1. THERE was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and 2 turned away from evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the children 4 of the east. And his sons went and held a feast in the house of each one upon his day; and they sent and called for their three sisters 5 to eat and to drink with them. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually. Now it came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, that Satan came also among 7 them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down 8 in it. And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and 9 turneth away from evil. Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear 10 God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his 11 substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face. 12. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD. 13 And it fell on a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in 14 their eldest brother's house, that there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside 15 them: and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I 16 only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only 17 am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have taken them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped 18 alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: 19 and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am es 20 caped alone to tell thee. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and wor 21 shipped; and he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the 22 LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God with foolishness. 1-3. THE first three verses describe the position of Job, his country, name, character, family, and possessions. 1. Uz. A district peopled by the descendants of Uz. Three patriarchs bear this name: a son of Aram (Gen. 10:23); a son of Nahor, Abraham's brother (Gen. 22 : 21) ; and a grandson of Seir, the Horite (Gen. 36 : 28). The second of these probably gave the name to this country : the Chaldeans, Buzites, and indeed all the persons and tribes mentioned in the Book of Job, belong to the same race ; being either collateral or direct descendants from Abraham, and for the most part retaining the old patriarchal habits and traditions. The district, as generally identified, lay to the northeast of Idumæa, and appears to have been nearly co-extensive with Bathanyeh, or East Hauran, once a rich and fertile country. This is now generally regarded as the true home of Job. Cook. 3. Job dwelt not in tents, but in a house, not in camps, but in a town, having a fixed and not a movable residence, though his shepherds doubtless went out afar with his flocks. This is the state of life depicted as that led by the elder branches of Abraham's family at Haran, the state of life which that great father of the faithful quitted, relapsing into a more simple pastoral life, to meet the alteration of his circumstances when he was required to go into a strange country, "not knowing whither he went." This of course affords a corroboration to the opinion that Job not only belonged to this state of life, but to this region. He belonged to that condition which fluctuated between that of the wandering shepherd and that of the settled inhabitant of towns and cultivator of the ground ; and this mixed condition of life, which is still to be witnessed in some parts of western Asia, sufficiently accounts for the diversified character of the allusions and pictures which the book contains—to the pastoral life and the scenes and products of the wilderness ; to the scenes and circumstances of agriculture ; and to the arts and sciences of settled life and advancing civilization. Kitto. 4. In this beautiful picture of family affection and of domestic enjoyments sanctified by piety, and in the sudden and total reverse which follows, the way is prepared for the lessons of this book. Of the particular occasion or occasions of these entertainments no intimation is given. A birthday festival is mentioned among very ancient usages (Gen. 40 : 20), and an annual family festival (1 Sam. 20 : 6, 29). Whatever was the occasion, they were held at the houses of the several sons in immediate succession till the circle was completed. Conant. 5. We apprehend this to mean that when the cycle of entertainments for the period over which the rotation ran had been completed, Job customarily sent to invite them all to meet at his house, that they might be present at a solemn act of expiatory sacrifice—which, as the head of the family, it belonged to him in the absence of a priesthood to offer—by way of atonement generally for the sins of the season gone by, and specially for any forgetfulness of God into which they might have fallen in the course of their festivities. The subsequent institution under the law of Moses of a great annual day of atonement, understood to be expiatory for the transgressions of the congregation during the past year, helps to corroborate this interpretation as well as to illustrate the practice. This was the time, in the course of the rotation of visits, when all the family assembled in their father's house. It was his turn then to receive them, and his entertainment was such as became his position and character. Kitto.—The act of worship was the sacrifice. As was customary in the patriarchal age to which Job belonged, and even far down in the history of Israel, the father was priest of the family, and the sacrifice offered was the burnt-offering. This offering contained in it the germs which afterward expanded into the various distinct kinds of sacrifice. Job used it as a sacrifice of atonement A. B. D. These verses serve a threefold use in the narrative : primarily, they furnish an historical occasion for the terrible calamities which follow ; incidentally, they contain a striking illustration of Job's tender and conscientious piety ; and finally, they present a pleasing picture of patriarchal family life in its affectionate harmony and joyousness. Evans.—Where now such piety was to be found, and such conscientious solicitude to keep his whole house free from sin, there might we expect, judging after the manner of men, that prosperity would abide permanently. This at least we might expect from the standpoint of theory, which regards the outward lot as an index of the moral worth ; which assumes piety and prosperity to be inseparable conceptions. But in heaven it was otherwise decreed. Dillmann. 6. This is a similitude taken from earthly courts, where advocates and accusers come together ; and it intimates unto us that as the good angels are ready to go forth at God's command for the good of men, so is Satan ever ready to further his malicious plots against them. Neither came he for good, as the angels did, but presents himself to get a commission to hurt Job. Ainsworth. Satan. Foe to God and man, and the accuser of the brethren. The Greek version in this passage of Job, and in Zech. 3:1, renders "Satan" by a word signifying the accuser. Parkhurst.—The grand spiritual "adversary" of mankind is here first introduced in Scripture under his proper name, "Satan," and under the character assigned to him from hence in the New Testament, of "walking about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet. 5:8, with allusion to Job 1:7 and 2:3), and as "the accuser of the brethren, who accused them before God night and day" (Rev. 12:10). Hales.—The name "Satan," as denoting an enemy, frequently occurs in the Old Testament. See 2 Sam. 19:22; 1 Kings 5:4, where the word for "adversary" is in the original "Satan." It is extremely probable that the root Satan was introduced into the Hebrew and other Eastern languages to denote an adversary, from its having been the proper name of the great enemy of mankind. Bishop Watson. Satan appears here with all the traits which characterize him in the Hebrew Monotheism, a high dignity of origin, a perfidious malignity, a spirit of considerable power, but strictly limited by the will of Him who entrusts him with it. Godet.—Though malignant and evil, this spirit is evidently counted among the angels by origin and nature. He comes among them as one of their order. Like them, he has to give an account of what he has observed. This representation is in accordance with other notices in the Bible. The existence of a malignant spirit, permitted to range the earth, tempting and eahmmisting God's rational creatures, is implied or asserted in all Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It is to be observed that the final expulsion of this spirit from the higher region is represented in the New Testament as a result of the Saviour's coming. The mystery which hangs over such representations is common to all questions which concern the origin or continuance of moral evil. Cook. The attentive reader of Scripture will not fail to remark that the statement of the existence, the moral propensities, and the agency of Satan is extended nearly through the whole of the sacred volume; that its writers, in their portraiture of our great adversary, employ the same images and adhere to the same appellations throughout; that a complete identity of character is exhibited, marked with the same features of force, cruelty, malignity, and fraud. He is everywhere depicted as alike the enemy of God and man; who, having appeared as a serpent in the history of the fall, is recognized by Paul under the same character in express allusion to that event, and afterward by John in the Apocalypse as “that old serpent the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” We have, therefore, just the same evidence of the real personality of Satan as of the Holy Spirit, and exactly of the same kind; both are described by inspired persons; to both, volitions, purposes, and personal characteristics are ascribed. A uniformity of representation, an identity of character, distinguished respectively by the most opposite moral qualities, equally pervade the statements of Scripture as to each to such a degree that, supposing the sacred writers to have designed to teach us the proper personality of Satan, it is not easy to conceive what other language they could have adopted. R. Hall. There is a profound meaning in Satan's appearing here among the sons of God before the Lord. It is designed to express his subordination and subjection to Divine control. There is a superior restraint to which he is obliged to bow, a superior will that sets limits to his rage, and allows him even within these limits to act out his evil nature only for the sake of some Divine end which he is made to be instrumental in achieving. It is evil in the person of its arch-representative and head, subject to good and constrained to be its minister. It is Satan actually exhibited in the attitude of a servant of God, and made subservient to the discipline and training of His people. W. H. G. It does not at all derogate from the credibility of Job's story in general to allow that this discourse between God and Satan is parabolical, an allegory designed to represent the malice of the devil against good men and the Divine check and restraint that malice is under. Only thus much further is intimated, that the affairs of this earth are very much the subject of the counsels of the unseen world. That world is dark to us, but we lie very open to it. H.—As to the incredibility of the conversation which is related to have taken place between the Almighty and Satan, it may be observed that this and the assemblage of the celestial intelligences before the throne of God should be considered as prophetical personifications, in accommodation to our limited faculties, which are abundantly authorized by God Himself in Holy Scripture, and are perfectly agreeable to the style wherein His prophets have been frequently commanded to deliver the most solemn and important truths. Thus the prophetic visions of Isaiah (chap. 6), of Ezekiel (chap. 1), of Paul (2 Cor. 12:2, 4), and of John (Rev. 4:1, 2) represent the proceedings of Providence in like reference to our powers and modes of conception; and the vision of Micaiah (1 Kings 22: 19-23) and that of Zechariah (2: 13; 3: 1) supply cases precisely parallel in every respect. Farmer justly remarks on this subject that such "visions or parabolical representations convey instruction as truly and properly as if they were exact copies of outward objects." And indeed if the introduction of Satan be admitted as an argument against the truth of the history, it should lead us equally to reject the narrative of our Lord's temptation as an unfounded fiction. Archbishop Magee. Such passages [as cited above] fall in with those very emphatic sayings of Christ concerning the joy in heaven over a repentant sinner, and the angels of the little ones. They teach us that earth is not lost out of the sight of heaven, that heaven is full of intense interest, longing, joy, and sorrow over the course of man. Vincent.—We shall fail to grasp the principles which underlie this dramatic picture, unless we are taught by it that the fortunes of men possess an absorbing interest for the inhabitants of heaven; that moral problems are being wrought out here unlike any which have been solved there; and that therefore they follow the fluctuation of our fate with a Divine curiosity and sympathy of which we have but a faint conception. For a few brief years man passes across the face of the earth, but above him there bends a broad heaven, not cold and hard and careless, but full of tender love and eager ministries; and beneath him there yawns a hell crowded with hostile and malignant spirits, who would fain make him as selfish and miserable as themselves; while above all and through all and in all God reigns and works, compelling even the disasters and defeats of the conflict to minister to the completeness and glory of the final triumph. Cox. 7. Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down. One consequence to the spirit which has no belief in unselfishness is the want of any centre of rest within itself. The condition of Satan is thus described here. Incessant wandering, "going about," "seeking rest and finding none," is the view given of him in Scripture. There is the constant endeavor to find a fixed point, and inability to discover it; and this may be the truth intended to be conveyed in that strange but significant narrative (Matt. 8: 28), where the evil spirit is urged from place to place by the conquering power of good, till it is driven to beg for a refuge in the lowest and most grovelling forms of creation—to find itself, even here, too, rejected, and cast forth naked and shelterless. This is most certain, that if the heart does not give quiet, no place in the universe can, and the personal head of evil has been for ages making the attempt to find that quiet in vain. Ker.—What doth Satan when he walks up and down the world? Doth he walk like an idle vagrant that hath nothing to do? Doth he walk merely to take the air or to take his pleasure, to see and be seen? No; when Satan walks about the world, his walking is working; he goeth about to tempt, to try and lay snares and baits to catch and captivate the souls of men. Caryl. 8-10. God, the Author, Judge, and Rewarder of good in the universe, declares before the heavenly assembly His satisfaction in the piety of Job. Satan, the representative of scepticism as to all virtue that has not passed through trial, does not give way to this judgment of God. God, instead of suppressing his insinuations, Himself draws forth the expression of them: "Hast thou considered My servant Job?" Satan, having no accusation to make against the outward conduct of Job, calls in question the purity of his motives: "Doth Job fear God for nought?" There is no great merit in faithfully serving a master who heaps benefits upon you, and pays you highly for your services. Godet. 8. My servant. No higher title of honor can be borne by man. This direct attestation of God to Job's character must be borne in mind throughout. Cook.—Both in the Old Testament and in the New, the dignity of the service of God is spoken of as paramount to all the other dignities of God's people? "Hast thou seen My servant Job?" God spoke with Moses face to face, but when God would boast of Moses, He does not speak of other privileges, but of this: "My servant, that is faithful in all My house." The great Apostle Paul puts his being a servant of God before his apostleship. "Paul, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ." You find the same in Peter. He also says, "Peter, the servant of God and of Jesus Christ, and an apostle." When the great apostle speaks of James, he calls him "the Lord's brother;" but when you find James writing his epistle, it is, "James, the servant of God and of Jesus Christ." The beloved disciple lay upon the bosom of God, but we do not find him speaking of this as his primal privilege; it was, "John, the servant of Jesus Christ." The glory of the angelic host does not consist in this, that they excel in strength, that they stand upon the mount of God, but that they do His commandments, and that they hearken unto the words of His mouth. There is no higher dignity in heaven, no higher privilege than to be the servant of God. When we come to the Revelation we read of a goodly multitude there, clothed in white robes. There are palms in their hands; they stand upon a sheet of glass; they harp with the harps of gold; but what is the privilege on which the Spirit of God lays emphasis? Not their robes, not their palms, not their harps, but this—"They serve God, day and night, in His temple." Marcus Rainsford. A perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and turneth away from evil. This statement of the Lord is very comprehensive. He was perfect and upright. Uprightness denotes honesty, straightforwardness, sincerity. He was sincere in his professions and honest in his practice. Uprightness, moreover, means conformity to the standard of right, and this both inwardly and outwardly. We read both of the upright in heart and of the man that is upright in his way. He was a man of integrity, therefore, both in spirit and in life—a man attentive to his obligations both to God and man, and who punctually discharged them. And, with all, he was perfect—perfect and upright, perfect in his uprightness. Perfect not, of course, in that sense in which, according to the uniform teaching of Scripture and the universal experience of men, perfection is unattainable in this life. Not that he was absolutely faultless, for there is no man that liveth and sinneth not. Job never claims spotless innocence. But he was perfect in the sense of completeness. There was a completeness in his piety, which compassed the whole round of obligation. He studied conformity to the rule of right in all things, at all times, under all circumstances. And the spring of this perfectness and uprightness, or this complete integrity, was that he feared God. He set the will of God before him as his rule, the glory of God as his end, the approbation of God as his highest reward. In this fear of God he walked all the day long. This was his grand motive, overpowering everything else. This impelled him to prompt and ready obedience to every Divine command. This made him steadfast in his uprightness, and led to his perfectness and completeness in it. It also led to the sedulous avoidance of its opposite, and thus completed the perfect square by the fourth side, which is the finishing stroke to this description of a well-regulated piety. He "turned away from evil;" he carefully shunned all sin, kept aloof from everything that was wrong in heart, speech, and behavior. W. H. G. Having a respect to all God's commandments, aiming at perfection, he did not dissemble in his profession of piety; his heart was sound, and his eye single. Sincerity is Gospel perfection; I know no religion without it. He was upright in his dealings both with God and man; was faithful to his promises, steady in his counsels, true to every trust reposed in him, and made conscience of all he said and did. The fear of God reigning in his heart was the principle that governed his whole conversation. That made him perfect and upright, inward and entire for God, universal and uniform in religion; that kept him close and constant to his duty. H.—Perfect holiness is the aim of the saints on earth, and is the reward of the saints in heaven. That which they aim at here is perfection—to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect, therefore they are called perfect. As God accepts the will for the deed, so He expresses the deed by the will. He esteems him to be a perfect man who strives after perfection; and He calls that person perfect who longs to have all his imperfections cured. We see, therefore, that Job might properly and fitly be described as "a perfect man," although it is clear from what ensues that many infirmities remained with him, and although he knew himself to be a sinner. Kitto.—Job was an eminent saint of God, though his line of descent was not counted from Abraham, and though he did not practise the multiplied rites of the Mosaic ceremonial. Whatever advantages there may be in an outward connection with the people of God or the visible Church, and whatever benefit may arise from outward attendance upon the services of religion—and certainly neither of these are to be undervalued when rightly understood and put in their proper place—that piety which has the approbation of God is something different from them and independent of them. W. H. G. 9. Satan, the accusing angel, fresh from his self-chosen task of roaming earth in search of sin, fronts God in heaven itself with calumnies against His purest creatures and detraction of His most tried saints. It is indeed a devilish suggestion, one too gross for human mind to invent, that all virtue is assumed, and piety itself but a selfish policy to cheat God. "Doth Job serve God for nought?" Aglen.—For nought. The central point of the whole narrative is in this word. No flaw is discoverable in Job's outer life; Satan, wiser than Job's friends, sees and owns his integrity; the only possible objection touches the principle of his acts; the question raised is whether his goodness was disinterested, springing from pure love, or merely prudential, and dependent upon the external conditions under which it had been developed. Cook. The question says, in effect, why not be righteous, when righteousness pays so well? But for another thing, the question reveals Satan's character, which, as the sequel shows, is in polar contrast to that of Job. A half-wondering, half-sneering, wholly selfish question, the question of one who, having no allegiance outside of self, has no ability to understand unselfishness; it says in effect, Is there such a thing as disinterested integrity, goodness without thought of reward, possible in the world? J. F. G.—It is an argument of a most malignant spirit, when a man's actions are fair, then to accuse his intentions. The devil had nothing to say against the actions of Job, but goes down into his heart and accuses his intentions. Malice misinterprets the fairest actions, but love puts the fairest interpretation it can upon foul actions. Caryl. Satan puts his calumny, as many people have since done, into the form of a question. It is evident how he intended it to be answered. God has held up Job as a proof of His power to put true goodness into human nature, and the reply is that this seeming goodness is only self-interest. The man is religious because he makes a good thing out of it. The accuser has a belief in the philosophy of selfishness. It is a faith not uncommon in our day. There are some who seek a foundation for it in argument, and wish to prove that all virtue is merely self-interest largely and wisely interpreted, which is true in this respect, that goodness and self-interest will in the end coincide, but very false if it is meant that goodness has its origin in taking this end into account. Ker.—It was a great truth that Job did not fear God for nought, for godliness is great gain; but it was a falsehood that he would not have feared God if he had not got this by it, as the event proved. Job's friends charged him with hypocrisy because he was greatly afflicted; Satan, because he greatly prospered. It is no hard matter for those to calumniate that seek an occasion. It is not mercenary to look at the eternal recompense in our obedience; but to aim at temporal advantages in our religion, and to make it subservient to that, is spiritual idolatry; worshipping the creature more than the Creator is likely to end in a fatal apostasy; men cannot long serve God and mammon. H. The attacks of Satan are aimed primarily at the honor of God. And he knows perfectly well that the most telling blow he can inflict upon it is to deny that God is ever disinterestedly served and sincerely loved by any being whatsoever. The object of the trial of Job is precisely to demonstrate to him the contrary. Godet. 12. To make it plain that goodness may have other foundations and affliction other results, the Lord allows him to oppress for a season His righteous servant—to strip him of all—to bring him very low, but only to hold his person sacred. We learn from this that Satan has no independent power to distress mankind but as the Lord permits, for the trial of our faith and for the purification of our souls, and, therefore, for ultimate good if we but hold fast that which we have. It is only by our failure that the enemy gains any real power over us; and this conviction, that whatever form our trials take they are essentially from the Lord, should teach us to receive them all as from His hand—a Father's hand. Kitto.—It is matter of wonder that God should give Satan such a permission as this, but He did it for His own glory, the honor of Job, the explanation of Providence, and the encouragement of His afflicted people in all ages; to make a case which, being adjudged, might be a useful precedent. He suffered Job to be tried as He suffered Peter to be sifted; but took care that his faith should not fail, and then the trial of it was found unto praise and honor and glory (1 Pet. 1:7). But it is matter of comfort that God has the devil in a chain (Rev. 20:1). He could not afflict Job without leave from God first asked and obtained, and then no further than he had leave: "Only upon himself put not forth thine hand; meddle not with his body, but only with his estate." It is a limited power that the devil has; he has no power to debauch men but what they give him themselves, nor power to afflict men but what is given him from above. H. It belongs to the magnificence of God's universal government that opposition and hostility, instead of tending to thwart or retard His plans, invariably contribute to further and promote them. Satan forms no exception. This archfiend, with the entire kingdom of evil which he instigates and controls, is absolutely powerless to prevent or to retard the execution of the least of God's designs. The decrees which he would frustrate embrace himself and all his hateful deeds, as agencies co-operating to their fulfilment. With all his hatred of God and spite against His people, he cannot emancipate himself from that sovereign control which binds him to God's service. In all his blasphemous designs he is, in spite of himself, doing the work of God. W. H. G. All agencies, material and spiritual, are under the Divine control; and the one or the other may, with equal reason, be made the instrument of God's will. A process similar to the one here described, and with like results, is recorded in the memorable passage, Luke 22:31. The lessons to be drawn from the course of Providence, in the present state of imperfection and trial, are fully set forth in Rom. 8:18-25, 28. Conant.—God inaugurates and permits nothing which He cannot control; and the same thought is in the mind of Paul when he writes to the Corinthians, "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way for your escape, that ye may be able to bear it." V. Satan went forth. It is not the place makes us like to God, but there must be a likeness to God to make the place pleasant to us. When once the angels had corrupted their nature, the short stay they made in heaven did neither please them nor reform them. And when Satan appeared before God, among the angels, neither God's presence nor His speaking to him did anywise better him; he came a devil and he went away so, without any pleasure in the place or presence, but by the permission of God to wreak his malice on holy Job. Charnock. 17. This completes the ruin of Job's estate. The Sabeans had plundered the cattle of the homestead, the oxen and the asses; the fire had consumed the flocks of sheep in the pastures; and now the Chaldeans drive off the camels, which were at pasture in another and probably more distant quarter. And it is worthy of note that in all these cases the servants had lost their lives in defence of their master's property—the best proof that could be given that he had been a good master to them. Kitto.—These incursions from opposite quarters—Sabeans from the south, Chaldeans from the north—completed the destruction of Job's substance, but this draws from him no word of complaint; the "hedge" (v. 10) is broken down, the "blessing" gone, the "cattle" and "household" destroyed, but he remains steadfast. Cook. 18,19. The next messenger came to declare to the patriarch that all his children were dead—rent from him at one fell swoop. In the midst of their feast, a "great wind from the wilderness came and smote the four corners of the house," so that it fell, and destroyed all who were in it. This must have been a whirlwind, as it thus seemed to come from all points of the compass at once. Of the extreme violence and destructive effects of whirlwinds within the limited range in which they operate in eastern and especially tropical countries, many instances are reported. Kitto.—We had scarcely advanced two miles into the plain, when we were enclosed by a violent whirlwind, or what is called, at sea, the waterspout. A camel was lifted and thrown down at a considerable distance, and several of its ribs broken. Although I was not near its centre, it whirled me off my feet, and threw me down on my face, so as to make my nose gush out with blood. Two of the servants likewise had the same fate. It demolished one half of a small hut as if it had been cut through with a knife, and dispersed the materials all over the plain, leaving the other half standing. Bruce. This was Job's greatest loss and severest trial. In tracing the dark and blood-red cycle of Job's afflictions, we miss the purpose for which these things were written, if we do not learn to hold all our blessings with a loose hand. There could be no one whose estate was better gotten, better founded, or better managed than Job's; yet in one short day all was gone. In the morning he had a fair estate and numerous children, in whom he saw the roots of his honors planted deep. In the things of this world, all was as great and good as the heart of man could desire. But in the evening he stood among the ruins of his greatness, poor, childless, desolate. Kitto. 20. Then Job arose—then only, not until his heart was smitten by the loss of his children—and rent his mantle. The outer robe worn by men of rank. The shaving of the head, an act done slowly and carefully, indicates mastery over the strong passion; there was no wild tearing of hair, but simply the adoption of the usual form of mourning. Worshipped. He prostrated himself, the most solemn act of adoration; thus directly, though unconsciously, refuting the assertion that he would renounce God in bereavement. Cook.—Afflictions send the people of God home to God. When God is striking, then Job is praying; when God is afflicting, then Job falls to worshipping. Grace makes every condition work glory to God, and God makes every condition work good to them who have grace. Caryl. 21. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Oh, victory! What were the conquest of a realm—what all that the earth calls glory, to this? The man has conquered himself; and in so doing Satan is conquered too. Little knew Job the great confusions that hung upon that issue. The “sons of God” once more “shouted for joy;” and the enemy for the time withdrew defeated, but still unconvinced and still implacable. Kitto. So far is Job from giving up his confidence in the goodness of the Lord that he strengthens himself in this confidence by the very greatness of the calamity that he has suffered, and draws his argument of praise for the multitude of God’s mercies from the very bitterness of the cup that is now pressed to his lips. The more deeply he mourns the treasures which have been taken away from him, the higher is his appreciation of the gracious kindness of Him who bestowed them. Thus the more profoundly he grieves, the more fervently he still blesses the name of the Lord. W. H. G.—He has still the same great and good thoughts of God that ever he had, and is as forward as ever to speak them forth to His praise; and can find in his heart to bless God, even when He takes away, as well as when He gives. Thus must we sing both of mercy and judgment (Ps. 101 : 1). He blesses God for what was given, though now it was taken away. When our comforts are removed from us, we must thank God that ever we had them, and had them so much longer than we deserved. He adores God even in taking away, and gives Him honor by a willing submission; nay, he gives Him thanks for good designed him by his afflictions, for gracious supports under his afflictions, and the believing hopes he had of a happy issue at last. H. Mighty is the faith that blesses God while smiting our comforts to the ground. The grace enjoined on New Testament believers is exemplified in this Old Testament saint (1 Thess. v. 18). To bless God in our comforts is the way to have them increased; to bless Him in our afflictions the way to have them removed [Augustine]. T. Robinson.—If we bless God in our afflictions, then our afflictions are blessings unto us. We have so much blessing in our afflictions as we can bless God for our afflictions. Here is an heavenly alchemy: Whatsoever affliction you touch with blessing God, you turn that affliction to a blessing. Caryl. “The Lord gave.” Look upon all you enjoy as the free gift of a covenant God; hold the Giver fast, but hold the gifts with a trembling hand. Perhaps you may be constrained to say of some of your sweetest enjoyments, “The Lord hath taken away.” Love saw that they would do you harm, and that it is best for you to be without them; therefore in love God takes them away. Love is the same in God when giving as when taking away; therefore, what good reason have we to say for both, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Here you see the work of faith. It sees the Lord’s name written upon every enjoyment; it owns the Lord’s right to give or take away; it bows to the Lord’s sovereign will, and says, Lord, Thou doest all things well; though what Thou doest I cannot now know, yet I shall know hereafter; I am sure there is a Father’s love and wisdom in all; oh, that all may be sanctified to me and I profited by all. Thus, as faith in Christ brings us to the knowledge of God to enjoy peace with Him, so it teaches submission to His will and to bless His name at all times. Rejoice in the Lord. W. Mason. 22. Sinned not, nor charged God with foolishness. Imputed no folly or injustice to God. Ascribed nothing to God unworthy of His justice, goodness, and wisdom. Entertained no dishonorable thought, uttered no murmuring word against Him. T. Robinson.—If Job had let Satan carry away his good conscience, he would soon have unbound him, and let him have his estate and children again. It is not a form of religion, but its power, that the devil maligns. The profession of Judas, Satan knew, did not put him a step out of his way to hell. The devil can live very peaceably, as a quiet neighbor, by the door of such as will content themselves with an empty profession; this alters not his property, nor touches his copyhold. Gurnall. That we may properly appreciate the conduct of Job in his affliction, we must take into consideration that those revelations had not yet been made upon which the believer now so firmly rests his hope in times of deep distress. He grappled with the mystery of affliction in all its unexplained darkness and difficulty until his own soul found rest. Those cheering views of truth to which he fought his way, or which were graciously vouchsafed to him in his trial, have been the heritage of God’s people ever since. Simple and obvious as they now appear to us from frequent repetition, they had never been distinctly formulated, and no clear conception of them had ever been reached. W. H. G. Job was obliged to work out the problem as best he could in darkness and desertion and wretchedness, and patiently to await "the end of the Lord." But through the life and sorrow and death of the Son of Man, it has come to pass that Job's experience need never be repeated, to any Christian at least, so far as the meaning of sorrow is concerned and the presence and purpose of God in affliction. The particular result which God may be meaning to work out for you or me through trouble may not indeed be plain; but we can never be in doubt that God is in the trouble, that God is using the trouble for good, that God is controlling the trouble so that it shall not exceed our strength, that by the trouble God is testing the reality of our faith and the sincerity of our motives, and purging out the dress of selfishness, and that out of the trouble He means to bring a thoroughly tried and proved character, which "shall appear to praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." Vincent. We know that the trial of the angels has taken place. Holy Scripture makes known to us the result of it, though without telling us in what it consisted. This result differs in one very material point from that in our own case. With us the race altogether is fallen, just because we are a race, and in that method of existence, the fate of all the individuals is bound together, at least according to the order of nature. Humanity is like a single tree with many branches; cut the trunk, and each branch is as completely severed from the root by that one blow as if it had itself been struck. The case must be quite different where there is no race, no filiation, no species. With the angels, then, trial may have had different or opposite results in different cases. And according to Scripture, we find that this possibility became a reality. It tells us of certain angels that they "kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation;" that they "abode not in the truth;" while to others is given the title of "holy angels" and "elect angels." The former, then, have abjure: the law of their existence, the will of their Creator; that is to say, they have made their own will the principle of their actions. They have thus fallen from the sphere of truth, which is only in God, into that of falsehood; their existence has become factitious, they oscillate unceasingly between illusion and imposture, alternately deceived and deceiving. For there exists no support outside of their own being to which they can attach themselves. They no longer possess God, from whom they have separated themselves, and with whom the faithful angels are still in communion; neither can they enjoy the world, with which the nature of their organs does not allow them to communicate directly—that world which forms a temporary compensation for sinful men who have lost God. They live and act in the void of their own subjectivity, a void which they ever seek to people with their own lying creations. The only consolation they have for the loss of God consists in fighting against all that is good and true, and in seducing other free beings, whom they seek to drag with them into their own feverish activity, purely negative, and constantly powerless. Godet. Jesus distinctly recognized the existence of Satan, and a kingdom of evil spirits marshalled under Satan for the destruction of mankind. The war which began in heaven has been transferred to this world, and waxes fiercer as the end draws near. Christ came to destroy the power and the works of the devil; and while, by His teaching, His atonement, and His Spirit, He sought to deliver men personally from the dominion of Satan, He also maintained, in the region of spiritual forces, a direct conflict with the powers of darkness. The fact that He cast out devils was proof that the Spirit of God wrought in Him, and that the kingdom of God was mightier than the kingdom of Satan. Every man must choose between these kingdoms, between evil and good, between darkness and light, between Satan and God. "There is and can be in the world no middle party; they who are not with Christ, who do not gather with Him, are against Him and His work, and, as far as in them lies, are undoing it." The mightiest spiritual forces are struggling for the possession of the soul of man: on the one hand, Satan, the tempter of our first parents, the "father of lies," with his subtle devices of temptation; and, on the other, the Holy Spirit of light, truth, and love, with His influences of grace. No one can be passive in this conflict of spiritual powers; and as one chooses his alliance here will be his state and portion in the hereafter. J. P. T. The question of Satan's personality is one relating to the credibility of the Scriptures. The existence of the devil is so clearly taught in the Bible, so necessarily a part of the revealed Word, so legible on its very face, and so thoroughly interwoven with all of its deliverances, that to doubt it is to doubt the authenticity of the Bible itself. Having the same proofs of the personality of Satan that we have of any other being unseen by us, they who preach a symbolical devil should also preach a symbolical Adam, a symbolical Christ, a symbolical God, a symbolical universe. T. McRae.—The Satan of Scripture is individual and personal. It is he who is said to have tempted Christ, to have prompted Judas in his sin, to have filled the heart of Ananias, to have hindered the apostle in a proposed journey, to have baffled him with some unknown ailment. He is described as tempting the saints, as going about like a roaring lion, as counteracting the effect of the word of God, as sowing tares among the wheat, as the instigator of persecution against the church. To destroy Satan's power was the special object of Christ's coming. He is the spirit who works in the disobedient, and who blinds the eyes of them that believe not. To the unbelieving world he stands in a special relation as its prince and patron. For him and his angels there is reserved "the lake of fire and brimstone." Moreover, this Satan does not stand alone in his opposition to Christ—he is Beelzebub, the prince of devils. He is ruler of a kingdom. His angels are mentioned as well as himself. Christians are warned against the wiles of the devil, and are also enjoined to put on the whole armor of God if they would wage a successful warfare "against principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world." In short, over against the kingdom of God, of which He is the head and for the coming of which we are taught to pray, stands the kingdom of darkness, of which Satan is the head, and from which it is our privilege as Christians to be delivered. Yes. Satan is no abstract law or ideal conception of evil, but a personal being, conscious and distinctively active as man, though with faculties immeasurably beyond any we possess. T. A. Nelson. Surely, if there is any petition that we offer in all sincerity and with agonizing fervency, that which our blessed Lord has taught us should be so offered, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." He who has any just sense of his own weakness and frailty, and of the frightful evil of sin, must be incessant in his entreaties that he may be upheld in steadfastness by an almighty arm, and guarded from the assaults of one who succeeded even in enticing angels to their fall, and prevailed over our first parents in all the vigor of their early integrity, and to whom we shall prove an easy prey unless One stronger than the strong man armed interferes for our rescue. W. H. G. Satan will not be wanting in any opportunity or advantage of setting upon the soul. He seeks to winnow, and comes when the corn is under the flail. Reckon, therefore, that when trouble cometh, the prince of this world cometh also, that you may be provided for him. Then is the time to take the shield of faith, that we may be able to quench his fiery darts. Watch, therefore, and pray, that Satan do not represent God falsely unto you. He that durst represent Job falsely to the all-seeing God will, with much more boldness, represent God falsely unto us, who see and know so little. Owen.—Since the fall, a godly life is not known by perfection of grace, so much as by conflicts with sin. Those that have most grace feel most trouble from Satan. Sometimes he distresses God's people with sad and doubtful thoughts; at other times with worldly and carnal temptations. We cannot set upon the performance of any duty, but he suggests slothful thoughts or carnal counsels! You must not then suppose yourselves forsaken of God because tempted of Satan. Such conflicts are not inconsistent with faith and piety. He adventured upon Christ Himself, after he had a testimony from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son." The way and means by which this resistance may be carried on is by the graces of God's Holy Spirit. There must be faith, which is the shield. There must be prayer, by which we strive to bring God on our side in the conflict. There must be sobriety. By which the apostle means a moderation of our affections in worldly things; which is necessary to this purpose, because all temptations are insinuated under the baits of pleasure, honor, profit, etc. There must be watchfulness: walking with fear and circumspection. But, above all, there should be reliance in the help and strength of Him who foiled the tempter, and who has put weapons into our hands that we may foil him also. He trod upon this old serpent when His heel was bruised upon the cross; and the God of peace shall tread Satan under our feet shortly. We need not doubt of help; for if Satan be an accuser, Jesus is an advocate; if there be evil spirits against us, there is the Spirit of God for us! T. M. 1. AGAIN there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to 2 present himself before the LORD. And the LORD said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. 3 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil: and he still holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against 4 him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give 5 for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will 6 renounce thee to thy face. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; 7 only spare his life. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot 8 unto his crown. And he took him a pots- 3. Movedst Me. A strong expression, equivalent to "didst tempt or instigate Me;" it belongs to anthropomorphical representations of God common in Holy Writ, and is most impressive as indicating a depth and extent of sympathy between man and the divine nature of which philosophy can give no account. Satan certainly did move God to act, since his calumny was the immediate occasion of Job's calamity, but the result was the complete overthrow of his own position, and the establishment of the principles which he assailed. Cook. —Satan is condemned for his allegations against Job—thou movedst Me against him, as an accuser, to destroy him without cause. Well is it for us that neither men nor devils are to be our judges, for perhaps they would destroy us, right or wrong; but our judgment proceeds from the Lord, whose judgment never errs, or is biased. Job is commended for his constancy, notwithstanding the attacks made upon him: "Still he holds fast his integrity, as his weapon, and thou canst not disarm him; as his treasure, and thou canst not rob him of that; nay, thine endeavors to do it make him hold it the faster; instead of losing ground by the temptation, he gets ground." God speaks of it with wonder herd to scrape himself withal; and he sat 9 among the ashes. Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? 10 renounce God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips. 11 Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: and they made an appointment together to come to bemoan 12 him and to comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward 13 heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great. and pleasure, and something of triumph in the power of His own grace—still he holds fast his integrity. Thus the trial of Job's faith was found to his praise and honor (1 Pet. 1: 7). H. Without cause. In estimating the justice of Job's complaint, let us bear in mind that God Himself is represented as acknowledging that the visitation was causeless—that is, not just to Job's deserts. In estimating himself as unjustly punished, Job sees as God sees. J. F. G. 4. Satan will have Job's cause called over again. The malicious, unreasonable importunity of that great persecutor of the saints is represented (Rev. 12: 10) by his accusing them before our God day and night, still repeating and urging that against them which has been many a time answered; so did Satan here continue to accuse Job. H. Skin for skin. The meaning is, "Who is there that will not give another skin to save his own; nay, part with his children, as well as his goods, to save his life?" Bishop Patrick. —The general sense is determined by the context: so long as a man's own person is untouched he may bear any loss with comparative firmness, give up the skin or life of others, even of his children, so that his own be safe; and if he attributes his preservation to God, may still retain his allegiance. Satan can recognize no principle of action but selfishness, and finds in it alone the secret of Job's firmness. Cook.—The unqualified statement is unqualifiedly false. Men will die for their honor, for their country, for God and truth. Behrends. 5. In his former aspersion of Job, Satan had only hinted that his religion was not quite genuine; it was profitable, and therefore carefully attended to. Here he goes a great way deeper, and maligns human nature in its very humanity. Man is not only irreligious except for profit (so said Satan, and so say the ungodly always), but he is inhuman. What are usually regarded as possessions of the most irreligious men (the natural virtues)—love of kind and kindred, the deeper affections of family, on which so much fine sentiment has been expended—they are matters of profit too. Man caxes little for friend or family, only he be safe himself. Put forth thy hand and touch his own bone and flesh, and his viperish nature will rise like the trodden serpent, and disown thee to thy face. A. B. D.—The essence of sin in its ordinary human manifestation is to be unable to live from any higher motive than self; its essence in the life of Satan is to be unable to conceive of any higher motive than self. The spirit of evil in man often makes virtue tributary to self; the spirit of evil in Satan takes the very constancy of virtue as proof only of more intense selfishness. The devil's logic in the case of Job ran in this wise: the more steadfast Job seems to be, the more inhuman must he be. Evans. The hour of affliction is an hour of temptation. Satan loves to fish when the waters are troubled. He would bring us to hard thoughts of God by the hard things we suffer from God. "Touch him, and he will curse Thee to Thy face." In such stormy weather some vessels are cast away. Faith is a special antidote against the poison of the wicked one. It can read love in the blackest character of Divine dispensation, as by a rainbow we see the beautiful image of the sun's light in the midst of a dark and waterish cloud. Swinnock.—Satan knew, and we find by experience, that nothing is more likely to ruffle the thoughts and put the mind into disorder than acute pain and distemper of body. There is no disputing against sense. Paul himself had much ado to bear a thorn in the flesh, nor could he have borne it without special grace from Christ (2 Cor. 12: 7, 9). H. 7. Smote Job with sore boils. With a loathsome and universal leprosy, a disease common in the East and in hot countries. It is of two kinds, the white and the black. This latter is commonly called elephantiasis, because it renders the skin, like that of the elephant, uneven and wrinkled, with many furrows. Hales.—The malady with which Job was afflicted is now generally believed to have been the leprosy of the Arabs, called also elephantiasis, from the swelling of the feet and the thickening and roughness of the skin. In this disease small spots first appear on the skin; then tumors of the size of a pea at first, increasing to that of a walnut or a hen's egg, with deep furrows between, covering the whole body. Finally, many of these suppurate and form ulcers, with a bloody and very offensive discharge, which dries and hardens to dark-colored scales. The face becomes bloated and glistening, the eyes feeble and watery, the breath offensive, the voice weak and hoarse, or entirely lost. The sufferer is subject to extreme dejection; his nights are sleepless or harassed with frightful dreams. In the last stage of the disease the extremities perish and fall off, the bones and ligaments being destroyed by the ulceration. No cure has been found for this terrible malady, though the patient may survive many years. Conant.—The mere description of these symptoms will suffice to show with what infernal malice and skill such a disease was selected by one who well knew the influence of the body upon the mind. It was chosen as the fittest of any to bring the patriarch into that state of mind which Satan's purposes, or rather his arguments required; and if the reader studies the utterances of Job attentively, he will be enabled without difficulty to trace the progressive influences of the disease upon his mind, and to measure the degrees by which his soul succumbed to its power. 8. That we may realize the picture of Job in his humiliation to our minds, the writer sets him visibly before us, seated in the ashes and scraping himself with a potsherd. We read this, and never more forget the picture these simple words print upon the mind. Nothing can surpass or approach the utter forlornness which this picture indicates. He who had been erewhile the greatest man in the east country seems to have been left to himself—forsaken of all. Kitto. 9. No personage in all the Scriptures has suffered more at the hands of critics, who have mistaken the true point of view, than the wife of Job, who cried, "Renounce God, and die." They will have it that she was destitute of piety toward God, and of love and sympathy toward her husband. Taking the simplest view of the great scope of this book, and the characters who figure in it, nothing could be more unjust than such criticism. There is no intimation (unless the single allusion, 19:17, be overstrained to this end) in the whole book to any unhappiness in Job's domestic life. There is nothing to show that she was not his joy and solace, and united with him in his earnest religious life, approving and sharing his uprightness and pious trust in God. And when his subsequent prosperity came there is no hint that she marred in any way its happiness. Nay, so far as appears from the record she had been found strong enough in the faith to bear with meek submission the loss of property and family. She uttered no word of protest against Job's pious ejaculation, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away;" and from all that we can gather she had parted with all that she held dear on earth without a word of repining. I would understand it therefore as rather a proof of her unbounded love and admiration for her husband that though she could bear up under all that had gone before, she should now break down under despair; as she saw the earthly prop and stay of her soul subjected to such misery and suffering, that her faith should pass under a cloud, and she should regard it as a pitiless and cruel providence that so holy a man as her husband should thus have judgments heaped upon him. The manifest design of the sacred writer is to bring out the marvellous faith of Job by contrasting it with the great faith of his wife, which, great as it was, failed at the last extremity. S. R. 10. The loving wife, in the frenzy of her anguish, has ranged herself unwittingly on the tempter's side. That she did this under the impulse of her affections seems to be implied in the connection. Her words are introduced as adding force to the temptation, and affording a fresh exhibition of the firmness of Job's piety. His reply to her suggestion is not harsh and severe, as it is frequently interpreted, but rather the language of pained surprise. It is not a stern censure, but a mild rebuke, though decided in its rejection of her ill-judged counsel. He does not charge her with being herself a foolish woman, whether the meaning be destitute of sense or lacking in true piety. He simply says this was not spoken like herself; she had spoken not with her usual wisdom and pious feeling, but as one of the foolish women speaketh. "What, shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" Job did not understand that pain and suffering were or could be anything else but evils. Yet regarding them simply in this light, as evils, and evils received from the hand of God, they did not blind him to the fact of the Divine goodness and the great preponderance of blessing received from His bountiful hand. The evil does not by any means match the good, much less outweigh it. Shall we forget the immensity of the benefits bestowed because He also sends some suffering? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? Job is again victorious, and the tempter is once more foiled. His piety has proved equal to the severity of this fresh test to which it was subjected. "In all this," the record runs, "did not Job sin with his lips." But Job's trial is not yet ended. He has passed through two stages of it, and has successfully surmounted them. Thus far his piety has borne the test triumphantly, to the confusion of the tempter. W. H. G. A second victory has thus been gained over Satan. He has dealt his last direct blow against God's servant, and an answer has been found to his question, "Doth Job fear God for nought?" It has been proved that Job's religion has some deeper foundation than self-interest; that he serves God not from mercenary motives, but because he acknowledges God's right to his allegiance. Amid the wreck of his fortunes his integrity survives, and, bereft of all earthly good, his faith in God and in goodness stands firm. E. Bayley.—Job is now seen lying under a quaternion of troubles—adversity, bereavement, disease, and reproach. "He sinned not with his lips"—the thing Satan desired, endeavored after, and waited for. The temptation to murmur was present, but was resisted and repressed. Job is still by grace a conqueror over corrupt nature. T. Robinson.—Since it is out of doubt the devil may have some hand in our outward affliction, we are concerned to take so much the more care that he may not have his end upon us by it. A hand he may have, and we cannot determine how far; but whether it be more or less, great care we are concerned to take how to frustrate his design. He has the most mischievous ends that can be, and designs worse things to us than the affliction which is the means, whatsoever that be. He would fain engage us in a controversy with God, would have us contend with him; murmur, fret, blaspheme and curse God, and therewith send out our last and dying breath. That was his design upon Job. Let us labor to frustrate it, as he did. South. At the close of the account of Job's first trial, and the manner in which he sustained it, the words occur: "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly;" that is, did not charge God with unreasonableness in so afflicting him. At the end of his second trial, the same words occur, with a variation, which is not without meaning: "In all this did not Job sin with his lips." Such declarations are not afterward repeated, and seem to be purposely introduced to mark the tendency of his state of feeling, and to assist our comprehension of his character. From the comparison of these two declarations, it appears clearly designed that we should understand that Job's mind had already, at the point last indicated, been touched with some hard thoughts of God, but he had hitherto fought against them, and refused to give them utterance. Hence, although he has no longer the praise of being, even in thought, sinless in this matter, the lower praise is allowed him that he had not yet sinned with his lips. That this is at this point inserted, and is afterward withheld, seems purposely intended to indicate that afterward he did "charge God foolishly," and did "sin with his lips." There can be no doubt that thus far Job is still set forth to us as an example of patience. His mastering of the unruly tongue is the very quality which the Apostle James sets forth as a high point of Christian perfection; and we shall acquiesce, as we are bound to do, in this estimate, when we reflect how over-swift the tongue is to clothe the evil thought in words, so that it will often happen that it has been uttered almost before we are fully conscious that it has been conceived or entertained. He, therefore, who is enabled so to hold himself in that under the severest trials no ill-considered words—no words dishonoring God—fall from him, shows himself to be endowed with a grace of no mean account. Kitto. The Apostle James, in the energetic and paradoxical language so peculiar to him, exhorts us "to count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations;" and calls "blessed" not the man who is not tempted, but him who "endureth temptation;" that is to say, who undergoes it without yielding to it; for, "when he is tried"—viz., when he has resisted in seasons of trial—"he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to them that love Him." In order to enlighten Job's faith, to strengthen his heart and perfect his joy, the cruel display of Satan's malice was necessary. The perfidious detractors who cast Daniel into the lion's den were necessary to him, in order that he might know during the peaceful night which he spent amid those terrible animals all the power and all the faithfulness of his God. Paul needed that "thorn in his flesh," that "messenger of Satan sent to buffet him," that he might be kept humble, and not "exalted above measure through the abundance of his revelations;" that he might feel the power of that word which comforted him, and which will comfort the saints to the end of time—"When I am weak, then am I strong." Peter needed that court of the high-priest to show him his own weakness; so that, after the confession and the forgiveness of his sin, he might reappear in the eyes of the church worthier than ever of the distinction which the Lord had bestowed upon him, and which he continued to him notwithstanding his fall. Monod. God is educating us not for immediate effects merely, but for eternity. All our discipline is for lasting purposes, not transitory results; and God will form us to habits of life, not mere temporary excitements. God will work in us elements of character, not mere fitful impulses. We look too much to present frames, enjoyments, fruits; God looks to eternal results, and an eternal life of holiness and glory. We look to feelings, emotions, speculations; God looks to active habits, and a life made up of principles and habits, which shall be the eternal, inalienable nature of our being. G. B. C.—Measure not God's love and favor by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof. So God loves as well when He shines not in the brightness of His countenance upon us as when He does. Job was as much beloved of God in the midst of his miseries as afterward in the abundance of his mercies. Sibbes. 11-13. Job's three friends, having heard of his misfortunes, come to condole with him. How long time intervened between Job's second affliction and the arrival of his friends cannot be accurately ascertained. From the allusions in chaps. 7, 19 and 30, it is probable that a considerable time elapsed. A man of Job's rank would not choose his friends from the men of inferior station around him; they would be, like himself, Eastern princes, all but his equals in rank and influence. Their abodes would therefore be distant from one another, and more distant from his, and travelling in the East is slow. The tone of Job's mind, too, as reflected in chap. 3, has undergone a change, the effect, no doubt, of protracted sufferings. A. B. D.—Owing to the distance, and the leisurely modes of travel and of sending reports in the East, very likely the “months of wretchedness” of which Job speaks in chap. 7:3 intervened before the friends reached him. J. F. G. 11. Three of them are here named—Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. We shall meet with a fourth after, who, it should seem, was present at the whole conference—namely, Elihu; whether he came as a friend of Job, or only as an auditor, does not appear; these three are said to be his friends. H.—Teman was a city of Edom (Jer. 49:7, 2); Ezek. 25:12, 13); Shuah was a district in the “east country” of Arabia Petræa, where Abraham's sons by Keturah were settled (Gen. 25:2, 6); Naamah was a city of Edom (Josh. 15:21, 41). Hales. 12,13. They could not more delicately express their commiseration for him in his terrible sorrows, which it was beyond the power of human helpers to mitigate or to relieve. There is no room for supposing that they entertained any other than the most friendly feelings, or that any ungenerous suspicions had as yet taken possession of their minds as to the reality of Job's piety, or the reasons of these extraordinary sufferings which had been sent upon him. W. H. G. 1. AFTER this opened Job his mouth, and 2 cursed his day. And Job answered and said: 3. Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man child conceived. 4. Let that day be darkness; Let not God regard it from above, Neither let the light shine upon it. 5. Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it. 6. As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it: Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; Let it not come into the number of the months. 7. Lo, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come therein. 8 Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan. 9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: Let it look for light, but have none; Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning: 10. Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes. 11. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me? 12. Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? 13. For now should I have lien down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest: 14. With kings and counsellors of the earth, Which built up waste places for themselves; 15. Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver: 16 Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; As infants which never saw light. 17. There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary be at rest. 18 There the prisoners are at ease together; They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. 19. The small and great are there; And the servant is free from his master. 20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul; 21. Which long for death, but it cometh not; And dig for it more than for hid treasures; 22 Which rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave? 23. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in? 24. For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water. 25. For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. 26. I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh. THE cry of misery is thrice repeated in the chapter: 1-10. Would God I had never been conceived or born. 11-19. Would God I had died from my birth. 20-26. Why does God continue life to the wretched, who long for death? A. B. D. The opening of Job's first speech reveals something of the obscure march of his soul during those silent days. The first feeling of a soul thus plunged into undeserved misery we can readily divine—the sense of utter bewilderment. This is the feeling that finds expression in Job's first speech, wherein he opens his mouth and curses his day. Weariness of life, passionate desire for death with its rest and its oblivion, which are the emotions that shape his utterance, are after all but the surface-waves of his agitation; its deep cause lies in his feeling that his life has lost its guidance and direction. The only outlet for his overburdened heart, in this opening speech, is just to sigh over a life that contains no reason for living. It is worthy of remark that Job's question is not, why he is punished, but why a life so bitter and dark should have been given at all. Punishment implies desert, or if not desert, then injustice. To have given his affliction the name of punishment would have set him at once in the attitude of seeking for its cause, either in himself or in God. That the cause should be in himself, either as wicked, or even as unconsciously corrupt through the innate sinfulness of men, has never entered his mind; on the contrary, one great element of his bewilderment is his consciousness of the watchful solicitude with which he has hitherto led a life of faithful integrity before God. No more is he ready to fasten the cause, even by remote implication, upon God. J. F. G. Day after day, week after week, he is still compelled to drag his heavy burden. How long we know not. Through all this protracted period he bore his grief in silence. But at length nature can hold out no more: he can endure it no longer, and he gives vent to the most distressed sighs and groans; but in it all observe that he does not rail against God. In the most passionate manner he utters his wailing cry, "Oh, that he had never been born, or that when born he had perished!" He longs for death; he would clutch at it as the miser grasps his gold. Why is this coveted privilege of death denied him? The sentences are not to be nicely weighed. They must be judged of from the situation of Job. They are the language of one tortured beyond endurance, who cannot support the anguish that he suffers, and whose life has become an intolerable burden. Allowance must be made for these paroxysms of helpless, hopeless sorrow. His strength was not the strength of stones, nor his flesh of brass. He was incapable himself of weighing what he uttered. It only represents the bitterness of irrepressible woe. Still, bruised as he is, hopeless of good, with but one wish, and this that he might die, Job does not reproach or revile his Maker. The tempter has broken his spirit, and crushed him to the earth; but he has not succeeded yet in wresting from him his integrity or bringing him to forsake his God. W. H. G. A paroxysm of violent grief vents itself in the following imprecations. The passion, however, subsides a little in the latter part of the speech, and flows in the soft complaining strain of elegy. This impotence of mind in Job, so inconsistent with his former firmness, may be accounted for in part from the influence of his disease; to which must be added his not having obtained any abatement of his affliction notwithstanding his submission, and his suspicion, from the silence of his friends, that he was to expect no consolation from them. Scott.—Job is neither rigidly to be taxed with blasphemy or profaneness, nor totally to be excused for this high complaint. It must be granted that Job discovered much frailty and infirmity, some passion and distemper, in this complaint and curse; yet notwithstanding we must assert him to be a patient man, yea, a mirror of patience; for consider the greatness of his suffering, the multiplicity of his troubles; that his complainings and acts of impatience were but few, but his submissions and acts of meekness under the hand of God were very many; take also into consideration that, though he did complain, and complain bitterly, yet he recovered out of these complainings; he recalls what he had spoken, and repents of what he had done. Caryl. In this wild and passionate outburst of feeling it is important to mark that there is no approach to the impiety which Satan hoped to provoke. The language of the sufferer is reckless and vehement, but it comes from the depths of a single and simple heart. As yet there is not even a complaint of injustice, not a question of the providence which has allowed the affliction. Existence indeed has become inexpressibly miserable, and for a time the active trust once habitual to this pious soul is paralyzed. Sick in body and sick in mind, his one wish is for death to come to end the weary scene of monotonous, never-ending pain that robs him of thought and rest, and even of hope. Aglen. —Surely Satan was deceived in Job, when he applied that maxim to him, All that a man hath will he give for his life; for never any man valued life at a lower rate than he did. H. 1-10. With regard to the mere fact of Job's cursing the day of his birth, and so forth, this is much less offensive than some of his subsequent utterances. It is less offensive to an Oriental than to a European imagination. The feelings of grief, of despair, of hate, of joy which with us are vented in the simplest forms of expression, are in the East carried to the utmost limits of language and thought, are applied in all their possible circumstances. That this kind of language was not regarded as more heinous than such phrases in common use as we have produced is shown by the fact that (not to mention other instances) the Prophet Jeremiah curses his days in terms as hot and passionate, though "less amplified," as does our patriarch in this place, and for the very same reason too—"Because he came into the world to see labor and sorrow, and that his days were consumed with shame." Job is certainly not more to be blamed than Jeremiah—perhaps less, for the prophet possessed the light of a brighter revelation than was afforded to the patriarch. Kitto. It was not so bad as Satan promised himself; Job cursed his day, but he did not curse his God; was weary of his life, and would gladly have parted with that, but not weary of his religion; he resolutely cleaves to that, and will never let it go. The dispute between God and Satan concerning Job was not whether Job had his infirmities, and whether he was subject to like passions as we are (that was granted), but whether he was a hypocrite, and secretly hated God, and, if he were provoked, would show it; upon trial, it proved that he was no such man. Nay, all this may consist with his being a pattern of patience; for though he did thus speak unadvisedly with his lips, yet, both before and after, he expressed great submission and resignation to the holy will of God, and repented of his impatience; he condemned himself for it, and therefore God did not condemn him; nor must we, but watch the more carefully over ourselves, lest we sin after the similitude of this transgression. H. 11-13. The whole strophe contains strong reasons for his cursing the night of his conception and birth. It should rather have made the womb barren, and so have withdrawn the sorrow he now experiences from his unborn eyes. The four questions (vs. 11, 12) form a climax. He follows the course of his life from its commencement in embryo to the birth, and from the joy of his father, who took the new-born child upon his knees, to the first development of the infant, and he curses this growing life in its four phases. Delitzsch. 17. How much is here contained in a few words! The grave, it is the boundary line of wrongdoing—"there the wicked cease from troubling." The grave, it is the close of labor—"there the weary are at rest." The grave, it is the refuge of the bond-slave—"there the prisoners rest together," no more afraid of the oppressor's scourge. The grave, it is the triumph of equality: the small and the great are there, "no distinction between master and servant." Liberty, equality, fraternity, striven for in the world of the living, is the fundamental law in the world of the dead; the mightiest become equally defenceless with the most feeble, when Death points the finger; and every step we trace across the churchyard shows us the image of quiet, freedom, and repose! Yet let us remember that it is not death that is the deliverer of suffering humanity, but the Prince of life, who lived and suffered and died in order to redeem us both from the curse of sin and from the fear of death. Without Him there can be no tranquil glance upon the grave, and no peace when this opens before us. But with Him there is then also complete victory both over death and its terror, since we know who it is that died for us, and now liveth to all eternity. Van O. There is nothing more striking about the state of those who have gone into the unseen world than the completeness of their escape from all worldly enemies, however malignant and however powerful. But there is something beyond the mere escape from worldly evil. Now the busy heart is quiet at last, and the weary head lies still. It is sometimes comforting, and we cannot say it is not sometimes fit and right, to think of a place where we shall find rest and quiet, where "the weary are at rest." But though a deep sleep falls on the body, it is only for a while, and indeed there is a certain delusion in thinking of the grave as a place of quiet rest. The soul lives still, and is awake and conscious, though the body sleeps; and it is our souls that are ourselves. Even that in us which does sleep—even the body—sleeps to wake again. Though these are Old Testament words, we read them in a New Testament light, as those who know that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life to all His people. These words speak of a better world. They point us onward to heaven. The two great things of which they assure us and remind us are safety and peace. There is to be safety, and the sense of safety. "There the wicked cease from troubling." Not wicked men only, but everything wicked—evil spirits, evil thoughts, evil influences, and our own sinful hearts. When the wicked cease from troubling, there will be no trouble at all. "The weary are at rest." We know the meaning of all the vague and endless aspirations of our human hearts. It is that "this is not our rest." Our rest is beyond the grave. There is something of life's fitful fever about all the bliss of this life; but in that world the bliss will be restful, calm, satisfied, self-possessed, sublime. It will be "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." A. K. H. B.—To the saint Death changes many of his offices. He is the queller of strife and the calmer of care. The aching head throbs no more; the swollen heart fetches no more sighs. The weary are at rest. He is, in one sense, the Destroyer; but he is also the Restorer. He brings back, through Christ's victorious grace, the lost innocence and peace of Eden. Is he the Divider, sundering the nearest ties, and riving asunder the household bands? But he is also the Re-uniter, gathering me to my dead who sleep in Jesus, and to "the general assembly of the firstborn" Is he the curse of the law? Is he not also, through our blessed Master, who magnified and satisfied that law, become to us who believe the end of sin, the gate of paradise, and the guerdon of a new, a better, and an unending life? W. R. W. 20. Wherefore is light given. These inquisitive expostulations are the beginning of that striving with his Maker which increases to great boldness in the progress of the poem. Scott.—23. To a man whose way is hid. Why is light cast upon a man whom God hath made so miserable that there is no way to be hoped of his deliverance from this calamity; whom God hath shut up in this distress without the possibility of escape? Bishop H.—Whom God hath hedged in.** Hath compassed round about with evils, so that he cannot get out. Before Job was hedged in with good things, so that no evil could come nigh him, but now with evils, out of which he could make no escape Ainsworth. Job reaches his defining-point, the real secret of his anguish of soul. He has lost the clew to God and God's ways, being plunged into an abyss of punishment for which he can find no cause. The way that he has hitherto taken, with its consciousness of Divine companionship and friendship, is suddenly closed; there is no longer any outlook. J. F. G. 26. He had not been secure nor indulged himself in ease and softness, had not trusted in his wealth nor flattered himself with the hopes of the perpetuity of his mirth; yet trouble came to convince and remind him of the vanity of the world, which yet he had not forgotten when he lived at ease. Thus his way was hid, for he knew not wherefore God contended with him. Now this consideration, instead of aggravating his grief, might rather serve to alleviate it; nothing will make trouble easy so much as the testimony of our consciences for us that in some measure we did our duty in a day of prosperity; and an expectation of trouble will make it sit the lighter when it comes. The less it is a surprise, the less it is a terror. H. This chapter exhausts all expressions of agony; there is not a gleam of hope in it; the heart is quite crushed; still, so far as regards the precise object of the trial, there is no giving way. Job neither surrenders his own integrity nor renounces his allegiance to God; not that his words are blameless, but the wrong in them belongs to the infirmity rather than to the corruption of man's nature. Shadows of dark superstition pass over Job's spirit and give a form to his complaints, but they are from without, and find no abiding place in his heart. It must be observed that some of his very strongest expressions have been adopted by prophets and great saints, and by the King of Saints Himself. Cook. Job nowhere says that he will have nothing more to do with God; he does not renounce his former faithfulness; yet this speech is to be regarded as the beginning of Job's sinning. If a man on account of his sufferings wishes to die early, or not to have been born at all, he has lost his confidence that God, even in the severest suffering, designs his highest good; and this want of confidence is sin. Delitzsch.—These wild and wrongful utterances of Job sinful as they are, yet speak volumes for his habitual trust in God. The ground of his despair is that God has forsaken him. This appears more and more clearly in his further utterances. Vincent.—His soul is cast down, but not destroyed; perplexed, but not in despair. It is on all sides harassed; without are fightings, within are fears; but the will is inflexible on the side of God and truth, and the heart, with all its train of affections and passions, follows it. The man does not wickedly depart from his God; the outworks are violently assailed but not taken; the city is still safe and the citadel impregnable. Heaviness may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning. The reader who closely examines the subject will find that this was the case of Job. The following chapters show the conflict of the soul; the end of the book, God's victory and His exaltation. Satan sifted Job as wheat, but his faith failed not. A. Clarke. 1. THEN answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, 2. If one assay to commune with thee, wilt thou be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? 3. Behold, thou hast instructed many, And thou hast strengthened the weak hands. 4. Thy words have upholden him that was falling, And thou hast made firm the feeble knees. 5. But now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest; It toucheth thee, and thou art troubled. 6. Is not thy fear of God thy confidence, And the integrity of thy ways thy hope? 7. Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off? 8. According as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, And sow trouble, reap the same. 9. By the breath of God they perish, And by the blast of his anger are they consumed. 10. The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, And the teeth of the young lions, are broken. 11. The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, In his first utterance, chap. 3, Job has not complained of injustice; as yet, and before his friends have stung and wounded him, he makes no questioning of Providence—but why was life given him at all, if only for this? Sick in mind and sick in body, but one wish remains to him, that death will come quickly and end all. It is a cry from the very depths of a simple and single heart. But for such simplicity and singleness his friends could not give him credit; possessed beforehand with their idea, they see in his misery only a fatal witness against him. Job had sinned and he had suffered, and this wild passion was but impenitence and rebellion. Froude. And the whelps of the lioness are scattered abroad. 12. Now a thing was secretly brought to me, And mine ear received a whisper thereof 13. In thoughts from the visions of the night, When deep sleep falleth on men, 14. Fear came upon me, and trembling, Which made all my bones to shake. 15. Then a spirit passed before my face; The hair of my flesh stood up. 16. It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof; A form was before mine eyes: There was silence, and I heard a voice, saying, 17. Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? 18. Behold, he putteth no trust in his servants; And his angels he chargeth with folly: 19. How much more them that dwell in houses of clay, Whose foundation is in the dust, Which are crushed before the moth! 20. Betwixt morning and evening they are destroyed: They perish for ever without any regarding it. 21. Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom. The third and last trial of Job is brought about by the harsh suspicions, the cruel reproaches, and the unjust charges of his friends. Their contention was, that under the righteous government of God there is always in this life an exact agreement between sin and punishment, and that the calamities of Job could only be accounted for on the assumption of great criminality on his part. The three friends were right in affirming that there is a close connection between sin and suffering. Our present life is passed under the moral government of God, and he must be blind who cannot trace in it the judicial dealing of God with men. Nay, it is only when we see in the course of history a continuous judgment of the world, that our faith in a final judgment can be rational and strong. The future life is not the beginning, but the completion of our existence. There is no break in the continuity of our being. If sin does not even here work ruin, then there exists no hell; if salvation and happiness do not even here wait upon righteousness, then there exists no heaven. Scripture knows nothing of a God who only rises to power when this life is ended. Its God is from beginning to end a living God; and both in His retributive judgments and in His bestowing of present blessing He is ever enforcing His own great principle, that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." There was truth, therefore, in the contention of the friends: their error consisted in applying this principle, without any qualification, to Job. It never occurred to them that suffering might be inflicted as a test of virtue, or that it might be sent to lay bare the hidden defects of a godly life. E. Bayley. Every word uttered by his friends finds its way to the sufferer's heart. He is wounded by their harshness, stung by their censures, exasperated by their reproaches, and driven into antagonism by their arguments. They are the professed advocates of religious obligation. They represent the cause of God, enforcing His claims on Job and justifying His ways with him in a spirit that repels him, with assumptions that experience does not sanction, and which his own inner consciousness falsifies. The unfairness with which they plead God's cause place him under additional temptation to reject that cause itself. The hopeless variance which they assume or create between God's justice and Job's integrity, for which latter he nevertheless has the testimony of his own conscience which he cannot surrender or falsify, tends to place before his mind a distorted image of the character of God. God appears to be torturing him for crimes which he has not committed, to be relentlessly pursuing him as an implacable foe, and without justice or reason to be employing His resistless power to crush him to the earth. This is the phantom which his friends are constantly setting before him, this false notion of God as unjust and pitiless toward him; and this his own intolerable sufferings, for which he cannot himself otherwise account, seem to rivet upon him. This phantom, apparently so real, he is incessantly obliged to fight, or it would drive him to absolute despair and force him to give up his confidence and trust in God, and thus throw him completely into the tempter's snare. This is the point around which the conflict in Job's soul so fearfully rages. This is the very acme and crisis of the temptation. This unwelcome apparition, which his friends are constantly bringing up and dressing out before him, of a God of arbitrary power, whose justice, as they assert it, would be rank injustice, and who seems devoid of pity—this it is which fills him with the deepest anguish. His heart is all laid open before us, down to its lowest depths, in his discourses with his friends. We see all the tumult of his soul in its conflicting emotions. We have reason to believe that these friends of Job were eminent, wise, and good men. The whole tenor of their speeches shows that they were concerned both for the honor of God and for the spiritual welfare of Job. They advocate and approve what is good, they reject and condemn the bad. Their discourses sparkle with gems of morality and religious truth. Their reasoning is fallacious, indeed, because built on false though specious premises; but their arguments are coherent and strongly put. They fail to convince or to confute Job, but it is from no want of skill in advocacy. It is a matter of personal consciousness about which they contend. No subtleties and no cogency of demonstration can convict him of offences of which his own conscience pronounces him innocent. They misinterpret the ways of Providence, and fail to explain the mystery of Job's sufferings. But this is from no mental incapacity. Job can see no farther into this dark dispensation than they can. He knows that they are mistaken. But he no more understands the real state of the case than they do. The fact is that the enigma is insoluble by the unaided reason of man. God can alone declare the purpose of His afflictive dispensations, and this He had never yet revealed. These distresses of Job were to afford the occasion of shedding the first rays of light upon it. W. H. G. The great debate is divided into three circles of speeches: (1) chaps. 4-14; (2) chaps. 15-21; (3) chaps. 22-31. Each of these three circles contains six speeches, one by each of the three friends in succession, with a reply from Job. In the last round, however, the third speaker, Zophar, fails to come forward. This is a confession of defeat; and Job, resuming the thread of his reply to Bildad, carries it through a series of chapters, in which, with a profound pathos, he contrasts his former greatness with his present misery, protests his innocence before Heaven, and adjures God to reveal to him the cause of his afflictions. A. B. D. In the first round of debate, each of the three friends addresses the unhappy chief, and he replies to each in succession, concluding with an appeal from their judgment to God. They assert that the righteous God blesses the just, and punishes the unjust. Job replies that it is not uniformly so seen; that he himself, for example, while just, is made to suffer; and that, in point of fact, the just often endure wrong, and the wicked are allowed to triumph. The philosophy of those Arabian sages was too narrow for the case; and Job, in his last address, told them plainly that they were "physicians of no value," and that he appealed from them to that very God on whose providence they dilated with such confidence. At the same time he was sore perplexed, for he, like his friends, had been wont to connect all suffering with punishment for sin, and knowing himself free from presumptuous sin, he passed through a dreadful intellectual strife and moral agony. D. F.—Job's disputing with God is as terrible as it is pitiable. It is terrible, because he uplifts himself, Titan-like, against God; and pitiable, because the God against whom he fights is not the God he has known, but a phantom which his temptation has presented to his dim vision—a phantom in no way differing from the inexorable ruling Fate of the Greek tragedy. D. # Speech of Eliphaz, chaps. 4 and 5. Eliphaz, who speaks first in each dialogue, is evidently the oldest of the three, as he is the most dignified, the calmest, and the most considerate. He is the only one whose words (at the outset) convey sympathy with the pain they inflict. He comes forward under a sense of duty and with an apology. Aglen.—It is the most elaborate discourse of the friends, and anticipates substantially their whole argument. It is the argument that everything in the world comes by justice and desert; that punishment has its sufficient cause in sin, open or secret; and that thus in God's wrath we may read and measure man's wickedness. This is what Job has always accepted as the fundamental principle of the Hebrew philosophy; nor is it to be called untrue, so much as inadequate and aside from the present case. Of course it can have but one implication. To talk of sin and punishment now, though in ever so general terms, is merely to accuse Job of sin. It is meaningless otherwise. So little is this implication disguised that forthwith Job is solemnly admonished to make his peace with God—as if he had ever been at war with God! But there is the tell-tale leprosy; the friends cannot get over that. If it does not mean that some one has sinned, it seems to mean something about God which it were impiety to think of. J. F. G. It is not to be denied that the arguments of Eliphaz are weighty, and are urged with much force of sentiment and beauty of language, wanting mainly correctness of application. He points out the inconsistency of a good man repining under calamity; and since he now so outrageously complained who had often exhorted others to fortitude, it might well raise a doubt whether he were the good man he seemed. He then advances the doctrine maintained by the friends throughout the book—that misery implies guilt, and insinuates that the sins of Job are the true cause of his affliction. This view he enforces not only by his own observation and experience, but by a remarkable vision with which he had been favored, but which is much less clearly applicable to his argument than he supposes. He admits that the wicked may seem for a time to be prosperous, but he contends that this is unstable and transitory, and that we had but to wait to see the end. It might well have been asked, on his own ground, why the afflictions of the apparently righteous might not also be transitory, and why not in their case also wait to see the end before finally deciding? He has enforced notions of the justice of God which he cannot reconcile with the sufferings of the righteous, and therefore he argues that all who suffer are wicked. Yet God is not inexorable, and if the sufferer confess the hidden guilt, and humble himself under the hand that smites, prosperity may yet be restored to him. Kitto. Chap. 4: 3, 4. Job instructed not only his own, but he instructed others. He did not confine his doctrine and advice to his own walls, but the sound thereof went wherever he went. He instructed many. Caryl.