they must dwelllit. in the horror of the gorges (in horridissima vallium regione; comp. Job 41:22; Ewald, 313, c) it is for them to dwell; comp. Gesen., 132 ( 129], Rem. 1.In holes of the earth and of the rocks. Hence they were genuine troglodytes; see below after Job 30:8. Concerning , earth, ground, see on Job 28:2.
Job 30:7. Among the bushes they cry out. above in Job 6:5 of the cry of the wild ass, here of the wild tones of the savage inhabitants of the steppes seeking food,not their sermo barbarus; Pineda, Schlottmann [who refers to Herodotus comparison of the language of the Ethiopian troglodytes to the screech of the night-owl. According to Delitzsch the word refers to their cries of lamentation and discontent over their desperate condition. There can be but little doubt that the word is intended to remind us of the comparison of these people to wild asses in Job 24:5, and so far the rendering of E. V. bray, is not amiss]. Under nettles (brambles) they herd together; lit. they must mix together, gather themselves. Most of the modern expositors render the Pual as a strict Passive, with the meaning, they are poured [or stretched] out, which would be equivalent tothey lie down [or are prostrate]; comp. Amo 6:4; Amo 6:7. But both the use of in such passages as 1Sa 26:19; Isa 14:1, and the testimony of the most ancient Versions (Vulg., Targ., and indeed the LXX. also: ) favor rather the meaning of herding, or associating together. [But neither the fut. nor the Pual (instead of which one would expect the Niph., or Hithpa.) is favorable to the latter interpretation: wherefore we decide in favor of the former, and find sufficient support for a Heb.-Arabic in the signification effundere from a comparison of Job 14:19 and the present passage. Del.].
Job 30:8. Sons of fools, yea, sons of base men,both expressions in opposition to the subject of the preceding verse. is used as a collective, and means the ungodly, as in Psa 14:1., equivalent to ignobiles, infames, a construction similar to that in Job 26:2 [lit. sons of no-name]; comp. 286, g.They are -whipped out of the land; lit. indeed an attributive clausewho are whipped, etc.; hence exiles, those who are driven forth out of their own home. [The rendering of E. V., they were viler than the earth was doubtless suggested by the use of the adjective in the sense of afflicted, dejected]. In view of the palpable identity of those pictured in these verses with those described in Job 24:4-8, it is natural to assume the existence of a particular class of men in the country inhabited by Job as having furnished the historical occasion and theme of both descriptions. Since now in both passages a troglodyte way of living (dwelling in clefts of the rock and in obscure places, comp. above Job 24:4; Job 24:8) and the condition of having been driven out of their former habitations (comp. Job 24:4) are mentioned as prominent characteristics of these wretched ones, it be comes particularly probable that the people intended are the Choreans, or Chorites (Luther: Horites) [E. V.: Horims] who dwelt in holes, the aborigines of the mountain region of Seir, who were in part subjugated by the Edomites, in part exterminated, in part expelled (comp. Gen 36:5; Deu 2:12; Deu 2:22). Even if Jobs home is to be looked for at some distance from Edomitis, e. g. in Hauran (comp. on. Job 1:1) a considerable number of such Chorites (, i. e. dweller in holes, or caves) might have been living in his neighborhood; for driven out by the Edomites they would have fled more particularly into the neighboring regions of Seir-Edom, and here indeed again they would have betaken themselves to the mountains with their caves, gorges, where they would have lived the same wretched life as their ancestors, who had been left behind in Edom. It is less likely that a cave-dwelling people in Hauran, different from these remnant of the Horites, are intended, e. g. the Itureans, who were notorious for their poverty, and waylaying mode of life (Del. and Wetzst.).
Job 30:9. In the second half of the Long Strophe, which also begins with Job turns his attention away from the wretches whom he has been elaborately describing back to himself. And now I am become their song of derision, I am become to them for a byword., elsewhere a stringed instrument, means here a song of derision, (comp. Lam 3:14; Psa 69:13 [12], , malicious, defamatory speech, referring to the subject of the same (LXX.: ).
Job 30:10. Abhorring me, they remove far from me (to wit, from very abhorrence), yea, they have not spared my face with spitting;i. e. when at any time they come near me, it is never without testifying their deepest contempt by spitting in my face (Mat 26:67; Mat 27:30). An unsuitable softening of the meaning is attempted by those expositors, who find expressed here merely a spitting in his presence (Hirzel, Umbreit, Schlottmann); this meaning would require rather than . Comp. also above Job 17:6, where Job calls himself a for the people.
Job 30:11 seq. show why Job had been in such a way given over to be mocked at by the most wretched, because namely God and the divine powers which cause calamity had delivered him, over to the same. For these are the principal subject in Job 30:11-14, not those miserable outcasts of human society just spoken of (as Rosenm., Umbreit, Hirzel, Stickel, Schlottm., Del. [Noy Car., Rod. and appy. E. V.] explain). The correct view is given by LXX. and Vulg., and among the moderns by Ewald, Arnh., Hahn, Dillm., etc.For He hath loosed my cord. So according to the Kri , on the basis of which we may also explain: For He hath loosed, slackened my string, which would be an antithetic reference to Job 29:20 b, even as by the translation cord there would be a retrospective reference to Job 4:21; Job 27:8. If following the Kthibh we read , the explanation would be: He has loosed His cord, or rein, with which he held the powers of adversity chained, with which however the following clause: and bowed me would not agree remarkably well [not a conclusive objection, for might very appropriately and forcibly describe the way in which his nameless persecutor, God doubtless, would overpower, trample him down, by letting loose His horde of calamities upon Job. Comp. Psa 78:8 [7]. Conant not very differently: because he has let loose his rein and humbled me; i. e. with unchecked violence has humbled me. Ewald, less naturally: He hath opened (i. e. taken off the covering of) His string (his bow). Elizabeth Smith better: He hath let go His bow-string, and afflicted me. in the sense of letting loose a bow, or bow-string however, is not used elsewhere, and would hardly be a suitable description of the effect of shooting with the bow.E.]. And the rein have they let loose before me;i.e., have let go before me (persecuting me). The subject of this, as of the following verses, is indisputably Gods hosts let loose against Job, the same which in the similar former description in Job 19:12 were designated his (comp. also Job 16:9; Job 16:12-14). The fearful, violent, and even irresistible character of their attacks on Job, especially as described in Job 30:13-14, is not suited to the miserable class described in Job 30:1-8. They are either angels of calamity, or at least diseases and other evils, or, generally speaking, the personified agencies of the Divine wrath, that Job has nere in mind.
Job 30:12. On the right there rises up a brood, or troop. , or according to another reading , lit. a sprouting, a luxuriant flourishing plant. [E. V., after the Targ. Rabbis, the youth, which is both etymologically and exegetically to be rejected.E.] This calamitous brood (of diseases, etc.) rises on the right, in the sense that they appear against Job as his accusers (comp. Job 16:8); for the accusers before a tribunal took their place at the right of the accused; comp. Zec 3:1; Psa 109:6.They push away my feet, i. e., they drive me ever further and further into straits, they would leave me no place to stand on. (Ewalds emendation they let loose then-feet, set them quickly in motionis unnecessary)And cast up against me their destructive ways, in that they heap up their siege-walls against me, the object of their blockade and hostile assaults. , as in Job 19:12, a passage which agrees almost verbally with the one before us, and so confirms our interpretation of the latter as referring to the Divine persecutions as an army beleaguering him. [Not only is this view favored by such a use of the same language as has been used elsewhere (Job 19) of the Divine persecutions, but also by the language itself. It is scarcely conceivable that Job should dignify the spiteful gibes and jeers of that rabble of young outcasts by comparing them to the solemn accusations of a judicial prosecution, or the regular siege of an army.E.]
Job 30:13. They tear down my path;i. e., by heaping up their ways of destruction they destroy my own heretofore undisturbed way of life.They help to my destruction (comp. Zec 1:15)they to whom there is no helper:i. e., who need no other help for their work of destruction, who can accomplish it alone. So correctly Stickel, Hahn, while most modern expositors find in c the idea of helplessness, or that of being despised or forsaken by all the world, to be expressed. Ewald however [so Con.] explains: there is no helper against them (appealing to Psa 68:21); and Dillmann doubts whether there can be a satisfactory explanation of the text, which he holds to be corrupt.
Job 30:14. As through a wide breach ( an elliptical comparison, like Job 30:5) they draw nigh [come on]; under the crash they roll onwards, i, e., of course to storm completely the fortress; comp. Job 16:14. The crash, , is that of the falling ruins of the walls [breached by the assault] not that, e. g., of a roaring torrent, as Hitzig explains (Zeitschr. der D.M. G., IX. 741), who at the same time attempts to give to the unheard of signification, forest stream. [Targ. also; like the force of the far-extending waves of the sea, after which probably E. V., as a wide breaking-in of waters. But the fig. is evidently that of an inrushing army.E.]
Job 30:15. Terrors are turned against me;i. e., sudden death-terrors; comp. Job 18:11; Job 18:14; Job 27:20; they pursue like the storm, (like an all-devastating hurricane) my dignity () [not soul, E. V., probably after the analogy of frequently in Psalms] that, viz., which was described in Job 29:20 seq. The 3d sing. fem. referring to the plur. as in Job 14:19; Job 27:20, and often.And (in consequence of all that) like a cloud my prosperity is gone;i. e., it has vanished as quickly and completelyleaving no traceas a cloud vanishes on the face of heaven. Comp. Job 7:9; Isa 44:22. [Paronomasia between and : my prosperity like a vapor has vanished].
6. Continuation. Second Strophe: The unspeakable misery of the sufferer: Job 30:10-23.And now (the third , comp. Job 30:1; Job 30:8) my soul is poured out within me, dissolving in anguish and complaint, flowing forth in tears [since the outward man is, as it were, dissolved in the gently flowing tears (Isa 15:3) his soul flows away as it were in itself, for the outward incident is but the manifestations and results of an inward action. Del.] On , with me, in me, comp. Job 10:1; Psa 42:5 [E. V., too literallyupon me].Days of suffering hold me fast, i. e., in their power, they will not depart from me with their evil effects [ with its verb, and the rest of its derivatives is the proper word for suffering, and especially the passion of the Servant of Jehovah. Del.]
Job 30:17. The night pierces my bones.[The night has been personified already, Job 3:2; and in general, as Herder once said, Job is the brother of Ossian for personifications: Night, (the restless night, Job 7:3 seq., in which every malady, or at least the painful feeling of it increases) pierces his bones from him. Del.] Or a translation which is equally possible, by night my bones are pierced [E. V., etc.], inasmuch as can be Niph. as well as Piel. , lit. away from me, i. e., so that they are detached from me.And my gnawers sleep not;i. e., either my gnawing pains, or my worms, the maggots in my ulcers; comp. . Job 7:5 [and which in the extra biblical tradition of Jobs disease are such a standing feature, that the pilgrims to Jobs monastery even now-a-days take away with them thence these supposed petrified worms of Job. Del.] In any case is to be explained after Job 30:3. The signification veins (Blumenth), or nerves, sinews (LXX., , Parchon, Kimchi) [E. V.] is without support.
Job 30:18. By omnipotence my garment is distorted;i. e., by Gods fearful power I am so emaciated that my garment hangs about me loose and flapping, no longer looking like an article of clothing (comp. Job 19:20). This is the only interpretation (Ewald, Delitzsch, Dillm., Kamphausen, [E. V., Con., Words., Ren.] etc.), that agrees with the contents of the second member, not that of the LXX., who read instead of , and understood God to be the subject: ; nor that of Hirzel: by omnipotence my garment is exchanged, i. e., for a sack; nor that of Schult. and Schlott.: it (i. e., the suffering, the pain) is changed into [become] my garment, etc. [with the idea of disguise, disfigurement].It girds me round like the collar of my [closely-fitting] coat;i. e., my garment, which nowhere fits me at all, clings to my body as closely and tightly as a shirt-collar fastens around the neck. [, cingit me, is not merely the falling together of the outer garment, which was formerly filled out by the members of the body, but its appearance when the sick man wraps himself in it; then it girds him, fits close to him like his shirt-collar. Del.] The LXX. already translate correctly: (Vulg. quasi capitium tunic) [E. V.].To render as, or in proportion to yields no rational sense (comp. also Exo 28:32).
Job 30:19. He (God) hath cast me into the mire (a sign of the deepest humiliation, comp. Job 16:15) so that I am become like dust and ashes (in consequence of the earth-like, dirty appearance of my skin, comp. Job 7:5, a theme to which he recurs again at the close of the chapter, Job 30:30)
Job 30:20-23. A plaintive appeal to God, entreating help, but entreating it without a hope of being heard by God.I stand there (praying) and Thou lookest fixedly at me, viz., without hearing me. This is the only interpretation of the second member which agrees well with the first, not that of Ewald: if I remain standing, then Thou turnest Thy attention to me, in order to oppose. [Ewald preferring the reading ]. It is absolutely impossible with the Vulg., Saad., Gesen., Umbreit, Welte, [E. V., Ber.] to carry over the of the first member to I stand up, and Thou regardest me not. [The effect of cannot be repeated in the second member, after a change of subject, and in a clause which is dependent on the action of that subject. Con.]
Job 30:21. Thou changest Thyself to a cruel being towards me.svus, comp. Job 41:2 [10], also the softened in the derivative passage, Isa 63:10.On in b, [with the strength of Thy hand Thou makest war upon me], comp. Job 16:9.
Job 30:22, Raising me upon a stormy wind (as on a chariot, comp. 2Ki 2:11) [not exactly to the wind (E. V., Con., Words., etc.), as though Job were made the sport of the wind, ludibrium ventis, but flung upon it, and whirled by it down from the heights of his prosperity.E.]. Thou causest me to be borne away (comp. Job 27:21), and makest me to dissolve in the crash of the storm.The last word is to be read after the Kthibh, with Ewald, Olsh., Del., etc., , and to be regarded as an alternate form of , or (comp. Job 36:29), and hence as being essentially synonymous with , Pro 1:27, tempest, and as to its construction an accus. of motion, like in the following verse. [Ges., Umbr., Noyes, Carey, read , Thou terrifiest me, a verb unknown in Heb., and even in Chaldee used only in Ithpeal. See Delitzsch.] The Kri (of which the LXX. have made ) would give a meaning less in harmony with a: Thou causest well-being to dissolve for me [E. V.: Thou dissolvest my substance. But the other rendering is a far more suitable close to the whole description, which is fearfully magnificent, besides being entitled to the ordinary preference for the Kthibh].
Job 30:23. I know that Thou wilt bring me to death (or bring me back in the sense of , Job 1:21) [death being represented as essentially one with the dust of death, or even with non-existence, Delitzsch, who, however, denies that always and inexorably includes an again], into the house of assembly for all living.The latter expression, which is to be understood in the sense of Job 3:17 seq., is in apposition to , and this is used here as a synonym of , as in Job 28:22.
Conclusion: Third Strophe: Job 30:24-31 : The diappointment of all his hopes.
Job 30:24. But still doth not one stretch out the hand in falling? here an adversative particle, as in Job 16:7; , however, interrogative for , comp. Job 2:10 b. The view that is compounded of and , ruin, fall, destruction (comp. Mic 1:6, also the more frequent plur., , ruins), is favored by the parallel expression in the second member. finally, in the sense of stretching out the hands in supplication, prayer, is at least indirectly supported by Exo 17:11 seq., and similar passages (such as Exo 9:29; 1Ki 8:38; Isa 1:15; Isa 65:2, etc.).Or in his overthrow (will one not lift up) a cry on that account?The interrogative = extends its influence still over the second member. The suffix in refers back to the indefinite subject in , and belongs therefore to the same one overtaken by the fall, and threatened with destruction ( as in Job 12:5). Respecting on that account, therefore, see Ewald, 217, d; and on = , a cry, comp. Job 36:19 a.It is possible that instead of the harsh expression we should read something like (according to Dillmanns conjecture). On the whole the explanation here propounded of this verse, which was variously misunderstood by the ancient versions and expositors, gives the only meaning suited to the context, for which reason the leading modern commentators (Ewald, Hirzel, Delitzsch, Dillmann, and on the whole Hahn, etc.) adhere to it. [Delitzsch thus explains the connection: He knows that he is being hurried forth to meet death; he knows it, and has also already made himself so familiar with this thought, that the sooner he sees an end put to this his sorrowful life, the betternevertheless does one not stretch out ones hand when one is falling? or in his downfall raise a cry for help? As Dillmann remarks, this meaning is striking in itself (besides being simple and natural), and is in admirable harmony with the context. The E. V., after some of the Rabbis, takes in the sense of grave, although the meaning of its rendering is obscure. It would seem to be that God will not stretch out His hand, in the way of deliverance, to the grave, although when He begins to destroy, men cry out for mercy. Wordsworth translates: But only will He (God) not stretch out His hand (to help, see Pro 31:20; Hab 3:10) upon me, who am like a desolation or a ruin? And will not crying therefore (reach Him) in His destruction of me?Others (Ges., Con., Noyes, Carey, take (from ) to mean prayer: Yea, there is no prayer, when He stretches out the hand; nor when He destroys can they cry for help, which is not so well suited to the connection, and is against the parallelism which makes it probable that before is a preposition as before .E.]
Job 30:25. Or did I not weep for him that was in trouble? lit. for the hard of day, for him that is afflicted by a day (a day of calamity). On b comp. Job 19:12; Job 19:15 seq. The . . , to be troubled, grieved, is not different in sense from , Isa 19:10.
Job 30:26. For I hoped for good, and there came evil, etc.For the thought comp. Isa 59:9; Jer 14:19. Respecting (Imperf. cons. Piel), comp. Ewald, 232, h; the strengthening in the final vowel as in Job 1:15.
Job 30:27. In regard to the boiling ( as in Job 41:23 [31]) of the bowels, comp. Lam 1:20; Lam 2:11; Isa 16:11; Jer 31:20, etc. [My bowels boiled, E. V., does not quite express the Pual , are made to boil, the result of an external cause.] On , to encounter any one, to fall upon him [E. V. prevent obsolete], comp. Psa 18:6 [6].