—Further, by deeds of helpfulness as well as words of sympathy, he encouraged, comforted, and upheld the weak and fainting everywhere. Strange that, with this knowledge of Job's long-tried character and beneficent life, Eliphaz could so instantly turn and rend the friendship of years with such harsh words and cruel judgment. B. 5. He makes too light of Job's afflictions—"It touches thee." The very word that Satan himself had used, chap. 1: 11. Had Eliphaz felt one half of Job's afflictions, he would have said, "It smites me, it wounds me;" but speaking of Job's afflictions, he makes a mere trifle of it— "It touches thee, and thou canst not bear to be touched." Men in deep distress must have grains of allowance and a favorable construction put upon what they say; when we make the worst of every word we do not as we would be done by. 6. How unkindly does he upbraid him with the great profession of religion he had made, as if it were all now come to nothing, and proved a sham—"Is not thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope the uprightness of thy ways? Does it not all appear now to be a mere pretence? For hadst thou been sincere in it God would not thus have afflicted thee, nor wouldst thou have behaved thus under the affliction." This was the very thing Satan aimed at, to prove Job a hypocrite and disprove the character God had given of him: when he could not himself do this to God, but He still saw and said, Job is perfect and upright, then he endeavored by his friends to do it to Job himself, and to persuade him to confess himself a hypocrite: could he have gained that point, he would have triumphed. But by the grace of God Job was enabled to hold fast his integrity, and would not bear false witness against himself. Those that pass rash and uncharitable censures upon their brethren, and condemn them for hypocrites, do Satan's work, and serve his interest more than they are aware of. H. 7. We may and often do err in attempting to read God's providence from the wrong end, by asking what God means by it, instead of inquiring what lesson we ourselves may learn from it. We may err in reading God's providence for others instead of for ourselves. We will greatly err if we say that those eighteen upon whom the Tower in Siloam fell were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem: but we will likewise err if we deny that that lamentable accident had any moral significance at all. It was certainly meant as a warning to those on whom it did not fall, and it was for them to read its lesson for themselves. We may err in directing too exclusive attention to what we call special providences, and thinking too little of ordinary and every-day Divine protection. If a railway accident occurs, by which many are severely injured and some escape unhurt, we tell these last that they have great cause to thank God, which no doubt they have, but we probably forget that we ourselves have still greater cause to do so, inasmuch as we have travelled often and without accident. James Smith. 8. He that sows evil shall reap evil; he that soweth the evil of sin shall reap the evil of punishment. So Eliphaz told Job that he had seen, "they that plough iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same." And that either in kind or quality, proportion or quantity. In kind, the very same that he did to others shall be done to him; or in proportion, a measure answerable to it. So he shall reap what he hath sown, in quality or in quantity; either in portion the same, or in proportion the like. T. Adams.—Everything reaps its own harvest, every act has its own reward, and before you covet the enjoyment which another possesses, you must first calculate the cost at which it was procured. For instance, the religious tradesman complains that his honesty is a hindrance to his success; that the tide of custom pours into the doors of his less scrupulous neighbors in the same street, while he himself waits for hours idle. My brother, do you think that God is going to reward honor, integrity, high-mindedness, with this world's coin? Do you fancy that He will pay spiritual excellence with plenty of custom? Now consider the price that man has paid for his success. Perhaps mental degradation and inward dishonor. His advertisements are all deceptive; his treatment of his workmen tyrannical; his cheap prices made possible by inferior articles. Sow that man's seed, and you will reap that man's harvest. Cheat, lie, advertise, be unscrupulous in your assertions, custom will come to you. But if the price is too dear, let him have his harvest and take yours; yours is a clear conscience, a pure mind, rectitude within and without—will you part with that for his? Then why do you complain? F. W. R.—Bountiful gifts of a gracious Providence, wealth and abundance, splendid opportunities for good, intellectual endowments, rare talents, or, in humbler life, openings for advancement and usefulness which might have led to distinction, are through the perverse folly of their possessors worse than wasted, and dark shadows are thrown across what should have been the brightness of a happy life. And then men speak of their bad luck, and murmur against the providence of God; as if one could sow the wind and not reap the whirlwind, or cut off the shadow of sin, remorse and shame and death. Bishop Hervey. It is a hard truth that the fruit of forgiven sin does not die with the death of the tree that bore it. Even though we may find pardon for our errors, others must suffer for them, and we ourselves must also be sufferers notwithstanding our pardon. As Faber says of evil habits, so it might be said of single evil deeds: "Habits of sin, even when put to death as habits, leave many evil legacies behind them." No truth is surer than that "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The real measure of a planted seed is its prospective crop. Beware of any sowing except for a harvest you would rejoice in. H. C. T. If you waste your youth, no repentance will send the shadow back upon the dial, or recover the ground lost by idleness, or restore the constitution shattered by dissipation, or give again the resources wasted upon vice, or bring back the fleeting opportunities. If you forget God and live without Him in the world, fancying that it is time enough to become "religious" when you "have had your fling"—even were you to come back at last—and remember how few do—you could not obliterate the remembrance of misused years, nor the deep marks which they had left upon imagination and thought, and taste, and habit. The wounds can all be healed indeed; for the good Physician, blessed be His name, has lancets and bandages, and balm and anodynes for the deadliest, but scars remain even when the gash is closed. There is an aspect in which it is true that the very greatness of the previous sin may become the occasion for the loftiest devotion and the lowliest trust in a pardoned man. The effects may be so modified as to contribute to the depth and power of his Christian character. But even when the grace of God so modifies them, they remain. And though in some sense it be true that pardon is better than innocence, the converse is true, that innocence is better than pardon. "I would have you simple concerning evil"—for even when forgiven, it leaves on character and memory many a trace of weakness, many a painful record. A. M. What growth is in the natural world, habit is in the moral. There is the same certainty in its laws, the same slowness and often imperceptibleness in its advance, the same immutability in its results. The causes remaining in operation, there is the same certainty of perfection, and the point of perfection once reached, the point where all the processes ever intended to be applied have accomplished their work, there can be no more change, in kind, forever. The season of these processes we call, in moral things, probation; the result is as immutable as that of seed time and harvest in natural things. When the processes are done, there can be no more change. A good man, when all the processes are finished, can never become a bad man, and a bad man, when all the processes are finished, can never become a good man. The world of processes and probations being finished, and character once completely formed, in one of its two moulds, there can be no change forever. Such is the certainty and immutability of habit, the certainty of its laws and processes, the immutability of its results. Cheever. 10,11. The sudden destruction of the wicked is thrown by Eliphaz into another graphic figure, the breaking-up and dispersion of a den of lions. There are five words used for lion in these verses, some of which are epithets taken from the characteristics of the lion; they are: Lion, roaring lion (rather than fierce lion), young lion, and strong (or, old) lion, and lioness—the whelps of the lioness. Between the lion and the wicked whom Eliphaz describes there are two points of resemblance: first, their strength or power; and second, their inherent violence of nature. This is the kind of men on whom afflictions fall that are final. The picture of the breaking-up of the lion's home is very graphic; in the midst of the strong lion's roaring and tearing of his prey, by a sudden stroke his roaring is silenced and his teeth dashed out; thus disabled he perishes for lack of prey; and the whelps, having no provider, are scattered abroad. The reality of the figure is seen in the breaking-up of the home of the wicked (5:2-5). 4:12-21 and 5:1-7. Having expressed his wonder that a righteous man like Job should fall into such utter despair under afflictions, forgetting that to the righteous affliction is but a discipline, Eliphaz seeks to draw Job back to consider what is the real cause of all affliction. This is the imperfection of man, an imperfection which he shares indeed with all created beings, in the highest of whom to God's eye there is limit and possible error. And this being so, murmuring can only aggravate his affliction by provoking the anger of God. The passage falls into two divisions. In the first (vs. 12-21), Eliphaz contrasts the holiness of God with the imperfection of all creatures, even the pure spirits on high, and much more a material being like man, and thus indirectly suggests to Job the true secret of his troubles. In the second (5:1-7), having laid this broad foundation, he builds on it a warning to Job against his murmurs. Only the wicked resent God's dealing with them, and by doing so bring increased wrath upon themselves till they perish. 14-16. Eliphaz depicts graphically the circumstances in which he received the message from heaven. In the dead night, in the midst of his perplexing thoughts upon his bed, a supernatural terror suddenly seized him. Then he was conscious of a breath passing before him (v. 15). Then he seemed to perceive a figure in his presence, too dim, however, to be discerned; and at last a whisper of a voice gave utterance to the awful words that expressed the relations of man to God (v. 16). A. B. D. 16. It stood, but I discerned not its aspect, a form before mine eyes, a hush, and I heard a voice. The terms are the most vague and indefinite that could be found; there was a form, yet shapeless and undistinguishable, a voice, but scarcely audible, or audible only to the inner sense. Milton takes from this his representation of Death: "If shape it could be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed." 17. The voice answers the inward question, What account can be given of the apparent inequalities in God's ways? Only that every man is essentially unjust in his sight, and therefore liable to punishment. Eliphaz seems to represent himself, and doubtless with truth, as having once been beset by doubts, which were cleared up by a revelation so dim and mysterious in its form as to be scarcely distinguishable from the inner movements of his consciousness. Cook. The vision itself—as the description of a supernatural visitation, and of its effects upon the witness, is the most remarkable in the languages of men. There is nothing like it, or that comes near it. The reason is, that this is the description of a true vision by the man to whom it came; whereas all other descriptions, the best of them, are ideal. Eliphaz describes, in that simplicity of eloquence which thrills the deepest, because it is beyond the reach of art, what he himself saw—what he himself felt; and from the manner in which he speaks, we know that he did see, did feel, as he describes. We have numerous highly wrought poetical descriptions of supernatural appearances, but they all fail in some point or other—all want “keeping.” They are either obscure in the aim at a cloudy sublimity, or they are petty in the minuteness of their details. The vision of Eliphaz is in the highest degree sublime—un-approachably sublime, without being obscure, and circumstantial, without being mean. “It is impossible,” says Barnes, “to conceive anything more sublime than the whole description. It was midnight. There was silence and solitude all around. At that fearful hour the vision came, and a sentiment was communicated to Eliphaz of the utmost importance, and suited to make the deepest possible impression. The time; the quiet; the form of the image, its passing along, and then suddenly standing still; the silence; and then the deep and solemn voice—all were fitted to produce the profoundest awe." The vision asserts plainly enough that all men are sinners—that even the purest are far from being clean—and affirms the absolute rectitude of God, and the impiety of arraigning His moral government of the world. The just deduction from this would have been, that, seeing all men were sinners, all were with equal justice open to punishment, without any imputation upon the justice of God; and hence, the ground for the special condemnation of Job as a sinner, because he was a sufferer, would be taken away. But Eliphaz, in eagerly availing himself of the statement that men were open to punishment for sin, as applicable to his argument against Job, puts out of view the correlative statement that all men were sinners. We need not be very severe upon Eliphaz for this, or suppose him to have been intentionally disingenuous. Men have not, even to this day, lost the habit of seeing only so much of an authoritative declaration as can be made to fall in with their preconceived opinions. Kitto. 17. More just than God. A man may be a man and yet be unjust, but God cannot be God and yet be unjust. A man may be a man and yet be impure, but God cannot be God and yet be impure; so that justice and purity are not accidents or qualities in God, but His very essence and being. Destroy or deny the justice and purity of God, and you put God out of the world as much as in you lies; for He cannot be God unless He be both just to others and pure to Himself. Caryl. The ghost is asking this question still: "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" Our age is baffled by the same perplexities which alarmed Job and his friends. It is from God Himself that man derives the terrors which scare him. The alarm, the fear, the awe, the moral misery—these are the assertion of the Divine within the soul. To the alarmed conscience now God comes by the Saviour, not by an apparition. The conscience is calmed amid its highest terrors by the "blood of sprinkling" and by the night-breezes of Gethsemane. From the darkness of Calvary comes a consolation to dispel all evil spirits and all night fears. E. P. Hood. 18. God is eternally holy, the fountain of holiness; the creatures are derivatively and by participation holy. God is eminently and transcendently so; the creatures in a finite degree. God is immutably so; it is impossible it should be otherwise; but no creature is out of an abso- tute possibility of sin. In this sense it is here said that "He putteth no trust in His servants, and His angels He charged with folly;" and (15:15), "He putteth no trust in His saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in His sight." Archbishop Tillotson.—The object of this whole argument is to show, that if confidence could not be reposed in the angels (because of the necessary limitations of their nature), and if all their holiness was as nothing before God, little confidence could be placed in man, and that it was presumption for him to sit in judgment on the equity of the Divine dealings. Barnes.—It is not meant that the good spirits positively sin, as if [to] sin were a natural necessary consequence of their creatureship and finite existence, but that even the holiness of the good spirits is never equal to the absolute holiness of God, and that this deficiency is still greater in spirit-corporeal man. Delitzsch. 19-21. Men are mortal, and dying. In death they are destroyed, and perish forever as to this world; it is the final period of their lives and all their employments and enjoyments here; their place will know them no more. They are dying daily and continually wasting—destroyed from morning to evening. In death all their excellency passes away; beauty, strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death but die with them; nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power descend after them. Their wisdom cannot save them from death; they die without wisdom, die for want of wisdom, by their own foolish management of themselves. It is so common a thing that nobody heeds it or takes any notice of it; they perish without any regarding it or laying it to heart. The deaths of others are much the subject of common talk, but little the subject of serious thought. H. 1. CALL now; is there any that will answer thee? And to which of the holy ones wilt thou turn? 2. For vexation killeth the foolish man, And jealousy slayeth the silly one. 3. I have seen the foolish taking root: But suddenly I cursed his habitation. 4. His children are far from safety, And they are crushed in the gate, Neither is there any to deliver them. 5. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, And taketh it even out of the thorns, And the snare gapeth for their substance. 6. For affliction cometh not forth of the dust, Neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; 7. But man is born unto trouble, As the sparks fly upward. 8. But as for me, I would seek unto God, And unto God would I commit my cause: 9. Which doeth great things and unsearchable; Marvellous things without number: 10. Who giveth rain upon the earth, And sendeth waters upon the fields: 11. So that he setteth up on high those that be low; And those which mourn are exalted to safety. 12. He frustrateth the devices of the crafty, So that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. 13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: And the counsel of the froward is carried headlong. 14. They meet with darkness in the day-time, And grope at noonday as in the night. 15. But he saveth from the sword of their mouth, Even the needy from the hand of the mighty. 16. So the poor hath hope, And iniquity stoppeth her mouth. 17. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. 18. For he maketh sore, and bindeth up; He woundeth, and his hands make whole. 19. He shall deliver thee in six troubles; Yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. 20. In famine he shall redeem thee from death; And in war from the power of the sword. 21. Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue; Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh. 22. At destruction and dearth thou shalt laugh; Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. 23. For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee. 24. And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace; And thou shalt visit thy fold, and shalt miss nothing. 25 Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great, FIRST SPEECH OF ELIPHAZ—Concluded. 1. Call now. The meaning of this verse is sufficiently clear; if Job does not submit himself to God's visitation without murmuring, he will find none to sympathize with him in heaven or earth; men and angels are alike subject to God, and have neither the power nor, if good, the will to take part with His enemies. Cook.—Job, in his present mood, need expect no sympathy or help from any quarter. After God has spoken there is none other—holy man or angel—who will either deign or dare to make reply to his (Job's) complaints. To reply, even, might foster the spirit of rebellion. J. S. Burr. 2. The connection of thought is this: Nothing can be done for a man who indulges such feelings as those which pervade Job's complaint, for wrath indicates folly or depravity (alluding to 3:1-10), and can have no end but destruction; and envy, which prefers any lot to one's own, even that of non-existence or death (3:14-19), is sinful infatuation; a word which corresponds to the Hebrew both in meaning and origin. Cook.—The murmurer against God is here designated, twice over, "the foolish;" a term frequently used in the poetic Scriptures to designate a character of unwisdom, in respect to both the understanding and the heart; and although these things are uttered as general truths, still their reference to Job is too manifest to escape recognition. Curry. Jealousy slayeth. To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and to be acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more; for injuries long dreamt on take away all rest. Browne.—The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself. What good, then, in being a man, if one has neither himself nor a neighbor, nor God. Bishop H. 3-5. Their prosperity is short, and their destruction certain. He seems here to parallel Job's case with that which is commonly the case of wicked people. Job had prospered for a time, seemed confirmed, and was secure in his prosperity; and it is common for foolish wicked men to do so. I have seen them taking root, And thine offspring as the grass of the earth. 26 Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, Like as a shock of corn cometh in its season. 27 Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; Hear it, and know thou it for thy good. planted, and in their own and other's apprehension fixed, and likely to continue. We see worldly men taking root in the earth; on earthly things they fix the standing of their hopes, and from them they draw the sap of their comforts. The outward estate may be flourishing, but the soul cannot prosper that takes root in the earth. H. 4. His children. An evident reference to the death of Job's children. Eliphaz dwells with complacency upon the result of a bad man's ruin; his children are involved in it; they are exposed to every kind of danger; are broken to pieces by litigations (the Hebrew probably implies against one another) in the gate, where the courts of justice were held, and find no helper, none to take up their cause as advocate or intercessor; a terrible picture of the misery which at all times in the East has fallen upon the orphans of criminal or suspected parents. Cook. 6,7. Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, but man is born unto trouble. Two important and clearly related truths are here set together: The fact that trouble is the common and unavoidable lot of all men, and the assured truth that these things are not merely accidental. Back of both of these, in the mind of the speaker, is the great and abiding principle of the Divine government, that affliction—trouble—comes upon men as a result of sin; or, as Paul sententiously puts the case, death is the wages of sin. A great truth is thus enunciated, which indeed leaves Job under the judgment of condemnation, but only in common with universal manhood. Curry.—The words rendered "affliction" and "trouble" are the same which occur in the preceding chap., v. 8—i.e., evil and trouble. Eliphaz denies that they take place as results of natural laws, as the spontaneous produce of the soil; wherever they are found they spring up because man's guilt has ploughed the ground and sowed the evil seed. Eliphaz states the cause of trouble, man inherits it as the portion of his corrupt nature, though it is only brought into activity by his own sin. Cook. Sorrow is not an accident, occurring now and then, it is the very woof which is woven into the warp of life. It is the law of our humanity, as that of Christ, that we must be perfected through suffering. And he who has not discerned the Divine sacredness of sorrow, and the profound meaning which is concealed in pain, has yet to learn what life is. The cross, manifested as the necessity of the highest life, alone interprets it. F. W. R.—Trouble must have great possibilities of blessing in it, or would not be so common in God's world. Surely we need not dread it so, when it brings in one hand the peaceable fruit of righteousness and in the other the joys of consolation for so many sorrowing souls. Anon. How the Christian Scriptures abound with sayings about the necessity of disappointments, the uses of adversity, and the glory of suffering. How full they are of exhortations to be patient, to endure, to be steadfast—all implying our need of discipline. How sublimely, too, they teach us the true secret of endurance, in the life of Him “who, though a Son, learned obedience in the things that He suffered.” In this light we can understand why God makes life a trial. Our characters must be tested. There are evil tendencies in us which remain concealed and unknown, until we are tried—tendencies to a low, grovelling selfishness, which almost rejoices in another’s pain—capacities for the darkest sins, which may burst into action in moments of passion. We fancy we hold the reins of our natures. We think we are strong, and rejoice in our fancied strength. And then God sends us trials, disappointments, bitter lessons of sorrow, and under their startling light we discover our weakness and evil. We grow earth-bound, become wrapped in life’s transient interests; God sends us suffering, and in the long, lonely watchings of pain, we catch glimpses of eternal realities. E. Hull. You do not suffer because God is indifferent. That your life is tried; that you seem to be resisted at every step by a subtle, spiritual power, that darkens your understanding and blunts your perception, stimulates your carnal nature and injects thoughts of evil into your mind, is no necessary sign that you are not in the very arms of God. Nay, it may be just the reverse, “for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Let none of us think to escape discipline. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. “I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil.” If you are a child of God, you will not escape discipline, but it is the will of the loving heart of Christ that you should be kept safe amid the ordeal. Let us be of a good courage, then, looking unto Jesus, our exemplar. “Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Blessed be God! that is our goal. The end will compensate for the agonies of its attainment. The crown is worth the strife. Think of this when the skies are dark, when the heart fails and the reason falters, when the hand is powerless, when fires are burning quick into the flesh, and even when the gateways into death and the grave are being opened. Aye, think of it when alone and in silence and in sorrow. And even when the white spray of the tempest is over thee like a garment think of this: It will not be long—the wrestling, the ordeal of conflict, the suffering is but for a while, then the God of all grace, who has called us unto His eternal glory, will bring us thither, and we shall at last assume our place and dignity among the thrones and dominion of heaven, and be crowned kings and priests unto God and the Father forever. “Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight.” T. A. Nelson. 9. Marvellous things.—In the progress of his argument, the mind of Eliphaz is dilated with the strong conception of the greatness and wisdom of God as evinced in His works of creation—touching thus incidentally upon that branch of the great argument, which is more adequately produced by the Lord Himself toward the close. God, he says, “doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number.” That in these expressions he has the material creation in view is shown by the context. The sense clearly is, that there is no possibility of computing—that the mind is wholly unable to grasp the great and marvellous things which the universe contains. Kitto. 13. The counsel of the froward is carried headlong. That is, if men will be winding and turning and thinking to catch others, or overreach the Lord Himself with tricks and turnings of wit, the Lord will meet and answer them in their own kind. He can turn as fast as they; he can put Himself into such intricate labyrinths of wisdom and craft as shall entangle and ensnare the most cunning wrestler of them all. Caryl. 17,18. Happy is the man whom God correcteth, if he make but a due improvement of the correction. A good man is happy, though he be afflicted; for whatever he has lost, he has not lost his enjoyment of God nor his title to heaven; nay, he is happy because he is afflicted; correction is an evidence of his sonship and a means of his sanctification; it mortifies his corruptions, weans his heart from the world, draws him nearer to God, brings him to his Bible, brings him to his knees, works him for and so is working for him a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; happy therefore is the man whom God correcteth. Though He wounds, yet His hands make whole in due time; as He supports His people and makes them easy under their afflictions, so in due time He delivers them and makes a way for them to escape. All is well again; and He comforts them according to the time wherein He afflicted them. God's usual method is first to wound and then to heal, first to convince, then to comfort, first to humble and then to exalt; and He never makes a wound too great, too deep for His own cure. H. It is a mercy that He will chastise; you may put your corrections among your mercies. His breakings of you are His blessings, His woundings are your cures; and by your own as by your Lord's stripes you are healed. And when you shall review and read over all His darker providences, and behold the wisdom and tenderness which is attempered with His severities, evidenced in His laying on so much, and yet no more than was needful, you will then write down with the Psalmist: "Thou in very faithfulness has afflicted me." Richard Alleine.—God never means harm to our lives when He sends afflictions to us. Our disappointments are God's appointments, and bring rich compensation. Our losses are designed to become gains to us as God plans for us. There is nothing really evil in the experiences of a Christian, if only God be allowed to work out the issue. Our Father sends us nothing but good. J. R. M. The more a man is buffeted and wounded, disappointed and humiliated, wronged and persecuted, in this life, the more he comes to fall back upon the sovereign power of God. God is just, loving, omniscient, and almighty. The reins of the world never slip nor slacken in His hand. He is never mistaken, never forgetful nor negligent, never defeated, and nothing eventuates contrary to His will. Though He tolerate wrongs temporarily, He will right them. Though He permit suffering, He sees clearly the path along which it will find culmination in peace and joy. God is as good as He is strong, benevolent as He is wise, true as He is great. We can trust in Him, rest in Him, and we can assure ourselves that all that there is of Him in power, wisdom, love—is ours. The weakest of us is in Him stronger than all the powers of time, circumstance or enemies that may be arrayed against us. God is our Father, and no earthly father's love is so pure and true as His love. But for suffering and danger and disaster we should never know how wondrous a heritage we have in God. Interior. If it be wise for us to pursue the greatest good, is it not kind in God to lift off our burdens, and to mingle bitterness with the pleasures which tend to make us linger? Is He not kind, and kind as no friend was ever kind before, in waking us from unsafe repose, in hastening us on with His rod, in giving wings to the objects we attempt to grasp by the way, and which, taken and retained, would defeat our better aims? The sum, then, of all our sorrows is this, that we are denied lesser to prepare for greater goods; inferior enjoyments are embittered or taken away, to sharpen the relish and looking for those which are full, unmixed, and eternal. Thus it is that our "light afflictions," which are but for a moment, for time at most, "work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." H. H. Not prosperity, but adversity, commonly quickens and intensifies faith. It is when all else seems to fail, that God's loving control stands out as unfailingly sure. When you find a man of exceptionally strong faith, you find a man who has had exceptionally trying experiences. And when you are called to unlooked-for and severe trials, you may feel that here is a fresh proof that God loves you, and is drawing you closer to Himself by the surest means of faith promoting. H. C. T.—Sorrow and suffering, bereavement, disappointment, and "hope deferred," seem to have but one mission—to develop, refine and enlarge the susceptibilities, and to newly capacitate the mind for the reception of new and higher forms of blessedness than were before possible. Each special form of sorrow is attended with some special and correlative manifestation of the character, love, or grace of Christ—a manifestation which ever after remains in the mind as a source of everlasting consolation and "joy unspeakable and full of glory." Among the aspects of Christ's character and grace—aspects which induce the fullest and most abiding blessedness—are those which the Spirit has unveiled to the mind when some great sorrow lay upon the heart. Hence it is that afflictions, tribulations, and great heavinesses become almost sacred in the mind's regard, followed as they all are, and that so soon, with such "everlasting consolations and good hope through grace." A. Mahan. Many of the world's best things have been born of affliction. The sweetest songs ever sung on earth have been called out by suffering. The richest things we inherit from the past are the purchase of suffering and sacrifice. Our redemption comes from Gethsemane and Calvary. Whatever is purest and most valuable in life anywhere has been in the fire. Our love for one another may be strong and true in the sunny days, but it never reaches its holiest and fullest expression until pain has touched our hearts and called out the hidden treasures of affliction. Even the love of a mother for her child, deep and pure as it is, never reaches its full wondrousness of devotion and sacrifice until the child suffers, and the mother bends over it in yearning and solicitude. The same is true of all the home loves; the best and divinest qualities in them come out only in the fires. The household that has endured sorrow in the true spirit of love and faith emerges from it undestroyed, untarnished, with purer, tenderer affections, with less of passion, of selfishness, and of earthliness. J. R. M.—There are gains through loss, there are joys through sorrow, there are richest blessings through greatest trials. Only as we meet and overcome enemies, can we have the rewards of victory: Only as we learn the lessons of bereavement, can we experience the comforts of Christ's most precious ministry of consolation. Jesus loves those most tenderly who are in greatest need of His tender love; and no call on Him is surer of an instant and helpful response than the call of a crushed and trusting heart. Says a quaint religious writer: "Music is sweetest near or over rivers, where the echo thereof is best rebounded by the water. Praise for pensiveness, thanks for tears, and blessing God over the floods of affliction makes the most melodious music in the ears of heaven." H. C. T. 19. The Lord can deliver us as often as we need deliverance; in six troubles, yea, in seven. This should bear up our hearts in the multiplied returns of troubles. The Lord hath a succession of mercies for our succession of sorrows. Say not, then, We have got off this trouble, but what if another come? If another come, you have the same God, and He can give you another deliverance. Caryl.—As afflictions and troubles recur, supports and deliverances shall be graciously repeated, be it never so often. In six troubles, He shall be ready to deliver thee; yea, and in seven. This intimates that, as long as we are here in this world, we must expect a succession of troubles, that the clouds will return after the rain; after six troubles may come a seventh. After many, look for more; but out of them all will God deliver those that are His. Former deliverances are earnests of, not (as among men) excuses from further deliverances. Whatever troubles good men may be in, there shall no evil touch them, they shall do them no real harm; the malignity of them, the sting, shall be taken out. The evil one toucheth not God's children (1 John 5:18). Being kept from sin, they are kept from the evil of every trouble. H.—God saves and delivers His people from all evil, even while they are in the midst of trouble. If God be with us, though all evils are upon us, yet no evil touches us. The presence of the Chief Good is banishment to every evil. Caryl. 21. The scourge of the tongue. There is a certain irony, Schlottman remarks, in the fact that Eliphaz should mention, as one of the chief evils from which his friend would be hid, that very calamity of which Job had afterward occasion to complain as his sorest affliction. Curry. 23. The whole of nature will be at peace with thee: the stones of the field, that they do not injure the fertility of thy fields; the wild beasts of the field, that they do not hurt thee and thy herds. Delitzsch.—Our covenant with God is a covenant with all the creatures, that they shall do us no hurt, but be ready to serve us and do us good. 24. Their houses and families shall be comfortable to them. Peace and piety in the family will make it so. "Thou shalt know and be assured that thy tabernacle is and shall be in peace; thou mayest be confident both of its present and its future prosperity." That peace is thy tabernacle, so the word is. Peace is the house in which they dwell who dwell in God and are at home in Him. 25. God has blessings in store for the seed of the faithful, which they shall have, if they do not stand in their own light and forfeit them by their folly. It is a comfort to parents to see the prosperity, especially the spiritual prosperity, of their children; if they are truly good they are truly great, how small a figure soever they make in the world. H. It will be observed that the supreme blessing here contemplated by Eliphaz is essentially the restoration of Job's former state, the blessing of prosperity and peace and long life and numerous offspring. After such blessings Job does not seem to seek; one result of his suffering is that all other desires give way in time to the supreme longing for God's presence. It is in this longing that Job disappoints Satan and leaves his friends far behind; such pure aspiration they neither cherish nor appreciate. J. F. G. 26. Like as a shock of corn cometh in in its season. Cometh to the threshing-floor at the season of harvest. Bishop Stock.—The Eastern people used not anciently to stack their corn in the straw to remain for a considerable time, as we do; but to carry it together in heaps, and then presently thresh it in the field; and they observe the same practice to this day. “As a heap of corn comes up” (on the threshing floor, namely) “in its season”—that is, when fully ripe. Parkhurst.—An easy death in a good old age, a worthy and respected character, and an honorable interment, are the ideas conveyed in this rural comparison. Scott.—To die seasonably, as the corn is cut and housed when it is full ripe; not till then, but then not suffered to stand a day longer lest it shed. Our times are in God’s hand; it is well they are so, for He will take care that those who are His die in the best time; however their death may seem to us untimely it will be found not unseasonable. H. “As I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young,” says Cicero in his treatise on old age. Beautiful is the old age of those who are full of hope, and of the fruits of righteousness and of the blessings of peace. They have lost much, but they have gained more; the thrill of early passion is over, but the peace of God keeps guard over their heart. The glory of the morning has faded into the light of common day, but it is a day in which their sun no more goes down. Anon.—Death is not destruction. Death is not even decay. Death is harvesting; and the design of the harvest is the preservation of the grain. With death end all processes of tillage. No longer the plough and the pruning-knife, the driving wind and rain. Henceforth only the serenely sheltered garner. This analogy is transcendent to our experience, and therefore to our understanding. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived, the bright reality. This much only can we understand, that the risen spirit is advanced at death not simply to frames of intense rapture, but to spheres of transcendent usefulness in the kingdom of God. And as we rejoice over the value and uses of our secured harvests, so does all heaven exult, as things precious unto God, over the spirits of just men made perfect in glory. And as angel-reapers gather them and bear them upward in flaming chariots along yon highway of sapphires unto the heart and throne of the Eternal Father, heaven will open wide its joyful gates, and all the shining creatures that stand before God strike their harps to the anthem of the great harvest-home, because perfected man cometh to his end “as a shock of corn cometh in in its season!” Charles Wadsworth. 27. Thus closes this beautiful picture, founded on a poetical view of God’s providence and admirably adapted to good men in prosperity. But Job had now reached a point not rare in the experience of the pious, demanding deeper insight into the mysteries of the Divine government, where all such commonplaces (see 6:5-7) are stale, flat, and unprofitable. T. Lewis.—Job is thus promised the exact reverse of all that he had experienced: a safe home, flocks untouched, a happy and prosperous family, a peaceful old age. It must have sounded like a bitter mockery, and as such he resents it. Cook.—The intent of this speech is very plain; it was to bring Job to a confession of some secret wickedness, some great enormity, of which his friends supposed him to be guilty. And so, we find, Job understood it; for he complains of the unkindness of the suspicion in the following reply (6:14, 15, 25). Peters. Eliphaz is right in censuring Job’s vehement passion. He is right in so grandly asserting the sinfulness of the creature in the light of the Creator’s holiness. He is right in asserting man’s inheritance of sorrow through sin, and in insisting that his true refuge is in God’s compassion. Right, too, in saying that suffering is meant to lead him to God. But he does not see that suffering, along with its intent to awaken to sin, may carry with it the intent to purify character. He does not see that the purpose of suffering may be to test fidelity and to show to the sufferer himself and to men about him that neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come can separate him from the love of God. He did not know that this was the great purpose of Job’s affliction. He could not know it, for he had not heard the discussion in the heavenly conclave on the question whether Job served God for nought. He did not see that suffering may be without any special connection with sin—sent for God’s sake rather than for man’s—even as the Psalmist says and Paul quotes: “For Thy sake we are killed all the day long.” Vincent. The appeal to Job’s piety, as though this should quiet his sorrows, and cause him to maintain a cheerful confidence in his overwhelming distress, shows a lack of due consideration for the condition of the sufferer. Greater tenderness of manner, and a more sympathetic appreciation of Job’s sorrows, was especially needed in one who should attempt the office of comforter to one so afflicted. Eliphaz’s assumption rejecting the immediate connection in the Divine government of suffering and sin is quite too broad and unqualified. On general principles, all he assumes is true, but there is something fallacious in making the principles universally applicable, and terribly cruel in rigidly enforcing them in respect to Job's case. The general sinfulness of men may account for human sorrows so far as they are uniformly distributed; and a like principle may be applied where they are plainly graduated in proportion to the demerit of the sufferers. But special suffering, not involving special guilt, cannot be thus accounted for. A sinfulness common to all cannot be the reason why one is singled out rather than another, and made to endure extraordinary sorrows. The special significance of suffering, therefore, remains unexplained. Its importance as a test of character, its value as a means of discipline and training, and the far more exceeding reward by which it shall be abundantly compensated, are not once suspected. Eliphaz alleges that man suffers because he is a sinner; he knew not that a man may likewise suffer because he is a saint; that he may thus exhibit more distinctly his saintly character; that he may be ripened still more in holiness; and that his final recompense may be proportionately increased. Suffering, to Eliphaz, was ever and only a punishment, a judgment for sin, an infliction of the Divine displeasure. He knew not that it might also be a token of love, a means of grace, a blessing in disguise; that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. W. H. G. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2. Oh that my vexation were but weighed, And all my calamity laid in the balances! 3. For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas: Therefore have my words been rash. 4. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up: The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. 5. Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? Or loweth the ox over his fodder? 6. Can that which hath no savour be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg? 7. My soul refuseth to touch them; They are as loathsome meat to me. 8. Oh that I might have my request; And that God would grant me the thing that I long for! 9. Even that it would please God to crush me; That he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! 10. And be it still my consolation, Yea, let me exult in pain that spareth not, That I have not denied the words of the Holy One. 11. What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is mine end, that I should be patient? 12. Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of brass? 13. Is it not that I have no help in me, And that wisdom is driven quite from me? 14. To him that is ready to faint kindness should be shewed from his friend; Even to him that forsaketh (or, Else might he forsake) the fear of the Almighty. 15. My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, As the channel of brooks that pass away; 16. Which are black by reason of the ice: And wherein the snow hideth itself: 17. What time they wax warm, they vanish: When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. 18. The caravans that travel by the way of them turn aside; They go up into the waste, and perish. 19. The caravans of Tema looked, The companies of Sheba waited for them. 20. They were ashamed because they had hoped; They came thither, and were confounded. 21. For now ye are nothing; Ye see a terror, and are afraid. 22. Did I say, Give unto me? Or, Offer a present for me of your substance? 23. Or, Deliver me from the adversary's hand? Or, Redeem me from the hand of the oppressors? 24. Teach me, and I will hold my peace: And cause me to understand wherein I have erred. 25 How forcible are words of uprightness! But what doth your arguing reprove? 26 Do ye think to reprove words? Seeing that the speeches of one that is desperate are as wind. JOB'S reply to the first of his three friends falls into three great sections: First, 6:1-13. He defends against the remonstrances of Eliphaz the bitterness of his complaining and his despair. Second, vs. 14-30. He laments with sorrowful disappointment the attitude his friends have taken up toward him. Third, chap. 7. He falls anew into a bitter lamentation over his sorrowful destiny, and appeals against God's treatment of him in language much more direct and keen than that used in chap. 3. A. B. D.—Job excuses his impatience by the greatness of his sufferings, which his friends have not duly appreciated. He rejects the consolation offered by Eliphaz. He declares expressly that he does not expect a cure, and that a speedy death is his only desire; he complains that his friends do not sympathize with him; he laments the general lot of human nature, and his own in particular; he confesses at last that he is not unjustly punished, but complains that God should so strictly observe and so rigidly punish offences that cannot injure Him. Michaelis. Chap. 6. There is something very open and engaging in the character of Job as it appears in this speech. He confesses the impatience that Eliphaz found fault with, though he excuses it by the incalculable weight of his affliction (v. 2). He admits that his words have been wild, though he thinks this was but natural when a creature found himself in conflict with God (v. 4). He even suggests to his friends the worth at which to estimate his language when he says that the words of one that is desperate go into the wind (v. 26). And he goes so far as to speak of himself as losing hold of the fear of the Almighty under the trial of his calamities (v. 14). There is something simple, too, and childlike in his defence of his cry of despair by the example of the lower creatures, which also express their pain or want by cries of distress (v. 5). In keeping with this openness in regard to himself is his impatience and resentment of the covert insinuations of his 27. Yea, ye would cast lots upon the fatherless, And make merchandise of your friend. 28 Now therefore he pleased to look upon me; For surely I shall not lie to your face. 29 Return, I pray you, let there be no injustice; Yea, return again, my cause is righteous. 30 Is there injustice on my tongue? Cannot my taste discern mischievous things? friends through their first spokesman. He demands that they should show him what they are hinting at by the pictures they are drawing and the blind parables they are narrating at him (v. 24); he himself will look them in the face and affirm his innocence (v. 28). And even the one bitter sentence which he utters against their hard-heartedness (v. 27) is quite in harmony with the honest directness of the rest of his words. A. B. D. 1-7. Job meets the arguments of Eliphaz in order. The first point which made Eliphaz doubt the integrity of Job, and on which his argument hinges, was the bitterness of spirit, the "wrath" which Job gave way to in his affliction. Job first addresses himself to this argument. Cook.—The "anger" that Eliphaz has deprecated Job justifies by referring to the unexplained visitation that compels it. Looking into his affliction honestly, and interpreting it according to the only data he has, as God's especial displeasure, he sees only too much reason for being profoundly disturbed and embittered in soul. J. F. G. 2. He would have his afflictions, inclusive of their distressing impressions on his mind, to be put together in one scale, and weighed against the sand on the seashore in the other scale. This is only a poetical and pathetic manner of saying that his afflictions were insupportable; a consideration which in equitable judgment would at least excuse his intemperate complaint. Scott. 4. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. This is uttered by the patient man, when he would excuse his passion by the terror and agony he was in. He had patience enough for the oppression and rapine of his enemies, for the unkindness and reproach of his friends, and for the cunning and malice of the devil; but he was so transported with the sense of God's anger, he could not bear that with temper; the apprehension that all these miseries, of so piercing and destroying a nature in themselves, fell upon him not only by God's permission, to try and humble him, but proceeded directly from His indignation and resolution to destroy him, almost confounded him. Clarendon.—He saw himself charged by the terrors of God as by an army set in battle-array, and surrounded by them. God, by His terrors, fought against him; as he had no comfort when he retired inward into his own bosom, so he had none when he looked upward toward heaven. He that used to be encouraged with the consolations of God, not only wanted those, but was amazed with the terrors of God. H. 5. Job justifies his complainings by intimating that there is a sufficient reason for them. The wild ass does not bray when it has pasture, nor does the ox low over his fodder, nor would I complain without a cause; but it is not to be expected that I will be silent while either starving or feeding upon bitter or tasteless food. Curry. 6. Can, or do, men use to eat unsavory meats, with delight, or without complaint? That is, Men commonly complain of their meat, when it is unsavory; how much more, when it is so bitter as mine is? Poole. 7. My soul refuseth to touch, they are as loathsome food to me. The translation and meaning of the first clause are clear. Job cannot accept the poison, his soul recoils from it; the sense of the second clause is most probably, “the evils which have come upon me are like diseased or poisonous food,” literally, as disease of my food. This means more than loathsome food—food contaminated and full of disease, food at once disgusting and unwholesome; how, then, can I receive it without such expressions of grief, or wrath, as appear to Eliphaz proofs of sin and unpardonable folly? 8-10. Eliphaz had represented death as the last punishment; Job now declares that it is his only hope. This represents a critical point in the argument; he consoles himself with one thought, that he has not sinned against God; thus, as in all former trials, holding fast his integrity and his allegiance to God. As yet there is no indication of a hope beyond death. Cook,—Job had been courting death, as that which would be the happy period of his miseries (chap. 3). For this Eliphaz had gravely reproved him; but he, instead of unsaying it, says it here again with more vehemence than before; it is as ill said as almost anything we meet with in all his discourses, and is recorded for our admonition, not our imitation. Observe, Though Job was extremely desirous of death, and very angry at its delays, yet he did not offer to destroy himself, nor to take away his own life; only he begged that it would please God to destroy him. H.—In all his sufferings Job never intimates a thought of taking his own life. The old Hebrew mind would have spurned the effeminacy that expresses itself in the “Morals” of Seneca (commending suicide in cases of hopeless afflictions). That mind was strong to bear the ills of life so long as it pleased God. In the entire Old Testament there is no trace of suicide apart from war, except in the case of the miserable Ahithophel. J. S. Burr. 10. The general connection is clear; some words are difficult, but the words may be more clearly expressed, so would it still be my comfort, and in the midst of my unsparing anguish would I exult that I have not denied—that is, renounced, the words of the Holy One. This comfort was not merely that death would end his troubles, but that to the last he has the consciousness of having kept the faith. Cook.—I would set myself to bear the pangs and agonies of death if I had but this hope, that my misery was near expiring; for I have the testimony of a good conscience, which tells me that I have not smothered any light which God hath sent me, but that I have been faithful to Him, His cause, and His truth. Caryl.—Job had the words of the Holy One committed to him. The people of God were, at that time, blessed with Divine revelation. It was his comfort that he had not concealed them, had not received the grace of God therein in vain. He had not kept them from himself, but had given them full scope to operate upon him, and in everything to guide and govern him. He had not kept them to himself, but had been ready on all occasions to communicate his knowledge for the good of others; was never ashamed or afraid to own the Word of God to be his rule, nor remiss in his endeavors to bring others into an acquaintance with it. Those, and those only, may promise themselves comfort in death who are good and do good while they live. 11,12. He justifies himself in this extreme desire of death, from the deplorable condition he was now in. Disconsolate spirits will reason strangely against themselves. Is my strength the strength of stones? Are my muscles brass and sinews steel? No, they are not, and therefore I cannot hold out always in this pain and misery, but must needs sink under the load. Had I strength to grapple with my distemper, I might hope to look through it; but, alas! I have not. H.—This note of self-distrust, as Job looks forward to a life of pain, deepens our sense of his heroic loyalty. To be patient without any outlook, to endure without Divine support—Job does not promise it, and he trembles at the prospect; but none the less he sets his feet on the toilsome way. J. F. G. 14-30. Job, having thus briefly disposed of the arguments urged by Eliphaz, takes up another position, and attacks his friends, first for their neglect of the first duty of friends, compassion for the afflicted (14-21); and then for their failure in argument, accompanied by injustice and cruelty, which involve far deeper guilt than idle and hasty words wrung from a sufferer. 14. To him. This expresses the sense of the Hebrew, though not the full force of the words or the conciseness of the phrase, "To the afflicted from his friend pity;" the latter clause means either "should he forsake the fear of the Almighty," or "lest he forsake." This gives a satisfactory sense; friends should above all things soothe a man's feelings lest he be driven to desperation. The word for afflicted is very graphic, "melted down," "dissolved," alluding, it may be, to the effect of the poisoned arrows (v. 4). Cook.—Surely those have no fear of the rod of God upon themselves who have no compassion for those who feel the smart of it. Troubles are the trials of friendship. When a man is afflicted, he will see who are his friends indeed, and who are but pretenders; for a brother is born for adversity. H. —Human sympathy is a great help in keeping alive a sufferer's trust in God. God ministers His own pity often through His servants. It is a Christian truth, illustrated by the highest and most sacred relations; for surely we are encouraged to trust in God's pity when we remember how the human Christ was and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. We may, by hardness or lack of sympathy for one in sorrow, alienate him not only from us, but from God. V. 15-21. More sorrowful to him than any cold, critical words which they have uttered is the feeling that his friends have taken up such a position against him. This was what he had not looked for. And his disappointment is like that of the thirsty caravan that finds the long-looked-for waters dried up in the heat. Every emotion seems now to find a place in Job's mind in succession. First, his disappointment, expressed in this beautiful figure, is mixed with the feeling how unworthy his friends' conduct was. They had not acted to him as men do to one who is, as he describes himself, "despairing" and "losing hold of the fear of the Almighty." Kindness is due to such a one, but they had turned against him from sheer feebleness of spirit, because they saw that his calamity was from God. A. B. D.—The imagery of this passage is taken from a land intersected by ravines, deep wadys dry in summer, and filled suddenly after storms by torrents from neighboring heights. This corresponds most exactly with the descriptions of the Hauran, in which there is no river flowing through the summer; whereas in winter torrents rush with great impetuosity through cavernous ravines from the Jebel Hauran. 15. The channel of brooks. The former word denotes the deep wady or ravine through which the brook or torrent rushes, often with much noise and vehemence, soon passing away, and leaving only a heap of shingle. The simile is remarkably complete: when little needed the torrent overflows, when needed it disappears; in winter it does not fertilize, in summer it is dried up; nor is it merely useless; it deceives, alluring the traveller by the appearance of verdure, promising refreshment and giving none. Such were the friends of Job with their noisy grief and vehement gesticulations, and the absence of genuine sympathy. Cook. 21. For now ye are nothing. Job at length applies the similitude to his friends. Ye are now nothing; ye are of no service in assuaging my affliction; ye have deceived even the lowest expectation of relief, as a torrent, whose waters have passed away, frustrates the hopes of a thirsty traveller. Rosenmüller. It is from this view of friendship that the way begins to diverge by which Job arrives in time to a point wholly opposite to theirs, where he is fully fixed by faith on God. That God has afflicted him is no reason why friendship should be withdrawn; rather he needs friends the more as he feels himself slipping away from his old moorings in God. He desires simply that their natural affection remain undisturbed by what they see of his disease, and be kept faithful to his essential righteousness. J. F. G. 22,23. His mixed sadness and contempt passes into sarcasm when he tells them that he could have understood their fear if he had asked anything from them—even one's friends must not be put under that strain—but he sought only sympathy. A. B. D.—A bitter irony, implying that he might have been foolish had he counted upon substantial help, but that it was impossible to foresee that his friends would withhold the simple boon of pity, costing neither money nor exertion. 24,25. Job demands that since his friends have neither helped nor comforted him, they should at least convince him of error, pointing out in what his assumed guilt consisted. Eliphaz had inferred his folly, or sin, from the fact of his wrath. (See 5:2.) With that accusation Job has already dealt, and now calls for more substantial reasons. Cook.—If, instead of invidious reflections and uncharitacle insinuations, you will give me plain instructions and solid arguments, which shall carry their own evidence along with them, I am ready to acknowledge my error, and own myself in a fault; Teach me, and I will hold my tongue, for I have often found with pleasure and wonder how forcible right words are; but the method you take will never make proselytes; what doth your arguing reprove? Your hypothesis is false, your surmises are groundless, your management weak, and your application peevish and uncharitable. H. 26. Is it your object merely to reprove my words? The next clause should be rendered, but the words of the despairing are for the wind. Words wrung from a man in such a condition had, as Job would argue, no bearing upon the question of his guilt; they followed, and could not therefore have provoked the visitation, and were after all merely uttered to the wind, borne away by it and leaving no trace, at the worst idle and meaningless. Cook. 27. A strong invective against their unfeeling behavior. The words are severe; the preceding passage, however, in which their refusal of sympathy (vs. 22, 23) and their petty fault-finding with Job's language (vs. 25, 26) are referred to, naturally leads up to the idea. The same phrase, to cast lots, occurs 1 Sam. 14:42, and the phrase bargain over, or make merchandise of, occurs again (Job 41:6), "Will the partners bargain over him?" The "fatherless" is probably the child of the debtor. After his death the ruthless creditors cast lots for possession of the child as a slave. A. B. D. 28. Look upon me. A still closer challenge. Look me in the face, and detect my falsehood, if you can. To propose such a test is itself a strong presumption of conscious innocence, of which the continued importunity of the next sentence is a still stronger proof. However far wrong he may be before God, in the sight of all men he knew his cause was just, and that his sufferings were not inflicted upon him by reason of his exceptional wickedness. His own conscience, his moral sense, which tries actions as the palate tries mischievous things, acquits him of iniquity. Curry.—Though he had let fall some passionate expressions, yet, in the main, he was in the right, and his afflictions, though very extraordinary, did not prove him to be a hypocrite or a wicked man. His righteousness he holds fast, and will not let it go. H. 29,30. Bethink yourselves of the wrong you have done me, and repent of it. Let me not be charged with sin and hypocrisy for what I have said. Think again, and better of it. Upon further consideration the righteousness of my cause and person will fully appear to you. Clark.—See whether I utter anything that is false; and whether I possess not a sound judgment to distinguish between right and wrong. Rosenmüller. My taste, literally my palate, meaning here, not the aesthetic sense that we associate with taste, but spiritual sense and insight. Job avers that his spiritual sense is not blunted; that when he says he is righteous it is from a real discernment, as keen and true as it ever was, of good and evil. Both Job and the friends recognize that one's spiritual discernment of truth may be impaired or destroyed, so that evil and good may cease to appear in their real guise; and Job is evidently solicitous to keep this fine sense intact in all his affliction. J. F. G. 1. Is there not a warfare to man upon earth? And are not his days like the days of an hireling? 2. As a servant that earnestly desireth the shadow, And as an hireling that looketh for his wages: 3. So am I made to possess months of vanity, And wearisome nights are appointed to me. 4 When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise and the night be gone? And I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. 5. My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; My skin closeth up and breaketh out afresh. 6. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, And are spent without hope. 7. Oh remember that my life is a breath: Mine eye shall no more see good. 8. The eye of him that seeth me shall behold me no more : Thine eyes shall be upon me, but I shall not be. 9. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, So he that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more. 10. He shall return no more to his house, Neither shall his place know him any more. 11. Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12. Am I a sea, or a sea-monster, That thou settest a watch over me ? 13. When I say, My bed shall comfort me, My couch shall ease my complaint; 14. Then thou scarest me with dreams, And terrified me through visions : 15. So that my soul chooseth strangling, And death rather than these my bones. In this chapter Job's mind begins to turn from the cruelty of his friends to the larger aspects of his sorrow ; and his words take on the character of a soliloquy. When his words run into appeal or address it is no longer to the friends, but to God. V. Renewed outburst of despair at the thought of his sorrowful destiny. With a deeper pathos than any that had gone before, this innocence of his and this capacity to form true moral judg- ments regarding his history being his starting- point, Job turns to the broad world to contem- plate how helpless man is with these qualities against that fated, inexorable misery called human life. His view is general, though he himself is the centre of it, and his own history gives color to that of man. He speaks out of the agony of suffering and from the abjectaess of his own whole condition, and contrasts these with the natural greatness of the Being who has plunged him into them. It is the physical claim of sentient life which he urges, not to be tortured on any grounds whatsoever they be. A. B. D. This chapter marks another stage in the de- velopment of Job's innermost feelings. In the first part (1-10), he repudiates altogether the hope of a possible restoration to life, and claims the right of unqualified complaining. In the latter part (11-21) he enters into direct expostu- lation with God. In all this he still keeps clear from the sin of renouncing God ; so far the temptation completely fails ; but he incurs the very serious reproach of arraigning His govern- ment. This distinction must be borne in mind 16. I loathe my life ; I would not live alway : Let me alone ; for my days are vanity. 17. What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, And that thou shouldest set thy mind upon him, 18. And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, And try him every moment ? 19. How long wilt thou not look away from me, Nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle ? 20. If I have sinned, what do I unto thee, O thou watcher of men ? Why hast thou set me as a mark for thee, So that I am a burden to myself ? 21. And why dost thou not pardon my trans- gression, and take away mine iniquity ? For now shall I lie down in the dust ; And thou shalt seek me diligently, but I shall not be. throughout. Job is faulty, and "darkens coun- sel by words without knowledge," but his fault is that of a man who fears and loves God, yet cannot understand His ways. Cook.—The pathetic lament of Job does not argue a spirit of impatience or of complaint against God ; it is the weakness of the flesh first expostulating with the harsh judgment of his friends upon his longing for death, and then appealing to the Almighty to send him the relief that he hoped for in the future state. He had borne with a majestic patience the sudden loss of all earthly good ; but this protracted suffering from a disease that caused him to loathe himself had so far exhausted his nervous vitality and the spirit of hope, that even the instinct of life had died out within him. Never was a picture more true than this of the weariness of a prolonged and seemingly incurable sickness, which leaves no hope of life, yet does not bring the relief of death. In such a condition it is not wrong to wish to die. Yet Job humbled himself before God, and acknowledged his sinfulness and ill- desert, and did not murmur under the chasten- ing hand of the Preserver of men. J. P. T. 1. Job argues that since life is bounded within certain limits, with its appointed work, when those limits are reached and the work is done a man may be justified in longing for the rest of the grave. This position at once meets the argument of Eliphaz, and supplies a basis for the following expostulation. Cook. 1,2. How pathetic is the touch which gives character to this description—the slave panting for the shades of evening, which may bring him rest from his toil; the hired soldier, who looks for his wages not so much from greed as from the fact that the time of payment is the time of release and rest. Such, says Job, am I. V.—Man's life is a warfare, and as the days of a hireling. We are every one of us to look upon ourselves in this world (1) as soldiers, exposed to hardship and in the midst of enemies; we must serve and be under command; and, when our warfare is accomplished, we must be disbanded, dismissed with either shame or honor, according to what we have done in the body. (2) As day-laborers, that have the work of the day to do in its day, and must make up their account at night. Job had as much reason, he thought, to wish for death, as a poor servant or hireling that is tired of his work has to wish for the shadows of the evening, when he shall receive his penny and go to rest. The darkness of the night is as welcome to the laborer as the light of the morning is to the watchman. H. 3. But there is this difference, that the hireling in the midst of all his toils can look forward with assured confidence to the precise hour at which they will close, and when his wages will be given to him. But Job knows not the appointed time for his release. Death seems his only refuge, it is his only hope; and although he knows that it must come at last, he knows not when. Meanwhile he says: "Months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me." In the last clause, respecting the "wearisome nights," there is an apparent transition from the greater to the lesser sense of the comparison. The nights, which bring sound and healthful rest to the hireling, are to Job more wearisome and full of seeming horrors than even the day. This was one of the symptoms of his disease. But apart from this, every one knows that under mental trial the nights are far more terrible than the days. The mind no less than the body lies loose and relaxed; and all the avenues of the soul are open to receive those impressions of grief, horror and despair against which the guarded mind might be able to stand up. Hence it is that Job and other sacred poets speak so much of the terrors of the night; and that the Psalmist, especially, so often dwells upon the blessedness of filling the mind with thoughts of God and of His loving-kindness when we lie down upon our beds. Kitto. 5. This verse gives an exact description of the symptoms of the disease. Maggots breed rapidly in the mouldering flesh; clods, as it were, of earth are formed by the dry, swollen skin, rough as the hide of the elephant, which gives the name to the malady. When fully formed the lumps burst, the skin falls off in masses, and the body is covered by virulent discharge. Such symptoms, presented incidentally, and without consciousness on the part of the speaker that he is supplying materials for the diagnosis of his disease, do not belong to fiction; they bear the impress of living truth. Cook. 6. He compares his life to a web; the days which composed it are the threads; the work is God's, who determines the measure of every man's life; retrospection on time that is passed away makes it appear, to a man in misery, very swift, and past happiness as nothing. His days seemed now to him to have gone off faster than a manufacture of the loom. Scott.—Our days are like a weaver's shuttle, thrown from one side of the web to the other in the twinkling of an eye, and then back again, to and fro, until at length it is quite exhausted of the thread it carried; and then we cut off, like a weaver, our life (Isa. 38:12). Time hastens on apace, the motion of it cannot be stopped, and when it is past it cannot be recalled. While we are living we are weaving; every day, like the shuttle, leaves a thread behind it; many weave the spider's web, which will fail them (8:14). If we are weaving to ourselves holy garments and robes of righteousness, we shall have the benefit of them when our work comes to be reviewed, and every man shall reap as he sowed and wear as he wove. H. Without hope. That is Job's present feeling. The question remains, whether the truth of a future vindication will reveal itself in the conflict of a soul conscious of integrity and devotion to God, but in misery hopeless, so far as this life is concerned. In the actual state of Job's mind he can as yet wish for nothing but death. Cook. 8. In the representation of the hopelessness of a return from the underworld, the most touching feature is v. 8—that there neither the eye of any man would see him again, nor would even God Himself, if He would, as Job continues firmly to believe, at some time in the future (alas! too late) judge his cause, and on that account seek for him—seek for him among the living, other than in vain! Hence, too, the language of the second part of the verse is particularly agitated. Ewald. 9. Sheol. The Hebrew word designating the unseen abode of the dead; a neutral word presupposing neither misery nor happiness, and not infrequently used much as we use the words "the grave," to denote the final undefined resting-place of all. J. F. G.—Man gone into the invisible word, never to return hither, is the subject of the comparison; the thing to which he is in this regard compared is a cloud that is vanished; unsubstantial in its composition, transient in its duration, it disappears and is nevermore seen. Scott. 10. What he saith is not a denial of a dying man's resurrection to life, but of his restitution to such life as he parted with at the grave's mouth. They who die a natural death do not live a natural life again; therefore he addeth in the next verse, he shall return no more to his house. He shall have no more to do with this world, with worldly businesses or contentments, with the labors or comforts of the creature, or of his family; he shall return no more to his house. Neither shall his place know him any more. When a man lives and comes home to his house, his house (as it were) welcomes him home, and his place is glad to entertain him. As in the Psalm the little hills are said to rejoice at the showers, so when a man comes home, his house and all he hath have, as it were, a tongue to bid him welcome and open arms to receive and embrace him; but when he dies he shall return no more, and then his place shall know him (that is, receive him) no more. Caryl. 11. Job heaps image upon image to set before himself and the eye of God the brevity of life, the weaver's shuttle (v. 6), the wind (v. 7), the morning cloud (v. 9), ending with a pathetic reference to his home, which shall see him no more (v. 10). These regrets altogether overmaster him, and, combining with his sense of the wrong which he suffers and his impatience of the iron restraints of human existence, hurry him forward, and he resolves to open the floodgates to the full stream of his complaint (v. 11): Therefore I will not refrain my mouth -i.e., therefore I also, I on my side, will not refrain. A. B. D. 12. Now we see Job at his worst. He gives way to bitter indignation against God. The burden of his complaint is that God acts as a spy upon him, as though he were a rebellious wretch plotting against God's government and needing to be kept constantly under guard. He is utterly without defence in his charges against God, in his bitter, defiant tone, and his presumptuous impugning of God's justice and love. V. —And these harsh and presumptuous speeches against God are accompanied by no qualifications or partial retractions, such as we find in nearly all the lamentations of the Psalmist and of the Prophet Jeremiah, where they make use of similar expressions, and represent God now by this and now by that figurative expression as their unsparing persecutor, and their stern, unpitying Judge. Job persists in all that he says in this direction of a doubtful character; he takes nothing back; he concludes his discourse immediately after the most passionate and presumptuous of these sayings has passed from his lips. Zöckler.—It is not Job's peculiar sin that he thinks God has changed to an enemy against him; that is the view that comes from his vision being beclouded by the conflict through which he is passing, as is frequently the case in the Psalms. His sin does not even consist in the inquiries, How long? and Wherefore? The Psalms, in that case, would abound in sin. But the sin is, that he hangs on to these doubting questions, and thus attributes apparent mercilessness and injustice to God. And the friends constantly urge him on still deeper in this sin the more persistently they attribute his sufferings to his own unrighteousness. Jeremiah (Lam. 3), after similar complaints, adds: "Then I repeated this to my heart, and took courage from it; the mercies of Jehovah they have no end; His compassions do not cease." Many of the Psalms that begin sorrowfully end in the same way; faith at length breaks through the clouds of doubt. Delitzsch. 13-16. He is keenly and violently plagued by God; yea, does not even find rest in sleep—is absolutely weak and harmless. Rather than continue to carry about this wretched skeleton, this body which has been reduced to "bones" (see 19:20), he would prefer strangling or death in any form. This body (life) he despises (9:21), he has already lived too long; and, therefore, at last the wild demand escapes him that God may at least now grant him a moment's rest, as in any case his life is already forfeited and he has no desire to retain it. Ewald.—Doubtless this was Job's infirmity, for though a good man would not wish to live alway in this world, and would choose strangling and death rather than sin, as the martyrs did, yet he will be content to live as long as pleases God, not choose them rather than life, because life is our opportunity of glorifying God and getting ready for heaven. H. 16. Life should be considered by the Christian as a possession greatly to be cherished. To esteem lightly and wish to abridge life is wrong. The desire to be with Christ—the attractive end of the magnet—cannot be too strong: but the weariness of this world, the longing to escape from it—the repulsive end—may easily run into excess. The present state of existence is the only one in which we shall ever glorify God by patience and the resistance of evil, or, as far as we know, by extending His kingdom upon earth. And therefore let us not be in haste to quit the field; for it may be the only field we shall ever have where we can glorify God for these high ends. To the majority of people, however, the danger lies on the other side. They are unwilling to die. Notwithstanding all warnings and preparations which God is sending every day, the real spirit of their mind is, "I would live alway." It is because they are so encased and absorbed with the present life that they have no room for another. When our sins are once cancelled, our nature spiritualized, ourselves "meetened for the inheritance of the saints in light," who would not say, with the patriarch, "I would not live alway"? We know and are sure that another life is awaiting us, to which this life is but as death; and our arms stretch out to that life. "We would not live alway." J. V. 17. David's "What is man, that Thou shouldst think of him to bless him?" is turned into "What is man, that Thou shouldst think of him to curse him?" A. B. D.—This same question is asked by the Psalmist (8:4) with adoring wonder at the Divine condescension; here with bitter complaint that, perishable as man is, he is possessed with ceaseless sufferings, for which cause he had become an object of terror; and he now asks only the poor boon of being let alone. Curry.—Magnify him. There is a bitter irony in this expression; that God should concern Himself so long, busy Himself, so to speak, with His creatures, implies in them a Titanic grandeur, so to speak, a relation of proportion, if not equality, between Him and them. In the eighth Psalm God is said to magnify man by rich endowments of soul and body, here by the infliction of tortures, which imply godlike capacities of endurance. Cook. 18. Try him every moment? The question expresses one of the first of those great mysteries which the stern reality of trouble had forced on his thoughts. It was no curious inquiry on his part; it was not a question which he could be content to leave unanswered; it was one which the agony of his life had compelled him to meet. Every earthly hope had been wrecked, all the charm of life had faded, his very friends had proved unkind in the hours when he most needed their sympathy. And, still more, he had no peace in his own soul, for by day dark doubts respecting God perplexed him, and at night those doubts haunted him in dreams. It was not strange that he should choose death rather than life, and pray for the time when he should enter that region where the "wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." And then arose the mysterious question, Why did God prolong his life? To live amid the desolation of his great sorrow, and struggling with awful doubts, was a constant trial, and why did God thus "try him every moment" by keeping him alive? E. Hull. 19. Till I swallow down. A proverbial expression, common in Arabic, for a moment of time, equivalent to "the twinkling of an eye." It may be here suggested by the feeling of suffocation, the distressing gasping of the diseased throat in elephantiasis. 20,21. The last objection is dealt with here—"I have sinned"—that is, granted that I have committed some sin, what then? Is it in my power now to make any compensation, to live and act for God's service? 20. O Thou preserver of men. There is in this a touching appeal. Job does but contrast what he now experiences with what he believes and knows of God's providential goodness and care of His creatures. Cook. 21. Job seems to claim pardon almost indignantly, as if it were a right. Even the God who will by no means acquit may be called on for pardon; and much more when the sin is below consciousness, not to be merciful is not to be just. For now I shall sleep in the dust; this, after all, is what makes Job's inquiries and expostulations so natural. So near death as he is, the logic of his case demands pardon; for what is the significance of torturing by pain a life so soon to go out? The thought of a life beyond has not risen to Job's mind out of this enigma. J. F. G. In one very important point he and his friends were agreed; both alike falsely regarded his afflictions as indications of God's displeasure; they at once concluding that his refusal to submit proved radical unsoundness, while he is driven to utter perplexity and hopelessness. The solution of the problem involved two conditions, one of which was as yet beyond the reach of either party; first, the certainty that all punishments falling on God's true servants are directed by His wisdom and controlled by His power; and, secondly, the knowledge of a future state, in which the living Redeemer will rectify all inequalities. Each step in the discussion brings the necessity of such a solution nearer. Cook. 1. THEN answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 2 How long wilt thou speak these things? And how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a mighty wind? 3 Doth God pervert judgment? Or doth the Almighty pervert justice? 4 If thy children have sinned against him, And he have delivered them into the hand of their transgression: 5 If thou wouldest seek diligently unto God, And make thy supplication to the Almighty; 6 If thou wert pure and upright; Surely now he would awake for thee, And make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous. 7 And though thy beginning was small, Yet thy latter end should greatly increase. 8 For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, And apply thyself to that which their fathers have searched out: 9 (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, Because our days upon earth are a shadow:) 10 Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, And utter words out of their heart? 11 Can the rush grow up without mire? Can the flag grow without water? BILDAD the Shuhite now comes forward to rebuke his fallen friend, and to vindicate, as he supposes, the ways of God. "There is," as Chalmers remarks, "sound general truth in Bildad's affirmation respecting the dealings of God with the upright and the evil;" but the application of this "general truth" to Job in particular is his fault, and is unauthorized by anything he knew or could charitably conjecture. Kitto, —Bildad infers from the justice of God that chastisement implies guilt, and that one is as surely the consequence of the other as effects in the natural world are inseparable from their causes. This position, he says, was not a discovery of yesterday; it had been uniformly maintained by wise men through all ages past. Job, therefore, must have been guilty. His children had perished because they acknowledged not their sins; but Job might yet be restored, if he confessed his evil doings and asked pardon for them. Bishop Stock.—Siung by 12. Whilst it is yet in its greenness, and not cut down, It withereth before any other herb. 13 So are the paths of all that forget God; And the hope of the godless man shall perish: 14 Whose confidence shall break in sunder, And whose trust is a spider's web. 15 He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand: He shall hold fast thereby, but it shall not endure. 16 He is green before the sun, And his shoots go forth over his garden. 17 His roots are wrapped about the heap, He beholdeth the place of stones. 18 If he be destroyed from his place, Then it shall deny him, saying, I have not seen thee. 19 Behold, this is the joy of his way. And out of the earth shall others spring. 20 Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, Neither will he uphold the evil doers. 21 He will yet fill thy mouth with laughter, And thy lips with shouting. 22 They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame; And the tent of the wicked shall be no more. Job's reproaches, but unmoved by his distress and regardless of his protestations, this respondent calls the whole a storm of passion. With this spirit he enters upon his answer, wherein he supports the principle of Eliphaz, that all sufferings are punishments, and necessarily imply preceding guilt. He advances, in defence of that position, two arguments: the first is taken from the justice of God, the other from the sentiments of the ancient sages. These are the outlines of his short discourse. Scott. The argument of Bildad the Shuhite rests upon the same principle as that of Eliphaz, but it touches more forcibly upon some points briefly indicated in the previous discourse, and the illustrations are novel and striking. There is vigor as well as ingenuity in the reasoning. Bildad feels aggrieved by Job's complaints, which involve the charge of injustice in God (vs. 2, 3) and, admitting hypothetically the possibility of the Patriarch's righteousness, he infers the guilt of his children who had perished, and the certainty of his own restoration to happiness (vs. 4-7). In order to maintain the general principle that God never abandons the righteous or gives permanent prosperity to evil-doers, he adduces the authority of ancient and universal tradition, and quotes three similes, or proverbial sayings, of singular beauty. The discourse winds up with an assurance that, notwithstanding Job's belief that he "should no more see good," he would still be happy as well as prosperous, supposing that his confident assertions of integrity and piety are well founded. Cook. 2,3. We thought Job spake a great deal of good sense and much to the purpose, and that he had reason and right on his side; but Bildad, like an eager, angry disputant, turns it all off with this, How long wilt thou speak these things? taking it for granted that Eliphaz had said enough to silence him, and that therefore all he said was impertinent. Thus reproofs are often grounded upon mistakes. Men's meaning is not taken aright, and then they are gravely rebuked as if they were evil-doers. Bildad compares Job's discourse to a strong wind. Job had excused himself with this, that his speeches were but as wind (6:26), and therefore they should not make such ado about them. "Yea, but," says Bildad, "they are as a strong wind, blustering and threatening, boisterous and dangerous, and therefore we are concerned to fence against them." He justifies God in what He had done. This he had no occasion to do at this time, for Job did not condemn God; and this he might have done without reflecting upon Job's children, as he does here. Could not he be an advocate for God, but he must be an accuser of his brethren? 3,4. Job readily owned that God did not pervert judgment; and yet it did not therefore follow either that his children were castaways, or that they died for some great transgression. It is true that we and our children have sinned against God, and we ought to justify Him in all He brings upon us and ours; but extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces; and, in our judgment of another's case (unless the contrary appears), we ought to take the more favorable side, as our Saviour directs (Luke 13:2, 4). Here Bildad missed it. H. More probably v. 4 is complete in itself: If thy children have sinned, so (or, then) he hath, etc. The idea is that evil carries its own retribution with it, and that a sinner is destroyed by the very sin which he commits—a common idea in the book. Though Bildad puts his reference to the children of Job hypothetically, there is great harshness in the allusion, and we may understand how the father would smart under it from his own reference later in the book to the time when his children were yet alive: "When my children were about me." A wiser and more human-hearted Teacher than Bildad has instructed us, from the instances of the affliction of blindness and the accident in the Tower of Siloam, that calamity is no proof of guilt in those on whom it falls, and that evil may serve in the hand of God wider uses than the chastisement of individuals. This is the very lesson of the Book of Job. A. B. D. 5-7. This very accurately describes both Job's attitude toward God and what afterward befell him; only it contemplates Job's approach to God as a return from sin and rebellion rather than as the hunger of an unselfishly righteous heart. We see through it all the irreconcilable difference between the friends' point of view and Job's; the friends reasoning that Job is a leper, and therefore, of course, a sinner; Job asserting, I am a righteous man, and my leprosy is a mystery that I cannot penetrate. Observe that Bildad, like Eliphaz, sets before Job merely a promise of reinstatement, restoration to worldly prosperity. This is all that the friends contemplate, and is their measure of blessing. Job's ideal is much higher, being measured by nothing short of God's presence. J. F. G. 8. Blessed be God, now that we have the word of God in writing, and are directed to search that, we need not inquire of the former age, nor prepare ourselves to the search of their fathers; for the Word of God in the Scripture is as nigh us as them, and it is the more sure Word of prophecy to which we must take heed. If we study and keep God's precepts, we may by them understand more than the ancients (Psalm 119:99, 100). H. 9. The recency of man. In the distant past not a trace of man's presence has been found. He is of yesterday. While the stone volume has preserved for us the slight impressions of the annelid and the foot-trail of perished mollusks in the soft mud over which they crawled; while it has restored to us in perfect shape the delicately constructed, many-lensed eye of the trilobite, and has kept exact record of the death struggles of fishes on the sands of olden seas; while it has delineated on carboniferous columns fern-leaves exquisitely delicate in structure as the finest species of modern times; and while the rain-drops of long bygone ages have left imprints which reveal to us the course which even the wind followed, not a trace of man is visible. Only at the close does he appear; science finds him where the Scriptures placed him, and sees in him the crown which continuous type had long foreshadowed. W. Fraser.—No fact of science is more certainly established than the recency of man in geological time. Not only do we find no trace of his remains in the older geological formations, but we find no remains even of the animals nearest to him; and the conditions of the world in those periods seem to unfit it for the residence of man. If, following the usual geological system, we divide the whole history of the earth into four great periods, extending from the oldest rocks known to us—the Eozoic, or Archean—up to the modern, we find remains of man, or his works, only in the latest of the four, and in the later part of it. In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the presence of man until we reach the early modern period. The absolute date of the first appearance of man cannot, perhaps, be fixed within a few years or centuries, either by the biblical chronology or by the science of the earth. It would seem, however, that the Bible limits us to two or three thousand years before the deluge of Noah, while some estimates of the antiquity of man, based on physical changes or ancient history, or on philology, greatly exceed this limit. If the earliest men were those of the river gravels and caves, men of the “mammoth age,” or of the “palaeolithic” or palaeocosmic period, we can form some definite ideas as to their possible antiquity. They colonized the continents immediately after the elevation of the land from the great subsidence which closed the pleistocene or glacial period, in what has been called the “continental” period of the post-glacial age, because the new lands then raised out of the sea exceeded in extent those which we have now. We have some measures of the date of this great continental elevation. Many years ago, Sir Charles Lyell used the recession of the falls of Niagara as a chronometer. Estimating their cutting power as equal to one foot per annum, he calculated that the beginning of the process which dates from the post-glacial elevation was about thirty thousand years ago. More recent surveys have, however, shown that the rate is three times as great as that estimated by Lyell, and also that it is probable that a considerable part of the gorge was merely cleaned out by the river since the pleistocene age. In this way the age of the Niagara gorge becomes reduced to perhaps seven or eight thousand years. Other indicators of similar bearing are found both in Europe and America, and lead to the belief that it is physically impossible that man could have colonized the northern hemisphere at an earlier date. These facts render necessary an entire revision of the calculations on the growth of stalagmite in caves, and other uncertain data, which have been held to indicate a greater lapse of time. The value of the demands made on other grounds is uncertain and fluctuating. Egyptian chronology is constantly varying as new discoveries are made. Anthropology cannot precisely measure the rapidity of variation in the infancy of mankind, and Hale has recently shown that American facts respecting language prove that it may vary much more rapidly than has heretofore been supposed. It is further to be observed that these demands for long time relate to the post-diluvian period, about which there is a consensus of historical evidences limiting it to at most 3000 n.c., and that there is no geological evidence of any considerable change, either physical or vital, within that time. It is true that announcements have been made from time to time of the discovery of remains indicating the existence of man in deposits as old as the miocene period; but these alleged facts have broken down on investigation, so that no certainty can be attached to them. Nor have we discovered in the tertiary formations older than the modern or later pleistocene any animals nearly related to man which might be regarded as his precursors. To this recency of man we have to add the further fact that the earliest known men are still members of the human species, not exceeding in their variation the limits presented by the various races of men in the present day. Nor do the bones or the works of the earliest men present any approximation to those of lower animals. In physical development and cranial capacity, the oldest men are on a par with those who have succeeded them, and, in some respects, superior to the average. There is, however, evidence of the contemporaneous existence of very rude and savage tribes with others of higher culture and development, which is also affirmed of the antediluvians in Genesis. J. W. Dawson. 10. Words out of their heart. Words, not the result of hasty and superficial generalizing, but of an experience which the lengthened lives of these men had enabled them to pass through, and the principles learned in which had sunk into their heart. The “heart” is in Hebrew the deepest part of human nature, whether intellect or feeling. 11-13. The moral maxims of the ancient time are thrown into gorgeous similes drawn from the rank and luxuriant vegetation of the swamps and river brakes of the semi-tropical East. The downfall of the wicked when God turns away from him is as rapid and complete as the sinking and withering of the stately reed when water is withdrawn from it. A. B. D. 13. The correct translation, "godless man," for "hypocrite," is important. So 13:16; 20:5; 27:8; 34:30; 36:13. It is unquestionable that in all these places there is no reference to hypocrisy. De Witt. 14. Like the spider, the self-righteous man weaves his web, his hope, his trust, out of his own bowels. It is the creature of his fancy, spun from the materials of self-righteousness. He may call it a garment to hide his shame, but it is a mere web, unfit to cover a naked soul, and easily rent. He may call it a house, but it is unavailable to "hide from the storm, or cover from the tempest." He may hold fast by it, but it shall fall, and he perish in the ruins. There is, there can be, no shelter, safety, nor security in the cobweb of self-righteousness. If not stripped off in the world, it will be swept away by the first breath of eternity. Anon. 15. What more beautiful than those threads thrown from branch to branch of the golden gorse—an aerial bridge—all gemmed with diamonds of morning dew? But would any man in his senses trust his weight to it? Equally insecure are the hopes of the unbelieving and ungodly, "whose hope," to use the words of Job, "shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure." Guthrie.—His vain confidence will easily and certainly be swept away, as the cobweb with the besom, when God shall come to purge his house. The prosperity of worldly people will fail them when they expect to find safety and happiness in it. When a wicked man dies, his expectation perishes. The ground of his hopes will prove false; he will be disappointed of the thing he hoped for, and his foolish hope, with which he buoyed himself up, will be turned into endless despair; and thus his hope will be cut off, his web, that refuge of lies, swept away, and he crushed in it. H. 16-18. The godless man was first compared to a rush, secondly to a spider's web, but now to a plant or tree. This third similitude puts him in the fairest posture that can be imagined, and yet all proves nought; his branches shall be cut down, and his root stubbed up. Caryl.—The profession and the power of godliness differ, as leaves on a tree and good fruit; a tree that hath fruit will usually have leaves; a man that hath the power will usually have a form of godliness; but as some trees, as the ivy, are never without leaves, yet never bear good fruit while they live, so many profess Christ all their days who never bring forth fruit worthy of repentance and amendment of life Some defy the devil with their lips who deify him in their lives. Swinnock. They have the semblance of godliness, but not the substance; they have the lineaments of godliness, but not the life; they have the face of godliness, but not the heart; they have the form, but not the power. They are like a well-drawn picture which hath all the likeness of a man, but wants the principle of motion and operation. T. Brooks.—It is a ridiculous thing, and fit for satire to persons of judgment, to see what shifts formalists have, and what prospectives to make superficies seem a body that hath depth and bulk. Bacon. 20-22. Bildad here, in the close of his discourse, sums up what he had to say in a few words, setting before Job the blessing and the curse; assuring him that as he was, so he should fare, and therefore they might conclude that as he fared, so he was. Yet to argue (as Bildad does) that because Job's family was sunk, and he himself at present seemed helpless, therefore he certainly was an ungodly, wicked man, was neither just nor charitable as long as there appeared no other evidence of his wickedness and ungodliness. Let us judge nothing before the time, but wait till the secrets of all hearts shall be made manifest, and the present difficulties of Providence be solved to universal and everlasting satisfaction, when the mystery of God shall be finished. H. Bildad, still further than Eliphaz from weakening the erroneous supposition of a hostile God which had taken possession of Job's mind, represents God's justice, to which he attributes the death of his children, instead of His love, as the hand under which Job is to humble himself. Thereby the comfort which Job's friend offers to him becomes a torture, and his trial is made still greater; for his conscience does not accuse him of any sins for which he should now have an angry instead of a gracious God. Delitzsch.—From the very beginning there is an evidence of harshness of judgment, first pronounced against Job's children, in the formally hypothetical but nevertheless real assumption that their sudden death was the consequence of their sin, the merited punishment of their crime. At the bottom of this judgment there lies, unquestionably, a one-sidedly harsh, gross, and external representation of the nature and operation of God's retributive justice. Zöckler. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2. Of a truth I know that it is so : But how can man be just with God ? 3. If he be pleased to contend with him, He cannot answer him one of a thousand. 4. He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength : Who hath hardened himself against him, and prospered ? 5. Which removeth the mountains, and they know it not, When he overturneth them in his anger. 6. Which shaketh the earth out of her place, And the pillars thereof tremble. 7. Which commaadeth the sun, and it riseth not ; And sealeth up the stars. 8. Which alone stretcheth out the heavens, And treadeth upon the waves of the sea. 9. Which maketh the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south. 10. Which doeth great things past finding out ; Yea, marvellous things without number. 11. Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not : He passeth on also, but I perceive him not. 12. Behold, he seizeth the prey, who can hinder him ? Who will say unto him, What doest thou ? 13. God will not withdraw his anger ; The helpers of Rahab do stoop under him. 14. How much less shall I answer him, And choose out my words to reason with him ? 15. Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer ; I would make supplication to mine adversary. 16. If I had called, and he had answered me : Yet would I not believe that he hearkened unto my voice. 17. For he [or, he who] breaketh me with a tem- pest, And multiplieth my wounds without cause. 18. He will not suffer me to take my breath, But filleth me with bitterness. Chap. 9. Starting with the question, How can man substantiate his innocence in the face of God's overpowering might (vs. 2, 3), Job passes on to a delineation of this Divine power, which he conceives as a terrible, irresistible Force, which moves mountains and shifts the earth from its place ; which dictates to the sun that he shine not ; which made the mighty con- 19. If we speak of strength, lo, he is mighty ! And if of judgment, who will appoint me a time ? [or, Lo, here am I, saith he ; and if of judgment, who, etc.] 20. Though I be righteous, mine own mouth shall condemn me : Though I be perfect, it shall prove me per- verse. 21. Though I be perfect, I will not regard my- self ; I despise my life. 22. It is all one ; therefore I say, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. 23. If the scourge slay suddenly, He will mock at the trial of the innocent. 24. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked : He covereth the faces of the judges thereof ; If it be not he, who then is it ? 25. Now my days are swifter than a post . They flee away, they see no good. 26. They are passed away as the swift ships : As the eagle that swoopeth on the prey. 27. If I say, I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad countenance, and be of good cheer : 28. I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou wilt not hold me inno- cent. 29. I shall be condemned ; Why then do I labour in vain ? 30. If I wash myself with snow water, And make my hands never so clean ; 31. Yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, And mine own clothes shall abhor me. 32. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, That we should come together in judgment. 33. There is no daysman betwixt us, That might lay his hand upon us both. 34. Let him take his rod away from me, And let not his terror make me afraid : 35. Then would I speak, and not fear him ; For I am not so in myself. stellations of the sky, and whose workings are beyond the compass of the human mind to grasp (vs. 4-10). Then, passing from the material world to creatures, he imagines this Power com- ing, say, upon himself unseen, beyond intelli- gence (v. 11), irresistible, irresponsible (v. 12), and cites as an instance good for all the memorable defeat of the abettors of Rahab, the helpers of Rahab succumbed to him, how then should I answer him? (vs. 13, 14.) What Job describes is a meeting of God and man, that the latter may uphold his innocence against Him, or perhaps any meeting of God and man; and such a meeting has Job to face in the attempt to establish his innocence. He must be overpowered and fail though guiltless—if I were innocent I could not assert my innocence, I must fall down and supplicate my omnipotent Opponent (v. 15). This feeling of helplessness before a crushing power altogether overmasters Job and rouses him to a recklessness which is that of despair, and going back upon his words, if I were innocent, he cries, I am innocent, innocent and guilty He destroys alike; the earth is given into the hands of the wicked, He covers the faces of the judges thereof—if it is not He, who then is it? (vs. 16-24). But now, the paroxysm being over, Job proceeds more calmly to speak of his own condition, which is but an illustration of what is everywhere seen, but sorrow and perplexity now prevail over indignation. He describes the pitiful brevity of his life (vs. 25, 26). And with a touching pathos he tells how he sometimes resolves to leave off his sad countenance and brighten up, but the thought that God has resolved not to hold him innocent again crushes him, he has to be guilty, and all his efforts to show himself to be clear are vain (vs. 27-31). And he rounds off his speech with a reference to that with which he began, the central difficulty: God is not a man that man might answer Him; there is no umpire between Him and man to impose his authority on both; but if He would lift His afflicting rod from Job and not afflight him with His majesty, he would speak without fear, for his conscience is void of offence (vs. 32-35). A. B. D. Job's reply to Bildad is in terms more quiet than his previous utterances, but there is the same spirit essentially at work, which at length brings him to the point of condemning God that he may justify himself. Though fully conscious of his integrity—though he feels that the sins for which his friends deem him to be punished cannot be laid to his charge, yet what would it avail him to contest the matter with One so high and so wise; and since God has, by this visitation of His judgment, passed, as his friends allege, sentence upon him, he could not dispute it with any effect. Job's answer, therefore, as a whole, although it finely sets forth the power and majesty of God, is still censurable, as it implies that the question between the afflicted and the Lord of providence is not one of right, but of might. It seems to us that Job has by this time been so far touched by the arguments of his friends as to conceive that the rule of Divine government may indeed be such as they describe—that the Lord has, in fact, countersigned their judgment upon him; but as he is still unconscious, somewhat self-righteously unconscious, of any cause in his conduct for this judgment upon him, he inclines to regard it as an act of arbitrary power, if not of oppression, to which certainly he has not yet brought himself to submit with unmurmuring acquiescence. It has been alleged that there are apparent inconsistencies in the language of Job, on this and other occasions. But the answer is, that he is represented as torn by contending emotions. Fear and hope, despair and confidence, the spirit of submission and of bold complaint, by turns have possession of his mind, and as either predominates it gives a character to his language. Truth, in the exhibition of opposite feelings and passions, requires some inconsistencies in language and sentiment. Yet, perhaps, more inconsistency has been found than really exists. Here, for instance, he begins by acknowledging that no man can be just with God, yet ends by protesting his innocence. Here is an apparent but no real inconsistency. He knows that he is not free from sin, but he contends that he is innocent of the secret crime charged against him by his friends—that he is free from the uncommon guilt which, as they suspect, can alone account for the uncommon judgments which have befallen him. Kitto. 2. Job agrees with Bildad in his principle, that God never perverts judgment. 'It is so of a truth, that wickedness brings men to ruin, and the godly are taken under God's special protection. These are truths which I subscribe to; but how can any man make good his part with God?' In His sight shall no flesh living be justified (Psalm 143:2). How should man be just with God? H.—The question here asked is the most important ever propounded by man: 'How shall sinful man be regarded and treated as righteous by his Maker?' Man is conscious that he is a sinner. He feels that he must be regarded as such by God. Yet his happiness here and hereafter, his peace and his hope, depend on his being treated as if he were righteous, or regarded as just before God. This inquiry has led to all forms of religion among men; and it has never been satisfactorily answered except in the Christian revelation, where a way is disclosed by which God 'may be just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth.' The question asked by Job implies that such is the evidence and the extent of human guilt that man can never justify himself. This is clear and indisputable. Man cannot justify himself by the deeds of the law, and he can be justified only by that system which God has revealed in the Gospel, where a conscious sinner may be treated as if he were righteous through the merits of another. Barnes. Perhaps in nothing else does the human mind realize the personality of God so vividly as in suffering the mordant stings of conscience when in bondage to remorse. We cannot feel guilty for having violated an impersonal law. What is impersonal law to me more than any other dead thing? This living soul of mine is its superior. It is God, the infinite and holy Person, against whom sin seems to have been flung in insult. That which seemed but an error at first, deepens into an outrage. Toward this outraged God it is that sorrow wells up from the broken spirit. Not law, but the Law-giver, is then the only thing in the universe with which the guilty one has to do. The great unanswered question of the ages, "How shall man be just with God?" looms up as the only question in the universe that needs an answer. A. Phelps. —One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, and rises to view on every page—this recurring theme, toward which all instructions and histories tend, is the great and anxious question of condemnation or acquittal at the bar of God, when the irreversible sentence shall come to be pronounced. "How shall man be just with God?" is the inquiry, ever and again urged upon the conscience of him who reads the Bible with a humble and teachable desire to find therein the way of life. In subserviency to this leading intention the themes which run through the sacred writings, and which distinguish those writings by an immense dissimilarity from all the remains of polytheistic literature, are those of guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and affectionate obedience. And, moreover, in conformity with this same intention the Divine Being is revealed—if not exclusively, yet chiefly, as the party in the great controversy which sin has occasioned. The intercourse, therefore, which is opened between heaven and earth is almost confined to the momentous transactions of reconciliation and renewed friendship. When the Hearer of prayer invites interlocution with man, it is not, as perhaps in Eden, for the purposes of free and discursive converse, but for conference on a special business. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Almighty; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." I. T. God's government must be absolutely perfect, or it is no government at all. The slightest imperfection would be as really fatal to its stability as the gravest fault. The only hold which it has upon the blessed angel lies in its spotless purity. This is a point which short-sighted man is very apt to overlook or deny. "Why cannot I be saved on the mere ground of my sincere repentance? Why the need of this complicated and unintelligible doctrine of the Atonement?" For the reason that your happiness and that of every other created being are bound up in the maintenance of God's attributes untarnished, in the preservation of perfect order in His kingdom. What could you do if you could not bow down before God with the deepest reverence? The paying of this homage is essential to your happiness. Yet you could not do this if you had the least suspicion that He had failed to perform His word. Now, He would fail to perform it most notoriously if He did not punish sin—or, in other words, if He should admit sinners into His favor, on the mere ground that they were sorry for their offence. There is no deep mystery here. It is one of the plainest things which can be stated to a reasonable being. Now, redeeming love, while it accomplishes its specific work, not only does no dishonor to the character of God, but sheds a brighter lustre upon it. Instead of violating the sanctity of the Divine law, it places its perfection in new lights. Instead of endangering the loyalty of the pure spirits in heaven, it calls forth fresh songs of admiration and praise. While ample provision is made for the recovery of man, new reasons are seen for worshipping the Almighty, and for rejoicing that man was made in the Divine image. B. B. E. "The Word made flesh" is the revealed solution of the difficulty. It is the story of the Son of God, clothed in our nature, tabernacling in the world. It is the tale of His life of suffering and His death of agony. It is human nature, illustrating by a course of unswerving obedience and spotless innocence the excellence, and so magnifying the righteousness of the broken law. It is the picture of "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." It carries us with Him every step of a painful pilgrimage. It shows Him to us as He struggles in the garden with His anticipations of coming woe, as He agonizes on the cross, carrying on there a mysterious conflict and enduring an incomprehensible anguish, and expiring amid the throes of convulsive pain with which all nature sympathized. We feel, while we read the tale, that we are communing with a singular being; singular in the constitution of His person as harmonizing and embracing the Divine and the human; singular in all His experience, singular in His conflicts, and singular in His death; and while we study the exhibition we are told that in view of it God can be just and yet forgive; that on the ground of the doing and the suffering of Jesus Christ pardon, full and free, may be extended to sin, to any sin, to all sin. This is the simple narrative, the answer which the Bible gives to the question, "Can a man be just with God?" E. Mason. 3. If a man should wish to plead his own cause he will not be able to meet one out of a thousand charges which infinite wisdom might adduce, and infinite power would punish. Job thus admits a relative and inherent injustice or sinfulness in himself, but only that which he has in common with his fellow men, thereby answering the insinuations of his false friends, and in reality vindicating himself from the charge of special guilt, supposed to be brought to light and demonstrated by his terrible punishment. Cook.—How shall he be justified by his works who hath not one perfectly good action among a thousand sins? He that would be justified by his works must not have one ill action among all his actions. One fly in the box of ointment corrupts all; one defect makes a sinner, but many good actions cannot make one righteous. Caryl. 4. Who hath hardened himself and prospered? No human soul is ever in exactly the same state or on the same plane after the truth is heard—better or worse, softer or harder, higher or lower, always. There is a hardening process which is involuntary, and which consists simply in the repetition of the same impression. To handle tools makes a callous hand; no event, however startling, could impress us a second time as it did the first; and so by handling truth carelessly we get callous of mind, and an unheeded warning or invitation of Providence or grace can never arouse us a second time as it did at first. No spiritual impression can ever repeat itself in the same form or by the same means. A conviction resisted becomes ultimately a conviction lost; a heart refusing to respond to love becomes at last insensible to love; a conscience disobeyed becomes by and by silent; a will choosing evil becomes finally incapable of any other choice. This is the law of involuntary and perhaps unconscious hardening. There is also a voluntary process of hardening. We may cultivate insensibility to want and woe—wilfully resist the truth, shut our eyes to light and turn the very message of life into a sentence of death. We may buy the "marble heart" if we will, and buy it cheap. We may sear conscience as with a hot iron, and it will cost but little pain to make it painless. A. T. Pierson. 5-13. In this grand description of God's majesty Job's immediate object is to establish the utter hopelessness of attempts to explain and vindicate His ways. Cook.—When Job has occasion to mention the wisdom and power of God he forgets his complaints, dwells with delight and expatiates with a flood of eloquence upon that noble subject. H. 8. It is of the greatest consequence that such a being as God should have images prepared to express Him and set Him before the mind of man in all the grandeur of His attributes. These He has provided in the heavens and the sea, which are the two great images of His vastness and power; the one remote, addressing itself to cultivated reason and science; the other nigh to mere sense, and physically efficient, a liquid symbol of the infinitude of God. Every kind of vastness—immensity, infinity, eternity, mystery, omnipotence—has its type in the sea. H. B. Who alone stretcheth out the heavens. Outside our solar system there are constellations where every luminous point may be, and probably is, the centre of a system of its own, filled with vast and varied being. Beyond these visible stars, which seem like the first milestones in trackless space, there is the faint light called the Milky Way, which, by the aid of the telescope, can be resolved into masses of stars so distant from us that a ray of light from them would require thousands of years to reach us. The Milky Way is with good reason supposed to be the outer bound of that great stellary congregation to which all the visible stars belong, including our own sun. But in the depths of space, immeasurably beyond the Milky Way, there are systems and groups of systems as large as or larger than the whole field of creation already noticed. Our own galaxy is but a unit among many more. Beyond it there are others so distant that, as Sir John Herschel states, "the rays of light from some remoter nebulæ must have been two millions of years on their way." In the presence of such conceptions thought is powerless. If we can realize all this as the product of one mind, how does it magnify our idea of it! How great the Being who not only comprehends all these worlds at a glance, but who made them, sustains them, and more than 62. fills them! "Behold the heaven, and heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee." Ker. 9. When he saith, "which maketh the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades," Job means, which makes them appear or do their office; for the discourse is not about Creation, but about Providence; so that the meaning is only this, God orders the times of their rising and setting to distinguish the seasons of the year, and to produce their several effects in every season. Caryl. —He ordereth and disposeth them, as the word "maketh" is sometimes used in Scripture. Poole. — The names Arcturus, Orion and Pleiades are of late invention in comparison with the Hebrew Ash, Cesil and Cimah. What is here intended is to point out to us that all the constellations of heaven obey God in their several seasons. To the same purpose is that which venerable Bede delivers in his comment on this text: "By these constellations, which are more celebrated than almost all the stars in the firmament of heaven, it is signified that the whole system of the heavenly bodies is under the governance of God." Chappelow. 9,10. The limit of the star-depths has not yet been found; no one has "stretched the line upon it." But men have climbed out eagerly upon the farthest stars to get shadows and angles of measurement beyond. Thus far, however, a dim haze in the constellation of Orion seems to mark the outer rim of the visible universe. So distant is it that its light is thought to require at least fifty thousand years to reach us. Mean-time our sun has been discovered to be moving through space with the system of which our earth is one, and according to all analogy is believed to be making a "circuit" in the heaven, as David described it in the nineteenth Psalm. But about what centre? for that centre, when found, would seem the centre of all worlds. The independent studies of the German Mädler converging upon Alcyone, the brightest of the Pleiades, he has with great skill maintained that the pivot of the universe is there. As this conclusion has not been shown incredible, and as no other definite opinion has been ventured, it seems reasonable to say that the best astronomic conjecture of to-day would, to measure the visible universe, set its centre in the Pleiades, and stretching a radius to Orion, swing round through that the outer circle of the worlds. But in so doing the astronomer points us back to the words of Him who "answered Job out of the whirlwind," who, emphasizing the depth of Divine mystery and the range of Divine omnipotence, blends with the question, "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?" the challenge, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" If, indeed, the Pleiades be at the centre, and Orion at the outer rim of stellar space (and it is curious that the term translated "Pleiades" means in Chaldaic "the pivot," and that "Orion" means in Greek "the border," or "bound"), how better than in these words could the science of today express the range of Omnipotence! But our growing knowledge assures us that the absolute limits have not yet been reached, nor the contents even of the near world measured. The stars within the range of natural vision must always have seemed easily numerable, being not more than 1500 in any hemisphere. The famous catalogue of Hipparchus found 1022 the limit. But under the telescopic eye they swarm in increasing myriads, so that, as Herschel says, they lie upon the heavens like "glittering dust." Professor Nichol says of the distant nebula of Orion, long thought to be unresolvable: "It would seem that if all other clusters hitherto gauged were collected and compressed into one, they would not surpass this mighty group, in which every wisp, every wrinkle is a sand heap of stars." The dust of the earth, the sand of the sea thus alone seem adequate to symbolize the innumerable host of heaven now brought to view. And as deeper vision breaks up nebulae into stars, rank after rank of new worlds wheeling into view, but brings new nebulae again, we pause bewildered, as in presence of the Infinite. When we are further told that even with telescopic help we never see the body of the stars, but only their light—that so limited are our faculties at the best that, according to Professor Tyndall, two thirds of the sun rays are lost to us, because they fail to enter the channel of vision—and that, according to Professor Huxley, "the noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due to the dulness of our hearing," and could we catch the "murmurs of these tiny maelstroms" (the life movements in the cells of the trees), "we should be stunned as with the rear of a great city"—do we not recognize the thought of Job, as rendered in Dr. Conant's excellent version, "Who doeth great things, unsearchable; things wonderful, without number." J. B. Thomas. 10. Marvellous things without number. On the earth we find things mysteriously small; in the heavens things mysteriously large. Here we have not merely inanimate atoms that are inconceivably minute, but also living beings furnished with all the organs of sense in the highest perfection, and yet barely visible as so organized under a microscope magnifying two hundred and fifty thousand times. And how far may even these living infinitesimals be from the last minims of animated nature! On the other hand, peering up through the night, we discover a world to which our earth is almost a nothing—twelve thousand million times greater—also a system of worlds within which could be packed away, at average star-distances from one another, the cube of that number of such spheres—nay, a system that actually embraces within its glorious rotund the whole materialism and spiritualism of the universe. . . . When the motion of spheres revolving in orbits about their common centre of gravity is seen to be incessant as well as universal; when it means the transfer through space of huge worlds and huger systems of worlds at the rate of 50,000 and even 1,200,000 miles an hour; where such a motion as this is combined with a thousand other motions woven together inextricably and yet never interfering with one another and separately calculable—as when a moon moves on its axis, also around its planet, also around the sun, also around the sun's centre of revolution, and so on indefinitely; when each of these motions has superimposed on itself myriads of other motions called perturbations, struggling toward all points of the compass, we find ourselves as much lost in this vast wilderness of motions as ever was traveller in new lands or babes in a wood. So many questions can be asked about them that science cannot answer, nor hope to answer. What endless mazes! How the shuttles fly through the heavens in all directions, weaving out, we know not how, law and order and stability! Who can disentangle the threads that make up the wondrous web? Astronomy is helpless and hopeless in the presence of such labyrinths. Burr. The telescope reveals a system in every star. The microscope discloses a world in every atom. The one announces that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field of immensity. The other teaches me that every grain of sand may harbor within it the tribes and the families of a busy population. The one declares the insignificance of the world I tread upon. The other redeems it from all its insignificance; for it tells me that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firmament. The one suggests that beyond and above all that is visible to man there may lie fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along and carry the impress of the Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes of the universe. The other suggests that within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore there may be a region of invisibles; and that, could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we might there see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within the compass of a point so small as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but where the wonder-working God finds room for the exercise of all His attributes, where He can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidences of His glory. Then I can no longer resist the conclusion that it would be a transgression of sound argument, as well as a daring of impiety, to draw a limit around the doings of this unsearchable God; and should a professed revelation from heaven tell me of an act of condescension in behalf of some separate world, so wonderful that angels desired to look into it, and the eternal Son had to move from His seat of glory to carry it into accomplishment, all I ask is the evidence of such a revelation; for, let it tell me as much as it may of God letting Himself down for the benefit of one single province of His dominions, this is no more than what I see lying scattered in numberless examples before me, and meeting me in every walk of observation; and now that the microscope has unveiled the wonders of another region, I see strewed around me, with a profusion which baffles my every attempt to comprehend it, the evidence that there is no one portion of the universe of God too minute for His notice nor too humble for the visitations of His care. T. C. 14. Much less shall I. If all powers of earth and heaven are unable to stand against Him, how then could I? 15. My adversary, the person who contends with me in judgment. Job means that, were he conscious of perfect innocence, the might and wisdom of his adversary would leave him no option but supplication. Cook.—Though he vindicated his own integrity to his friends, and would not yield that he was a hypocrite and a wicked man, as they suggested, yet he would never plead it as his righteousness before God. I will never venture upon the covenant of innocency, nor think to come off by virtue of that. Job knew so much of God, and knew so much of himself, that he durst not insist upon his own justification before God. H. 16. The meaning of this verse is: If God really answered my appeal and permitted me to stand at the bar and plead my cause against Him, I could not rely upon His hearing me; for that would involve an inconceivable condescension. Job, it must be noted, does not either renounce God or his own integrity, but he trenches on the grievous sin of imputing to Him a real disregard of justice. Such words must not be taken as a deliberate conclusion, but partly as the wanderings of a maddened and embittered spirit, partly as the struggles of a perplexed mind. 17. For. Literally, Who; but our translation preserves the sense. Job argues that God would not hearken to his supplication from the fact that He now pursues him with unceasing calamities. Cook.—Without cause. Without any extraordinary guilt which should procure such punishment. Clark.—Without cause. This consideration defines Job's issue with the friends; and we, who know the Prologue, know that Job, on God's own confession, has pronounced truly. This is no plea of sinlessness; Job would not make such a plea; but a complaint of multiplied wounds—punishment far beyond its desert. All sense of proportion between desert and punishment is lost in this experience. J. F. G. 17,18. Here, no doubt, he spake unadvisedly with his lips; he reflected on God's goodness in saying that he was not suffered to take his breath, while yet he had such good use of his reason and speech as to be able to talk thus; and on His justice in saying that it was without cause. Yet it is true that, as there are many who are chargeable with more sin than the common infirmities of human nature, and yet feel no more sorrow than that of the common calamities of human life; so there are many who feel more than the common calamities of human life, and yet are conscious to themselves of no more than the common infirmities of human nature. H. Job's fundamental position is thoroughly false—that God is merciless, disposing of men in sheer arbitrary exercise of power, irrespective of all human worthiness or unworthiness. Could he have looked into that council chamber of heaven, he would have learned how God delights in the way of an upright man, and honors all sincere efforts to serve Him. He would have seen himself not as a victim of righteous retribution, but as a witness for God, by whom God would prove that He could inspire a character which would serve Him for nought. V. 20-24. These verses assert a great truth, but in a spirit which makes it a virtual untruth. From the certain truth that all men are guilty in God's sight, equally unable to resist His power or to sustain His judgment, Job draws the false inference that they are all involved in one condemnation, those who in a true though relative sense are perfect, and those who are altogether wicked. Cook. 20. Though I be perfect, it shall prove me perverse. Observe hence that famous Gospel doctrine, No man can be justified before God by the works of the law. It is as noble a proof of free justification in the Old Testament as any in the New. Caryl.—Mine own mouth shall condemn me. Has the outside world been entirely fair and just in its judgments of the Church? Has it not judged Christianity by imperfect disciples, and has it not condemned these imperfect disciples because they are not what they never pretended to be? Has it not criticised half-finished work, and condemned, not only the work, but Christianity itself, because this work was not up to the sample? It is very common to hear men say that such and such a Christian is no better than the average of people outside of the Christian Church, thus condemning the genuineness of his character because he is not a perfect Christian. As Christians cannot by any possibility be perfected on the instant, the large majority must be in various stages of progress—nay, most of this large majority are not even half finished. The Christian Church itself is a piece of unfinished work, and every individual member is the same. I never knew a Christian to set himself up as a pattern. So far as I know they are very shy of pretension, and deprecate nothing more than the thought that anybody should take them for finished specimens of the work of Christianity in human life and character. J. G. Holland. 23,24. He will mock at the trial of the innocent. A fearful arraignment of the Divine government in two distinct counts: (1) If, in the course of affairs, the scourge slay the innocent, instead of saving or even pitying them He (God) laughs at their sufferings; and (2) instead of overthrowing and punishing the wicked, He gives the earth into their hands, while the judges themselves, by whom a better judgment should be meted out, are blinded so that they cannot administer justly. Curry. 23. He charges God with mocking at their perplexity, the temptation which besets them to question His goodness and wisdom. Jerome says truly: "There is in the whole book nothing harsher than this;" it is a Titanic outbreak of unutterable woe. 24. He covereth. So that they cannot discern between good and evil; the wrong is not merely committed with impunity, but altogether escapes the notice of those whose duty it is to administer justice. The second clause should be rendered: If it be not He, who then is it? Cook.—If God does not do that—well, then, who is it? Can it be denied this puzzling, shocking phenomenon must ultimately come from Him? Ewald.—Others besides Job have asked such questions. A. B. D. The very confusions that are in the world are an argument for the power of God; for, seeing the world continue in the midst of such confusions, it shows there is a mighty power balancing those confusions so exactly that they cannot ruin the world. If there were not an overruling power in God, wicked men ruling would soon ruin all. There are mysteries of providence as well as of faith, and many are as much troubled to interpret what God doeth as what He hath spoken. Caryl. In this passage Job's spirit reaches the lowest abyss of its alienation from God. From this time onward his mind is calmer, and the moral idea of God begins to reassert its place in his thoughts. Here God appears to him as a mere omnipotent power, with a bias, if He have one, to evil and cruelty, and he speaks of Him distantly as "He." His conception is but the reflection of his own case, as he conceived it, flung over the world, though his conception of his own case was false. In these verses Job traverses directly the maxim of his friends in regard to the discriminating righteousness of God, and the examples which he cites he might have used to demolish their theory. But he is little concerned with their theory here; later he does use his examples to drive them from the field. But here he is occupied with himself, with the impossibility of making his innocence, which he is conscious of, to appear and be admitted; for, of course, to himself and to all others his afflictions were the testimony of God to his guilt. And thus, though in the last verses his view extends to the world in general, he comes back in v. 25 to himself. A. B. D. 25-35. The rapidity with which life fleets away, and the greatness of his sorrows, make it impossible for Job to accept consolation; while the certainty of his condemnation, should he appeal for justice, makes expostulation or defence utterly useless; what he needs is an umpire, a daysman, standing between him and God, and a cessation of the infliction and terrors of Divine wrath; then he might plead his cause without fear of the result. Thus in the very depth of misery there comes (not, indeed, a hope, but) an aspiration for a Mediator. Cook. 25,26. Schultens very ingeniously suggests that Job compares the days of his prosperity in three several degrees with what we esteem the swiftest in the three elements—namely, with the quick despatches of the post by land; with the more expeditious motion of papyr-vessels by sea; and, which exceeds them both for swiftness, with the flight of the eagle in the air to his prey. Chappdow.—Swifter than a post. We must not think of any organized plan for the regular transmission of letters, but simply of the speed with which a courier charged with a special message, oral or written, travels. We suppose that Job had in view the speed of a man mounted on a swift dromedary—the animal usually employed in the regions where Job dwelt. Kitto.—How swift the motion of time!—it is always upon the wing, hastening to its period; it stays for no man. What little need have we of pastimes, and what great need to redeem time, when time runs on so fast toward eternity, which comes as time goes! 27,28. It is easy to preach patience to those that are in trouble, and to tell them they must forget their complaints and comfort themselves; but it is not so soon done as said. Fear and sorrow are tyrannizing things, not easily brought into the subjection they ought to be kept in to religion and right reason. H. 29. He forms for himself a gloomy, horrible representation of a God of absolute power, who rules and directs not according to objective standards of right, but according to the promptings of an arbitrary will subject to no restraint. It is the “just God” absolutely, in essence disjoined from all kindness and love, disposing of the destinies of men in accordance with an unconditional arbitrary decree, irrespective of all moral worthiness or unworthiness; such is the Being whom Job here delineates, and before whose hostile assaults on his person, guiltless as he knows himself to be, he recoils in shuddering anguish. Zöckler.—But his complaint of God as implacable and inexorable was by no means to be excused. It was the language of his corruption. He knew better things, and at another time would have been far from harboring any such hard thoughts of God as now broke in upon his spirit, and broke out in these passionate complaints. Good men do not always speak like themselves; but God considers their frame and the strength of their temptations; gives them leave afterward to unsay it by repentance, and will not lay it to their charge. H. 30. The thought suggested is that Job could really clear himself of guilt, but that his justification would be useless; it would not stand God's judgment. In this, as throughout the passage, there is the recognition of a real and universal truth, but partially understood, and perverted by natural passion and infirmity. Job has a right, so far as regards his friends, to maintain his integrity; on the other hand, he is right in believing that no human being can be held innocent in God's sight; but the former conviction is bound up with feelings which need chastening, the latter leads him to the inference that moral differences are disregarded by the Almighty. Cook. 30,31. These words are capable of a good construction. If we be ever so industrious to justify ourselves before men and to preserve our credit with them, if we keep our hands ever so clean from the pollutions of gross sin which fall under the eye of the world; yet God, who knows our hearts, can charge us with so much secret sin as will forever take off all our pretensions to purity and innocency, and make us see ourselves odious in the sight of the holy God. Paul, while a Pharisee, made his hands very clean; but when the commandment came and discovered to him his heart-sins, that plunged him in the ditch. H. 32-34. The preceding verses described how unavailing all Job's efforts were to make out his innocence in the face of the fixed resolution of God to hold him guilty. Now Job comes back to what is the real difficulty—God is not a man like himself. A. B. D.—Take Job's view of God, as the magnificent words (vs. 5-12) describe Him, overturning the mountains, shaking the earth, scaling the stars, striding upon the heights of the sea, and bringing this tremendous energy to bear in afflicting a poor, weak son of man, and do you wonder that he cried out for some one to stand between him and that awful power and holiness? V. 32. He is not a man, like me; this characteristic of God, removing Him from all human standards and conceptions, and making justice and mercy as between God and man mere empty names, is the ultimate root of Job's problem. His deeply felt need, which his unexplained punishment makes palpable, is that God should be like man—that there should be some common ground of understanding between them. Thus his outreach from the depths is Messianic. 33. Nor is there any Daysman—only a negative assertion this, but noteworthy as suggesting what would solve his problem if only it were true, and especially noteworthy as originating with the human, with Job. And though only negative, yet it is to him such a fascinating idea that he broods upon it, and turns it over in his mind, and finally comes to believe and assert it. J. F. G. Daysman. Or umpire. In some of the northern parts of England, any arbitrator, umpire, or elected judge is commonly termed a diesman or daysman. The word "day" in all idioms signifies judgment. Hammond.— That might lay his hand upon us both. "The laying the hand, like a just umpire, on both parties," implies a coercive power to enforce the execution of his decrees; this no one could have on the Almighty; it was therefore vain to contend with Him. Scott.—There is no prophecy of the Incarnation in these verses. But there is a cry of the human heart amidst its troubles that it might meet and see God as a man. Then man's relation to Him might be understood and adjusted. That the cry is uttered under a misconception of God and of the meaning of His providence does not make the expression of man's need any the less real or touching, for in our great darkness here misconceptions of God prevail so much over true conceptions of Him. A. B. D. This complaint that there was not any daysman is, in effect, a wish that there were, and so the LXX read it: Oh, that there were a mediator between us! Job would gladly refer the matter, but no creature was capable of being a referee, and therefore he must even refer it still to God Himself, and resolve to acquiesce in His judgment. Our Lord Jesus is the blessed Daysman, who has mediated between heaven and earth, has laid His hand upon us both; to Him the Father has committed all judgment, and we must; but this matter was not then brought to so clear a light as it is now by the Gospel, which leaves no room for such a complaint as this. H.—There is, indeed, a Daysman betwixt God and man, but God Himself hath appointed Him. His own good-will and free grace moving Him thereunto, He stands engaged in the bonds of everlasting truth and faithfulness to perform what Jesus Christ, as Mediator, should ask for us. Unto Him we may safely commit our cause and our souls with that assurance of the apostle, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." Christ, God-man, is umpire between God and man. What we trust Him with shall not miscarry; He will make our cause good and our persons acceptable before God in that great day. Caryl. Job simply tells over again the old, old story of the human heart : God is so remote, His majesty and power so transcendent, that direct approach to Him is impossible unless in something or some one the two lives and the two conditions meet and blend, so that a daysman may stand between, with one hand on weak, ignorant man, and the other touching the Divine throne itself and interpreting the one life to the other. This demand for a mediator is backed and urged by two great interlinked facts—sin and suffering. . . . Christ steps forth from the darkness which veils Calvary and says to the great host of the suffering : “ Here is suffering which is not retribution, suffering ministered by perfect love and issuing in power and purity.” We need, our great humanity needs, such a daysman, partaker of both natures, the Divine and the human, to show us suffering on its heavenly as well as on its earthly side, and to flood its earthly side with heavenly light by the revelation. The transfigured and the crucified Christ are one and the same. Suffering and glory blend in Him unto greater glory, and through Him God’s suffering servant learns that he suffers with Him that they may be glorified together. In Him we have the human experience of sorrow and its Divine interpretation. Job’s longing, therefore, is literally and fully met. To the cry that comes from that far-off wreck of earthly happiness, “ He is not a man, as I am,” we can answer to-day, “ He is a man.” To the words, “ There is no daysman to lay his hand upon us both,” we answer, “ There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.” Vincent. 34,35. If God would only remove his pain from him for a brief space (Job pleads), so that he might recover himself for self-defence, and if He (God) would not stifle his (Job’s) words, as they come freely forth from his lips, by confronting him with His overwhelming majesty, then he would fearlessly speak for himself ; for I am not conscious of such a moral condition as compels me to remain dumb before Him. His self-consciousness makes him desire that the possibility of answering for himself might be granted him ; and, since he is weary of life, and has renounced all claim for its continuance, he will at least give his complaints free course, and pray the Author of his sufferings that He would not permit him to die the death of the wicked, contrary to the testimony of his own conscience. Delitzsch.—Let us not blame Job for his impatience and irreverent language until we have carefully examined our own hearts in the times of trial like those which he endured. Let us not infer that he was worse than other men until we are placed in similar circumstances, and are able to manifest better feelings than he did. Barnes. 1. My soul is weary of my life ; I will give free course to my complaint ; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 2 I will say unto God, Do not condemn me ; Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me. 3 Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, That thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, And shine upon the counsel of the wicked ? 4 Hast thou eyes of flesh, Or seest thou as man seeth ? 5 Are thy days as the days of man, Or thy years as man’s days, 6 That thou inquirest after mine iniquity, And searchest after my sin, 7 Although thou knowest that I am not wicked ; And there is none that can deliver out of thine hand ? 8. Thine hands have framed me and fashioned me Together round about ; yet thou dost destroy me. 9 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as clay ; And wilt thou bring me into dust again ? 10 Hast thou not poured me out as milk, And curdled me like cheese ? 11 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, And knit me together with bones and sinews. 12 Thou hast granted me life and favour, And thy visitation hath preserved my spirit. 13 Yet these things thou didst hide in thine heart ; I know that this is with thee : 14 If I sin, then thou markest me, And thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity. 15 If I be wicked, woe unto me ; And if I be righteous, yet shall I not lift up my head; Being filled with ignominy And looking upon mine affliction. 16. And if my head exalt itself, thou huntest me as a lion: And again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me. 17. Thou renewest thy witnesses against me, And increasest thine indignation upon me; Changes and warfare are with me. 18. Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me. 19. I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. 20. Are not my days few? cease then, And let me alone, that I may take comfort a little, 21. Before I go whence I shall not return, Even to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death; 22. The land dark as midnight; The land of the shadow of death, without any order, And where the light is as midnight. Chap. 10. Job's new appeal to God, in the form of an effort to discover what in the Divine nature it can be that will explain his terrible sufferings. The chapter attaches itself closely to the last words of chap. 9, precisely as chap. 7 to the end of chap. 6. Chap. 9 ended with the expression of the feeling on Job's part of his own innocence, and at the same time of the feeling that God had determined to hold him guilty. Added to this was the feeling of his helplessness to make his innocence appear against God's power and majesty. After a slight pause, perhaps, these mixed feelings gather new volume in his mind, and he breaks out, perplexed and baffled, my soul is weary of my life. Then commences an appeal unto God in which one supposition after another is hazarded as to what in God's nature it is that is the secret of Job's sufferings, each supposition being refuted by being seen to be in contradiction to God's true nature. The whole thus forms a very impassioned argument with God founded on His own nature. First, Job appeals to God not to make him guilty by mere arbitrary will, but if He have cause against him to reveal it (v. 2). Then with a strong feeling of his own innocence he asks if it be a pleasure to God to oppress and reject the just and smile upon the wicked? Can it be that God finds pleasure in this (v. 3)? Then he wonders if God have eyes of flesh, subject to illusion and error, so that He mistakes the innocent for the guilty; or if He be short-lived, like men, and must gratify His vengeance on suspicion lest His victim should escape Him—though, in truth, none of this could be, for He knew Job's innocence, and none could deliver from His hand (vs. 4-7). Then the mention of His "hands" suggests to Job, and he brings it before God, the strange contradiction in God's treatment of him—His hands fashioned him once like a precious vessel, and now He reduces him to dust again (v. 8)! This contradiction, vividly put in v. 8, is then enlarged upon. Job recalls God's remembrance to past times, how He wonderfully began his being in the womb, and with a careful and minute tenderness fashioned all his parts, forming him with a prodigal expenditure of skill; and then when a living man hedged him about with lovingkindness and guarded his spirit with constant oversight (vs. 9-12). The contradiction between this gracious guidance in the past and God's present treatment of him utterly baffles Job, and he leaps to the desperate conclusion that all that he now suffers had always been designed by God, and that even while expending His greatest skill upon him He had been cherishing this deep purpose of plaguing him. With an elaborate minuteness Job goes over this Divine scheme (vs. 13-17), and as he realizes it to himself in detailing it, he finally cries out in despair, why God ever gave him life at all (vs. 18, 19)? and begs for a little easing of his pain before he goes into the land of darkness (vs. 20, 21); concluding with some terrible touches concerning that gloomy land, where the light is as darkness (v. 22). A. B. D. 1. The only ease of a troubled soul is to pour out complaints unto God. It will be ease to the mind to open up the grief to any, but far more to open it up to God. Job's complaint here is the laying forth of his present burden; what he felt and what he feared; even the wrestling of his faith and sense, brought forth before God in such words as he feels the battle within, the battle betwixt sense and reason or suggestion on the one hand, faith and God's spirit on the other hand. The wrestling of these two makes up a complaint. "My soul is weary of my life"—this is sense's part; it says that it is best to be dead and out of pain; which lets us see that in the day of sore trouble and grief sense will cry out, "God, if I were dead!" But this is the voice of nature, and not God's voice. Dickson. Do not quarrel with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore, keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. Character grows in the stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love. H. Drummond. 2. I will say unto God. Faith takes him up again and bids him speak of his complaint to God; complain to Him, and not of Him. In straits we may complain to God, but not of God. Therefore, say not to others, God hath dealt thus and thus with me; but go to Himself, for thou wilt be warmliest heard of Himself. And be sure this shall both give ease, and make God to say that He is thy salvation; that He will neither leave thee nor forsake thee, and bid thee call on Him in the day of thy trouble, and He shall hear thee. Do not condemn me. The voice of sense is, that I am condemned; but faith says, Lord, Thou wilt not condemn me, but absolve me; which also shows that faith doth not abide to be condemned or separated from God. Show me. Albeit faith cannot see a reason why it is thus handled, yet it will not yield to sense, nor to men's words, nor to appearances of God's anger; albeit it cannot particularly refute all challenges, yet it yields not, but speirs at God, how it can be? and rests not till it finds satisfaction. Dickson. It is because Job so thoroughly believes in God that God's attitude perplexes and affrights him. He is troubled because God's character is seemingly impugned by his affliction. He is confident that God has an explanation for him if he can but get to God and plead his cause. V. 3. Is it beseeming—that is, worthy of God as God? At the outset of his misery Job would not "attribute aught unbeseeming to God" (1:22). Neither does he here; he does rather what is more honest and open, goes straight to God with his difficulty and seeks explanation by some principle that he can understand. It is like Abraham's question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" That Thou shouldst oppress. Notice that Job uses the word presupposing his innocence; not punish, as if he were guilty. J. F. G. He thinks it unbecoming the goodness of God and the mercifulness of His nature to deal so hardly with His creature as to lay upon him more than he can bear. Is it good unto Thee that Thou shouldst oppress? Now, Lord, what is the meaning of this? Such is Thy nature that this cannot be a pleasure to Thee; and such is Thy name that it cannot be an honor to Thee; why, then, dealest Thou thus with me? Far be it from Job to think that God did him wrong, but he is quite at a loss how to reconcile His providences with His justice, as good men have often been, and must wait until the day shall declare it. Let us, therefore, now harbor no hard thoughts of God, because we shall then see there was no cause for them. H.—Sense says to Job that for all his righteousness God will cast him off, oppress and despise him; that it is but bootless to reckon rights or wrongs with God, for He is risen in anger against him. But the voice of faith says God will not oppress, despise, or cast off; for his interrogation proves it; his asking if it can be imports a denial that it can be. It lets us see that whatever sense says against God, faith says the clean contrary. Dickson. 4-6. The force of this argument rests upon Job's conviction that God is omniscient, and from everlasting to everlasting; so that, in fact, its very audacity proves inner faith. Cook.—There is a strong battle in Job's breast. Sense said one thing to him, suggestion and his friends said the same, and he had only the grip of faith to stick by. And now, here he sticks by faith, and will not quit his grips; and therefore he speaks thus. Out of this questioning, we learn that the man who has learned God's nature and properties will be better furnished with matter of dispute in his tentation about God's providence; for all this dispute and questioning which Job has is grounded upon his knowledge of God. He had learned God's attributes so tightly, as from them he could dispute his matter accurately, and from these affirm that it could not be as his friends alleged. Therefore, provide yourselves in time with the knowledge of God, that in the day of trial ye may make use of it. Dickson. 7. Thou knowest that I am not wicked. He had already owned himself a sinner and guilty before God, but he here stands to it that he was not wicked, not devoted to sin, not an enemy to God, not a dissembler in his religion—that he had not wickedly departed from his God (Psalm 18 : 21). Here see what ought to quiet us under our troubles ; that it is to no purpose to contend with Omnipotence. What will abundantly comfort us, if we are able to appeal to God, as Job here, “ Lord, I cannot say that I am not wanting or I am not weak ; but through grace I can say, I am not wicked ; Thou knowest I am not, for Thou knowest I love Thee.” H.—Where he is thus strenuous in asserting his integrity, it is only in opposition to the notion which those mistaken friends had entertained of him—that he had been guilty of some gross sins which he had the art to hide from the world, but that he was in reality a wicked man and a hypocrite in his behavior. This is what Job utterly denies and disclaims ; though he nowhere arrogates to himself perfect innocence or freedom from sin. Peters. A renewed man may know a change in himself, the begun work of God in himself, albeit it be not clear at all times, but will ofttimes be so put in the mist as he wots not what to say ; but when he gets liberty to look about him, he may pronounce of God’s work in him and (as Job here) appeal to God and say that he is not wicked. An honest, sincere man will be bold with God. An honest man is not a sinless man, but one who, as he shall answer to God, strives against all known sin in private and in public ; and when he is overcome in sin is never at rest till he be sure that God is pacified and has assurance of a remission granted. He tells God whatever he feels or fears, puts God on all his counsels, goes to Him in all his distresses ; counts God so merciful and good, that he will go to Him ; so constant that He will not, cannot change, and still justifies God to be what He has spoken of Himself in His Word. Such a man will get liberty to tell all his mind to God, and God will not mistake him or captiously snap at his words, but expound them favorably. As he construes God according to His mind, so God construes him according to his aim and desire. Therefore, be honest before God, for there is no beguiling of Him. Study plain dealing with God. If there be great wickedness in your heart, tell Him of it. Tell Him that it is stiff, stubborn, and backward ; or that it is borne down with naughty burdens, and will not take on a better burden. Let God be thy confidant in all, and whatever thou would have close kept commit that to Him. Dickson. 8-12. The vividness with which God’s process of creation is conceived and portrayed is an indication of the keenness with which Job realizes the awful inconsistency that confronts him. The wantonness of the destruction heightens his sense of the wonderfulness of creation. J. F. G. 9. Remember that Thou hast made me? Now Job begins to plea God with reasons and arguments ; and as his first, he takes hold of God by the far end of the band of creation, and by that draws strength to himself and confidence to look for mercy. 12. Granted me favor. Count everything received of God a favor, so nothing shall make thee impatient as to storm when He gives or takes ; for if He take, it is the loosing of some burden off us ; if He strike, it is but the surgeon’s lancet ; if He gives a bitter cup, it is healing. Those who construe all that God doeth to be out of love are God’s friends. Dickson. God maintains us ; having lighted the lamp of life, He does not leave it to burn upon its own stock, but continually supplies it with fresh oil ; “ Thy visitation has preserved my spirit, kept me alive, protected me from the adversaries of life, the death we are in the midst of, and the dangers we are continually exposed to ; and blessed me with all the necessary supports of life and the daily supplies it needs and craves.” H. 13. “ And these things hast Thou hid in Thy heart.” That is, Albeit now, Lord, Thou seemest to be wroth and about to destroy me, and to forget all the pains Thou hast taken in forming of me ; yet I believe Thou hast some love to me, which Thou had when Thou formed me. I know that same care Thou had in fashioning of me continues ; albeit Thou seem to destroy me, yet love is hid in Thy breast. Job is put to a trial when God hides. It lets us see that the time of God’s hiding of His love is the proper time of faith’s trial. See here the piercing look of Job’s faith ! It passeth in by God’s hand to his heart ; which lets us see that faith looks more to God’s Word than to His work, and more to His heart than to His hand, and to that which is hid than to that which is seen. 14,15. Job is put to search himself in his afflictions. We see that afflictions are sent, that we may be put to a search what the matter can mean. We see that in the search he says : “ I am either dealt with as a man guilty of sins unrepented, or a righteous, tried, and humble man. If it be the punishment of a wicked man, then woe’s me ; woe, and double woe to me ! But in this my comfort abides, that I am not wicked. If I be righteous, yet will I not lift mine head—that is, if the Lord be trying me as a righteous man, I know it is but to humble me, and I am content it be so." Think not that God hath not heard you because ye cannot get rest, for herein ye are mistaken, seeing Job, accepted of God, and humbled before Him, is yet restless in his mind, that he may be experimentally humbled, and patient till the delivery come. Out of this last we see albeit a man be righteous, yet is he not freed from correction—and here stands the dispute between Job and his friends. For Job affirms that a man indeed may be righteous and yet hardly handled by God's afflicting hand; but they, not having seen the like in their experience, hold the contrary; yet Job's ground holds fast. Dickson. 16,17. The outward evils inflicted on him he connects with his own inward conflicts, to which he ascribes every renewal and aggravation of them. Thy witnesses—the evils which he was suffering, regarded as evidences of God's displeasure; the fundamental error in his, as well as his friends' view of God's dealings with him. Conant.—That which made his afflictions most grievous was that he felt God's indignation in them; that was it that made them taste so bitter and lie so heavy. They were God's witnesses against him, tokens of His displeasure; this made the sores of his body wounds in his spirit. His affliction increased, and God's indignation in the affliction; he found himself no way better; these witnesses were renewed against him, that if one did not reach to convict him another might. Changes and war were against him. H. 18. Consider what guiltiness is in this passion and reasonless speech of Job's: "Wherefore brought Thou me forth?" It is a reproving of God's work, a finding fault with God's providence, a casting down of all that God had done to him or by him. Job can draw no comfort to himself from anything that is befallen him in this life, or from any good that he has done, nor from anything God has done to him; so doth passion blind men in all that God has done to them, or by them. We see that in the day of trial, from bygone experiences, we may find no comfort. It must be fresh furniture that will do thy turn; that thou may have it, depend upon God at all times and in every case. Out of Job's error learn we, whatever comes on us, rue we never that we are in life. Say not, it is better never to have had children or riches than to have had them and then to be taken away, for God has wise reasons both for giving and taking. Be not so foolish as to misinterpret any past work or gift of God. Dickson. 20-22. The frenzy spends itself here, and dies away into a plaintive wail of remonstrance, like that of an exhausted child. Once more he takes up the theme of chap. 3, lamenting that he ever saw the light, and praying for a little respite and rest ere he goes hence to be no more. Vincent. 21,22. Job accumulates epithets to express the sense of utter blackness and desolation of the state which he deliberately prefers to life in misery—each word has its peculiar horror; darkness (Gen. 1:2), such as was on the face of the waters before light was; "shadow of death," a word originally meaning "deep shade," but modified in form and signification so as to express the blackness of death; then returning to the same thought, and bringing out its full significance, "a land gloomy as blackness itself, the blackness of the shadow of death;" then the "without order," the return, as it were, to chaotic disorder, the tohu and bohu preceding creation; last of all, the darkness which, as it were, radiates a hideous mockery of sunlight, no mere privation of light, but an aggressive and active power opposed to the abodes lightened by God's presence and favor. Here, again, we feel how important it was that the utter blankness of a death without sensation, followed by no awakening, should be realized, in order that the mind might, in its recall, grasp the hope of immortality. Cook. It might seem that Job is now on the high road to renounce God, as Satan had predicted he would do. But Job does not find renouncing God quite so easy a thing. And he enters upon a course in chap. 10 which, though at first it appears to take him a step farther in this direction, is really the beginning of a retreat. He endeavors to set before his mind as broad a view of God as he is able, in order that by thinking of all that he knows of God he may catch the end of some clue to his calamities. This makes him realize how much he is still sure of in regard to God. And first, he cannot doubt that He is all-knowing and omnipotent. But he goes farther. He cannot help seeing in the carefulness and lavish skill with which he was fashioned round about in all his being by the hands of God, not only wisdom, but a gracious benevolence, and in the preservation of his spirit a providence which was good. And he dwells on these things, not in the cold manner of a philosopher making an induction, but with all the fervor of a religious mind, which felt that it had fellowship with the Being whose goodness it experienced, and still longed for this fellowship. Yet God's present treatment of him seemed in contradiction to all this. Thus Job balances God against Himself. Yet there is no other method by which he can reach the light; and though the balance inclines in one direction meantime, by and by it will incline in another. A. B. D. 1. THEN answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, 2. Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be justified? 3. Should thy boastings make men hold their peace? And when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed? 4. For thou sayest, My doctrine is pure, And I am clean in thine eyes. 5. But Oh that God would speak, And open his lips against thee; 6. And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, For he is manifold in understanding! Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth. 7. Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 8. It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know? 9. The measure thereof is longer than the earth, And broader than the sea. 10. If he pass through, and shut up, And call unto judgment, then who can hinder him? 11. For he knoweth vain men: ONE after another, these officious friends take up their argument against Job; and one after another they repeat the same commonplaces of their creed. God is just, and, therefore, God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. If a man suffers, he suffers because he deserves it. If you do not concede this, they say you arraign the justice of God. Job may have been apparently moral, upright, religious, but he must have cherished some secret sin; and it is this which has called down upon him the vengeance of the Most High. This is their compendious system of theology. But it is not large enough to cover the facts. You cannot sum in little the mysteries of the universe. He seeth iniquity also, even though he consider it not. 12. But vain man is void of understanding, Yea, man is born as a wild ass's colt. 13. If thou set thine heart aright, And stretch out thine hands toward him; 14. If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, And let not unrighteousness dwell in thy tents; 15. Surely then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; Yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: 16. For thou shalt forget thy misery; Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away: 17. And thy life shall be clearer than the noonday; Though there be darkness, it shall be as the morning. 18. And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope; Yea, thou shalt search about thee, and shalt take thy west in safety. 19. Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid; Yea, many shall make suit unto thee. 20. But the eyes of the wicked shall fail, And they shall have no way to flee, And their hope shall be the giving up of the ghost. You cannot still the anguish of beating hearts, crying out for God in their desolate misery, by giving them the dead, dry sand of some formula which you presumptuously label as the truth. It is all too little; the facts of God's world are too broad for your system. "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God might be made manifest in him." Perosene. Zophar the Naamathite shows a more rude and less cultivated and proportionately a more heated character than the other two. He is the most inveterate of Job's accusers, and he speaks wholly without feeling or pity. In substantial argument, he does little more than repeat what Bildad has already said; indeed, his speeches are made up rather of invectives and reproaches than of new ideas and reasonings. In his second speech—and he has one speech less than the others, probably because he could find nothing more to say—he betrays manifest signs of exhaustion of matter, without any abatement of wrathfulness; he again repeats with exaggeration what had already been said; and he certainly does himself justice in being the first to give over speaking, for it was his turn to answer Job, when it is stated, in 32:1, that “these three men ceased to answer Job.” In this first speech Zophar falls upon Job open-mouthed, with censures still less veiled than those of his predecessors. He sneers at him for his loquaciousness, denounces him for his lies, and explicitly charges him with the renunciation of God, or at least with gross impiety in daring to assert his own innocence, when the Lord’s righteous judgments so plainly declare what he is. They had heard enough of Job’s estimate of his own character; and Zophar much wishes that the Lord would disclose to him His estimate of it. But, indeed, He had already done so by these His judgments, and doubtless God had exacted far less from him than his iniquity deserved. Kitto. 2,3. Zophar's indignation rises still higher than that of the others; being a narrower man, his views are correspondingly more intense and dogmatic. With no pretence of courtesy, he characterizes Job as a "man of lips," whose words are mere babbling and mocking. J. F. G. 4. He charges him with saying, I am clean in Thine eyes. Job had not said so: he had, indeed, said, Thou knowest that I am not wicked (10:7), but he had also said, I have sinned, and never pretended to a spotless perfection. He had, indeed, maintained that he was not a hypocrite, as they charged him; but to infer thence that he would not own himself a sinner was an unfair insinuation. We ought to put the best construction on the words and actions of our brethren that they will bear; but contenders are tempted to put the worst. H. 5,6. The words put into Job's mouth (v. 4) give rather Zophar's brief summary of all the previous speeches of Job; since he, the person attacked, spoke more like a teacher than a repentant learner, it seemed to Zophar as if he considered both his doctrine and his life quite unimpeachable before God. Both assumptions, particularly the first, incense him (Zophar) so that he immediately desires the revelation of God to convince Job, by the display of perfect wisdom and knowledge, that God still causeth much of his guilt to be forgotten—that is, punishes him for less than he deserves according to strict justice. Ewald.—Observe how the friends have gathered heat as they proceeded. Eliphaz was courteous and indirect, exhorting merely to repentance; Bildad spoke of the sons' calamity as just; Zophar finds Job's punishment less than his desert. J. F. G. 7-12. Panegyric on the Divine wisdom or omniscience. This wisdom cannot be fathomed by man (v. 7). It fills all things (vs. 8, 9). And this explains the sudden calamities that befall men, for God perceives their hidden wickedness (vs. 10, 11). But man is of no understanding (v. 12). A. B. D.—Zophar launches forth into a very noble declaration of the greatness of God and the unsearchable wisdom of all His ways, whence he argues not only the folly but the inexpressible presumption of questioning His dealings with man or of refusing to acquiesce in His appointments. This portion of Zophar's discourse “forms one of the most noted Bible passages for reference and repetition in all ages.” It will be observed that in it Zophar makes no attempt to explain the equity of the Lord's dealings with man, but he dwells on the greatness and sovereignty of God, and hence deduces the duty of man to submit with humbleness to His decrees. And certain it is that the more any one is enabled to realize to his own soul a sense of the Divine perfections, the less possible it will be for him to allow a rebellious sigh to arise, even under the severest pressure of the Lord's afflictive dispensations. Kitto.—Nothing can be more beautiful or true than these words abstractly considered; and it is only Zophar's point of view that makes them convict Job of presumption. Job has been trying to find merely what concerns him as a responsible being, something that he feels he has a right to know if he is judged on grounds of mere justice; but Zophar identifies this with presumptuous curiosity about God's hidden ways. J. F. G. 7. The verse means, Canst thou fathom or conceive God? The special side of God's being, which Zophar declares to be unfathomable, is His wisdom or omniscience. This is the point in question, for it is this which discovers Job's heart and his sins; and Zophar desires to put this omniscience before Job to bring him to take a right place before it, just as Eliphaz brought the holiness of God before him. Literally the verse reads: Canst thou find the deeps of (or, that which has to be searched out in) God, canst thou reach to the perfection (the outmost, the ground of the nature) of the Almighty? S. His wisdom is immeasurable, unfathomable. The words are an exclamation: heights of heaven! what canst thou do?—thou art impotent before it to scale it or reach it. A. B. D.—Literally, “heights of heaven; what doest thou? deeper than hell, what knowest thou?” i.e., The wisdom of God is as the heights of heaven, how canst thou reach it? deeper than Sheol, how canst thou comprehend it? Cook. As there is a foolish wisdom, so there is a wise ignorance in not prying into God’s ark nor inquiring into things not revealed. I would fain know all that I need and all that I may; I leave God’s secrets to Himself. It is happy for me that God makes me one of His court, though not of His council. Bishop H.—To pry into the maze of His counsels, is not only folly in man but presumption even in angels; like us, they are His servants, not His senators; He holds no council but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three persons, there is but one mind, that decrees without contradiction; nor needs He any; His actions are not begot with deliberation, His wisdom naturally knows what is best; His intellect stands ready fraught with the superlative and purest ideas of goodness; consultation and election, which are two motions in us, make but one in Him, His actions springing from His power at the first touch of His will. Browne. How the Divine Being Himself exists in an essential and eternal nature of His own, without beginning as well as without end; how He can be present at the same moment in every point of illimitable space, without excluding any one of His creatures from the room it occupies; how, unseen, unfelt by all, He can maintain a pervading and intimate acquaintance and contact with all parts and portions of the universe; how He can be at once all eye, all ear, all presence, all energy, yet interfere with none of the perceptions and actions of His creatures—this is what equally baffles the mightiest and the meanest intellect; this is the great mystery of the universe, which is at once the most certain and the most incomprehensible of all things—a truth at once enveloped in a flood of light and an abyss of darkness! Inexplicable itself, it explains all besides; it casts a clearness on every question, accounts for every phenomenon, solves every problem, illuminates every depth, and renders the whole mystery of existence as perfectly simple as it is otherwise perfectly unintelligible, while itself alone remains in impenetrable obscurity! After displacing every other difficulty, it remains the greatest of all, in solitary, unsurmountable, unapproachable grandeur! R. Hall. Does the aspect of nature contradict this doctrine? Who will presume to deny that the incomprehensible materialism about us, to say nothing of the more incomprehensible spiritualism within us, is just what one would expect to find issuing from the hands of an incomprehensible Creator—a being mysteriously without a beginning, mysteriously self-existent, mysteriously able to make the greatest and noblest things out of nothing by simple volition, mysteriously all-knowing, mysteriously unfettered in the application of His power and knowledge by all conditions of space and duration and personal presence, mysteriously three in one—in short, a being enveloped in a terrible pomp and majesty of sunset-clouds, whose broken lines never permit the orb that glorifies them to appear, even for a moment, in clear and golden contour on our rapt sight. Such a being, setting out to create, would be likely to give us the present enigmatic universe—nay, would be sure to give it. If a Jehovah build the temple of nature at all, He will found it on mysteries, frame it with mysteries, cover and dome it with mysteries, pave and ceil it with a mosaic of mysteries—surely He will. And when I am told of a being whose own nature is an overwhelming problem; whose attributes have no horizon, no zenith, and no nadir; whose ends respect all possible objects and interests, and spread themselves out in plans of boundless vastness whose merest corners and differentials only are visible to men of the widest scope; when I am told of Him, and I then place myself out under nature’s open dome, amid its protean inscrutableness of leaf and star, of whole crowded earth and circumventing heavens—the peopled heavens where sweep in inextricable maze the hurricane hosts of advancing and retreating orbs; and open my soul candidly to all their silent suggestions and magnetisms—I feel myself drinking in faith, as the fleece spread out under the stars drinks in the dew—I feel that the facts give embracing arms to the doctrine; that the actual universe, instead of swearing with decisive voice and hand uplift to heaven that there is no inscrutable God, significantly asks with panting whisper and color that comes and goes, “Is there not such a being?” Burr. If the longer man stretches his line, the deeper this awful ocean of life becomes; if the farther his telescope penetrates the heavens, and his microscope the earth, the more entirely are all his speculations distanced by the magnificence and wisdom of the scene; if the more searching his analysis into principles and second causes, he utterly fails to see through them—he always finds back of all researches a mysterious power which it is utterly impossible for him to grasp or comprehend; if he finds that there is a limit to his knowledge, not from the shallowness of the subjects but from the nature of his own mental faculties, and that the smallest flower that springs up at his feet hath that within it which eludes the most intense vision of the most vigorous intellect; if he sees this to be true, not in one or two instances, but in every instance, that there is a plastic power which ascends from stones to stars, and pervades all creation in its wondrous subtility and influence, then he is obliged to believe—then he is brought face to face with an infinite being, whom by searching it is impossible to find out unto perfection; and so the tendency—the uncounteracted force of these material studies is to bear him onward to a sublime faith in the eternal Creator, and prepare his mind for the reception of whatever further light He may see fit to shed upon his soul. Thus the “unlocking of the gates of sense” is made ultimately to unlock the gates of the spirit to the entrance of the grandest views of the infinite Lord. The march of science, other things being equal, will be the triumph of a lofty and intelligent faith. Who have been the famous patriarchs of infidelity, the grand masters in this temple of nightshade? Were they Copernicus and Galileo, the Bacons and Kepler and Newton, and a host of such bright names; the naturalists to whom all eyes at once turn with reverence, whose amazing toils created a new world of science, and gave an upward impulse to the human mind, and set in motion that train of causes whose results are our daily wonder and thanksgiving? Or were they not such men as Bolingbroke and Hume and Gibbon and Voltaire and Paine, the speculators, the moral and political philosophers; men who set reason above facts, or made the facts bend to their logic? And in these latter days, whence sprang that mystic rationalism which spirits away Christianity in a fog of doubts, of myths and fables, and degrades the chief revelation of the Infinite to a level with the Iliad of Homer and the theogony of Hesiod? Came it from Davy and Herschel and Cuvier and Humboldt, the grandest naturalists of their day? or came it not from the brains of a Kant, a Hegel, a Strauss, and others of like character, the men who spin their theories not out of the heavens and the earth, but out of their own benighted intellects? What form of infidelity at this day is most rampant, insinuating, plastic, and intractable? Comes it from natural philosophy, or astronomy, or geology? or comes it not from a false philology which misinterprets Scripture, and a false philosophy which misinterprets life and its great ends? Eng. Rev. If I may thoroughly know God, I must cease to worship Him. I cannot adore what I can measure. If His plans are within my comprehension, they are finite. If there is nothing in God which I cannot find out by searching, then God is finite and is not God. He lets me feel the touch of His hand, He daily compasses me with His love, He draws sharply for me the great outlines of His character, He restrains and forms me by His law, He teaches me by His providence, guides me by His wisdom, upholds and saves me by His power. But while there is thus a side of revelation in contact with me and daily available for me, I must never forget that it is only a side; that God’s revelation is not God, but, as it were, a line of light on the verge of a narrow horizon, beyond which lie depths and glories of Divine Being unconceived and inconceivable by the heart of man. V. Well may the prudent consideration of what hath been said concerning the depth of Divine omniscience put the wisest of men in mind of their nescience; keep them from leaning to their own understandings, and give them just occasion to think of an answer to Zophar’s question: “What canst thou know?” If the secrets of nature do so puzzle thee, what canst thou know concerning those much greater secrets of grace and glory of which Luther very excellently says: “Philosophy receives them not, faith doth. The authority of Scripture is greater by far than the capacity of our wit; and the Holy Ghost than Aristotle”? Well may the depth of Divine understanding, which the Psalmist saith is infinite—“Great is the Lord, and of great power; His understanding is infinite”—cause us to reflect upon the shallowness, the infiniteness—yea, the folly of our own knowledge. Arrowsmith. 10-12. God’s mode of trial is summary, because infallible. He knows altogether the people who disguise their moral nothingness, and sees the falseness of those who persist in their worthlessness. He knows and sees this moral wretchedness at once, and need not first of all reflect upon it. Delitzsch.—He needs no lengthened observation, He seeth at once into the ground of the heart, His wisdom is direct intuition, absolute and perfect. Cook. 13-19. Zophar still treats Job as wicked, but lets it appear that he does not regard him as hopelessly reprobate, and assures him that by repentance and prayer he may yet reconcile himself to God, and through His blessing be restored to a prosperous state. Then, he says, 'Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away'—forget it, or have that unpainful recollection of it which is a species of forgetfulness. Kitto.