Job 30:28. I go along blackened, without the heat of the sun, i. e. not by the heat of the sun, not as one that is burnt by the heat of the sun. Since (comp. Son 6:10; Isa 30:26) denotes the sun as regards its heat, (instead of which the Pesh. and Vulg. read ) is not to be explained without the sun-light=in inconsolable darkness (so Hahn, Delitzsch, Kamp.) [and probably E. V.: I went mourning without the sun]; which is all the less probable in that can scarcely denote anything else than the dirty appearance of a mourner, covered with dust and ashes (comp. Job 7:5), such a blackening of the skin accordingly as would present an obvious contrast with that produced by the heat of the sun. On comp. Job 24:10.I stand up in the assembly, complaining aloud, giving free expression to my pain on account of my sufferings. here indeed not of the popular assembly in the gatesfor the time was long since passed, when he, the leper, might take his place there (comp. Job 29:7 seq.)but the assembly of mourners, who surrounded him in, or near his house, and who, we are to understand, were by no means limited to the three friends. The opinion of Hirzel and Dillmann, that means publice, is without support; , Pro 26:26 argues against this signification, rather than for it, for there in fact the language does refer to an assembly of the people, not to any other gathering.
Job 30:29. I am become a brother to jackals [Vulg., E. V.: dragons], a companion of ostriches [E. V. here as elsewhere incorrectly owls], i. e. in respect to the loud, mournful howling of these animals of the desert (see Mic 1:8). The reference is not so well taken to their solitariness, although this also may be taken into the account; for the life of a leper, shut off from all intercourse with the public, and put out of the city, must at all times be comparatively deserted, notwithstanding all the groups of sympathizing visitors, who might occasionally gather about him. [See note in Delitzsch 2:171; also Smiths Bib. Diet. Dragon, Ostrich.]
Job 30:30. My skin, being black, peels off from me: lit. is become black from me. as in Job 30:17; the blackness of the skin (produced by the heat of the disease) as in Job 30:19 [where, however, it is referred rather to the dirt adhering to it]; comp. Job 7:5.Respecting from , to glow, to be hot, comp. Eze 24:11; Isa 24:6.
Job 30:31 forms a comprehensive close to the whole preceding description: And so my harp (comp. Job 21:12) was turned to mourning, and my pipe (comp. the same passage) to tones of lamentation; lit. to the voice of the weeping. Jobs former cheerfulness and joyousness (comp. Job 29:24) appears here under the striking emblem of the tones of musical instruments sounding forth clearly and joyously, but now become mute. Similar descriptions in Psa 30:12 [11]; Lam 5:15; Amo 8:10, etc. [Thus the second part of the monologue closes. It is Jobs last sorrowful lament before the catastrophe. What a delicate touch of the poet is it that he makes this lament, Job 30:31, die away so melodiously. One hears the prolonged vibration of its elegiac strains. The festive and joyous music is hushed; the only tones are tones of sadness and lament, mesto flebile. Delitzsch].
Third Division: Jobs asseveration of his innocence in presence of the God of the future: Job 31.
First Strophe: Job 31:1-8. The avoidance of all sinful lust, which he had constantly practiced.A covenant have I made with mine eyes, and how should I fix my gaze on a maiden?i. e., with adulterous intent (comp. , Mat 5:28; comp. Sir 9:6). The whole verse affirms that Job had not once violated the marriage covenant in which he lived (and which, Job 2:9comp. Job 19:17shows to have been monogamous) by adulterous inclinations, to say nothing of unchaste actions. In respect to the significance of this utterance of a godly man in the patriarchal age, in connection with the history of morals and civilization, comp. below Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks. The words ( instead of or ) are literally rendered: to prescribe, to dictate a covenant to the eyes. Job appears accordingly as the superior, prescribing to his organ of vision its conduct, dictating to it all the conditions of the agreement. It is unnecessary, and even erroneous, to translate the verbs as pluperfects (I had made a covenant how should I have looked upon, etc.so e.g., Umbreit, Hahn, Vaih.), for Job would by no means describe these principles of chastity, which he observed, as something belonging merely to the earlier past.
Job 31:2-4 continue the reflections, beginning with Job 31:1 b, which had restrained him from unchaste lusts, and this in the form of three questions, of which the first (Job 31:2) is answered by the second and third (Job 31:3-4).And (thus did I think) what would be the dispensation of Eloah from above? is the portion assigned by God, the dispensation of His just retribution; comp. Job 20:29; Job 27:13, where also may be found the parallel , inheritance. On , from above, comp. Job 16:19; Job 25:2; and in particular such New Testament passages as Rom 1:18 ( ), Jam 1:17 (), etc.
Job 31:3 seq. The answer to that question itself given in the form of a question. On comp. above on Job 30:12; on , Job 18:21; on calamity, Oba 1:12.
Job 31:4. Doth not He (, referring back to , Job 31:2) [and emphatic: Hedoth He not see, etc.] see my ways, and doth He not count all my steps?Comp. Psa 139:2 seq. It was accordingly the thought of God as the omniscient heavenly Judge, which influenced Job to avoid most rigidly even such sinful desires and thoughts as were merely internal!
Job 31:5-8. The first in the series of the many adjurations, beginning with , in which Job continues the assertion of his innocence to the close of the discourse.If I have walked [had intercourse] with falsehood ( here as a synonym of the following , not simply vanity [E. V.] but falsehood, a false nature, lying) and my foot hath hastened to deceit. from a verb , not found elsewhere; and signifying not to be silent, but to hasten (like ) is an alternate form of the more common (comp. , 1Sa 15:19, from a root , synonymous with ).
Job 31:6. Parenthetic demand upon God, that He should be willing to prove the truth of Jobs utterances (not the consequent of the hypothetic antecedent in the preceding verse, as Delitzsch [E. V.], would make it).Let Him (God) weigh me in a just balance; or in the balance of justice, the same emblem of the decisive Divine judgment to which the inscription in the case of Belshazzar refers (Dan 5:25), and which appears in the proverbial language of the Arabs as the balance of works; in like manner among the Greeks as an attribute, of Themis, or Dike, etc.
Job 31:7. Continuation of the asseveratory antecedent in Job 31:5, introduced by an Imperf. of the Pastexpressing the continuousness of the actions describedinterchanging with the Perf. (as again below in Job 31:13; Job 31:16-20, etc.)If my steps turned aside from the way, i. e., from the right way, prescribed by God (comp. Job 23:11), which is forsaken when, as the thought is expressed in b, one walks after his own eyes, i. e., allows himself to be swayed by the lusts of the eye (comp. Jer 18:12;. 1Jn 2:16).And a spot cleaved to my hands, to wit, a spot of immoral actions, especially such as are avaricious. Comp. Psa 7:4 [3] seq.; Deu 13:17, etc. instead of the usual form (comp. Job 11:15), found also Dan 1:4.
Job 31:8. Consequent: then shall I sow and another eat;i. e., the fruits of my labor shall be enjoyed by another, instead of myself (because I have stained it by the fraudulent, appropriation of the property of others); the same thought as above in oh. Job 27:16 seq.; comp. Lev 26:16; Deu 28:33; Amo 5:11, etc.And may my products be rooted out! used here not of children, offspring [E. V.] (as in Job 5:25; Job 21:8; Job 27:14), but according to a of the growth of the soil as planted by the owner, which so far as it shall not fall into the hands of others shall be destroyed (comp. Isa 34:1; Isa 42:5).
9. Continuation. Second Strophe: Job 31:9-15. The righteousness which he had exercised in all the affairs of his domestic life.If my heart has been befooled on account of [or enticed towards] a woman;i. e., a married woman,for the sins of which Job here acquits his conscience are those of the more flagrant sort, like Davids transgression with Bathsheba, cot simple acts of unchastity, such as were described above in Job 31:1.As to b, comp. Job 24:15, and particularly Pro 7:7 seq.
Job 31:10. Consequent: Then let my wife grind for another;i. e., not simply grind with the hand-mill for him as his slave (Exo 11:5; Isa 47:2; Mat 24:41), but according to the testimony of the Ancient Versions (LXX., Vulg., Targ.) and the Jewish expositorsit refers to sexual intercourse in concubinagethis obscene sense being still more distinctly expressed in b., Aram. plur. as in Job 4:2; Job 24:22.
Job 31:11-12. Energetic expression of detestation for the sin of adultery just mentioned.For such a thing () [this] would be an infamous act, and that () a sin [crime to be brought] before the judges.So according to the Kthibh, which with points back to that which is mentioned in Job 31:9, but with points back to , transgression, deed of infamy [the usual Thora-word for the shameless, subtle encroachments of sensual desires, Del.], while the Kri unnecessarily reads in both instances would be, so written (with in the absol. state) = crimen, et crimen quidem judicum (comp. Gesen., 116 [ 114]. Rem.). Still the conjecture is natural that, we are to read either, as in Job 31:28 cr. judiciale, or, , cr. judicum. The meaning of the expression is furthermore similar to , Mat 5:21 seq.
Job 31:12. For it would be a fire which would devour even to the abyss, i. e., which would not rest before it had brought me, consumed by a wicked adulterous passion, to merited punishment in the abyss of hell; comp. Pro 6:27 seq.; Psa 7:26 seq.; Sir 9:8; Jam 3:6, and in respect to see above Job 26:6; Job 28:22,and which would root out all my increase, i. e., burn out the roots beneath it. The before may be expressed by the translation: and which should undertake the act of outrooting upon my whole produce, (Delitzsch) [Beth objecti, corresponding to the Greek genitive expressing not an entire full coincidence, hut an action about and upon the object. See Ewald, 217].
Job 31:13 seq. A new adjuration touching the humane friendliness of Jobs conduct toward his house-slaves. If I despised the right of my servant, of my maidif those who were often treated as absolutely without any rights, certainly not on the basis of the Mosaic law (comp. Exo 21:1 seq., 20 seq.). Job, the patriarchal saint, appears accordingly in this respect also as a fore-runner of the theocratic spirit; comp. Abrahams relations to Eliezer, Gen 15:2; Gen 24:2 seq.
Job 31:14. What should I do when God arose?etc. Umbreit, Stickel, Vaih., Welte, Delitzsch [E. V. Con., Carey, Noy., Words., Merx], correctly construe this verse as the apodosis of the preceding, here exceptionally introduced by , not as a parenthetic clause, which would then have no consequent after it (Ewald, Hirzel, Dillmann), [Schlottmann, Renan, Rod., Elz.]. In respect to the rising up of God, to wit, for judgment, comp. Job 19:25; on to inquire into, comp. Psa 17:3; on , to reply, Job 13:22.
Job 31:15. In the womb did not my Maker make him (also), and did not One (, one and the same God) fashion us in the belly?, syncopated Pilel-form, with suffix of the 1st pers. plur., for (Ewald, 81, a; comp. 250, a). For the thought comp. on the one side, Job 10:8-12; on the other side the use made of the identity of creation and community of origin on the part of masters and servants as a motive for the humane treatment of the latter by the former in Eph 6:9 (also Mal 2:10). [The position of gives some emphasis to the thought that the womb is the common source of our earthly life, or as Delitzsch expresses it, that God has fashioned us in the womb in an equally animal way, a thought which smites down all pride.E.].
Continuation. Third Strophe; Job 31:16-23 : His righteous and merciful conduct toward his neighbors, or in the sphere of civil life (comp. above Job 29:12-17). After the first hypothetic antecedent, in Job 31:16, follows immediately the parenthesis, in Job 31:18, then three new antecedent passages, beginning with (or ), until finally, in Job 31:22, the common consequent of these four antecedents is stated. If I refused to the poor their desire [or, if I held back the poor from their desire] ( construed otherwise than in Job 22:7; comp. Ecc 2:10; Num 24:11); and caused the widows eyes to failfrom looking out with yearning for help; comp. Job 11:20; Job 17:5; and in particular on comp. Lev 26:16; 1Sa 2:33.
Job 31:18. Parenthesis, repudiating the thought that he could have treated widows or orphans so cruelly as he had just describedintroduced by in the significationnay, rather comp. Psa 130:4; Mic 6:4, and often). Nay indeed from my youth he grew up to me as to a father, viz., the orphan; the position of the subjects in respect to those of Job 31:16 and Job 31:17 is chiastic [inverted]. The suffix in has the force of a dative (Ewald, 315, b), and is an elliptical comparison for . The conjecture of Olshausen, who would read he honored [magnified] me, is unnecessary. And from the womb I was her guide.Occasioned by the parallel expression in a, the meaning of which it is intended to intensify, the phrase , from my mothers womb, i. e. from my birth, presents itself as a strong hyperbole, designed to show that Jobs humane and friendly treatment of widows and orphans began with his earliest youth; he had drank it in so to speak with his mothers milk. [So far back as he can remember, he was wont to behave like a father to the orphan, and like a child to the widow. Del.].
Job 31:19. If I saw the forsaken one [or: one perishing] without clothing, etc. as in Job 29:13; , as in Job 24:7. The second member forms a second object to , lit. and (saw) the not-being of the poor with covering.
Job 31:20. In respect to the blessing pronounced by the grateful poor (the blessing described as proceeding from his warmed hips and loins, which in a truly poetic manner are named instead of himself) comp. Job 29:13.
Job 31:21. If I shook my hand over the orphan (with intent of doing violence, comp. Isa 11:15; Isa 19:16) [as a preparation for a crushing stroke], because I saw my help in the gate (i. e. before the tribunal, comp. Job 29:7)a reference to the bribery which he had practiced upon the judges, or to any other abuse of his great influence for the perversion of justice.
Job 31:22. Consequent, corresponding immediately to Job 31:21, but having a wider reference to all the antecedents from Job 31:16 on, even though the sins described in the former ones of the number were not specially committed by the hand, or arm. Then let my shoulder fall from its shoulder-blade. signifies shoulder, or upper arm, even as in b designates the arm. is the nape, which supports the upper arm, or shoulder (together with the shoulder-blades); a pipe, but used to denote the shoulder-joint to which the arm is attached; less probably the hollow bone of the arm itself (against Delitzsch). Concerning the raphatum in the suffixes and , comp. Ewald, 21, f; 247, d.
Job 31:23. Assigning the reason for what precedes, sustaining the same relation to Job 31:22, as Job 31:11 seq. to Job 31:10. For the destruction of God (comp. Job 31:3) is a terror for me ( meaning in mine eyes, comp. Ecc 9:13), and before His majesty ( compar.; as in Job 13:11) I am powerlessI can do nothing, I possess no power of resistance. Job emphasizes thus strongly his fear and entire impotence before God, in order to show that it would be morally impossible for him to be guilty of such practices, as those last described. The hypothetic rendering of the verse: for terror might [or ought to] come upon me, the destruction of God (Del., Kamph.) is impossible.
11. Continuation. Fourth Strophe: Job 31:24-32. Jobs conscientiousness in the discharge of his more secret obligations to God and his neighbor. Within this strophe, Job 31:24-28 constitute first of all one adjuration by itself, consisting of three antecedents with , to which Job 31:28 is related as a common consequent. (According to the assumption of Ewald, Dillmann, Hahn, etc., that Job 31:28 is only a parenthesis, and that a consequent does not follow within the present strophe, the discourse would be too clumsy). Job here expresses his detestation of two new species of sins: avarice (Job 31:24-25), and the idolatry of the Sabian astrology, which are here closely united together as the worship of the glittering metal, and that of the glittering stars; comp. Col 3:6.
Job 31:24. If I set up gold for my confidence, etc. On gold and fine gold comp. Job 28:16; on and , Job 8:14. Respecting the masc. used as a neuter in Job 31:25 b, of that which is great, considerable in number or amount, comp. Ew., 172, b.
Job 31:26. If I saw the sunlight (, the light simply, or the light of this world, Joh 11:9; used also of the sun in Job 37:21; Hab 3:4; comp. the Greek , Odyss. III. 355, and often), how it shines ( as in Job 22:12), and the moon walking in splendor. a prefixed accus. of nearer specification to hence used as an adverb, splendide (Ewald, 279, a). [ is the moon as a wanderer (from = ) i.e., night-wanderer, noctivaga. The two words describe with exceeding beauty the solemn majestic wandering of the moon. Del.]
Job 31:28. And my heart was secretly beguiled, so that I threw to them (to these stars, having reference to the heathen divinities represented by them; hence the , Deu 4:19) a kiss by the hand (lit. so that I touchedwith a kissmy hand to my mouth; respecting this sign of adoratio, or , comp. 1Ki 19:18; Hos 13:2; also Plin. H. N. XXVIII., 2, Job 5 : Inter adorandum dexteram ad osculum referimus et totum corpus circumagimus; and Lucian , who represents the worshippers of the rising sun in Western Asia and Greece as performing their devotion by kissing the hand ( ). In the case of Job it was the worship of the stars as practiced by the Aramans and Arabians (the Himjarites in particular among the latter worshipping the sun and moon [Urotal and Alilat] as their chief divinities) which might from time to time present itself to him in the form of a temptation to apostatize from one invisible God; comp. L. Krehl, Die Religion der vorislamitischen Araber, 1863; L. Diestel, Der monotheismus des ltesten Heidenthums, Jahrbcher fr deutsche Theologie, 1860, p. 709 seq. Against Ewalds assumption that there is here an allusion to the Parsee worship of the sun, and that for that reason our book could not have been written before the 7th Cent. B. C, it may be said, that the kissing of the hand does not appear in the Zoroastrian ritual of prayer, and also that the sun and moon are represented in the Avesta as genii created by Ahuramazda, and consequently not as being themselves gods to be worshipped. Equally arbitrary with this derivation of the passage from the Zend religion by Ewald, is Dillmanns assertion, that it was only from the time of King Ahaz, and still more under Manasseh, that the adoration of the host of heaven began properly to exercise a seductive influence on the people of Israel, and that it was only from that point on that it could be regarded as a sign of particular religious purity that one had never, not even in secret, yielded to this temptation. As though our poet did not know perfectly well what traits he ought to introduce into the picture of his hero, who is consistently represented as belonging to the patriarchal age! Comp. against this unnecessary assumption of an anachronism, of which the poet had been guilty, in the history of civilization or religion, the Introduction, 6, II., f.
Job 31:28. Consequent, (see above): This also were a crime to be punished; lit. a judicial crime, one belonging to the judge; comp. on Job 31:11; and respecting the thought, Exo 17:2 seq.Because I should have denied the God above (Job 31:2); lit. I should have denied [acted falsely] in respect to the God above; means here the same with elsewhere (Job 8:18; Isa 59:13).
Job 31:29-30. A new asseveration with an oath repudiating the suspicion that he had exhibited toward his enemies any hate or malice. For this hypothetic antecedent, as well as for all those which follow, beginning with down to Job 31:38, the special consequent is wanting; not until Job 31:38 seq. does this series of antapodota [antecedents or protases] reach its end. The consequent in Job 31:40, however, is, in respect of its contents, suited only to the antecedent passage immediately preceding, in Job 31:38-39, and not also to the verses preceding those.