—The condition—sincere repentance and confession—must be immediately and afresh more emphatically conditioned by another one which is, in point of fact, earlier—the removal of all previous unrighteousness (restitution). As the happy consequences of the fulfilment of these conditions appears a new, confident, and cheerful courage; and, afterward, increased prosperity, with a rest not to be disturbed by danger. Ewald. The picture which Zophar draws of Job's restored prosperity is beautiful. Trouble shall be forgotten, or remembered as waters that are passed away; and the memory of a past trouble that cannot recur, but makes the present happiness greater (v. 16). And the future shall rise brighter than noon; or, it may be, shall increase toward brightness more than the noon does, showing an ever-growing clearness; and if it be at any time clouded, as in any life, however clear, there are clouds, the darkness shall only be a lesser light, like that of the morning; or, as the words may mean, the darkness shall only be like the fixed changes of nature, and shall give place, like the night, to a fair and hopeful morning (v. 17). Thus restored to the fixed order of a life with God, he shall be trustful, because there is hope, and he shall look about, surveying all things, and finding nothing to dread, shall lie down in confidence (v. 18); and when lain down, he shall rest peacefully. And his security and prosperity shall draw to him the homage of many, who (as before) shall seek his favor (v. 19). 20. Zophar concludes by setting in opposition to this picture another, the fate of the wicked. A. B. D.—Their hope will perish and expire as a man does when he gives up the ghost; it will fail them when they have most need of it, and when they expected the accomplishment of it; it will die away and leave them in utter confusion. They shall not avoid the evil which sometimes they frighten themselves with the apprehension of; they shall not escape the execution of the sentence passed upon them; can neither outbrave it nor outrun it. Those that will not fly to God will find it in vain to think of flying from him. H.—Foolish self-love makes men unwilling to know the worst of themselves, and so causeth them to presume and keep up false deceiving hopes that they may be saved. They know that all is not well with them, but they hope God is merciful, that He will not condemn them; or they hope to be converted some time hereafter; or they hope that less ado may serve their turn, and that their good wishes and prayers may save their souls; and in these hopes they hold on till they find themselves to be past remedy, and their hopes and they be dead together. I speak not this without the Scripture (Prov. 11:17; Job 27:8, 9; 11:20). There is scarcely a greater hindrance of conversion than these false, deceiving hopes of sinners. Baxter. Verse 7. Sound doctrine is the fruit of righteousness. Christ so puts it. "If you do My will, you shall know of the doctrine." Obedience comes before knowledge in the school of Christ, as in every other. "Canst thou by searching find out God?" No, you never will. Those who intellectually seek Him lose Him. But "I am found of them that sought Me not," He says. Simple obedience is the guide-board to God and to heaven. We can learn more about God in one hour, by bowing at His feet and receiving the benediction of Divine forgiveness through Christ, than by a lifetime of poring over tomes of divinity. Interior. The effect of this discourse could only be to exasperate Job; it states in the most distinct and offensive form what the other two had suggested or insinuated, and far from admitting the possibility of Job's purity and uprightness, asserts that his guilt has not yet been fully punished. His hands are supposed to be full of iniquity, his tent of ill-gotten spoils, his face spotted with ignominy. (See v. 15.) The hope which it seems to suggest is nugatory, since it could only be realized after a change which implies previous guilt of the deepest dye, of which Job's conscience acquitted him. Cook. Like the others, Zophar regards the retributive justice of God as the principle on which alone the Divine government of the world is exercised, and to which every act of this government is to be attributed. This limited view which the friends take in the matter readily accounts for the brevity of their speeches in comparison with Job's. This one common ground is their only theme, which they reiterate constantly in some new and modified form, while the mind of Job is an exhaustless fountain of thought, suggested by the direct experience of the past. Before the present dispensation of suffering came upon Job he enjoyed the peace of true godliness, and all his thoughts and feelings were under the control of a consciousness made certain by his experience that God makes Himself known to those who fear Him. Now, however, his nature, hitherto (in the absence of any severe strain upon his faith) kept in subjection by Divine grace, is let loose in him; the powers of doubt, mistrust, impatience, and despondency have risen up; his inner life is fallen into the anarchy of conflict; his mind, hitherto peaceful and well disciplined, is become a wild, chaotic confusion; and hence his speeches, in comparison with those of the friends, are as roaring cataracts to small confined streams. The new truth, the solution of the mystery, springs from this spiritual battle which Job has to fight, and from which, although not scathless, he shall come forth as conqueror. On Zophar's side it is maintained that God always acts in accordance with justice, and Job maintains that God does not always so act. The maxims of the friends (while fundamentally correct) are false in the exclusiveness with which they maintain them, (but) the exclusiveness to which they are urged gives evidence of the fallacy of the premises; they must condemn Job, and consequently become unjust, in order to rescue the justice of God. Job's maxim, on the other hand, is true, but it is so unconnected as it stands (in what he says) that it may be turned over any moment and changed into a falsehood. For that God does not act solely as the Just One, that He does not exercise His justice without respect to His other attributes, is a truth; but to say that He sometimes acts unjustly is blasphemy. Job's steadfast consciousness of his innocence proves to him that God does not always act simply as the Just One; shall he therefore suppose that God deals unjustly with him? From this blasphemous inversion of his maxim Job seeks refuge in the absolute power of God, which (he assumes) makes that just which is unjust according to the clearest human consciousness. Delitzsch. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2 No doubt but ye are the people, And wisdom shall die with you. 3 But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Yea, who knoweth not such things as these? 4 I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbour, I who called upon God and he answered: The just, the perfect man is a laughingstock. 5 In the thought of him that is at ease there is contempt for misfortune; It is ready for them whose foot slippeth. 6 The tents of robbers prosper, And they that provoke God are secure; Into whose hand God bringeth abundantly. 7 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: 8 Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. 9 Who knoweth not in all these, That the hand of the LORD hath wrought this? 10. In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind. 11 Doth not the ear try words, Even as the palate tasteth its meat? 12 With aged men is wisdom, And in length of days understanding. 13 With him is wisdom and might; He hath counsel and understanding. 14 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again; He shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening. 15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up; Again, he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth. 16 With him is strength and effectual working; The deceived and the deceiver are his. 17 He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, And judges maketh he fools. 18 He looseth the bond of kings, And bindeth their loins with a girdle. 19. He leadeth priests away spoiled, And overthroweth the mighty. 20 He removeth the speech of the trusty, And taketh away the understanding of the elders. 21 He poureth contempt upon princes, And looseth the belt of the strong. 22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, And bringeth out to light the shadow of death. 23. He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: He spreadeth the nations abroad, and leadeth them captive. 24 He taketh away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth, And causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. 25 They grope in the dark without light, And he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man. Chaps. 12-14. Job's reply to Zophar's short address extends through three chapters. It is highly animated, and almost exhaustive of the argument he maintains. He enters more keenly into the spirit of the debate as an argument, and is hence drawn somewhat more out of himself than hitherto, and goes further afield in thought and illustration. He is also more bold as well as more keen in recrimination, indulging occasionally in biting sarcasms, and at times displaying a little personal exasperation. In this discourse he with great ability takes up the very doctrine of God's sovereignty, which Zophar had so forcibly set forth and urged as a ground of submission, and presses it into the support of his own view, arguing that this sovereignty was shown by God's acting from His own absolute will in the government of the world, far more than by His being bound by the conditions of merit or demerit in man, as they affirm. Nothing, therefore, which the friends could advance on the subject of the Divine power and greatness could prove him guilty, or make out that he was subjected to punishment for his sins. Kitto. In these chapters Job sums up the result of the first colloquy; chap. 12:1-6 contains a bitter reproof of the speaker's arrogance and pitilessness, with a reassertion of the statement that the good suffer and the wicked prosper. Vs. 7-25: All results, whether good or evil, must be attributed to God, whose hand hath wrought it all, and upon whom all things living absolutely depend. In this passage Job admits what has been said of the unsearchableness and omnipotence of God, but draws from it the inference that He causes all the evils which are found in the world. In the next place (13:1-12), Job charges his friends with falsehood, and with a base and cowardly attempt to vindicate a course of things which is manifestly inconsistent with the attributes of righteousness. In all this it is evident that Job argues simply from the facts as they come before him; having no clew to the secret of the visitation by which he is reduced to such misery, he sees in it but an absolutely inscrutable dispensation, and rejects all attempts to account for it by facts within the scope of human experience as vain and foolish. He knows that the supposition that he is himself inwardly false, godless, and hypocritical is quite groundless; he does not believe that his friends really think that goodness and prosperity are inseparable; he scorns the mean spirit which can profess to be satisfied with a fallacy, and he threatens them with God's wrath for such mockery. The following passage (vs. 15-19) is in another tone; Job declares that although he can neither comprehend the visitation nor hope for deliverance, still his trust is unshaken—"though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him;" he will neither give up trust in God nor his own integrity; he then (vs. 20-28) pleads directly with God, asks for light only, only to know why he is thus condemned, what is the special sin; and from the frailty and misery of man he draws a plea for pity and respite (14:1-12), since life once lost is irrecoverable, till the heavens be no more there will be no awakening from that sleep (vs. 13-28). In this passage comes the first gleam of a hope, a dim, uncertain feeling which was afterward to be developed. Job expresses a desire that he may lie in the grave until the time of wrath be past away; he would then wait patiently for his change, with a certainty that God would have a desire to the work of His own hands. As for any other hope, he rejects it altogether; all that is in the world must perish; man passeth away from it, and forever; what may be the lot of his posterity he cannot know; all that is sure for himself in this life is pain and misery. The whole argument may thus be summed up in a few points. The correlation between goodness and prosperity assumed by his friends does not rest on facts; whatever evils exist in the universe come from God's work; all attempts to frame a theodicea for this life are false and sophistical; all that a good man can do is to retain trust in God, though without hope of living to see the cause of right triumph; the sense of inner weakness, past and present sinfulness, will find expression in prayer, but a consideration of the shortness of life, its wretchedness, its hopeless end, brings out an aspiration, developed by spiritual affliction into a hope of a restoration to life, and of a last judgment, which must issue in the perfect establishment of the right. Cook. Chap. 12. Hitherto Job's attitude toward his friends has been that of unquestioning assent. Agreeing with all their assertions, he has endeavored, but wholly without result, to make their philosophy explain these perplexing facts. Now that all three have spoken, however, and revealed their uniform drift, the barrenness of their generalizations flashes upon him, and he sees that they have not touched the difficulties of the case at all. They have urged no more than he has always known. From this point his attitude toward them changes. They no longer stand to him as representatives of wisdom; and ceasing to arraign God, he arraigns the friends instead. J. G. F. 1-3. He begins with a sarcastic remark upon his friends' intense appreciation of their own wisdom, and ventures to distrust its quality, seeing that it had not led them to show manly pity and compassion for a friend in severe distress. Deriding their pretensions, he declares that he had no need to come to them for instruction, but had at least as much knowledge of the matters in debate as they had. He declares that all they had said upon the wisdom and power of God was merely trite and obvious; and then, as if to prove that they could boast no superiority of view in this respect, he breaks out into a most eloquent discourse on the same subject—the power and providence of God—which is certainly not inferior to theirs in matter, while it exceeds them in freshness of sentiment and illustration. Kitto. 4. I who called upon God, and He answered. If our friends be deaf to our complaints, God is not; if they condemn us, God knows our integrity; if they make the worst of us, He will make the best of us; if they give us cross answers, He will give us kind ones. 6. Job's friends, all of them, went upon this principle, that wicked people cannot prosper long in this world, but some remarkable judgment or other will suddenly light on them; Zophar had concluded with it, that the eyes of the wicked shall fail (11:20). This principle Job here opposes, and asserts as an undoubted truth that wicked people may, and often do, prosper long in this world. Even great sinners may enjoy great prosperity. We cannot, therefore, judge of men's piety by their plenty, nor of what they have in their heart by what they have in their hand. H. 7-9. Job takes up and iterates what is true in the views of the friends, at the same time broadening its application. Everything, both good and evil, is in God's hands; no Eliphaz's vision, or Bildad's traditional wisdom, or Zophar's occult philosophy, is needed to prove that; the commonest things teach it. J. F. G. —Such knowledge as the friends possessed of God's wisdom and power, and their action in the world, could be learned by any one who had eyes to observe the life and fate of the lower creatures. In all may be seen God's absolute might and sway prevailing. Davidson. —All these creatures, though without reason and speech, still utter a language which is heard by every intelligent man. They do not even possess knowledge, but they offer instruction, and are a means of knowledge. Creation is the school of knowledge, and man is the learner; and this knowledge forces itself upon one's attention. Delitzsch. The great lesson which the animal creation, regarded simply as the creature and subject of God, is fitted to teach us is a lesson of the wisdom, and power, and constant beneficence of God. Job sends us to the animal creation that we may gather from it instances of the greatness of the Creator's hand and the constancy of the Creator's providence. For every creature there is a place, and to this each is adapted with transcendent skill and beneficence. Nowhere do we detect a fault or a flaw amid all these teeming myriads. All are perfectly complete, and attest the majesty of Him by whose hand they have been formed. Consider the lessons which the lower animals are fitted to teach us by the way in which they spend their life and use the powers which God has given them. They constantly and unceasingly fulfil the end of their being. Be their sphere large or small, they always occupy it to the full. What a lesson is here addressed to man, and what a rebuke to him for the studied and persevering neglect he manifests of the purpose for which God has made him and sent him into the world! The lower animals are seen always to live according to their nature. They neither transgress that nature, nor do they fall short of it. Can this be said of man? How far is the best from yielding his entire nature in its symmetry and its fulness to what truth and righteousness demand of him! The lower animals teach us to seek happiness according to our nature and capacity. W. L. A. 10. Every living thing. Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running, flying. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its checkered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pick up a fallen leaf, and if nothing is visible on it, there is probably the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting there development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its animals, visible under the microscope. This same microscope reveals that the "blood-rain" suddenly appearing on bread and awakening superstitious terrors is nothing but a collection of minute animals; and that the vast tracts of snow which are reddened in a single night owe their color to the marvellous rapidity in reproduction of a minute plant. The very mould which covers our bread, our jam, or our ink, and disfigures our damp walls, is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-colored fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals. Nor does the vast procession end here. Our very mother-earth is formed of the débris of life. We dig downward thousands of feet below the surface, and discover with surprise the skeletons of strange, uncouth animals which roamed the fens and struggled through the woods before man was. Our surprise is heightened when we learn that the very quarry itself is mainly composed of the skeletons of microscopic animals. The flints which grate beneath our carriage wheels are but the remains of countless skeletons. The Apennines and Cordilleras, the chalk cliffs of England—these are the pyramids of bygone generations of atomies. Ages ago these tiny architects secreted the tiny shells which were their palaces; from the ruins we build our Parthenons, our St. Peters, and our Louvres. So revolves the luminous orb of life! Generations follow generations; and the present becomes the matrix of the future, as the past was of the present—the life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher life. G. H. Lewes. 11. The mind of man has as good a faculty of discerning between truth and error, when duly stated, as the palate has of discerning between what is sweet and what is bitter. He therefore demands from his friends a liberty to judge for himself of what they had said; and desires them to use the same liberty in judging of what he had said; nay, he seems to appeal to any man's impartial judgment in this controversy; let the ear try the words on both sides, and it would be found that he was in the right. H. 12-25. A very eloquent description of the Divine power and wisdom begins to flow from the lips of the afflicted man. He makes this description not in mere rivalry with the friends, but with far superior power and wealth of ideas, this far surpassing in point of wealth and copiousness his earlier description (9:4-10). Nor does he here repeat the fine illustrations which he had used in his previous speech, but applies with extreme skill the details of his description precisely to the present case, doing this without any express indication of it, but yet quite perceptibly. For, while he could have described the power of God and His wisdom, which, according to the feelings of the ancients, displayed itself more particularly in enigmas and marvels, in various ways dwelling very much upon most various things, in which the ancient world felt the mysterious, hidden wisdom and power of God, he takes another course, and designedly brings forward partly the great vicissitudes in human affairs, according to which God sends both weal and woe, prosperity and disaster, and partly the experience that even the wisest of the earth may easily become fools before God and get into helpless perplexity. The first phenomenon the opponents will do well to give heed to, since the cause of Job's misfortune may, after all, be another one hidden from men; the latter let them apply to themselves, and at the same time remember that at last God can bring all hidden things into the light. Ewald. The design of this grand discourse on the ways of God to men is, I apprehend, to establish his position (9:22). "He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked." He allegeth those great and general calamities, drought, inundation, and the overthrow of kingdoms; which make no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, but involve the most virtuous characters, and the noblest and most important talents, in distress, disgrace, and ruin. Scott. 15. Great droughts are sometimes great judgments; he withholds the waters, and they dry up; if the heaven be as brass, the earth is as iron; if the rain be denied, fountains dry up and their streams are wanted, fields are parched and their fruits are wanted. Great wet is sometimes a great judgment; He raises the waters and overturns the earth, the productions of it, the buildings upon it. A sweeping rain is said to leave no food (Prov. 28:3). How many ways God has of contending with a sinful people, and taking from them abused, forfeited mercies; and how utterly unable we are to contend with Him! H. 16. The deceived and the deceiver are His. God will make both the deceiver and the deceived accountable to Himself; it is from His sufferance that there are any such; in infinite wisdom and holiness He disposeth of the errors of men and of those that lead them into error, ordering how far any man shall deceive, and to what extent his deceit shall prevail; and, further, the Lord improves both to serve His own ends, to bring about His counsels and promote his own glory. Caryl. 17-23. He gives many instances of God's management of the children of men, crossing their purposes, and serving His own by them and upon them, overruling all their counsels, overpowering all their attempts, and overcoming all their oppositions. What changes does God make with men, what turns does He give to them; how easily, how surprisingly! 24,25. They that were driving on their projects with full speed are strangely bewildered and at a loss; they know not where they are nor what they do, are unsteady in their counsels, and uncertain in their motions, off and on, this way and that way, wandering like men in a desert, groping like men in the dark, and staggering like men in drink. God can soon nonplus the deepest politicians, and bring the greatest wits to their wits' end—to show that wherein they deal proudly, he is above them. Thus are the revolutions of kingdoms wonderfully brought about by an overruling Providence. Heaven and earth are shaken, but the Lord sits King forever, and with Him we look for a kingdom that cannot be shaken. H. Job has thus accurately defined how far he and the friends are at one; they agree in ascribing all events to God. But from this point their paths diverge. J. F. G. 1. Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, Mine ear hath heard and understood it. 2. What ye know, the same do I know also: I am not inferior unto you. 3. Surely I would speak to the Almighty, And I desire to reason with God. 4. But ye are forgers of lies, Ye are all physicians of no value. 5. Oh that ye would altogether hold your peace! And it should be your wisdom. 6. Hear now my reasoning, And hearken to the pleadings of my lips. 7. Will ye speak unrighteously for God, And talk deceitfully for him? 8. Will ye show partiality to him? Will ye contend for God? 9. Is it good that he should search you out? Or as one deceiveth a man, will ye deceive him? 10. He will surely reprove you, If ye do secretly show partiality. 11. Shall not his majesty make you afraid, And his dread fall upon you? 12. Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defences are defences of clay. 13. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, And let come on me what will. 14. Wherefore should I take my flesh in my teeth, And put my life in mine hand? 15. Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him: Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before him. 16. This also shall be my salvation, That a godless man shall not come before him. 17. Hear diligently my speech, And let my declaration be in your ears. 18. Behold now, I have set my cause in order; I know that I shall be justified. 19. Who is he that will contend with me? For then would I hold my peace and give up the ghost. 20. Only do not two things unto me, Then will I not hide myself from thy face: 21. Withdraw thine hand far from me; And let not thy terror make me afraid. 22. Then call thou, and I will answer; Or let me speak, and answer thou me. 23. How many are mine iniquities and sins? Make me to know my transgression and my sin. 24. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, And holdest me for thine enemy? 25 Wilt thou harass a driven leaf? And wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? 26 For thou writest bitter things against me, And makest me to inherit the iniquities of my youth: THERE is no pause between this and the preceding chapter; in the first two verses Job winds up his argument with the words which he used in the beginning of his speech. Cook. 1-22. Having finished his delineation of God's might and wisdom as they act in the world, Job looks back upon his picture, saying that he knows all this as well as his friends (vs. 1, 2); but his calamities receive thereby no solution. In spite of this knowledge he desires to plead his cause before God (v. 3). And they who sought to use this wisdom and might of God against him were mere forgers of lies, who gave a false as well as feeble explanation of his troubles (vs. 4, 5). They were nothing but partisans for God. And as they had invoked the omniscience of God against him he will threaten them with the judgment of the same God, who will search out their hidden insincerity, and before whom their old maxims will be but "proverbs of ashes" (vs. 6-12). With this stinging rebuke to his friends Job turns from them unto God. He will adventure all and go into His presence to plead his cause, come what may (vs. 13-15). This courage which he feels is token to him that he shall be victorious, for a godless man would not dare to come before God. He knows he shall be found in the right (vs. 16-19). Only he will beg for two conditions: that God would remove His hand from him, and that He would not terrify him by His majesty; then he is ready to answer if God will call, or to speak if God will answer (vs. 20-22). A. B. D. 3. Taking Zophar at his word, Job would invite God's answer by making plea to Him. In the absence of a daysman to represent his cause, Job approaches God directly, as indeed he has approached Him before, but in much better spirit now. J. F. G.—This desire to plead with God must be attributed to real inward faith; the plagues which had fallen on Job confound him; he cannot reconcile them, or other events in the world's history, with what he believes of God, but they do not drive him from God; far from renouncing God, he turns away from all other things, comes to Him, and is quite sure that his honesty will be recognized and approved. (See v. 18.) Cook. 27. Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and markest all my paths; Thou settest a bound to the soles of my feet: 28 Though I am like a rotten thing that consumeth, Like a garment that is moth-eaten. 4. They framed a wrong hypothesis concerning the Divine Providence and misrepresented it, as if it did never remarkably afflict any but wicked men in this world; and from thence they drew a false judgment concerning Job, that he was certainly a hypocrite. For this gross mistake, both in doctrine and application, he thinks an indictment of forgery lies against them. H.—What the friends have said, true though it is, is only the half-truth, which in their application of it has all the effect of a lie. Two essential elements they have ignored—the fact, illustrated by Job's affliction, that man may be punished though righteous; and the converse, taught by obvious facts, that man may be wicked and prosper. Hence their philosophizings are of no worth at all. J. F. G. 5. The advice is not mere irony, it is more than a taunt, for true wisdom teaches in the first place the limits of our knowledge, and the duty of silence when we are really ignorant. Cook. 7,8. He tells them plainly, (1) that God and His cause did not need such advocates—"Will you think to contend for God, as if His justice were clouded and wanted to be cleared up, or as if He were at a loss what to say and wanted you to speak for Him? Will you, who are so weak and passionate, put in for the honor of pleading God's cause?" (2) That God's cause suffered by such management. Under pretence of justifying God in afflicting Job, they magisterially condemn him as a hypocrite and a bad man. "This," says he, "is speaking wickedly" (for uncharitableness and censoriousness are wickedness, great wickedness; it is an offence to God to wrong our brethren), "it is talking deceitfully, for you condemn one whom yet perhaps your own consciences cannot but acquit. Your principles are false and your arguings fallacious; and will it excuse you to say, It is for God?" H. 7-11. Their advocacy of God is an injustice to Job, and an evil service rendered to God, which cannot escape punishment from Him. They set themselves up as God's advocates, and at the same time they are partial in His favor, as they are twice reminded and given to understand. They conceal their better knowledge by the assumption of an earnest tone and a bearing expressive of the strongest conviction that they are in the right. Such advocacy must be put to shame when He who needs no concealment of the truth for His justification will bring all untruth into the light. Delitzsch.—Let them consider what a God He is into whose service they had thus thrust themselves, and to whom they really did so much dis-service, and inquire whether they could give Him a good account of what they did. Let them consider the strictness of His scrutiny and inquiries concerning them, “Is it good that He should search you out? Can you bear to have the principles looked into which you go upon in your censures, and to have the bottom of the matter found out?” It concerns us all seriously to consider whether it will be to our advantage or no that God searches the heart. H. 13-22. Job now turns from his friends, whom he commands to be silent, to his great plea with God, resuming the intention expressed in v. 3. The passage has two parts: one preliminary (vs. 13-16), exhibiting a singular picture of the conflict between resolution and fear in Job's mind. He will go before God, come upon him what will (v. 13). Yet he cannot hide from himself that it may be at the hazard of his life. Yet he will not be deterred; he will defend his ways to God's face (vs. 14, 15). And yet again, this very courage which he has, arising from his sense of innocence, is a token to him that he shall be victorious (v. 16). The second part is vs. 17-22. Feeling that the victory is already his, he commands his friends to mark his pleading of his cause. He knows he shall be found in the right. Nay, no one will even plead against him (vs. 17-19). Only he begs two conditions of God—that He would lift His afflicting hand from him, and that He would not affright him with His terror (vs. 20-22). A. B. D. 14. In the first clause Job asks why he should cling to mere life, his torn and mutilated flesh, as with the desperate tenacity of a wild beast; in the latter he resolves to risk his life, to expose himself to any danger in pleading with God. 15. Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him. Or, Lo, He may slay me, yet will I wait for Him—i.e., abide hopefully the issue of His judgment. This appears to be the true sense of the passage. It expresses Job's own feeling, as is shown distinctly by the next verse, “He shall be my salvation,” about which no question is raised; it corresponds exactly with the expression in Psalm 38:15, a psalm throughout full of reminiscences of Job, and here apparently adopting his very words; the connection of thought is unbroken, whereas the rendering adopted by many commentators introduces an ill-timed exclamation of hopelessness. Cook.—Job's lowest despondency is generally the season when his strangely supported spirit mounts up to the strongest expression of his never-to-be-extinguished hope. T. Lewis. Literally it reads, “Lo, He may slay me, yet will I wait for him,” and the meaning is that, so sure is Job of the justice of his cause, that at the hazard of his life he will vindicate himself before God and wait in sure expectation of a favorable verdict. Our version is a truthful expression of the faith in God's righteousness which underlies Job's words. The sentence has become one of the standard formulas of the Christian faith. It expresses the right attitude of the soul toward a God of infinite love and truth, who yet, through the very depth and vast range of His counsels, is sometimes hidden from His children. He that stakes his life on God's truth will never be the loser. V. Job's triumph is, in the most absolute and unqualified manner, the triumph of faith over sense. It would seem as though everything conspired to show that God was persecuting him, and treating him as an enemy. Yet from an angry God he can turn nowhere but back to God Himself, in whom he does and must confide, in spite of His apparent hostility. W. H. G.—Everything is against his trust in God. He has been stricken, terribly stricken, when he had no consciousness that he deserved it. And He who permitted this—instead of appearing to explain the mystery—has hidden Himself from His servant. All around in the darkness does the patriarch grope after Him, but it is in vain. The next blow may cleave him to the ground, but he fears it not. He looks calmly to the threatening cloud. Let it come. It will make no difference in his confidence—“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him.” F. Greeves. 15,16. To maintain His ways, to be true in the face of God and the iron universe to that perfect and upright ideal which has hitherto shaped his life, is in Job's soul the supreme imperative, compared with which the desire for restored health and property or any earthly happiness never once comes to mention. “There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the God-like that is in man, and how in the God-like only has he strength and freedom? . . . Love not pleasure; love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works it is well with him." (Carlyle.)—The encounter with the selfishness of his friends has carried Job over from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yea. Farewell now, fear and complaining; farewell, trust in the outworn maxims of men; face to face with death and the worst that his unseen enemy can do, Job turns solemnly from his fellows and commits himself anew to the righteousness that has hitherto been his life, in supreme faith that its issue, though now he sees it not, must be salvation. J. F. G. If God is worthy to be trusted—and that question is already settled once for all—God is to be trusted always; to be trusted because of what He is, and not merely because of the proofs of his worthiness to be trusted, that are multiplied to us hour by hour. There are times when we cannot understand the ways of God; times when God's ways might be so interpreted as to seem to show a lack of wisdom or a lack of love; but then it is that our trust in God is to be rested on as having a surer basis than our understanding of His present providences. No child of God has, indeed, a true trust in God, unless he can feel and say in all sincerity concerning God, when God's ways are most inscrutable, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." S. S. T. 16. My salvation. This leaves no doubt as to the very innermost feeling of Job. He is sure of salvation, though he knows not how it may be possible, or in what form it may come. Cook.—A godless man shall not come before Him.** A godless man will not dare to go before God; but Job dares and desires; and this courage, sweet evidence to himself of his innocence, he says will be his salvation—that is, will secure him victory in his plea with God. He hardly distinguishes between his own consciousness of innocence and his innocence itself and the proof of it. He is so conscious of it that he is sure it will appear before God. A. B. D. 18. Behold, now have I set in order my cause; I know that I shall be justified.** It is an appeal from the God who works in the impenetrable darkness without to the God who has put holy impulses within, and a trust in the guidance of that honest human heart which "condemns him not." This declaration we may regard as the bed-rock, so to say, of the Book of Job. To appreciate what it means for Job to make it, reflect that the wisdom of man, the testimony of the past, the utterance of trusted friends, have all raised their voice in unison with a mysterious visitation of God to declare the contrary. Job is launching out into the darkness alone, staking life and destiny on the belief that the powers that work unseen, in spite of inexorable appearances, are for righteousness. Doth Job fear God for nought? The sneer of Satan is more than answered. J. F. G. 19. Who will contend with me? Who will oppose me with good reasons—who will bring a valid argument against me? The words are a triumphant expression of the feeling that no one will or can. For then would I hold my peace, and give up the ghost**—that is, in case any one should appear against him with proof of his sin. The words form a splendid climax to the declaration of his consciousness of innocence. He is sure he shall be found in the right—nay, none will be found to contend with him; if he thought any one could, he would be silent and die. A. B. D. He is assured God will not maintain the cause against him, will not assert that he really drew upon himself all these calamities; but that if he be mistaken in that conviction, if God really should impute guilt to him, he has no alternative but to lie down and die in silence. There is a strong undercurrent of hope in this, for it is clear that Job is confident that when God speaks it will be in righteousness and love. (See 14:15.) Cook.—These words indicate how deeply Job's avowal has taken hold of his life. So sure is he of its truth that if it were possible for one to make good the opposite, then life would have no more significance for him; his whole being is committed to this position of his. 20-24. Comparing this passage with 9:32-35, we see that the two things for which Job asks here are just the boons that he associates with a daysman. Note, then, the place of this plea. As soon as Job, committing life and destiny to his integrity, feels that he has reached a point where God and he may stand together, and where, believing that God will hear and heed, he may set in order his cause, he makes his plea for that which a daysman would secure. J. F. G. 23. Job begins his plea with the demand to know the number of his sins—how many iniquities and sins have I?—and in general to be made aware of them. He means what great sins he is guilty of, sins that account for his present afflictions. He does not deny sinfulness, even sins of his youth (v. 26); what he denies is special sins of such magnitude as to account for his calamities. Job and his friends both agree in the theory that great afflictions are evidence that God holds those whom He afflicts guilty of great offences. The friends believe that Job is guilty of such offences; he knows he is not, and he here demands to know what the sins are of which God holds him guilty. A. B. D. 24. Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face. The loss of property he hardly mentions, his bereavement of his children he barely alludes to; but it is for God he mourns, for the hiding of His face, “the light of His countenance,” that ineffable good for which our purest modern religion finds its best expression in the language of this ancient theism. Such a feeling is not inconsistent with the daring and almost profane expostulations wrung from him by the long continuance of his sharp bodily pains. In every subsidence of this great misery there returns again the humbled, mourning spirit with its Divine want. T. Lewis. Holdest me for Thine enemy. An indirect but most touching assertion of his love and trust; Job feels that the enmity can but be apparent, though every outward act seems to attest its reality. Cook.—During the discussion with his friends there is exhibited to us the conflict in Job's mind; how it sometimes veered in the direction of infidelity, but ever again recovered itself and came back to steadfastness and trust. What raises such tides of agony in Job's soul is not that he has been stripped barer than the tree in winter; not that his friends misunderstood him; not even that his life and hopes were extinguished; it is that God has forsaken him; that he is cast out from His presence; and that he is so, all these calamities are proofs too surely conclusive. A. B. D. 26. The iniquities of my youth. An important passage, proving that Job's consciousness of integrity does not exclude a true estimate of his own character; like the Psalmist, he remembers the sins of his youth, and attributes his sufferings to them, but not without a feeling that it is inconsistent with God's goodness to visit them so bitterly. The words, however, express a general truth; the sense of sin remains, it haunts the memory, and comes out with terrible vividness in seasons of trial and suffering. Cook.—The sins of youth are often the smart of age, both in respect of sorrow within (Jer. 31:18, 19) and suffering without (20:11). Time does not wear out the guilt of sin. When God writes bitter things against us, His design is to bring forgotten sins to mind, and so to bring us to remorse for them as to break us off from them. This is all the fruit, to take away our sin. H. There is the language of complaint here; there is a disposition to blame God which we can by no means approve, and which we are not required to approve. But let us not too harshly blame the patriarch. Let him who has suffered much and long—who feels that he is forsaken by God and by man—who has lost property and friends, and who is suffering under a painful bodily malady—if he has never had any of those feelings, cast the first stone. Let not those blame him who live in affluence and prosperity, and who have yet to endure the first severe trial of life. Barnes. 1. MAN that is born of a woman Is of few days, and full of trouble. 2. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: He fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. 3. And dost thou open thine eyes upon such an one, And bringest me into judgment with thee? 4. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. 5. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with thee, And thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; 6. Look away from him, that he may rest, Till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. 7. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. 8. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, And the stock thereof die in the ground ; 9. Yet through the scent of water it will bud, And put forth boughs like a plant. 10. But man dieth, and wasteth away : Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he ? 11. As the waters fail from the sea, And the river wasteth and drieth up ; 12. So man lieth down and riseth not : Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, Nor be roused out of their sleep. 13. Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, That thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me ! 14. If a man die, shall he live again ? All the days of my warfare would I wait, Till my release should come. Verses 1-6 : He wonders that God would bring such a being into judgment with Him, when the race of man is universally imperfect and a clean one cannot be found in it. And he founds an appeal on the fated shortness of man's life that God would not afflict him with strange and uncommon troubles, but leave him to take what comfort he can, oppressed with only the natural hardships of his short and evil "day." 7-12 : This appeal is supported by the remembrance of the inexorable "nevermore" which death writes on man's life. Sadder is the fate of man even than that of the tree. The tree if cut down will bud again, but man dieth and is gone without return as wholly as the water which the sun sucks up from the pool ; his sleep of death is eternal. 13-15 : Step after step Job has gone down deeper into the waters of despair—the universal sinfulness of mankind and the inexorable severity of God ; the troubles of life, of which one must sate himself to the full ; its brevity ; and last of all, its complete extinction in death. The waters here reach his heart ; and human nature, driven back upon itself, becomes prophetic : the vision rises before Job's mind of another life after this one, and he pursues with excited eagerness the glorious phantom. 16-22 : Finally, the prayer that such another life might be is supported by a new and dark picture which he draws of his present condition. A. B. D. 15. Thou shouldest call, and I would answer thee : Thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thine hands. 16. But now thou numberest my steps : Dost thou not watch over my sin ? 17. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, And thou fastenest up mine iniquity. 18. And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, And the rock is removed out of its place ; 19. The waters wear the stones ; The overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth : So thou destroyest the hope of man. 20. Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth ; Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. 21. His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not ; And they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them. 22. But his flesh upon him hath pain, And his soul within him mourneth. 1-12. These verses indicate a gradual subsidence of stormy passion, preparatory to a state of mind in which the true secret of God's dispensations may be dimly discerned, a gleam of hope may visit the soul. The images by which the shortness and misery of life and its utter hopelessness, if followed by no resurrection, are illustrated have been adopted in all ages of the Church as the truest and most touching expression of the feelings of mourners. Cook. 1. Full of trouble. Suffering is a test of all philosophies and all theories of life. It is useless to leave it out of the calculation ; for, through the disorders of a mortal body, through dull discouragements, through weaknesses of the spirit, through a sensitive brain or heart, through the affections that weave families together—through some of these inlets, it forces its way back into every lot, and will not be forgotten. Life does not really become a problem with any of us till we taste of its bitterness. Pain, sorrow, trial, bereavement—these are names of which no man or woman ever learns the real signification from grammar or dictionary, but only by drinking their cup in a secret experience. F. D. H. 2. Man comes forth, says Job, like a flower, and is cut down ; he is sent into the world the fairest and noblest part of God's works, fashioned after the image of his Creator, with respect to reason and the great faculties of the mind; he cometh forth glorious as the flower of the field; as it surpasses the vegetable world in beauty, so does he the animal world in the glory and excellence of his nature. But as God has appointed and determined the several growths and decays of the vegetable race, so He seems as evidently to have prescribed the same laws to man, as well as all living creatures, in the first rudiments of which there are contained the specific powers of their growth, duration and extinction; and when the evolutions of those animal powers are exhausted and run down, the creature expires and dies of itself, as ripe fruit falls from the tree, or a flower preserved beyond its bloom droops and perishes upon the stalk. Sterne. Life, with its beauty, brevity, and frailty, can find no better symbol than the flower. Life, in its swift evanescence, will never suggest to the greatest poet a more fitting figure than a shadow. V.—Perhaps no image is more suggestive than that which Job here moaned out, that “man fleeth as a shadow.” What is a shadow? Nothing. It is the absence of light. Some obstruction has come between the earth and sun, light has been intercepted, and, as rapidly as light moves, so the shadow withdraws itself. A leaf creates it, a limb, a tree, a fence, a snowflake, a cloud, a flower, a church-spire, a child’s hand. It is very beautiful, like life itself. Nature delights in shadows. They are essential to loveliness and expression, and the master of light and shadow is a great painter. But oh, how swiftly the shadows flee away! J. H. Burrows.—Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave, and reckon thyself above the earth by the line thou must be contented with under it. Spread not into boundless expansions either of designs or desires. Browne. 4. Job throws his idea of the universal uncleanness of man, and that there is not one without sin, into the form of a wish that it were otherwise. If the race of men were not universally infected with sin, which each individual inherits by belonging to the race, God’s stringent treatment of the individuals would not be so hard to understand. Job urges the admitted fact as a plea for forbearance on the side of God. A. B. D. Moralists may preach, “Unless above himself he can erect himself, how mean a thing is man!” but all the preaching in the world is of no avail. The task is an impossibility. The stream cannot rise above its source nor be purified in its flow if bitter waters come from the fountain. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” There is no power in human nature to cast off this clinging self. As in the awful vision of the poet, the serpent is grown into the man. The will is feeble for good, the conscience sits like a discrowned king issuing empty mandates, while all his realm is up in rebellion and treats his proclamations as so much waste paper. How can a man remake himself? how cast off his own nature? The means at his disposal themselves need to be cleansed, for themselves are tainted. It is the old story—who will keep the keepers?—who will heal the sick physicians? Only the influx of that pardoning, cleansing grace which is in Christ will wash away the accumulations of years, and the ingrained evil which has stained every part of my being. We cannot cleanse ourselves, we cannot “put off” this old nature which has struck its roots so deep into our being. Only “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus shall make us free from the law of sin and death.” A. M. 5. The number of our months is with God, at the disposal of His power, which cannot be controlled, and under the view of His omniscience, which cannot be deceived. It is certain that God’s providence has the ordering of the period of our lives, our times are in His hand, the powers of nature depend upon Him and act under Him; in Him we live and move and have our being. H. 5,6. The two verses are closely connected; there should be no full stop at the end of v. 5. Since his days are determined, the number of his months with Thee, since Thou hast fixed his limit which he cannot pass, therefore look away from him that he may cease, till he gladly finish his day, like a hireling. Cook. 7-9. One is here at once reminded of the palm which, on the one hand, is pre-eminently a water-loving plant, and, on the other hand, possesses a wonderful vitality, whence it becomes a figure for youthful vigor. The palm and the phœnix have one name, and not without reason. The tree, reviving as from the dead at the scent of water, is like the wondrous bird rising from its own ashes. Delitzsch. 10-12. In the case of the tree the possibility of a new life is not excluded, but it is wholly different in the case of a deceased man. As the dried-up water leaves behind it no trace in the lake or stream and never returns, so man, when dead, returneth not until the heaven is no more—and that is eternal—never cometh again from his motionless sleep in Hades into this life in the upper world. Ewald. 10. Where is he? In eternity, living, thinking, feeling. In eternity, prepared or unprepared for its life. In eternity, changed or unchanged, saved or unsaved. In eternity, like or unlike God. In eternity, to abide with Christ or exiled from Christ. In eternity, to encounter the reaping of that which is now sowing in time, to meet again all the life we have lived, its evil forgiven and its good done a lasting memory of grateful joy, or its evil unforgiven, its good undone, an abiding memory of despairing remorse. B. Erelong the present state of things shall end. The rich, the noble, the learned, the lowly, the afflicted, the ignorant, shall put aside their temporary parts, and be seen in their real, unpersonated, eternal selves! How unspeakably little, in the retrospect, will all these famous inequalities appear! Entering upon immortality—an immortality which knows nothing of any distinctions but those of holiness and nearness to God—with what inconceivable indifference we shall regard the distinctions, the varieties, the apparent advantages and disadvantages of this world! They will be passed, and passed forever!—except in their effects; except as they have left consequences upon our souls, according as they have been improved or neglected, they will be as though they had never been. And what shall remain? our spiritual life; our holy or unholy souls! That which is now so apt to be lost amid petty thoughts and trifling interests; that which is now so often overlaid by all manner of worldly and temporary inequalities, will then stand forth in the greatness of its own true proportions. In our spiritual being—soul and body raised to every seed his own—we shall stand before the Eternal Judge of quick and dead, capable of new and unimagined heights of bliss or depths of woe, to pass at once and forever to our own place. G. M. How different are the consequences of death to different men! We are now seated within the same walls, all wearing the same form, sharing, for the greater part, in the same joys and sorrows, burdened with the same cares and with the same sins; but look forward a few years, and how amazing the difference that has taken place between man and man! Some of us are in a world of peace, with every sorrow gone, every fear at rest, every hope realized; so pure that a holy God looks on us “with exceeding joy;” so unutterably happy that even in heaven we wonder at our happiness. But where are others of us? In a land where we shall see them no more; as wretched as we are happy; completely and forever lost. And is a dissimilarity like this, so great, so lasting, and yet so near, a matter of indifference to us? C. Bradley.—Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Where he will remain forever. The disciplinary system has ceased; motives are no longer urged upon him; he hears no arguments. From the cessation of many former influences, from its translation out of that entire economy of trial, and from its new, unmingled emotions, the disembodied spirit must become irresistibly conscious that retribution has commenced. Not one word do we find in holy writ authorizing the belief of a future probation, restoration, or annihilation of the wicked, any more than of future condemnation of the righteous. A. C. Thompson. There is something that is ours which is to be a thousand years, a million of years, a million of ages hence, a million times that—and so forward; it is ours, for it is certain to be and certain to be inseparable from us. It is to be even ourselves, as absolutely ours as the state we are to be in to-morrow is so—nay, as much as the state we are in this moment belongs to us. J. F. We long to know something definite as to a future life to which we stand in conscious relationship. Nature is silent. The stars bring us no tidings. Morning brightness, sunset splendor tell us nothing. It is, indeed, “the land which is very far off.” In the hurry of life we may for a while forget, but in our quiet hours, the Sabbaths of the soul, these queries burn into our hearts like coals of fire. “What am I? and what is that realm of spirit to which I am hastening?” None but Christ can tell. He came to teach us. To Christ alone we go to find our ardent yearnings satisfied. Sweetly sounds the Saviour’s voice: “He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” I rejoice with joy unspeakable, for, in touching this promise, I touch the staff of Omnipotence! Baffled everywhere else, repelled everywhere else, I find comfort here. R. S. S. 12. Their sleep. Some translate death into such terrible shapes and represent it to themselves under such affrighting forms that they live in bondage through the fear of death all their days. Do as the Spirit of God teacheth you. Clothe it with pleasant expressions; call it the undressing and unclothing of yourselves; call it rest; conceive it under the notion of sleep, and then you will not fear, but welcome it. Caryl. 13-15. Job expresses a desire that the grave (Sheol) may not be his everlasting home, but that he may remain there till the wrath be past, that God may appoint a set time and remember him; he is content to wait for that time if he may then be called to plead his cause; as he proceeds he finds a real ground for such a hope in God's love of the creation—His desire to the work of His own hands. This may be but a yearning, but it indicates the existence and strength of a feeling which when developed would necessarily issue in the belief of a future compensation. Cook. Having pursued the destiny of man through all its steps down to its complete extinction in death, Job, with a revulsion created by the instinctive demands of the human spirit, rises to the thought that there might be another life after this one. This thought is expressed in the form of an impassioned desire. His firm conviction is that his malady is mortal—in other words, that God's anger will pursue him to the grave. On this side of death he has no hope of a return to God's favor. Hence, contemplating that he shall die under God's anger, his thought is that he might remain in Sheol till God's wrath be past, for He keepeth not His anger forever; that God would appoint him a period to remain in death and then remember him with returning mercy and call him back again to His fellowship. But to his mind this involves a complete return to life again of the whole man (v. 14), for in death there is no fellowship with God. A. B. D. 12. The word "hide" is very expressive, meaning literally to hide with loving care, as something costly and precious. It carries a beautiful and touching hint that Job still deems himself dear to God. He would fain be hidden by His hand in that shadowy realm which the Egyptians call "the shelter of the weary." V. 14. Shall he live again? The question implies not a denial of the possibility of such a restoration, but a deep sense of its hopelessness. The longing, however, bears witness to a spiritual instinct, which could scarcely exist without some corresponding reality. The latter clause means, were such a hope vouchsafed I would pass all the days of my service in patient waiting until my change came. The days of service in this case include the intermediate period in Sheol, when he would wait, like a soldier on guard, to be relieved; and the change is not from life to death, but from that state to new life. Cook.—If only it might be so, all the days of my sojourn in Hades would I wait until my discharge came. Until that summons from God should call me forth from the darkness I would sit amid the gloom and silence like a sentinel at my post. V. # If a man die, shall he live again? Consider some of the grounds for believing that the soul of man is immortal. The main current of human opinion sets strongly and steadily toward belief in immortality. The masterminds have been strongest in their affirmation of it. The longing of the soul for life and its horror at the thought of extinction. There must be correlation between desire and fulfilment. The action of the mind in thought begets a sense of continuous life. A parallel argument is found in the nature of love. It cannot tolerate the thought of its own end. Love has but one symbol—Forever! its logic is, There is no death. There are in man latent powers, and others half revealed, for which human life offers no adequate explanation. There is within us a strange sense of expectancy. A Divine discontent is wrought into us—Divine because it attends our highest faculties. The imagination carries with it a plain intimation of a larger sphere than the present. The same course of thought applies to the moral nature. If we turn to the Divine nature, we shall find a like, but immeasurably clearer group of intimations. Without immortality there is failure in the higher purposes of God respecting the race; God's ends are indicated, but not reached. The fact that justice is not done upon the earth involves us in the same conclusion. Man is less perfect than the rest of creation, and, relatively to himself, is less perfect in his higher than in his lower faculties. As love is the strongest proof of immortality on the man-ward side of the argument, so it is on the God-ward side. Divine, as well as human love has but one symbol in language—Forever! T. T. Munger. The confidence of immortality is implied in Job's question. Death does not, in the slightest degree, affect the essential vitality of the soul; so it does not, in the slightest degree, affect the outflow of God's love to that soul. It is a change of condition and circumstance, and no more. He does not lose us in the dust of death. How beautifully this thought contrasts with the saddest aspect of the power of death in our human experience! He is Death the Separator, who unclasps our hands from the closest, dearest grasp, and divides asunder joints and marrow, and parts soul and body, and withdraws us from all our habitude and associations and occupations, and loosens every bond of society and concord, and hales us away into a lonely land. But there is one bond which his "abhorred shears" cannot cut. One Hand holds us in a grasp which the fleshless fingers of death in vain strive to loosen. The separator becomes the uniter; he rends us apart from the world that he may "bring us to God." The love filtered by drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood in death; "for I am persuaded that neither death nor life shall be able to separate us from the love of God. A. M. The Gospel comes to change the whole aspect of death, reigning with terror from the sin of Adam down to the birth of the Redeemer. This celestial visitant, like the shining angel in the tomb of Jesus, takes her stand at the door of the sepulchre, and the light she bears shines far within—yea, entirely through the dark valley. As revealed religion did not produce death nor inflict it, but finds it as a fact already existing, so all its extraordinary power is applied, not to prevent death, but so to change its whole aspect and quality that the curse shall be converted into a blessing, and men may be more than willing, even glad to die. It is the Gospel which extracts the sting of death, depriving it of all power to harm the feeblest believer. To all intents, death is actually abolished. By a Divine revelation we are assured that death is not the destruction of humanity. Life and immortality are brought to light in the Gospel. The body itself shall be raised again, and, perfected and refined itself, shall be conjoined to a refined and perfected spirit. In proof and promise of this great achievement, the Son of God Himself became subject unto death, and rose again from its power. The one sweeping fact of mortality is confronted by another fact, extraordinary and miraculous, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Here is positive help and hope for man, under the most abhorrent event which Nature knows, From being the ghastly King of Terrors, striking down the helpless into the dust, and trampling upon humanity with his iron heel, Death, by the intervention of the Redeemer, is converted into a minister of mercy—unclothing the child of God, that he may be clothed upon with his house which is from heaven. How soft and grateful the light which it sheds on the grave! It is the halo of hope—the reflection of heaven's own peace and repose. W. Adams. Christ authenticated the popular belief of a life after death, and the future resurrection of the dead. He taught His disciples to anticipate an ultimate, glorious, divine futurity for those who received His doctrine, and who lived an unblemished and holy life upon earth. He spake with great familiarity of heaven as His Father's house, told His friends of its many mansions, and of His going to prepare a place for them. They heard Him pray that they might be with Him hereafter, to behold His glory and to participate His joy. He evoked the expectation of their rising to an equality with those higher orders of beings who stand continually in the Divine presence, and look familiarly on the face of God. There was nothing dark, vague, or uncertain about His teaching as to the reality of a future life; and, as to its perpetuity, it was to be "life eternal" in the sense of being that which was to be enjoyed forever; they that were thought worthy to attain it should be like the angels of God, so confirmed in their immortality that they could "die no more." Binney. President Charles White, of Wabash College, thus wrote during the moments which preceded his own sudden rapt transition to the experience here portrayed: "What a serene glory surrounds the death-scene, as depicted by the eye of faith! The senses are closing, never to reopen; the eye is dim, never to be relighted—the beautiful, the sublime, the faces of loved ones, never more are recognized; the ear is closed, voices die, sounds are heard no more. But nobler organs are received; visions of spirits ecstatic and rapturous are now enjoyed. Glorious voices are recognized by a new spiritual sense. Uncertainty and darkness and sin are left behind, as also the prison which had held the spirit. Disease and pain and bereavement are an entrance made into the grand lights and substantial purities of an unchanging realm. Faith sees the spirit loosened clear and clean from the world, buoyant and mounting toward heaven—sees the kindled, kindling hope on exultant wing soaring into glory and rest—" 15. Thou wilt have a desire. The hope of a resurrection is thus, for the first time, made to rest upon the love of God; the desire of the creature may suggest the possibility or reasonableness of such a hope, the desire of God alone can seal it. Job knew how his heart yearned to meet God, he believes that in God's heart there must be a corresponding yearning to see once more the creation of His power and love. This word touches upon the utmost limit of religious speculation; with that conviction Job was safe, the next application of it to his own circumstances would bring the truth out in a still more definite form. Cook.—How persistently Job presupposes in God a love like that of a father! And it is on this line of affection — Creator for creature, friend for friend, an affection which in his relations here on earth has failed—that he reaches his greatest achievements in faith. J. F. G. Job considered that even in its intermediate state, the body would be precious to God. "Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." Of that separate state we know but little. That it will be a state of consciousness is evident, both from universal instinct and from the nature of spirit. Spirit can only exist in motion, and therefore the ancients called spirit perpetual motion. It is evident also from the general necessity that a creature once made to glorify God can never cease to glorify Him. In the intermediate state the spirit must be happy. How can it be conscious and with Christ, and not happy? So that our Saviour doubly proves it when He says, "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Consider that broad foundation thought on which the patriarchs rested for everything, having the resurrection as its base, "Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." It is upon this principle that we at once see the unspeakable comfort there is in the full, simple recognition of the doctrines of grace. Once let any part of the work of grace have man in it, and in the same degree it has uncertainty in it. Man does not return to his own designs. Man does not finish his own work. But God does. If, therefore, the beginnings are entirely God's, "the ends" are perfectly sure. J. V. 15. This language, which seems to mount to almost full assurance, is but a transient gleam, and the close of the chapter becomes as mournful as its beginning. The inference strongly suggests itself that this is a true experience, an actual life that is lived. A soul went through these sorrows. It had these transitions of hope and despair, now moaning and expostulating with God, now praying and trusting, now utterly cast down, and now rising suddenly to a height of rapture in which everything disappears before the beatific vision of God. To a mind in a right state there comes from this an irresistible argument for the actual truthfulness of the history. T. Lewis. 16. The head and source of all Job's misery is the feeling that God for some unknown reason does not pardon. He numbers every false step, keeps a watch over his sins. Cook.—It is but a moment ago (v. 15) that he recognized, in a strain of inimitable beauty, the yearning bent of creative Love. He is now, indeed, complaining of the present severity of God's dealings with him; but the plaintive tenderness of that sentiment still floats over his spirit and lingers in his words, softening them into the tone of a subdued and reproachful moan. Ewald. 17. My transgression. The meaning seems to be that God treasures up all Job's misdoings, keeps them carefully in order to repay them fully. He has but to open that bag and the sins will come out in the form of terrible plagues. Here again the admission of sin must be noted. Cook.—God does indeed see all our sins, He sees sin in His own people, but He is not severe in reckoning with us, nor is the law ever stretched against us, but we are punished less than our iniquities deserve. God does indeed seal and sew up, against the day of wrath, the transgression of the impenitent, but the sins of His people He blots out as a cloud. H. 18,19. The agencies affecting the whole surface of the earth and giving character to its scenery, while explaining its history, are vividly set forth by Job, when he says, "And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought (or fadeth), and the rock is removed out of his place. The waters wear the stones; Thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth." The very processes which modern geologists are engaged in keenly discussing are specified in the language of the patriarch. Comprehensively, these delineations in Scripture may possibly represent universal geologic movements. W. Fraser. As "the waters wear the stones," they teach us a lesson of perseverance. They write upon the rocks a parable of patient diligence. There are some things which must be done at a stroke, on the spur of the moment, or the opportunity is gone forever. But the eye to see what is to be done, the skill to aim the stroke, the strength to give it, the coolness and courage to be as steady and self-possessed at the moment as if you had plenty of time to spare—these can come only by slow, patient, persevering work, like that with which "the waters wear the stones." The waters as they wear the stones may teach us a parable of life. They may remind us what little things may in time do great mischief. Not a few homes could be found in which it would pay to have this motto put up in golden letters, if only everybody would learn its lessons. They seem to lack nothing that is needed for a happy home. What is amiss? Only this, that no one has learned how much both the happiness and the unhappiness of life depend on little things. Little opportunities for a kind action, a kind word, a kind look, slip by continually. And so, because life is mostly made up of little things, the happiness of home is bit by bit destroyed, even as "the waters wear the stones." The water-worn rock teaches us another parable—a parable of character. Our character depends chiefly on the habits we form. There are good habits and bad habits. And how do these habits grow? Little by little, as "the waters wear the stones." The Bible speaks of a "stony heart"—that is, a heart hardened in sinful habits, in unbelief and forgetfulness of God. We cannot change the past, but God can forgive it. Tears of repentance cannot wash away one sin, but the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. E. R. Conder. All these similitudes appear to aim at the same point, which Job had been pursuing a little before—namely, that a man dying shall return no more to his former state; this he shadows out by mountains, rocks, stones, trees, and the fruits of the earth, which are changed and consumed, as if they had never been. Caryl. 19. Thou destroyest the hope of man. Even the most durable things cannot defy decay; and as to mortal man, thou hast brought his hope utterly to nought. Death, the germ of which he carries in him even from his birth, is to him an end without a ray of hope. Delitzsch.—The mind of Job, beginning to fall back into its despondency, is led to a mental consideration of the slow changes of nature, and breaks out into a sort of abrupt answer to the thought that had silently intervened: "Ah yes! God's times are long; the earth, too, and the heavens (vs. 11, 12) are passing away." "Yes; even the mountain, falling, crumbles to decay." The effect of this is to throw a shade over his hope, until, at the end of the chapter, he seems to have got almost wholly to his old despairing state. T. Lewis. With this language of mingled complaint, remonstrance, despondency, and doubt, Job closes the first series of the controversy. He is evidently in deep perplexity. He knows not what to do or what to think; but, on the whole, his language is that of one who feels that God and man are alike against him, and that he has no comforter. Kitto. The first circle of speeches, now completed, started from Job's complaints in chap. 3. Job did not there name God nor make any open imputation against Him, but his bitter maledications of the day of his birth and his impatient cry. Why gives He life to him that is in misery (3:20)? showed too well against whom it was that he "turned his spirit" (15:12). Hence the three friends conceive that the first thing to aim at is to bring Job back to just and reverent thoughts of God. Therefore they dwell upon the attributes of God and contrast Him with man, hoping by this great thought of God to still the tumult in Job's breast and bring him to take his right place before the Creator. However irreligious Job's demeanor might seem to his friends, it is obvious that he has struck from their hands the weapon they have hitherto been using against him. Their argument of "God" is exhausted. Job's passionate proclamation that what he desires above all things is to meet God and maintain his ways to His face has convinced them that he is not to be vanquished with this weapon. Hence they are obliged to look about for others. A. B. D. What has Job gained in this first discussion? 1. He has won a victory in argument over the friends. Against their insinuations of his guilt, his conscience, acquitting him of hidden guilt and speaking out in manly denial, has proved more effective than all logic. To their rebukes of his impatience he has a ready answer in the desperation to which suffering has driven him. To the dogma that God rewards the good and punishes the wicked in this life he has opposed the unanswerable argument of fact. 2. He has refuted the great accuser, Satan. He has not renounced God. Everything has been taken from him; all sorts of calamities have been heaped upon him. God, who had been the object of his love, the source of his happiness, had apparently renounced him, yet he never renounces God. V. 1. THEN answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, 2 Should a wise man make answer with vain knowledge, And fill his belly with the east wind? 3. Should he reason with unprofitable talk, Or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? 4. Yea, thou doest away with fear, And restrainest devotion before God. 5. For thine iniquity teacheth thy mouth, And thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. 6. Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I; Yea, thine own lips testify against thee. 7. Art thou the first man that was born? Or wast thou brought forth before the hills? 8. Hast thou heard the secret counsel of God? And dost thou limit wisdom to thyself? 9. What knowest thou, that we know not? What understandest thou, which is not in us? 10. With us are both the grayheaded and the very aged men, Much elder than thy father. 11. Are the consolations of God too small for thee, Even the word that is gentle toward thee? 12. Why doth thine heart carry thee away? And why do thine eyes flash? 13. That thou turnest thy spirit against God, And lettest such words go out of thy mouth. 14. What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? 15. Behold, he putteth no trust in his holy ones; Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight 16. How much less one that is abominable and corrupt, A man that drinketh iniquity like water! 17. I will shew thee, hear thou me: And that which I have seen I will declare: 18 (Which wise men have told From their fathers, and have not hid it; 19. Unto whom alone the land was given, And no stranger passed among them:) 20. The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days, Even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor. 21. A sound of terrors is in his ears; In prosperity the spoiler shall come upon him: THE three friends have now spoken, and Job has replied to them all in turn. The first series of the discussion closed with the last chapter, and the second commences with the one before us. In this the friends add scarcely anything to what they had already urged, betraying man- ifest signs of exhaustion. The speeches are of equal number as before, but so much shorter that this section of the debate occupies only seven chapters, as against eleven in the first de- 22. He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness, And he is waited for of the sword: 23. He wandereth abroad for bread, saying, Where is it? He knoweth that the day of darkness is ready at his hand: 24. Distress and anguish make him afraid; They prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle: 25. Because he hath stretched out his hand against God, And behaveth himself proudly against the Almighty; 26. He runneth upon him with a stiff neck, With the thick bosses of his bucklers: 27. Because he hath covered his face with his fatness, And gathered fat upon his loins; 28. And he hath dwelt in desolate cities, In houses which no man inhabited, Which were ready to become heaps. 29. He shall not be rich, neither shall his sub- stance continue, Neither shall their possessions be extended on the earth. 30. He shall not depart out of darkness; The flame shall dry up his branches, And by the breath of his mouth shall he go away. 31. Let him not trust in vanity, deceiving him- self: For vanity shall be his recompense. 32. It shall be accomplished before his time, And his branch shall not be green. 33. He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, And shall cast off his flower as the olive. 34. For the company of the godless shall be bar- ren, And fire shall consume the tents of bribery. 35. They conceive mischief, and bring forth in- liquity, And their belly prepareth deceit. bate. Kitto.—The arguments employed by the three friends remain throughout in sub- stance the same. But up to this time the three have been content with general statements, which were, of course, partially true; now they step forward to a direct and personal attack. Job's speeches appear to them to be a damning proof of his impiety, and they do not hesitate to denounce him as a rebel against God. In at- tempting to maintain their new position, the three friends stray further and further from the truth, and, as is natural, grow visibly angry. Wounded self-love shows behind their zeal for God, and, as always happens, their bigotry grows more intense with the rise of personal feeling. Job, on the other hand, becomes every moment calmer and more collected as the accusations assume a more direct form. Before, he had been confused and divided, as one who fights in the dark where friend and foe are indistinguishable. But as the charges are brought personally home to him he feels more and more the falsehood implied in them, and is more and more confirmed in his innocence. "He had before known that he was innocent, and now he feels the strength that lies in innocence, as if God were beginning to reveal Himself within him, to prepare the way for the outward manifestation of Himself." The theme chosen by the speakers suits their indignant mood. Abandoning all attempt to comfort Job with the promises that wait on repentance, they concentrate all their powers on the description of the doom of wicked men. It is an awful picture, none the less true because of the falsehood of its application. The type of wickedness selected is one intended to cover the case of Job. It is the Oriental chieftain grown great and rich by successful violence and rapine (15:27, 28; 18:7; 20:6-15). The successive steps of the tyrant's ruin are graphically described, from the first stings of the guilty conscience that disturbs the serenity of his proud prosperity to the oblivion that at last overwhelms and buries his infamous name (15:20 sq.; 18:7 sq.; 20). A few delicate touches serve to detect the individual peculiarities of the three. Eliphaz is still the most dignified and considerate, and although he assumes an air of superiority, he tries to make his words less direct while he supports them with the weighty authority of tradition. He dwells chiefly on the terrors which haunt a guilty mind, painting, with a vividness of touch which no poetry has surpassed, the coward fears that attend an evil conscience. Bildad, whose taste for brevity makes Job's lengthy speeches especially offensive to him (18:2), follows with a description of the godless man, which is a masterpiece of poetic idealizing, and teems with images that have enriched literature forever (vs. 6-14). Zophar, the most angry and the least able to disguise his wounded vanity, pursues the same theme in a series of vigorous figures, which display at the same time the narrowness of his mind. Aglen. Job's demeanor under his sufferings only confirmed the conclusions which his sufferings themselves compelled them to draw. They see in Job a type both of the calamities that befall the wicked and of their rebellious impatience under them. In this way the thoughts of the friends are drawn away from heaven to earth. God is no more their theme, but man, especially the wicked man as history and experience show him to be dealt with in the providence of God. The effect of this change is naturally to draw the arguments of the friends closer around Job, and bring the debate to a crisis. For though the object of the three friends in drawing their dark pictures of the heaven-daring sinner and his fate is to awaken Job's conscience and alarm him, that he may turn from his evil, their arguments are now of a kind that can be brought to the test of experience, and Job, so soon as he can be induced to grapple with them, has little difficulty in disposing of them. A. B. D. Chap. 15. It has now become the turn of Eliphaz, who opened the former debate, to speak again. He begins with bitter sarcasms and reproaches, and strongly censures Job's doctrine of the indiscriminate distribution of happiness and misery, as tending to undermine religion, and to discourage prayer. The drift of the whole speech is to vindicate Providence, to condemn Job as a manifest object of the Divine wrath on account of his wickedness, and to terrify him, if possible, into a confession of his guilt. Kitto.—The speech of Eliphaz is harsh and sarcastic, and assumes Job's guilt as proven by his own lips. 1-6: He reproves his presumption in despising the wisdom of his elders, disregarding the consolations of God and arraigning His judgments, forgetful of man's utter corruption and his own abomination. 7-16: Then, under cover of quoting axioms of wise antiquity, he describes the actual condition, feelings, and struggles of Job, in which he sees a proof of his wickedness, and a token of his final destruction. The discourse has not a word of comfort, nor the suggestion of a hope. It marks a considerable change in the spirit of the speaker, and brings the question much nearer to an issue. He does not indeed accuse Job of renouncing God, but of rebelling against Him (vs. 4, 13, 25, 26), and denounces his attempts to vindicate himself, and hold fast his integrity, as vain, impious and hypocritical. 2. Vain knowledge. Literally, "knowledge of wind," empty, noisy, and turbulent; the turn of expression is highly sarcastic, it has what may be called a grim humor; the words of Job are like wind, his whole inner man is inflated, torn, and in a state of turmoil, as though possessed by storm winds from the burning desert. The word "belly" is a necessary because literal translation of the original, which means in Hebrew physiology the innermost nature of man, the seat of thought, intelligence, and reflection. Cook. # A wise man with vain knowledge. There is oftentimes a great deal of knowledge where there is but little wisdom to improve that knowledge. It is not the most knowing Christian but the most wise Christian that sees, avoids, and escapes Satan's snares. Knowledge without wisdom is like mettle in a blind horse, which is often an occasion of the rider's fall, T. Brooks.—Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for what they know. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. Anon. 4. He charges him with impiety and irreligion. "Thou castest off fear"—that is, "the fear of God, and that regard to Him which thou shouldst have; and then thou restrainest prayer." See what religion is summed up in—fearing God and praying to Him; the former the most needful principle, the latter the most needful practice. Where no fear of God is no good is to be expected; and those who live without prayer certainly live without God in the world. Those who restrain prayer prove that they cast off fear. Surely those have no reverence of God's majesty, no dread of His wrath, and are in no care about their souls and eternity, who make no applications to God for His grace. Those who are prayerless are fearless and graceless. H. This text helps us to put our finger on the cause of a great deal that is amiss in all of us. It is very likely, it is all but certain, that the reason of all our trouble and discouragement, and want of growth and health is that we are doing just the thing that Job's unkind friend accused him of in the text—"restraining prayer before God." A. K. H. B.—In proportion to their importance, who gives as much time to prayer as to business; as much thought to their Bibles as merchants to their ledgers; as much trouble to cultivate their souls as husbandmen expend in ploughing and sowing and weeding the soil, and reaping the crop? No wonder that even those who are saved make such slow progress in the Divine life. T. G. Hundreds of millions are paying homage to insensible substances, phantasms, or devils. Many millions are literally making to themselves an amusement and a sport of shows and vain ceremonies of a religion pretended to be in homage to the true God. But come to what is accounted the most privileged, instructed, and Christianized portion of mankind. There are millions of them that practise no worship, no prayer at all in any manner; they are entirely "without God in the world." Assemble them in imagination, and look upon them! To say to but one of these, in the full and entire sense, "Thou restrainest prayer!" is pronouncing upon him an awful charge, is predicting an awful doom. You are pronouncing that he habitually scorns the Almighty, his soul, and the happiness of eternity; that he deliberately keeps himself detached from all that could save him from perdition! J. F.—Drexellius tells us of a vision that a religious man had at his prayers in the congregation. He saw a several angel at the elbow of every one present, ready to write down his petitions; those who prayed heartily their angels wrote down their suits in gold; those that prayed but coldly and carelessly their angels wrote, too, but it was with water; those that prayed customarily, only from the teeth outward, had their angels by them, who seemed to write, but it was with a dry pen, no ink in it. Such as slept had their angels by them, but they laid their pens by. Such as had worldly thoughts their angels wrote in the dust. And such as had envious and malicious spirits their angels wrote with gall. If this be so, I fear few angels have written this day in golden letters; but the pens of the others have gone very fast. Have a care how thou prayest, if thou wouldst have them written with the golden pen. N. Rogers. Neglect of reading the Bible is a powerful hindrance to our prayers. In these pages we commune with God. In these chapters we find the promises. Here stand the invitations to God's presence. Reading here we are better prepared to pray. Reading here makes us feel like praying. Here is revealed God's will, according to which our requests are to be shaped. Here are the Saviour's directions for the duty. And if we shut up all this from eye and thought, we cut off the living springs that give life and elasticity to prayer. The man cannot be found who rejects his Bible and is faithful in his closet. If he think he can pray as well without the inconvenient delay of first bringing into contact with his mind the thoughts of God as recorded here, he is preparing to stifle and restrain prayer. And this is the way in which prayer often declines with individuals and with a whole church. R. S. S.—How many prayers this deception has precluded: "I shall be in a better tone of feeling; my thoughts more composed; there will be less liability to interruption; such an affair I shall have disposed of and discharged from my mind. It were even irreverent to approach the Divine majesty just as I now feel"! As if that commanded serious effort required in such approach were not one of the best expedients for putting the mind in order. And then, what does experience say as to the actual occurrence and improvement of that expected better season? How soon does the seasonable hour come, when the first is easily let to slide by as unseasonable? Is there a disposition to give a ready allowance to pleas for deferring or cutting very short? What a test of the habitude of the heart is there in this! J. F. We may have as much of God as we will. Christ puts the key of the treasure chamber into our hand, and bids us take all that we want. Whose fault is it that Christian people generally have such scanty portions of the free riches of God? Prayers unaccompanied by effort are not answered. Many ask who do not seek. There must be continuous desire and effort. That implies that the answers do not always come immediately. The best gifts grow slowly, more than forty and six years is the temple of a Christ-like nature in building. Therefore patient continuance in waiting on the Giver is the final condition of receiving His highest gifts. A. M. 5. Thine iniquity. Eliphaz can attribute Job's bold words only to high-handed defiance of God; there is no room in his system for honest doubt and inquiry. Even Job's assumption of honesty, as would seem from the next line, looks to him like craft. 7. Job's ideas so strike out from the beaten path that he talks like one with a new source of knowledge. His assertion that he knows all that they have told him, and his contempt of their philosophy, is galling to Eliphaz. 11. Consolations of God—such is the name that Eliphaz gives to his admonitions, a name that evidently rankles in Job's mind. J. F. G. —The force of self-complacency can hardly go further than in this assumption of being God's agent of consolation to Job. V. 14-16. Eliphaz repeats here what he has already said (4:18 seq.), but he does it intentionally, since he wishes still more terribly to ascribe human uncleanness to Job. He first refers to the hereditary infirmity and sin in human nature (v. 14), and next (v. 16) to man's own free choice of that which works his destruction. He uses the strongest imaginable words to describe one actually and originally corrupted. It is further said of him (man) that he drinks up evil like water—a figure which implies that he lusts after sin, and that it is become a necessity of his nature, and is to his nature what water is to the thirsty. Even Job does not deny this corruption of man (14:4), but the inferences which the friends draw in reference to himself he cannot acknowledge. Delitzsch.—Does it follow that Job is a hypocrite and a wicked man, which is all that he denied? By no means. Though man, as born of a woman, is not clean, yet, as born again of the Spirit, he is. H. 20-35. Here begin the words of the fathers, Eliphaz brings up this lurid picture of the wicked in order to counteract Job's intimations that the wicked are prospered while the righteous suffer. Such intimations, in direct contradiction to the conclusions of wisdom, seem to open the door to all kinds of violence and infidelity; it lets down the barriers of doubt and admits indefinable riotings of extravagant doctrine. So Eliphaz, who gives the tone to the others, desires to put himself strongly on record for God; hence this purely theoretical picture of the wicked, drawn not for truth, but for theological consistency, and erring grossly by exaggeration; see, for instance, v. 29, which Job will show to be palpably untrue. J. F. G. 25,26. The wicked man (v. 20) bids defiance to God, and to His authority and power. Tell him of the Divine law and its obligations; he breaks those bonds asunder and will not have, no, not Him that made him, to restrain him or rule over him. Tell him of the Divine wrath and its terrors; he bids the Almighty do His worst, he will have his will, he will have his way in spite of Him, and will not be controlled by law, or conscience, or the notices of a judgment to come. He stretches out his hand against God in defiance of Him and of the power of His wrath. God is indeed out of His reach, but he stretches out his hand against Him, to show that if it were in his power he would ungod Him. Sinners in general run from God; but the presumptuous sinner, who sins with a high hand, runs upon Him, fights against Him, and bids defiance to Him; and it is easy to foretell what will be the issue. 27. He covers his face with his fatness. This signifies both the pampering of his flesh with daily delicious fare, and the hardening of his heart thereby against the judgments of God. The gratifying of the appetites of the body, feeding and feasting that to the full, often turns to the damage of the soul and its interests. Why is God forgotten and slighted, but be- cause happiness is placed in the delights of sense? H. 28. Ready to become heaps. This is an emphatic description of the condition of many sites of ancient renown which we have examined in the East, and which are literally heaps—nothing but heaps—covered with soil, and appearing like natural hillocks, but which are known to cover blocks of ancient building. The houses mentioned here are “houses of clay,” or of sun-dried brick, and such are the houses which are especially liable to become heaps. The recent descriptions of such mounds or heaps at Nineveh, by Layard and others, and the discoveries which their exploration has afforded, have rendered this condition of ancient cities—so different from that of stony ruins in various lands—familiar to the minds of our readers. It is to such kinds of “heaps” that we apprehend Eliphaz to refer to as the ultimate condition of “desolate cities.” We shall not readily forget the surprise, nearly akin to disappointment, with which we regarded the first ancient site of this sort that came under our personal notice—when, instead of broken walls, and towers, and columns of stone, nothing appeared but a confused wilderness of rounded “heaps”—a sea of solid billows. This happened to be Seleucia, on the Tigris, sometimes called Babylon. Kitto. 29. Many that get much by fraud and injustice, yet do not grow rich; it goes as it comes; it is got by one sin, and spent upon another. He is in care to keep what he has got, but in vain, his substance shall not continue; it will dwindle and come to nothing, God blasts it, and what came up in a night perishes in a night. Wealth gotten by vanity will certainly be diminished. H. 33. The grape in its first stage is peculiarly tender and liable to disease, and the flowers of the olive are shaken off by the least gust of wind. 34. Two charges are insinuated: hypocrisy, with reference to Job's former reputation for piety, and bribery, with reference to his character as a judge; both words imply secret and unsuspected guilt, discovered only by the punishment. Thus Eliphaz answers Job's protestations of innocence. Cook. 35. Finally Eliphaz condenses into an expressive figure the general doctrine both of this and his former discourse—namely, that suffering and disaster follow, as by a law of nature, doing evil and wrong A. B. D.—However wide of the mark these words may be as applied to Job, we cannot be blind to the power and truthfulness of this description of the terrors which sometimes beset the wicked. While many a wicked man goes through life in prosperity and apparently without fear, yet in the experience of one and another the retributions of the future are foreshadowed in this world. And no more terrible and graphic picture of a sinner thus pursued and foredoomed can be found than in these old Arabian sayings of Eliphaz. Vincent. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2. I have heard many such things: Miserable comforters are ye all. 3. Shall vain words have an end? Or what provoketh thee that thou answerest? 4. I also could speak as ye do; If your soul were in my soul's stead, I could join words together against you, And shake mine head at you. 5. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, And the solace of my lips should assuage your grief. 6. Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged: And though I forbear, what am I eased? 7. But now he hath me weary: Thou hast made desolate all my company. 8. And thou hast laid fast hold on me, which is a witness against me: And my leanness riseth up against me, it testifieth to my face. 9. He hath torn me in his wrath, and persecuted me; He hath gnashed upon me with his teeth: Mine adversary sharpeneth his eyes upon me. 10. They have gaped upon me with their mouth; They have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully: They gather themselves together against me. 11. God delivereth me to the ungodly, And casteth me into the hands of the wicked. 12. I was at ease, and he brake me asunder; Yea, he hath taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces: He hath also set me up for his mark. 13. His archers compass me round about, He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; He poureth out my gall upon the ground. 14. He breaketh me with breach upon breach; He runneth upon me like a giant. 15. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, And have laid my horn in the dust. 16. My face is foul with weeping, And on my eyelids is the shadow of death; JOB'S second answer occupies two chapters. 1-5: He rejects the statements of Eliphaz as commonplace, such as he might have himself used with equal ease had the positions of the speakers been reversed. 6-16: He draws out all the circumstances of his misery in order to justify the extremity of his anguish, and after an asseveration of innocence (v. 17) he appeals to earth and heaven, and to God Himself (v. 20). In 17: 1-10 he continues the appeal, and grounds it on the scorn, contumely (v. 2), igno- rance (v. 4), and dishonesty (v. 5) of his friends. He then (vs. 11-16) concludes with an expression of utter hopelessness, so far as life is concerned; if there be hope it has no visible grounds, it has its only home in death. Cook. Chap. 16. God's turning away from Job causes men to avert their faces too. His isola- tion is complete. And to him who had once stood so high in the estimation of men, and as a man of deep human feelings yearned for men's sympathy, the thought comes home with a crushing effect. This is the new thought in Job's mind, and it is this thought that gives such a tragic pathos to his speeches in the second cycle of debate. In the first circle of speeches it is God's enmity alone of which Job complains, but now there is added to this the universal alienation and abhorrence of mankind. This feeling gives tone to all his speeches, and in chap. 19, which forms the climax of this di- vision, finds its fullest expression in the words, Pity me, pity me, O ye my friends, why do ye persecute me like God? And this overmaster- ing feeling forces its way to expression almost in spite of him (v. 6) in the first part of the pres- ent speech (vs. 7-17). Nothing now remains to him but his own sense of his innocence; and to this he clings all the more tenaciously. He shall never be acknowledged in this life: he shall die under God's hand and go down to the 17. Although there is no violence in mine hands, And my prayer is pure. 18. O earth, cover not thou my blood, And let my cry have no resting place. 19. Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, And he that voucheth for me is on high. 20. My friends scorn me: But mine eye poureth out tears unto God; 21. That he would plead for a man with God, And as a son of man for his neighbour! 22. For when a few years are come, I shall go the way whence I shall not re- turn. grave numbered with the transgressors, for the hopes which the friends held out of restoration were but the veriest folly. But it is a martyr's death that he shall die. And so strong is his sense of his innocence that he rises to the assur- ance that it cannot remain unrecognized forever. His innocent blood will appeal unto heaven with an unceasing cry till it finds a response (v. 18). And even now he has a Witness who will testify for him, even God as He is in Him- self in heaven. And to this Witness he makes his appeal. Men mock him, but he lifts his tear- ful face (v. 20) to God, God as He is in truth and as He must reveal himself in the future, begging that He would uphold his right with God, who now is unjustly bringing him to death, and do justice between him and his fel- lows, whose suspicions so cruelly wrong him (v. 21). And if he may not ask or expect that God would appear for him in this life, yet he will beseech God to give him some pledge even here that afterward, when he shall have gone the way whence he shall not return, He will make his innocence to appear (v. 22). A. B. D. 2. Many such things. Such wise saws as identify guilt with suffering. "Miserable comforters," or "comforters of trouble," who bring nothing but trouble. The same word is used here which in the last verse of the preced- ing chapter is rendered "mischief." Job thus retorts, the conception of mischief or trouble applies more directly to those whose duty it was to console the afflicted. Cook.—Eliphaz has just blamed Job (chap. 15) for despising the "consolations of God." Job retorts that the friends are administering just the reverse of consolation; they are tormenting comforters. J. F. G. 4. In my soul's stead. In the same state, like mine, wretched and desolate. Heap up words; the original phrase implies artificial combinations of words, as though it were all mere rhetorical declamation. Cook. 6-17. Leaving here what Eliphaz has said, Job returns to his own line of thinking, which he laid down at the end of chap. 14 with the unsolved problem of death. It is the thought of his suffering that he now takes up, and especially with reference to the author of it. J. F. G. He hardly knows whether he shall speak or be silent, so overcome is he and so unavailing to help him or make men judge truly of him are both speech and silence—if I speak my grief is not assuaged, and if I forbear what am I eased? (v. 6). Yet this new condition in which he realizes that he is, which makes speech useless, forces him to speak, and he sets before himself in an excited soliloquy the combined enmity to him of men and God. First (vs. 7-11), he realizes to himself the complete estrangement from him of all familiar friends; God's enmity to him has turned men also into foes (vs. 7, 8). This combined enmity of God and men is represented under what seems the figure of a creature hunted by one great, lion-like assailant, leading on a host of minor, ignobler foes. The chief adversary is first described, his rending anger, and gnashing teeth, and flashing eyes (v. 9); and then the pell-mell rout of baser foes that howled behind him, their open mouth and shameless gestures, and full cry after the prey, which is flung over into their hands (vs. 10, 11). Second (vs. 12-17), the hostility of God Himself is particularly dwelt upon in graphic figures, which express its unexpected suddenness, its violence and destructiveness. One figure is that of a man suddenly grasped by another of overwhelming strength and tossed about and dashed to pieces (v. 12). Then the figure changes, and this shattered frame is set up as a mark, and God's arrows hiss around him and split his reins and pour out his life to the ground (v. 13). Again the figure changes, and this body seems some fair edifice or fort which God dismantles by breach upon breach till it lies a sorrowful ruin (v. 14). And finally is described the condition of humiliation to which the sufferer is brought, and all this befell him, though he had done no wrong (vs. 15-17). A. B. D. 7. The notable thing of this whole passage is that Job hardly knows how to identify the author of his misery. He speaks here of "He," without naming God; in the next breath he turns directly to God and says, "Thou;" again it is "His anger" (v. 9), as if Job were reluctant to tax God directly with it; then it is "mine enemy," as if it were some fell power whom he dared not name. Anon it is "they" (v. 10), as if it were an army of foes, or as if his friends were combined with the unseen powers. Clearly. Job is hesitating to ascribe to God such hatred as he must recognize in his punishment; he is groping after the God of love, and unwittingly drawing near to Him. J. F. G. 7-9. No solacing word shall come to him. He means to say that he stands entirely alone, and neither sees nor hears anything consolatory. He is therefore completely shut up to himself; and this suffering form to which God has reduced him is become an evidence, an accusation, which puts him down as a sinner, although his self-consciousness testifies the opposite to him. It was the wrath of God which tore him so and pursued him hostilely. God has gnashed against him with His teeth, and sharpened His eyes, like swords, to pierce him through. His present suffering is only the continuation of the decree of wrath which is gone forth concerning him. Delitzsch.—It is Job's deep-rooted conviction of the goodness of God which embitters him and stimulates accusation; for why, being so good a being, should He treat him thus? Under the complaints of Job there is perceptible the feeling of the peculiar hardship of suffering under a good Being whom he was bound to honor and reverence. He shows the inconsistency of perplexed love, keenly alive to the goodness of its object, and quickly susceptible on that very account of anger toward it. Mozley. 11. The contumely to which Job is exposed is attributed to God's will; the heaviest affliction of all was, that he should be delivered up to men whose want of honesty, truthfulness, and love evinced their wickedness. Cook. 12-14. The imagery shows the sufferer, first, as one assailed from without, seized by the neck, and again made a mark to be shot at; next, we see his very vitals torn within him; and last, he is likened to a fortress broken by successive assaults of an irresistible antagonist. In all this God Himself is the efficient cause and agent. Curry. 15. Laid my horn in the dust. Generally the horn appears in the Bible as a symbol of strength and power. The figure is undoubtedly taken from horned animals, whose power in attack or defence rests in their horns; and hence the word came to be used to denote the qualities which confer greatness on man—his honor, dignity, and strength. At length the horn itself, commuted eventually for a representation of it, came to be worn as a sign of power; and as such it appears in the most ancient figures of gods and spiritual existences, and was also worn by princes and leaders of men. Of this there is now no question, for the representation of two, and often four horns, two on each side, enfold the turbans or crowns of the most exalted beings represented in the sculptures of Nineveh. Kitto.—To exalt the horn—an expression often occurring in the poetic and prophetic parts of the Bible—means to advance in power, honor, and dominion. To defile it in the dust is a figure drawn from the condition of a dying ox or stag, who literally defiles his horn in dust mingled with his own blood. It is painfully significant of defeat, disgrace, and death, and for a prince like Job it was to be dishonored and utterly overthrown. W. M. Thomson. 17. Job's condition was very deplorable; but had he nothing to support him, nothing to comfort him? Yes; he had the testimony of his conscience that he had walked uprightly, and had never allowed himself in any gross sin. None was ever more ready than he to acknowledge his sins of infirmity; but he could not charge himself with any enormous crime, for which he should be made more miserable than other men. "Not for any injustice in my hands, any wealth that I have unjustly got or kept." Eliphaz had represented him as a tyrant and an oppressor. "No," says he, "I never did any wrong to any man, but always despised the gain of oppression." Eliphaz had charged him with hypocrisy in religion, but he specifies prayer, the great act of religion, and professes that in that he was pure, though not from all infirmity, yet from reigning and allowed guile. H. Not for any injustice. In the original exactly the same words are used which are applied to Christ by Isaiah (53:9): "Because he had done no violence," or, "not that he had done any violence." In this passage the meaning is given more accurately. Job directly meets the two charges of injustice toward man and hypocrisy toward God. 18. Cover not Thou my blood. In this sublime outcry Job alludes to the old belief that the blood of one unjustly slain remains on the earth. The earth cannot absorb it, it cries aloud for vengeance. (See Isa. 26:21; Ezek. 24:7,8, and Gen 4:10.) It is the strongest assertion of his innocence; he dies guiltless; his blood, like that of Abel, cries to God; that cry can have "no place," no rest until it is answered. Thus while in form appealing to earth, Job in fact appeals to God Himself. Cook. "I must die, but it is unrighteous murder. Let the earth refuse to drink in my blood thus unjustly shed, so that it may remain forever exposed, a constant witness to the terrible wrong perpetrated upon me; and let my death-cry never be hushed to silence, but resound forever in testimony of the cruel violence under which I suffer. I die, unable longer to sustain these dreadful inflictions which God is bringing upon me; but I die protesting against the injustice and the outrage." Has Satan, then, gained his end, and has Job at length fallen into the snare? In the frightful darkness which has, to outward view, obscured the evidence of God's rectitude, has Job given up his sense of that rectitude? Is his confidence in God's eternal justice gone? Then has he indeed been driven to that renunciation of God's service to which Satan has been relentlessly endeavoring to force him. No! In all this agony and darkness and inexplicable mystery Job cannot let go his ineradicable trust in God. Brought, as it might seem, almost to the point of abandoning it, the strength of that trust only becomes more conspicuous from the strain to which it has been subjected. By its powerful recoil it carries him suddenly back from the verge of the abyss to the immovable foundation. The faith that seemed to be vanishing, if it had not already vanished, rises unexpectedly superior over all the tumult of his soul, and all depressing circumstances. From his frantic outcry against the injustice that is slaying him he passes to the instant expression of his unabated trust in God in vs. 19, 20. W. H. G. 19. In the next breath Job turns for vindication to the very quarter whence he has supposed the injustice comes. In his thought he seems to divide the God who oppresses him from a God who loves him and represents his cause; at least he commits himself by a mighty reach of faith to an Advocate on high, though he does not clearly identify such an Advocate fully with God. Job evidently thinks of the Advocate as the Daysman whom he so longed for; and we see the advance he has made in faith by the fact that the being whose existence he despairingly denied then he now acknowledges with passionate assertion. J. F. G. 19. Even now, in the very midst of my desolation, when I seem to be wholly without a supporter. In this verse Job prepares us for the great declaration (19:25). Up to this time he reaches, but does not go beyond the expression of his certainty that his righteousness is known; his one desire is that God will vindicate it; but he cannot rest there; the certainty and the desire combined cannot but issue in the sure hope of a future manifestation. God Himself is Job's witness, he has no other, all his trust is in Him who afflicts him. Cook.—As if Job had said, I fear no evidence that can be brought against me on earth, and I rejoice in the witness which I have in heaven: though I have none to testify for me here, yet I have One who will testify for me above; "my Witness is in heaven, and my record is on high." A good man dares appeal to God, and commit his cause to Him, deriving joy and comfort from the reflection that there is a God in heaven who knows his heart, and is the witness of all his ways. Caryl. Already in chap. 10 Job had drawn a distinction between God of the present, who persecuted him as guilty though he was innocent, and God of the past, whose gracious care of him had been wonderful; though there he grasped at a frightful reconciliation of the contradiction: God of the present, who destroyed him, seemed the real God, and His past mercies were no true expression of His nature. In chap. 14 Job reached out his hand into the darkness and clutched at another idea, a distinction between God of the present, who would pursue him unto death, and God of the future—God when His anger should be overpast and He would yearn again toward His creature, the work of His hands. This God of the future was God as He is in truth, true to His own past dealing and to man's conceptions of Him. It is on this line of thought that the present passage moves. A. B. D. Job says: "God has done me apparent wrong. I am innocent and He has smitten me. It seems unjust, but there is right somewhere at the bottom of this mystery. God can vindicate Himself and right me. God can reconcile the three facts of my integrity, His justice, and my suffering. To God, and to none other, will I appeal. I am sure that He will hear this plea against Himself, and vindicate both Himself and me." This is a most wonderful utterance in its boldness and faith. It is worthy of the highest Christian character—this faith which, with so little to hang upon, with so much arrayed to shake it, struggles up through desertion by God and man to the love in God's heart which will not suffer Him finally to abandon His children; a faith which fights down the hideous phantom of God raised by disease and an imperfect knowledge, and presses past it to the true God. Even with our Christian training, with our knowledge of the Divine, loving intent of chastening, do we not sometimes suffer our disappointment and our grief to frame for us a phantom God, with a frowning face behind the frowning Providence? V. 20. Scorn me. Literally, are my scorners, or mockers, instead of being my witnesses. Because his friends mock him, and no sympathy or insight is to be looked for from them, his eye droppeth—he appeals with tears to God (cf. Isa. 38:14). What Job desires of his Witness is that He would see right done him both with God and with men—with God, who wrongly held him guilty, and against men, his fellows, who, founding on God's dealing with him, held him guilty also and were his mockers. A. B. D.—My scorners are my friends; they who scorn me are those who ought to befriend me; they have nothing but taunts and gibes to give me in place of comfort. The appeal to God proves how intimately Job is penetrated with the feeling of His real tenderness and love. "Poureth out tears," literally, streams; the eye melts away, so to speak, in a flood of tears. 21. The meaning of this verse is, Oh, that He (that is, God Himself) would plead for a man (i.e., for me) with God. Job appeals from God to God; as He is at once Accuser and Judge, so he prays that He would be also at once Advocate and Judge. Each aspiration becomes clearer and draws nearer to the unrevealed truth; no "daysman" who is not, like the Judge Himself, all-knowing and Almighty, will suffice. As a man pleadeth for his neighbor. Either, "and as a son of man for his fellow," or, as Dillm. prefers, and for the son of man (i.e., Job) against his neighbor—i.e., that God would plead Job's cause, first, before Himself as Judge; secondly, against Job's fellow-men. The designation which Job here applies to himself, son of man, is remarkable; he feels that he really represents the cause of suffering humanity. We know of whom in this he was a true type. Cook. Yet here his idea of the Advocate stops; it must take another surge of faith before he connects his immortality therewith. J. F. G. 22. Go the way I shall not return. Without raiment, without money, we, our very selves, must pass the river. No sound from the street or market-place; no news of the day; no literature in any form to pass the time; no amusement to distract; no society to float us on from hour to hour; no excitement to color the paleness of the landscape. All disguises stripped off; all prejudices annihilated; all errors refuted. However much luggage we may have accumulated by the way, all is taken from us at the station, which is the starting-point from whence we must walk toward the city of the great King, crowned with light, or that other city, whose streets are full of misery. Bishop W. A. The hand of God was in these dreadful sorrows. Why had He sent them, or permitted them? Job was in utter darkness and perplexity, and the only solution which offered itself, and toward which he was persistently driven by antagonism to the inadmissible position urged upon him by his friends, was not reconcilable with the goodness or justice of God. Hence the tumult of his soul and the tempest of conflicting emotions which rages within him. Reason and sense urge him in one direction, and the strong recoil of faith drives him back in the other; and thus he is swayed perpetually to and fro, still hoping against hope, ever afresh seeking unto God who had cast him off, unable to escape from conclusions to which the logic of his sufferings seemed to constrain him, or to banish the forbidding spectre of an angry God which they perpetually raise before him, and yet holding fast to his inmost convictions, in spite of all that seems to contradict them. This inward struggle of Job is vividly depicted in his successive speeches in reply to his friends. These lay bare all the workings of his soul, and the fearful agitation which was going on within him. They disclose the terrible conflict through which he was passing, in its various phases, until out of the depths of despair he fought his way to solid peace. They show what gloom and darkness had settled upon his path; to what spiritual straits he was reduced; but how in spite of all he never abandoned his faith in God. He staggered and tottered under the tremendous blows which were given him, and it seemed at times as though he could not recover himself and must fall. But somehow he always regained his footing, and never lost his balance entirely. The adversary was foiled, and the piety of Job, which he sought to undermine or to destroy, sustained the test and triumphed in the encounter. W. H. G. 1. My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct, The grave is ready for me. 2 Surely there are mockers with me, And mine eye dwelleth upon their provocation. 3 Give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself; Who is there that will strike hands with me? 4 For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: Therefore shalt thou not exalt them. 5 He that denounceth his friends for a prey, Even the eyes of his children shall fail. 6 But he hath made me a byword of the people; And I am become an open abhorring. 7 Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, And all my members are as a shadow. 8 Upright men shall be astonied at this, And the innocent shall stir up himself against the godless. THE style in the first ten verses of this chapter expresseth great discomposure. There are frequent and sudden changes of the person. The transitions are abrupt, without the joining particles; and the sentiments follow one another with little or no connection, just as the tumultuous and shifting emotions of his mind suggested them. From the eleventh verse to the 9. Yet shall the righteous hold on his way, And he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger. 10 But return ye, all of you, and come now: And I shall not find a wise man among you. 11 My days are past, my purposes are broken off, Even the thoughts of my heart. 12 They change the night into day: The light, say they, is near unto the darkness. 13 If I look for Sheol as mine house; If I have spread my couch in the darkness; 14 If I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; To the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister; 15 Where then is my hope? And as for my hope, who shall see it? 16 It shall go down to the bars of Sheol, When once there is rest in the dust. end of the discourse all is in the moving strain of elegy. With a melancholy calmness he resigns himself to despair and the grave. Scott. —As before he poured out so passionately his longing for instant death, so now, in the gentlet mood that has come over his spirit, he anticipates the rest of the grave, and, bidding farewell to life, chants in strains of exquisite ten derness his own requiem. But through this elegiac tone the strong, persistent, and almost triumphant protestation of innocence is always heard. The refining efficacy of affliction has already appeared in Job's gentler manner. It shows still more plainly in the purer form which his faith begins to take. Aglen. 1. Each of the three clauses of this verse expresses the same thought: Job's utter despair of life, and his reckoning himself as virtually dead already; he was standing on the verge of the grave; it is cruel mockery to promise him long life if he will repent. Curry. 2,3. In this hopeless condition such offices of professed friendship as had been tendered him were only a mockery of his sufferings. Against this unkindness he pleads that God would undertake for him, and become surety for his innocence. Conant. 3. The meaning of this verse is clear; it refers altogether to the usual proceedings in a court of justice; each party in a suit had to deposit a pledge, or to find surety; the surety accepted the responsibility by striking hands with the person whom he represented. (See Prov. 6:1.) Job turns altogether from his friends; they are not to be depended upon. He calls upon God Himself to be Himself surety with Himself as Judge, to accept the position of Job's advocate. The expression "with Thee" is striking—be my surety with Thyself; no other mediation or advocacy is possible. Cook. 4-9. These verses support the petition in v. 3. If God will not undertake for Job none else will, for the hearts of his friends have been blinded. This thought of the perverse obstinacy and cruelty of his friends leads Job again to a gloomy survey of his whole condition. He is become a public contempt to mankind, and brought to the lowest ebb of mortal weakness and humiliation (vs. 6, 7). Such moral perversions on the earth astonish the righteous and rouse them to indignation against the wicked in their prosperity (v. 8). Yet they will not permit themselves to be misled by such things to err from the paths of rectitude. Full of moral terror as these perversions are, the righteous will in spite of them cleave to his righteousness. He will feel that he is in possession of the only true good, and even because of them, and though he sees the world under the rule of God given over to wrong, he will wax stronger and stronger in well doing (v. 9); an astonishing passage. A. B. D. 8,9. The saints are described as upright men, honest and sincere, that act from a steady principle with a single eye. This was Job's own character, and probably he speaks of such upright men especially as had been his intimates and associates. They are the innocent; not perfectly so, but it is what they aim at and press toward. Sincerity is evangelical innocency, and they that are upright are said to be innocent from the great transgression (Psalms 19:13). They are the righteous, who walk in the way of righteousness. They have clean hands, kept clean from the gross pollutions of sin, and, when spotted with infirmities, washed with innocency (Psalm 26:6). H. 9. He that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger. The passage teaches that those who do right shall increase in strength to do right. The hand is the instrument of action, and "clean hands" hence become the symbol of holy things, and of the absence of any appearance of unholy conduct. It is not the same as uprightness of heart, but something supplemental to it, and needful to constitute the character fairly complete in living grace. It is declared that he who, besides the uprightness of heart and the general innocency and righteousness of his way, is also careful to keep himself free from every spot that might stain his hands, shall wax stronger and stronger. Let none say, when taxed with uncleanness of hands, that their hearts are nevertheless right; that, although they fail often and would be better and do better, yet they have good meanings, and feel that they are upright before God. This is self-delusion. It is easier to keep the hands right than the heart right; and he whose hand is foul may depend upon it that his heart is fouler still. Where there is a clean heart there will be clean hands. It is of these two things taken together—the clean heart and the clean hand—as forming the perfection of godliness, that Job speaks when he says that the man thus complete in his character "shall wax stronger and stronger," or, as the original has it, "shall add strength," especially in time of trial and affliction. This is spiritual "strength." It is the same strength which the apostle had in view when he said (2 Cor. 4:16), "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." It cannot be otherwise. The man thus endowed is in a state of grace before God; and grace is a living thing, and while it lives must grow—even as the grain of mustard seed must increase to a large tree. It is in a time of trouble that this progress from strength to strength is most active and is most sensibly discerned; and we cannot doubt that it was this which Job had especially in view. It is affliction that beyond all things gives proof of godliness, whether it be true or not. That which is untrue—that which has no firm foundation—cannot abide this test; but he whose heart is well established in grace not only does not fall off in time of trouble, but grows and increases in grace. Kitto. "The righteous shall hold on his way." Can we read these words and deny the perseverance of saints? An unseen hand will be over you, attractions too strong to be resisted will draw you, a spirit not your own will animate you, and you will hold on your way. "He that hath clean hands." To have clean hands is the scriptural expression for a man who is living without any one known, wilful, deliberate sin. The forgiven man who lives purely "shall be stronger and stronger." His conceptions of truth will grow continually firmer; his faith in that truth will strengthen; his power over his besetting sin will be greater; his ability for service will grow; his happy sense of God's love and favor will increase. J. V. Righteousness and innocence have no occasion to change their way. Experience shows them it is a safe way. He that walketh uprightly walketh surely. The righteous shall hold on his way because he walks with God. His way is an ever-brightening way, a way of pleasantness and peace, a way on which the traveller has the best of guidance and of help, for "the steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord." V. A man whose life is pure and high may not open his lips, yet his very silence shall be eloquent for God. Day by day virtue is going out of him; day by day he is giving strength to one who is wrestling with doubt or temptation; day by day he is a beacon to those who are tossed on the waves of irresolution and uncertainty; day by day he is, without knowing it, a stay, a support, an encouragement to many who but for him would flag or be beaten down in the battle. Perowne. Such as do not grow in grace decay in grace. There is no standing at a stay in religion, either we go forward or backward; if faith doth not grow, unbelief will; if heavenly-mindedness doth not grow, covetousness will. A man that doth not increase his stock diminisheth it; if you do not improve your stock of grace your stock will decay. The angels on Jacob's ladder were either ascending or descending; if you do not ascend in religion, you descend. T. Watson. In the development of Christian character and in the fruits of the Christian life all valuable growth is slow. All permanent acquisition and abiding products are attained by the process of "patient continuance in well-doing." A steadfast, calm persistence day by day, amid the common circumstances of life, in meeting the demands of each hour and event, under the pressure of no impulse or excitement, but of fixed, quiet yet fervent principle, doing every duty, private and personal, social and relative—this is affirmed directly and indirectly by the Word and providence of God to be the indispensable condition of permanence and growth in Christian character, of progress in Christian life and fruitfulness, and of success in Christian achievement. B. 10. As for you all, if you think fit, return to the charge, repeat your arguments; it is but what may be expected of you, for I can see no symptom of real wisdom in any of you; a bitter irony, but justified by God's own declaration (42:7, 8). 11-16. No hope but in the grave; there is the ever-recurring thought; the question is, whether Job will find any hope in the grave, whether his wish will give birth to the hope of a future vindication. 11. Life with its objects and cares must perish; it is already gone. Thoughts. Literally, possessions; a fine expression for all that the heart and mind has acquired and cares to retain, its best thoughts, purposes, and imaginations. 13-16. These words express one thought with the variety and pertinacity of a spirit dwelling upon its hopelessness and exhausting its misery; there is no hope elsewhere, my only home now is the grave; there is my only rest, all that could comfort my heart, excite in it any sense of joy, is exchanged for rottenness, for the loathsome inmates of the grave. My hope is there, who can see it? To speak of hope on earth in life is a mockery; if there be a hope, it is to be found in the grave. Bearing in mind the aspiration of chap. 14: 13-15 (the wish there so nearly resembling a hope, grounded on a principle which can scarcely exist without suggesting and confirming it), we do not find in this verse an expression of absolute hopelessness. We can scarcely resist the conclusion that although neither Job, nor, as he is well aware, any other living man of his own age, can see any definite ground for hope, he has at the bottom of his heart a feeling which assures him that Sheol, the region of the shadow of death, is not the last word of God to man. Cook. 1. THEN answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 2 How long will ye lay snares for words? Consider, and afterwards we will speak. 3 Wherefore are we counted as beasts, And are become unclean in your sight? 4 Thou that tearest thyself in thine anger, Shall the earth be forsaken for thee? Or shall the rock be removed out of its place? 5 Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, And the spark of his fire shall not shine. 6 The light shall be dark in his tent, And his lamp above him shall be put out. 7 The steps of his strength shall be straitened, And his own counsel shall cast him down. 8 For he is cast into a net by his own feet, And he walketh upon the toils. 9 A gin shall take him by the heel, And a snare shall lay hold on him. 10 A noose is hid for him in the ground, And a trap for him in the way. 11 Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, And shall chase him at his heels. 12 His strength shall be hungerbitten, And calamity shall be ready at his side. In this angry and intemperate speech of Bildad it is difficult to discern any advance, or even variety of argument. It consists of vituperations, in which the words used by Job to describe his misery are taken as applicable, universally and exclusively, to the calamities which befall the wicked. There is no suggestion of hope, no admonition even which would indicate the possibility of amendment. Job is to Bildad henceforth simply as one that "knoweth not God" (v. 21). In the discourses of Job there is a steady onward progress; the distinction between the appearance and the reality continually becomes clearer; his aspirations assume a more definite form, gradually approaching the confines of hope; and the consciousness of inward integrity, with a full perception of man's natural and inherent sinfulness, and his own participation in it through the passions of youth and the infirmity at all seasons of life, finds ever a more forcible and evangelical expression. But in direct contrast with this, in the speeches of each and all the interlocutors, the change is altogether from better to worse, from sympathy to alienation, from well ordered reasoning to senseless and cruel upbraidings, from vindica- 13. It shall devour the members of his body, Yea, the firstborn of death shall devour his members. 14 He shall be rooted out of his tent wherein he trusteth; And he shall be brought to the king of terrors. 15 There shall dwell in his tent that which is none of his: Brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation. 16 His roots shall be dried up beneath, And above shall his branch be cut off. 17 His remembrance shall perish from the earth, And he shall have no name in the street. 18 He shall be driven from light into darkness, And chased out of the world. 19 He shall have neither son nor son's son among his people, Nor any remaining where he sojourned. 20 They that come after shall be astonied at his day, As they that went before were affrighted. 21 Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous, And this is the place of him that knoweth not God. tion of God's justice to uncandid and violent representations of the effects of His vengeance. In the following speech, and in the answer of Job, we find the central crisis of the discussion. On the one hand, the fury of the incensed friends is well-nigh exhausted; on the other, the hope of a perfect vindication (inseparably bound up with an instinctive, though undeveloped and half-conscious belief in a future resurrection), for the first time takes the form, which has been recognized by believers in all ages as the sublimest utterance of a devout and heaven-taught spirit, brooding on the mystery of life and anticipating its true solution. 1-4. Job is blamed for idle words, contempt of his friends, vain and desperate struggles, and useless aspirations. Cook.—Bildad here shoots his arrows, even bitter words, against poor Job, little thinking that in this instance he was serving Satan's design, in adding to Job's affliction. He charges him with idle, endless talk, as Eliphaz had done; with a disregard of what was said to him (v. 2); with a haughty contempt of his friends (v. 3); with outrageous passion and an arrogant desire to give law even to Providence itself (v. 4). H. 5-21. The disastrous end of the wicked, in the moral order of the world, is certain. The idea is set out in a great variety of graphic figures, and the speech is studded with sententious and proverbial sayings in the manner of the speaker's first discourse (chap. 8). The history of the wicked man's downfall is followed through all its stages: 5-7. The principle—the sinner's light goes out. 8-11. The progress of his downfall. 12-14. The final scenes. 15-17. The extinction of his race and name. 18-21. Men's horror of his fate and memory. A. B. D. The ruin and misery of the wicked, the destruction of his race, the extinction of his very name, are described with much force and variety of imagery, but without any new thought. As in his former speech, Bildad rests altogether on the recorded facts and sayings of the past. Cook.—The description is terribly brilliant, solemn, and pathetic, as becomes the stern preacher of repentance with haughty mien and pharisaic self-confidence; it is none the less beautiful, and, considered in itself, also true—a masterpiece of skill in idealizing. Delitzsch. 7. The cunning of a wicked man often defeats itself. A man's sin will not only be found out, but will find him out. It is only another form of expressing Paul's words, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Bildad gives us this truth when he says of the wicked, "His own counsel shall cast him down." The inevitable, natural, only outcome of evil is entanglement, stumbling, confusion, ruin to the evil-doer. V. 11. Terrors on every side.** A striking personification; the inward terrors take a bodily form, are realized, and beset him without intermission; the very symptoms which Job had described so vividly, in the vain hope of exciting compassion (3 : 25 and 7 : 14). Cook. 14,15. Death itself is called "the king of terrors" in distinction from the terrible disease which is called its "firstborn." Death is also personified by Isaiah (28 : 15), and in the Psalms (49 : 15) as a ruler in Hades, as in the Indian mythology the name of the infernal King Jamas signifies the tyrant or tamer. The biblical representation does not recognize a king of Hades; but the judicial power of death is allotted to angels, of whom one, the angel of the abyss, is called Abaddon (Rev. 9 : 11); and the chief possessor of this judicial power—he having the power of death (Heb. 2 : 14)—the angel prince who according to the prologue of our book has also brought a fatal disease upon Job, without, however, in this instance, being able to go further than to bring him to the brink of the grave. But since Job himself and the friends trace back directly to God that mysterious affliction which forms the dramatic knot, we may understand by the king of terrors death itself. After the evildoer is tormented for awhile and made tender, and reduced to ripeness for death by the firstborn of death, he falls into the possession of the king of terrors himself; slowly and solemnly, but surely and inevitably (like the march of a criminal to the place of execution) he is led to this king by an unseen arm. The description next advances another step into the calamity of the evildoer's habitation; "brimstone" is strewed over it, to mark it as suffering the fulfilment of the curse, and not again to be rebuilt or inhabited. Delitzsch. 16-20. His roots shall be dried up.** The figure is changed, but the thought is the same—the complete overthrow and destruction of the evildoer; as a tree "his roots shall be dried up," and his branches cut off; as a man among men his name shall perish, the execrations of men shall chase him out of the world; as a father he shall leave behind him neither son nor son's son, and if remembered at all after his death it shall be only as a spectacle of retribution for sin. Curry. 21. That knoweth not God.** The climax of all charges is a direct denial of Job's most solemn protestations. Cook.—Bildad wrote under the picture which he had drawn, these are the habitations of the wicked, and held it up before Job. It was meant for him, for all that is specific in it is borrowed from the circumstances of his case. The terrible distemper, the "firstborn of death," that consumes the sinner's limbs, is too plain an allusion to his leprosy to be misunderstood by him (v. 13). The brimstone that burns up the sinner's habitation (v. 15), though there may lie in it a distant reference to the cities of the plain, is also the fire of God that fell on Job's cattle and their keepers (1 : 16). The tree dried up at the roots and withered in the branches (v. 16) reminds Job easily enough of his own wasted state and of the sad calamities that had blighted his home. The horror and detestation of men (v. 20) is but a picture of what was passing before the eyes of the disputants, and is a touch of ruthless severity, which brings Job utterly to the dust; for while in his former speech (chaps. 16, 17) he is able in the strong sense of his innocence to resent the treatment of men, he is here wholly broken by it (19 : 21). Every sentence of Bildad's speech carries with it the charge, Thou art the man. A. B. D. 1. THEN Job answered and said 2. How long will ye vex my soul, And break me in pieces with words ? 3. These ten times have ye reproached me : Ye are not ashamed that ye deal hardly with me. 4. And be it indeed that I have erred, Mine error remaineth with myself. 5. If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, And plead against me my reproach : 6. Know now that God hath subverted me in my cause, And hath compassed me with his net. 7. Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard : I cry for help, but there is no judgment. 8. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, And hath set darkness in my paths. 9. He hath stripped me of my glory, And taken the crown from my head. 10. He hath broken me down on every side, and I am gone : And mine hope hath he plucked up like a tree. 11. He hath also kindled his wrath against me, And he counteth me unto him as one of his adversaries. 12. His troops come on together, and cast up their way against me, And encamp round about my tent. 13. He hath put my brethren far from me, And mine acquaintance are wholly estranged from me. 14. My kinsfolk have failed, And my familiar friends have forgotten me. 15. They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger : I am an alien in their sight. FROM the abyss of darkness and cheerless de- spondency Job struggles constantly upward toward the light. In each successive speech there is some fresh reaching out toward help or hope. Every address made by his friends shows him more and more plainly that nothing is to be looked for or expected from them ; they still persist in refusing to him even that meas- ure of relief or consolation which human sym- pathy might supply. Cut off from all earthly assistance or even pity, there is no one but God to whom he can have recourse. And here he is torn by conflicting feelings. God is persecut- 16. I call unto my servant, and he giveth me no answer, Though I intrcat him with my mouth. 17. My breath is strange to my wife, And my supplication to the children of my own mother. 18. Even young children despise me ; If I arise, they speak against me. 19. All my inward friends abhor me : And they whom I loved are turned against me. 20. My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. 21. Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends ; For the hand of God hath touched me. 22. Why do ye persecute me as God, And are not satisfied with my flesh ? 23. Oh that my words were now written ! Oh that they were inscribed in a book ! 24. That with an iron pen and lead They were graven in the rock for ever ! 25. But as for me, I know that my redeemer liveth, And at last he shall stand up upon the earth ; 26. And after my skin, even this body, is de- stroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God : 27. Whom I, even I, shall see on my side, And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. My reins are consumed within me. 28. If ye say, How we will persecute him ! Seeing that the root of the matter is found in me ; 29. Be ye afraid of the sword : For wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, That ye may know there is a judgment. ing and afflicting him, and, to all outward ap- pearance, is treating him as an enemy. And still he cannot let go that inward persuasion, which manifests itself at first but dimly, and yet grows in clearness and strength as he recurs to it, that God will not altogether withhold His favor from him. Each time that he essays to speak, sense and faith stand in blank antagonism. His sufferings press overwhelmingly upon him with their apparent evidence that God is against him. But faith comes with its whispers, scarcely audible, and yet refusing to be stifled, that God must nevertheless be on his side. These suggestions of his unquenched confidence in God are only hypothetical at first. If such an obstacle were only removed, or if such a condition could only exist, then God would surely manifest Himself in his favor. But the obstacle remains; the condition is impossible to be realized; and so he sinks back each time into a state of unrelieved despondency and gloom. But his despair is no longer absolute and total. These suggestions of faith and hope gradually assume a more definite form, and take upon themselves more reality. They gain in strength, and come to a fuller utterance with each successive response he makes to his friends, until at last they grow into a clear and decided conviction, which vanquishes the temptation completely and forever by the language of triumphant assurance, "I know that my Redeemer liveth!" W. H. G. Chap. 19. After a brief expostulation (vs. 2-4) Job declares, in the strongest possible language, his conviction that the calamities, which he enumerates with greater force and fulness than in any preceding discourse, are not reconcilable with any known principle of the Divine government; they come from God, and cannot be justified by such reasonings as those which he has repeatedly refuted (vs. 6-20); they ought to excite pity; man ought to sympathize with his fellow when he is smitten by God. This course of thought issues in a complete triumph of the inner principle. He calls attention to the words which he is about to speak, as the only ones which deserve a perpetual record, which sum up the whole of his convictions, and will endure forever. His cause, being the cause of righteousness, is secure; for God (who has hitherto but shown Himself in wrath, in terror, in accusations, as an object of mysterious awe and terror) is Himself his Redeemer, a Redeemer now living in heaven, hereafter to be manifested in earth; to be seen after the destruction of Job's whole bodily frame by Job's own eyes. He concludes with an emphatic warning, that they who judge harshly will be judged unsparingly. Cook. Job realizes from Bildad's words, more clearly than before, his dreary isolation, God and men being alike estranged from him, which he laments in most pathetic words. But so profound and unalterable is his consciousness of his innocence, that at the moment when he has entered step after step into the thickest darkness he makes a sudden leap out into the light, and rises by an inspiration to the assurance that his innocence shall yet be revealed, that God will yet publicly appear for him, and that he shall see God. The order of thought is well marked: First (vs. 2-6), some preliminary words, as usual, of a personal kind, though these are here fewer, the speaker's mind being filled with greater things. He gives brief expression to his impatience of his friends' diatribes, and repudiates the inferences they drew from his calamities; his calamities were due to God, who had perverted his right. Second (vs. 7-27), this reference to God leads over to the theme of the whole chapter, which is nothing but God. The sufferer's mind wrestles with his thought of God—the thought of Him as the Author of his present terrible fate, from which he rises by a sudden revulsion to the thought of Him as One who must yet appear as his vindicator and joy. This part has three steps: A dark picture of the desertion of God and His terrible hostility to him (vs. 7-12). Then even a more touching complaint of the alienation of men from him—which God has caused (vs. 13-22). Hopeless in the present, he turns his eye to the future. He desires that his protest of innocence might find indelible record in the rock, that the generations to come might read it. Yet how small a thing that would be to him, whose chief sorrow lay in the alienation of God from his spirit. He shall have more. He knows that God shall yet appear to vindicate him, and that he shall see Him with his eyes—in peace (vs. 23-27). Finally he adds a brief threat to his friends (vs. 28, 29). A. B. D. 2,3. Three points are urged: his friends' cruelty, their pertinacity, and their injustice. Cook. 4-6. Let it be granted that I am in an error; if ye, upon that ground, "magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach," then, "know that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with His net;" this answer may put you to silence. As if he had said, The hand of God is upon me; why do you lift up your heads against me? Caryl.—If they really maintain that he is suffering on account of flagrant sins, he meets them on the ground of this assumption with the assertion that God has wronged him and has cast His net over him, so that he is indeed obliged to endure punishment. In other words: If his suffering is really not to be understood otherwise than as the punishment of sin, as they would uncharitably and censoriously persuade him, it urges on his self-consciousness, which rebels against it, to the conclusion which he hurls into their face as one which they themselves have provoked. Delitzsch. 5,6. A direct statement that, if he be condemned on the ground that God has put him to shame, he is prepared to prove that the providential dispensation, as understood by his friends, is not just. The word is purposely strong, He hath overthrown, or rather perverted me, dealt with me unjustly. It must be borne in mind, that the object of the Divine dispensation was precisely the reverse of what Job's friends had assumed it to be; that it was not intended to punish his guilt, but to test and prove his righteousness; interpreted as they interpreted it, it would have been a perversion of justice. Cook. 7. In the unshrinking truthfulness with which he utters his inmost feelings, we are startled by the boldness and seeming irreverence with which he arraigns the rectitude of the Divine proceedings. But it is not the daring recklessness of presumptuous speculation intruding on the unrevealed; nor is it the profane utterance of the impious transgressor blaspheming his Maker. It is the transparent sincerity of the tempted soul, driven almost to distraction by suggestions which are forced upon him and which he cannot shut out. In his conscious integrity he denies the righteousness of any infliction which charges that upon him of which he is not guilty; he denies the justice of executing sentence upon him for crimes of which he was free. If God, in sending these sufferings upon him, has marked him out as a criminal, as his friends allege, then He has perverted justice, He has done him wrong. W. H. G. 9-12. Which way soever Job looked, he thought he saw the tokens of God's displeasure against him. Did he look back upon his former prosperity? He saw God's hand putting an end to that (v. 9): "He has stripped me of my glory, my wealth, honor, power, and all the opportunity I had of doing good; my children were my glory, but I have lost them; and whatever was a crown to my head, He has taken it from me, and has laid all mine honor in the dust." Did he look down upon his present troubles? He saw God giving them their commission, and their orders to attack him. They are His troops, that act by His direction, which encamp against me (v. 12). It did not so much trouble him that his miseries came upon him in troops, as that they were God's troops, in whom it seemed as if God fought against him and intended his destruction. Time was when God's hosts encamped round him for safety; Hast Thou not made a hedge about him? Now, on the contrary, they surrounded him to his terror, and destroyed him on every side (v. 10). Did he look forward for deliverance? He saw the hand of God cutting off all hopes of that; (v. 8) "He hath fenced up my way, that I cannot pass;" I have now no way left to help myself, either to extricate myself out of my troubles, or to ease myself under them. H. 11. The climax, God deals with him as an enemy. What makes this so appalling but Job's own ineradicable love and faith? The complaint tells of natural weakness, but proves spiritual firmness: God may appear to forsake him, he will not renounce God. 12. His troops. All things that work together for man's weal or woe are God's apparitors, the executors of His will. Cook. 13-21. Job's complaint now is even more touching than before; God not only afflicted him with trouble, but removed far from him all human sympathy. And there is something more breaking to the heart in the turning away of men from us than in the severest sufferings. It crushes us quite. We steel ourselves against it for a time and rise to it in bitterness and resentment, but gradually it breaks us, and we are crushed at last. And this seems the way, whether men frown on us with justice or no. And there came on Job when he contemplated his complete casting off by men, by his friends and his household and even by the little children, a complete break-down, and he cries, Pity me, O ye my friends. A. B. D. 20,21. Wasted away to a skeleton, and become both to sight and smell a loathsome object—such is the sufferer the friends have before them; one who is tortured, besides, by a dark conflict which they only make more severe; one who now implores them for pity, and because he has no pity to expect from man, presses forward to a hope which reaches beyond the grave. Delitzsch.—The last and strongest appeal to human pity, but made in vain; the hand of God had touched him, so they esteemed him "smitten of God and afflicted." That was to them the very ground why they would not pity him. Cook.—Overcome by his sense of the terrible enmity of God, Job piteously cries out for the compassion of men. There is a strong antithesis between "ye my friends" and the "hand of God." The whole speech, even when the enmity of men is referred to (v. 13, seq.), is occupied with the thought of God; he is regarded as the cause of man's abhorrence. A. B. D. 22. "Why do ye persecute me as God?" Surely His rebukes are enough for one man to bear, you need not add your wormwood and gall to the cup of affliction He puts into my hand. If they did delight in his calamity, let them be satisfied with his flesh, which was wasted and gone, but let them not wound his spirit and ruin his good name. H. 23-29. The great declaration of the book introduced with words of unusual solemnity; whatever may become of other words, whether wrung from him by misery, or expressing yearnings, aspirations, or even hope, Job will have this recorded, for it speaks of a certainty. Cook. 23,24. Perceiving that he had made no impression upon them, the afflicted patriarch suddenly raises his voice and expresses his ardent desire that the words he had uttered in his own defence should be recorded in some enduring memorial. It is clear that the loss of character is involved in the imputations which the friends shower upon him. All other evils are in his view light to this; and what he desires is not so much deliverance from his misery, as the vindication of his integrity. And thus he practically refutes the, to him unknown, insinuations of Satan, that his piety was founded on selfish motives. Kitto.—That which Job here somewhat passionately wished for, God graciously granted him; his words are written, they are printed in God's Book; so that wherever that Book is read there shall this be told for a memorial concerning Job, He believed, therefore he spake. H. We give the translation which seems to us preferable: "O that my words were now recorded! O that they were engraven on a tablet! With an iron grave, upon lead; That they were graven in a rock forever." The careful reader will here find four ideas, rising to a climax in the grandest and most durable form of writing. Job first expresses a wish that his words were simply written down or recorded in the ordinary mode, without specifying any. He then goes on to engraving or writing on tablets, that may have been of wood, earthenware, or bone. Then he comes to the process of writing on tablets of soft metal, with a pen or stylus of harder metal, a pen of iron on tablets of lead. Lastly, he would have them "graven in the rock forever." It was certainly a grand idea for man to think of committing to the living rock, and of thus giving a magnificent permanency to the record of his history and his thoughts. Many such monuments of the most ancient date have been found in various countries, but none more extensive or remarkable than those in the Written Mountains of Sinai. These inscriptions are found in the hills and valleys which run toward the northwest to the vicinity of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez. Kitto. This desire to have his words inscribed upon the rock is not so much an introduction to what follows as the conclusion of what precedes. It represents not his rising consciousness of triumph, but rather his lowest depth of desolation and hopeless despair, joined with his inward consciousness of integrity, that demands some recognition. Bereft of every helper, human and Divine, crushed beneath an unrighteous sentence, his appeals to God unheard, and his friends joining in the merciless persecution, he asks that the rocks may take up his dying declaration, and that his words may be indelibly written there, so that the imperishable stone may speak his innocence of these false charges, and testify of the wrong that has been done him, after his own voice is hushed. And thus his appeal to the rocks to transmit his defence to all coming time will be parallel to his passionate apostrophe to the earth in his last preceding speech (16:18): "O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place." It is the outcry of one hopelessly overwhelmed by unjust imputations and wrongful treatment, but to whom his integrity is dearer than his life, and who insists that what is true and right shall have the assertion to which it is entitled; and who cannot but believe after all that eternal justice shall find a response somewhere and at some time. W. H. G. The desire suddenly seizes Job to make his appeal to posterity, to record in writing his protestation of his innocence, or to grave it in the rock, that when he is gone men might read it to all time. Yet this thought satisfies him but for a moment. Even if the generations to come should not only mitigate but reverse the judgment of his contemporaries, how small a thing that would be to him! And his mind rebounds from this thought forward to a greater—he knows that His redeemer liveth and shall appear for his vindication and peace. A. B. D. In the very reaction from his despair of human help, he suddenly rises to the highest level which he attains in the book, "to a point where he catches a prophetic sight of a larger hope and utters the sublime words which more than any others have become associated with his name." V.—All at once he breaks out into that avowal which for all the ages since has remained the supreme utterance of the Book of Job, which gathers into one mighty assurance the solution of all his problems, the final reach of his aspiring faith, revealing in one view the Advocate on high, the vindication beyond death, God his restored friend—and binding all together with the exultant word, I know. J. F. G. Job has already expressed a wish that there might be an umpire between him and God; then he goes further and desires an advocate; then declares that he has a witness, One who exactly knows his rights, in heaven; then calls upon God Himself to be his advocate. He now takes a stronger position, and declares his certainty that there is One who adds to all these conditions that which gives them solidity, and assures his final triumph; there lives One who will vindicate his righteousness and clear his cause completely. Cook. This passage forms the grand climax in the utterances of Job's faith, to which he has from the first been slowly but steadily rising. It is the turning-point in his discussions with his friends, the culmination and the close of his sore inward conflict, the full and complete outcoming of a trust which has been gradually gathering strength in the face of the most formidable opposition, and struggling to find expression, and the crowning victory over Satan's fiercest and most subtle temptation. It is faith planting itself firmly on the unseen, when not one single external ground of support remains. Who the Redeemer is in whom Job thus affirms his confidence cannot admit of a moment's doubt. It is the same of whom he had declared in his preceding speech (16:19), "My Witness is in heaven, and my record is on high;" and whom he had supplicated to be his Surety (17:3) when all others refused to espouse his cause; and of whose sentence in his favor he had again and again expressed his strong assurance, if his cause could but be brought before Him so as to obtain His decision. Now all doubts have vanished; every condition that had previously clogged his hopes is removed. The Lord has undertaken for him. The Lord has engaged upon his side. The Lord will defend him against all injury and wrong. God, who seems to be persecuting him with such relentless hostility, is not his Enemy. The Witness to his integrity on high, to whom he had appealed to become his Surety, becomes his Redeemer, the Avenger of his innocent blood, vindicating him, appearing as his Champion, and on his behalf, and, as he in the verses next ensuing warns his friends, punishing them that have done him wrong. W. H. G. The conception of an Invisible One who can "be wrought to sympathy" with human hopes and fears grows clearer with every utterance of the sufferer. At last there comes one of those flashes of inspiration by which from time to time God heralds His fuller revelation. Whatever be the literal meaning of this celebrated passage, from which to English ears thoughts of an incarnate Saviour and a resurrection from the dead can never be dissociated, it is certain that it leaps in its large aspiration far beyond the purest hopes that up to this time had stirred even Hebrew hearts. In the intense feeling that justice must and will be done, Job is made to cast one marvellous look through the mysterious darkness of death, and see God, his Avenger, stand, as it were, above his dust and vindicate his character upon his grave. In this great hope he is able himself to live again, and to appropriate the living Redeemer, and look upon Him when the skin is wasted from his bones and his body destroyed. Aglen. Whatever may happen, he shall not perish; leprosy may eat up his flesh, and even consume his bones; his friends may bring against him the gravest charges, but what does it matter? It is to God alone that he will for the future carry his appeal. He is sure of God—yes, sure of Him even at the very time when this God seems to be doing everything to ruin him. Does he express in these words his hope of a mere cure, when it shall please God to suspend the ravages of leprosy, and to say to that incurable disease, "Thus far and no farther?" Or does he, despairing of all cure here below, cast himself upon the certainty of a resurrection, properly so called? Between these two interpretations which have divided commentators, would not Job perhaps have himself hesitated? Does he not feel his ignorance as to how God will dispose of this body, this living skeleton, in which he is still suffering and groaning? But what he does know for certain is that, whether by means of a cure, or else by means of a resurrection, live he shall—for his Redeemer lives. All the truths that Jesus draws (in Matt. 22:32) from the expression, "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," are comprehended in this cry of faith from the patriarch: "My Redeemer liveth!" Godet. I know. It is a bold challenge made by a suffering man to the ages. The ring of conviction resounds in every line and fills the air with its thrilling music. Three distinct assertions follow this quickening preface. First, he declares that God is the Vindicator of right-seeking and right-doing men. Of the fact he is sure; of the how and when and where he says nothing; but an invincible faith that before the "last" moment in his history comes God will be his Redeemer from all the ills of which he is now the victim animates and sustains his suffering spirit. Job is sure that he himself, in his own conscious person, will be the rejoicing witness of that Divine vindication. The chief, the conquering, the most meritorious quality in Job's mood of mind is his clear and steadfast recognition of the real but dimly revealed law that the suspension of the accepted and outward manifestations of the Divine care and regard is not the suspension of the Divine sympathy, nor the withdrawal of the Divine love and help. J. Clifford. My Redeemer. With an intense significance the great word goel ("Redeemer" or "Vindicator") is invested in virtue of its general use throughout the Old Testament. The goel was the near kinsman in Israel on whom the right and duty of redeeming were devolved. The goel brought back the forfeited inheritance; redeemed the slave; avenged the slain; perpetuated the family name and heirship among the families and estates in Israel. In fine, he was the redeeming, avenging, vindicating, perpetuating kinsman; whose name and deeds must have come to be embalmed in tearful, joyful family memories. And this is the word employed by Job when he passionately exclaims: "But I know that my Goel—my redeeming kinsman—liveth." Anon.—The goel means any one who has the right and duty to vindicate one who has suffered wrong. Job certainly did not believe that any man was in that position; the only Goel he could possibly rely upon was the living God. Cook. My Redeemer liveth. "Liveth" means more than is, exists. Job uses the word in opposition to himself—he dies, but his Redeemer lives after him. Job has in God a Goel who liveth. This Goel will vindicate his rights against the wrong both of men and God. At the same time, this vindication is regarded less as an avenging of him than as a manifestation of his innocence. This manifestation can only be made by God's appearing and showing the true relation in which Job stands to Him, and by Job's seeing God. For his distress lay in God's hiding His face from him, and his redemption must come through his again beholding God in peace. Thus the ideas of Goel and Redeemer virtually coincide. A. B. D. It may not be without its deeper significance and its divinely intended meaning that the term "Redeemer" had the association linked with it, both in patriarchal and Mosaic usage, of the next of kin. Is there not here possibly a shadowing forth of more than Job himself intended or imagined when he used the word? an index pointing to that Divine Redeemer, who is, withal, our nearest Kinsman, and who allied Himself to us in the bonds of our common humanity, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, that He might have a kinsman's right to espouse our cause, to vindicate us from the accusations of the law, and free us from the sentence of death written in our members, and open to us life and immortality with the beatific vision of God. W. H. G. 26. The whole expression "after this my skin has been destroyed and without my flesh" means "when I have died under the ravages of my disease." The words do not express in what condition precisely, but after what events Job shall see God. A. B. D.—Job certainly did not expect that the manifestation would be granted before death. Whether in the body or out of the body, he was sure that after the utter destruction of his frame—of the last fragment of his physical being, he would see God with his own eyes. Cook. Job knows the just God too well not to be sure that his upright disposition toward God will come to light after death, if not before, and in such a way that he himself will be present in personal vitality. The certainty of a life after death is here born out of painful conflict. What in chap. 14:13 was mere longing desire, in chap. 16:18 took the shape of bold demand, and here has become joyous certainty—namely, that even death cannot bury the right. This Goel is none else than Eloah (16:19), his seeming opponent. He has a representative who is living, not subject to death. And the satisfaction which God grants him is that he will behold Him, after death, the God who now hides Himself from him. The dark riddle is solved and the ban broken. The greatest bliss a believer can conceive is this beholding of God. But grand as is this inward conquest of death through the certainty of righteousness in God's sight and fellowship with Him, still the passage does not, as has been thought, contain a direct Messianic prophecy. Orelli. I shall see God. The last words explain who Job's Redeemer or Goel is, and who He is who remaineth or shall come after him—viz., God. After his skin is destroyed and without his flesh he shall see God. Before death he shall not see Him, for he shall die under His afflicting hand (cf. 23:14), but he shall yet behold Him. To see God is to see Him reconciled and in peace, for this is implied in seeing Him at all, because now He hides His face. 27. These words might mean merely, whom I myself shall see; or, for myself may mean, favorable to me, on my side and to my joy. A. B. D. Away from his flesh he shall see God, his Vindicator, his Looser. The core of his trouble has been that God hid Himself; he could not see Him; he could not come into court with Him and plead his cause face to face. He shall see God at last, plead his cause and receive his vindication. For that face-to-face vision and vindication, for that, he says, "my reins are consumed within me." V.—The latter words are an exclamation, meaning, I faint. The reins are the seat of the deepest feelings and experiences, especially of those toward God. Job began with expressing his assurance that he should see God, but as he proceeds, so vivid is his hope that it becomes almost reality, the intensity of his thought creates an ecstatic condition of mind in which the vision of God seems almost realized, and he faints in the presence of it. Everything here centres in the assurance that he shall see God; and this steady faith is expressed in each of the three verses, with only verbal variations. . . . The great idea of the passage is the manifestation of the Divine Deliverer, and that single idea is expressed first in direct and concise terms, and next with accompanying conditions. The main thought in Job's mind is that God will appear to vindicate his innocence and that he shall see God to his joy; the question whether this shall be in this life or beyond it is of only secondary importance. Being himself conscious of his own rectitude, and believing that God also knew it, he fell back upon the assurance that in spite of the greatness and completeness of his present desolation, God would somehow become his Vindicator. There is an evident antithesis of thought between Job's anticipated death and his hope of a living Redeemer. I shall return to the dust, but He shall stand over my dust. The vindication may not be now, in my flesh, but in the hereafter, without my flesh, so joining together the laying aside of the flesh and the putting on of immortality. A. B. D. 28,29. It is quite in accordance with Job's custom elsewhere to follow one of his passages of deep and true insight by a note of warning in which the friends' purblindness is recognized. This is the most solemn passage of the kind, as befits the lofty reach of faith that precedes it. J. F. G.—The probable rendering is this: "If ye shall say, 'how shall we persecute him?' and 'the root of the matter is found in me,' then be ye afraid of the sword for yourselves, for scorn is one of the sins of the sword, so that ye will know that there is a judgment." If this rendering be accepted, the former verse would describe the acts and words of Job's persecutors, who cast about how they may heap indignities upon him, and attribute the root or cause of all that has happened to his own sin; the second verse (29) warns them of the sure penalty, the sword of Divine wrath will punish them deservedly; for such burning scorn is a capital offence, and they will learn by their own experience that there is a righteous Judge. Cook. From this point onward Job no more struggles with the problem of death; a fact which indicates that the immortality here recognized is henceforth taken for granted. Nor is God any more regarded as an enemy. J. F. G. The Christology of the Book is indirect. There are no express references to the Messiah, though several passages may seem unconscious prophecies of Him, as those that express Job's desire to meet and see God as a man (9:32; 23:3). Job's God or Redeemer is God. A distinction of persons in the Godhead was not present to his thoughts when he used this term; though the conception of God in the passage and many things said in it may find verification in God's manifestation of Himself in His Son. The strange distinction which Job draws between God and God, God who persecutes him and God who is his Witness and Redeemer, is of course not a christological distinction, nor one that corresponds to any distinction in the Godhead made known to us by subsequent revelation. The distinction was one which Job's ideas almost compelled him to draw. He believed that every event that occurred came immediately from God's hand; and he believed that every event that befell a man reflected the disposition of God's mind toward him; calamity indicated the anger and prosperity the favor of God. This second superstition is the source of all his perplexities; and the distinction which he draws between God and God is his effort to overcome it. God whom he appeals against is the rule and course of this world, the outer providence of God, to which Job can give no name but "God." God to whom he appeals is the inner mind of God toward His servants, the moral ideal of the human heart. This is God his Witness and Redeemer. Job succeeded in drawing this distinction; but the reconciliation which the distinction demanded he was only partially successful in effecting. He could not reach the idea that God, the heart of God, might be toward him, while God—the outer course of the world—afflicted him. These two things could not be at the same time. But they might succeed one another. Hence his reconciliation is temporal; God will bring him unto death, but after his body is destroyed God shall appear to vindicate him and he shall see God. The doctrine of Immortality in the Book is the same as that of other parts of the Old Testament. Immortality is the corollary of Religion. If there be religion—that is, if God be, there is immortality, not of the soul but of the whole personal being of man. This teaching of the whole Old Testament is expressed by our Lord with a surprising incisiveness in two sentences—"I am the God of Abraham. God is not the God of the dead but of the living." A. B. D. We have in vs. 25-27 the undoubted utterance of the truth of the higher hope which looks joyfully beyond physical death into the immortality of the soul. It is true that this hope is as yet without any of the luxuriant developments of it which were often carried beyond all proportion in later times; we see it here quite in its first fresh germination as a new and certain view, just as it springs forth from an inward necessity. The view that Job expresses here an earthly hope, and does not at all speak of the time after death, is indeed totally false. It is opposed to the words themselves, to the connection of the thoughts, and sins against the meaning of the whole Book, and against the plain advance from 14:13-15; 16:18, seq., and finally to this passage. Ewald.—The Book of Job is throughout a very hymn of immortality. If this world were all, all was lost for Job; God was a terrible enigma; chance was God; providence was but a name. But Job, in the depth of his anguish, "knows that his Redeemer liveth, and that without his flesh he shall behold God." H. P. L. The doctrine of immortality comes in solely to still Job's inward conflict, and bring him to a settled conviction that there is peace between his soul and God, which no outward and temporal troubles can destroy. This it effectually does. Job's inward agitation ceases from this moment. He is no longer distracted by the sense of God's hostility and wrath. His outward situation is unchanged, and the problem of his sufferings is as mysterious as ever; but he has attained to inward peace. He knows that his Redeemer liveth, and that after his worn and suffering body shall be resolved into dust the clouds shall break away which now obstruct his vision of the face of God. The lesson of immortality has accomplished its end. But in what relation, it may be further asked, does this passage stand to the doctrine of the Messiah and of a corporeal resurrection? Is Job's Redeemer ours, and his faith the same in which the people of God now rejoice in the completed victory over death and the grave? When Job appeals to his Redeemer, he does so without even remotely apprehending that He is the second person of the Godhead; for of the distinction of persons in the Diving Being, and of the doctrine of the Trinity as unfolded in the New Testament, he knew nothing. But he addresses Him in a character, and solicits the fulfilment of an office which distinctively belongs to God the Son. He is and has been in every age the Redeemer out of every distress, the Guardian and Protector of His people, and their Deliverer both from temporal distress and from that everlasting woe of which the former is the figure and the type. It is He to whom the saints of God are indebted for that joyful prospect of the vision of God beyond the grave, to which Job looked forward. So that the doctrine of Christ is here approached from its Divine side, not as the Son of Abraham, but as the Son of God. W. H. G. Job here speaks out the conviction and the prophecy of a future retributive life; not of a bodily resuscitation from death, but of a future beholding of God in a spiritual state. His hope is the hope of immortality rather than of resurrection. But we need not break the bond which links this passage with the Christian truth of the Resurrection. We are not forbidden to read back to these passages in New Testament light and to make them expressions of New Testament truth. While there is no good reason for believing that Job in this sublime utterance saw what Paul did when he wrote 1 Cor. 15, we may still use these words to formulate our hope of the Resurrection. He who abolished death and brought immortality to light is in the grandest sense our Redeemer, our Goel, loosing for us the bonds of death, becoming our Surety with the God with whom He is one, thus fulfilling Job's words that He will justify His own against Himself. This Redeemer liveth, ever liveth to make intercession for us. V.—God has given to us, for our faith to rest on, something more distinct and tangible than He gave to Job. There has been One on earth through whose lips God's voice spoke, and from whose character was reflected the character of God. A living Person manifesting Deity. It is all this added meaning gained from Christ with which we use these words: "I know that my Redeemer liveth." F. W. R. They that live the spiritual life have it from the Son of God, and by believing in Him: He rises from the dead and lives forever; therefore they also live immortally. These are the short, clear steps in that evangelic argument. But no line of reasoning establishes the conclusion. We are dealing not with the parts or conditions of a problem, but with a living fact and a personal reality. "I am the Resurrection and the Life; whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die"—this carries us beyond the region of premise and inference. We believe, or not, and are blessed or wretched accordingly; but we are not argued into the conviction, or out of it. The faith, however, in its certainty, amounts to sight or knowledge; and hence it is no exaggeration when all Christendom, moving ever toward the grave in the procession of its generations, declares, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." F. D. H. Job doth not only profess faith in a Redeemer, but in his Redeemer—my Redeemer liveth. Every word in this confession is precious and weighty. Here he useth an appropriating word, yet he doth not engross the Redeemer to himself, excluding others, but he takes his part with others. Those pronouns, mine, thine, his, are words of love, and drop like honeycomb with sweetness of affection. The first work of faith is to believe that Christ is a Redeemer; the second is to believe and rely upon Christ as a Redeemer; the third is to see an interest in Christ as my Redeemer. Caryl.—Job uses the language of appropriation. He says, "My Redeemer." And all that we know, or hear, or speak of Him will avail us but little, unless we are really and personally interested in Him as our Redeemer. A cold speculative knowledge of the Gospel, such as a lawyer has of a will or a deed, which he reads with no further design than to understand the tenor and import of the writing, will neither save nor comfort the soul. The believer reads it, as the will is read by the heir, who finds his own name in it, and is warranted by it to call the estate and all the particulars specified his own. He appropriates the privileges to himself, and says, The promises are mine; the pardon, the peace, the heaven of which I read, are all mine. This is the will and testament of the Redeemer, of my Redeemer. The great Testator remembered me in His will, which is confirmed and rendered valid by His death (Heb. 9:16), and therefore I humbly claim, and assuredly expect, the benefit of all that He has bequeathed. Newton, 1725-1807. I know; it is a matter of the greatest certainty to my soul, that there is a Redeemer for lost sinners; I know He is my Redeemer; I have seen my want of Him, and my certain destruction without His redemption. He liveth; while He lives my hopes cannot die, my soul cannot despair; stripped of all things beside, nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. I know that Christ liveth at the right hand of God, because He lives in my heart by faith. By the word of grace we know there is a Redeemer; by the testimony of the Spirit of truth, through faith, the sinner is enabled to say He is mine, my beloved, my Friend. There are two infallible evidences of this: Christ has both our hearts and our hopes; our heart is set upon Him; our hopes centre in Him. He is precious to our hearts; we have fellowship with Him by faith; we know that He liveth, because we enjoy the comfort of His life and love in our souls; we know Him both as dying for us and also as living in us; He dwells in our hearts by faith; He sends His tokens of love; He draws our affections to Himself. W. Mason. 1. THEN answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, 2 Therefore do my thoughts give answer to me, Even by reason of my haste that is in me. 3 I have heard the reproof which putteth me to shame, And the spirit of my understanding answereth me. 4 Knowest thou not this of old time, Since man was placed upon earth, 5 That the triumphing of the wicked is short, And the joy of the godless but for a moment? 6. Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, And his head reach unto the clouds; 7 Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: They which have seen him shall say, Where is he? 8 He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: Yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. 9 The eye which saw him shall see him no more; Neither shall his place any more behold him. 10. His children shall seek the favour of the poor, And his hands shall give back his wealth. 11. His bones are full of his youth, But it shall lie down with him in the dust. 12. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, Though he hide it under his tongue ; 13. Though he spare it, and will not let it go, But keep it still within his mouth ; 14. Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, It is the gall of asps within him. 15. He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again : God shall cast them out of his belly. 16. He shall suck the poison of asps : The viper's tongue shall slay him. 17. He shall not look upon the rivers, The flowing streams of honey and butter. 18. That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down ; According to the substance that he hath gotten, he shall not rejoice. 19. For he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor ; He hath violently taken away an house, and he shall not build it up. 20. Because he knew no quietness within him, He shall not save aught of that wherein he delighteth. BILDAD (chap. 18) had enlarged upon the certainty of the sinner's downfall from the moral order in the world and the moral sense in men, which rose up against wickedness. Zophar's point is slightly different, it is the brevity of the wicked man's prosperity, which arises from the fact that wickedness brings about its own retribution. He illustrates this theme by drawing the picture of a rapacious, oppressive man of power suddenly brought to destruction and destitution in the midst of his days, with the hand of every one that is wretched against him, and forced to disgorge that which he had greedily swallowed. Job may understand that the fable is narrated of him. Zophar is too much of the "plain, blunt man ;" his meaning is so transparent that he commits himself and his friends into his adversary's hands. One general idea pervades the speech, the brevity of the wicked man's prosperity. A. B. D. 1-3. Zophar takes no notice of what Job had said to move their pity or to evidence his own integrity, but fastens upon the reproof he gave them in the close of his discourse, counts that a reproach, and thinks himself therefore obliged to answer, because Job had bidden them be afraid 21. There was nothing left that he devoured not ; Therefore his prosperity shall not endure. 22. In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits : The hand of every one that is in misery shall come upon him. 23. When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fierceness of his wrath upon him, And shall rain it upon him while he is eating, 24. He shall flee from the iron weapon, And the bow of brass shall strike him through. 25. He draweth it forth, and it cometh out of his body : Yea, the glittering point cometh out of his gall ; Terrors are upon him. 26. All darkness is laid up for his treasures : A fire not blown by man shall devour him ; It shall consume that which is left in his tent. 27. The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, And the earth shall rise up against him. 28. The increase of his house shall depart, His goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath. 29. This is the portion of a wicked man from God, And the heritage appointed unto him by God. of the sword, that he might not seem to be frightened by his menaces. H. The entire speech of Zophar, after the introductory sentences (vs. 2, 3) is comprised briefly in vs. 4 and 5, and all that follows, to the end, are only illustrations and amplifications of the idea at first enunciated. The wicked shall perish miserably—he shall not be found among men, he shall be chased away as the shadows, and even any who may remember him shall not see him any more—his very name shall rot. The curse of his wickedness shall descend to his children, his youthful transgressions shall ripen their bitter fruits in his later life, and his cherished sins especially shall result in bitterness, disease, disaster, and remorse. The fruit of his iniquitous carefulness shall not remain except as a curse—it shall not cause him to rejoice. His oppressions and violence, though for awhile successful, shall not bring him quiet ; his greediness shall bring him only desolation, and those whom he has spoiled will pursue him with maledictions and vengeance. He shall be cursed in his eating, the sword shall pursue him, a fire not blown (by man) shall devour him ; the created universe shall be against him, and all his substance shall "slip away," because God is against him. Such is the decree of the Almighty respecting the portion—the heritage—of the wicked man. The doctrine here taught is the same that is seen in all parts of the Bible; but it is here presented with a terrible fulness and forcefulness of expression and an exuberant enumeration of details. Curry. 