Job 31:30; Job 31:32; Job 31:35-37 are accordingly mere parentheses.If I rejoiced over [or in] the destruction ( as in Job 30:24) of him that hated me.That the love of our enemies was already required as a duty under the Old Dispensation is shown by Exo 23:4; Lev 19:18 (the latter passage not without a characteristic limitation), but still more particularly by the Chokmah-literature, e. g.Pro 20:22; Pro 24:17 seq.; Pro 25:21 seq.
Job 31:31. Yet I did not ( with an adversative meaning for the copula) allow my palate (which is introduced here as the instrument of speech, as in Job 6:30 [where, however, it is rather the instrument of tasting, and so is used for the faculty of moral discrimination]) to sin, by a curse to ask for his life;i. e. by cursing to wish for his death.
Job 31:31 seq. He has also continually shown himself generous and hospitable towards his neighbor.If the people of my tent (i. e. my household associates, my domestics) were not obliged to say: where would there be one who has not been satisfied with his flesh? lit. who gives one not satisfied with his flesh? as in Job 14:4; , Partic. Niph. in the accus. depending on (comp. also Job 31:35, and above Job 29:2). here means the same with , 1Sa 25:11, the flesh of his slaughtered cattle. The figurative expression: to eat any bodys flesh in the sense of backbiting, calumniating (Job 19:22) is not to be found here.
Job 31:32. The stranger did not pass the night without; I opened my doors to the traveller. might of itself signifytowards the street (Stickel, Delitzsch). But since this qualification would be superfluous, is rather to be taken as = or . As to the thought, comp. the accounts of the hospitality of Abraham at Mamre, of Lot at Sodom, of the old man at Gibeah (Gen 18:19; comp. Heb 13:2; Jdg 19:15 seq.); also the many popular anecdotes among the Arabs of divine punishments inflicted on the inhospitable (to open a guest-chamber is in Arabic the same as to establish ones own household), and the eulogies of the hospitality of the departed in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Comp. Wetzstein in Delitzsch [2:193], Brugsch, Die egypt. Grberwelt, 1868, p. 32 seq.; L. Stern, Das egypt. Todtengericht, in Ausland, 1870, p. 1081 seq.
12. Conclusion: Fifth Strophe: Job 31:33-40Job is not consciously guilty even of the hypocritical concealment of his sins, nor of secret misdeedsa final series of asseverations, which is not only related to the preceding enumeration (as though the same were incomplete, and might be supposed to have been silent in regard to some of Jobs transgressions), but which simply links itself to all the preceding assertions of his innocence, and concludes the same.
Job 31:33. If I covered after the manner of men my wickedness;, after the way of the world, as people generally do; comp. Psa 82:7 and Hos 6:7; for even in the latter passage this explanation is more natural than that which implies a reference to Gen 3:8 : as Adam (Targum, Schult., Rosenm., Hitzig, Umbr., v. Hofm., Del.) [E. V., Good, Lee, Con., Schlott., Words., Carey, etc.; and comp. Pusey on Hos 6:7. Conant observes of the rendering ut homo that there is little force in this. On the contrary there is pertinency and point in the reference to a striking and well-known example of this offense, as a notable illustration of its guilt. Such a reference to primeval history in a book that belongs to the literature of the Chokmah is, as Delitzsch remarks, not at all surprising. And certainly the extra-Israelitish cast of the book is no objection to the recognition of so widely prevalent a tradition as that of the Fall in the monotheistic East.]Hiding (, Ew. 280, d) in my bosom my iniquity. is a poetic equivalent of , found only here (but much more common in Aram.).
Job 31:34, closely connected with the preceding verse, declares the motive which might hare influenced Job to hide his sins, viz. the fear of men.Because I feared the great multitude. here as fem., comp. Ew. 174, b; here (otherwise than in Job 13:25) intransitive to be afraid, with accus. of the thing feared. On b and c comp. Job 24:16. The tribes [] whose contempt he fears ( as in Job 12:5; Job 12:21) are the nobler families, his own peers in rank, to be excluded from social intercourse with whom because of infamous crimes would cause him apprehension. With his holding his peace, and not going forth at his door (in c)signs betraying an evil conscience, Brentius strikingly compares the example of Demosthenes, who (according to Plutarch, Demosth, 25) on one occasion made a sore throat a pretext for not speaking, whereas in truth he had been bribed, and who was put to the blush by an exclamation from one of the people: He is not suffering from a sore throat, but from a sore purse ( ). [E. V. renders the verse interrogatively: did I fear? etc.; i. e. if I covered my transgression, etc., was it because I feared the multitude? The objection to this rendering, however, is that it is less in harmony with the adjuratory tone of the context. Not a few commentators render this verse as the imprecation corresponding to Job 31:22 : Then let me dread the great assembly, etc. So Schultens, Con., Noyes, Wemyss, Carey, Good, Lee, Barnes, Elzas.(Patrick makes 34c the apodosis: Then let me hold my peace, and go not forth, etc.). It seems more natural however to regard the dread of the great assembly, and the contempt of the great families of the land, as causes of the cowardly hypocrisy of Job 31:33, rather than as its consequences.Moreover, what the discourse loses as regards completeness of structure, it gains in impressiveness and energy by the frequent parentheses and breaks, which characterize this final strophe according to the view taken in the comm., and adopted by Ewald, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Schlottm., Rodwell, Wordsworth, Renan.E.]
Job 31:35-37. The longest of the parentheses which interrupt the asseverations of our chapter, a shorter parenthesis being again incorporated even with this (Job 31:35 b).O that I had one who would hear me! to wit, in this assertion of my innocence. In this exclamation, as also in the following Job has God in view, for whose judicial interposition in his behalf he accordingly longs here again (as previously, Job 13:16. seq.)Behold my signature (lit. my sign)let the Almighty answer me.The meaning of this exclamation which finds its way into this tumult of feeling can only be this: There is the document of my defense, with my signature! Here I present my written vindicationlet the Almighty examine it (comp. Job 31:6), and deliver His sentence! means lit. my mark, my signature [not my desire, (E. V., after Targ. and Vulg.), as though it were connected with ]; comp. the commentators on Eze 9:4.The cross-form of this sign ( = ), which has there a typical significance, would have no significance in this passage. Rather is it the case that Tav here, in accordance with a conventional, proverbial way of speaking (as tiwa among the Arabs signifies any branded sign, whether or not it be precisely in the form of a cross), has acquired by synedoche the meaninga written document with signature attached, a writing subscribed, and for that reason legally valid; and that Job means by this writing all that he has hitherto said in his own justification, the sum total of his foregoing asseverations of innocence, that it is therefore an apologetic document, a judicial vindication, to which he refers by this little word this appears from the contrast with the accusation or indictment of his opponent, which is immediately mentioned in c. The supposition that Job was ignorant of writing, and for that reason was compelled to put a simple for his signature can be inferred from the passage only by an inappropriate perversion of the proverbial and figurative meaning of the language. Moreover Job 19:23 seq. can be made to lend only an apparent support to this supposition.And (that I had) the writing which mine adversary has written!Grammatically this third member is connected with the first as a second accus. to ; but according to its logical import, it is conditioned by the second member; or, which is the same thing, b is simply a grammatical parenthesis, but at the same time it serves to advance the thought. The writing of the adversary can only be the written charge, in which Jobs adversary, i. e., God (not the three friends, as Delitzsch explains, against the context) has laid down and fixed upon against him. This charge of Gods he wishes to see over against his written defense, for which he is at once ready, or rather which he has already actually prepared. Most earnestly does he yearn to know what God, whom he must otherwise hold for a persecutor of innocence, really has against him. It is only from this interpretation of the words (adopted by Ew., Hirz., Heiligst., Vaih., Dillm.) [Schlott., Noy., Car., Con., Rodw., Bar., Lee, all agreeing as to sense, but with slight variations as to construction] that any available sense is obtained,not from taking the third member as dependent on in the second, in which case must denote either the witness of God to Jobs innocence written in his consciousness (Hahn, and similarly Arnh., Stickel), or the charge preferred against Job by Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (Del.) neither of which explanations is suitable, for the following verses show that Job is here speaking of something which he does not yet have, but only wishes for.In respect to the use of writing, which is here again presupposed in judicial proceedings, comp. on Job 13:26.
Job 31:36-37 declare what Job would do with that charge of his divine adversary, for which he here longs; he would wear it as a trophy, or as a distinguishing badge of honor on his shoulders (comp. Isa 9:5; Isa 22:22), and bind it around as an ornament for his head, lit., as crowns, i. e., as a crown consisting of diadems rising each out of the other (comp. Rev 19:12);comp. on the one side Job 29:14; Isa 61:10; on the other side Col 2:14 (the handwriting which was blotted out by Christ through His being lifted up on the cross).And further: The number of my steps would I declare to Him;i. e., before Him, the Divine Adversary (who however is at the same time conceived of as Judge, as in Job 16:21) would I conceal none of my actions, but rather would I courageously confess all to Him ( as in Psa 38:19; respecting the construction with a double accus., comp. above Job 26:4).Like a prince would I draw near to Him;i. e., draw nigh to Him with a firm stately step ( intens. of Kal, comp. Eze 36:8), as becomes a prince, not an accused person conscious of guilt; hence with a princely free and proud consciousness, not with that of a poor sinner.
Job 31:38-40 follow up the general assertion, that his conscience was not burdened with secret sins, with a more particular example of his freedom from covert blood-guiltiness. He knows himself to be innocent in particular of the wickedness of removing boundaries by violence, and of the heaven-crying guilt of secret murder, such as he might possibly have committed (after Ahabs example, 1Ki 21:1 seq.; comp. above Job 24:2; Isa 5:8) in order to acquire a piece of land belonging to a weaker neighbor. That Job should close this series of asseverations of innocence with the mention of so heinous a crime will appear strange only so long as we do not realize just how his opponents thus far had judged in respect to the nature and occasion of his suffering in consequence of their narrow-minded, external theory of retribution. Their judgment indisputably wasand Eliphaz had once, at least, expressed it very openly and decidedly (see Job 22:6-9):Because Job has to endure such extraordinary suffering, it must be that he is burdened with some grievous sin, some old secret bloody deed of murder, rapine, etc.! It is into this way of thinking of theirs that Job enters when he concludes his answer with the mention of just such a case, one which might seem sufficiently probable according to a human estimate of the circumstances, and so intentionally reserves to the end the solemn repudiation of that suspicion, which might very easily cleave to him, and which, if well-founded, must have affected him most destructively. The whole discoursewhich indeed in its last division (Job 31) is essentially a self-vindication of the harshly and grievously accused suffererthus acquires an emphatic ending, which by the significant assonances that occur in the closing imprecation, Job 31:40, reaches a very high degree of impressiveness, and produces a thrilling effect on those who heard and read it. This rhetorical artistic design in the close of the discourse is ignored, whether (with Hirzel and Heiligst.) we assume that it was the poets purpose, that Jobs discourse, which with Job 31:38 seq., had taken a new start in further continuation of the series of asseverations touching his innocence, should seem to be interrupted by the sudden appearance of Jehovah (Job 38.), which takes place with striking effect (comp. Introd., 10, No. 1, and ad. 1); or assume a transposition of Job 31:38-40 out of their original connection, as was done by the Capuchin Bolducius (1637), who would remove the three verses back so as to follow Job 31:8; by Kennicott and Eichhorn, who would place them after Job 31:25; by Stuhlmann, who assigned their position before Job 31:35, and latterly by Delitzsch, who leaves undetermined the place, where they originally belonged.
Job 31:38. If my field cries out concerning me (for vengeance, on account of the wicked treatment of its owner; comp. Job 16:18; Hab 2:11), and all together its furrows weep (a striking poetic representation of the figure of crying out against one).
Job 31:39. If I have eaten its strength (i. e. its fruit, its products, comp. Gen 4:12) without payment, and have blown out the soul of its owner, i. e. by any kind of violence, by direct or indirect murder, have caused him to expire; comp. Job 11:20; and the proverbial saying: to snuff out the candle of ones life.
Job 31:40. Consequent, and emphatic close: Briars must (then) spring up (for me) instead of wheat, and stinking weeds instead of barley (the strong word only here, odious weeds, darnel). As to meaning, Job 31:8 is similar; but the present formula of imprecation is incomparably harsher and stronger than that former one, as is shown by the doubled assonance, first the alliteration and , and then the rhyme and .The short clause: the words of Job are ended, which the Masoretes have inappropriately drawn into the network of the poetic accentuation, could scarcely have proceeded from the poet himself (as Carey and Hahn think, of whom the former is inclined even to regard them as Jobs own final dixi), but stand on the same plane of critical value, and even of antiquity with the inscription at the end of the second book of Psalms (Ps. 72:64), or with the closing words of Jer 51:64. The LXX. have changed the words to , in order to bring them into connection with the historical introductory verses in prose which follow (Job 32.). But according to their Hebrew construction they do not seem to incline at all to such a connection. Jerome already recognized their character as an annotation of later origin; they found their way into his translation only by subsequent interpolation.All Heb. MSS. indeed, as well as the ancient oriental versions (Targ., Pesh., etc.), exhibit the addition, which must be accordingly of very high antiquity.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Measured by the Old Testament standard, the height of the moral consciousness which Job occupies in this splendid final monologue deserves our wonder, and is even incomparable. He says much, and says it boldly, in behalf of the purity of his heart and life. He affirms this with such ardor and fulness of expression, that at times he seems to forget himself, and to contradict his former confessions touching his participation in the universal depravity of the race, as found in ch.Job 13:26; Job 14:4 (see e. g. ch Job 29:14; Job 31:5-7; Job 31:35 seq.). He even relapses at one time into that tone of presumptuous accusation of God as the merciless persecutor of innocence, and seems to find the only divine motive for his grievous lot to be a supposed pleasure by God in the infliction of torture, a one-sided exercise of His activity as a God of power, without any co-operation from His righteousness and love (Job 30, especially Job 30:11 seq., Job 30:18; Job 30:20 seq.). But if in this there is to be recognized a remainder of the unsubdued presumption of the natural man in him, and a lack of proper depth, sharpness and clearness in his consciousness of sin, such as is possible only under the New Dispensation, he occupies a high place notwithstanding in the roll of Old Testament saints. He appears still, and that even in the protestation of innocence which he makes in his own behalf in this his last discourse, as a genuine prince in the midst of the heroes of faith and spiritual worthies of the time before Christ, as one who, when he suffered, had the right to be regarded as an innocent sufferer, and to meet with indignation every suspicion which implied that he was making expiation for secret sins, as the wicked must do.
2. This moral exaltation of Job is seen already in the way in which in Job 29. he describes his former prosperity. Among all the good things of the past which he longs to have back, he gives the pre-eminence to the fellowship and blessing of God, the fountain of all other good (Job 29:2 seq.). In describing the distinguished estimation in which he was then held among men, it is not the external honor as such which he makes most prominent, but the beneficent influence, which, by virtue of that distinction he was able to exert, the works of love, of righteousness and of mercy, in which he was then able to seek and to find his happiness, as the father and guide of many (Job 29:12-17). In the midst of his bitterest complaints on account of the greatness of his losses and the depth of his misery, there come groanings that he can no more do as he was wont to doweep with the distressed, and mourn with the needy, in order to bring them comfort, counsel and help (Job 30:25). And what a noble horror of the sins of falsehood, of lying and deception, of adulterous unchastity, of cruelty towards servants and all those needing help in any way, sounds forth through the asseverations of his innocence in the 31st chapter! With what penetrative truth and beauty does he grasp the two forms of idolatry, the worship of gold on the part of the avaricious, and the worship of the stars by the superstitious heathen, as two waysonly in appearance far removed from each other, but in truth most closely united togetherof denying the one true and living God (Job 30:24-28)! How decidedly he maintains the necessity of showing love even to ones enemies, to say nothing of ones fellow-men in general, known or unknown, neighbors or foreigners (Job 30:29 seq.)! With what indignation does he repel the suspicion of secret, hypocritically concealed sins and deeds of violence, again solemnly appealing in the same connection to God to be a witness to the purity of his conscience and to be a judge of the innocence of his heart (Job 30:33 seq.)! The man who could thus bear witness to his innocence could be a virtuous man of no ordinary sort. He was far from being one of the common class of righteous men known in ancient times. Such an one, far from being subject to the curse of wicked slander and calumny, could not be reckoned among ordinary sinners, or as a crafty hypocrite.
3. That, however, which exalts Job higher than all this is that which is said by him in the beginning of Job 31. (Job 31:1 seq.; comp. Job 31:7) in respect to his avoidance on principle even of all sins of thought, and impure lusts of the heart. A covenant have I made for my eyes, and how should I fix my gaze on a maiden? He who shows such earnestness as this in obeying the law of chastity, in avoiding all sinful lust, in extirpating even the slightest germs of sin in the play of thought, and in the look of the eyeshe strives after a holiness which is in fact better and more complete than the law of the Old Dispensation, with its prohibitions of coveting that which belongs to another (Exo 20:17; Deu 5:21), could teach. He shows himself to be on the way which leads directly to that pure as well as complete righteousness and godlikeness, which has for its final aim purity of heart as the foundation and condition of one day beholding God, and which, in its activity towards men, takes the form of that perfect love which seeks nothing but good and blessing even for enemies, and devotes itself wholly and unreservedly to the kingdom of Godon the way, in short, to that holiness and purity of heart which Christ teaches and prescribes in the Sermon on the Mount. The fact that Job gives utterance to such high and clear conceptions of rectitude, virtue and holiness, is of especial interest for the reason that not one of the fundamental principles recognized by him is referred expressly to the Sinaitic law; but, on the contrary, the extra-Israelitish pre-Mosaic patriarchal character of his religious and ethical consciousness and activity is preserved throughout, and with conscious consistency by the poet in the description before us (comp. above on Job 31:24-27). In the strict accuracy with which this representation mirrors the characteristic features of the inner, as well as of the outer life of the patriarchal age, and in the fidelity with which the East cherishes and preserves the traditions of the primeval world in general, these utterances of a man who survived in the recollections of posterity as a moral pattern of the tas patriar-charum, acquire indirectly even an apologetic importance which is not insignificant, in so far as it proves the impossibility of conceiving historically of the moral civilization of the patriarchs otherwise than as resting on the foundation of positive revelation. Comp. Delitzsch [II. 172 seq.]: Job is not an Israelite, he is without the pale of the positive, Sinaitic revelation; his religion is the old patriarchal religion, which even in the present day is called din Ibrahim (the religion of Abraham, or din el–bedu (the religion of the steppe) as the religion of those Arabs who are not Moslem, or at least influenced by the penetrating Islamism, and is called by Mejnsh el hanfje, as the patriarchally orthodox religion. As little as this religion, even in the present day, is acquainted with the specific Mohammedan commandments, so little knew Job of the specifically Israelitish. On the contrary, his confession, which he lays down in this third monologue, coincides remarkably with the ten commandments of piety (el–felh) peculiar to the dn Ibrahm, although it differs in this respect, that it does not give the prominence to submission to the dispensations of God, that teslm which, as the whole of this didactic poem teaches by its issue, is the study of the perfectly pious; also bravery in defense of holy property and rights is wanting, which among the wandering tribes is accounted as an essential part of the hebbet er–rh (inspiration of the Divine Being) i.e. active piety, and to which it is similarly related, as to the binding notion of honor which was coined by the western chivalry of the middle ages. Job begins with the duty of chastity. Consistently with the prologue, which the drama itself nowhere belies, he is living in monogamy, as at the present day the orthodox Arabs, averse to Islamism, are not addicted to Moslem polygamy. With the confession of having maintained this marriage (although, to infer from the prologue, it was not an over-happy, deeply sympathetic one) sacred, and restrained himself not only from every adulterous act, but also from adulterous desires, his confessions begin. Here, in the middle of the Old Testament, without the pale of the Old Testament , we meet just that moral strictness and depth, with which the Preacher on the Mount (Mat 5:27 seq.) opposes the spirit to the letter of the seventh commandment. As Biblical parallels to the strict observance of the law of monogamic chastity in the patriarchal age, as the passage before us affirms it of Job, may be mentioned Isaac and Joseph, as also Moses and Aaron.
4. The fact that Job towards the end of his monologue (not quite at the end of itsee above on Job 31:38 seq.) repeats his previously uttered wish for a judicial interposition of God in his behalf is significant in so far as in this demand the triumph of his consciousness of innocence, by virtue of which he knows that he is secured against all dangers of defeat, expresses itself most strongly and clearly; and in this same connection the practical goal of his apologetic testimony hitherto is evident in his pressing on to the conclusion of the entire action. This conclusion of the action does not indeed follow immediately, inasmuch as a human teacher of wisdom next makes his appearance as the harbinger of Jehovahs appearance,preparing the way for it. This however takes place exactly in the way, and with the result which Job himself has wished and hoped forthe trial to which God finally condescends at Jobs repeated request, being such as yields for its result not a clean victory for Job, but rather a thorough humiliation of the pride and presumption, hitherto unknown to himself. But even this incongruity between Jobs desire and the way in which God grants it, corresponds perfectly to the poets plan, and is a most brilliant evidence of the purity and loftiness of his religious and moral way of thinking, in which a conscience so wonderfully delicate and enlightened as that which Job had disclosed in these his closing discourses nevertheless appears as in need of repentance, and unable to secure from God a verdict of unconditional justification. In like manner as Christ declared to that young man who boasted that he had kept all the commandments of the law from his youth up, that one thing was lacking, even to give up all his earthly possessions, and to secure an imperishable treasure in heaven (Mar 10:17, and the parallel passages), our poet first introduces Elihu, as a representative of the highest that human wisdom can teach and accomplish apart from a divine revelation, and then the revealing voice of God Himself, crying out to his hero a humiliatingOne thing thou lackest! This one thing which Job yet lacked in order to be acknowledged by God as His well-beloved servant, and to be received again into His favor, is to humble himself beneath Gods mighty hand, willingly to accept all His dispensations as wise, gracious, and just, to be thoroughly delivered from that sinful self-exaltation, in which he had dared to find fault with God, and to be enraged against His alleged severity. This was the last thing belonging to him which he must give up, the last remnant of earthly impure dross, from which the gold of his heart must be set free, in order that he might become partaker of the divine grace of justification. In order really and completely to comprehend the divine wisdom, which in Job 28. he had so strikingly described as a precious treasure in heaven transcending all earthly jewels, in order actually to travel the hidden way to her, with that accurate knowledge of it which he had there portrayed, this one thing was still lacking to him:the humble acknowledgment that even in his case God had acted altogether justly, altogether lovingly, altogether as a Father. To the possession of this one precious pearl he was led forward by Elihu and Jehovah through the two remaining stages in the solution of the problem.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
In unfolding the rich contents of the three preceding chapters according to their connection with the entire structure of the poem, and in assigning to these contents their true position in the inner progress of the action, it will be well to bestow special attention on the parallel just now indicated (Doctrinal and Ethical Remarks, No. 4) between Job and the rich young man. Job, earnestly and honestly striving after the kingdom of God, after an eternal fellowship of the life with God, with this in view receiving and enumerating all the moral treasures of his spirit and of his life, who notwithstanding his wealth in such treasures is discovered to be not yet just before God;or, more briefly: Job, the Old Testament seeker after happiness, contemplating himself in the mirror of the law (Job, the prototype of that rich man, to whose perfection one thing was yet lacking);such might be the statement of the theme of a comprehensive meditation on the material before us, according to its relations to that which precedes, and to that which follows. The length of the discourse indeed would necessitate a division into several parts, of which any one could not very well exceed the limits of one of the three chapters. The practical expositor will find the richest yield of fruitful hortatory motives in the two bright pictures which constitute the opening and the close of the long soliloquy (Job 29, 31), whereas the gloomy night-piece which they enclose (Job 30) seems in this respect relatively poor, and when compared with the similar descriptive lamentations in Jobs previous discourses, exhibits scarcely anything that is essentially new.
Particular Passages
Job 29:2 seq. Cocceius: Job indeed in this place seems not so much to desire his former happiness, as to contrast the pleasure of a good conscience and of a friendship with God formed in youth, with his present fearful sufferings He wishes for his former condition, adorned as it was with tokens of divine favor, not for the sake of those tokens, to wit, plenteousness and sweetness of life, but for the sake of that of which they were the seal He distinguishes between his own chief good, and the things connected with it. He brings forward his riches as a testimony of the past, not as a necessity of the present. For he knew that even a beggar can delight in God.V. Gerlach: That which constitutes the kernel of the description here again is the constant nearness of God, the consciousness of His approbation, the certainty of His guidance; this is accompanied by the happy recollection that he had employed the honor which God had granted to him, the riches which He had bestowed on him, only to bless others: in short his position was that of a princely, royal representative of God on earth.
Job 29:18 seq. Cramer: On earth there is nothing that endures; if it goes well with any one, let him suspect that it may go ill with him (Sir. 2:26).V. Gerlach: In Jobs allusion to the ancient legend of the phnix, there lies a certain irony: I had hoped in respect to the permanence of my happiness that which was most incredible, most impossible, etc.
Job 30:1 seq. Brentius: From all these things (enumerated in the preceding chapter), Jobs authority is eulogized, that we may learn with what honor God sometimes distinguishes the pious. But in this chapter we are taught with what a cross He afflicts them that they may be tried; for it behooves the godly to be proved on the right hand and on the left, as Paul says 2Co 6:7 (comp. Php 4:12). But this is written for our instruction, that we may learn that nothing in the whole world, however excellent, endures, but that all things go to ruin; for both the heavens and the earth will perish, how much more carnal glory, authority and happiness (Isaiah 40).Idem (on Job 30:12): Temptation is two-fold, on the right hand, and on the left. We are tempted on the right when fleshly joys, health, riches, majesty, glory abounda temptation which, as it is most agreeable to the flesh, so also is it most dangerous. We are tempted on the left by crosses, afflictions and evils of whatever sort, more safely, however, and with less danger, for we are more readily taught by the cross than destroyed by it.Zeyss: To be the objects of extreme contempt and ridicule from the world is to pious believers a great tribulation, and inflicts deep wounds on their hearts, but even in this they must become like Christ their head (Heb 12:3)!Idem (on Job 30:15): When God afflicts His children in the body, or by some other grievous outward calamity, this is seldom unaccompanied by inward trials, anguish, fear and terror; it. is with them, as with the Apostlewithout fightings, within fears (2Co 7:5).
Job 31:1 seq. Oecolampadius: He sets before our eyes one who is absolutely righteous in every particular; for a man will not escape the wrath of God, if he is merciful to the wretched, while at the same time he pollutes himself with various lusts and crimes. He accordingly indulges in holy boasting that he had been blameless in the law, that he had kept his members from abominable sins, and devoted himself to the service of righteousness, keeping his eyes from lusting after a woman, his tongue from guile and falsehood, his hands and feet from cruelty, violence, revenge and rapacity. For he who puts such a watch upon his senses, he will easily be perfected in all things.Starke: Forasmuch as it is through the eyes, for the most part, that whatsoever excites the lust finds its way into the heart, Job naturally begins with his watchfulness over this sense; from which it may be seen that he understood the divine law far better than the Pharisees in the time of Christ (Mat 5:27 seq.).
Job 31:16 seq. Starke: He who does good to the poor will not remain unblessed (Psa 41:2 [1] seq.). Clothing the naked is a deed of mercy (Isa 58:7 seq.) which Christ will hereafter praise on the last day (Mat 25:36).
Job 31:24 seq. Oecolampadius: See what a chain of virtues he links together, and what innocence he preserves through all things! It is not those only who acquire riches by plunder and lawlessness who incur Gods wrath, but those even who trust in riches honestly acquired, and who prefer them to God, so that they become their idol and their mammon. The pious and grateful man would say: I have received from God; but they whose God is gold, have no God.Starke: It was a proof of great constancy on the part of Job to serve the true God faithfully in the midst of idolaters, and to be most solicitous to show the more subtle idolatry of avarice as well as the more gross idolatry of sun and stars.
Job 31:35 seq. Osiander: Even godly people have flesh and blood, and often say things of which they must afterwards repent, and which they themselves cannot praise.Wohlfarth: I will, I can render an account before the Lordthus speaks Job in the consciousness that he has never committed a gross sinnay, has even shunned most carefully the minor and more secret offenses. Was he, however, quite so sure of this? Was he in truth so absolutely blameless before God, to whom we must confess: Lord, when I have done all things, I am still an unprofitable servant! Who can mark the number of his transgressions? etc. There belongs in truth more to this than a man generally believes when he calls God as a witness.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
Job continueth his discourse yet farther, through the whole of this chapter. He draws a pathetic picture of his former prosperity.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(1) Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, (2) Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; (3) When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; (4) As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; (5) When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me;
It should seem very evident from these expressions, for they are all gracious expressions, that the Patriarch was chiefly lamenting, not that he was in distress, but that the presence of the LORD was not with him as heretofore he had enjoyed it. I need not, I hope, remind the Reader, how much in this instance Job was a type of the LORD JESUS. The agonies of JESUS in the garden and on the cross, were all on this account. “O my GOD (was the prophetical language concerning CHRIST, as well as by CHRIST), I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not.” Psa 22:2 . The several expressions here are all of a gracious kind. GOD’S punishment of Job, and his consciousness of it: The candle of the LORD shining upon him; meaning, no doubt, his HOLY SPIRIT: And the secret of GOD upon his tabernacle. Was not this secret of GOD another expression for what another servant of the LORD meant, when he said, The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant? Psa 25:14 . I do not presume to say so, but yet venture to ask, Is there not, in those several expressions, somewhat that hath reference to the glorious doctrine of the joint work and love of that Holy three, which bear record in heaven? The preservation and keeping of the believer is peculiarly referred unto the favor and mercy of the FATHER. Joh 17:11 ; 1Pe 1:5 . The candle shining, is a well known metaphor, for the lifting up the light of the HOLY SPIRIT on the head of GOD’S people. Num 6:26 ; Psa 4:6 . And is it not JESUS meant here, he whose name was Secret, and who is the whole of the covenant to his people? Jdg 13:18 ; Isa 42:6 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job 29:2
At the close of his paper on Good-Nature ( Spectator, No. 171), Addison quotes this chapter as one of ‘several passages which I have always read with great delight in the book of Job. It is the Account which that Holy Man gives of his Behaviour in the Days of his Prosperity; and, if considered only as a human Composition, is a finer picture of a charitable and good-natured man than is to be met with in any other author.’ ‘People do not dream when they are happy. For the last few days,’ says Miss Thackeray of her heroine, Catherine, in The Village on the Cliff, ‘she had remembered without bitterness. Life seemed to have grown suddenly bearable, and almost easy once more. If she had known how short a time her tranquillity was to last, she might have made more of it perhaps, and counted each minute as it passed. But she did not know, and she wasted many of them as she was doing now, as we all do, in unavailing hankering and regrets precious little instants flying by only too quickly, and piping to us very sweetly, and we do not dance. Looking back, one laments not so much the unavoidable sorrows of life, as its wasted peace and happiness, and then more precious minutes pass in remorse for happiness wasted long ago.’
References. XXIX. 2. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 81. XXIX. 2-4. Ibid. vol. xvii. No. 1011.
Job 29:5
‘When I get down to my home from this House,’ said Bright in the House of Commons during the American Civil War, ‘I find half a dozen little children playing upon my hearth. How many Members are there who can say with me, that the most innocent, the most pure, the most holy joy which in their past years they have felt, or in their future years they have hoped for, has not arisen from contact and association with our precious children?’
Job 29:7 f.
To Sir Alexander Ball exclusively the Maltese themselves attributed their emancipation; on him, too, they rested their hopes of the future. Whenever he appeared in Valetta, the passengers on each side, through the whole length of the street, stopped and remained uncovered till he passed, the very clamours of the market-place were hushed at his entrance, and then exchanged shouts for shouts of joy and welcome. Even after the lapse of years he never appeared in any one of their casals, which did not lie in the direct road between Valetta and St. Antonio, his summer residence, but the women and children, with such of the men who were not at labour in their fields, fell into ranks, and followed, or preceded him, singing the Maltese song which had been made in his honour, and which was scarcely less familiar to the inhabitants of Malta and Gozo than ‘God save the King’ to Britons. ‘When he went to the gate through the city, the young men refrained talking; and the aged arose and stood up. When the ear heard, then it blessed him; and when the eye saw him, it gave witness to him: because he delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and those that had none to help them. The blessing of them that were ready to perish came upon him; and he caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.’
Coleridge in The Friend.
Reference. XXIX. 16. J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx. pp. 264, 280.
Earthly Anticipations
Job 29:18
We seem to learn from these anticipations of Job in the days of his former prosperity and comfort the delusions relative to things tending to their own good and to the glory of God, which may especially be imposed upon the godly in seasons of great and uninterrupted prosperity.
I. An overrated estimation of their own comfort, ‘I shall die in my nest’. If your hearts are in heaven, you will find your conflicts upon earth, which will effectually hinder you from the making of nests in a world of sin and sorrow.
II. A forgetfulness of their character as strangers and pilgrims upon earth, ‘I shall multiply my days as the sand’. Job manifested the presumption of long life, on which the rich man went, who is the subject of a parable in the gospel, ‘Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?’
III. A disposition to estimate their time upon earth, rather upon the score of its comfort, or its duration than of its usefulness. What is the value of all that comfort to a sinner in which God is not glorified? What is the value of multiplied days, if they do not speak to the praise of Jehovah?
W. Borrows, Select Sermons, p. 216.
Reference. XXIX. 20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1649.
Job 29:25
How easy it is to shed human blood! How much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind! How difficult and noble it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection!… The vigour I love consists in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in relieving them, in the laborious, watchful, and difficult task of increasing public happiness by allaying each particular discontent.
Sydney Smith, Peter Plymley’s Letters (ix.).
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Sunny Memories
Job 29
This chapter is a kind of spiritual inventory. Job begins to enumerate the blessings which he once had, and as he sets them down in order they seem to multiply and brighten in the process. We all know what that means. Blessings seem to brighten as they take their flight. We did not know how precious they were at the time; we were partially contented with them; probably they were all we needed just at that particular moment, but we had no special or exuberant joy in their possession; after they all vanished we began to think how truly good they were, and precious even to invaluableness. We do so with our friends now. Verily we praise the dead more than the living in more senses than one. Men whom we treat but unkindly or thoughtlessly now we shall one day speak of as wonderful men, men who deserved all confidence and honour and love: how much better rightly to esteem the blessing which is in hand which constitutes the immediate joy of life, than to neglect that blessing and only revere and value and regret it long months after it has gone! He that hath ears to hear let him hear. Let us have no more vain lamentations, for they may but express a form of hypocrisy, inasmuch as it is just possible that were the blessings to return we should set as little store by them the second time as we did the first. Let us avail ourselves of the present moment, and be kind to every one, and value and appreciate every one highly and justly and generously; thus shall we do good to ourselves, so marvellously are things constituted that we cannot allow ourselves to go out in blessing others without preparing ourselves for a redoubled blessing in our own hearts. He that watereth others shall be watered himself. With what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged. Your appreciation is not wasted; it enlarges the heart that encourages it; it purifies the lips that express it; it returns to its source, a blessing for the man who sent it forth. Job is not speaking of romantic losses. When he sets down in his catalogue loss after loss we begin to feel that the loss was real and disastrous. He has lost what today we call religion. He has lost the consciousness he used to have of the divine presence and nearness and love; he has lost the light; in place of the great sun he seems to have a greater cloud; he does not know where the altar is, or if he could find the rude pile no flame would burn upon it, and there would be nothing round about it to certify the divine recognition and benediction.
The first loss of Job is an infinite religious loss
“Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; when the Almighty was yet with me” ( Job 29:2-5 ).