10. His children shall seek the favor of the poor. This is much stronger than if he had said, "they shall become poor." It is placing them below poverty itself. They shall court the good-will and assistance of the most destitute and abject. Scott.—God many times suffers an estate got by injustice or wrongdoing to prosper for a little while; but there is a curse attends it, which descends upon the estate like an encumbrance. As, then, you would not transmit a curse to your children and devolve misery upon your family, free your estates from the burden and weight of what is other men's, lest by God's just judgment and secret providence that little which you injuriously detain from others carry away your whole estate to them and their family. God's providence many times makes abundant restitution when we will not. Archbishop Tillotson. 11. No truth more grows upon men, in the light of modern research, than the immutability of law. All its voices affirm together that "not a jot or tittle shall fail;" that the "uttermost farthing" shall be required. "Transgression carries its penalty in it, as the acorn carries the oak," says a scientific skeptic; unconsciously reiterating the thought of James, "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." The force once set in motion, and unhindered, goes on, as we are told, "unhasting, unresting," never wasting, never turning aside, never intermitting. The law works unflinchingly outward, carrying the contagion of plague or the breath of spring, alike to all. It works as stubbornly inward, transmuting act into habit, and pricking habit indelibly into the blood—and sinking it into the very marrow—so that literally, and not figuratively only, a man's "bones are full of the sins of his youth." J. B. Thomas. 12-14. The great force of a vicious habit is strongly marked in this and the following verses. The pleasure which a corrupt mind feels in the indulgence of its criminal inclination is compared to an epicure's high enjoyment of some delicious morsel. Scott.—When the pursuit of money grows to a monster passion of the soul, the mind dwindles, the affections wither, and sometimes even the nerve of hunger itself ceases to act, leaving the wretched miser to perish by starvation fast by his heap of gold. So if a man lives for the table, the organs of the mouth and chin change their expression, the eye grows dull, the gait heavy, the voice takes a coarse animalized sound, and the higher qualities of intelligence he may once have manifested will be manifested nowhere, save as purveyors to the organs of taste and the gastric energy. H. B. 17. He shall be disappointed in his expectations, and shall not find that satisfaction in his worldly wealth which he vainly promised himself; he shall never see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter. The world is not that to those who love and court it which they fancy it will be. The enjoyment sinks far below the raised expectation. H.—These figurative expressions undoubtedly represent some part of his punishment. Rivers, honey, and milk are Oriental emblems of felicity. It is possible that the utter loss of all his former abundance and enjoyments may be intended. But probably a worse punishment is here threatened; even exclusion from "the seats of the blessed." The blessings of religion and the future happiness of good men are represented in Scripture by these pleasant images. 24. The word rendered "weapon" signifies arms or weapons of every sort, and is here put for the armed host of evils. God is at war with him. The Scripture arms the Divine Being with a sword, a bow and arrows to represent His vengeance. All his efforts to ward off the calamities which fall upon him will be ineffectual. The Arabian writers are very fond of the idea of a bow, and frequently use it to represent extraordinary, inevitable, and destructive calamities from the hand of God. 26. This is one of those terrible images by which the Scripture represents the future punishments of the wicked. It is unquenchable fire; for it is not kindled by the breath of man, but of God. While he himself is suffering the wrath of God in another world vengeance pursues the family he left in this world to utter extermination. 28. The effect of the combined operations of the heavens and the earth against him is the swift and violent dissipation of his whole estate. The increase of his house shall roll away, like torrents, in the day of His wrath. Scott. 29. This is the portion of a wicked man from God. He will have it at last, as a child has his portion, and he will have it for a perpetuity, it is what he must abide by; this is the heritage of his decree from God; it is the settled rule of His judgment, and fair warning is given of it. O wicked man, thou shalt surely die! (Ezek. 33:8.) H.—They chose to obey their own passions and lusts in the place of God, and He leaves them to the unrestrained tyranny of their evil tendencies. They would not live to Him, but lived to themselves cultivating selfishness in all its forms; He assigns to them a condition in which selfishness reigns supreme in every being, where every evil bias of the human heart is allowed to bring forth its fruit without restraint in its bitterest intensity. What can be more awful than such a state of existence? Every element of happiness has been excluded, and nothing is left but unsatisfied appetite wrought up to madness, envy, malice, rage, cruelty, implacable and unmerciful, all acting without control and each seeking nothing but the misery of all. And more than this, every one is conscious that he is receiving nothing but the result of his own choice. Wayland. We have here a most admirable account of great wicked men; the only fault in Zophar was in misapplying it to Job; as if God could not in justice afflict any but wicked men. Bishop Wilson.—Like all the speakers in this second round of debate, Zophar concludes by pointing with an impressive gesture to the picture he has drawn. Job should see himself there. He finishes by saying “from God.” This forces Job into the arena; he has no help, however unwilling he may be, but face this argument (21:27), and he shows that that which comes “from God” (21:22) is something very different. A. B. D. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2 Hear diligently my speech; And let this be your consolations. 3 Suffer me, and I also will speak; And after that I have spoken, mock on. 4 As for me, is my complaint to man? And why should I not be impatient? 5 Mark me, and be astonished, And lay your hand upon your mouth. 6 Even when I remember I am troubled, And horror taketh hold on my flesh. 7 Wherefore do the wicked live, Become old, yea, wax mighty in power? 8 Their seed is established with them in their sight, And their offspring before their eyes. 9 Their houses are safe from fear, Neither is the rod of God upon them. 10 Their bull gendereth, and faileth not; Their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf. 11 They send forth their little ones like a flock, And their children dance. 12 They sing to the timbrel and harp, And rejoice at the sound of the pipe. 13 They spend their days in prosperity, And in a moment they go down to Sheol. 14 And they say unto God, Depart from us; For we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. 15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him? 16 Lo, their prosperity is not in their hand: The counsel of the wicked is far from me. 17. How oft is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity cometh upon them? That God distributeth sorrows in his anger? 18. That they are as stubble before the wind, And as chaff that the storm carrieth away? 19. Ye say, God layeth up his iniquity for his children. Let him recompense it unto himself, that he may know it. 20. Let his own eyes see his destruction, And let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. 21. For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, When the number of his months is cut off? 22. Shall any teach God knowledge? Seing he judgeth those that are high. 23. One dieth in his full strength, Being wholly at ease and quiet: 24. His breasts are full of milk, And the marrow of his bones is moistened. 25. And another dieth in bitterness of soul And never tasteth of good. 26. They lie down alike in the dust, And the worm covereth them. 27. Behold, I know your thoughts, And th devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me. 28. For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? And where is the tent wherein the wicked dwelt? 29. Have ye not asked them that go by the way? And do ye not know their tokens? 30. That the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity? That they are led forth to the day of wrath? 31. Who shall declare his way to his face? And who shall repay him what he hath done? 32. Yet shall he be borne to the grave, WE have traced the fierce and weary conflict to its final issue. We have watched him in his inward strife, in his piteous moans, his expostulations with God, his vain appeals to Him to declare Himself on his side. We have seen him driven to and fro in his tumultuous agitation, until, forced to the very edge of the precipice, and apparently about to fall hopelessly and helplessly into the awful chasm, he cleared it by one energetic act of faith, reaching forth into the unseen, and sustaining himself without any visible support. The personal question is now settled, and his intense inward agitation has subsided. He is in a much calmer and more tranquil state of mind. He has gained that unshaken conviction of the rectitude and goodness of God, which enables him to claim Him as his Redeemer in spite of all adverse appearances. This source of his disquiet is put to rest. The power of the temptation is broken. Satan cannot detach him from the service of God, seeing that he holds fast to his faith in Him, in spite of all the suggestions of sense and of reason. Job is safe from falling. But outward sense and human reason still present a problem which baffles him completely. He holds fast to his confidence in God, but he is bewildered nevertheless. The solution of his friends is no solution. According to their principles, indeed, there is no enigma in Providence. They see nothing but the evident and uniform reign of justice. Job shows, on the contrary, that this is not the case. He takes issue with them in regard to their fundamental principle, and exposes its falsity. It is not, as they allege, a fact of uniform experience that the righteous are rewarded and the wicked suffer. This is the point to which he addresses himself in his remaining speeches. W. H. G. The three friends have all spoken in the same strain, portraying in violent and exaggerated terms the doom of the wicked; but to their arguments Job has deigned no answer until now. The present speech, however, squarely traverses what they have said, and indicates that he has merely waited for what all had to urge, that he might answer all of them at once. Not in anger—the problem is too awful for that And men shall keep watch over the tomb. 33. The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, And all men shall draw after him, As there were innumerable before him. 34. How then comfort ye me in vain, Seeing in your answers there remaineth only falsehood? —but in shuddering amazement Job portrays to his friends what indeed is palpable to every one who will be honest with himself and the world: the wicked prospering, becoming old, and dying in peace, apparently just as secure and just as favored as the righteous. J. F. G. Instead of chiding his friends, he can only appeal to them to contemplate the awful riddle of Providence, at the thought of which he himself trembles (v. 6). This riddle, the prosperity of the wicked in God's hand (v. 16), their peaceful death (v. 13), and even the renown of their memory (v. 33), he then proceeds to unfold: First (vs. 2-6), some words of introduction, in which Job bids his friends be silent till he unfolds before them the mystery which weighs down his own soul and the thought of which makes him tremble—then they may mock if they have a mind. Second (vs. 7-34), the mystery itself, the prosperity of the wicked, in four turns: Vs. 6-16. The wicked are prosperous, themselves, their children, their possessions, and they die in peace. This is an undeniable fact of experience. Vs. 16-21. On the other side, how often is it that they are seen overwhelmed by calamity? There is no such invariable principle. They do not die sudden and violent deaths as the friends represented. Vs. 22-26. Why, then, should men—the friends—be wiser than God? Why should they impose their petty principles on God's providence, and prescribe methods to Him which He does not follow? Vs. 27-34. Finally Job turns to the insinuations of his friends—he knows the meaning of their indirect allusions, when they say, Where is the house of the prince (v. 28)? but they only show their ignorance of the testimony of those who have travelled (v. 30), and their little sense of the unfathomableness of God's ways, and even if possible less sense of the ways of men, who have no such horror of the wicked as the friends pretend, but who press forward in their footsteps, admiring their prosperity and forgetting their wickedness (v. 34). A. B. D. In language of unparalleled boldness Job maintains that the wicked live, grow old, keep their power, their children are established, they and theirs live and die in prosperity, joyous, careless; they renounce God openly, and with complete impunity, a common fate awaits all, there is no sign of the temporal retribution of which dogmatists speak so confidently. This speech virtually closes the second day's colloquy; its import seems to have been misunderstood; but what is the real object of the trials permitted by God but to demonstrate that goodness may exist, that a man thoroughly sincere, perfect, and righteous may hold fast his integrity though every shadow of hope connected with life be withdrawn? Job feels and declares not only that his own "hedge" has been removed, and that every conceivable calamity has befallen him, destroying the spring of life, and leaving him apparently blasted by God's wrath, an object of loathing and scorn to the representations of humanity; but also that the whole scheme of the world's history proves there is no general connection here between goodness and happiness; men who renounce God prosper to the end, and then but share the fate of all mankind; all lie down alike in the dust and the worms cover them. Thus also with regard to the fear and love of God; though quite convinced that it will bring no recompense, he abjures the "counsels of the wicked" (v. 16), and so proves that his innermost convictions are steadfast. 5,6. A very important and necessary introduction to the following statements. Job is quite aware of the horror and indignation which they must excite; none feels this more deeply than he. He trembles, is terrified at the contemplation of apparent injustice in God's dealing with his creatures. Cook.—The friends have so revelled in their highly colored descriptions that they have almost exulted over the fate of the wicked; Job, on the other hand, full of sympathy with right and truth, must view with amazement the confused order of things; it is not what he wishes to see. J. F. G. It is deeply interesting to observe, not merely that the difficulties concerning Providence felt by Job refer to the very subjects which painfully perplex the modern mind, but also that the friends of Job exhibit the instinctive tendency which is observed in modern times to denounce his doubt as sin, not less than to attribute his trials to evil as their direct cause. Farrar. 7. In every age, perhaps we might even say in every Christian experience, there are junctures in which it is difficult to reconcile the dispensations of Providence with the goodness of God. The controversy began in the patriarchal days, and is the grand argument of the Book of Job. "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?" The seventy-third Psalm is occupied with the clearing of the same paradox. Jeremiah, pre-eminently a sorrowful man, breaks forth thus: "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, when I plead with Thee, yet let me reason the case with Thee of Thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?" (Jer. 12:1.) The worst men are sometimes apparently happy, and the consequence is that the believer is envious at the foolish. Enemies of God appear to him to succeed in every undertaking. Wealth flows in on them; they arrogate to themselves an exemption from all reverses, and feel insured even against Providence; they fill the public eye, they build and decorate, they gather about them the gay and the revelling, they leave wealth to their children. J. W. A. Still life goes on with the worldly soul, deepening and widening in its flow, and holding in itself manifold and still multiplying elements of interest. Increasingly the man is caught and held by these—like a ship from which many anchors are being cast into the sea. He strives among the struggling, rejoices with the gay, feels the spur of honor, enters the race of acquisition, does some hard and many kindly things by turns, multiplies his engagements, his relationships, his friends, and then—just when after such preparations, life ought to be fully beginning, and opening itself out into a great restful, sunny plain—lo! the shadows begin to fall, which tell, too surely, that it is drawing fast to a close. But he is not ready. He has thrown out so many anchors, and they have taken such a fast hold of the ground that it will be no slight matter to raise them. He is settled. He has no pilgrim's staff at hand; and his eye, familiar enough with surrounding things, is not accustomed to the onward and ascending way, cannot so well measure the mountain altitude, or reckon the far distance. The progress of time has been much swifter than the progress of his thought. Alas! he has made one long mistake. He has "looked at the things which are seen," and forgotten the things which are not seen. And "the things which are seen are temporal," and go with time into extinction; while "those which are not seen are eternal." And so there is hurry, and confusion, and distress in the last hours, and in the going away. Raleigh. 8-12. Of course Job does not mean to say that they have all this material welfare because they are wicked; that is not the issue. His point, made against the whole tenor of the friends' arguments, is simply that, being wicked, they are not treated according to their wickedness. J. F. G. 14,15. Their prosperity continues to the very last. Experiencing no reverses and no unusual calamity, with no check upon their good fortune, and no term of suffering that could be regarded as a penalty for their misdeeds, they go down peacefully and quietly to the grave. Their life is filled up with pleasure and with every form of earthly good to its very close. And the natural consequence follows. In their arrogant and impious presumption they refuse all subjection to the Most High. W. H. G.—These men live and die in practical atheism—are simply secularists; they do with impunity, in their day of enjoyment, just what Satan had affirmed Job would do in hopelessness—they "renounce God." The threefold rejection should be noted—they care not to know His ways, nor to serve Him, nor to be in communion with Him. Cook. Unbelief is human nature shutting closely her eyes lest she should perceive and love; human nature making her ears heavy lest she should hear and be saved. Man, ruined, wretched, complaining, dying man, is haughty and unbending, still clinging to his own miseries, aggravating his own sufferings, provoking the doom which he sincerely dreads, and refusing to "come to Christ, that he might have life." Heaven urges by all its joys, and hell by all its terrors; the cross of Christ pleads by all its wonders of justice and of grace, and unbelief replies to every commandment, "We will not have this man to reign over us;" and to every gracious overture, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways." E. M.—What condition of a human soul can be thought of more unnatural or more destructive than to live perpetually in panic with respect to its Creator, its Portion, its Saviour, than to hate the thought of the Greatest, Best, and Loveliest! What more hopeless than to shrink with horror from the countenance that is always turned on us, and be impatient of the searching eye which we can never escape! This is what impenitent men are preparing for themselves in greater measure than they have yet experienced. Even now they sometimes shake with terror, or avoid it only by a violent force put upon the thoughts; but the great mystery of fear is yet to be revealed to them. J. W. A.—The Eternal departs from them. By this is meant not that the Almighty withdraws from man His life-sustaining energy, or forgoes any of His claims to human love and homage. No, He will keep the human spirit in existence and bind it by the laws of moral obligation to His throne forever. But it means a discontinuance of the overtures of His love, and His agencies to restore; it is leaving man to himself, to reap the labour of his own hands. The first stage is probation; the second stage is retribution. In the first stage man says to God, "Depart from me, I desire not the knowledge of Thy ways;" in the second stage God says to man, "Depart from Me." In the first stage all is Divine mercy; in the second stage all is justice. Anon. 15. What profit if we pray unto Him? Any unperverted mind will conceive of the scriptural idea of prayer, as that of one of the most downright, sturdy realities in the universe. Right in the heart of God's plan of government it is lodged as a power. Amid the conflicts which are going on in the evolution of that plan it stands as a power. Into all the intricacies of Divine working and the mysteries of Divine decree, it reaches out silently as a power. In the mind of God, we may be assured, the conception of prayer is no fiction, whatever man may think of it. It has, and God has determined that it should have, a positive and an appreciable influence in directing the course of a human life. It is, and God has purposed that it should be, a link of connection between human mind and Divine mind, by which, through His infinite condescension, we may actually move His will. It is, and God has decreed that it should be, a power in the universe, as distinct, as real, as natural, and as uniform as the power of gravitation, or of light, or of electricity. A man may use it as trustingly and as soberly as he would use either of these. This intense practicalness characterizes the scriptural ideal of prayer. The Scriptures make it a reality, and not a revery. They never bury it in the notion of a poetic or philosophic contemplation of God. They do not merge it in the mental fiction of prayer by action in any other or all other duties of life. They have not concealed the fact of prayer beneath the mystery of prayer. The scriptural utterances on the subject of prayer admit of no such reduction of tone and confusion of sense as men often put forth in imitating them. Up on the level of inspired thought prayer is PRAYER—a distinct, unique, elemental power. A. Phelps. Every man who believes in matter and force and natural law must logically believe in the possibility of miracle and the efficacy of prayer, provided that there is an architect of the universe, and that we can obtain access to him. Bible miracles do not involve the suspension of natural laws, but only arrangements under these laws, or the operation of unknown laws; which, however, may be as inexplicable to us as if they were contraventions of law. Prayer, in the scriptural sense of it, is an appeal to One whose knowledge of and power over His own works are capable of effecting results to us not only impossible, but inconceivable. In maintaining the possibility of miracle and the power of prayer, along with the unchangeable law of God, the Bible is thus on higher scientific ground than that of any of those who call these in question. Dawson. Among all the moral instincts of man there is no one more natural, more universal, more unconquerable than prayer. Among all peoples, renowned or obscure, civilized or savage, one meets with acts and set forms of invocation. Wherever man lives, under certain circumstances, at certain hours, under the dominion of certain impressions of the soul, his eyes raise themselves, his hands seek each other, his knees bow, to petition or to give thanks, to adore or to deprecate. With joy or with fear, openly or in the secrecy of his heart, it is to prayer that man betakes himself, in the last resort, to fill up the void of his soul, or to bear the burdens of his destiny. It is in prayer that he seeks, when all is failing him, support for his weakness, comfort in his afflictions, encouragement for his virtue. Guizot.—Grant God and man (God's yet unfallen creature) standing in His presence, conscious of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, and of his own dependence upon Him, and prayer is an intuitive idea. It remains intuitive when man stands before God as a fallen creature, conscious how far he has gone from original righteousness, though it requires reassuring under his thus altered moral circumstances. It remains intuitive, though it requires redirecting, when man has slighted the one true God, and addressed himself to other objects of worship, whether instead of Him or beside Him. It remains intuitive, though, when the fulness of time was come, Christ was plainly set forth as the medium through whom it is to be offered, and the Holy Spirit was made known as cooperating with the human spirit in its utterance. By such revelations it is sublimed, indeed, and purified, but it is not thereby rendered less an intuitive effort on the part of man. These several and successive interworkings gave prayer a larger scope, or reassured or extended it, or recalled it from abnormal movement, or rescued it from utter perversion, or showed man the most appropriate channel through which it should pass, and the most effectual aid by which his own effort might be sustained. They did not originate it. Man found the faculty or tendency toward it within him, and practised it from the beginning. Hessey. Prayer is a Divine institution for human training on the side of character, and is related to Divine providence, not to natural causes. That Providence is ordered with entire reference to the education of the human race in love, faith, humility, reverence, and obedience, and is made to hinge largely on prayer, or the application of individuals and communities to God for aid. The idea is not that prayer enlightens God as to the fact, or as to the supply of human wants; or that it persuades Him to change His mind at man's entreaty; but prayer is a wise condition for God to annex to benefits which He is already inclined to bestow, in order that when given they may be attended with the best results. For spiritual ends it is often better that a thing should not be given, than that it should be given to a state of mind different from that which is secured by prayer, and by prayer alone. For God's great object is to draw the soul as much as possible into a felt connection with Himself in all things; that by a perpetual faith it may consciously live and rejoice in Him. W. W. Patton. Because life is so subtle an intermixture of dependence and action, prayer is the most practical of all forms of work; it is at once the activity of man's freedom and the expression of his dependence; and the answer which it wins is not less, in one sense, the result of human effort than in another it is the work of God. And thus it is in and by prayer that the two governing elements of religious life, thought, and work alike find their strongest impulse and their point of unity. Such is our weakness that we are either absorbingly speculative and contemplative on the one hand, or we are absorbingly practical and men of action on the other. Either exaggeration is fatal to the true life of religion, which binds the soul to God by faith as well as by love; by love not less than by faith; by a life of energetic service not less truly than by a life of communion with light and truth. It is in prayer that each element is at once quickened in itself and balanced by the presence of the other. It is prayer which prevents religion from degenerating into mere religious thought on the one side or into mere philanthropy on the other. Thus it is that prayer is of such vital importance to the well-being of the soul. It is indispensable, alike for workers and students, for the educated and unlettered. For we all have to seek God's face above; we all have souls to be sanctified and saved; we all have sins and passions to beat back and conquer. And these things are achieved pre-eminently by prayer. H. P. L. Though it be not in the same thing that we desire, yet when the Lord changes our petitions in His answers, it is always for the better; He regards our well more than our will. We beg deliverance; we are not unanswered if He give patience and support. L.—God may answer prayer in what seems to us its denial. We pray for the process, and He gives us the result. A man prays to be delivered from trouble, God sends the trouble, but sends also courage of heart and calmness of mind. Is not the intent of the prayer more completely met than if the form of it had been granted? So God answers our prayers often, not by giving the thing we ask, but by leading us to the end we seek. We cannot doubt that He careth for us. But He may relieve us by removing the occasion of our cares or by so increasing our courage and faith that they shall be no longer a care to us. He may lift our burden from us or so strengthen us under them that they shall no longer be a burden. R. Cordley. 16. Having drawn in such attractive colors the prosperity of the wicked, a prosperity given from the hand of God, Job, even in the midst of his own misery, which is also from God, cannot refrain from repudiating their principles—far be from me the counsel of the wicked. A. B. D.—After quoting the words of the ungodly, Job feels himself compelled, by his deepest personal revulsion, to declare his own inmost abhorrence of them—how he himself is wholly unable to believe that they thus really possess their best weal, and how he does not in the least justify (or sympathize with) such language. Ewald. 17,18. Job challenges his opponents to prove their assertions. How often, he asks, does it happen, as you say, that the torch of the wicked is put out? that calamity comes upon them? that God apportions sorrows (or snares) to them? that they are as straw before the wind, as chaff which the storm takes suddenly away? Cook.—How often is it that the wicked are made like stubble? You say that God deals with men exactly according to their characters, and that the wicked are certainly subjected to calamities; but how often does this, in fact, occur? Do they not live in prosperity, and arrive at a good old age? Barnes. 19-21. The first clause states the dogma: God, you say, reserves His guilt—i.e., its punishment for His children; nay, Job answers, let God requite the man himself, and he shall know it; his own eyes would then see his ruin; he would, as he deserves, drink himself the wrath of the Almighty. If the number of his own months be completed—i.e., if he has lived out his allotted time—what cares he about the prosperity of his house after him? Throughout the preceding statement the references to the arguments of Job's friends are clear and unmistakable. Cook. 21. What careth he? It is from the depth of Job's unselfish love that the foregoing demand comes; for he sees that in the cold selfishness of the wicked, punishment reserved for posterity does not touch his soul at all—it does not punish sin of that kind. J. F. G. 22-26. By insisting on a doctrine of Providence which did not correspond to God's providence as actually seen in facts, Job's friends were making themselves wiser than God and becoming His teachers—Will any teach knowledge unto God? Shall we insist on His method of government being what it plainly is not? This is what it is: One man dieth in his full prosperity—wholly at ease and quiet. Another man dieth in the bitterness of his soul and has not tasted pleasure. They lie down alike in the dust and the worm covers them. Their different fortune is not determined by their different character. The one is not good and the other wicked. But God distributes to them as He chooses. A. B. D. 27. Your thoughts. All the speakers had insinuated Job's guilt; none as yet had openly charged him with crimes committed before his ruin; but he felt every blow, and understood the exact bearing of every remark. Cook. 27-34. He reproaches them for identifying the fall of his house and estate, who was a prince among them, with the retribution due to an oppressor or a tyrant. He rebukes the misinterpretation, and gives the true solution of it, that there is a day of wrath and judgment coming—a pretty clear intimation of his faith in a future state. Before that day comes there may not be power in any man here to inflict or declare a just sentence on him who prospers in an evil way; we do not even see the punishment of such in their death, for the quietness of the grave also is alike to all; your argument, therefore, against me is vain, and if intended for comfort through the hope that if righteous I shall be still happy in this world, it is based on a principle which, as false, ought to be rejected. T C. 29. Those "that go by the way" were undoubtedly travellers, particularly such as came from distant journeys in caravans, a mode of travel which is shown by chap. 6 : 19 to have existed in the time of Job. In the paucity of written knowledge, as well as of epistolary communications between distant parts, they were the chief sources of information respecting the circumstances of foreign countries. The idea of Job clearly is that the friends could resort to the testimony of travellers as to what they had observed of God's dealings with men, and what they had heard of the sayings of the wise in other lands. As to the "tokens," the reference appears to be to the memorials of persons and events which they had seen in their travels. Kitto. 30. As he had before stated his own hope of a gracious sentence from his Redeemer, so now he closes and completes his masterly argument with a declaration that the wicked who prosper in this life, and leave their proud monuments behind them, shall receive a dreadful recompense in the future day of judgment Peters. Day of wrath. Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with the love; and in the utmost solitudes of nature the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven. It is well for us to dwell with thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the black, perilous whirlpools of the mountain streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty into darkness, and of all strength into dust—have these no language for us? The good succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so also the evil to the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man and his futurity. Ruskin.—One dark world is to career forever. No sun is ever to arise upon its night. Its people few, compared with the infinite numbers of the universe, they are never to increase or decrease while God endures. They are imprisoned for life—the life of eternity. Reid. 31. The evil-doer stands unreproved because of his prosperity—there is none to repay him what he hath done; he goes to his grave unscathed, and even there his prosperous career continues to watch over him; the very earth that covers him is, by a strong figure, rendered conscious of the preciousness of its trust, and his influence lives after him. Curry.—So great is his power that no one ventures to rebuke his injustice, or is able to punish it. Conant. 32,33. The wicked man came to an honored grave, and the clods of the valley lay softly on him; and his example, so far from being shunned, was followed by the mass of men, as there were multitudes that preceded him in the way he walked. A. B. D.—The rich man lives luxuriously, dies without any mark of judgment, is buried honorably, and leaves his substance to his family. What men saw and knew of him was just what Job and his opponents knew of the wicked; the after awakening was unrevealed. Job sees all this; but it neither leads him to give up the cause of goodness, nor tempts him to turn away from God. 34. Falsehood. Stripped of all artifices, reduced to the ultimate principle, there remains nothing but deceit, a false pretence of honor to God, and real treachery to your friend. Thus ends the second colloquy. Cook. Job has hitherto answered the accusation of the friends, which they express in ever-increasingly terrible representations of the end of the godless, presenting only the terrible side of their dogma of the justice of God, with a steadfast attestation of his innocence, and with the ever-increasing hope of Divine vindication against human accusation. In him was manifested that faith which, being thrust back by men, clings to God, and thrust back by God Himself, soars aloft from the present wrath of God to His faithfulness and mercy. The friends, however, instead of learning in Job's spiritual condition to distinguish between the appearance and the reality in this confidence which comes back to itself, see in it only a constant wilful hardening of himself against their exhortations to penitence. It does not confound them that he over whom, according to their firm opinion, the sword of God's vengeance hangs, warns them of that same sword, but only confirms them still more in their conviction that they have to do with one who is grievously self-deluded. Delitzsch. True consolation could be founded only on correct views of the government and dealings of God; but such views Job says they had not. With their conceptions of the Divine administration they could not administer to him any real consolation. Truth alone sustains the soul in affliction; truth only can inspire confidence in God; truth only can break the force of sorrow, and enable the sufferer to look up to God and to heaven with confidence and joy. Barnes. 1. THEN answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, 2. Can a man be profitable unto God? Surely he that is wise is profitable unto himself. 3. Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? Or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect? 4. Is it for thy fear of him that he reproveth thee, That he entereth with thee into judgment? 5. Is not thy wickedness great? Neither is there any end to thine iniquities. 6. For thou hast taken pledges of thy brother for nought, And stripped the naked of their clothing. 7. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, And thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. 8. But as for the mighty man, he had the earth; And the honourable man, he dwelt in it. 9. Thou hast sent widows away empty, And the arms of the fatherless have been broken. 10. Therefore snares are round about thee, And sudden fear troubleth thee, 11. Or darkness, that thou canst not see, And abundance of waters cover thee. 12. Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are! 13. And thou sayest, What doth God know? Can he judge through the thick darkness? 14. Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; And he walketh on the vault of heaven. 15. Wilt thou keep the old way Which wicked men have trodden? 16. Who were snatched away before their time, IN the first round of speeches the three friends exhausted the argument from the general conception of God. In the second they exhausted the argument from the operation of His providence in the world, as observed in the fate of the wicked. To the last Job had replied by a direct contradiction, adducing facts and testimony in proof that the fate of the wicked man Whose foundation was poured out as a stream: 17. Who said unto God, Depart from us; And, What can the Almighty do for us? 18. Yet he filled their houses with good things: But the counsel of the wicked is far from me. 19. The righteous see it, and are glad; And the innocent laugh them to scorn 20. Saying, Surely they that did rise up against us are cut off, And the remnant of them the fire hath consumed. 21. Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: Thereby good shall come unto thee. 22. Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, And lay up his words in thine heart. 23. If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up; If thou put away unrighteousness far from thy tents. 24. And lay thou thy treasure in the dust, And the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks; 25. And the Almighty shall be thy treasure, And precious silver unto thee. 26. For then shalt thou delight thyself in the Almighty, And shalt lift up thy face unto God. 27. Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee; And thou shalt pay thy vows. 28. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee; And light shall shine upon thy ways. 29. When they cast thee down, thou shalt say, There is lifting up; And the humble person he shall save. 30. He shall deliver even him that is not innocent: Yea, he shall be delivered through the cleanness of thine hands. in God's providence was in no way so uniformly miserable as the three friends had represented (chap. 21). There is, manifestly, now left but one weapon in the hands of the three friends—namely, to express openly what they had hinted at formerly in a veiled manner, and charge Job directly with great sins. This charge is made by Eliphaz in the opening speech of the third round of debate. A. B. D.—In the third cycle of debate the comforters are turned into headlong accusers. Eliphaz expresses great truths with wonderful force of language; but truths inadequate, in their application to the case of Job, to explain his suffering. Words the most sound and holy lose their value and become impertinent and injurious, when they are uttered at the wrong time, or in a wrong spirit, or with a wrong direction. D. F. Chap. 22. It is not the general sinfulness of human nature which Eliphaz adduces against him as in his first discourse. Nor does he merely allege the language of impiety and irreverence to be found in Job's speeches, as in his second discourse. But he makes open and direct charges of habitual and gross transgression. What a spectacle is this! and what a lesson it reads to us! This man is one whom God declared to be without his equal for piety in the earth—perfect and upright, and one that feared God and turned away from evil. And yet here are good and wise men, men of age and experience, his friends through many former years, knowing him not merely by reputation but by personal, familiar, and long acquaintance, who do not scruple to cherish the grossest and most unjust suspicions, and actually to charge upon him the most egregious misconduct. And all this they do without the slightest foundation in actual fact. We say again, What a spectacle! and what a lesson it reads to us! W. H. G. 2-10. The cause of God's afflicting a man is not to be sought for in God Himself, as if it arose out of any self-seeking on His part, or any respect He had to Himself, for a man's righteousness is no profit to God, neither is his wickedness any loss to Him. The reason of God's treatment of men is therefore to be sought in themselves. But it is inconceivable that He should chastise a man for his piety. It must therefore be for his sins (vs. 2-5). Having by means of this syllogism confirmed his conviction of Job's guiltiness, Eliphaz proceeds to suggest what sins Job must have committed, which are those that a powerful, irresponsible, rich ruler of his time might most naturally be guilty of (vs. 6-10). A. B. D. 2-5. If God sends punishments (so Eliphaz argues), man must have deserved them; God does not punish on His own account, still less on account of man's piety, but on account of man's sin, and thus for the profit of man himself. Now, Job's sufferings are such punishments; therefore he must have grievously sinned. This series of inferences is pointed, connected, and in itself clear. But at last comes unobserved a tremendous fallacy, that sufferings are, as such, punishments. If one starts with this principle he is landed in the alternative that sufferings are sent on account of piety (which is impious to suppose) or on account of the sins of the sufferer. Ewald. 2. Can a man be profitable unto God. These words, under an interrogation couching a positive assertion, are a declaration of the impossibility of man's being profitable to God, or (which is all one) of his meriting of God, according to the proper and strict sense of merit, which implies man's claim or title to receive as much good from God as he had done for God. But all that any man is capable of doing is but an indispensable homage to God, and not a free oblation. That, however, which excites endeavor and sets obedience on work is not properly a belief or persuasion of the merit of our works, but the assurance of our reward. And can we have a greater assurance of this, than that Truth itself, which cannot break its word, has promised it? For the Most High and Holy One (as we may with reverence speak) has pledged His word, His name, and His honor to reward the steadfast, finally persevering obedience of every one within the covenant of grace, notwithstanding its legal imperfection. And, therefore, though we have all the reason in the world to blush at the worthless emptiness of our best duties, and to be ashamed of the poorness and shortness of our most complete actions, and, in a word, to think as meanly of them and of ourselves for them as God Himself does; yet still let us build both our practice and our comfort upon this one conclusion "as upon a rock," that though after we have done all we are still unprofitable servants, yet because we have done all God has engaged Himself to be a gracious Master. South. 5. Here, for the first time, Eliphaz distinctly charges Job with guilt, the exact nature of which he infers from the special punishment. The wickedness must have been great, the iniquities infinite, which called for such penalties. Cook. 5-9. These specific charges are of course wholly theoretic, nor are they inaptly made. They name such things as might be done by a busy rich man like Job, through forgetfulness or indifference, or such things as may have been done in his name by servants. Any of them might take place at the gate of a prince without his knowledge. The expression, "man of the strong arm" (v. 8), by which Eliphaz characterizes such as Job, shows how he accounts for such sin; the man whose strength and wealth and whose absorption with his favored friends make him indifferent to needs and distress because removed from them. J. F. G. He charges him with oppression and injustice; that when he was in prosperity he not only did no good with his wealth and power, but did a great deal of hurt with it. This was utterly false, as appears by the account Job gives of himself (29:12, etc.), and the character God gave of him. And yet Eliphaz branches out this charge into divers particulars, with as much assurance as if he could call witnesses to prove upon oath every article of it. For aught I know, Eliphaz, in accusing Job falsely, was guilty of as great a sin and as great a wrong to Job as the Sabeans and Chaldeans that robbed him; for a man's good name is more precious and valuable than his wealth. It is against all the laws of justice, charity, and friendship, either to raise or receive calumnies, jealousies and evil surmises concerning others; and it is the more base and disingenuous if we thus vex those that are in distress and add to their affliction. Eliphaz could produce no instances of Job's guilt in any of the particulars that follow here, but seems resolved to calumniate boldly and throw all the reproach he could on Job, not doubting but that some would cleave to him. H. 9. Widows . . . fatherless. For Job's answer see chaps. 29:12, 13 and 31:16, 18. No charge could affect him more deeply, and he dwells upon it with unusual fulness in his two answers. Cook. 10,11. On account of this inhuman mode of action, by which he has challenged the punishment of justice, “snares are round about” him, destruction encompasses him on every side, so that he sees no way out, and must, without any escape, succumb to it. And the approaching ruin makes itself known to him, time after time, by terrors which come suddenly upon him and disconcert him; so that his outward circumstances being deranged, and his mind discomposed, he has already in anticipation to taste that which is before him. Delitzsch. 12-20. Eliphaz, having suggested what Job's offences must have been, now suggests under what feeling in regard to God he must have committed them. He thought God so far removed from the world that He did not observe men's conduct. A. B. D. 12,13. The Book of Job is full of these thoughts: “Can a man be profitable to God? is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous?” “Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars—how high they are! And thou sayest, ‘Can God know?’ ‘Can He judge through the dark cloud?’” Yet, as these old Hebrews believed, as we know, to whom the Gospel has come, even better than they, God is mindful of man. He does think of us. He never ceases to care for us. Even the host of stars—whatever grander office they fulfil in the universe—are made at the same time to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and for years, and to be lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. Whatever nobler purposes they may accomplish for this use, also, they were adapted by the Creator. And no one can gaze on the form and aspect of the heavens, on the perfect symmetry of that vaulted dome, in the splendor of noonday, or when pale fires are kindling in myriads upon the darkening surface of the evening sky—no one can behold this ineffable grandeur and beauty, and doubt that here is an arrangement to give joy to man. By whatever optical laws the effect is produced, for whatever ends infinitely higher than the convenience and delight of man the heavens were made, this arrangement is plain. The intention of the Creator to elevate and gratify the human mind by spreading over us the sun-lit and star-lit sky is undeniable. One motive, therefore, in the structure of the material universe was the good of man. Out of all the worlds He has erected a roof over man's destiny. At the moment when we are awed by the revelation of His greatness we are touched by the disclosures of His condescension. G. P. Fisher. 21-30. Eliphaz exhorts Job to reconcile himself with God, assuring him of restoration and great felicity if he will do so. A. B. D.—Reconcile. This word, presupposing guilt and sin on Job's part, is what invalidates the whole force of this beautiful passage, which is the final appeal of the friends to Job. Abstractly there is nothing whatever to be urged against the lines; but in implication, and as here applied, they gather into themselves all the charges that Eliphaz has made. J. F. G. The passage consists of two parts: first, a series of exhortations, each of which is accompanied by a promise (vs. 21-25), and second, a series of great promises simply (vs. 26-30). The exhortations are: that Job should reconcile himself with God and receive His words into his heart—thus should he be at peace, and good would come to him (vs. 21-22); that he should put away his evil—then should he be restored (v. 23); that he should set his heart no more on earthly treasure, but fling it to the dust and among the pebbles of the brooks—then should the Almighty be his treasure (vs. 24, 25). The promises are: that, delighting himself in the Almighty, he would be able to lift up his face to God in confidence, unashamed by afflictions (v. 26); he would pray unto God with the assurance of being heard, and the vows which he made to God when presenting his request he would have cause to pay, his request being fulfilled (v. 27); his purposes in regard to the future would stand and be realized, for the light of God would be on his ways (v. 28); any casting down that might happen to him would speedily be turned by God into upraising, because of his meekness and humility (v. 29); and finally, even those who had incurred guilt would be saved through his availing prayer (v. 30). A. B. D.—These exhortations and promises are, in and of themselves, true and most glorious. There is also somewhat in them which reflects shame on Job; they direct him to that inward peace, to that joy in God which he had entirely lost sight of when he spoke of the misfortune of the righteous in contrast with the prosperity of the wicked. But even these beauteous words of promise are blemished by the false assumption from which they proceed. The promise, the Almighty shall become Job's precious ore [instead of gold or silver, or his lost wealth], rests on the assumption that Job is now suffering the punishment of his avarice, and has as its antecedent, "Lay thine ore in the dust and thine Ophir beneath the pebbles of the brook." Thus do even the holiest words lose their value when they are not uttered at the right time, and the most brilliant sermon that exhorts to penitence remains without effect when it is prompted by pharisaic uncharitableness. D. 21. Acquaint thyself with God and be at peace. Our daily holy walking is a daily acquainting ourselves with God; every step of a holy life is both toward and with God. Caryl.—The life of true religion is a heart knowledge of God; such a thorough appreciation of the excellence and beauty of His character as really contents and satisfies the soul, even when earthly sources of happiness fail. In the knowledge of God, in the appreciation of God, in the enjoyment of God, in communion with God, but in nothing short of this man can find rest. E. M. G.—All holiness is so connected with this growing knowledge of God, that there can be none without it. All happiness, all enjoyment of spiritual privileges, hangs upon it. "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Would you have "grace and peace multiplied unto you?" it must be in the same way—"through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord." "Then shall you know, if you follow on to know the Lord." The smallest degree of this blessed knowledge attained will assuredly kindle in you an ardent desire for more. Every step you take in it is a step nearer heaven; a wading deeper into that ocean of bliss without a bottom or a shore—God, your God, in Christ. Goode. The knowledge of God is gained, as the knowledge of man is gained, by living much with Him. Seek not so much to pray as to live in an atmosphere of prayer, lifting up your heart momentarily to Him in varied expressions of devotion as the various occasions of life may prompt, adoring Him, thanking Him, resigning your will to Him many times a day, and more or less all day; and you shall thus, as you advance in this practice, as it becomes more and more habitual to you, increase in that knowledge of God which fully contents and satisfies the soul. So, also, the knowledge of God may be obtained from studying His mind as given us in the Holy Scriptures. It is through His Word that God speaks to us, as it is through prayer that we speak to God; for which reason he who would cultivate acquaintance with God must cultivate a taste for the Holy Scriptures, not merely a literary antiquarian taste (though as a mere piece of ancient literature the Bible is the most wonderful book in the world), but a devotional taste. There is a study of Scripture which is analogous to ejaculatory prayer; a study which inweaves the Word into the daily life of the Christian; a rumination which can be carried on without book, and which is more or less continual. Again, the discipline of life will very much contribute, under God's blessing, toward the knowledge of God. When God's people desire to have Him in their hearts He advances into the centre of their life. He trains them by what is called their fortunes, by reverses, by tears, by trials, by manifold temptations, by touching them in their sensitive part, sometimes by a sunshine of prosperity, which makes their heart expand in gratitude to Him. Those, then, who desire to have a practical and experimental, as distinct from a speculative knowledge of Him, will study Him in these His dealings; they will try to discern the lesson of every part of their own experience, if haply it may teach them something of Him with whom they have to do, and will thus have His wisdom, power, and love impressed upon them in a way in which nothing short of experience can impress. E. M. G. Christ is truth for the understanding, authority for the will, love for the heart, certainty for the hope, fruition for all the desires, and for the conscience at once cleansing and law. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passiveness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but the contact of the whole nature with its sole adequate object and rightful Lord. A. M. Draw nearer, O my soul, to the Lord of love, and be not seldom and slight in thy contemplation of His love and loveliness. Dwell in the sunshine, and thou wilt know that it is light and warm and comfortable. Distance and strangeness cherish thy doubts. "Acquaint thyself with Him and be at peace." Look up, often and earnestly look up, after thy ascended glorified head. Think where, and what He is, and what He is now doing for all His own, and how once abased, suffering love is now triumphant, reigning, glorified love; and therefore not less now than in all its tender expressions on earth. Baxter. And be at peace. Is there such a thing among men as peace, a deep and true peace, without any acquaintance with God? Suppose the case of one possessing high intelligence allied with all the ordinary virtues of human life, but who lacks entirely any personal faith in God as a person. If you ask if his nature is at peace, he answers, Yes; I have no fear, no trouble, except that which comes by ignorance or inattention to law. Life is not long; I shall soon be in the dust, and that will be the end of me. I am at peace. The peace of such a man may be calmness, indifference; but cannot be the same thing as comes into a soul and flows through it and down into its far depths as the result of acquaintance with God. A. R. Thereby good shall come unto thee. The heavenward look draws new strength from the source of all our might. In our work, contemplating as it ought to do exclusively spiritual results, what we do depends largely on what we are, and what we are depends on what we receive, and what we receive depends on the depth and constancy of our communion with God. "The help which is done upon earth He doeth it all Himself." A. M. 22. Receive the law from His mouth. Having made thy peace with God, submit to His government, and resolve to be ruled by Him, that thou mayest keep thyself in His love. Lay up His word in thine heart. It is not enough to receive it, but we must retain it (Prov. 3:18). We must lay it up as a thing of great value, that it may be safe; and we must lay it up in our hearts as a thing of great use, that it may be ready to us when there is occasion. H. 26-29. These words can be regarded as describing the sweet and wonderful prerogatives of the devout life. So understood, they may rebuke and stimulate and encourage us to make our lives conform to the ideal here. Life may be full of delight and confidence in God (v. 26). When we "delight" in a thing or a person, we recognize that that thing or person fits into a cleft in our hearts and corresponds to some need in our natures. We not only recognize its good, sweetness, and adaptation to ourselves, but we actually possess the sweetness that we recognize and the good which we apprehend in it. And so these things, the recognition of the supreme sweetness and all, perfect adaptation and sufficiency of God to all that I need; the suppression of tastes and desires which may conflict with that sweetness, and the actual enjoyment and fruition of the sweetness and preciousness which I apprehend—these things are the very heart of a man's religion. He is the truly devout man who not only knows God to be great and holy, but feels Him to be sweet and sufficient; who not only fears, but loves; who not only seeks and longs, but possesses; or, in one word, true religion is delighting in God. And herein is supplied a very sharp test for us. Do our tastes and inclinations set toward Him, and is He better to us than anything beside? Is God to me my dearest faith, the very home of my heart, to which I instinctively turn? Is the brightness of my day the light of His face? Do I worship because I think it is duty, and are my prayers compulsory and mechanical; or do I worship because my heart goes out to Him? And is my life calm and sweet because I "delight in the Lord"? The next words will help us to answer. "Thou shalt lift up thy face unto God." That is a clear enough metaphor to express frank confidence of approach to Him. And unless we have that confidence in Him, not because of our merits, but because of His certain love there will be no "delight in the Lord." And there will be no such confidence in Him unless we have "access with confidence by faith" in that Christ who has taken away our sins, and prepared the way for us into the Father's presence, and by whose death and sacrifice, and by it alone, we sinful men, with open face and uplifted foreheads, can stand to receive upon our visage the full beams of His light, and to expatiate and be glad therein. Such a life of delighting in God will be blessed by the frankest intercourse with Him (v. 27). These are three stages of this blessed communion that is possible for men. And note, prayer is not regarded in this aspect as duty, nor is it even dwelt upon as privilege, but as being the natural outcome and issue of that delighting in God and confident access to Him which have preceded. That is to say, if a man really has set his heart on God, and knows that in Him is all that he needs, then, of course, he will tell Him everything. As surely as instinctive impulse, which needs no spurring from conscience or will, leads us to breathe our confidences to those that we love best, so surely will a true love to God make it the most natural thing in the world to put all our circumstances, wants, and feeling into the shape of prayers. They may be in briefest words. They may scarcely be vocalized at all, but there will be, if there be a true love to Him, an instinctive turning to Him in every circumstance; and the single-worded cry, if it be no more, for help is sufficient. When the desires of our heart are for God, and for conformity to His will, as they will be when we "delight ourselves in Him," then we get our hearts' desires. There is no promise of our being able to impose our wills upon God, which would be a calamity, and not a blessing, but a promise that they who make Him their joy and their desire will never be defrauded of their desire nor robbed of their joy. And so the third stage of this frank intercourse comes. "Thou shalt pay thy vows." All life may become a thank offering to God for the benefits that have flowed unceasing from His hands. First a prayer, then the answer, then the rendered thank-offering. And so, in swift alternation and reciprocity, is carried on the commerce between heaven and earth, between man and God. The desires rise to heaven, but heaven comes down to earth first. And prayer is not the initial stage, but the second in the process. God first gives His promise, and the best prayer is the catching up of God's promise and tossing it back again whence it came. Then comes the second downward motion, which is the answer to prayer, in blessing, and on it follows, finally, the reflection upward, in thankful surrender and service, of the love that has descended on us in answer to our desires. Such a life will know neither failure nor darkness. "Thou shalt decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee, and the light shall shine upon thy ways" (v. 28). I decree a thing—if I am a true Christian, and in the measure in which I am—only when I am quite sure that God has decreed it. And it is only His decrees, registered in the chancery of my will, of which I may be certain that they shall be established. There will be no failures to the man whose life's purpose is to serve God, and to grow like Him. To serve Him, and to fall into the line of His purpose, and to determine nothing, nor obstinately want anything until we are sure that it is His will; that is the secret of never failing in what we undertake. So with the promise of light to shine upon our paths. It is "the light which never was on sea or land;" and you and I, if we delight ourselves "in the Lord," will have an unsetting sun to light our paths; "and at eventide," and in the mirkest midnight, "there will be light" in the darkness. Lastly, such a life will be always hopeful, and finally crowned with deliverance (v. 29). "When they cast thee down, thou shalt say, There is lifting up." Even in a blessed life times will come when the path plunges downward into some valley of shadow. But even then the traveller will bate no jot of hope. He will in his heart say Up even while sense says Down. The devout life is largely independent of circumstances, and is upheld and calmed by quiet certainty that the general trend of its path is upward, which enables it to trudge hopefully down an occasional dip in the road. And the issue of all will be, "He will save the humble person"—namely, the man who is "lowly of eyes" in conscious unworthiness, even while he lifts up his face to God in confidence in his Father's love. The "saving" meant here is, of course, temporal deliverance from passing outward peril. But we may permissibly give it wider and deeper meaning. Continuous partial deliverances lead on to and bring about final full salvation. For to the soul which has delighted itself in God, and looked in His face with frank confidence, and poured out its desires to Him, and been the recipient of numberless answers, and the seat of numberless thank-offerings, has travelled along life's common way in cheerful godliness, has had the light of heaven shining on the path, and has found an immortal hope springing, a heaven of endless blessedness and close communion with God is the only possible ending. A. M. There is nothing but religion, or the life in God, that can be looked to for the completion of a soul. And it has three great advantages that differ it from everything else: It takes hold of the soul's eternity and its sin, to raise up, harmonize, inwardly purify, glorify and settle it, in a rest of everlasting equilibrium in God. It takes hold of all possible conditions and callings, completing as truly the menial as the employer, the bondman as the master, the unlettered as the scholar, the man that is grimed by labor as the man of leisure or the monk in his cell. It completes one degree of capacity as certainly as another, preparing even the feeblest to fill out its measure as roundly and blissfully as the highest. Such is religion, the great all-formative grace for man. Nothing but this can even dare to promise any fit completion of humanity. All the harmonies, all the great inspirations, all the immovable and immortal confidences, all the contacts of infinity and seals of infinite possessorship, are here. H. B. Everything that befalls us, every object with which we come in contact, all the variety of condition, all the variations of our experience, have one distinct and specific purpose. They are all meant to tell upon character, to make us better in sundry ways, to bring us closer to God, and to fill us more full of Him. And that one effect may be produced by the most opposite incidents, just as in some great machine you may have two wheels turning in opposite ways, and yet contributing to one resulting motion. And so, by sorrow and by joy, by light and by dark, by giving and withholding, by granting and refusing, by all the varieties of our circumstances, and by everything that lies around us, God works to prepare us for Himself. And while, thus, the most opposite things may produce the same effect, the same thing will produce opposite effects according to the way in which we take it. There is nothing that can be relied upon to do a man only good; there is nothing about which we need fear that its mission is only to do evil. For all depends on the recipient, who can make everything to fulfil the purpose for which God has sent him everything. So life is what you and I will to make it, and the events which befall us are for our rising or our falling according as we determine they shall be, and according as we use them. Think, then, how solemn, how awful, how great a thing it is to stand here a free agent, able to determine my character and my condition, surrounded by all these circumstances and the subject of all these wise and manifold Divine dealings, in each of which there lie dormant, to be evoked by me, tremendous possibilities of elevation even to the very presence of God, or of sinking into the depths of separation from Him. A. M. 30. A good man is a public good. Sinners fare the better for saints, whether they are aware of it or no. If Eliphaz intended hereby (as some think he did) to insinuate that Job's prayers were not prevailing, nor his hands pure (for then he would have relieved others, much more himself), he was afterward made to see his error, when it appeared that Job had a better interest in heaven than he had; for he and his three friends, who, in this matter, were not innocent, were delivered by the pureness of Job's hands (42:8). H. This speech, in fact, brings the whole argument on the side of Job's opponents to a close. Bildad has no more to add. Zophar is henceforth silent. The immediate effect upon Job's mind is that of utter weariness and prostration. In the following answer he can but repeat arguments which, though unanswered, have been rejected with scorn. Cook. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2 Even to-day is my complaint rebellious My stroke is heavier than my groaning. 3 Oh that I knew where I might find him, That I might come even to his seat! 4 I would set my cause in order before him, And fill my mouth with arguments. 5 I would know the words which he would answer me, And understand what he would say unto me. 6 Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? Nay; but he would give heed unto me. 7 There the upright might reason with him; So should I be delivered for ever from my judge. 8 Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; And backward, but I cannot perceive him: 9 On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold him: He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him. 10 But he knoweth the way that I take; When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. 11 My foot hath held fast to his steps; His way have I kept, and turned not aside. 12. I have not gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured up the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. 13. But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? And what his soul desireth, even that he doeth. 14. For he performeth that which is appointed for me: And many such things are with him. 15. Therefore am I troubled at his presence; When I consider, I am afraid of him. 16. For God hath made my heart faint, And the Almighty hath troubled me: 17. Because I was not cut off before the darkness, Neither did he cover the thick darkness from my face. FROM this point forward, with the exception of a few truisms advanced by Bildad (chap. 25), which are wholly inapplicable to the matter in debate, the next nine chapters are wholly devoted to the self-justification into which Job enters against the charges of his friends, interspersed with musings on the ways of Providence, which are always applicable to the questions in dispute. That he goes on thus uninterruptedly is to be ascribed to the friends declining to answer him any further. Indeed there is an indication that after Job had replied to Bildad in the twenty-sixth chapter, he made a pause as if expecting the reply of Zophar, whose turn it then was to speak; but finding that he made no sign to avail himself of the opportunity, he proceeded. Thus at the commencement of the twenty-seventh chapter, we find the unusual introduction: "Moreover, Job continued his parable, and said." Kitto. As in the two preceding circles of debate, Job's mind is too much absorbed in the contemplation of the great mystery of providence, which he had set before himself in chap. 21, to be able for a time to give heed to the shameful charges of Eliphaz against him. He dwells in his reply still, continuing the thought of chap. 21, upon the riddle of God's rule of the world. He misses rectitude in this rule, and can observe no principle of moral government as he understands it. First (vs. 2-7), with his mind full of the sense of his own innocence, and of the mysterious wrong which he suffers from God, Job gives new and importunate expression to the wish that he knew where to find God, and that he could come to His tribunal and judgment-seat. Then he would set his cause fully before Him, and hear from the Almighty His plea against him, sure that his innocence would appear and that he would be delivered forever from his judge. Second (vs. 8-12), from this dream of a judgment-seat of God such as the judgment-seat of a human judge who would "give heed" to him, Job suddenly awakens to the feeling of what his actual position is. He cannot find God, whose presence he feels; He everywhere eludes him. Yet He knows Job's innocence, and that if He tried him he would come forth as gold, for all his life long he has kept His way and not departed from the commandments of His lips. Third (vs. 13-17). But He is unchangeable in His purpose. He has resolved to destroy Job, and who can turn Him from that on which He has set His mind? It is this arbitrary, mysterious way of God that confounds and paralyzes Job's mind, not his calamities or his death in itself. A. B. D. 2. Though we may by no means justify the murmurings of Job nor the doubting despondency which he manifests, we cannot wonder at their existence, but rather stand amazed before the massive fortitude which formed the chief characteristic of his conduct. Nevertheless, he did murmur against God, he did miscalculate Divine providence. A. M. A. W. —A godly man may see two things in the heaviest strokes of his affliction, which may provoke him to thanksgiving—at least which may stop him from all immoderate complaining. First, that God hath a respect to his good in his heaviest afflictions, and that the issue shall certainly be good to him; and secondly, that how heavy soever his stroke is, his sin hath deserved a heavier, and that God could have made it heavier, even his little finger heavier upon him than his loins have been. Caryl. 3. Eliphaz has bidden him return to God, and given him sweet promises if he will so do; Job takes him at his word, so far forth at least that he longs supremely after God's presence; though he turns to God not as a sinner, but as a man with a just and righteous cause. J. F. G. 3-7. Oh that I knew where I might find Him!** So just did his cause appear to be that it seemed to the sufferer that, could he only be permitted to plead before God, he could not be denied the justification for which he asked. Curry.—Much is left in him still, much that, in all times, is dear to God. There is the eager, the passionate desire for truth—"Give me light, and let me die." And there is the firm persistence in calling on his God to reveal the truth to him. Through all the darkness that surrounds him, he is on the search for God. Dean Bradley. Oh that I knew where I might find Him! The anxious heart of humanity speaks out in this sentence. The more the mind grasps the less it can be satisfied without God; the more the soul knows the stronger are the constitutional and eternal necessities of its being to know God; the vaster the reach of its travel in the created demonstrations of God, the more pressing and irresistible become the cravings of its immortal nature for the sight of God. For, wherever you go, whatsoever you do, whatsoever you know, rest is never in all creation, but in God; happiness is never in created things, but in God. From the depths of immortality, the unsatisfied, restless yearning rises after God. The depths of an infinite despair, to a being endued with intelligence and immortality, are in the condition of not finding, seeing, knowing God. Cheever. Thou art seeking thy light in the dispersion of the cloud, and all the time thy light is in the cloud. Thou hast been down in the valley of the shadow, and thou hast been looking up to the calm heavens to find thy God. The calm heavens have not answered thee, and thou hast said: "Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself." Yet all the time thy God has been beside thee in the valley, a sharer in the shadow of thy life. Thou hast been looking too far to find Him; thou hast cried to the heavens when He was at the very door. He was speaking in the voices that seemed to deny His presence; He was manifested in the shades that appeared to veil His form. He came to thee in the night that His glory might be concealed. He came to thee unaccompanied and unadorned, that He might know whether He were loved for Himself alone. The night under which thou hast murmured has been hiding in its fold a wondrous treasure—the very presence of the King of kings; wherefore didst thou not see the bright light in the clouds? G. Matheson. Oh this wonder of discovery, the knowledge of God—who can find words for it, or the change it must needs make! It even makes the soul another creature to itself. Now it is no more blank to God, tortures itself no more in guesses dim, sighs no more—"Oh that I knew where I might find Him!" It has recovered the major part of existence that before was lost; it knows not only itself, but it has the knowledge of God; and in that fact it is raised out of its mere finite speck of magnitude, into the conscious participation of being infinite. Everything is now become luminous. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new—great as new, and holy as great, and blessed as holy. Bushnell. Look at the incarnation and say if God does not want man to find Him? Heathen mythology had the idea obscurely. But God's Word alone reveals an incarnation—that is, "God with us." Look at redemption also—the new birth. If all other evidence of Christianity were wanting, we would defend it on the basis of the new birth. The Holy Spirit changing man's nature, making him His temple, purifying him, sustaining him, till he is presented "faultless" to the Father, with exceeding joy. Who, in meditating on these things, can doubt that God wants man to find Him, or that man can find Him? There is a necessity laid upon every soul to find God. No matter what knowledge any man may have gained, if he has not gained the knowledge of God, he has missed the object of his creation and of his search. Think of such a man launched into eternity bereft of all his knowledge—in the universe then without anything that can avail him; without God, or only a God of justice to him then! If you doubt that man can find God, listen to the testimony of the Church in every age, to the song of the great multitude before the throne. B. M. Palmer. 6. This question, with its negative answer, indicates how far Job has advanced in his conviction of God's favor since he conquered his way to the assurance that his Redeemer liveth. He is sure now that if he could find God he would find Him a friend. J. F. G. 7. This passage is of great importance, proving that Job knows that when God manifests Himself the cause of righteousness is assured; there can be no unrighteousness with Him. 8,9. Very beautiful as this is, the effect is much heightened when it is recollected that these references are really to the cardinal points of the compass, and should have been so rendered. Noyes gives it thus— "But behold I go eastward, and He is not there; And westward, but I cannot perceive Him; To the north, where He worketh, but I cannot behold Him; He hideth himself in the south, and I cannot see Him." The Hebrews, in common with other Orientals, regarded themselves as facing the east, instead of the north, as we do. Then, of course, the west was behind them, the south on the right hand, and on the left the north. The expressions applied to the north and to the south are especially worthy of consideration. "On the left hand, where He doth work." The phrase does not so much signify His working, as the manifestations of His working, which in the north are here supposed to be more conspicuous than in any other quarter. Thus in Ezekiel's vision of the cherubim the whole magnificent scene is described as coming from the north. And so in Zechariah's vision, the horses that came out of the mountains are represented as going, or returning, to the north as their place of rest, after having gone through the earth. These passages, with others of the like purport, show that the northern regions, and especially the mountains in the north, were regarded as the seat of striking and peculiar manifestations of the Divine glory. But as the north is the quarter of manifestation, so the south is the quarter of concealment. In the north God works, in the south He hides Himself. To apprehend this in the fulness of its meaning, it is necessary to bear in mind that the south was to the ancients an unknown region. To these hidden and unknown quarters Job says that he now turned, after he had in vain explored every other quarter of the heavens in search of some manifestations of God. Yet here also his search was vain. God hid or concealed Himself in the remote and inaccessible south, so that he could not approach Him. Kitto. 8,9. The efforts of the soul to find Him whom it seeks were never described more truly or affectingly; such sorrow can only be felt by a spiritual mind; contrast this with the feelings described (21:14, 15 and 24:13, 17). It should be observed that Job's conviction of God's absolute presence comes out most strongly when he feels that he cannot discern Him. Cook.—Though Job cannot find God, and this is the very centre of his agony, yet he never loses the sense that God is somewhere. He never relapses into atheism. It is not a mere blind force which controls the rising of the morning or the shining of the pole-star. God is in the north, working, though he cannot see Him; in the south, though He veils Himself. V. A perfect revelation of God to human intelligence would be impossible. Were God to undertake the task of revealing Himself to me in all His completeness, in order to succeed, He would be obliged by the nature of things to expand my intelligence into dimensions like His own. There is no help for it—to being so narrow as men, God must be, in large part, shrouded in impenetrable obscurity. A revelation of God much short of what our intelligence could grasp would consume us. Suppose God should take as much of His nature as we can understand, and bring it to us in the way of adequate personal manifestation to the senses. Could we endure the exhibition? Why, we can hardly bear such sights and sounds as we ourselves can produce. We ourselves can kindle such glory of conflagration, can detonate such might and majesty of sound, as destroy sight and hearing, and even shock the weakly out of life. And surely if God should come upon our senses with such imperialism of sights and sounds as would appropriately represent the utmost power and knowledge we can conceive—as would worthily express our ideas of eternity and almightiness and omniscience—that moment would be our last. A revelation of God such as would not consume us would yet so shake and derange the mental faculties as to prevent due use of the revelation. These delicate nerves and brains of ours, that so bow and break at the approach of what, after all, is mere nature—what would they not do at the approach of the Great Supernatural in any fitting circumstance! The man who asks that there should be made to us a full discovery of God knows not what he asks. Does he want the world peopled with gods instead of men? Does he want to become a handful of ashes, or at least to be dazzled into corpsehood, by an insufferable brightness? Does he even want his reason and nervous system to fall to pieces under a manifestation of the Eternal? If not, he must be content to have these veils between him and God. Burr. 10. The way that I take. The marginal rendering is closer and more forcible; the way that is with me, i.e., which I habitually walk in. When. This word is unnecessary and should be omitted. God has tried Job, who knows that when the fiery trial is over he will come out of the furnace as pure gold. Cook.—Though he cannot find God, yet God keeps an eye on him. "He knows the way that is with me," the course of my life, the way in which I habitually walk; and that way is His way. My foot hath held His steps, and His way have I kept. Job has faith, too, in the happy outcome of his trial. "I shall come forth as gold." This is the first hint of his suspicion that punishment may be of the nature of discipline. V. It is a great comfort to those who mean honestly that God understands their meaning, though men do not, cannot, or will not. He approves of it: "He knows that however I may sometimes have taken a false step, yet I have still taken a good way; have chosen the way of truth, and therefore He knows it"—that is, He accepts it and is well pleased with it, as He is said to know the way of the righteous (Psalm 1:6). From this Job infers, When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. They that keep the way of the Lord may comfort themselves when they are in affliction with these three things: That they are but tried; it is not intended for their hurt, but for their honor and benefit; it is the trial of their faith (1 Pet. 1:7). That, when they are sufficiently tried they shall come forth out of the furnace, and not be left to consume in it as dross or reprobate silver. The trial will have an end; God will not contend forever. That they shall come forth as gold, pure in itself and precious to the refiner; they shall come forth as gold approved and improved; found to be good and made to be better. Afflictions are to us as we are; those that go gold into the furnace will come out no worse. H.—Gold is a metal so invincible and unconquerable that no fire can consume it; it may burn it indeed and melt it; the dross indeed doth consume and give way to the power of the fire, but the gold remains and holds its ground; you, it gets ground even of the furnace and fire itself; for the more it is burned and melted the more it recovers its color, and the more it shakes off its dross and dishonor. Bunyan. Affliction is the trial and touchstone of sincerity. When God doth afflict you, then He doth bring you to the touchstone to see whether you are good metal or no; He doth bring you then to the furnace to try whether you be dross or gold. Affliction is the great discoverer that unmasks us. While religion and prosperity go together, it is hard to say which a man follows; but when once they are forced to a separation, where the heart was will soon be manifest. Caryl.—The design of God in all the afflictions that befall His people is only to try them; it is not to wrong them nor to ruin them, as ignorant souls are apt to think, "When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold," says patient Job. So in Deut. 8:2, "Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no." God afflicted them thus, that He might make known to themselves and others what was in their hearts. T. Brooks.—Job out of his own experience says: "He knoweth my way and trieth me, and I shall come forth like the gold." In respect of which happy issue given by the Lord to all our trials, we have just cause to bear them all with patience and comfort, with joy and thanksgiving. For if we be not counterfeit metal, but good gold, why should we fear the furnace of affliction, seeing it will not consume us like straw or chaff, but only try us and in trying purify us; that coming to the touchstone we may be approved, and so be reserved forever in God's treasury of blessedness? Then let God's faithful ones endure all these trials with patience, comfort, and rejoicing, seeing they do by exercising manifest God's graces, that He may be glorified in His gifts, and His gifts crowned in them. Downname. As frankincense, when it is put into the fire, giveth the greater perfume; as spice, if it be pounded and beaten smelleth the sweeter; as the earth, when it is torn up by the plough, becometh more fruitful; the seed in the ground, after frost and snow and winter storms, spring-eth the ranker; the nigher the vine is pruned to the stock, the greater grape it yieldeth; the grape, when it is most pressed and beaten, maketh the sweetest wine; linen, when it is washed, wrung, and beaten, is so made fairer and whiter; even so the children of God receive great benefit by affliction; for by it God washeth and scoureth, schooleth and nurtureth them, that so, through many tribulations, they may enter into rest. Carew.—That scouring and rubbing which frets others shall make them shine the brighter; and that weight which crushes and keeps others under shall but make them, like the palm-tree, grow better and higher; and that hammer which knocks others all in pieces, shall but knock them nearer to Christ, the corner-stone. Stars shine brightest in the darkest night; torches give the best light when beaten; grapes yield most wine when most pressed; spices smell sweetest when pounded; vines are the better for bleeding; gold looks the better for scouring; juniper smells sweetest in the fire; chamomile, the more you tread it the more you spread it. Where afflictions hang heaviest corruptions hang loosest; and grace that is hid in nature, as sweet water in rose-leaves, is then most fragrant when the fire of affliction is put under to distil it out. T. Brooks. We have a Brother who has Himself travelled every foot of the road by which we have to go, and His footsteps have marked out with blood a track for us to follow, and have trodden a footpath through the else pathless waste. He knows "how to encamp in this wilderness," for He Himself has "tabernacled among us," and by experience has learned the weariness of the journey and the perils of the wilderness. His life is our pattern. However diverse our duties and circumstances are, the principles which come out in the Divine record of that fair life and wondrous death will fit with equal closeness to us all; and so Divine and all-comprehensive is it that it abides as the sufficient pattern for every class, for every stage, for every variety of character, for every era, and every land, till the end and beyond the end. A. M. 13. But this is only a gleam of light. He returns to his great problem, the apparent injustice of God's administration. V.—In one mind, or, "He is one," i.e., "changes not." Job speaks not of the mind of God which he knows to be with him, but of His dealings, which he feels to be against him; He persists in one course. Cook.—Pain, penury, the scorn of men, the unfriendliness of friends—all these may be borne; it is not these which break his spirit. What unmans him is not this outer darkness, but the inner darkness which it breeds, the eclipse of faith, the rejection of a love unrequited and disdained, the hideous confusion of thought bred by the conviction that the God who is present to bruise his heart is not present to explain and indicate the course He takes with him. Cox. 14. in the light of Job's new solution note how differently God's dealings look to him. He sees the same changeless, inexorable, inscrutable work that he contemplated before, and the sight fills him with trembling; but he does not, as then, trace in it God's injustice and persecution; he is content to let it be so, though wondering at its darkness. This is his only remaining problem, and it is to this that the Lord addresses His words from the whirlwind. J. F. G. He performeth that which is appointed for me. He has a purpose, not only in relation to the universe as a whole, but to every part of the whole; not only to communities, but to individuals. "Me." Wonderful is the thought that God has a purpose concerning my little life, conduct, and destiny. D. Thomas.—God professes in His Word to have purposes prearranged for all events; to govern by a plan which is from eternity even, and which, in some proper sense, comprehends everything. And what is this but another way of conceiving that God has a definite place and plan adjusted for every human being. There is, then, a definite and proper end or issue, for every man's existence; an end, which, to the heart of God is the good intended for him, or for which he was intended; that which he is privileged to become, called to become, ought to become; that which God will assist him to become, and which he cannot miss, save by his own fault. Bushnell. 16. Job could not trace God in His works, or in His providences—all was dark in respect to himself. But there was still support in the belief that God knew him (v. 6), knew his way perfectly (v. 10). But the other thought, of fixed law, which is nothing else than arbitrary decrees (vs. 13, 14), in other words, a blind fatality, whether called God or nature, which had no regard to human affairs at all, no moral concern for man—this was anguish unalleviated. It was this that weakened—in modern phrase, broke his heart (v. 16). T. L. 1. WHY are times not laid up by the Almighty? And why do not they which know him see his days? 2 There are that remove the landmarks; They violently take away flocks, and feed them. 3 They drive away the ass of the fatherless, They take the widow's ox for a pledge. 4 They turn the needy out of the way: The poor of the earth hide themselves. 5 Behold, as wild asses in the desert They go forth to their work, seeking diligently for meat; The wilderness yieldeth them food for their children. 6. They cut their provender in the field; And they glean the vintage of the wicked. 7 They lie all night naked without clothing, And have no covering in the cold. 8 They are wet with the showers of the mountains, And embrace the rock for want of a shelter. 9. There are that pluck the fatherless from the breast, And take a pledge of the poor : 10. So that they go about naked without clothing, And being an hungered they carry the sheaves ; 11. They make oil within the walls of these men ; They tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst. 12. From out of the populous city men groan, And the soul of the wounded crieth out : Yet God regardeth not the folly. 13. These are of them that rebel against the light ; They know not the ways thereof, Nor abide in the paths thereof. 14. The murderer riseth with the light, he kill- eth the poor and needy ; And in the night he is as a thief. 15. The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight. Saying, No eye shall see me : And he disguiseth his face. 16. In the dark they dig through houses : They shut themselves up in the day-time ; They know not the light. 17. For the morning is to all of them as the shadow of death ; Chap. 24. From his own mysterious affliction he now passes to the mystery of God's permitting the evil of the world to go on unpunished. V.—Job begins by asking, Why are not times (of assize) appointed by the Almighty ? and, Why do they that know Him not see His days (of judgment) ? This is Job's complaint, that God the judge and ruler of the world fails to judge and rule it in righteousness. Men do not behold Him appointing times and holding days for doing judgment on wrong, and righting the oppressed. On the contrary, the powerful tyrants oppress and the miserable poor are oppressed (vs. 3-11), and God regards not the wrong (v. 12). Besides these public wrongdoers, there are other transgressors who shun the light. The murderer, the adulterer, and the robber ply their unhallowed trade in the darkness (vs. 13-17). And all of them, instead of being visited by God with sudden judgments, as the Friends insisted and as the popular literature described (vs. 18-21), are upheld in power by God, made to dwell in safety, and at last brought in peace to a natural death "like all others" (vs. 22-24). A. B. D. The whole speech is most painful ; but, bearing in mind the real scope and object of Job's For they know the terrors of the shadow of death. 18. He is swift upon the face of the waters ; Their portion is cursed in the earth ; He turneth not by the way of the vineyards. 19. Drought and heat consume the snow waters : So doth Sheol those which have sinned. 20. The womb shall forget him ; the worm shall feed sweetly on him ; He shall be no more remembered : And unrighteousness shall be broken as a tree. 21. He devoureth the barren that beareth not ; And doeth not good to the widow. 22. He draweth away the mighty also by his power : He riseth up, and no man is sure of life. 23. God giveth them to be in security, and they rest thereon ; And his eyes are upon their ways. 24. They are exalted ; yet a little while, and they are gone ; Yea, they are brought low, they are taken out of the way as all other, And are cut off as the tops of the ears of corn. 25. And if it be not so now, who will prove me a liar, And make my speech nothing worth ? trials, we see that it still leaves the foundation untouched. Far from forsaking God, Job's great misery is that he cannot find Him ; far from believing that the inexplicable indications of injustice prove that God in His essential attributes is unjust, Job is sure that when God does manifest Himself, the righteous cause must prosper ; believing most fully that his righteousness here will have no recompense, nor save him from the most cruel afflictions, "he holds fast to his integrity," and finds, as heretofore, his only consolation in the consciousness that he has walked with God. He doubts not that God has His own appointed seasons and methods of judgment, though neither he nor his opponents can discern them. His despair is complete so far as regards this life, but it does not reach the centre of his being ; he still offers the sublimest of all spectacles ; not that of a good man struggling with adversity, but that of one who, though prostrated by it and relinquishing all struggles as utterly useless, still cleaves to goodness and to God. Cook. 2-4. Fearlessly and unpunished, the oppression of the helpless and defenceless, though deserving of a curse, rages in every form. They remove the landmarks; they steal flocks, the ass of the orphans (their only beast for labor) they carry away, and the ox of the widow; they turn the needy aside from the way, so that they wander hither and thither without home or right, and the poor of the land are obliged to hide themselves altogether. D. 5-8. A continuation of the thought of v. 4. "The poor" of the land are the persons spoken of, who, on account of the cruelty of their oppressors are compelled to go forth, like "the wild asses" of the desert, seeking a scanty subsistence in the open rocky pastures. They are also compelled to perform hard service, gathering fodder in the field and gleaning the vintage for the wicked who oppress them. By night they are unprotected from the cold and rain, and are driven to hide themselves among the rocks, or in caves, for shelter. The imagery is peculiarly Arabic, that of the open desert, or outlying pastures. The whole is designed to show how the ungodly oppress the poor, and yet go unpunished. Curry.—We have thus before us a graphic portraiture of savage hordes, who, when displaced by a more civilized and powerful race, prowl in the desert, at once desperate and pitiless. It is evident that the writer describes occurrences of his own time and country. 13-17. These verses go farther still; they describe a class of still more desperate offenders; the oppressors and usurers previously described had a semblance of right, and may have kept within the limits of hard law, as yet unmitigated by the Mosaic code; those who now come before us sin against light. Cook.—They are murderers, thieves, adulterers, and burglars, and the methods by which they ply their evil arts are here indicated. They are night prowlers for plunder, but do not scruple to carry out their designs by murder itself. The adulterer also seeks the aid of darkness, and of a disguised habit, that he may not be detected, while others dig through houses for purposes of plunder. To all such light is unwelcome, because it stops their pursuits and exposes them to detection. Thus by their skill and contrivance they escape danger, and Divine justice allows them to remain undiscovered and unpunished. 21-24. Still another class of evil-doers is now introduced—men of position and political power, who, like the unjust judge of the parable, disregard the claims of right and justice, and have no pity on the poor and helpless. They surround themselves with confederates in oppression, and spoil and murder to promote their iniquitous purposes; and they often prosper for a season, or to life's end, when, as is the common lot of men, they are gathered to the grave by the great harvester, Death. All this, it is assumed, is patent to every one who will consider the case, and so Job closes (v. 25) with a challenge to his antagonists to disprove his facts, or to show any want of pertinence in his arguments that God does not, in His judgments, distinguish between the wicked and the righteous. Curry. 24. The form of their death itself is by no means such as to reveal the retributive justice of God. And does it become at all manifest during their life? These, whose trust in their own strength God might smite down by His almighty power, He preserves alive, even in critical positions, by His power. God grants them a secure, peaceful existence, sustains them, and raises them up again; His eyes are on the ways of these men—they stand, as it were, beneath His special protection. They are brought to death without great suffering like other men. D.—Job thus declares, in direct opposition to the other speakers, that so far from living in terror, the evil-doer is in perfect security; instead of being overthrown he is supported; he is an object of special providential care; he rises to eminence, and when, like all men, he dies, it is by a sudden or painless death, preceded by no lingering disease, and not until he has reached his full term of life, like corn ripe for the harvest. In all this exaggeration there is an underground of substantial facts. It would have been easy to prove that such is not the general result of an evil life; but nothing short of a clear proof that no innocent man is ever overwhelmed by misfortune, and no guilty man ever escapes it, would overthrow Job's position. The mystery is unsolved; Job does not doubt that God has a solution; he is sure that his opponents have not. "Who," he concludes (v. 25), "will prove the falsehood of this statement, and invalidate my argument?" With this last outburst the storm passes by. Cook. Job had now attacked their main position and had appealed to facts in defence of what he held. He maintained that, as a matter of fact, the wicked were prospered, that they often lived to old age, and died a peaceful death without any direct demonstration of the Divine displeasure. He boldly appeals to any one to deny this or to prove the contrary. The appeal was decisive. The fact was undeniable, and the controversy was closed. Barnes.—Job has shown that God's rule of the world is not just, in the sense in which the friends insisted that it was just, and in the sense in which his own moral feeling demanded that it should be just. God is not righteous, in the sense that He punishes wickedness with outward calamity and rewards the righteous with outward good. So far the three friends are defeated, and with their defeat on the general question their infer- ences from Job's calamities as to his guilt fall to the ground. A. B. D.—Job's conclusive victory over his friends is indicated by the challenge with which he here seals his words. No one takes it up; for though Bildad yet speaks, his words are so aside from the issue as to be a virtual confession of defeat. J. F. G. 1. THEN answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 2 Dominion and fear are with him; He maketh peace in his high places. 3 Is there any number of his armies? And upon whom doth not his light arise? 4 How then can man be just with God? BILDAD responds wholly without the rancor and bitterness that have characterized the friends' answers hitherto, and with general considerations quite apart from the question at issue. Perhaps it is Job's persistent affirmation of his integrity, that immediately calls them forth; but Bildad no longer makes it a personal matter, and seems to repeat his lesson almost mechanically, the chapter from his well-conned Wisdom which is least to be called in question. J. F. G.—He falls back upon the original position of Eliphaz in his opening speech—viz., the universal sinfulness of men, in which Job is of necessity involved. He thus not only impliedly retracts the charges hitherto insinuated or openly made against Job, but concedes his inability to conduct the argument further. He has nothing to adduce but what had been adduced and answered long before. The same thing is likewise intimated by the brevity of his speech. W. H. G. This short speech of Bildad shows the complete exhaustion of Job's opponents. The speaker leaves unnoticed the question raised by Job, and simply repeats two commonplaces, which had been advanced in the beginning of the controversy by Eliphaz; but so far from being disputed by Job, had been repeatedly urged and illustrated by him. God is omnipotent; hence follows the duty of unreserved submission, an inference which Bildad leaves to be drawn by the hearer; man is naturally unclean; how, then, can he be justified by Him who discerns impurity in the very heavens? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? 5 Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, And the stars are not pure in his sight: 6 How much less man, that is a worm! And the son of man, which is a worm! The tone of Bildad's speech, though without an attempt to grapple with the real difficulties of the question, is pleasing in tone, free from Zophar's violence, and from the worldliness of Eliphaz. He does not repeat the old charges and insinuations against Job, but admonishes him to submission on grounds which are not calculated to cause any personal irritation, and which Job himself would be first to admit. He brings the discussion, so far as his party is concerned, to a close. Cook. 2,3. Dominion and fear are with Him. He is an awful God who hath the absolute dominion over all the world; He ordereth the very heavens so that there is a perfect harmony in all the apparently contrary motions thereof; and contriveth all things so that they agree to glorify Him! What innumerable troops of glorious angels hath He there above, and what infinite armies of His creatures to execute His will upon all occasions! And how gracious is He in sending forth His light into all the corners of the earth! and how wise in searching all the secrets of human actions and counsels! Bishop H. 2. He maketh peace in His high places. The high places are His high places; for the heavens, even the heavens, are the Lord's in a peculiar manner; peace is God's work; where it is made it is He that makes it. In heaven there is perfect peace; for there is perfect holiness, and there is God, who is love. H.—A great truth lies deep in these words, that peace is a creation; and all creation is an attribute of God. The most beautiful word that ever hung upon the mouth of man is peace, because it is sweetness to his fellow-men and it makes sacrifice to God. Many summers and many winters of life go to ripen that fruit. And of that beautiful fruit of the lips hear what God says: "I create the fruit of the lips; peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the Lord; I will heal him." The words are meant to teach us that up in His high places God is ever devising and carrying on processes which are to produce peace for men in this lower state. In mystery, in solitude, and in largeness, before the foundations of the earth were laid God began to make peace in His high places. He willed that great scheme whereby Christ should come in the fulness of time to make redemption for a yet unformed and yet uncreated world. The ruin of Eden was prepared for in the high places of the eternal mind; and at once, at the moment of the fall, the promise came that peace should be restored on earth. The far end of Christ's work was to give peace to men. J. V. 4. Bildad's question finds its answer, the grand difficulty of all heathen nations and ages its complete solution, in the Gospel. At the foot of the cross, sprinkled with the blood of Christ, the sinner changes into a saint; the unjust into the just; the condemned into the acquitted; the child of wrath into an heir of heaven. In the eyes of his Sovereign Judge, the believer, happy man! is without spot, or stain, or any such thing. "There is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." T. G. Justification (considered in the Gospel notion) is that gracious sentence of God wherein, with respect to Christ apprehended by faith, He absolveth the believer from sin and death, and doth repute him just and righteous unto eternal life. This doctrine of free justification is the foundation and corner-stone of all our comfort. For whereas there is a double change in the state of the sinner—first, a relative change; secondly, an absolute and real change—the one is made in sanctification, the other in justification. Sanctification is a real change, subduing corruption, destroying the power of sin in us. But justification is not a change in the person; it is only a relative change as to his state. To justify is a law term signifying the pronouncing or declaring of a man righteous; so that justification is an act of God upon us or toward us. Sanctification is an act of God in us. This blessed grace of sanctification always followeth the grace of justification as an effect or fruit of it; and though it may be easily distinguished from it, yet it can no more be separated or divided from it than heat from fire or motion from life. Caryl. 5,6. There is something truly sublime in this representation of the Supreme Ruler. His splendor darkens all; His radiant hosts are numberless; His light and purity surpass all created excellence; the heavenly bodies are eclipsed and retire before Him. Still greater is the disparity of man, whose impurity and meanness will not bear His inspection. Anon. 1. THEN Job answered and said, 2. How hast thou helped him that is without power! How hast thou saved the arm that hath no strength! 3. How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom, And plentifully declared sound knowledge! 4. To whom hast thou uttered words? And whose spirit came forth from thee? 5. They that are deceased tremble Beneath the waters and the inhabitants thereof. 6. Sheol is naked before him, And Abaddon hath no covering. 7. He stretcheth out the north over empty space, And hangeth the earth upon nothing. 8. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; And the cloud is not rent under them. 9. He closeth in the face of his throne, And spreadeth his cloud upon it. 10. He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters, Unto the confines of light and darkness. 11. The pillars of heaven tremble And are astonished at his rebuke. 12. He stirreth up the sea with his power, And by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab. 13. By his spirit the heavens are garnished; His hand hath pierced the swift serpent. 14 Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways: WITH this chapter begins the magnificent series of discourses in which Job reviews and sums up the whole controversy. He adopts all that is substantially true in the arguments of his opponents, and recedes from a position which, though tenable against them, does not accord with his own principles, or truly represent the results of his own experience. After a few words of well-deserved, but not bitter rebuke (vs. 1-4), he enlarges upon the first great truth which has been often stated, but neither on their side nor on his without some admixture of error or of rebellious feeling, the truth of God's almightiness and omniscience; and concludes a description, crowded with sublime imagery, by a declaration that all that can be conceived or received by man is but a faint echo of the voice which, if uttered, would overwhelm the spirit of man. Cook. Bildad had spoken only of God's kingdom in heaven; Job adds the counterpart, His kingdom in Hades, the world of death. Thence he ascends to the creation, the origin and foundation of Divine dominion; and finisheth with a display of some illustrious operations of Providence for the benefit and preservation of our system. He shows them that he firmly believed in the all-wise and almighty Maker and Governor of the world; and had too great and venerating ideas of His adorable perfections to be capable of being an atheist, as Eliphaz had cruelly painted him (22: 12-20), or of entering into a contest with such a formidable Being, as Bildad had injuriously represented Him. Scott. Bildad in his short speech magnified the greatness of God and His purity, before which even the heavens are not clean. Job had heard all this before; it did not touch the enigma of his life and of Providence. Hence, first, he pours out his sarcasm on Bildad's irrelevant statements (vs. 2-4). He knows God's greatness not less than Bildad, if knowledge of it only helped him in any way or had any bearing on the dispute, which was not concerning the greatness of God, but concerning His justice. And second, to show that he does not need to be taught concerning God's greatness, he proceeds to give a far more brilliant picture of it than Bildad had attempted, showing how it manifests itself; in the underworld of the shades (vs. 5, 6); in the world above, the earth and heavens (vs. 7-13); ending with the sublime thought that, mighty and majestic as the oper- And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand? ations of God are which are seen in these parts of the universe, they are but the fringes or outskirts of His ways, only a whisper in comparison to the full thunder of His power. 2-4. Job sarcastically expresses his admiration of Bildad's speech, and gratitude for the help it has been to him. A. B. D.—What powerful support hast Thou given to one (Job himself) who is deprived of all strength and wisdom? Rosenmüller.—Dost Thou think me ignorant of these things, or canst Thou pretend to any extraordinary inspiration concerning them? Bishop Patrick. 5. They that are deceased tremble. This rendering scarcely does justice to the original, though it is better than the Authorized Version, which is wholly without intelligible meaning. Other and more adequate versions are: The shades are put to pain (Delitzsch); Where groan the giant shades (T. Lewis); There the shades are made to sorely tremble (Ewald); The shades tremble (Conant). The word rephso, feebly rendered "dead things," means the shades of the dead; the departed spirits that dwell in Sheol. (See Isa. 14: 9.) These, because the place of Sheol was conceived to be under the earth, are designated those beneath the waters. Curry.—Bildad had spoken of God's dominion in heaven, Job shows that it reaches the dead; the Hebrew word is Rephaim, the name of an extinct race of giants, but here and elsewhere applied to the shades (souls) of the departed. The dead sleep; their shadowy forms rest in Sheol, under the ocean; but God's will reaches them, rouses them in torture from their death-stillness below the depths of ocean peopled by monster forms. This statement coincides with many vague allusions to the conditions of the disembodied spirit, and it has a most fitting place in Job's discourse. His (God's) witness is on high, but His power reaches to the very abodes of darkness, and restores consciousness to the very shades of the departed. 6. Abaddon, the abyss of the bottomless pit; the abode of destruction; no mere abstraction or negation, but a region impenetrable save to God's eye. 7. The north. By the north we are probably to understand the firmament, extending, as the ancient Semites conceived, from the northern point indicated by the polar star, over the apparently empty space of our atmosphere. The words employed here and in other passages of Holy Scripture do not convey the impression of substance or of metallic solidity, as is frequently asserted, but simply of expansion; they are vague, indefinite, just what they ought to be to express the impressions made upon an observant mind, careful not to substitute speculations for facts. Cook. The word north here denotes the heavens as they appear to revolve around the pole, and which seem to be stretched out as a curtain. The heavens are often represented as a veil, an expanse, a curtain, or a tent. (See Isa. 34:4; 40:22.) Upon nothing. That is, without anything to support it. There is no certain evidence here that there then existed any conception of the globular form of the earth, with its diurnal and annual revolutions. But it is clear that it is regarded as not resting on any foundation or support; as lying on the vacant air, and kept there by the power of God. Barnes.—In respect to the real “foundations of the earth,” the Bible holds a truer language than science itself. The ultimate foundations, or supports, of the earth are God’s upholding power. T. L. Empty space. Sir John Herschel has been sounding the heavens with his powerful telescope, and gauging the stars, and where do you think he finds the most barren part—the empty place—of the sky? In the north, precisely where Job told Bildad, the Shuhite, the empty place was stretched out. It is there where comets most delight to roam, and hide themselves in emptiness. Maury.—How Job knew the truth, demonstrated by astronomy, that the earth hangs self-poised in empty space, is a question not easily solved by those who deny the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Cook. 8. He bindeth up the waters in His thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them. Sir Isaac Newton could not have more succinctly stated the position of the earth, nor could any of our meteorologists give fitter outline of our cloud system than this and similar descriptions embody. W. Fraser.—He binds up the waters and keeps them suspended in the clouds; through which they distil by drops to moisten the earth in due season. Bishop Patrick.—This verse comprehends the whole process of Almighty power in making the air, raising the watery vapors, condensing them into clouds, and sustaining them in that form so that their contents may not burst all at once upon the earth. Scott.—Notwithstanding the vast weight of water so raised and laid up, yet the cloud is not rent under them, for then they would burst and pour out as a spout; but they distil through the cloud and so come drop by drop, in mercy to the earth, in small or great rain, as He pleases. H. 9. The deep vault of the heavens is referred to as God’s throne, which is spoken of as being closed in—veiled—by the cloud. Curry.—It is a beautiful poetical conception that the firmament not only reflects the splendor of God, but also veils His throne from human eyes. All nature may be regarded as a veil of Deity, “through whose mantling folds” he designs to show so much of His being as eye or heart can bear. J. S. Burr.—Heaven, or the sky, is styled in Scripture “the throne of God;” which “He shutteth up,” by spreading His clouds upon it. We are here presented with the same scene of nature which is described in chap. 36:32, “With clouds He covereth the light, and commandeth it not to shine, by the cloud that cometh betwixt.” This is the magnificent preparation and signal of Providence for the descent of fruitful showers on the thirsty ground. Psalm 147:8, “Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.” Cloud-assembling Jove is one of the lofty titles which Homer gives to the Supreme Being. Scott. 10. He hath described a boundary. The thought is carried over to the waters of the sea, which, according to the universal conception of antiquity, encircled the whole earth, and whose outer rim reached to the confines of light and darkness, where the two abutted upon each other. Curry. 11. The pillars of heaven tremble. When God shows Himself angry by sending thunder, tempests, and earthquakes, the very heavens seem to tremble, and the whole universe to be moved by these tokens of His displeasure. Clark.—The figurative expression, “the pillars of heaven,” seems intended to represent the heavens, under the idea of an immense fabric, supported on stately columns. Their “trembling” and “astonishment” is the animated style of sublime poetry, to denote violent concussions of the air, and agitation of the clouds. The cause is God’s “reproof”—that is, thunder, lightning, and tempestuous winds, which are represented by the heathen, as well as by sacred poets, as effects and tokens of God’s displeasure at the sins of men. Scott. 12. It may be the description of a tempest; and if the former part mean that God sometimes, by His power, raises a violent storm at sea, the latter may be well enough understood of the pride or swelling of the sea itself, allayed again by the same Divine power and will that raised it. Peters. 13. For aught that appears, all space is populous with worlds; for aught that appears, there never has been, and never will be, a moment without the presence in it of created worlds. The uncreated and indestructible amphitheatre of duration in which the stars run their courses, and the absence of which is inconceivable, is equally august and infinite with that of space, and equally unintelligible. They are twin mysteries—great cloudy homes, within whose coincident and sublime architectures dwell all other mysteries, all created nature, and even the Supernatural. E. F. Burr. "The serpent" may mean an heavenly constellation, called the great dragon or serpent; which being most eminent as taking up a considerable part of the northern hemisphere, may well be put for all the rest of the constellations or stars with which the heavens are garnished. Job knew the names of certain constellations, as appears from chaps. 9:9 and 38:31. Poole. 14. The power of God is illustrated in the mighty works described in vs. 5-13. Yet what we see of Him in these is but the ends, the outskirts of His real operations. And what we hear of Him is but as a faint whisper; the thunder of the full unfolding of His power who can understand? The nervous brevity and sublimity of these words are unsurpassable. A. B. D. These are only "parts of His ways." These nether regions of disembodied spirits, this great earth suspended "on nothing," the oceans of waters that roll around and over its surface, the heavens crowded with innumerable globes of fiery brilliancy—He has to do with them all. He is not like the engineer that has finished the machine and left it, or the architect that has built the edifice and left it. He is in every part of the machinery He has constructed, in every part of the great house He has built. D. Thomas.—Every star must give up its secret before we have the complete manifestation of God, and even then we would see but "parts of His ways." To compare and to study these may be, must be, the work of eternity; and, as we wonder sometimes how a soul, growing on forever, can find fresh exercise for all its thoughts and activities, we may reach the answer when we look up through the countless hosts of the firmament, and feel that every point of light shall yet open out into a sun, and each one cast its own special illumination on the nature of Him who, with all our searching, cannot be found out unto perfection. Ker. His power. Though in a just idea of the Deity perhaps none of His attributes are predominant, yet to our imagination His power is by far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparison, is necessary to satisfy us of His wisdom, His justice, and His goodness. To be struck with His power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. And although a consideration of His other attributes may relieve in some measure our apprehensions, yet no conviction of the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with trembling; and even while we are receiving benefits we cannot but shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance. Burke. It is the object of the sacred writer, in this chapter, to show the power and grandeur of God as seen in His works. The structure of the material universe and the processes of nature are represented as they appear to the eye, and by the impressions which they make on the common mind. So these subjects are everywhere treated in the Bible; and the lessons thus given require no other knowledge of nature than what is apparent to every eye. Any other mode would not have answered the design of the Holy Scriptures, the religious and moral instruction of men in every stage of culture and knowledge. By this exhibition of the power and sovereignty of God, in nature and over all created intelligences, the way is prepared for the topics of the next two chapters. Conant. 1. AND Job again took up his parable, and said, 2. As God liveth, who hath taken away my right; And the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul; 3 (For my life is yet whole in me, And the spirit of God is in my nostrils :) 4. Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness, Neither shall my tongue utter deceit. 5. God forbid that I should justify you: Till I die I will not put away mine integrity from me. 6. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live. 7. Let mine enemy be as the wicked, And let him that riseth up against me be as the unrighteous. 8. For what is the hope of the godless, though he get him gain, When God taketh away his soul? 9. Will God hear his cry, When trouble cometh upon him? 10. Will he delight himself in the Almighty, And call upon God at all times? 11. I will teach you concerning the hand of God; That which is with the Almighty will I not conceal. 12. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; Why then are ye become altogether vain? 13. This is the portion of a wicked man with God, And the heritage of oppressors, which they receive from the Almighty. 14. If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword; And his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. 15. Those that remain of him shall be buried in death, And his widows shall make no lamentation. 16. Though he heap up silver as the dust, And prepare raiment as the clay; 17. He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, And the innocent shall divide the silver. 18. He buildeth his house as the moth, And as a booth which the keeper maketh. 19. He lieth down rich, but he shall not be gathered; He openeth his eyes, and he is not. 20. Terrors overtake him like waters; A tempest stealeth him away in the night. 21. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; And it sweepeth him out of his place. 22. For God shall hurl at him, and not spare: He would fain flee out of his hand. 23. Men shall clap their hands at him, And shall hiss him out of his place. CHAP. 27 consists of two main parts: First (vs. 1-6), a solemn protestation before God by Job of his innocence; And second (vs. 7-23), a picture of the condition of the wicked man, in two divisions, his dreary and desolate condition of mind, having no hope in God, when death or afflictions overtake him (vs. 7-10); and the terrible external destruction that befalls him at the hand of God (vs. 11-23). A. B. D.—Under this second part he declares fully and plainly what he really believes touching the principles of God's providential government; and directly repudiates the argument which he had previously urged, both as a real matter of trouble and perplexity to himself and as a conclusive answer to his opponent's charges. He does not even now assert that the righteous man will necessarily be prosperous, a statement which he could not reconcile with the facts of his own experience; but he states that the real portion of the wicked, that which is reserved for one and all as their heritage, is final and complete extermination; his children will be cut off, his wealth be the sport of the innocent, his house overthrown, his life filled with incessant terrors and ended by a storm, his memory accursed. Vigorously as Job had maintained the proposition which he here recalls, it is evident throughout that the conviction of God's righteousness lay far deeper; the current of thought which carried him away was but superficial, and yields to the mighty tide of feeling, when the depths of his heart are brought into motion. He was naturally unwilling to leave the question, which he here disposes of, on so unsatisfactory a footing. Job, doubtless, shared the universal conviction that notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, which are quite sufficient to put a stop to uncharitable judgments and applications to individual cases, God judges the wicked even in this life, and sooner or later awards to each his portion. Cook. 2. To what Job has yet to say, which may be regarded as a summary of his views and life, he prefixes the most solemn form of the Hebrew oath, "As God liveth." So sure is he of the integrity that the friends have so attacked, and of his true interpretation of God's workings. J. F. G.—Hitherto Job has used no oath; now for the first time he swears by the living God, his "Witness" and "Redeemer." This oath expresses his faith and also his conviction that his judgment is not as yet complete; "God hath taken it away" is an expression carefully chosen to imply "withholding" not "perversion." Job thus, as throughout this discourse, corrects his former assertions; he holds fast the conviction that his afflictions are not a punishment due for his offences, but he no longer charges God with injustice; even for that expression which he still uses, modified as it is, he suggests an excuse in the pardonable bitterness of a soul filled with anguish. Cook. 3. According to most modern expositors we take v. 3 as a parenthetical confirmatory clause, by which Job gives the ground of his solemn affirmation that he is still in possession of his full consciousness, and cannot help feeling and expressing the contradiction between his lot of suffering which brands him as an evil-doer, and his moral integrity. D. 5,6. He summons Jehovah to attest his integrity. He will not be guilty of the iniquity and deceit of admitting that he is guilty when he knows himself to be innocent. Job thus fulfils God's declaration in the second chapter. "Still he holdeth fast his integrity." V.—Good and holy men in Scripture do everywhere, with great confidence and assurance, appeal to God concerning the integrity and sincerity of their hearts toward Him. It would not be modesty, but impudence, in any man to declare that he suspects himself of hypocrisy; good men have always abhorred the thought of it. This was a brave and generous speech of Job. After he had lost all, and he had a great deal to lose; when he was forsaken of all other comfort, even the charitable opinion of his best friends concerning his sincerity; what was it that bore up his spirit? nothing but the conscience of his own integrity. With what resolution and constancy of mind he asserts and maintains it. Archbishop Tillotson. 8-10. The mention of the wicked (v. 7) gives occasion to introduce the subject again, and to settle it according to the insight of truth. Against their intemperate and one-sided portrayals he has already answered negatively, what the fate of the wicked is not; now, free from the heat of controversy, he will give his view of what their fate is. J. F. G.—The comfortless state of the ungodly man, who has no trust in God, is described in three conditions of his history: First, when he is at the moment of death, when God "cutteth him off" and "draweth out his soul" (v. 8); second, when calamity overtakes him (v. 9); and in general, in his whole life (v. 10). A. B. D. What is the hope? This is the key note of Job's portrayal of the wicked; they have no hope, no abiding future; the permanency of things is not theirs. Job can see this clearly now, having conquered his way by faith to a hope beyond this life. J. F. G.—The ungodly man, says Job, has no God to hear his cry in distress. He cannot find any consolation in God. "What can the impious hope for though he get him gain, when God taketh away his soul?" The word "gain" is literally unlawful gain, implying that such is the character of all the gain of the wicked; and the word "taketh away" is literally "draw out," like a sword from its scabbard—a vivid image of God stripping the soul from its body as a sword is drawn out of its sheath. We see here how deeply the thought of the future retributive life has entered into Job's mind. If there be no such life how could there be any question of what a man may hope for when God requires his soul? Even the godless man may look forward to something there. V. 9,10. Though God gives temporal blessings to the ungodly, there is still a fatal separation between Him and them. God is not near to them, to answer their cry in times of trouble, nor do they find their hearts turning toward Him in joyful confidence. Curry.—They are not anchored to God; all is precarious, unsafe, unstable. Besides, whatever else they gain, the blessing paramount, that which alone, whether now or hereafter, gives value to life—namely, delight in God and sweet dependence on His will, they miss entirely; it is to them a thing non-existent. These words furnish an expressive indication of the pure standard of Job's righteousness; it is not merely service for reward, but delight in God, unselfish devotion to God for His own sake. The friends' conception has been distinctly lower than this; and it is this that Job has maintained against Satan's sneer of the beginning. And now Job's conception of wickedness is just its opposite. To him nothing can be more deplorable than not to delight in God. J. F. G. In comparing himself with the "ungodly," Job is conscious that he has a God who does not leave him unheard, in whom He delights Himself, and to whom He can at all times draw near. D.—It is manifest that in these verses the speaker means to contrast his own condition of mind with that of the godless man. He has hope in God, in death and in trouble, for he delighteth himself in God at all times. A. B. D.—To the ungodly there shall be neither the hearing of his prayers nor a joyful, trustful, and loving fellowship with God. Job claims for himself both these things (13:16), and thereby leaves out of the account transient obscurations of his spirit, like that in which he mourns (19:7) that his prayer is not heard. Zöckler.—Job felt that God did hear his cry, though he could get no answer. 10. Will he delight. Job therefore delighted in the Almighty his punisher. "Always call," he would therefore pray without ceasing; note the extreme beauty and delicacy of the term by which Job thus unconsciously, as it would seem, bears witness to his own inward faith, hope, and piety. Cook. Will he always call upon God? Every one that knows him can make the answer for him, "No, he will not;" especially in secret, where none but God's eye can behold him. Upon some extraordinary occasions, in extraordinary cases, he may seem very devout; but he is modest, he will not trouble God too far, nor too often. He will serve God only by fits and starts, when he himself lists. He never troubles God but when God troubles him. In health, wealth, peace he can comfort himself. He never prays but in trouble; in his affliction he will seek God. God is fain to go away and return to His place, else this man would never look after him. When God hath touched him he acquaints God with his misery, but when times grow better with him he excludes God from his mirth. Crook. 11. This verse is of great importance. It implies that Job is now going to state exactly what he believes touching the hand of God, i.e., the true character of the Divine dispensation. He will not conceal what is with the Almighty, the principle which he is assured must be present to the mind of God. This prepares us for a modification of statements which had been wrung from him, when his words flowed over from a spirit drunk with the poison of God's arrows. 12. They, like him, knew the facts, which he is now about to state, but they misapplied them altogether when, having no cause whatever to suspect Job's integrity, they represented his sufferings as proofs of guilt. Given two facts, God's wrath against sin, and Job's piety, proved by a life of consistent godliness, the only inference which they ought to have drawn from the aspect of his misery was that God's judgments are unsearchable, and that sooner or later His "righteous servant" would be justified. Cook. 13. He now admits that in human experience there are tokens of that law of retribution which he had called in question; that ultimately the wicked do not thrive and the righteous do. His whole view of the case is tinged by his thought of a future life. To be wicked is to be miserable, not here perhaps, but at last. V.—Job's portrayal, here beginning, is an exposition in poetic language of what we call the logic of events. It is the truth that only righteousness is well-built and permanent; the logic of wickedness is decay and destruction. Violence begets and succumbs to violence; being itself a tearing-down, it has no future to count upon. To this idea is naturally reducible all that Job here says, and all that is true in what the friends have said. J. F. G. 13-23. We have Job's final and formal statement of the doom and heritage of the wicked. It is a doom from God; a heritage to be received from the Almighty. He shall lose what he has unjustly gathered with so much care. Though he escape for a time, he shall get his reward in due course. V. 19-23. Most terrible is the description, introduced in v. 19, of the overthrow of the sinner himself (vs. 20-23); sudden mortal terror overtaketh him like an overwhelming flood; or rather, a swift tempest from the east taketh him up and carrieth him away with an irresistible force, so that before it, as before the missiles of a strong armed warrior, he can do nothing else than flee, for in this storm the Divine power is hidden, so he flees accordingly, still pursued by the scorn and ridicule of his own place, which ought to protect him. Ewald.—To sum up all, both God and man are against the evil-doer. God casts evils upon him and makes escape impossible, and men clap their hands and hiss him out of his place. This is an awful description, and in it Job has equalled if not surpassed the friends. V. Sin promiseth gold, and pays with dross; it promiseth bread, and pays with stones; it promiseth honor, and pays with disgrace; it promiseth a paradise, and payeth with a wilderness; it promiseth liberty, and payeth with bondage; in a word, it promiseth all manner of content, and pays us with utter disappointment and dissatisfaction. Every step in sin is a step to misery; and the farther any man proceedeth on in sin, the farther he wanders from God, and the farther he wanders from God the nearer he comes to misery. Every motion toward sin is a hasting into the arms and embrace of death. Caryl. 1. STRELY there is a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine. 2 Iron is taken out of the earth, And brass is molten out of the stone. 3 Man setteth an end to darkness, And searcheth out to the furthest bound The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death. 4 He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; They are forgotten of the foot; They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. 5 As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. 6 The stones thereof are the place of sapphires, And it hath dust of gold. 7 That path no bird of prey knoweth, Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it: 8 The proud beasts have not trodden it, Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. 9 He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturneth the mountains by the roots. 10 He cutteth out channels among the rocks; And his eye seeth every precious thing. 11 He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. 12 But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? 13 Man knoweth not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living. 14 The deep saith, It is not in me: And the sea saith, It is not with me. 15. It cannot be gotten for gold, Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. 16. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, With the precious onyx, or the sapphire. 17. Gold and glass cannot equal it: Neither shall it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold. 18. No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal: Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies. 19. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, Neither shall it be valued with pure gold. 20. Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding? 21. Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, And kept close from the fowls of the air. 22. Destruction and Death say, We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears. 23. God understandeth the way thereof, And he knoweth the place thereof. 24. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, And seeth under the whole heaven; 25. To make a weight for the wind; Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure. 26. When he made a decree for the rain, And a way for the lightning of the thunder: 27. Then did he see it, and declare it; He established it, yea, and searched it out. 28. And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding. HAVING portrayed the extreme of unwisdom (with which in the old philosophy wickedness was identified), the life that has not the future nor is built therefor, it is natural that Job should next speak of its contrast, the true wisdom and foresight whereby to build human life and character. There are many marvellous things that man may know or search out; but many also are unsearchable. He cannot see as God sees, perhaps cannot reach absolute truth. But there is a wisdom for him, which points to the absolute good as the needle points to the pole. J. F. G.—In this chapter Job turns to the great principle, which, once thoroughly accepted, shows the futility of all speculations touching apparent difficulties or inequalities in God's government. Man has marvellous faculties; in the investigation of physical phenomena, in his mastery over external nature, his powers are indefinite, his tact sure, his achievements a matter of rational admiration; but as for understanding which can penetrate God's secrets and comprehend His ways, man knoweth it not, it is not found in the place of the living. Wisdom, in that sense, belongs to God; it is His alone; all the wisdom and understanding of man is summed up in the fear of God and in the hatred of sin. With this declaration Job disposes of the whole argument; he does not profess to account for his own sufferings, or for any inexplicable events in the world's history; such attempts do but savor of presumption, their failure causes inconceivable scandal; one thing is sure, that he who fears God and departs from evil hath the true secret of life and eternity. In the three following chapters Job takes a review of his whole life, as though he would settle the question of his innocence once and forever; the conclusion is, that he holds fast to his integrity, but remains in a state of absolute perplexity touching the cause of his terrible sufferings, which he describes in the thirtieth chapter. Cook. The inequalities of human conditions, the success of wickedness, the sorrows of good men, the removal of those who apparently could least be spared, the survival of others who are a burden or perhaps a curse, the failure of enterprises wholly benevolent, the seemingly capricious ebb and flow of civilization in different ages and lands, the vicissitudes and disappointments of individuals and communities—these, and many like features of human life, baffle all attempts to account for them under the government of a wise and sovereign Ruler. Numerous philosophical systems have been propounded as solutions of the problem; but all have failed. Reasonable persons must admit that there is a Divine order in the universe. The world is not the sport of chance, nor the passive victim of unintelligent and inexorable fate, and still less is it subject to a Ruler who is indeed almighty, but neither wise nor holy. No, there is a principle of administration which, did we but know it, would reconcile all contradictions and illumine all mysteries. But we do not, cannot know it. Our faculties fail to take it in. Yet we are not left helpless, but have all that we really need for the conduct of life and the attainment of life's great end. This is the sum of what is contained in the brilliant twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job. Chambers.—The secret that resolves all mysteries, harmonizes all strifes, reconciles all contradictions, and reduces this seemingly inextricable confusion to perfect symmetry and order, is hidden in the infinite mind alone. But the Most High has revealed to man all that is necessary for his practical guidance. He may not know how God governs the world, or what rules He prescribes for His own procedure; but he has been sufficiently taught how to direct his own conduct and to govern his own life. He cannot solve the mysteries of Providence; but he need be in no doubt how to accomplish the true end of his own being and to secure his own highest welfare. “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” W. H. G. Analysis of Chapter. Wisdom can nowhere be found by man; God alone is in possession of it; the wisdom of man is to fear the Lord. The thought that wisdom cannot be reached by man is set forth and illustrated in many ways and with much poetical adornment. First (vs. 1-14), the precious ores and stones have a place where they may be found, to which men penetrate and from which they bring them forth to the light; but wisdom has no place where it can be found in all the land of the living. Second (vs. 15-22), wisdom is not to be seen in the marts of mankind; it cannot be purchased though gold and all precious things were offered for it. It is not found even in the world below, the realm of the dead. Third (vs. 23-28), God alone knoweth the way to it and is in possession of it, for He is the Creator of the world. The wisdom of man is the fear of the Lord. A. B. D. 1-11. Here Job shows what a great way the wit of man may go, in diving into the depths of nature and seizing the riches of it; what a great deal of knowledge and wealth men may, by their ingenious and industrious searches, make themselves masters of. But does it therefore follow that men may, by their wit, comprehend the reasons why some wicked people prosper and others are punished, why some good people prosper and others are afflicted? No, by no means. H.—These verses are remarkable for the knowledge of mining operations which they indicate in the writer. Though many expressions are still obscure, and will probably remain matters of controversy, we find in them singularly accurate and graphic descriptions of the processes of miners. It is an interesting question where the writer could have acquired such minute and accurate knowledge; certainly not in Palestine, where mining was unknown. But in very remote ages, far more ancient than that assigned to Job, there were gold mines in Egypt; silver was brought from the far east by Phoenician merchants; iron was found, and copper mines were worked in the Sinaitic peninsula by Egyptians from the third dynasty, at least some thousand years before Job, until the nineteenth dynasty. Cook. 1. Modern science instead of confuting only confirms the aphorism of the patriarch Job, who has shadowed forth the downward persistence of the one (silver), and the superficial distribution of the other (gold). "Surely there is a vein for the silver—the earth hath dust of gold." The indisputable fact is that the chief quantities of gold originally embedded in the upper portions of the vein have been broken up and transported, with the débris of the mountain-tops, into adjacent slopes and valleys. Silver and argentiferous lead, on the contrary, extended so largely downward into the bowels of the earth, that they must yield enormous profit to the miner for ages to come. Murchison. 1,2. The statements seem purposely indefinite; the things predicated belong to both silver and gold—both have a place in the mine, and also in the refinery. Iron is also taken from the earth, and brass or copper is obtained from stone by melting, or, in the language of the art, by smelting. These are simply matter-of-fact statements as to how these metals are obtained. 6. Both of the statements of this verse are well-known facts of mineralogy and mining. Crystals lie embodied in the rocks, and also gold in particles, or flakes, or nuggets. Curry.—And it hath dust of gold; or, and dust of gold is for him, for the miner. The great riches which reward the toils and talents of the miners, are contrasted with the empty results of speculation about the hidden things of God's government. 7,8. Or, a path which the eagle knoweth not, and the eye of the culture hath not espied it. In the next clause, read "the fierce beasts," literally, "the sons of pride or fierceness." The mine is a path which none but man could discern. The ingenuity of man is thus contrasted with the instinctive sagacity of animals, the far-reaching and keen vision of the eagle and hawk, the strength and force of the lion. The astonishment and admiration excited by the natural powers of the brute creation are especially noticeable in the monuments of Egypt. Job shows how far more wonderful and admirable are the faculties of man. 9. The rock. The word so translated means "granite" or "quartz." Job evidently alludes to excavations in the granitic and porphyritic rocks; the expression, "putteth forth his hand," denotes the severe and continued exertions required to penetrate the rock. Overturneth. By fire. Pliny describes various processes of blasting. Cook.—The operation described here, seems to be the breaking in pieces and dislodging, in order to come at the ore, the hardest flint or marble; which are the roots—that is, the foundation of the mountain. Scott. 10. Channels. To drain the mine, a process of great labor and danger in the infancy of hydraulic science, yet familiar to the Egyptians from the earliest times. 11. Trickle not. The miner not only turns the course of subterranean rivers which he meets in his excavation, but prevents the least leakage, or "weeping," a picturesque and perhaps technical term. Forth to light. The last grand result, the hidden treasures are brought into the light for the use and glory of man. Cook.—The metal that was hid in the ore is refined from its dross and brought forth pure out of the furnace; and then he thinks his pains well bestowed. Go to the miners, then, thou sluggard in religion, consider their ways and be wise. Let their courage, diligence, and constancy in seeking the wealth that perisheth, shame us out of slothfulness and faint-heartedness in laboring for the true riches. H. 12-19. The precious ores and costly stones, though hidden, have a place where they may be found, and man knows how to reach it and bring that which is hid to light; but where can wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? It has no place, and is unattainable by man; it is not to be found in the land of the living, in the deep, nor in the sea. A. B. D.—Job points out that there is absolutely no relation between the results of human ingenuity and true wisdom, they are utterly incommensurable. Man may traverse the habitable earth, explore the depths of the ocean, sail over all seas, possess all that the diver, the miner has collected, and the merchant transported from India to Ethiopia, but he acquires nothing which he can exchange for wisdom. This is no mere truism. Wisdom and the acquisition of wealth are inseparable in the minds of most men; when that acquisition involves the discipline and development of high moral and intellectual faculties, it has a claim readily conceded to it by the leaders of human thought. Job, doubtless, taught a truth new and strange, and likely to be contested by many of his contemporaries. Cook. 13-14. The whole realm of nature is exhausted. Man can find every precious material thing, but wisdom eludes his sharpest scrutiny. The most difficult material labors he performs with ease. Neither height nor depth, neither land nor sea, perplex him. Only let him know where anything of value is, and he will find or make a way to it. The fertility of his invention respecting such matters is something marvellous. But it utterly fails when applied to the effort to ascertain the moral order of the world. Chambers. 15-19. As the preceding verses (1-14) expressed the idea that there was no "place" of wisdom where men could find it and from which they could bring it forth, these verses express the idea that it can be acquired by no price which men can offer for it. It is altogether unattainable. Vs. 20-22 declare this explicitly. A. B. D. 16. It is doubtful what gem is meant by that which we translate the onyx; the epithet precious, as Schultens remarks, gives a distinction to it, which the onyx, a sort of agate, does not merit. The Chaldee interpreter renders it beryls. The beryl of the ancients was a transparent gem of a sea-green color. The sapphire is of a beautiful sky blue. Some will have the Hebrew word to signify the ruby; others the carbuncle, which is a stone of the ruby kind, very rare, and of a rich, glowing blood color. Scott. 20-22. Whence then cometh wisdom. The declared failure of the quest through all the world suggests this inquiry. It is too precious to be foregone, and yet a search over the whole world and into its most secret recesses fails to discover it. Another realm, the unseen underworld, is next questioned, and Destruction (Abaddon, the Destroyer) and Death, the custodian of those dark domains, respond that they have heard of it, but only in unintelligible rumors—they cannot tell what it is nor where it may be found. Curry. 22. By a grand personification Job summons the abyss (Abaddon) and Death to bear witness. They have heard a rumor. Perhaps Job felt that some dim intimation of the great truth reached "the spirits of the departed even in their state of imperfect consciousness," but the thought is vague and dimly expressed. It may be that he simply means that the dead and the living are equally incapable of comprehending the wisdom of God. Cook.—The words "we have heard the report thereof" ascribe neither a less nor a greater knowledge of wisdom to Death than the living possess. Both are equally ignorant of it, and equally without it. As vs. 13, 14 told how wisdom was nowhere to be found in the upper world, so v. 22 states that it is not to be found in the underworld. The process of exhaustion is complete; wisdom is nowhere to be found; neither in the earth nor in the sea, neither in the land of the living nor in the place of the dead. 23-27. Wisdom in this passage, as in other parts of Scripture where it is spoken of, is properly the idea or conception lying behind or under the fixed order of the universe, the world-plan. This fixed order itself, with all its phenomena and occurrences, is nothing but God fulfilling Himself in many ways, but these ways may be reduced to one conception, and this is wisdom, which is thus conceived as a thing having an objective existence of its own. Naturally such an objective thing is apt to be personified, and may be "seen," "established," "searched out," and the like. In the same way the question may be put, Where is wisdom to be found? and the answer given that it can be found nowhere. This question and answer merely mean that man cannot attain to intellectual apprehension of the idea of the universe, nor understand the principle underlying the phenomena and events of the world and human life. This wisdom can nowhere be found either by man or by any creature (v. 21), only by the Creator. God knoweth the place of it and is in possession of it, for He is the maker and upholder of the universe with all its agencies. And He has assigned to man as his wisdom the fear of the Lord (v. 28). A. B. D. 23. As for wisdom, "God understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof." The seat of wisdom is, was, and ever has been, the bosom of God. It is He and He only before whose comprehensive gaze all worlds are spread out; the world of nature in all the richness of its variety, the world of providence in all the intricacies of its counsels, the world of grace in all the profoundness of its depths. The subtlest powers of nature are His creation, and under His control. The deep designs which regulate the administration of events are the offspring of His mind. The great works of grace, redemption, sanctification, glorification, are all the result of His immediate agency. E. M. G. 24. This does not mean merely that He is omniscient, but that, as Creator, He has universal oversight of the work of His hands. All sprang from Him, and is, therefore, under His inspection and control. This is illustrated by two examples set forth in vs. 25, 26. Chambers.—The winds and "waters" are examples taken to represent all of the agencies and forces of creation. These were and continue all weighed and measured, adjusted and directed by God. A. B. D. 25. In the still atmosphere there slumbers amazing power; it has a weight, or substantiality, by which it upholds the clouds or the waters; and there is in its movements a force which is appalling when in tempest it rushes hither and thither, distributing desolation and death. In that silent process by which the clouds are uplifted, there is put forth in a single year a weight or an amount of force that is almost incredible; it has been calculated by Arago as greater than the united strength of all the nations of the earth if put forth for twenty thousand years. W. Fraser. Nothing sensible is to us more unaccountable than the wind; but God gives it out by weight, wisely ordering both from what point it shall blow and with what strength. The waters of the sea and the rain waters He both weighs and measures; allotting the proportion of every tide and every shower A great and constant communication there is between clouds and seas, the waters above the firmament and those under it; vapors go up, rains come down, air is condensed into water, water rarefied into air; but the great God keeps an exact account of all the stock with which this trade is carried on for the public benefit, and sees that none of it be lost. Now if in these things Providence be so exact, how much more in dispensing frowns and favors, rewards and punishments to the children of men according to the rules of equity! H. 28. And unto man He said. This ordinance in regard to man is also considered contemporary with creation: then God saw and searched out wisdom, and at the same time, as suitable to man's place, He ordained for him his wisdom, which is the fear of the Lord and to depart from evil. The wisdom spoken of throughout the chapter is a possession of God alone; it is His who is Creator; man has a wisdom also, which is that of the creature, to fear the Lord. A. B. D. It is to be remarked that Job thus unconsciously sets the seal upon his own triumph. His character is described by God Himself (chap. 1) as "one that feareth God and departeth from evil." The Hebrew has the same word in both places. Cook. These are just what Job started with (chap. 1), but they have reached a significance far beyond what they had then. He has tested and maintained them through the fiercest fires of struggle and affliction; and not only has he proved them true, but he has defined as never before what it involves to fear God and shun evil—even all that Satan doubted of him. Further, that very integrity has been to Job for insight into the deeps of things; the faith that was born of his loyalty to what was holy and loving has indeed proved itself "understanding." This, then, is the highest expression of Job's vindication. Thus Job, the man perfect and upright, who feared God and shunned evil, has not only answered Satan's question, but solved for every man the problem of life. His solution is not new, nor does it contradict the wise precepts of the friends. And yet it is new; for it comes now with a whole world of fact and experience behind it, reporting that in the most searching trial this rule of life has stood the test. To fear God and shun evil is wisdom, in spite of the affliction that righteousness suffers, in spite of the prospered wickedness that is rampant in the world. And in the deepest sense, too, the solution does contradict, if not the friends' words, yet the friends' whole false attitude toward God; for with Job to fear God and shun evil is not to fear and shun appearances, or to trim the sails according to the way in which the breeze of God's favor seems for the time to set; it is to be true to the soul's ideal of the godlike in scorn of consequence. They say Job was impatient. If patience means holding one consistent mind through a hard experience, and if patience has her perfect work in believing and enduring, was he impatient? J. F. G. The fear of the Lord. Higher than all knowledge of natural things is that which has God Himself for its object, and which defines man's relations to Him. Everywhere in His self-manifestation God is teaching man what are his spiritual relations toward his Maker and Keeper; and the disposition of mind in which man must apprehend God is expressed by the word fear. The idea of the apprehension of danger, though not wholly wanting, is subordinated to higher and better sentiments, including faith and trust warmed and elevated into love and active devotion, with a corresponding repulsion from all moral evil. Curry.—The fear of the Lord is the spring and summary of all religion. There is a slavish fear of God springing from hard thoughts of Him, which is contrary to religion (Matt. 25:24). There is a selfish fear of God springing from dreadful thoughts of Him, which may be a good step toward religion (Acts 9:5). But there is a filial fear of God springing from great and high thoughts of Him, which is the life and soul of all religion. And wherever this reigns in the heart it will appear by a constant care to depart from evil (Prov. 16:6). This is essential to religion ; we must first cease to do evil or we shall never learn to do well. H. Instead of the solution of the problem of the universe, God has given to man what is far better, the guiding principle of life, the key to usefulness and happiness. " And unto man He said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; And to depart from evil is understanding." What a world of significance lies in these lines ! " The fear," not of the deist's God, not of the agnostic's force, not of any humanly invented Deity, but " of the Lord"—Jehovah, the eternal and self-existent One, who has made Himself known to men, not only by His works, but also by His Word, the revealed God of the Scriptures. For this Being man is to cherish fear, not terror, but reverence, the happy compound of submission and fear, such as is expressed in the address of the Lord's Prayer which unites the tenderness of a father with the majesty of one enthroned in heaven, or in the preface to the Decalogue, where we are taught to feel awe toward the Creator as Jehovah our God, and at the same time grateful love to Him as the one who brought us out of the house of bondage. This is religion, the bond which unites with the unseen and eternal, the principle which introduces the supernatural into the sphere of the natural, the mighty spiritual force which alone can supply the needs of the human soul. Properly understood, the fear of the Lord covers the whole sphere of human life, and takes in every relation that man can hold. And to depart from evil is understanding. The negative form of the statement is owing, doubtless, to the character of man as sinful and fallen. Prone as he is by nature and practice to follow that which is evil, naturally the precept to him takes the prohibitory form found in the Decalogue. To depart from evil, is to revolutionize a man's whole course and character. It takes in thought, word, and deed. It comprehends all relations—domestic, social, civil, and ecclesiastical. It extends from the dawn of conscious moral agency to the last expiring breath. Nor is it possible to depart from evil without in the very act following that which is good, and so fulfilling one's whole duty. Chambers. The world gives the name of wisdom to many higher and lower manifestations of intellectual foresight and practical sense, but Scripture sees in it nothing save one single law of life : " The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is understanding." Some one may say, Is any knowledge worth the attainment save the one knowledge which is wisdom ? The answer is, To the true Christian every school will be a school of Christ. On the ample leaf of knowledge, whether it be rich with the secrets of nature or with the spoils of time, we will read no name save the name of God. To seek for knowledge where it is possible is the clear duty of man ; to win it is the gift of God. Knowledge apart from wisdom is like a vestibule dissevered from its temple, but it may, on the other hand, be the worthy vestibule of that sacred shrine. Knowledge is a vain thing only when it is sought out of unworthy motives and applied to selfish ends ; but it becomes noble and glorious when it is desired solely for man's benefit and consecrated wholly to God's praise. Farrar. Our faith is more precious in His eyes than our knowledge. By being left unacquainted with the secrets of the Divine wisdom in some things, we are in the better position for glorifying His wisdom in all things. If we cannot see the reason of His doings we are yet enabled, from what we do know, to conclude that the Lord is holy in all His ways, and righteous in all His works ; and in this confidence can rest content, happy, waiting in the posture that best becomes a believer, and which honors Him more than any amount of knowledge of His high secrets which He could bestow upon us. We know the whole counsel of God concerning faith and repentance ; concerning eternal life, and the way into it ; concerning the whole mystery of Christ crucified. All this—all that concerns our salvation, has been made open and plain to us. Is not this enough ? Kitto. In the Book of Job mention is made of kings, princes, nobles, judges, merchants, warriors, travellers, and slaves. The pen of iron had begun to engrave inscriptions upon rocks : the mining shaft was sunk for gold and silver ; and palaces that had been built for kings and nobles had fallen into ruin. Astronomy had begun to acquaint men with the heavenly bodies, and many of the stars and constellations had received well-known names. Altogether, the state of civilization was highly advanced. The more closely we study those early times, the more erroneous appears the opinion, that man began his career as a savage, and gradually worked his way up to refinement and civilization. The reverse of this is nearer the truth. " God made man upright"—civilized and refined, as well as intelligent and holy ; but as man departed from God, he lost these early blessings. Sometimes a considerable degree of refinement has been reached by other paths; but by far the richest and best civilization is that which has come with true religion—with the pure knowledge and simple worship of the one true God. W. G. B. 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 secret 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 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. 11 For when the ear heard me, then it blessed me; And when the eye saw me, it gave witness unto me: 12 Because I delivered the poor that cried, The fatherless also, that had none to help him. 13 The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: Jon having declared fully the principles by which he is guided in his consideration of God's government, reverts to a pathetic description of his present misery contrasted with his former happiness. The style of the rest of his discourse differs somewhat from that of the preceding portions; while it is equally conspicuous for power, conciseness, beauty, and copiousness of illustration, it is clearer, and flows in a more equable and limpid current; it is as though the storm-clouds are broken, and things stand out in their true light and just proportions, now that the struggles of contending emo- And I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. 14. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: My justice was as a robe and a diadem. 15. I was eyes to the blind, And feet was I to the lame. 16. I was a father to the needy: And the cause of him that I knew not I searched out. 17. And I brake the jaws of the unrighteous, And plucked the prey out of his teeth. 18. Then I said, I shall die in my nest, And I shall multiply my days as the sand: 19. My root is spread out to the waters, And the dew lieth all night upon my branch: 20. My glory is fresh in me, And my bow is renewed in my hand. 21. Unto me men gave ear, and waited, And kept silence for my counsel. 22. After my words they spake not again; And my speech dropped upon them. 23. And they waited for me as for the rain; And they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain. 24. I laughed on them, when they had no confidence, And the light of my countenance they cast not down. 25. I chose out their way, and sat as chief, And dwelt as a king in the army, As one that comforteth the mourners. tions are passing away. Job does not, indeed, and cannot, comprehend the cause of his calamities, or reconcile them with what he could conjecture of the Almighty by whose hand they are inflicted; but he sees them as they are; the present and the past are before him; and though he cannot formally express a hope, for which he has no sure objective grounds, yet the tone of his pleading with God indicates a deep under-current of pious feeling, while the complete and exhaustive examination of a life which has been passed in the faithful discharge of duty and in abstinence from all forms of wilful sin, cannot but impart some comfort and suggest some hope, or at least some preparation for hope to a conscience singularly free from offence. Cook. Chaps. 29-31. Job takes a comprehensive survey of his mysterious history as a whole. First, looking back with pathetic regret upon his former days, when his children were about him and he was prosperous and honored among men (chap. 29); second, contrasting with this happier past his present abasement, the contempt in which he is held by the lowest of mankind, and the mysterious afflictions of God upon him (chap. 30); and third, protesting that this affliction had come upon him for no sin of which he had been guilty; and ending with the impassioned cry that God would make known to him the charge which He has against him (chap. 31). A. B. D. Chap. 29. In chap. 28 Job's thought of God's ineffable wisdom came from the contemplation of his own mysterious sufferings, bringing him to the grand conclusion, that it is man's wisdom to believe and adore when he cannot understand. This high train of thought carries him for a season out of and above himself. Such a pitch, however, cannot be sustained, and so he comes down again to his own sorrows, his ever smarting pains, and that leads to the contemplation of former happiness, which the same unsearchable wisdom had so bountifully bestowed upon him. This is far from being an unnatural transition, although it is emotional rather than logical. It may be said, too, that the descent, if we may call it such, is all the more pathetic, as thus succeeding a meditation so glorious and profound. T. Lewis. In this chapter we have a description of the life of a great chieftain, no mere sheikh of a nomad tribe, but the prince of a state in which civilization had made considerable progress, and laws were administered with intelligence and care. The points which he enumerates are important for their bearing on the date of the work; they belong to an early age, and are entirely free from allusions to habits or institutions of later origin, from aught that can remind us of Judah under the successors of David. Cook. A pathetic picture of Job's former prosperity and respect. The passage has these parts: First (vs. 2-10), a sorrowful review of the happiness of former days, in which the things that made up this happiness, now departed, are enumerated: God's keeping of him (v. 2), His light upon his path (v. 3), and His intimacy and protection over his tent (v. 4); the presence of his children about him (v. 5); the prosperity, almost more than natural, that flowed in upon him in ways unsought (v. 6); and above all the respect and reverence paid him by his fellow-citizens, as he sat in their council and went among them (vs. 7-10). This last is the great thought that fills the chapter and forms the contrast to the wretchedness and the contempt from the meanest of mankind which he now endures (chap. 30); second (vs. 11-17), the reason of this universal reverence of men for him—his benevolence and impartial justice; third (vs. 18-20), an almost involuntary reference to his calm and sure outlook into the future amid this universal respect; fourth (vs. 21-25), after which the great thought of the passage, his high place among men and the delight which his benevolent intercourse with them was to him, again rushes into his mind. A. B. D. 1. It would seem that when Job had brought his discourse to the point which forms the close of the last chapter, he again paused to see if any of the friends were disposed to speak. But as none answered, he proceeded; for at the beginning of this chapter we again meet with the unusual formula, "And Job again took up his parable." The interval may have been of some duration, during which he appears to have been musing deeply on his former prosperity and happiness, and on the contrast to it which his present condition offered. The influence of these thoughts is seen when he again speaks. His speech is full of lingering regrets over the pleasant memories of his past estate, of which he gives a most eloquent description, replete with natural touches of pathos and tenderness. It marks the character of the man, that so far from being alienated from loving sympathies with his kind by the miseries he had suffered and the injurious treatment to which he had been exposed, he looks back with peculiar pleasure upon the good which in better days his wealth and influence enabled him to accomplish. Kitto. 2-9. He refers it all to God as the author and upholder thereof. It was His light that shone upon him, and by which he walked through darkness. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him (Psalm 25:14), and this was upon Job's tabernacle. God showed him that in His covenant which is hidden from the men of the world, and revealed unto the children of light. There are some fine touches of pathos in this retrospective description of what he was when his children were about him, and he was surrounded by the homage and respect of all who knew him. The exuberance of his wealth is expressed under the figure of "the rock pouring out rivers of oil." In Syria and Arabia the olive abounds in rocky places. One of God's blessings on Jacob was, that "He made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock." We have here a most eloquent representation of the universal esteem in which Job was held—of the awe which his presence inspired among the young, and the reverence that was called forth from the aged. T. C. 2. Months of old. Job looks back to his lost happiness as to a thing long since passed away; it is lost in a mist of blinding sorrow. When God watched over me. Job never omits to refer all to God. It is the habit, or, as old logicians say, the form of his mind; it belongs to his inmost nature. Cook. That he had comfort in his God was the chief thing he rejoiced in in his prosperity, as the spring of it and the sweetness of it; that he had the favor of God and the tokens of that favor. He makes the same acknowledgment that David does (Psalm 30:7). Thou, by Thy favor, hast made my mountain stand strong. A gracious soul delights in God's smiles, not in the smiles of this world. 3. God's candle shined upon his head—that is, God lifted up the light of His countenance upon him, gave him the assurances and relishes of His love. Such abundant satisfaction did Job take in the Divine favor, that by the light of that he walked through darkness; that guided him in his doubts, comforted him in his griefs, bare him up under his burdens, and helped him through all his difficulties. Those that are interested in the favor 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 balance the grievances of this present time. 4. The secret of God was upon my tabernacle—that is, when God conversed freely with him, as one bosom friend with another. The secret of the Lord is said to be with them that fear Him, for He shows them that in His covenant which others see not (Psalm 25:14). God communicates His favor and grace to His people, and receives the returns of their devotion in a way secret to the world. H. 5. The blessed fellowship of Eloah, indicating familiarity, confiding, unreserved intercourse, ruled over his tent; the Almighty was still with him, protecting and blessing him; and his children were round about him. D. My children were about me. He must be made of hard stuff who hears not in these words the echo of a sigh. The sentiment is exquisitely tender. He could not bear to dwell upon it—nor need we do so; it is a most intelligible stroke of natural emotion. Kitto.—When our children are children we should really have them “about us.” When our children are about us we should consider, with Job, that we are prosperous. When our children are about us we should tend them very carefully, and train them up in the way they should go. 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. These lessons are taught in no other school so well. When our children are about us we should anticipate the time when, as in the case of the patriarch, they will all be away. Many a Job stands amid the relics of the past, looking back, and plaintively or thankfully recalling the days when the children were about him. Well, but look forward. Antedate the time. Anticipate the inevitable severance and work for the formation of the deeper, the immortal union. If you have wealth—heart property—in these children, as children, know it now; for the riches will “make to themselves wings, and flee away.” If you have nurture to give them, suitable to their tenderness, preparation for their strength, give it now; in a little while they will be too hard and strong in nature’s growth to take it. If there are lessons which the Master would have you learn of them while they are yet young, and which they cannot teach, nor you learn of them when they are older, then learn the lessons now, for soon the little faces will be seen no more at your table, the patter of the little feet heard no more in your rooms. A. Raleigh. 7. Job, a rich landowner, probably did not live in the city, but on his estate that adjoined it. He took part, however, in all the life of the city, and sat in the council that guided its affairs. The “gate” is spoken of as the place where the council or assembly of the town met. Such a “gate” is usually a building of considerable size, like an arcade, and hence it is spoken of here as an independent edifice by or beside the city. A. B. D.—Judgment was administered in the gate, the place of concourse, to which every man might have a free access; that every one who would might be a witness to all that was said and done; and that, when judgment was given against the guilty, others might hear and fear. H. 11-25. It was not his wealth alone which procured for him all this consideration; his goodness, more than his greatness, had to do with it. He was the object of a general and grateful benediction because of his kindness to the poor and those who were ready to perish. There was a moral reverence awarded to him, not for his humanity alone, but also for his justice—he sat on the seat of judgment, where he searched out the cause that was brought before him and redressed the wrongs of the injured. In the days of his affluence and high reputation it was not his worth only, but his wisdom that drew upon him the general confidence and respect of the community—men kept silence at his counsel, and after his words spake not again. And he not only spoke to them with the weight of an adviser, but with the authority of a king. He chose out their way and sat amongst them as a chief among his subjects—“and the light of his countenance they cast not down.” It was not undervalued as the familiarity is which breeds contempt; but his notice and smile conferred a felt distinction on those to whom he gave them. Altogether, he presents us with a striking picture of the elevation and glory to which God had raised him. T. C. 11-14. He valued himself by the care he took of those that were least able to help themselves—the poor and the needy, the widows and the fatherless, the blind and lame, who could not be supposed either to merit his favor or ever to be in a capacity to recompense it. He valued himself by the conscience he made of justice and equity in all his proceedings; his friends had unjustly censured him as an oppressor: “So far from that,” says he, “that I always made it my business to maintain and support right.” He devoted himself to the administration of justice. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me—that is, he had an habitual disposition to execute justice, and put on a fixed resolution to do it. H. 14. This beautiful figure is common in Hebrew and in Arabic poetry. The robes of state worn on such occasions by judges and chieftains were thus regarded as a symbol or representation of the clothing of righteousness; the man is lost in the judge; all private, selfish feelings are covered over, forgotten, and buried. The two clauses are no mere tautology. Job put on righteousness, that was his free act, and it in return clung to him, became at once a permanent habit and a glorious ornament. Diadem, i.e., the turban of costly shawls wound round the head: a primeval custom. Cook.—Job clothed himself with righteousness, so that as a man he was lost in the justice that clothed him; and justice clothed itself in him—he, on the other hand, was justice become a person. A. B. D. Where silence against false imputations may be interpreted a confession, there the protestation of a man's own innocency is ever just, and sometimes necessary. When others do us open wrong it is not vanity, but charity, to do ourselves open right; and whatsoever appearance of folly or vain boasting there is in so doing, they are chargeable with all that compel us thereunto, and not we. "I am become a fool in glorying," saith Paul, "ye have compelled me" (2 Cor. 12:11). It was neither pride nor passion in Job, but such a compulsion as this that made him so often in this book proclaim his own righteousness. Bishop Sanderson. 15,16. From speaking of rendering simply right and justice without respect of persons, Job next refers to acts of beneficence—to the blind, the lame, the needy, and the shrinking sufferers that avoid notoriety. To care for the stranger was reckoned an especial duty among the Orientals. Job, without specifically defending himself against Eliphaz's uncharitable and unjust imputations (chap. 22), answers them by appealing to the facts, which could not be denied. Instead of oppressing the needy and helpless, he had been their constant friend and benefactor. Curry. 16. The cause of him whom I knew not. Not merely the poor about him, to whom he might feel that he owed help, but even strangers who had a cause that needed unravelling he aided by his wisdom and justice. A. B. D. 17. The picture is that of hardened and heartless tyrants and oppressors (especially unrighteous judges seem to be here meant), who are compared to ravening beasts of prey, from whose teeth the prey must be rescued. The figure of breaking the jaw is forceful and well suited to the purpose of indicating the only proper method of dealing with such miscreants. Curry.—As an advocate Job won the cause; then as chief he enforces the sentence; he is advocate, judge, sheriff, and executioner; a necessary and effective combination of offices in an imperfectly organized community. Cook. 24. "I laughed on them, when they had no confidence, And the light of my countenance they cast not down." Job, with his broader insight and more capable counsel, smiled on those who were perplexed and despondent; what seemed insurmountable difficulty or threatened disaster to them, seemed to him a thing easy to overcome and nothing to create alarm; while, on the other hand, the despondency of others was never able to cloud the cheerfulness of his countenance, so full was his mind of resource. 25. A concluding picture of the joy which he had in the fellowship of men, and how they recognized his worth and set him as a king among them, and yet how he with his high advantages and great wealth felt toward them, being among them as one that comforteth the mourning. A. B. D. The Book of Job is among the oldest books in the world; and for this reason alone it would be of great value and interest for its pictures of primitive society in Arabia, and as a repository of early thought upon nature and the problems of life. The venerable patriarch, with his vast possessions, his large family, his numerous retinue, yet living in a grand simplicity, and more honored for his virtue than his wealth; the protector of the poor, the friend of the widow and the fatherless, the judge of the city, “unto whom men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at his counsel”—such a picture is unsurpassed by Homer for vivid beauty. J. P. T. 1. But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, Whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs of my flock. 2. Yea, the strength of their hands, whereto should it profit me? Men in whom ripe age is perished. 3. They are gaunt with want and famine; They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of wasteness and desolation. 4. They pluck salt-wort by the bushes; And the roots of the broom are their meat. 5. They are driven forth from the midst of men; They cry after them as after a thief. 6. In the clefts of the valleys must they dwell, In holes of the earth and of the rocks. 7. Among the bushes they bray; Under the nettles they are gathered together. 8. They are children of fools, yea, children of base men; They were scourged out of the land. 9. And now I am become their song, Yea, I am a byword unto them. 10. They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, And spare not to spit in my face. 11. For he hath loosed his cord, and afflicted me, And they have cast off the bridle before me. 12. Upon my right hand rise the rabble; They thrust aside my feet, And they cast up against me their ways of destruction. 13. They mar my path, They set forward my calamity, Eccn men that have no helper. 14. As through a wide breach they come: In the midst of the ruin they roll themselves upon me. 15. Terrors are turned upon me, They chase mine honour as the wind; And my welfare is passed away as a cloud. 16. And now my soul is poured out within me; Days of affliction have taken hold upon me. 17. In the night season my bones are pierced in me, And the pains that gnaw me take no rest. 18. By the great force of my disease is my garment disfigured: It bindeth me about as the collar of my coat. 19. He hath cast me into the mire, And I am become like dust and ashes. 20. I cry unto thee, and thou dost not answer me: I stand up, and thou lookest at me. 21. Thou art turned to be cruel to me: With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me. 22. Thou liftest me up to the wind, thou causest me to ride upon it; And thou dissolvest me in the storm. 23. For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, And to the house appointed for all living. 24. Surely against a ruinous heap he will not put forth his hand; Though it be in his destruction, one may utter a cry because of these things. 25. Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the needy? 26. When I looked for good, then evil came; And when I waited for light, there came darkness. 27. My bowels boil, and rest not; Days of affliction are come upon me. 28. I go mourning without the sun: I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help. THIS chapter forms a contrast to chap. 29; and, as in that picture of Job's past felicity the brightest part was the high respect he enjoyed among men—sitting as a prince in the midst of them—so in this, the darkest part is the contumely and indignity he suffers from the basest and most abject of mankind. Chap. 29 ended with a reference to his former high place among men, and the present chapter starts with the antithesis to this, the contempt in which the base-born races now hold him. The subjects touched upon in the chapter are the same as those in chap. 29, though they are pursued in the reverse order. A. B. D.—The two pictures, looked at in succession, show the changes to which the sufferer had been subjected, and of which he complained. Viewed in connection with the harsh judgments of his friends, the comparison becomes Job's apology for his impatience and the bitterness with which he arraigned God Himself. Curry. Job's last bitter outcry. Formerly a prince among nobles he is now despised by the vilest of men (vs. 1-10); insults are heaped on him simply because he is afflicted of God (vs. 11-14). The afflictions reach him on all sides, from within and from without; his soul is full of terrors and anguish, his body consumed and tortured, he is cast into the dust (vs. 15-19). The greatest of all miseries is that his prayers are still unheard, that God is cruel to him (vs. 20-22). So he despairs of life (vs. 23, 24); yet Job had ever been compassionate and pitiful (v. 25), and looked for good and light (26), but is now reduced to bitter and ceaseless lamentations (27-31). Cook. The section (vs. 1-14) appears to be a strong and spirited description of those villainous Arabs who, when Job was in his prosperity, had felt the severity of his justice and fled into the lurking-places of the desert. Upon the loss of his authority, these miscreants came to revenge themselves upon him by the most scurrilous abuse. In drawing their character he insists much on the misery of their habitation and way of living, as circumstances very expressive of the turpitude and barbarity of their manners. Scott. 11-15. Though no longer heated by the 29. I am a brother to jackals, And a companion to ostriches. 30 My skin is black, and falleth from me, And my bones are burned with heat 31 Therefore is my harp turned to mourning, And my pipe into the voice of them that weep. strife of the conflict with his would-be comforters, Job still persists in recognizing God as the cause of his sufferings. He has "loosed his cord"—has afflicted him, and given loose reins to his adversaries. The miscreants at whose hands he suffers the insults of which he complains are the instruments of a higher hand. Curry.