The patriarch did not feel that the loss of religion was the gain of liberty; he does not testify that in proportion as he got away from religious centres and religious obligations he got into freedom and light and enjoyment. Let this man’s experience go for something. There is a common sophism that if we could only get rid of religion we should all be free and happy, unbeclouded by a fear, undeterred by a single menace. Granted that that may be our opinion, yet we must set side by side with it the testimony of men who have lost religious consciousness and gone away into more or less of melancholy, depression, gloom, and religious solitude. Who would not have expected Job to say, Now I have entered upon the real meaning of life: up to this time I have been superstitious, spending my reverence where veneration was not valued, throwing my best faculties away; but now, having abandoned the book and the altar and the religious vow and the whole spiritual life, why, I am a man? Job bears no such testimony. Rather he says I want the old days back again; they rose in brightness, they increased in glory, and when they went down at sunset the death was as precious as the birth, for it held within it all the hope of a new morning: once I could pray, and heaven seemed to meet me half-way when I said I will supplicate the throne that is unseen; my mouth was full of song and sacred laughter, and my heart pulsed like music, and all things bore testimony to the benediction of God. Is it so with us? It will be one day if we live a neglectful life and so forfeit our religious privileges. Now and again it does seem that if we could destroy the Bible, obliterate the Sabbath, forget the Cross, escape the Church, we should spend the remainder of our lives in green pastures, in drinking wine that would exhilarate us, and in dwelling under fruitful trees, the very produce of which would drop into our open mouths and melt there and nourish us, without trouble or effort. But men come to a better mind; they long even for the old familiar tunes; they desire but one vision of the ancient times when they assembled with the people of God in the sanctuary, and kept: holy-day with the great multitude, and were interested in all holy services and sacrifices. What would the flowers say, if they could speak, did the sun not come back punctually to them with his blessing? Hanging their heads on the second day they would say Oh that it were with us as it used to be but a few hours since! We are cold, we are heart-struck, we are without joy: Oh that the sun would come back again and bless us, and. we would answer his light with all our love! What would the picture say in the Royal Academy if the sun did not go before any other visitor went? Suppose he should tarry a day, a week and leave them there on their decorated walls? Could they speak, what would they say? Surely they would say, We are nothing without the light; we cannot be seen, we cannot show ourselves, we are not self-illuminating: oh that it were with us as it used to be! Then we could see one another; we could look across the hall, and salute one another in all the enthusiasm of mutual appreciation: we were modestly proud of our colour: but what are we without the sun? Nothing. We are not pictures; we might as well be empty canvas; it might as well be with us as if the hand of genius had never touched us; we seem now to see what the sun really is; the sun is more than mere light; light is the artist, light is the revealer, light is the great medium, the holy messenger: oh that it were with us as when the sun filled these rich halls and made every wall eloquent with colour and suggestion! so it is with the soul. Man cries out for the living God. For a time he is joyous enough without him in a superficial way; presently we shall hear a voice saying, “As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” We were made for God. It was meant that we should love him, and live in him, and be his sons and daughters evermore. Under any other thought we are not ourselves: we are wild men, we are decentralised, we are cut off from the mountain spring, we shall soon be dried up and withered; let us cry mightily for the days that have gone.
A wonderful thing Job says, almost incredible indeed to modern readers. We find this singular expression in the fourth verse, “As I was in the days of my youth.” Who can utter that prayer? Tell us where youth has not been misspent. Point out a man who has found in his youth all that was pure, lovely, and beautiful, and given his heart to it, and has not grown away from that youthhood which was nearly heaven. Other men have said they have been made to reap the sins of their youth: Job desires to be in his older age as he was in his early days. A sweet memory that! We are not now speaking of childhood innocent, prattling, trustful, musical, happy, all-holiday childhood, but of a more advanced youth. Are there not some men who would evermore forget their youth if they could? It is a blot, a wound, a shame, a blasphemy. Let others take heed, and live their youth well, so that when old age comes it may return in sweet and tender memory to make old age green, vernal, flowery.
When Job lost religious consciousness he lost something that was vital, he lost companionship. He says, “The days when the Almighty was with me.” He complains of loss of light, loss of communion, loss of the divine “secret” “when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle,” when God hung the key upon my tabernacle wall, the key of all things, that mysterious, marvellous, beneficent secret which is with them that fear the Lord: call it by what name you please; sympathy will do, so will insight, prevision, that prophetic power that sees over the intervening hills of time away into fruitful plains and gardens far beyond, yea, into millenniums. Now the secret has gone, and Job becomes a common man, who could but talk upon the topics of the day; he who was wont in his own degree to handle eternity is left with the bone and crust of time; he who once spake noble words, poems, prophecies, whose rhetoric was wisdom, whose eloquence was a revelation, now chatters the commonplaces of common men. To part with God’s own secret is to part with all that makes life powerful, real, beneficent. Job had lost his companion; he had no spirit that understood him to talk to any more: when he spoke it was to unsympathising listeners, when he poured out his complaint he was pouring the river of his sorrow into the empty air. There was none that understood him; there was none that could do him good. Take care how you lose God. Let us beware how we part with our Father the Father of our spirits. That loss cannot be expressed in words: it is the loss of self, the loss of heaven.
Job does not lower his key much when he bemoans the second loss in the cry, “When my children were about me.” He had not been used to live alone. The children were so many that he became one of them; their dispositions were so varied that he became self-multiplied; he had to listen to so many tones, pleas, supplications, definitions, arguments, that he himself was enlarged by the very process of listening and replying. No man liveth unto himself. No man is really happy who is left to his own individuality. He must have another self, somewhere, in some form; it may be a self in childhood, in work, in service, in thought, but there must be another self in which every man must live, if he would live his full life, and enjoy all the advantage God intended him to reap from being. “When my children were about me:” they seemed to divide the very burden which they created: if I had difficulty with them, I had more enjoyment: when they were very little they gave me pleasure enough for a lifetime; even if they proved in after life what I did not want them to be, yet when I think of their early existence and their early gifts of joy to me, I feel as if I had at the beginning my share of heaven: would, said Job, we could all be at home again the grand old home! We perhaps have no palace such as Job had, but every man’s home is a palace, if it be watched by love, if it be filled with prayer. Value home. Count the children one by one. When was there one too many even for the poorest man’s one loaf? When did not the loaf multiply when cut by the hand of love? It will be worse than useless to lament and regret and pine and whine over things that are gone if we do not now make home the gladdest place on earth. To find a man’s character inquire about him at home. Do not ask what he is in the marketplace, or on the platform, on in the church, or what he is when he has his professional robe upon him, or when he goes forth for the purpose of cutting and being a figure in society. Read his character on the hearthstone; inquire what he is amongst his nearest ones; then advance to his dependents, and see what view they take of him; and if a man can stand that test, he need not care much what critics say, who never spent an hour with him, and who know nothing about the innermost qualities of his loving heart. Make home precious now. Make it so precious that it can never fade out of the memory. And do not imagine that home can only be made precious by great deeds, by romantic actions, by great, splendid, dramatic efforts to make one day in the year a very red-letter day. Home is made precious by little acts, thoughtful deeds, quiet attentions, patient endurances; by smile, and grip of hand, and word of cheer, by a thousand little things that go without name but all minister to the upbuilding and comforting of family life.
Then Job tells us what he was socially, and wants to be the great man he once was amongst his fellow citizens. He used to be the principal man of his time. His steps were washed with butter; and the rock poured him out rivers of oil.
“The young men saw me, and hid themselves: and the aged arose, and stood up. The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth. The nobles held their peace, and their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth” ( Job 29:8-10 ).
He was a great man then. Now everybody sees that providence is against him. It is precisely the same in modern days. Given, a man rich, prosperous, influential, quite a noble figure in the social sphere, and it is easy to think that he is a favourite of heaven. Let him come to ill-health and poverty and abandonment of a social kind, and there will not be wanting those far-sighted owls who think that they see that God has turned from the man in anger because of the man’s wickedness. But Job was not only a great man socially; he was a great man amongst the poor as well as amongst the princes
“When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy…. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth” ( Job 29:11-17 ).
We may pardon a man some egotism who had done this all. He might remind himself of how the princes stood and bowed down to him, when he remembered that he was the friend of the poor, and that whenever he met oppression on the high road he rent it in twain, and left the two sundered pieces to come together again if they could. Now what Job says he was personally, religion, as represented by Christ, ought to be influentially. We cannot indeed be all these in the letter, for every man is not a Job in mental capacity or in material possessions; but the Church can be what Job was in its unity. The Church must play the Job of this twenty-ninth chapter of his book. Religion should be the greatest figure in society: it should be the great voice in council; it should represent what we find Job was in the twenty-fifth verse “I… dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth the mourners.” The Church that is not all this is not Christ’s Church, or if it be Christ’s Church it is ungrown, undeveloped, unaware of its privileges and responsibilities. Do not let us lose the golden thought of the occasion by imagining that there was but one Job, and that when he died all the actualities and possibilities of this chapter died along with him. What the one man was the one Church may be. Imagine a Church that can say, “When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: because” not, because I made great theologies, but “because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.” What will come upon the Church by way of crown and honour and robe of primacy and monarchy? “The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.”
“My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand. Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel. After my words they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain,” ( Job 29:20-23 ).
There is a career for the Church! The Church is to be a friend of the poor and the helpless and the destitute; the Church is to be the terror of oppression; the Church is to be the chief figure in all the social economy. Not the Church as a piece of mechanism and organisation and institution, but the spiritual Church, the Christ-loving Church, the Church born at the cross and crowned in heaven. Where is the Church now? Meek with modesty! Where is she? She ought to be at the front. She begs to be permitted to live! She spends her life in elaborate apologies! She is edged out by all manner of rivals and competitors. We wrong the Church if we deny her the first place, and she wrongs herself if she does not claim it. Now she has to go behind, when she ought to go before; she has whispered where she ought to have thundered; she has kissed the hand of the oppressor, when she ought to have smitten his cheekbone. There is no Church! She is indeed not dead, but she sleepeth. The time of her awakening must come. Lord Jesus, come and awake her out of sleep! If she had not a public holiday in the week called Sunday she would die utterly. She lives on the advantage of a public holiday! The people have then nothing else to do, or they weary in the doing of it, so they make the Church a kind of recreation: but if the Church had not this Sunday she would be swallowed up in the muddy river of the common times. She lives upon this holiday! She does not live in the week-time; she could not live then: Art, Business, Pleasure would laugh her to scorn; the theatre could outshine the sanctuary, and the reciter of poems would put the preacher down. We cling now to this one little day in the week, and that is fast going. When that goes the Church will go, and the pulpit, and all religious organisation. Lord Jesus, thou still dost work miracles oh, work a miracle in thine own Church! Arouse her; vitalise her; quicken her. She ought to be first in music, in art, in literature, in science; she ought to pull down her walls, and extend her boundaries, and heighten her roof, and kill the fatted calf, and bring forth the gold ring, and the best robe, and all good things, and make her house a place of feasting and banqueting. She is getting old, and economical, and poor, and toothless, and fearful, and decrepid, and men are laughing at the ancient heroine that struggled with the lion and beat him, that lived on the mountain and grew strong on the air of the hills, that found home in the fissures of the rocks and in the caves of the earth. Now she has been brought into the city, and she is giving way under the blandishments of civilisation, the seductions of luxury and fashion. May she not be recovered from the error of her way? Then come thyself, O Christ, and “dwell as a King in the army, and as one that comforteth the mourners”!
Note
In Job 29 (a fine specimen of flowing, descriptive Hebrew poetry) Job recalls the honour in which he used to be held, and the beneficent acts which he was enabled to perform. Modesty were out of place, for he is already in the state of “one turned adrift among the dead” ( Psa 88:5 ). In Job 30 and Job 31 he laments with the same pathetic self-contemplation his ruined credit, and the terrible progress of his disease. Then by a somewhat abrupt transition, he enters upon an elaborate profession of his innocence, which has been compared to the solemn repudiation of the forty-two deadly sins by the departed souls of the good in the Egyptian “Book of the Dead.” The resemblance, however, must not be pressed too far. Job’s morality, even if predominantly “legal,” has a true “evangelical” tinge. Not merely the act of adultery, but the glance of lust; not merely unjust gain, but the confidence reposed in it by the heart; not merely outward conformity to idol-worship, but the inclination of the heart to false gods are in his catalogue of sins. His last words are a reiteration of his deeply cherished desire for an investigation of his case by Shaddai. With what proud self-possession he imagines himself approaching the Divine Judge! In his hands are the accusations of his friends and his own reply. Holding them forth, he exclaims,
The Wisdom of the Old Testament. By the Rev, Canon Cheyne, M.A., D.D.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).
VIII
JOB’S RESTATEMENT OF HIS CASE
Job 27-31.
INTRODUCTION: A PBELIMINARY INTERVIEW WITH THE HIGHER CRITICS
1. That all that part of this statement from Job 27:8 to the end of Job 28 is not the words of Job, i.e., when you read to Job 27:7 you should skip to Job 29:1 where Job resumes.
2. That Job 27:8-23 is the missing third speech of Zophar, here misplaced.
3. That Job 28 is a choral interlude by the author of the book.
The reasons for these contentions, they say, are that Job 27:8-23 is wholly at war with Job’s previous and subsequent statements concerning the wicked and that a third speech from Zophar is needed to complete the symmetry of the debate. They further say that Job 28 does not fit into Job’s line of thought nor into the arguments of the three friends, and that interludes by the author recited by the choir are customary in dramas.
The mediating critics say that there is a real difficulty here in applying Job 27:8-23 to Job, but that it may be explained by assuming that in a calm restatement of the case Job is led to see that he had, in the heat of the discussion, gone somewhat too far in his statement concerning the wicked and takes this opportunity of modifying former expressions. Dr. Sampey’s explanation in his syllabus is this: Job 27 and Job 28 are difficult to understand, because Job seems to take issue with his own position concerning the fate of the wicked. Possibly he began to see that, in the heat of argument, he had placed too much stress on the prosperity of the wicked.
Dr. Tanner’s statement is much better. He says:
There seems no ground to question the integrity of the book. The portions refused by some part of Job’s restatement and the whole of Elihu’s discourse are thoroughly homogeneous and essential to the unity of the book.
The author’s reply to these contentions is as follows:
1. That Zophar made no third speech because he had nothing more to say. Even Bildad in his third speech petered out with a repetition of a platitude. In a word) the whole prosecution broke down when Eliphaz in his last speech left the safety of generalities and came down to specifications and proofs of Job’s guilt.
2. There is not a particle of historical proof or probability that a copyist left out the usual heading introducing a speaker and mixed up Zophar’s speech with Job’s.
3. Fairly interpreted, the section (Job 27:8-23 ) harmonizes completely with Job’s previous contentions, neither retracts nor modifies them, and is essential to the completeness of his restatement of the case. He has denied that in this life even and exact justice is meted out to the wicked; he has not denied the ultimate justice of God in dealing with the wicked. The great emphasis in this section, which really extends from Job 27:7 to the end of the chapter, is placed on the outcome of the wicked, “When God taketh away his soul,” as in our Lord’s parable of the rich fool. Then though he prospered in life (Job 27:9 ), “He openeth his eyes and he is not,” like our Lord’s other parable, the rich man who in hell lifted up his eyes, being in torment (Luk 16 ). Then, “he would fain flee out of God’s hand” (Job 27:22 ) and then the lost spirits of men who preceded him “shall clap their hands and hiss” (Job 27:23 ) as the lost souls greeted the King of Babylon on his entrance into Sheol (Isa 14:9-10 ; Isa 14:15-16 ).
Job 28 also is an essential part of Job’s restatement harmonizing perfectly with all his other contentions, namely, that God’s government of the universe is beyond the comprehension of man. It is this very hiding of wisdom that constituted his problem. He is willing enough to fear God and depart from evil, but wants to understand why the undeserved afflictions of the righteous, and the undeserved prosperity of the wicked in time.
The idea of Job 28 being a choral interlude by the author of the book (see Watson in “Expositor’s Bible”) is sheer fancy without a particle of proof and wholly against all probability. While the book is a drama it is not a drama for the stage. The author of the book nowhere allows even his shadow to fall on a single page. In succeeding acts and scenes God, the devil, and man, each speaks for himself, without the artificial mechanism and connections of stage accessories.
Job takes an oath in restating his case which relates to his integrity (Job 27:1-6 ). The items of this oath are (1) the oath itself in due and ancient form, (2) that his lips should speak righteousness, (3) that he would not justify them (the three friends), (4) that he would hold his integrity till death, (5) that he would hold to his righteousness and would maintain a clear conscience as long as he lived. Then follows Job’s imprecation, thus:
Let mine enemy be as the wicked, And let him that riseth up against me be as the unrighteous. For what is the hope of the godless, though he get him gain, When God taketh away his soul? Job 27:7-8 .
Then comes his description of the portion of the wicked after death (Job 27:9-23 ) : God will not hear his cry when trouble comes and I tell you the whole truth just as you ought to know it already. Now this is the portion of the wicked: His children are for the sword, his silver and raiment are for the just and innocent, his house shall not endure, his death shall be as other people and his destiny will be eternally fixed.
In Job 28:1-11 he shows that man’s reason is superior to the instincts of the lower animals, since by skill and labor in mining and refining he can discover, possess, and utilize the hidden ores and precious stones, the way to which no fowl and no beast ever knew.
But there is a limitation placed on man for he can never discover nor purchase the higher wisdom of comprehending God’s plan and order of the universe, and of his complex providence, because this wisdom resides not in any place to which he has access, neither in the earth, sea, sky, nor Sheol, and he neither knows how to price it nor has the means to purchase it (Job 28:12-22 ). God alone has this wisdom (Job 28:23-27 ).
The highest wisdom attainable by man comes by God’s revelation: And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding. Job 28:28 .
All this leaves Job’s case without explanation, but in Job 29-31 we have it, thus:
Job 30 shows what his case was then, as he was derided was watched over by God, when his children were about him, when his prosperity abounded, when he was recognized and honored by all classes of men, when he was helping the needy and when he was sought after for counsel by all men.
Job 30 shows what his case was then, as he was derided by the young whose fathers were beneath the dogs, as he was a byword for the rabble who spat in his face and added insult to injury, as his sufferings became so intense that he could find no rest nor relief for his weary soul and body, as he was a brother to jackals and a companion to ostriches, as his skin was black and his bones burned with heat, as mourning and weeping were the only fitting expressions of his forlorn condition.
Job 31 gives a fine view of his character and conduct. Job’s protests in this chapter are a complete knockout. “He protests that he is innocent of impure thoughts (Job 31:1-4 ) ; of false seeming (Job 31:5-8 ); of adultery (Job 31:9-12 ); of injustice toward dependents (Job 31:13-15 ); of hardness toward the poor and needy (Job 31:16-23 ); of covetousness (Job 31:24-25 ); of idolatry (Job 31:26-28 ); of malevolence (Job 31:29-30 ); of want of hospitality (Job 31:31-32 ); of hiding his transgressions (Job 31:33-34 ); and of injustice as a land-lord (Job 31:38-40 ).” Rawlinson in “Pulpit Commentary.” It will be observed:
1. That this chapter answers in detail every specification of Eliphaz in his last speech (Job 22:5-20 ).
2. That Job correctly recognized both the intelligence and malice and irresistible power of the successive blows dealt against him and was not deceived by the human and natural agencies employed. But failing to see that since man fell this world is accursed and that the devil is its prince, he was shut up to the conviction that the Almighty was his adversary. If Adam in Paradise and before the fall had fallen upon Job’s experience, the argument of Job, applied to such a case, would be conclusive in fixing all the responsibility on God. No human philosophy, leaving out the fall of man and the kingdom of Satan, can explain the ills of life in harmony with divine justice, goodness, and mercy.
Job’s extraordinary experience leads him, step by step, to suggest all the needs of future revelations and thus to reveal the real object of the book. His affliction led him to feel:
1. The need of a revelation of a book which would clearly set forth God’s law and man’s duties.
2. The need of a revelation of man’s state after death.
3. The need of a revelation of man’s resurrection.
4. The need of a revelation of a future and final judgment.
5. The need of a revelation of the Father in an incarnation, visible, palpable, audible, approachable, and human.
6. The need of one to act as a daysman, mediator, umpire, between God and man.
7. The need of one to act as redeemer for man from the power of sin and Satan and as an advocate with God in heaven.
8. The need of a revelation of an interpreter abiding on earth as man’s advocate.
This is the great object of this first book of the Bible) to show the need of all its other books, until the Coming One should become “The Burning Desire of All the Nations.”
That object being granted, the chronological place of this book in the Bible is that it is the first book of the Bible written.
QUESTIONS
1. What Bays the radical wing of the higher critics about this section?
2. What say the mediating critics of this section, and what the explanations by Sampey and Tanner, respectively?
3. What the author’s reply to these contentions?
4. What was Job’s oath in restating his case?
5. What was Job’s imprecation?
6. What his description of the portion of the wicked after death?
7. How does he show that man’s reason is superior to the instincts of the lower animals?
8. What limitation placed on man, and what Job’s philosophy of it?
9. With whom resides wisdom and how is this fact set forth?
10. What the highest wisdom attainable by man?
11. What is implied in all this?
12. What was his case in the past?
13. What was his case then?
14. What his character?
15. What does Jobs extraordinary experience lead him to feel the need of?
16. That object being granted, where is the chronological place of this book in the Bible.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Job 29:1 Moreover Job continued his parable, and said,
Ver. 1. Moreover Job continued his parable ] Or, his sentence, as Tremellius rendereth it, his sententious and elegant oration, his aureum flumen orationis, golden flood of grave discourse, as we may better call it, than Cicero did Aristotle’s politics, Tota oratio gravissimis sententiis, et verborum luminibus illustris est (Merlin). Here Job describeth graphically his former felicity; as in the next chapter his present misery. The promise of prosperity to God’s people is to be understood with exception of the cross, wherewith, if need be, 1Pe 1:6 , they are sure to be exercised; and they shall take it for a favour too, Heb 12:6 . “By the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report,” &c., 2Co 6:7-8 , they must learn “to be abased, and to abound, to be full and to be hungry,” &c., Phi 4:12 , though this be a hard lesson, Perquam durum est? sed ira lex scripta est, saith the civilian (Ulpian). Hard or not hard, we must frame to it, and hope for better. The Epicures held that a man might be cheerful amidst the most exquisite torments: 1. In consideration of his honesty and integrity: this indeed was Job’s great comfort, as we see, Job 31:6 . And, 2. In consideration of those pleasures and delights that formerly he had enjoyed, and now cheered up himself with the remembrance of, Ex praeteritarum voluptatum recordatione (Cicer. de Finib. l. 2; Sen. de Benef. l. 4, c. 22). But how slight and slender a comfort this was Job setteth forth in this chapter. And who knoweth not that as it is a sweet thing in prosperity to relate what hazards and hardships we have passed through; so in adversity it is grievous to call to mind what better days we have had? – Olim haec meminisse iuvabit (Virg.). Minerum est fuisse faelicem (Sen.). And yet it is but reason that we should eat the crust and crumb together; receive, I mean, evil at the hand of God as well as good, Job 2:10 . See Trapp on “ Job 27:1 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job Chapter 29
This is the beginning of Job’s last argument. The friends were quite silenced; he now makes his final confutation; and, indeed, it is more an appeal than an argument, for he rises above all that they had been pleading and insinuating.
Here he gives us in chapters 29-31 a very interesting pouring out of his feelings. The first of these chapters reviews his early days of prosperity, and we can see the very great complacency that he had in all that grace had wrought in him. But, alas! there was another thing that ought not to have been. He took pleasure in his good character. He was therefore in spirit too much of a Pharisee. “I thank thee that I am not as other men.” It was not but that there was great grace in Job, and that there was a very admirable character sustained; but why should he talk about it? why should he think upon it? why should he not think of the source of all the blessing? Why should he not be boasting in the Lord – instead of an implied boasting in himself? There was the very thing that God had a controversy with. And we see that up to this time Job had not got to the bottom of that which God was ferreting out. Satan had completely disappeared. He is always defeated with the children of God. He may appear to gain a battle, but the campaign is always against him; and so it is very marked in the case of Job.
But the second of these three chapters looks at his downfall; that is the great topic that is in it. He bemoans his terrible state; and up to the present he could not withhold the expression that he thought God dealt hardly with him, and was arbitrary. He could not understand His ways in the slightest degree; nor did he take in the motive that God had – the gracious purpose. In short, he had not reached the end of the Lord, because he had not done with himself. That is the real secret of it.
And the next chapter – the last of his appeal – is a most impassioned setting himself before God, and implicating judgments on himself. So thoroughly was his conscience good, that he goes over all the various snares of a man, and especially a man of position and wealth like Job; because that always increases the danger, and always makes the difficulty more. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that poverty is the hard place in which to serve God. On the contrary, it is when people are no longer poor, and no longer feel the need of continual dependence upon God – when they begin to be independent – for the world is not ashamed to call it that. I am sorry to say that Christians even drop into the language and the spirit of the world. Job calls solemn judgments upon himself – looking at the various snares – if he had been guilty in this or that or the other and so on – and the upshot of it all is that “The words of Job are ended.”
We have no more of Job now in the way of self-defence. We shall find a very interesting new speaker on which I may say a few words on chapter 32 tonight. But now, first of all Job says: “Oh; that I were as in months past.” Now it is always a bad sign when people look back to dwell on the past. Are people not to grow? Are children of God merely to be occupied with the immense favour of God? No doubt it is very true that one is plucked out of the teeth of Satan; but what is that compared with the positive knowledge of God? It is a great thing for us; but is not the knowledge of God infinitely greater than merely the action of divine grace in rescuing a poor wretched sinner? It is an admirable thing for the sinner always to feel it; but it is a sad thing when he looks back to it as the brightest of all things. Why, that means he has been making no progress at all; it means that he has been all these years afterwards looking back upon that as the divine moment. Surely divine life ought to be a growing enjoyment; and the more so as you know of Christ and of God – I am speaking now to Christians, of course.
But even for Job God never left himself without witness – and God always met the souls that really walked with Him. Who can doubt but that Enoch walked with God, and do you suppose that Enoch looked back at the first glimpse he had of God, and would say he knew God by that? No, far from it, and shame on all people who talk such language. I do not deny that it is the language of many a Christian, but that is the most sorrowful thing now – that Christians forget what it is to be a Christian. They only think of the moment of becoming a Christian, and they seem to think that that is the great thing. No doubt it is passing the border, but it is certainly not going into the brightness beyond it. Where is the feast; where is the joy of the Father; where is the best robe, and all the other accompaniments? Is that nothing? Well, that was after. And that is what in an image presents us with the positive place of blessing. The “grace wherein we stand” – not merely the grace that rescued us, but the grace wherein we stand. It is a continual place of grace to be enjoyed more and more as we learn more of God and judge ourselves. But there is where Job failed. Job admired himself. And so he looks back. “Oh, that I were as in months past.” God was going to do far better. It is true that Job went through very severe sifting, but that was all for his good; and more than that, it was for your good and my good, and the good of every believer that has ever profited by this book since God had it written down. It was meant for the blessing of all. It was not intended that there should be perhaps another man to go through the same. God has His economy of good; God has His reserve of grace; God was pleased that one should have had a very broad back to bear the trial. We have heard of the patience of Job; but that is the very thing wherein he broke down, so that he became impatient at last even with God. And the reason was because he was not yet an utterly broken man – he was given to knowing about himself.
Oh, how very rarely one finds a saint of God even now what every saint of God ought to be; but it is a rare thing even among Christian people. “As in the days when God preserved me; when His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth.” Why, that is a strange thing – “my youth.” No getting on with God in his maturity or in his old age! What was Job about? “When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me.” Was not He with him then? That is just what he did not see or know. “Whom He loveth He chasteneth”; and that is one of the great lessons of the Book of Job. I admit it was terrible chastening. And that is where the friends were all wrong; it was so terrible that they thought it was retributive, and that it was impossible for a person to suffer to such an extreme degree unless he had been extremely wicked. And what made it worse was that he looked so good, and therefore they thought he must be a hypocrite. There they were completely wrong; and the consequence was that they had to go down lower than Job, and that Job had to pray for them that they might be spared. And this he did. But, however, I anticipate what we will have another day.
“When I washed my steps with butter” – of course it is not literal – “and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.” You see that petroleum is an old affair in this world! “When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street! The young men saw me, and hid themselves; and the aged arose, and stood up.” All that was exceedingly pleasant to Job. And we are apt to think so too – there is nothing, men say, that succeeds like success, and there is not a more wicked maxim or one more entirely contrary to God; nothing more thoroughly denying that we are now in the place of suffering, and of being despised and rejected for Christ’s sake. But that is a worldly maxim, and it is just what the world delights in. Men will praise you if you do well to yourself, that is, if you are successful – make a good fortune, and have nice dinner parties, and so on. “The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth.”
Now one of the beautiful features about Job was that he did not pretend to be noble, and he did not seek to be a prince. He was like a king in the nobility of his character – what a king ought to be – he was truly noble in his ways; and all that would have been admirable if he had not said or thought; for that is the important point. “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” It does not mean that other people do not know it, but the wrong is that our left hand should know what our right hand does, i.e., we ought not to think about it. It is done to God; and it is merely returning a very little interest for the wonderful capital – for the spiritual capital that the Lord has put in our power.
Here you see it was not so. Job was highly pleased, and took great pleasure in the world thinking so much of him. “When the ear heard me, then it blessed me” – now he is looking at what you may call the objects of his kindness and love. For there was both kindness and love in Job. “And when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me.” He was referring to the people that had been helped out of their manifold afflictions. “Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.” And that was really true. God delighted in Job; that was all right; and he found at last that God did delight in him, but he did not find that till after the trial. He was buoyed up and raised above the ordinary occupations of men by the homage that was paid him and the perception of his exceeding kindness. All that lifted him up. Well, that is a very natural thing; but it is not spiritual; and it is the very thing that God was putting down severely in him; much more so than in a very inferior man. The greatest trials that God inflicts are upon the strongest, those that are able to bear them. Those that know most of His ways – they come in for it. And that was the case with Job.
“The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me; and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me” – that was very true, and he looked at his clothing too; – “my judgment was as a robe and a diadem.” Yes, very pleased was Job. “I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor; and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth. Then I said, I shall die in my nest.” No, no; God was going to disturb that nice nest of his that was so warm and comfortable. “And I shall multiply my days as the sand.” Why, he had been very desirous that God should cut short his days; for that was the only way that he saw out of all the trouble he was passing through. “My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch. My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand. Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel. After my words they spake not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain. If I laughed on them, they believed it not” – it is too good to be true – “and the light of my countenance they cast not down. I chose out their way, and sat chief, and dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth the mourners.”
You cannot be surprised that the Jews were the first rationalists; they were the higher critics of a former day. They did not believe that it was a true story – the philosophic Jews – they did not believe that. How far it penetrated the synagogue generally we cannot say. I presume there were simple-hearted men that fully believed every word of it. But one of the great reasons why the Jews did not accept this history was that Job was not a Jew. “Oh! that cannot be; why, they are all dogs. Everybody but a Jew is a dog.” And the idea that God did not say it of Abraham that he was of such integrity that there was nobody like him in all the earth – nor of Isaac, nor of Jacob! No, this they could not believe. They knew that it was of a patriarch of those days, and therefore they were dead set against the possibility of such a thing as God extolling one who was not of the chosen race, one of the family and of the nation that had the promise.
What is it that makes people higher critics? It is that they prefer their own thoughts to the word of God. That is what it is to be an unbeliever; and if it is carried out thoroughly you are an infidel; you are a lost man. I presume that these Jews fully held to the other books of the Bible. It is to be presumed so. Perhaps they did not like some others. I can understand their no more liking the prophecy of Jonah being given to a Gentile city than that Jonah liked to be the prophet sent there. He did everything to turn away from it; and when God told him to go east he went west. When he was told to go to Nineveh he took a ship at Joppa to go west – just in the very opposite direction.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Moreover = And.
continued his parable: i.e. again took up his impressive discourse. This is Job’s last address, corresponding with his first. See the Structure on p. 669.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 29
Moreover Job continued ( Job 29:1 )
He’s got a lot to say. Bildad has run out, so Job thought, “I’ll just keep going on.” And now it’s sort of a lament of the days before all of his afflictions. Looking back and remembering the past glory that he had.
Oh that as I were as in months that are past, in the days when God was preserving me; When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me ( Job 29:1-5 );
And now Job makes a reference to his children. Ten of them were all killed in that accident, and he remembers the beautiful day when the little children, his ten children, were round about him, on his knee and, you know, coming around him.
When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil; When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my throne in the street! The young men they saw me, and they hid themselves: and the aged arose, and stood up for me. The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth. The nobles held their peace, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: Because ( Job 29:6-12 )
Now Job is answering these accusations that they, false accusations that were made against him and he’s telling what he actually was doing.
Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, I was feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I broke the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth. Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand. My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch. My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand. Unto me men gave ear, and they waited, they kept silence at my counsel. And after my words they spoke not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain. If I laughed on them, they believed it not; and the light of my countenance they cast not down. I chose out their way, and sat chief, and I dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth the mourners ( Job 29:12-25 ).
So Job speaks of the former glory. People used to come to him for advice and counsel; they harkened to his words. He was held in honor and esteem by all of them.
Chapter 29
Moreover Job continued ( Job 29:1 )
He’s got a lot to say. Bildad has run out, so Job thought, “I’ll just keep going on.” And now it’s sort of a lament of the days before all of his afflictions. Looking back and remembering the past glory that he had.
Oh that as I were as in months that are past, in the days when God was preserving me; When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness; As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me ( Job 29:1-5 );
And now Job makes a reference to his children. Ten of them were all killed in that accident, and he remembers the beautiful day when the little children, his ten children, were round about him, on his knee and, you know, coming around him.
When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil; When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my throne in the street! The young men they saw me, and they hid themselves: and the aged arose, and stood up for me. The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth. The nobles held their peace, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: Because ( Job 29:6-12 )
Now Job is answering these accusations that they, false accusations that were made against him and he’s telling what he actually was doing.
Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, I was feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I broke the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth. Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand. My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch. My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand. Unto me men gave ear, and they waited, they kept silence at my counsel. And after my words they spoke not again; and my speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain. If I laughed on them, they believed it not; and the light of my countenance they cast not down. I chose out their way, and sat chief, and I dwelt as a king in the army, as one that comforteth the mourners ( Job 29:12-25 ).
So Job speaks of the former glory. People used to come to him for advice and counsel; they harkened to his words. He was held in honor and esteem by all of them. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Job 29:1-6
Introduction
Job 29
JOB’S MEMORY OF PAST GLORY
This chapter is the first of a trilogy addressed to God.
“This chapter is part of Job’s continuing recourse to God, a reiteration of his first complaint. It is the first of a trilogy that consists of: (1) a description of Job’s former exaltation (Job 29), (2) a description of his present humiliation (Job 30), and (3) a final protestation of his innocence (Job 31).”
“In the whole circle of Job’s lamentations this is perhaps the most affecting.” It cannot fail to touch the heart of any person who ever tasted the sorrows of being suddenly reduced from happiness, health, honor and glory to a status of disease, distress, dishonor and misery.
“We may only imagine what kind of an impression these last words of Job may have made upon his friends. Although obliged to be silent, they would not have admitted that they were vanquished, although the drying up of their thoughts and their involuntary silence was the proof of it.”
Job 29:1-6
JOB REMEMBERS HIS FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD
“And Job again took up his parable, and said,
Oh that I were as in the months of old,
As in the days when God watched over me;
When his lamp shined above my head,
And by his light I walked through darkness;
As I was in the ripeness of my days,
When the friendship of God was upon my tent;
When the Almighty was yet with me,
And my children were about me;
When my steps were washed with butter,
And the rock poured me out streams of oil.”
In these verses, Job remembers particularly the fellowship with God, to whom he attributed all of the happiness and prosperity which he had enjoyed in those blessed days then gone forever.
“In the days when God watched over me” (Job 29:2). “The pathos of the whole book is in these words.” Job recognized God as the source of all of his prosperity and happiness; and the misery that Job was experiencing at the time of this speech was due to his feeling that God was no longer watching over him.
E.M. Zerr:
Job 29:1. The Word parable means speech or discourse.
Job 29:2-3. I think it well again to call the reader back to the comments at Job 3:2-3. With those thoughts in mind we will expect to have Job go into many details in describing his affliction of body and mind. One of the most pathetic sources of grief is a reminiscent view of past scenes that were pleasant; pleasant but now gone, perhaps never again to be enjoyed.
Job 29:4-5. I believe this is the most pathetic passage in all of Job’s utterances. His mind went back to the time when the secret (intimacy) of God hovered over his home. The presence of the Almighty was in evidence all the time and made holy the joys he had in the family ties that kept his children about him. The smiles of their faces reflected the light of the good Lord who had given them to him. Even the expressions of pain that sometimes shadowed their countenances reminded him that they were his own flesh-and-blood offspring, and that he had another occasion of tendering to them his loving care to drive away those lines of anguish and make them give place to the beams of gratitude. Now they were all gone, never to come back as far as he knew.
Job 29:6. This is a figurative description of the better days gone by, when Job was abundantly blessed with the good things of life.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Job now moved a step forward in his reply. He was still without a solution. That of his friends he utterly repudiated. In order to prepare the way for the utterance of a solemn oath of innocence, he first looked back at old and lost days in order to compare them with his present condition.
In this chapter we have his description of the past. It is introduced with a sigh, Oh that I were as in the months of old.
That condition is described first in its relation to God. They were days of fellowship in which Job was conscious of the divine watchfulness and guidance. Then in one sentence which has in it the sob of a great agony, he remembered his children-
My children were about me.
He next referred to the abounding prosperity, and, finally, to the esteem in which he was held by all classes of men, even to the highest. The secret of that esteem is then declared to have been his attitude toward men. He was the friend of all who were in need. Clothed in righteousness, and crowned with justice, he administered the affairs of men so as to punish the oppressor and relieve the oppressed. He then described his consciousness in those days. It was a sense of safety and strength. Finally, he returned to a contemplation of the dignity of his position when men listened to him and waited on him, and he was as a king among them.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Bitter Memory of the Happy Past
Job 29:1-25
How many thousands, looking back on the beautiful dawn of life which has become overcast, have uttered the thought of the opening words of this chapter! The worldling has no hope of the renewal of that blessed past; but the believer knows that in Christ he belongs to the eternal order, which enters into the devastation wrought by sin, arresting, canceling and converting evil into good.
If we believe in Jesus Christ, submit to His will, and unite ourselves to His heart, a statelier Eden comes back to us. God watches over us for good; His lamp shines on our way; His friendship is in our tent, and His love transfigures all things. The graphic description which follows of the life of a godly man is still true when a mans ways please the Lord.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Job 29:5
I. When our children are children, we should really have them “about us.”
II. When our children are about us, we should consider, with Job, that we are prosperous.
III. When our children are about us, we should tend them very carefully, and train them up in the way they should go.
IV. When our children are about us, we should be careful, not only to teach them, but to learn the lessons which they can teach us.
V. When our children are about us, we should anticipate the time when, as in the case of the patriarch, they will all be away.
A. Raleigh, From Dawn to the Perfect Day, p. 15.
References: Job 28-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., pp. 293 and 329. Job 29:2.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 51; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 224; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 334; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 103. Job 29:2-4.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii., No. 1011. Job 29:11-16.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 281. Job 29:16.-J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., pp. 264, 280. Job 29:20.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1649. Job 29-H. Allon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 163. Job 29-30-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 430. Job 29-31-A. W. Momerie, Defects of Modern Christianity, p. 140. Job 30:25.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 479. Job 31:14.-G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 130. Job 31-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 27; Ibid., Commentary on fob, p. 366. Job 32:1-6.-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., pp. 99, 113. Job 32:2.-E. Monro, Practical Sermons, vol. iii., p. 377. Job 32:6 -xxxiii. 33.-Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 173.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 29
1. His past prosperity and honors (Job 29:1-10)
2. The good works he did (Job 29:11-25)
Job 29:1-10. The words spoken by Job were wholesome words, showing that his mind was moving in another channel, but now he reverts to the old complaint in self-occupation, self-pity and self-vindication. What a horrible thing this old self? And before the sun can scatter his dark night, that self must be laid into the dust of self-abhorrence. And so we hear him review the past. Some 20 times he says I in this chapter. It reminds one of the man in Rom 7:1-25 with his I. Retrospect is good if it is done with praise and in humility. Not once does Job utter a word of praise. It is all spoken to remind his friends, as well as himself, what a great man he was. How often it is with the Lords servants, that they live in the past and then nourish a most subtle pride.
Job 29:11-25. What a prominent place he used to occupy and the good works he did! The words need no further comment; what he means is on the surface. He glories in his good character and in his good works. Self is triumphant. His friends well knew that every word he spoke of his past greatness was true and not a lie.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
fear
(See Scofield “Psa 19:9”)
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
continued: Heb. added to take up, Job 27:1
Reciprocal: Num 23:7 – he took Job 34:29 – When he giveth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 29:1. Job now goes on to finish his defence, and in order to it he first sets forth his condition in the time of his prosperity, against which he places, by way of contrast, his present unhappy situation, describing both with great beauty and elegance. He then proceeds to purge himself of the several crimes laid to his charge, imprecating on himself the divine vengeance, in various manners, in case he were guilty, and at last concludes that this was his plea, on this he would rest his defence: he was desirous it might be recorded, and prays that his cause might be brought to a decision, declaring he was under no manner of apprehensions of the consequences.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 29:3. When his candle shined upon my head; that is, when the light of his countenance shone upon me, in every form of patriarchal prosperity. This figure seems to be borrowed from the lights in ancient tabernacles; and of course, anterior to the time that Moses illuminated the tabernacle with seven lamps.
Job 29:4. When the secret of God was upon my tabernacle. Rabbi Salom says, the angels, who crowd the sanctuary like a cloud. Psa 34:7. Isa 4:4-5. There peace and joy shone upon my soul, and judicial honours awaited me in the gate.
Job 29:5. When my children were about me, as hopeful branches of my house. These are often the sweetest days of parental bliss, for heavier cares come with riper years.
Job 29:9. Princeslaid their hand on their mouth; that is, elders and magistrates kept silence, to hear the wise and equitable opinion of the bench. A cool and comprehensive mind often suggests a superior idea, to which all men at once accede.
Job 29:16. The cause which I knew not I searched out; for the wicked hide all they can. Many good estates are mortgaged and lost; and when the children cry out of wrong, they are not heard. The Jobs are few among lawyers that will risk any thing to gain back a part to the injured family.
Job 29:18. I shall multiply my days as the sand. Hebrews chol, which designates both the sand and the palm. The Latin, partly following the LXX, reads, I shall multiply my days as the palm, which like the oak and the cedar, exists for ages, Isaiah has the same idea of longevity in the latter day. As the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. As sands are counted by number, not by days, this seems to be the true reading. Exo 15:27.
Job 29:25. Dwelt as a king in the army. Two of Jobs three friends have the title of king in the LXX: it was then common to the heads of tribes.
REFLECTIONS.
Job, feeling a hope in God, sighs for restoration, as in the former days. But like David, he sighs first for power to go and worship where the secret of God was upon his tabernacle. Psa 63:1-2; Psa 84:2. The patriarchal affluence, of washing his steps in butter, was the secondary request; for what is life without a God!
While his friends, in this dark and bitter day, were assaying to probe a guilty conscience, that rectitude of Job in having been eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame, a husband to the widow, and a father to the orphan, shed a cheering radiance on all his gloom. Though we magnify grace, and grace alone, yet those moral reflections embolden a confidence to which a mind conscious of derelictions in duty cannot have equal claims.
God reigns in heaven to do good to man. Such also was the life of our blessed Saviour; he went about doing good. The members of his mystical body should imitate his exemplary virtues. The relative situations of life should inculcate benevolence in every form. The rich have need of the poor, while the aged and the blind have natural claims on the public for bread. Add to this, the Lord has promised to deliver the man who has pity on the poor, in the day of trouble. Yea, the Lord himself will memorialize the cup of cold water in the great day of retribution. Hear this, oh christian, and be steadfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. In so doing you taste of pleasures pure and divine.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 29. Jobs Former Happy Days.
Job 29:1-6. Job longs that he might once again live as of old under Gods favour. In Job 29:4 secret means intimacy (cf. Psa 25:14).
Job 29:7-10. Job describes the reverence done to him by not only the young, but even the aged and the honourable. The gate of the city is the place of assembly, the counsel-house. Job lives on his country estate, but goes into the city to give counsel.
Job 29:21-25 should probably now follow (Budde, Peake). These verses continue the subject of Job 29:7-10. In Job 29:22 dropped means dropped as rain (Job 29:23). In Job 29:24 a mg. yields a better sense than text. Budde reads I laughed on them and they were confident. In Job 29:25, their way probably means their course of action. Job means that he chose out their fine of action in the counsel.
Job 29:11-17. This follows well upon Job 29:25. In this beautiful passage Job classifies himself as a helper of the helpless. In Job 29:11 blessed me means called me happy, i.e. because of his good life which must bring prosperity; the eyes witness means that it saw what Job was doing and testified his praise. In Job 29:14 a diadem is as in mg. turban.
Job 29:18-20. Consequently Job looked forward to a long and untroubled life. In Job 29:18 b read as mg. as the phnix. The poet refers to the Egyptian story of this bird, which renewed its life every 500 years, and was naturally, therefore, an illustration of great longevity. The bow in Job 29:20 is the symbol of strength.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
JOB’S PAST GREATNESS
In this chapter Job dwells upon the honour and dignity that had been his in the past. While he was sincere in what he said, and no doubt spoke truthfully, yet there is far too much of “sell” in what he says, so that in this way Chapter 29 is a contrast to Chapter 28, where he had given the Lord His place of supreme excellence. Nor had Job learned the truth of Ecc 7:10, “Do not say, Why were the former days better than these? For you do not enquire wisely concerning this.” In fact, Paul goes further than this in saying, “But what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ” (Php 3:7), so that he could add, “One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Php 3:13-14). We surely ought to give God credit for knowing just what we need and at what time. If He has blessed us in the past, let us thank God, and therefore trust him for the present and the future.
Thinking of his circumstances at home, Job well remembered the days of his prime (v.4), when God’s evident blessing was that of friendly counsel (though he now thought that God had virtually changed from a friend to an enemy). “When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were around me” (v.5). His circumstances were so pleasant that he considered this as an evidence of God’s presence with him, but now his children were gone: his home life had been virtually desolated, and even his wife had been no help to him in his adversity (ch.19), though he does not even mention her. But in contrast to his present circumstances, his steps were bathed with cream and he was figuratively blessed with “rivers of oil.”
HONORED BEFORE MEN
(vv.7-10)
Now Job speaks of his going out to the gate of the city, the place of public administration (v.7), taking his seat there, his dignity being such that young men instinctively retired and aged men rose up in his honour (v.8). Authorities would not take the lead in speaking, for everyone would wait upon Job (vv.9-10). If someone other than Job had said this, it would be impressive, but when Job speaks this way, he exposes the pride of his self-importance in such a way as to reveal why it was necessary for God to bring him down. Though these things might be perfectly true, yet he ought not to have dared to glory in such honour. Actually, the honour men give to us should only humble us to the dust. In fact, how good it is for every believer to take to heart the words of the Lord Jesus, “I do not receive honour from men” (Joh 5:41).
JOB’S GOOD DEEDS APPROVED BY OTHERS
(vv.11-17)
However, it was not merely Job’s outward position of dignity that caused people to honour him, but his consistent kindness toward others. People blessed him because he “delivered the poor,” the fatherless, and those who had no other source of help (v.12). If one was dying, Job was there to give help, and he gave widows cause to sing for joy (v.13). He was zealous for the cause of righteousness and justice (v.14), and was in effect “eyes to the blind and feet to the lame” (v.15). He was in practice “a father to the poor,” searching out the truth of a case that might not be easily apparent (v.16). He opposed the wicked, breaking their fangs, their ability to gain by oppression; and rescuing victims from their clutches (v.17).
No wonder God says of Job, “there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil” (ch.1:8). Yet how deeply did Job need to learn the lesson of the words of the Lord Jesus, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Mat 6:3). There is never a reason that we should advertise the good things that we do. If we do it as “unto the Lord,” (which ought to always be the case), we should remember that He knows and estimates its value far more accurately than we might do.
JOB’S CONFIDENCE IN HIS GOODNESS
(vv.18-20)
Because Job had been exemplary in his conduct and his reliability, he had felt quite confident that this prosperity would continue unabated, his days being greatly multiplied and his death one of comfort in his nest (v.18). His root and his branch would be well watered, even in the night (v.19), and the freshness of vibrant life would continue as it had, and his ability for conflict (his bow) would be constantly renewed (v.20). How differently things turned out than he thought! Do we also consider that we may depend on past experience to sustain us for the future? If so, we forget that we are totally dependent on the grace of God always.
RESPECTED FOR HIS KINDNESS
(vv.21-25)
Job returns here to speak similarly to what he did in verses 11 to 17, dwelling on the effects that had been produced in his hearers in days past when men listened carefully to him, not interrupting. Nor was this because of a forceful character that demanded men’s attention, but because of the apparently gentle wisdom of his counsel (v.21). When he spoke, they had no rebuttal (v.22), for his words were as dew, having a calming effect, rather than as an irresistible storm. Evidently his words were with such weight that men would wait upon his counsel, and when they opened their mouth wide, it was not to speak, but to drink in the counsel Job provided (v.23).
Verse 24 may be somewhat obscure in its meaning, but rather than, “If I mocked at them,” J.N.Darby’s translation reads, “If I smiled at them when they were without courage.” At any rate, Job is speaking of the way he helped those who lacked other help. When people were in confusion, Job was there to choose their way for them (v.25). He even felt himself as a king in the army,” able to order matters for the people in a way the people knew was good for them. How unusual a man he was!
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
2. Job’s defense of his innocence ch. 29-31
Job gave a soliloquy before his dialogue with his three friends began (ch. 3). Now he concluded that dialogue with two soliloquies (chs. 28 and 29-31). In this second of the bracketing two, Job longed for his past state of blessedness (ch. 29), lamented his present misery (ch. 30), and reaffirmed his innocence calling on God to vindicate him in the future (ch. 31). This whole discourse is a kind of concluding summary of his case, and he delivered it as if he were in court. He made no reference to his three companions in it.
"Job has decided how he will rest his case. He takes a daring step in a final attempt to clear himself. He swears an avowal of innocence. His oath forces the issue, for the oath compels God either to clear him or to activate the curses. Even if God continues to remain silent, that would be an answer, for if the curses Job utters are not activated, the entire community would be convinced that Job is innocent. So after swearing this avowal of innocence, Job will sit in silence, awaiting God’s answer." [Note: Hartley, p. 385.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Job’s past blessedness ch. 29
"Chapter 29 is another classic example of Semitic rhetoric with all the elements of good symmetrical style. . . . The pattern is as follows:
"Blessing, Job 29:2-6
Honor, Job 29:7-11
Job’s benevolence, Job 29:12-17
Blessing, Job 29:18-20
Honor, Job 29:21-25 . . .
"Job in asserting his benevolence places a description of it in the climatic position in this oration, with the key line (Job 29:14) in the exact middle of the poem." [Note: Smick, "Architectonics, Structured . . .," pp. 92-93.]
Another way to divide this chapter is into two sections. In Job 29:1-11 Job longed for the former days, and in Job 29:12-25 he explained why he had enjoyed them.
Job’s fellowship with God evidently meant the most to him since he mentioned this blessing first (Job 29:2-5 a). Butter and oil (Job 29:6) were symbols of prosperity. The rock (Job 29:6 b) may refer to an olive press or perhaps to the rocky soil out of which olive trees grew. Unlike God’s present treatment of him, Job had assisted the injured and had punished oppressors (Job 29:17). Most translators have rendered the Hebrew word hol at the end of Job 29:18 "sand," but one writer argued that it refers to the mythical phoenix bird. [Note: Henry Heras, "The Standard of Job’s Immortality," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 11 (1949):263-79.] Job had also provided encouragement and comfort for the despondent (Job 29:24-25) in contrast to his friends.
"Job’s review of his life [in this chapter] is one of the most important documents in Scripture for the study of Israelite ethics." [Note: Andersen, p. 230.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
XXIV.
AS A PRINCE BEFORE THE KING
Job 29:1-25; Job 30:1-31; Job 31:1-40
Job SPEAKS
FROM the pain and desolation to which he has become inured as a pitiable second state of existence, Job looks back to the years of prosperity and health which in long succession he once enjoyed. This parable or review of the past ends his contention. Honour and blessedness are apparently denied him forever. With what has been he compares his present misery and proceeds to a bold and noble vindication of his character alike from secret and from flagrant sins.
In the whole circle of Jobs lamentations this chant is perhaps the most affecting. The language is very beautiful, in the finest style of the poet, and the minor cadences of the music are such as many of us can sympathise with. When the years of youth go by and strength wanes, the Eden we once dwelt in seems passing fair. Of those beyond middle life there are few who do not set their early memories in sharp contrast to the ways they now travel, looking back to a happy valley and long bright summers that are left behind. And even in opening manhood and womanhood the troubles of life often fall, as we may think, prematurely, coming between the mind and the remembered joy of burdenless existence.
How changed are they!-how changed am I!
The early spring of life is gone, Gone is each youthful vanity, –
But what with years, oh what is won?
I know not-but while standing now
Where opened first the heart of youth,
I recollect how high would glow
Its thoughts of Glory, Faith, and Truth-
“How full it was of good and great,
How true to heaven, how warm to men.
Alas! I scarce forbear to hate
The colder breast I bring again.”
First in the years past Job sees by the light of memory the blessedness he had when the Almighty was felt to be his preserver and his strength. Though now God appears to have become an enemy he will not deny that once he had a very different experience. Then nature was friendly, no harm came to him; he was not afraid of the pestilence that walketh in darkness nor the destruction that wasteth at noon day, for the Almighty was his refuge and fortress. To refuse this tribute of gratitude is far from the mind of Job, and the expression of it is a sign that now at length he is come to a better mind. He seems on the way fully to recover his trust.
The elements of his former happiness are recounted in detail. God watched over him with constant care, the lamp of Divine love shone on high and lighted up the darkness, so that even in the night he could travel by a way he knew not and feel secure. Days of strength and pleasure were those when the secret of God, the sense of intimate fellowship with God, was on his tent, when his children were about him, that beautiful band of sons and daughters who were his pride. Then his steps were bathed in abundance, butter provided by innumerable kine, rivers of oil which seemed to flow from the rock, where terrace above terrace the olives grew luxuriantly and yielded their fruit without fail.
Chiefly Job remembers with gratitude to God the esteem in which he was held by all about him. Nature was friendly and not less friendly were men. When he went into the city and took his seat in the “broad place” within the gate, he was acknowledged chief of the council and court of judgment. The young men withdrew and stood aside, yea the elders, already seated in the place of assembly, stood up to receive him as their superior in position and wisdom. Discussion was suspended that he might hear and decide. And the reasons for this respect are given. In the society thus with idyllic touches represented, two qualities were highly esteemed-regard for the poor and wisdom in counsel. Then, as now, the problem of poverty caused great concern to the elders of cities. Though the population of an Arabian town could not be great, there were many widows and fatherless children, families reduced to beggary by disease or the failure of their poor means of livelihood, blind and lame persons utterly dependent on charity, besides wandering strangers and the vagrants of the desert. By his princely munificence to these Job had earned the gratitude of the whole region. Need was met poverty relieved, justice done in every case. He recounts what he did, not in boastfulness, but as one who rejoiced in the ability God had given him to aid suffering fellow creatures. Those were indeed royal times for the generous-hearted man. Full of public spirit, his ear and hand always open, giving freely out of his abundance, he commended himself to the affectionate regard of the whole valley. The ready way of almsgiving was that alone by which relief was provided for the destitute, and Job was never appealed to in vain.
“The ear that heard me blessed me,
The eye that saw bare witness to me,
Because I delivered the poor that cried,
And the fatherless who had no helper.
The blessing of him that was ready to die came upon me,
And I caused the widows heart to sing with joy.”
So far Job rejoices in the recollection of what he had been able to do for the distressed and needy in those days when the lamp of God shone over him. He proceeds to speak of his service as magistrate or judge.
“I put on righteousness and it indued itself with me,
My justice was as a robe and a diadem;
I was eyes to the blind
And feet was I to the lame.”
With righteousness in his heart so that all he said and did revealed it and wearing judgment as a turban, he sat and administered justice among the people. Those who had lost their sight and were unable to find the men that had wronged them came to him and he was as eyes to them, following up every clue to the crime that had been committed. The lame who could not pursue their enemies appealed to him and he took up their cause. The poor, suffering under oppression, found him a protector, father. Yea, “the cause of him that I knew not I searched out.” On behalf of total strangers as well as of neighbours he set in motion the machinery of justice.
“And I brake the jaws of the wicked
And plucked the spoil from his teeth.”
None were so formidable, so daring and lion-like, but he faced them, brought them to judgment, and compelled them to give up what they had taken by fraud and violence.
In those days, Job confesses, he had the dream that as he was prosperous, powerful, helpful to others by the grace of God, so he would continue. Why should any trouble fall on one who used power conscientiously for his neighbours? Would not Eloah sustain the man who was as a god to others?
“Then I said, I shall die in my nest,
And I shall multiply my days as the Phoenix;
My root shall spread out by the waters,
And the dew shall be all night on my branch:
My glory shall be fresh in me,
And my bow shall be renewed in my hand.”
A fine touch of the dream life which ran on from year to year, bright and blessed as if it would flow forever. Death and disaster were far away. He would renew his life like the Phoenix, attain to the age of the antediluvian fathers, and have his glory or life strong in him for uncounted years. So illusion flattered him, the very image he uses pointing to the futility of the hope.
The closing strophe of the chapter proceeds with even stronger touch and more abundant colour to represent his dignity. Men listened to him and waited. Like a refreshing rain upon thirsty ground-and how thirsty the desert could be!-his counsel fell on their ears. He smiled upon them when they had no confidence, laughed away their trouble, the light of his countenance never dimmed by their apprehensions. Even when all about him were in dismay his hearty hopeful outlook was unclouded. Trusting God, he knew his own strength and gave freely of it.
“I chose out their way, and sat as a chief,
And dwelt as a king in the crowd,
As one that comforteth the mourners.”
Looked up to with this great esteem, acknowledged leader in virtue of his overflowing goodness and cheerfulness, he seemed to make sunshine for the whole community. Such was the past. All that had been is gone, apparently forever.
How inexpressibly strange that power so splendid, mental, physical, and moral strength used in the service of less favoured men should be destroyed by Eloah! It is like blotting out the sun from heaven and leaving a world in darkness. And most strange of all is the way in which low men assist the ruin that has been wrought.
The thirtieth chapter begins with this. Job is derided by the miserable and base whose fathers he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock. He paints these people, gaunt with hunger and vice, herding in the wilderness where alone they are suffered to exist, plucking mallows or salt wort among the bushes and digging up the roots of broom for food. Men hunted them into the desert, crying after them as thieves, and they dwelt in the clefts of the wadies, in caves and amongst rocks. Like wild asses they brayed in the scrub and flung themselves down among the nettles. Children they were of fools, base-born, men who had dishonoured their humanity and been whipped out of the land. Such are they whose song and by word Job is now become. These, even these abhor him and spit in his face. He makes the contrast deep and dreadful as to his own experience and the moral confusion that has followed Eloahs strange work. For good there is evil, for light and order there is darkness. Does God desire this, ordain it?
One is inclined to ask whether the abounding compassion and humaneness of the Book of Job fail at this point. These wretched creatures who make their lair like wild beasts among the nettles, outcasts, branded as thieves, a wandering base-born race, are still men. Their fathers may have fallen into the vices of abject poverty. But why should Job say that he would have disdained to set them with the dogs of his flock? In a previous speech (chapter 24) he described victims of oppression who had no covering in the cold and were drenched with the rain of the mountains, clinging to the rock for shelter; and of them he spoke gently, sympathetically. But here he seems to go beyond compassion.
Perhaps one might say the tone he takes now is pardonable, or almost pardonable, because these wretched beings, whom he may have treated kindly once, have seized the occasion of his misery and disease to insult him to his face. While the words appear hard, the uselessness of the pariah may be the mare point. Yet a little of the pride of birth clings to Job. In this respect he is not perfect; here his prosperous life needs a check. The Almighty must speak to him out of the tempest that he may feel himself and find “the blessedness of being little.”
These outcasts throw off all restraint and behave with disgraceful rudeness in his presence.
Upon my right hand rise the low brood,
They push away my feet,
And cast up against me their ways of destruction;
They mar my path,
And force on my calamity-
They who have no helper.
They come in as through a wide breach,
In the desolation they roll themselves upon me.
The various images, of a besieging army, of those who wantonly break up paths made with difficulty, of a breach in the embankment of a river, are to show that Job is now accounted one of the meanest, whom any man may treat with in dignity. He was once the idol of the populace; “now none so poor to do him reverence.” And this persecution by base men is only a sign of deeper abasement. As a horde of terrors sent by God he feels the reproaches and sorrows of his state.
“Terrors are turned upon me;
They chase away mine honour as the wind.
And my welfare passeth as a cloud.
And now my soul is poured out in me
The days of affliction have taken hold upon me.”
Thought shifts naturally to the awful disease which has caused his body to swell and to become black as with dust and ashes. And this leads him to his final vehement complaint against Eloah. How can He so abase and destroy His servant?
I cry unto Thee and Thou dost not hear me;
I stand up, and Thou lookest at me.
Thou art turned to be cruel unto me:
With the might of Thine hand Thou persecutest me.
Thou liftest me up to the wind,
Thou causest me to ride on it;
And Thou dissolvest me in the storm.
For I know that Thou wilt bring me to death,
And to the house appointed for all living.
Yet in overthrow doth not one stretch out his hand?
In destruction, doth he not because of this utter a cry?
Standing up in his wretchedness he is fully visible to the Divine eye, still no prayer moves Eloah the terrible from His purpose. It seems to be finally appointed that in dishonour Job shall die. Yet, destined to this fate, his hope a mockery, shall he not stretch out his hand, cry aloud as life falls to the grave in ruin? How differently is God treating him from the way in which he treated those who were in trouble! He is asking in vain that pity which he himself had often shown. Why should this be? How can it be, and Eloah remain the Just and Living One? Pained without and within, unable to refrain from crying out when people gather about him, a brother to jackals whose howlings are heard all night, a companion to the grieving ostrich, his bones burned by raging fever, his harp turned to wailing and his lute into the voice of them that weep, he can scarce believe himself the same man that once walked in honour and gladness in the sight of earth and heaven.
Thus the full measure of complaint is again poured out, unchecked by thought that dignity of life comes more with suffering patiently endured than with pleasure. Job does not know that out of trouble like his a man may rise more human, more noble, his harp furnished with new strings of deeper feeling, a finer light of sympathy shining in his soul. Consistently, throughout, the author keeps this thought in the background, showing hopeless sorrow, affliction, unrelieved by any sense of spiritual gain, pressing with heaviest and most weary weight upon a good mans life. The only help Job has is the consciousness of virtue, and that does not check his complaint. The antinomies of life, the past as compared with the present, Divine favour exchanged for cruel persecution, well doing followed by most grievous pain and dishonour, are to stand at the last full in view. Then He who has justice in His keeping shall appear. God Himself shall declare and claim His supremacy and His design.
This purpose of the author achieved, the last passage of Jobs address-chapter 31-rings bold and clear like the chant of a victor, not serene indeed in the presence of death, for this is not the Hebrew temper and cannot be ascribed by the writer to his hero, yet with firm ground beneath his feet, a clear conscience of truth lighting up his soul. The language is that of an innocent man before his accusers and his judge, yea of a prince in presence of the King. Out of the darkness into which he has been cast by false arguments and accusations, out of the trouble into which his own doubt has brought him, Job seems to rise with a new sense of moral strength and even of restored physical power. No more in reckless challenge of heaven and earth to do their worst, but with a fine strain of earnest desire to be clear with men and God, he takes up and denies one by one every possible charge of secret and open sin. Is the language he uses more emphatic than any man has a right to employ? If he speaks the truth, why should his words be thought too bold? The Almighty Judge desires no man falsely to accuse himself, will have no man leave an unfounded suspicion resting upon his character. It is not evangelical meekness to plead guilty to sins never committed. Job feels it part of his integrity to maintain his integrity; and here he vindicates himself not in general terms but in detail, with a decision which cannot be mistaken. Afterwards, when the Almighty has spoken, he acknowledges the ignorance and error which have entered into his judgment, making the confession we must all make even after years of faith.
I.
From the taint of lustful and base desire he first clears himself. He has been pure in life, innocent even of wandering looks which might have drawn him into uncleanness. He has made a covenant with his eyes and kept it. Sin of this kind, he knew, always brings retribution, and no indulgence of his ever caused sorrow and dishonour. Regarding the particular form of evil in question he asks:-
“For what is the portion from God above,
And the heritage of the Almighty from on high?
Is it not calamity to the unrighteous
And disaster to them that work iniquity?”
Grouped along with this “lust of the flesh” is the “lust of the eyes,” covetous desire. The itching palm to which money clings, false dealing for the sake of gain, crafty intrigues for the acquisition of a plot of ground or some animal-such things were far from him. He claims to be weighed in a strict balance, and pledges himself that as to this he will not be found wanting. So thoroughly is he occupied with this defence that he speaks as if still able to sow a crop and look for the harvest. He would expect to have the produce snatched from his hand if the vanity of greed and getting had led him astray. Returning then to the more offensive suspicion that he had laid wait treacherously at his neighbours door, he uses the most vigorous words to show at once his detestation of such offence and the result he believes it always to have. It is an enormity, a nefarious thing to be punished by the judges. More than that, it is a fire that consumes to Abaddon, wasting a mans strength and substance so that they are swallowed as by the devouring abyss. As to this, Jobs reading of life is perfectly sound. Wherever society exists at all, custom and justice are made to bear as heavily as possible on those who invade the foundation of society and the rights of other men. Yet the keenness with which immorality of the particular kind is watched fans the flame of lust. Nature appears to be engaged against itself; it may be charged with the offence, it certainly joins in bringing the punishment.
II.
Another possible imputation was that as a master or employer he had been harsh to his underlings. Common enough it was for those in power to treat their dependants with cruelty. Servants were often slaves; their rights as men and women were denied. Regarding this, the words put into the mouth of Job are finely humane, even prophetic:-
“If I despised the cause of my man-servant or maid
When they contended with me
What then shall I do when God riseth up?
And when He visiteth what shall I answer Him?
Did not He that made me in the womb make him?
And did not One fashion us in the womb?”
The rights of those who toiled for him were sacred, not as created by any human law which for so many hours service might compel so much stipulated hire, but as conferred by God. Jobs servants were men and women with an indefeasible claim to just and considerate treatment. It was accidental, so to speak, that Job was rich and they poor, that he was master and they under him. Their bodies were fashioned like his, their minds had the same capacity of thought, of emotion, of pleasure and pain. At this point there is no hardness of tone or pride of birth and place. These are well doing people to whom as head of the clan Job stands in place of a father.
And his principle, to treat them as their inheritance of the same life from the same Creator gave them a right to be dealt with, is prophetic, setting forth the duties of all who have power to those who toil for them. Men are often used like beasts of burden. No tyranny on earth is so hateful as many employers, driving on their huge concerns at the utmost speed, dare to exercise through representatives or underlings. The simple patriarchal life which brought employer and employed into direct personal relations knew little of the antagonism of class interests and the bitterness of feeling which often menaces revolution. None of this will cease till simplicity be resumed and the customs which keep men in touch with each other, even though they fail to acknowledge themselves members of the one family of God. When the servant who has done his best is, after years of exhausting labour, dismissed without a hearing by some subordinate set there to consider what are called the “interests” of the employer-is the latter free from blame? The question of Job, “What then shall I do when God riseth up, and when He visiteth what shall I answer Him?” strikes a note of equity and brotherliness many so-called Christians seem never to have heard.
III.
To the poor, the widow, the fatherless, the perishing, Job next refers. Beyond the circle of his own servants there were needy persons whom he had been charged with neglecting and even oppressing. He has already made ample defence under this head. If he has lifted his hand against the fatherless, having good reason to presume that the judges would be on his side-then may his shoulder fall from the shoulder blade and his arm from the collar bone. Calamity from God was a terror to Job, and recognising the glorious authority which enforces the law of brotherly help he could not have lived in proud enjoyment and selfish contempt.
IV.
Next he repudiates the idolatry of wealth and the sin of adoring the creature instead of the Creator. Rich as he was, he can affirm that he never thought too much of his wealth, nor secretly vaunted himself in what he had gathered. His fields brought forth plentifully, but he never said to his soul, Thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. He was but a steward, holding all at the will of God. Not as if abundance of possessions could give him any real worth, but with constant gratitude to his Divine Friend, he used the world as not abusing it.
And for his religion: true to those spiritual ideas which raised him far above superstition and idolatry, even when the rising sun seemed to claim homage as a fit emblem of the unseen Creator, or when the full moon shining in a clear sky seemed a very goddess of purity and peace, he had never, as others were wont to do, carried his hand to his lips. He had seen the worship of Baal and Ishtar, and there might have come to him, as to whole nations, the impulses of wonder, of delight, of religious reverence. But he can fearlessly say that he never yielded to the temptation to adore anything in heaven or earth. It would have been to deny Eloah the Supreme. Dr. Davidson reminds us here of a legend embodied in the Koran for the purpose of impressing the lesson that worship should be paid to the Lord of all creatures, “whose shall be the kingdom on the day whereon the trumpet shall be sounded.” The Almighty says: “Thus did we show unto Abraham the kingdom of heaven and earth, that he might become of those who firmly believe. And when the night overshadowed him he saw a star, and he said, This is my Lord; but when it set he said, I like not those that set. And when he saw the moon rising he said, This is my Lord; but when he saw it set he said, Verily, if my Lord direct me not, I shall become one of the people who go astray. And when he saw the rising sun he said, This is my Lord; this is the greatest; but when it set he said, O my people, verily I am clear of that which ye associate with God; I direct my face unto Him who hath created the heavens and the earth.” Thus from very early times to that of Mohammed monotheism was in conflict with the form of idolatry that naturally allured the inhabitants of Arabia. Job confesses the attraction, denies the sin. He speaks as if the laws of his people were strongly against sun worship, whatever might be done elsewhere.
V.
He proceeds to declare that he has never rejoiced over a fallen enemy nor sought the life of any one with a curse. He distinguishes himself very sharply from those who in the common Oriental way dealt curses without great provocation, and those even who kept them for deadly enemies. So far was this rancorous spirit from him that friends and enemies alike were welcome to his hospitality and help. Job 31:31 means that his servants could boast of being unable to find a single stranger who had not sat at his table. Their business was to furnish it every day with guests. Nor will Job allow that after the manner of men he skilfully covered transgressions. “If, guilty of some base thing, I concealed it, as men often do, because I was afraid of losing caste, afraid lest the great families would despise me” Such a thought or fear never presented itself to him. He could not thus have lived a double life. All had been above board, in the clear light of day, ruled by one law. In connection with this it is that he comes with princely appeal to the King.
“Oh that I had one to hear me!-
Behold my signature-let the Almighty answer me.
And oh that I had my Opponents charge!
Surely I would carry it on my shoulder, I would bind it unto me as a crown.
I would declare unto Him the number of my steps,
As a prince would I go near unto Him.”
The words are to be defended only on the ground that the Eloah to whom a challenge is here addressed is God misunderstood, God charged falsely with making unfounded accusations against His servant and punishing him as a criminal. The Almighty has not been doing so. The vicious reasoning of the friends, the mistaken creed of the age make it appear as if He had. Men say to Job, You suffer because God has found evil in you. He is requiting you according to your iniquity. They maintain that for no other reason could calamities have come upon him. So God is made to appear as the mans adversary; and Job is forced to the demonstration that he has been unjustly condemned. “Behold my signature,” he says: I state my innocence; I set to my mark; I stand by my claim: I can do nothing else. Let the Almighty prove me at fault. God, you say, has a book in which His charges against me are written out. I wish I had that book! I would fasten it upon my shoulder as a badge of honour; yea, I would wear it as a crown. I would show Eloah all I have done, every step I have taken through life by day and night. I would evade nothing. In the assurance of integrity I would go to the King; as a prince I would stand in His presence. There face to face with Him whom I know to be just and righteous I would justify myself as His servant, faithful in His house.
Is it audacity, impiety? The writer of the book does not mean it to be so understood. There is not the slightest hint that he gives up his hero. Every claim made is true. Yet there is ignorance of God, and that ignorance puts Job in fault so far. He does not know Gods action though he knows his own. He ought to reason from the misunderstanding of himself and see that he may fail to understand Eloah. When he begins to see this he will believe that his sufferings have complete justification in the purpose of the Most High.
The ignorance of Job represents the ignorance of the old world. Notwithstanding the tenor of his prologue the writer is without a theory of human affliction applicable to every case, or even to the experience of Job. He can only say and repeat, God is supremely wise and righteous, and for the glory of His wisdom and righteousness He ordains all that befalls men. The problem is not solved till we see Christ, the Captain of our salvation, made perfect by suffering, and know that our earthly affliction “which is for the moment worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.”
The last verses of the chapter may seem out of place. Job speaks as a landowner who has not encroached on the fields of others but honestly acquired his estate, and as a farmer who has tilled it well. This seems a trifling matter compared with others that have been considered. Yet, as a kind of afterthought, completing the review of his life, the detail is natural.
“If my land cry out against me,
And the furrows thereof weep together,
If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money,
Or have caused the owners to lose their life:
Let thistles grow instead of wheat
And cockle instead of barley.
The words of Job are ended.”
A farmer of the right kind would have great shame if poor crops or wet furrows cried against him, or if he could otherwise be accused of treating the land ill. The touch is realistic and forcible.
Still it is plain at the close that the character of Job is idealised. Much may he received as matter of veritable history; but on the whole the life is too fine, pure, saintly for even an extraordinary man. The picture is clearly typical. And it is so for the best reason. An actual life would not have set the problem fully in view. The writers aim is to rouse thought by throwing the contradictions of human experience so vividly upon a prepared canvas that all may see. Why do the righteous suffer? What does the Almighty mean? The urgent questions of the race are made as insistent as art and passion, ideal truth and sincerity, can make them. Job lying in the grime of misery, yet claiming his innocence as a prince before the Eternal King, demands on behalf of humanity the vindication of providence, the meaning of the world scheme.