—Job had been in such a way given over to be mocked by the most wretched, because God and the Divine powers which cause calamity had delivered him over to the same. For these are the principal subjects in vs. 11-14, not those miserable outcasts of human society just spoken of. Zöckler. 15. Schultens observes that it is usual with the Arabian writers to compare hopes and promises which are not fulfilled, to a cloud which raises expectation of a plentiful shower, but is presently dispersed by the wind. In the parched country of Arabia we may see the propriety and force of this comparison. Scott. 16,17. Job now returns to the contemplation of his own wretchedness—his very soul is "poured out"—a figure strikingly expressive of the weakening, dissolving influence of deep and long-continued sorrow. He has become the helpless and unresisting subject of long-continued afflictions which now thoroughly possess him. Curry. 18. Because the body is wasted away to a skeleton there is an end to the rich appearance and beautiful flow which the outer garments gain by the full and rounded forms of the limbs; it falls down straight, in perpendicular folds, upon the wasted body, and contributes in no small degree to make him whom one formerly saw in all the fulness of health still less recognizable. Bindeth 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, lying round his shrivelled figure like the other about a thin neck. D. 20. Job represents the Almighty as looking on calm and pitiless, when he stands holding out his hands in prayer. Cook—That God did not appear for him cut him to the heart more than anything else. He addressed himself to Him, but gained no grant; appealed to Him, but gained no sentence; he was very importunate in his applications, but in vain. "I cry unto Thee as one in earnest, I stand up and cry, as one waiting for an answer, but Thou hearest not, Thou regardest not, for anything I can perceive." If our most fervent prayers bring not in speedy and sensible returns, we must not think it strange. Though the seed of Jacob did never seek in vain, yet they have often thought that they did. H. 20-23. Here his feeling almost gets the mastery of the speaker, so that it is only with difficulty that he can restrain himself; the speaking of God changes into a direct address to Him. If after the first vain complaint he remains standing without getting calmer, if he waits therefore, then God resents it; yea, becomes a cruel, pursuing enemy, causes him, when he has been lifted up by violence to ride away and perish in the wind and storm, as if death had already seized him to carry him away. Ewald.—Job thus retains the conviction which he has all along expressed, that his sufferings will only end with death. The absolute abandonment of all earthly hope was the real condition of his trial. It was important that it should be recorded here, in his last discourse, immediately before his final vindication of his former life, and his determination under all circumstances to appeal to God Himself for judgment (31:35) and to hold fast to His righteousness. Cook. 23. Thou wilt bring me to death. It is a solemn thought that, more surely than that any one of us will lie down to sleep tonight or rise from sleep to-morrow, each one of us will have to pass through, separately and alone, that act of dying, and that state of death, of which there is no one to tell us either the nature or the consequences. No one comes back from death to enlighten us as to its essence; and if such a return were ordained for any, he could not make us understand; he could not put us, in imagination or in knowledge, in the place which each one must occupy some day by actual experience. Such a prospect is serious; only a fool can despise it. The fear of death is the natural feeling; and from that fear grows (the apostle says) bondage. But if Christ has taken away our guilt; has borne our sins and made an atonement for iniquity; has procured for us pardon from God, and love, and blessing, and eternal life; and this by His own obedience unto death; then the words are fulfilled which say that Christ is the Destroyer of Death by His death; by that death from which indeed He rose, but by that death wherein and whereby He bore and took away the sin of the world. C. J. V.—Death itself can do us no real prejudice; on the contrary, we have reason to welcome it as a friend, because, when it beats down these tenements of clay in which we are lodged, or rather imprisoned upon earth, it only opens a passage for us into a far more commodious and lasting habitation, where we shall possess the greatest riches, the highest honors, and the most transporting pleasures, without intermission and without end. R. Walker. 24. Job characterizes himself as a heap of ruins, and, appealing to the Almighty, argues that against such a thing one does not stretch out a hostile hand; neither does one derive advantage to himself from another's calamity. This sense fits into v. 25 very well—Job, so far from increasing misfortune which he saw, commiserated and helped it. A. B. D. 27. These expressions, in their literal meaning, describe the violent inward heat caused by his inflammatory disease. They may likewise include the ferment of his mind ever since his afflictions came upon him. Scott.—My bowels are made to boil is an expression of violent mental agitation and suffering. A phrase of the same meaning occurs in Lam. 1:20 and 2:11, translated in the common version, my bowels are troubled (properly, are made to boil). Similar expressions occur in other ancient languages. The figure is a natural one, founded on the physical agitation and pain experienced in seasons of great mental anguish. (See Jer. 31:20.) Conant. 31. This is Job's last sorrowful lament before the catastrophe. With what a delicate touch of the past is it that he makes this lament die away so melodiously. One hears the prolonged vibration of its elegiac strains. The festive, joyous music is hushed; the only tones are tones of sadness and lament—mesto, flebile, D. This long and painful enumeration of Job's miseries comes in the right place; after the declaration which shows the unshaken firmness of his convictions, and his deep sense of the absolute, though unsearchable wisdom of Him by whom he was afflicted; and before his last complete vindication of his integrity. The outer gloom goes on increasing to the very end of his trial; the exposure, shame, and ignominy, inward terrors, loathsome disease, unanswered prayer, certainty of near death, the nervous system wholly prostrate, all these in their combination give him not a momentary repose, and draw from his heart reluctant, but unrestrained complainings. Satan has had his will, he has reached within the skin; and though forbidden to take the life, he has done that which was sufficient to prove the result of a mortal trial, he has made Job feel that life was gone; but with all that he has not advanced one step toward real success; the deeper the sense of God's alienation the more earnest are Job's pleadings for a hearing; he holds fast his integrity, and far from renouncing God only seeks His presence. Cook. 1. I MADE a covenant with mine eyes; How then should I look upon a maid? 2. For what is the portion from God above, And the heritage from the Almighty on high? 3. Is it not calamity to the unrighteous, And disaster to the workers of iniquity? 4. Doth not he see my ways, And number all my steps? 5. If I have walked with vanity, And my foot hath hastened to deceit; 6 (Let me be weighed in an even balance, That God may know mine integrity;) 7. If my step hath turned out of the way, And mine heart walked after mine eyes, And if any spot hath cleaved to mine hands: 8. Then let me sow, and let another eat; Yea, let the produce of my field be rooted out. 9. If mine heart have been enticed unto a woman, And I have laid wait at my neighbour's door: 10. Then let my wife grind unto another, And let others bow down upon her. 11. For that were an heinous crime; Yea, it were an iniquity to be punished by the judges: 12. For it is a fire that consumeth unto Destruction, And would root out all mine increase. 13. If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, When they contended with me: 14. What then shall I do when God riseth up? And when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? 15. Did not he that made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb? 16. If I have withheld the poor from their desire, Or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail; 17. Or have eaten my morsel alone, And the fatherless hath not eaten thereof; 18 (Nay, from my youth he grew up with me as with a father, And her have I guided from my mother's womb;) 19. If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, Or that the needy had no covering; 20. If his loins have not blessed me, And if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; 21. If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, Because I saw my help in the gate: 22. Then let my shoulder fall from the shoulder blade, And mine arm be broken from the bone. 23. For calamity from God was a terror to me, And by reason of his excellency I could do nothing. 24. If I have made gold my hope, And have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; 25. If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, And because mine hand had gotten much; 26. If I beheld the sun when it shined, Or the moon walking in brightness; 27. And my heart hath been secretly enticed, And my mouth hath kissed my hand: 28. This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges: For I should have lied to God that is above. 29. If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, Or lifted up myself when evil found him; 30 (Yea, I suffered not my mouth to sin By asking his life with a curse;) 31. If the men of my tent said not, Who can find one that hath not been filled with his meat? 32. The stranger did not lodge in the street; But I opened my doors to the traveller; 33. If like Adam I covered my transgressions, By hiding mine iniquity in my bosom; 34 Because I feared the great multitude, And the contempt of families terrified me, So that I kept silence, and went not out of the door-- 35 Oh that I had one to hear me! (Lo, here is my signature, let the Almighty answer me;) And that I had the indictment which mine adversary hath written! 36 Surely I would carry it upon my shoulder; I would bind it unto me as a crown. 37. I would declare unto him the number of my steps; As a prince would I go near unto him. 38 If my land cry out against me, And the furrows thereof weep together; 39 If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: 40 Let thistles grow instead of wheat, And cockle instead of barley. The words of Job are ended. In picturesqueness and force this passage is remarkable. Virtues and vices breathe and move. Job does not mention chastity and lust by name; but declares that he has made a league with his eyes, as two persons enter into a covenant for some common end. He does not speak of benevolence; but of warming the poor man with the fleece of his lambs. Nor of superstition; but of kissing his hand to the moon. A complete system of ethics is presented in a series of pictures, each of which is simple and clear-cut. Gilbert. As Job is unable to discover any connection between these deepest afflictions and that well-founded hope of his earlier life save in the supposition of his personal sin, there is nothing left for him, in his present intensified longing for deliverance, except at the close to protest most solemnly his innocence. Ewald.—This chapter contains Job's last and strongest asseverations of righteousness, a kind of solemn testimony which is to be lifted up before God, to be seen and judged. J. F. G. Job concludes the whole series of discourses with a solemn protestation of his integrity in all relative duties. The points which he selects belong altogether to natural religion, or rather to religion as it was understood and practised by the patriarchs, without a single reference or allusion to the specific institutions of Israel. He dwells in succession upon inward purity and integrity (vs. 1-11); upon equity in dealing with dependants (vs. 13-15); upon compassion to the poor and destitute (vs. 16-23); upon freedom from covetousness, from the pride of wealth (vs. 24, 25), and from the earliest form of false religion (vs. 26-28), upon superiority to envious and malignant feelings (vs. 29, 30); upon liberality to neighbors and to strangers (vs. 31, 32); upon honesty in confession of transgressions; and winds up with a solemn call upon the Almighty to hear his protestation and to judge his cause, confident of a complete and triumphant vindication. A few words in conclusion, which may perhaps have been transposed by copyists, declare Job's integrity in his relations as a great landowner. Exceeding interest attaches to this chapter as containing a complete code of patriarchal morality. Cook. The chapter consists of a series of protestations on the one hand, accompanied on the other by curses on himself if these protestations of innocence are not true. Occasionally appeals are made to God to judge him; and in some instances the considerations are stated which weighed with him and restrained him from the sins of which he protests his innocence. In Job's present condition, when he now speaks some of these imprecations appear unsuitable. But we must consider that as he is reviewing his past life, his mind throws him back into the circumstances in which he was then living, and this brings before him the considerations and feelings which then weighed with him. The chapter falls into three sections: First (vs. 1-12), Job clears himself of all those secret sensual desires of the heart which seduce men into shameful conduct; second (vs. 13-23), he repudiates all abuse of his power in reference to those inferior in rank, and all selfish indifference to the sufferings and wants of the unfortunate; third (vs. 24-40), he clears himself of every secret feeling that would be accounted dishonorable, whether in regard to men or God. A. B. D. I. Job prescribed a law to his eyes. Of all the senses Job singles out the finest, that through which the approaches of sensuality are most subtle and dangerous. The declaration stands well-nigh alone in the Old Testament and anticipates the saying of our Lord in Matt. 5:28. Cook.—Here, in the middle of the Old Testament, without the pale of the Old Testament law, we meet with just that moral strictness and depth with which the Preacher on the mount opposes the spirit to the (mere) letter of the seventh commandment. D. The "eye," the lusts of which are frequently spoken of in Scripture, is the great inlet through which that which is without affects the heart and stirs evil desire. Job made a "covenant" or agreement with his eyes, that they should obey his mind, or act always in harmony with his higher self. A. B. D.—Those that would keep their hearts pure must guard their eyes, which are both the outlets and inlets of uncleanness. Hence we read of wanton eyes (Isa. 3:16), and eyes full of adultery (2 Pet. 2:14). The first sin began in the eye (Gen. 3:6). What we must not meddle with, we must not lust after; and what we must not lust after, we must not look at; not the forbidden wealth (Prov. 23:5), not the forbidden wine (Prov. 23:31), not the forbidden woman (Matt. 5:28). H.—That sin may be avoided, we must avoid whatever leads to or occasions it. He that feareth burning must take heed of playing with fire. He that feareth drowning must keep out of deep water. He that feareth the plague must not go into an infected house. They do not avoid sin who present themselves to the opportunities of it. Caryl. 2. Uncleanness is a sin that forfeits all good and shuts us out from the hope of it. What portion of God is there from above? What blessing can impure sinners expect from the pure and holy God, or what token of His favor? 4. He not only sees, but takes notice; He counts all my steps, all my false steps in the way of duty, all my by steps into the way of sin. He not only sees our ways, but takes cognizance of our particular steps in these ways—every action, every motion. He keeps count of all because He will call us to account, will bring every work into judgment. God takes a more exact notice of us than we do of ourselves; for who ever counted his own steps? Yet God counts them; let us therefore walk circumspectly. H. How inexpressibly great is that Being who penetrates at once the recesses and circumscribes within Himself the boundless ranges of creation; who pierces into the profound meditations of the most sublime intelligence above with the same ease that He discerns the wayward projects of the child; who knows equally the abortive imaginations and the wisest plans of every creature that ever has thought or ever will think throughout the realms of intellect! How wonderful that wisdom which conducts at the same moment the innumerable purposes of all His creatures, and whose own grand purpose is equally accomplished by the failure or success of all the plans of all His creatures! Buckminster. See how God occupies Himself in our affairs! He informs Himself as to them all, and is not content till He has carried a searching gaze into every nook and corner of our history, and into the smallest particulars of our lives. He takes possession of all our secrets, uncovers all our hiding-places, insists on going with our feet, and even with our thoughts and feelings, on all their most private expeditions. He insists, too, on having an opinion on what He sees—making free to condemn or approve according to His finding of the facts. He will not only go with us wherever we go, and stay with us wherever we stay, bending on us an eye that never sleeps; but He will, at every turn and in all companies, give us His advice, whether we ask it or not, whether we are willing to have it or not. Unasked, undesired, repulsed, it may be, He still takes it upon Him to teach and discipline us, not incidentally and occasionally, but in a set system of education—rebuking, commanding, threatening, chastising even, as He sees occasion. He takes our hand and draws us hither and thither. Now He beckons us, and now he scourges us toward certain paths. He makes free with our property, our friends, our pleasures—to increase or lessen them, as He sees fit. In our plans and enterprises (all of them, whether great or small) He will have something to do, as well as something to say, either helping us or hindering us in His high independence. He especially busies Himself with our sins and virtues. He keeps a minute account of all our affairs, and has given out that He will one day bring us into formal judgment as to every work and every secret thing, whether it be good or evil—punishing and rewarding on the boundless field of an everlasting life; and doubtless He will be as good as His word. It is hard to see how God could busy Himself in our affairs more than He actually does, according to the Scriptures. Burr. When we consider that He knows our actions whereof there are multitudes, and our thoughts whereof there are millions; that He views all the blessings bestowed upon us; all the injuries we have returned to Him; that He exactly knows His own bounty and our ingratitude; all the idolatry, blasphemy, and secret enmity in every man's heart against Him; all unjust oppressions, hidden lusts, omissions of necessary duties, violations of plain precepts, every foolish imagination, with all the circumstances of them, and that perfectly in all their full anatomy, every mite of unworthiness and wickedness in every circumstance, should not the consideration of this melt our hearts into humiliation before Him, and make us earnest in seeking pardon and forgiveness of Him? Charnock. 5-9. Job appeals to God, and imprecates a vengeance upon himself—if he have ever walked in the ways of that vanity, from which he habitually turned his eyes, or if he have given way to deceitful lusts, or if he have walked after the desire of his eyes, or incurred the guilt whether of covetousness or rapacity. The two sins of incontinency and avarice seem blended together, as in other parts of Scripture; but the evils of licentiousness and God's displeasure against it are most prominently brought out in this passage. T. C. 6. Let me be weighed, or, let Him weigh me in a balance of righteousness; the reference is to the day of final account, when all actions and thoughts will be weighed and requited according to the absolute law of righteousness. That God may know. Rather, and God will know my integrity. Job's one longing is for full searching inquiry, which must issue in his vindication. Cook. 8-10. Job is so conscious of his own innocence that he is willing it should be put to the utmost proof; and if found guilty, that he should be exposed to the most distressing and humiliating punishment; even to that of being deprived of his goods, bereaved of his children, his wife made a slave, and subjected to all indignities in that state. A. Clarke.—Grinding was the representative occupation of the female slave, hence chosen as the mark that his wife is domiciled and degraded in another house. J. F. G. 12. It is a fire. Lust is a fire in the soul; they that indulge it are said to burn. It consumes all that is good there, and lays the conscience waste. It kindles the fire of God's wrath, which, if not extinguished by the blood of Christ, will consume even to eternal destruction. It consumes the body, it consumes the substance, it roots out all the increase. Burning lusts bring burning judgments. Perhaps it alludes to the burning of Sodom, which was intended for an example to those who should afterward live ungodly. H. 13-23. Job repudiates all misuse of the power which his rank gave him, denying that he treated contemptuously his servants when they had a cause against him (vs. 13-15); that he was indifferent to the wants of the unprotected, or refused to bestow on them of his own bread and raiment (vs. 16-20); that he violently wronged any, even though he could have secured a judgment favorable to him before the tribunal (v. 21); after which follows the imprecation (vs. 22, 23). A. B. D. 13. In ancient times slaves had no action at law against their owners, who might dispose of them as they did of their cattle or any other property. The slave might complain, and the owner might hear him if he pleased, but he was not compelled to do so. Job states that, far from preventing their case from being heard, he was ready to permit them to complain even against himself if they had a cause of complaint, and to give them all the benefit of the law. A. Clarke. 15. When he was tempted to be harsh with his servants, to deny them right and turn a deaf ear to their reasonings, this thought came very seasonably into his mind, "Did not He that made me in the womb make him? I am a creature as well as he, and my being is derived and depending as well as his. Whatever difference there is among men in their outward condition, in their capacity of mind, or strength of body, or place in the world, He that made the one made the other also; which is a good reason why we should not mock at men's natural infirmities, nor trample upon those that are any way our inferiors, but in everything do as we would be done by. H. 16-22. Job's protestation of his just and merciful treatment of the poor and helpless whom he had seen about him. The poor were cared for, the widow was cheered, the fatherless had been fed from his own table; he had clothed the naked, and defended the orphan in the gate. Job well knew that God cared for all these, and because he feared to offend Him he was ready to care for them also. There seems to be here a reference to the charges brought against him by Eliphaz (22: 6-9), and his circumstantial enumeration of the same particulars, with solemn asseverations enforced with imprecations, might seem to intimate that the charges had deeply grieved him. Curry.—Such was Job's "religion pure and undefiled," who "visited" the orphan and "widow in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world;" no wonder, then, that it was accepted before "God, even the Father." This surely is Gospel faith; and the Apostle James, in his excellent practical epistle, seems to allude particularly to the case of Job, whose "patience" he expressly celebrates in the following marked passages: chaps. 1: 4; 5: 11. Hales. Only when we feel a thorough compassion for ourselves, have recognized in ourselves in what the misery properly consists, the dark secret of life (or, as people say, “where the shoe pinches us”), only then can we feel a thorough compassion with others. But, on the other hand, only when we have a thorough compassion for the need of others, with the misery of humanity, when we in entire self-forgetfulness can give ourselves to the need of strangers, can take up into our heart all the woe of humanity, can our compassion with ourselves also in the same manner be purified from false egotism and small narrow-mindedness, and gain a truly higher and spiritual character. While we feel ourselves as individuals, we are likewise to feel ourselves members of the body of the entire community; we are also to be capable of suffering for others, for the whole, and keep alive in us the feeling that the individual has to seek and find his comfort even in that which has been given for comfort to all the world. Martensen.—It is positively injurious to be ever picturing to ourselves the woes of our fellow-men unless we endeavor to relieve them. Every time our compassion is stirred and no action is taken our hearts are hardened and our religion impaired. Anon. In that most pathetic and wonderful incident (John 13:12-17) Jesus sets forth the law for all His followers. That law is that dignity binds to service. If we are Christ's, we must stoop to serve, and serve to cleanse. The noblest form of help is to help men to get rid of their sin. The highest glory of powers and gifts is to humble one's self for the lowest, and to be ready to be a slave, if we may wash any stained soul or bind any bleeding feet. Only they are truly blessed who have no principles which do not regulate conduct, and no conduct which is not regulated by principle. The one principle which can shape all life into blessedness is, Do as Jesus has done for you. Stoop that you may serve, and let your service be cleansing. A. M. 21. Men in power should not satisfy themselves with what will pass among or be countenanced by men, but consider what is right in itself, what is right in the sight of God, and that they are in the sight of God. A bad business may pass very well among men, and we may have advocates who will answer for us and stop the mouths of all gainsayers; but can they stop the mouth of conscience? Can they blind the eyes of God or impose upon Him? God is the Judge of all the earth, and He will at last sit in judgment upon all the judges of the earth. Caryl. 23. To all these forms of the abuse of power there is a completely corresponding punishment, which Job wishes, with deliberation, to be so terrible—not from thoughtlessness, but really trembling at the Divine punishment, and knowing that all human power shrinks to nothing before the Divine majesty. Ewald. 24-34. Repudiation of another class of secret sins, that would have dishonored him: secret joy in the possession of wealth—that love of gain which is idolatry (Col. 3:5) (vs. 24, 25); a momentary impulse to salute the rising sun or the moon in her splendor, and thus be false to the true spiritual God on high (vs. 26-28); secret joy of heart at the misfortune of his enemy (vs. 29, 30); narrowness of soul and niggardliness (vs. 31, 32); and finally, hypocrisy (vs. 33, 34). A. B. D. 24. If I have made gold my hope. A repudiation of covetousness. Job had wealth, but he did not rejoice in it as his chief or ultimate good. He knew how to use it as not abusing it by overvaluation. The sin of covetousness belongs to all times, and it affects alike the rich and the poor. Curry. 25. If I rejoiced. A very remarkable saying, one which goes far beyond any recorded of early saints. Cook.—He took no pride in his wealth, as if it added anything to his real excellency, nor did he think that his might and the power of his hand got it him. He took no pleasure in it; in comparison with the spiritual things which were the delight of his soul. His joy did not terminate in the gift, but passed through it to the Giver. H. 26-28. If when I have beheld Thy glorious creatures, the sun and the moon, I have given way to any idolatrous conceits and have ascribed Divine honor unto them, as my heathen neighbors do; this were indeed a heinous and capital wickedness. Bishop H.—The only species of idolatry noticed in this book is Zabianism, or the worship of the heavenly bodies, which is the earliest on record, and an additional proof of the high antiquity of the composition; especially as it is noticed with abhorrence as a novelty deserving judicial punishment. We learn from Sir William Jones, that the people of Arabia very soon fell into the common but fatal error of adoring the sun and the firmament, the planets and fixed stars. Hales. 28. Job notices no other form of idolatry. Image worship, the adoration of Baal, Astarte, or of deities known in very early times to the Israelites, may or may not have been known to him, but it evidently did not come in his way; none of his friends allude to the possibility of his having been guilty of it; the only thing which he does conceive as possible, is that he may have been secretly moved by the glory of the two great lights to see in them deities or visible representation of the Deity. Kissing the hand as a token of admiration and worship was an early and common practice in Syria. Cook. 29,30. He protests that he was so far from doing or designing mischief to any, that he neither desired nor delighted in the hurt of the worst enemy he had. He did not so much as wish in his own mind that evil might befall him. He never wished a curse to his soul (curses to the soul are the worst of curses); never desired his death; he knew that if he did it would turn into sin to him. 32. He protests that he had never been unkind or inhospitable to strangers. He that is at home must consider those that are from home, and put his soul into their soul's stead, and then do as he would be done by. Hospitality is a Christian duty (1 Pet. 4:9). Job in his prosperity was noted for good housekeeping. He opened his door to the road; so it may be read; he kept the street door open, that he might see who passed by, and he invited them in, as Abraham (Gen. 18:1) 33. Zophar insinuated (20:12) that he hid his iniquity under his tongue. "No," says Job, "I never did, I never covered my transgression as Adam, never palliated a sin with frivolous excuses, nor ever hid my iniquity in my bosom, as a darling that I could by no means part with, or as stolen goods which I dreaded the discovery of." It is natural to us to cover our sins; we have it from our first parents; we are loath to confess our faults, willing to extenuate them, and make the best of ourselves, to devolve the blame upon others, as Adam on his wife, not without a tacit reflection upon God Himself. But he that thus covers his sins shall not prosper (Prov. 28:15). H.—Here is an explicit admission that he was not free from sin, which, had it been concealed, would have been iniquity; but, laid bare by honest confession, (it) lost that character and deserved pardon. Cook 34. He valued not the clamors of the mob, feared not a great multitude, nor did he value the menaces of the mighty; the contempt of families never terrified him. He was not deterred by the number or quality, the scorns or insults of the injurious from doing justice to the injured. He scorned to be swayed by any such considerations, nor ever suffered a righteous cause to be run down by a high hand. He feared the great God, not the great multitude, and His curse not the contempt of families. H. 35,36. Job repudiates all hypocritical conduct or secret transgression. This was the charge his friends made against him. And this consciousness of purity of heart, struggling with false accusations of hypocrisy, forces from him a new appeal to God to make known to him the sins laid to his charge. The verses are closely connected with vs. 33, 34. A. B. D. The most probable rendering of these two verses, of which the general sense is clear, may be as follows: Oh, that I had one who would hear me! Lo, here is my signature! May the Almighty answer me! Oh, that I had the book which my adversary had written; surely I would take it on my shoulder, and bind it as diadems upon me. It may thus be paraphrased. Would that there were one who would hearken to my pleading; here is my own statement fully drawn out and attested by my own formal signature; surely the Almighty, the righteous Judge, will not leave that statement unanswered. As for the writing which my adversary would be bound to produce in court, my one wish is that I had it; far from fearing shame, from dreading conviction, I would take it and lay it on my shoulders as a badge of honor (see Isa. 9:6; 22:22), or bear it as a crown upon my head. Two documents would be required in a full and formal investigation—the accuser's statement, drawn out previously and read in open court, and the answer of the accused with his signature. Cook.—The middle clause consists of two exclamations which force themselves in between the two parts of the wish which he expresses. By the first, behold my signature, Job means to say that he affixes his signature to all the protestations of his innocence just made in the preceding verses of the chapter, and attests them as his plea on his side. By the other, let the Almighty answer me, he challenges God, his accuser, to put in His plea in answer to his own. The language is evidently taken from the judicial practice of the time, according to which both charge and defence were laid before the court in writing. A. B. D. Near unto Him. That is the crown of all, nearness to God. This appears, beyond all doubt, to be the close of Job's speech; it brings all that has been said to an absolute conclusion—every possible charge has been disposed of; Job's integrity stands clear, and he presents himself before God for judgment. 38-40. These verses are evidently misplaced, but they deal with a very necessary point for Job's vindication, for he had been distinctly charged with abuse of his power as owner of lands. If my land cry out against me—that is, if it disown me as rightful possessor, if a single furrow of it has been acquired by injustice—a fine figure not unknown to Hebrew or classical poetry, and here standing just in its right place. Cook.—The estate he had he both got and used honestly, so that his land could not cry out against him, nor the furrows thereof complain (v. 38), as they do against those who get the possession of them by fraud and extortion (Hab. 2: 9-11). Two things he could say safely concerning his estate, that he never ate the fruits of it without money (v. 39). What he purchased he paid for, as Abraham for the land he bought (Gen. 23: 16), and David (2 Sam. 24: 24). The laborers that he employed had their wages duly paid them, and if he made use of the fruits of those lands that he let out, he paid his tenants for them or allowed it in their rent. That he never caused the owners thereof to lose their life; never got an estate, as Ahab got Naboth's vineyard, killing the heir and seizing the inheritance; never starved those that held lands of him, nor killed them with hard bargains and hard usage. No tenant, no workman, no servant he had could complain of him. H. The closing sentence, The words of Job are ended, have all the appearance of an editorial note, a finis, not unlike that found at the end of Psalm 72, and also at the beginning of the song of Hezekiah (Isa. 38: 9). It is, however, very old, being found in the LXX. Curry. Here is an amazing instance and example of a very great prince, who, when he had no superior to control him, gave such instances of his chastity, temperance, justice, charity, compassion, devotion, as few of his quality have imitated, worthy as they are all of imitation. Bishop Wilson.—Job's attitude has been emphasized at every step—supreme longing for the restoration of God's presence. "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" has been the constant burden of his cry; and beginning with his despairing wish for a Daysman, his creative faith has kept on until he knew that somewhere beyond this life he would see God as his friend. The whole determination of his life is toward God. J. F. G. Here ends the controversy between Job and his friends. The grand question in debate between them was, Whether Job was a sinner and a hypocrite or not. Both parties draw their arguments from the providence of God, which they both agreed could not act wrong. The friends represent his extraordinary calamities as a visible judgment on him for his sins; and because he had none that were public and notorious, they at first insinuate and afterward plainly assert that he must needs have been guilty of some secret bosom sin, and that of the deepest dye, that could subject him to such extreme misery; for that God never afflicts in so remarkable a manner but for sins of great magnitude. For which they appeal to experience: "Recollect, I pray thee," says Eliphaz, "what innocent person ever perished? and when were the righteous cut off?" (4: 7.) "Behold," says Bildad, "God will not cast off the perfect man, neither will He help the evil-doers" (8: 20), and Zophar tells him bluntly, "Know therefore, that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth!" (11: 6.) Job, on the other hand, defends himself by setting before them another view of providence. He denies an exact retributive justice in this life, arguing from the general course of it; whereas they argued chiefly from extraordinary exceptions; they had seen a good man sometimes remarkably delivered, and oftentimes a wicked man remarkably punished. But he bids them reflect how many they had known who were notoriously wicked, and had nevertheless prospered a long time, and no extraordinary calamity befell them in the course of their lives nor in their deaths. And though it was not so easy to discern who were really good (a bad inside being often covered by a good outside), yet he bids them consider what ravages were sometimes made either by the pestilence or the sword; and they must needs be convinced that many good men must unavoidably suffer with the bad in such great and general devastations. So that no certain conclusion could be drawn of men's being either good or bad from what they enjoyed or what they suffered in this world. And, therefore, it was rash and even wicked in them to charge him with heinous sins, without any apparent foundation besides the greatness of his sufferings. This is evidently the way of reasoning on both sides; and the leading object for Job's repeated wishes for an immediate trial before God with his accusers; and when that failed, his hope of a future resurrection at the day of judgment was, by such a solemn appeal, to convince them if possible of his innocence. Peters, Hales. Light falls on the question started by Satan at the beginning, "Doth Job fear God for nought?" It is fully proved that his piety was not mercenary or selfish, but deep-seated in his heart. At the same time, we have a most skilful delineation of the influence produced in course of the controversy on the mind of the afflicted patriarch himself, exposed as he was to the danger of defying heaven, and casting off all religious reverence and belief; but softened at times and subdued, as with the dropping of a gentle dew from above on his heart, and, with a strange mingling of audacity and plaintiveness of spirit, turning away from his fellow-men to his God. D. F. In the vehemence of his opposition to his friends and in the intensity of his inward struggles Job has been betrayed into expressions which cannot be approved, in which he seems to arraign the equity of the Divine administration. Great consideration is requisite in judging of these expressions and in estimating their real meaning. Allowance must be made for the circumstances in which they were uttered. Words wrung from him in the bitterness of his heart and in the tumult of his feelings, under the terrible pressure of his sorrows and the exasperating treatment of his friends, are not to be regarded as though they had been spoken in calmer moments. But if Job had gone no further astray than this, that in his desperation and intolerable distress he had occasionally let slip what he subsequently regretted, and what did not express his real state of mind, no correction might have been deemed necessary. The fact, however, is that Job was involved in an irreconcilable conflict with himself. His most intimate and ineradicable convictions were seemingly at hopeless variance. On the one side was the consciousness of his own integrity, which was dearer to him than his life, which he could not deny nor part with, and which he was prepared to assert at all hazards. He knew from the testimony of his own conscience that he was not a gross and wicked offender; and he made his confident appeal to the Searcher of hearts for the uprightness of his past life. But how, then, can he maintain his confidence in the justice and rectitude of God in His providential government? A God who lets the wicked triumph and who afflicts the just, how can He be a righteous and a holy God? Job cannot put these two things together, though he holds them both and will not abandon either. And yet, in the honest frankness of his soul, he does not and cannot shut his eyes to the fact that they do seem to him to clash. And, as in the guilelessness of his nature he makes no concealment, what he feels he says. His controversy with God's providence is not limited, therefore, to a few passionate outbursts, which in moments of reflection he would gladly recall. But it is forced upon him by an inward necessity which he cannot escape. He has justified his own integrity against the suspicions and accusations of his friends. But how is the righteousness of God to be vindicated? This is the problem. His friends can throw no light upon it, and he is as much in the dark as they. He still holds, indeed, with an unslackened grasp his confidence in God's righteousness, and he will not let it go. In his struggle to retain this great essential truth he had fought his way through to that grand burst of triumphant trust in God, in which he utters his faith in the unseen without a particle of misgiving, though flatly contradictory to outward sense: "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and that the Divine rectitude now so mysteriously hidden shall yet appear, and though He suffers me to perish in this world, He shall vindicate me in the next. But even this noble utterance leaves the black clouds of the present undispersed. The righteousness of God shall shine forth radiantly hereafter, but why is it so strangely obscured now? This Job cannot answer; and, though his trust abides in God's ultimate justice, it is, after all, a trust in a God who has hidden Himself. W. H. G. 1. So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. 2. Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram: against Job was his wrath kindled, because he justified himself rather than God. 3. Also against his three friends was his wrath kindled, because they had found no answer, 4 and yet had condemned Job. Now Elihu had waited to speak unto Job, because they 5 were elder than he. And when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his wrath was kindled. 6. And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said, I am young, and ye are very old; Wherefore I held back, and durst not shew you mine opinion. 7. I said, Days should speak, And multitude of years should teach wisdom. 8. But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding. 9. It is not the great that are wise, Nor the aged that understand judgment. 10. Therefore I said, Hearken to me; I also will shew mine opinion. 11. Behold, I waited for your words, I listened for your reasons, Whilst ye searched out what to say. 12. Yea, I attended unto you, And, behold, there was none that convinced Job, Or that answered his words, among you. 13. Beware lest ye say, We have found wisdom; God may vanquish him, not man: 14. For he hath not directed his words against me; THE debate between Job and the three friends closed with chap. 27, when Job had completed his response to Bildad's brief words in chap. 25. After that came (chap. 28) the interjected discourse on wisdom, and then Job's monologue, in three parts: A reminiscence of his former happy estate (chap. 29); a lament for his present misery (chap. 30); and a protestation, with imprecations, of his own uprightness (chap. 31). Job now ceased to speak, and at this point a new character is introduced. This person was "Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram." It is remarkable that this is the only one of the parties whose genealogy is fully given. We can gather little more from it than that Elihu belonged to a branch of the family of Abraham. His brother Nahor had two sons, Uz and Buz. Job, it would seem, was descended from the former, and Elihu appears to be descended from the latter; and the circumstance of his being of the family of Buz was doubtless thus pointedly mentioned by the sacred writer to draw respectful attention to him, notwithstanding his youth, on account of his relationship to Abraham. He assumes the office of umpire in no unbecoming spirit, and decides the question between the disputants justly and well; the best proof of which is found in the fact, that his tone of argument and his virtual decision are in all essential respects the same which the Voice from the whirlwind afterward declares. He also is exempted from the censures passed upon the arguments of the three friends, nor is Neither will I answer him with your speeches. 15. They are amazed, they answer no more: They have not a word to say. 16. And shall I wait, because they speak not, Because they stand still, and answer no more? 17. I also will answer my part, I also will shew mine opinion. 18. For I am full of words; The spirit within me constraineth me. 19. Behold, my breast is as wine which hath no vent; Like new bottles it is ready to burst. 20. I will speak, that I may be refreshed; I will open my lips and answer. 21. Let me not, I pray you, respect any man's person; Neither will I give flattering titles unto any man. 22. For I know not to give flattering titles; Else would my Maker soon take me away. Job required to offer an expiatory offering on his account. These are manifest though tacit tokens of approval upon the reasonings and the decision of the son of Barachel. Kitto Chaps. 32-37 contain the discourse of Elihu, a new interlocutor. The actual position of the disputants was unsatisfactory. Job had not only maintained his piety and integrity, but had imputed to God unrighteousness in His dealings; his opponents, on the other hand, had first insinuated and then openly declared that his calamities were a necessary and just punishment for wickedness, which they assumed, but were unable to prove. They had broken the law of charity, Job had trenched upon the reverence due to God. One point was common both to Job and his adversaries, they looked upon his afflictions as indications and results of God's wrath. At this crisis Elihu comes in; he has a different theory to propose. The Divine chastisements have a loving purpose. They are intended to awaken a man's conscience, and to save him from destruction, they make him feel the want of a mediator, and prepare him for spiritual ministrations, which, if received in humility, give him right views of God's righteousness, bring him into a state of reconciliation, restore him his righteousness, and save him "from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living." From this general principle Elihu proceeds, in chap. 34, to prove that it is impossible, from the very nature of things, that God, the supreme Almighty Ruler, should be unjust, and that such imputations as those which Job had advanced involve very serious guilt; instead of humility his afflictions had but taught him pride; hence the silence of God; had Job prayed he would have been heard, but he had spoken in vain, and multiplied words without a true knowledge of God's purposes. Job's only right course is to listen to God's teaching and to magnify His work, for His Being is unsearchable, and man's wisdom is but foolishness in His sight. The general structure of the discourse is thus tolerably clear, but it is exceedingly obscure in details. Cook. As Oehler so well said, Elihu is indignant with Job, "because he could only justify himself by accusing God; and indignant with the friends, because they could only justify God by accusing Job." The four discourses are the development of two great thoughts. First, what the friends ought to have said to Job, and what Job ought to have remembered, is that there are pains which, without being a retribution for any actual faults, are fitted for purifying man from the seeds of sin contained in his heart and to save him from falls to which he might be exposed. The second thought is: Even if we do not arrive at understanding the ways of God, He shows Himself too great and too wise in all nature to allow us to entertain a doubt of His perfection. God is not a mere "satrap," tempted to abuse a power only lent Him for a time. He is the Sovereign; and we may therefore depend upon His justice. To accept suffering as a purifying ordeal or as a preventive warning, in which conscience cannot recognize a punishment, and to submit entirely, looking to God with the docility of faith—even to such as we can in no degree understand either as punishment or as trial—this is the whole wisdom of Elihu. It is slightly commonplace, it may be said; but its originality consists in the contrast between it and the spurious wisdom of the friends and the rash language of Job. It is not the complete explanation of the mystery—Elihu knows nothing of the scene in the prologue—but until the veil is lifted, this is and remains the true wisdom. Accordingly Job does not answer. He does not yet confess himself defeated; but he no longer argues. It is the beginning of his complete submission. The authenticity of the speeches of Elihu has been strongly attacked. Are they then missing in any manuscripts? No. There is no mention of this fourth friend, it is alleged, either in the prologue or epilogue. His appearance upon the scene and his speeches are, therefore, it is said, a later interpolation. But this argument is weak. Elihu is not a fourth friend. It is expressly said that "his wrath was kindled against Job and against his three friends." As to the silence on the subject of Elihu in the epilogue, that is natural. He can neither be praised as having solved the problem nor blamed as having spoken wrongly. He has said nothing but the truth, though not the whole truth. Godet. Elihu is not spoken of in the beginning of the book, when the arrival of the three friends is mentioned, because there was no occasion for speaking of him then. He only engages in the dispute because the three friends have failed to find a satisfactory answer to Job; and to refer to him in the outset would have been to anticipate their incapacity to deal with the subject before they had made the attempt. Job does not make answer to Elihu as he had done to the friends, because he is convinced of the truth of what he says, and he has therefore nothing to reply. The Lord makes no allusion to Elihu, when He subsequently expresses His approval of Job and passes censure on his friends, because he was not one of the parties to the strife which was to be adjusted. W. H. G. The Elihu section theologically enriches the Old Testament with a monument of a truly Christian consciousness of sin. It expresses in Old Testament language the great truth announced by Paul, "When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world" (1 Cor. 11:32). Cheyne. Chapter 32 contains three parts: First (v. 1). The reason why Job's three friends refrained from speaking further—they failed to make any impression on Job: he was right in his own eyes. Second (vs. 2-5). The Author in his own words introduces Elihu, stating the reasons which constrained this speaker to take part in the dispute. The anger of Elihu was kindled, first, against Job because he justified himself as against God, held himself in the right at the expense of God's righteousness; and second, against the three friends because they failed to bring forward such arguments as effectively to condemn Job—that is, show him to be in the wrong in his complaints of God. In other words, the sole point which Elihu has in view is justification of God, and toward this point all his reasoning is directed. Job is guilty of wrong against God, and the three friends are to blame because they have not been able to bring this wrong home to Job. Third (vs. 6-22). Elihu is then introduced speaking in his own person; stating the reasons which hitherto have kept him from speaking and those which induce him now to take part in the controversy. He would have spoken sooner had he not been a youth in the midst of aged and presumably wise men. But he reflects, and indeed present events show it, that wisdom is not the prerogative of mere age; it is a gift of God, and therefore he will advance his opinion. It is intolerable to him (v. 19) that a man like Job, who utters such perverse and godless sentiments (34:7), should not be put to silence; and he is conscious of ability (vs. 8, 18) to answer him and all his class. A. B. D. 2. He justified himself rather than God. That is, Job took more care and pains to clear himself from the imputation of unrighteousness in being thus afflicted, than to clear God from the imputation of unrighteousness in afflicting him, as if he were more concerned for his own honor than for God's. H.—The greatness of his sufferings was in some measure the cause of his misconception, by exciting his feelings and preventing him from calmly considering his case. He had also received much provocation from his friends; and from these concurrent excitements he is tempted into harsh assertions, the subsequent endeavor to soften which repeatedly leads him into apparent and indeed real contradictions; such as must needs occur in the thoughts if not in the utterances of all who have been greatly tempted. But he is loud in acknowledging the wisdom of God, and at times allows himself to indulge in cheering hopes for the future. All this much excuses him, but cannot justify him; and it is, therefore, greatly to his praise that when the true state of the case is set before him by Elihu, he remains silent, and ultimately acknowledges his fundamental error of justifying himself rather than God. Kitto. 3. He was angry at the friends because they had not been candid to Job. They had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job They had adjudged him to be a hypocrite, a wicked man, and would not recede from that sentence concerning him; and yet they could not prove him so, nor disprove the evidences he produced of his integrity. They could not make good the premises, and yet held fast the conclusion. They had no reply to make to his arguments, and yet they would not yield. H. 6. Show you mine opinion, or, to utter what I know in your presence. The tone of the original is not boastful, but confident. Elihu does not speak of his opinion, but of what he knows, an inward conviction which it is his duty to utter. Cook. 7,8. I said, Days should speak. I said, Those who had the experience of many years should be most able to teach wisdom to such as are younger; but I see that all is not in age; there is a Spirit of God which, breathing where it listeth, maketh a difference in men. Bishop H. 8. The verse may be rendered, Truly it is the Spirit in man, and the breath of God, which giveth him (i.e., man collectively) understanding. Elihu doubts not that the inward impulse which moves him to speak comes direct from God. Cook.—This understanding spirit is in every man; it is the light that lighteth every man (John 1:9). It is the inspiration of the Almighty that gives us this understanding spirit; for He is the Father of spirits, and Fountain of understanding. H. It is the grand distinction of humanity that it is made permeable by the Divine nature, prepared in that manner to receive and entemple the Infinite Spirit, to be energized by Him and filled with His glory, in every faculty, feeling, and power. Consider what and how much it signifies that we are spirit, capable in this manner of the Divine concourse. In this point of view it is that we are raised most distinctly above all other forms of existence known to us. The will or force of God can act omnipotently on all created things as things. He can penetrate all central fires, and dissolve or assimilate every most secret atom of the world, but it cannot be said that these things receive Him; nothing can truly receive Him but spirit. To be spirit, or to have a spiritual nature, is to be capable, not of duty only, but of receiving God, of being permeated, filled, ennobled by His Infinite Spirit. Bushnell. We are responsible to God for our intellectual endowments. They came from Him, and are a trust for which we shall have to give account. Our first and plainest duty is to improve the intellect by wise and faithful culture. There is guilt in permitting such a gift to be wasted. The highest ministry of all in which the intellect can be engaged, to which by its Divine origin it is most urgently and imperatively called, is in direct connection with religion; and it is here that intellectual responsibilities become most solemn and oppressive. It is the duty of the intellect to take its part in direct acts of worship. R. W. Dale.—Men have the faculty, but God gives the light. It is spiritual idolatry to lean to our own understanding. True wisdom is a Divine ray, and an emanation from God. Men never obtain it but in the way of an humble trust. When we see our insufficiency, and God's all-sufficiency, then the Lord undertakes for us to direct us and guide us. When men think to relieve their souls by their own thoughts and care, they do but perplex themselves the more. God will be acknowledged—that is, consulted with, in all our undertakings or conflicts, or else we miscarry. T. M. 13,14. Without respect of persons and without flattery, but with a single regard to the judgment of his Maker, he will hold an even balance between the friends and Job. He proposes to put the matter on an entirely new basis, one altogether different from that on which it had been placed by the friends, and against which Job had successfully aimed his arguments. W. H. G. 15-22. Turning from the three friends Elihu seems to speak in soliloquy and present to his own mind the singular situation: the three friends are discomfited before Job and reduced to silence; this should not be; therefore he will express his convictions. His breast is filled with thoughts and emotions that will not be repressed; he must speak that he may find relief. And he will speak fearlessly and in sincerity, not regarding the person of any man. A. B. D. So far we have a vigorous and lively, but surely not presumptuous introduction to the discourses, which henceforth will be addressed exclusively to Job. Cook. 1. HOWBEIT, Job, I pray thee, hear my speech, And hearken to all my words. 2. Behold now, I have opened my mouth, My tongue hath spoken in my mouth. 3. My words shall utter the uprightness of my heart: And that which my lips know they shall speak sincerely. 4. The spirit of God hath made me. And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life. 5. If thou canst, answer thou me; Set thy words in order before me, stand forth. 6. Behold, I am toward God even as thou art: I also am formed out of the clay. 7. Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, Neither shall my pressure be heavy upon thee. 8. Surely thou hast spoken in mine hearing, And I have heard the voice of thy words, saying, 9. I am clean, without transgression; I am innocent, neither is there iniquity in me 10. Behold, he findeth occasions against me, He counteth me for his enemy; 11. He putteth my feet in the stocks, He marketh all my paths. 12. Behold, I will answer thee, in this thou art not just; For God is greater than man. 13. Why dost thou strive against him? For he giveth not account of any of his matters. 14. For God speaketh once, Yea twice, though man regardeth it not. 15. In a dream, in a vision of the night, When deep sleep falleth upon men, In slumberings upon the bed; 16. Then he openeth the ears of men, And sealeth their instruction, 17. That he may withdraw man from his purpose, And hide pride from man; 18. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, And his life from perishing by the sword. 19. He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, And with continual strife in his bones: 20. So that his life abhorreth bread, And his soul dainty meat. 21. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; And his bones that were not seen stick out. 22. Yea, his soul draweth near unto the pit, And his life to the destroyers. 23. If there be with him a messenger, An interpreter, one among a thousand, To shew unto man what is right for him; 24. Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom. 25. His flesh shall be fresher than a child's; He returneth to the days of his youth: 26. He prayeth unto God, and he is favourable unto him; So that he seeth his face with joy: And he restoreth unto man his righteousness. 27. He singeth before men, and saith, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, And it profited me not: 28 He hath redeemed my soul from going into the pit, And my life shall behold the light. 29 Lo, all these things doth God work, Twice, yea thrice, with a man, 30 To bring back his soul from the pit, THE following may be taken as an outline of the chapter: First (vs. 1-7), Elihu in some introductory words bespeaks Job's attention. He addresses Job by name, and, full of confidence in his ability to answer his complaints, invites him to attend to his words (vs. 1, 2), and assures him of his sincerity (vs. 3, 4). He desires Job to reply to him, for he is a man like himself, and has no imposing authority or presence to overpower Job, who had often complained that God's power overawed him and prevented him from justifying himself (vs. 5-7). Second (vs. 8-13), Elihu then refers to Job's complaint against God, reproducing passages from his speeches in which he said that God afflicted him unjustly though he was innocent; that He displayed an arbitrary hostility to him, and refused to hear any appeal. Elihu refutes these charges by the general consideration (a favorite one with him) that to act in such a way is unworthy of God, who is greater than men and whose ways are unlike theirs. Third (vs. 13-28), taking up more formally Job's complaint that God refuses to answer man, Elihu replies that God does speak to man in many ways: first (vs. 14-18) in dreams, to instruct him and turn him away from pride and from sin that might end in death; and second (vs. 19-28) by messengers in the midst of afflictions, who show to man what is right. If the sinner thus warned takes his instruction to heart he is restored to health and prosperity, and in his thankfulness shows publicly to men God's mercy, who hath not rewarded him according to his work. Finally (vs. 29-33), Elihu sums up the general lesson of his teaching regarding God in the preceding verses, and invites Job to reply to it, or if he cannot to listen in silence to further instruction. A. B. D. 2. Opened my mouth. The phrase so used always denotes careful, deliberate utterances on solemn occasions. In my mouth, or, palate; i.e., each word is as it were tasted; carefully examined and approved before it is uttered by the tongue. The palate represents to the Hebrew the judgment of a sound mind, That he may be enlightened with the light of the living. 31. Mark well, O Job, hearken unto me: Hold thy peace, and I will speak. 32 If thou hast any thing to say, answer me: Speak, for I desire to justify thee. 33 If not, hearken thou unto me: Hold thy peace, and I will teach thee wisdom. which examines a thought impartially and thoroughly before it allows it to pass the tongue. This is the first reason why Job should hearken. 3. Two additional reasons, honesty of intention and simple, straightforward earnestness of language. The latter clause should be rendered, My lips shall speak out what I know with sincerity. 4. The chief reason of all, because the Spirit to whose creative act all wisdom must be ascribed, the breath of the Almighty, which made man a living soul, now quickeneth Elihu, i.e., gives such life and power to his conviction that he is constrained to speak. Cook. The Spirit of God hath made me. At the first the soul of man was not produced by heaven or earth, but was breathed immediately from God; so that the ways and proceedings of God with spirits are not included in the laws of heaven and earth; but are reserved to the law of His secret will and grace wherein God worketh still, and resteth not from the work of redemption as He resteth from the work of creation; but continueth working till the end of the world, when that work also shall be accomplished and an eternal Sabbath shall ensue. Bacon.—The words, "God created man in His own image," cannot mean less than that man was by creation endowed with the faculties requisite to intelligent and morally responsible action; made capable of the conscious sense of duty—of learning what duty is, and of intelligently and voluntarily choosing obedience to its high and God-like behests. In these sublime and momentous elements of his created constitution he was made like God, in God's own image. Endowed with such capacities, it became possible that his body should be the temple of the Holy Ghost; that he should be filled with the Spirit of God; should be taught of God, comforted of God, replenished of the Spirit unto all holy affections, purposes, activities. So much both Scripture and human experience combine to prove as to the essential affinities of the human soul to the Divine. Man as toward God is inspirable—capable of being inspired with the very thoughts of God, moulded morally by spiritual impulses coming forth from “the Father of our spirits.” Moreover, through the agencies of the Divine Spirit upon the human soul, man is brought to act in full sympathy with God. “Filled with the Spirit,” he may truly say: O God, my heart is with Thee; all its deep, irrepressible desires are toward and after Thee; all centre upon pleasing Thee and doing Thy will most perfectly. H. C. This blessed influence from above is not of such rare occurrence as some suppose. It is everywhere. It falls upon every soul. Travel far as we may, hide ourselves in whatever dark place of the earth, we cannot go from the Spirit of the Almighty. And who would wish to go, who shall try to shut out the quickening, life-giving breath of the Divine Comforter from the soul? It will soothe in sorrow, it will strengthen in weakness, it will guide in perplexity. It will make the mind clear and the heart pure and the path of life plain. Amid all the troubles and disappointments of the world it will give a peace that passeth all understanding. D. M. 6. The lesson here taught is universally applicable. If this idea were treasured up in men's faith, it would restrain them from wronging, despising, or slandering one another. If they verily believe that their fellow-men are all and equally the subjects of God's love in Christ there would be an all-bounding charity among men. Brentius. 9-11. Elihu is justified in these statements; but he does little justice to Job's real inward conviction and frequent declarations, that he is conscious of natural sinfulness and many transgressions. Cook.—It was true that Job was a perfect and an upright man, and not such a one as his friends had represented him; but he ought not to have insisted so much upon it as if God had therefore done him wrong in afflicting him. Yet, it should seem, Elihu did not deal fairly in charging Job with saying that he was clean and innocent from all transgression, when he only pleaded that he was upright and innocent from the great transgression. But those that speak passionately and unwarily must thank themselves if they be misunderstood; they should have taken more care. 12. There is enough in this one plain, unquestionable truth, That God is greater than man, if duly improved, forever to put to silence and to shame all our complaints of His providence, and our exceptions against His dealings with us. He is not only more wise and powerful than we are, and therefore it is to no purpose to contend with Him, who will be too hard for us, but more holy, just, and good, for these are the transcendent glories and excellencies of the Divine nature; in these God is greater than man, and therefore it is absurd and unreasonable to find fault with Him, for He is certainly in the right. H. 13,14. Knowing himself to be righteous, and still considering himself treated as an enemy by God, Job has frequently inquired, Why, then, does He treat me thus with enmity, and why has He brought me into being to be the mark of His attack? Job has longed for God's answer to these questions; and because God has veiled Himself in silence he has fallen into complaint against Him, as a ruler who governs according to His own sovereign, arbitrary will. Of all those things which are so mysterious in His rule He answers not, gives no account of them. Yet no; God does really speak with men, although not as Job desires when challenged in his own defence. D. 14. God speaketh. God has not left Himself without witness among us. In volume after volume He has spoken to us. In voice after voice He has made known His will—by His works which are all around us in the universe wherein we live; by His Word which He inspired into holy men of old; by that conscience which is the lamp lit by the Spirit in every soul of man; by history, which is the record of His dealing with nations; by experience, which is the pattern woven by His own hand in the web of our little lives. By these we all may know Him. Farrar. God speaks distinctly, and, if necessary, repeatedly by His judgments, though men fail to understand their import. 15. The first process by which God makes His will known. He wakens the conscience by inward communications in the dead silence of night, when man communes with his heart alone with God. 16. Then God opens or uncovers their ears, i.e., opens their minds to spiritual truth; and sealeth their instruction or chastisement. “To seal” in scriptural language means to complete, or to appropriate, or to declare an appropriation. Here it means that God makes the man feel from Whom and for what purpose chastisement is sent. 17. The real object is one of love, not of wrath, as Job and his opponents had throughout assumed. The chastisement is intended to make a man give up some wrong purpose and to put away all pride. 19-22. Elihu takes a second case: that of a man heavily afflicted, one suffering like Job himself, and shows that here also the object is a loving one. Cook. That which chiefly distressed Job was that God seemed to be treating him as an enemy. He had dwelt most pathetically upon this aspect of his case, which was so unaccountable to him and so dreadful. It is to the disabusing of his mind on this point, which was his radical error, that Elihu mainly addresses himself. Affliction, he tells him, is not a token of God's displeasure, but one of the measures of His grace. He sends sickness and suffering to recall men to the path of uprightness. And then if the sufferer recognizes this merciful intent of his sorrows, and yields himself up to it, his pains will be removed. Their whole design will be accomplished, and they will be needed no more. This is an entirely new doctrine, and exhibits the matter under a totally different aspect. The friends had seen in suffering nothing but the punishment of sin and the Divine displeasure against it. To Job's mind it was an arbitrary infliction, irrespective of men's deserts. But the idea of a gracious purpose in earthly distresses, the idea that they betoken the Divine benignity and love, and are meant to accomplish a kindly end, had not dawned upon either of them. W. H. G. 24. Then He is gracious unto him. God mercifully accepts his repentance, and saith, "Deliver him"—that is, he shall be delivered, "from going down to the pit." Scott.—A ransom. The word so interpreted means that which covers sin and saves the sinner from its penalty; hence a ransom or atonement. Elihu evidently speaks of a propitiatory offering; in whatever form that may be provided, he is sure that the reconciliation must be effected. We have a true, though it may be an undeveloped, anticipation of the truth afterward revealed. Cook. I have found a ransom, says the Father; one fit to redeem man, a kinsman, one of that very same stock, the Son of man; one able to redeem man by satisfying Me, and fulfilling all I lay upon Him; My Son, My only begotten Son, in whom My soul delighteth. L.—Jesus Christ is that Ransom, for He is both the Purchaser and the Price, the Priest and the Sacrifice; so high was the value put upon souls, that nothing less would redeem them, and so great the injury done by sin, that nothing less would atone for it than the blood of the Son of God, who gave His life a ransom for many. This is a ransom of God's finding, a contrivance of infinite wisdom; we could never have found it ourselves, and the angels themselves could never have found it; it is the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom; and such an invention as is and will be the everlasting wonder of those principalities and powers that desire to look into it. Observe how God glories in the invention here, "I have found, I have found, the Ransom, I, even I, am He that has done it." II.—The Ransom came into the sinner's place that he might not perish, but live. And then the ransomed one belongs to the Ransomer. Thou art not thine own, but bought with a price; therefore glorify God in thy body and in thy spirit, which are God's. J. Duncan. 26. He prayeth unto God. The cure is given in answer to the sufferer's own prayer, and with restoration of health comes also the sense of God's favor. The restoration of his righteousness indicates the restoration of the afflicted one to God's favor; the whole passage is remarkable as anticipating the peculiar doctrine of justification by faith as specially taught in the New Testament. Curry. 27. A blessing or benefit is here promised on God's part, which is deliverance from the ill consequences and punishment of sin. But there is a condition required on our part: "If any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not." In which words are contained, first, a penitent confession of our sins to God; secondly, a true contrition for our sin, not only for fear of the pernicious consequences and punishment that will follow it, but from a just sense of the evil nature of sin and the fault and offence of it against God. Thus a true and perfect contrition for our sins is made a necessary condition of our deliverance from the punishment due to them. Archbishop Tillotson. Three heads of a long story of a sinful life. Mark the correctness of the man's view of sin. It is given in three particulars: 1. "I have sinned." I have transgressed the law, the commandment of Him who is my liege Lord, and to whom I belong. 2. There is a recognition, not only that the law is authoritative, but that the law is right: "I have perverted that which was right." Law, considered simply as law, is the will of a superior; but God's law is moral law, founded on the will of God, but having a ground in the nature of God. The law is the expression of God's moral perfections. 3. "And it profited me not." Sin is an unnatural, suicidal thing. It is contrary to the constitution and nature of man as it proceeded from the hands of God. J. Duncan. 29,30. This is God's way of dealing with men, coming often to them, and though it may be in chastisement, yet always with gracious designs. This was the lesson that both Job and the friends needed to learn, and Elihu is made their teacher instead of God, not to defend the Almighty, but to teach men that God is always righteous, though in many things His ways are past finding out. The “things” here referred to are those that have been enumerated in the preceding parts of Elihu’s discourse, in which Job’s confidence is rebuked, and God’s judgments are shown to be both just and merciful. Curry. The doctrine of Elihu is perfectly consistent with Job's true character as affirmed by God Himself; and it quite disarms Job, by showing that he has been neither unkindly nor unjustly dealt with. God is not treating him as a criminal nor as a foe, as he supposed, but is showing a solicitous regard for his highest good. Elihu's doctrine, that suffering was sent with a gracious design, and that it enclosed a real benefit, is not hampered by the rigid and inflexible rule of exact retributive justice maintained by the friends; nor does it conflict, as that did, with the general facts of Providence or with the consciousness of Job. Job's arguments and protests against the friends do not lie against it. It is not only consistent with, but gives a satisfactory account of the inequalities of human condition. This doctrine likewise supplies the hitherto undiscovered key to the enigma of Job's sufferings. No reflection is cast upon his integrity or the genuineness of his piety. His afflictions are neither an indication of the Lord's displeasure nor of His wanton hostility. A gracious God is by this severity of discipline purging away the dross which still adhered to His faithful servant, and refining the gold to a higher measure of purity. Accordingly, when Elihu pauses in his discourse to afford Job an opportunity for reply, he has nothing to say in opposition to what he has heard. It harmonizes his convictions respecting God with what has hitherto been inexplicable in His providence. It makes all plain in his own case, which has thus far been so dark and impenetrable. God has not been impeaching his integrity by the terrible sufferings which He has permitted. There is no hostile intent on the part of God; all has been done in kindness and love. W. H. G. Verses 14-30. It is a feature of Job that while the whole book is a poem, there can be lifted out of it every here and there a passage which is a small poem complete in itself. And in this thirty-third chapter there is (vs. 14-30) a hymn of experience which might have been to the Old Testament Church what “Rock of Ages” or “I once was a stranger” is to us. In v. 14 it commences, “For God speaketh once, yea twice;” and then, in twelve verses, the most vivid description is given of three ways in which God spoke or dealt with the spirits of men, four verses being devoted to each. The three ways are dreams, illness, and testimony. I. Dreams or visions. This mode of dealing with the soul is described in vs. 15-18. In any collection of experiences you would be surprised to find in how many instances a dream or vision had played a decisive part; and this has been the case in the lives of not a few, who even in recent times have occupied prominent places in the building up of the kingdom of God. Stalker.—The history of the Church, from Origen down, is full of conversions through the instrumentality of dreams; and many of the best Christians have traced their better life to their leading. Bunyan tells us in his “Grace Abounding” how, at the time when it was his delight to be led captive by the devil, at his will, and he was so rooted in evil that it was a second nature to him, yet the Lord did not wholly desert him, but “did scare and frighten him with fearful visions.” It was apparently through the influence of a dream that Elizabeth Fry was rescued from the indecision and doubt into which she fell after her conversion. John Newton’s remarkable dream of the precious ring intrusted to him, heedlessly cast away, and restored and preserved for him by a stranger, is quite of the same character. He did not himself doubt that it was from God. We may further cite the case of Alexander Duff’s dream of judgment, which threw him into earnest prayer for pardon, and was followed by what he long after described as something like the assurance of acceptance through the atoning blood of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Warfield. The state of the human mind in sleep is one of the great mysteries of existence. Many of those who have pondered on it most deeply have been led to the opinion that the mind never sleeps. There are few who cannot tell of some valuable impression which first visited them in sleep, and was worked out in their waking hours. Now why, among such impressions, should not religious ones have a place? We know that the forces of temptation are not idle while we sleep; for evil dreams, which pollute the mind and lodge images in the memory that return in waking hours, are among the worst distresses of many a man who is striving to purify his soul. If, then, the powers of evil have access to the mind in sleep, to make impressions which do not end with sleep, why should not the Spirit of God have access to it at the same time, to touch it to fine and noble issues? Of course it would be easy to press this too far. If every religious notion or spectacle which may present itself to us in the dreaming state were to be regarded as an inspiration of the Spirit of God, the region of religious belief would be invaded by a destroying host of fancies and caprices. But there is a plain rule by which, if we observe it, we shall be guarded from such error. Nothing of a religious nature occurring to us in dreams has any weight or value if it be not in harmony with the Word of God. This rule will save us from everything like fanaticism. But if an impression which reaches us in dreams makes any truth or fact of God's Word more vivid and real to us, and disposes us to act in accordance with it, then we are justified in believing that there may be in our dream or vision a Divine intention and a leading of the Spirit. II. Illness. What is said about this second mode of the Spirit's dealing (vs. 19-22) is remarkable for extraordinarily graphic touches. There is not, perhaps, in the whole compass of literature a more vivid description of illness. In v. 19 the phrase "the multitude of his bones" describes severe illness to the very life. In good health we scarcely know that we have bones; or at all events, we have no sense of the complexity of the osseous structure, for hidden under its comfortable coverings it does its work unfelt and as a whole. But in rheumatic fever and other maladies this wholeness is broken; we are conscious of every bone in our body, for there is a racking pain in every one of them, and we know what Job means by "the multitude of his bones." In v. 20 another feature of severe illness is given with equal vividness: "His life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat." Who that has experienced a prostrating illness does not remember this aversion to food? In v. 21 the aspect of the sick man is described at a later stage, as gaunt and deathlike, he raises himself up in bed, with sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, thin arms; or as, when he is not able for even this, he draws up his shrunken knees, and they look as if they would almost pierce the bedclothes. As v. 22 says, "His soul draweth nigh unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers." In those ancient days it was sometimes by bringing a man into this condition that God spoke to him; and here, at any rate, there is nothing antiquated, for this is still a common way in which the Spirit of God deals with the spirit of man. To lay him down on a bed of trouble is often the only way in which God can get a man to think. There are many so involved in the rush and excitement of business that they have no time for serious thought, and others are so engrossed with the pursuit of the gayeties and follies of the world that though they have time enough for meditation, they have no taste for it. Is it not merciful if God lays such a man down in trouble? He is sequestered from company and forced to face his inner self, and he sees that it is mean, squalid, and unfurnished. Though he may have been becoming rich in worldly means, it has been at the expense of inner poverty. He sees all that he has been laboriously acquiring on the point of passing away from him, while he, divested of everything, is about to enter into the presence of God and give in his account. Or it may be in another form that the shadow of death appears in the home. Illness may fall on one who is near and dear; death may carry off the pride of a man's heart and the light of his eyes; and as he gazes after that which has been taken from him into the pale kingdom of death, and hears the mighty waters breaking far off on the shore of eternity, folly dies in him, and he turns round to estimate the prizes of life with sane and altered eyes. It is often in the vast silence which falls on the heart bereaved that the voice of God is heard; the body of one has to die that the soul of another may live; and thus on many a grave in the churchyard there bloom flowers of immortality. III. Testimony. The third way in which the Spirit of God dealt in those ancient times with the spirit of man was through the testimony of one who, having been brought to God Himself, came to deal in God's name with those who were far from Him (vs. 23-26). Such a one is very remarkably described here. First, he is called "a messenger." He who deals with others about sin and God must be sent of God and bear a Divine message. If a preacher, for example, has not been with God before he comes forth to deal with man, he had better not come at all. Unless there be on his countenance a ray of that Divine light which is caught from intercourse with God, and in his heart a spark of that love which brought Christ Himself down from heaven to seek and save the lost, he had better keep out of such work altogether. But the messenger of God receives a still pro- founder name; he is called "an interpreter." God speaks to men, but they understand Him not. In His providence He speaks, and in His Word; but the message rolls over the heads of those to whom it comes, till some one who knows the language draws their attention to it and tells them what it means. Even in illness the Divine voice is often not heard till an interpreter comes into the sick-room and says, This is what your suffering signifies. Indeed, this is supposed in this chapter itself; for the interpreter comes on the scene because the two preceding voices of God have not been understood. The true interpreter hears the voice of God, and renders it in such a way as to win the attention and sympathy of the common man. This is, however, no common gift; as the passage says, the interpreter is "one among a thousand." Those who try to carry God's message to sin- ners are few and scattered. How many, even of professing Christians, are there who have any real passion for the salvation of the souls of men, or put forth any kind of sympathetic and original effort on their behalf? Is the proportion greatly larger than one in a thousand? Of the thousands of people whom any of us have met with in our journey through life, how few have seemed to be really concerned about our salvation, or have authentically interpreted God's voices to us? Yet the testimony of man to man is still the most effective means which the Spirit of God employs for doing His work in the human soul. Such, then, are the three modes in which the Spirit of God dealt of old with the spirits of men, and in which He still deals with them. The first may be called rare, the second common, the third most common. J. Stalker. 1. MOREOVER Elihu answered and said, 2. Hear my words, ye wise men; And give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge. 3. For the ear trieth words, As the palate tasteth meat. 4. Let us choose for us that which is right: Let us know among ourselves what is good. 5. For Job hath said, I am righteous, And God hath taken away my right: 6. Notwithstanding my right I am accounted a liar; My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression. 7. What man is like Job, Who drinketh up scorning like water? 8. Which goeth in company with the workers of iniquity, And walketh with wicked men. 9. For he hath said, It profiteth a man nothing That he should delight himself with God. 10. Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of understanding: Far be it from God, that he should do wickedness; And from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity. 11. For the work of a man shall he render unto him, And cause every man to find according to his way, 12. Yea, of a surety, God will not do wickedly, Neither will the Almighty pervert judgment. 13. Who gave him a charge over the earth? Or who hath disposed the whole world? 14. If he set his heart upon man, If he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; 15. All flesh shall perish together, And man shall turn again unto dust. 16. If now thou hast understanding, hear this: Hearken to the voice of my words. 17. Shall even one that hateth right govern? And wilt thou condemn him that is just and mighty? 18. Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art vile? Or to nobles, Ye are wicked? 19. How much less to him that respecteth not the persons of princes, Nor regardeth the rich more than the poor? For they all are the work of his hands. 20. In a moment they die, even at midnight; The people are shaken and pass away, And the mighty are taken away without hand. 21. For his eyes are upon the ways of a man, And he seeth all his goings. 22. There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, Where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. 23. For he needeth not further to consider a man, That he should go before God in judgment. 24. He breaketh in pieces mighty men in ways past finding out, And setteth others in their stead. 25. Therefore he taketh knowledge of their works; And he overturneth them in the night, so that they are destroyed. 26. He striketh them as wicked men In the open sight of others; 27. Because they turned aside from following him, And would not have regard to any of his ways: 28. So that they caused the cry of the poor to come unto him, And he heard the cry of the afflicted. 29. When he giveth quietness, who then can condemn? And when he hideth his face, who then can behold him? Chap. 34. Having in chap. 33 replied to Job's charge that God's afflictions were examples of an arbitrary hostility to men, Elihu in this chapter replies to another charge, that God was unjust in the afflictions which He laid on him. His answer is, That a motive for injustice in Him who is Creator of all cannot be found; and, That injustice in the Ruler of all is inconceivable—shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? The line of thought in the chapter is something as follows: First (vs. 1-4), in a brief introduction Elihu invites his intelligent hearers to listen further to him, and to unite with him in seeking to discover what was the right, the just state of the case, in Job's cause with God and his charges against Him. Second (vs. 5-9), these charges he recites: Job had said that God perverted his right, and that he was incurably afflicted though he had done no wrong (vs. 5, 6). Elihu cannot mention such charges without expressing his detestation of them: Job has not his parallel for impiety (vs. 7, 8). He has even gone the length of saying that it was no advantage to a man to be religious (v. 9). This last sentiment Elihu does not deal with in the present chapter, its discussion follows in chap. 35. Third (vs. 10-20), coming to his argument Elihu, first expresses his reprobation of such sentiments as those of Job, they are contrary to right thoughts of God; such ways of acting are not to be thought of in connection with the Almighty (vs. 10-12). Second, this reproof of Job's charges from God's nature in general Elihu then particularizes into two Alike whether it be done unto a nation, or unto a man: 30. That the godless man reign not, That there be none to ensnare the people. 31. For hath any said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more: 32. That which I see not teach thou me: If I have done iniquity, I will do it no more? 33. Shall his recompence be as thou wilt, that thou refusest it? For thou must choose, and not I: Therefore speak what thou knowest. 34. Men of understanding will say unto me, Yea, every wise man that heareth me: 35. Job speaketh without knowledge, And his words are without wisdom. 36. Would that Job were tried unto the end, Because of his answering like wicked men. 37. For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, He clappeth his hands among us, And multiplieth his words against God. distinct thoughts: 1. No motive for injustice in Him who is the Creator of all can be discovered; on the contrary, His calling all things into being and upholding them by sending forth His Spirit is evidence of unselfish goodness, for were He to set His mind on Himself and withdraw His Spirit all flesh would perish (vs. 13-15). 2. The foundation of government is justice, without which rule would come to an end. Injustice in the highest Ruler is inconceivable. And in truth His rule approves itself by its impartiality to be just (vs. 16-20). Fourth (vs. 21-28), this justice is secured by God's omniscient insight into men, and by His goodness which is the spring and motive of His rule of mankind. Fifth (vs. 29-33), shall any one then murmur at this absolute disposing of all things by the hand of God? To murmur is to usurp the rule of God, and to claim to dictate how He should dispense His recompenses. Finally (vs. 34-37), Elihu, having shown what is involved in Job's charges of injustice against God, draws the conclusion, in which he is confident all reflecting minds who listen to him will concur with him, that Job speaks without wisdom; to the sin of his life he has added a defiant and mocking impiety, which one must wish to see purified out of him in the furnace of severer afflictions. A. B. D. 7. A strong assertion that Job had given way to his feelings without restraint, that instead of shrinking from the temptation, he had greedily absorbed the bitter draught of scorn. Elihu goes now, for the first time, far beyond the truth. There was bitterness, even fierceness in Job's remonstrances, but the words were wrung from him by agony and by the taunts of his unfriendly counsellors; his scorn was altogether directed against them, not, as Elihu seems to assume, against God. 9. See 9:22; 21:7; 24:1, and other passages, stating or implying the same thing. Elihu, however, does scanty justice to Job, who repeatedly asserts that such facts are matters of perplexity, not that they really represent the principles of the Divine government. Cook. 10-12. In direct and broad contradiction of what Job had said, Elihu now proceeds to deny each and all of the charges of wrongdoing alleged against God, and to declare that He deals righteously with men, and recompenses to every man according to his ways—his conduct and character. He asserts God's infinite righteousness as proof that whatever He may do must be right, though His reasons may not appear even to the wisest of men. Curry. 10. There are and will be difficulties in the administration of providence; but these difficulties can never make reasonable and considerate persons, men of attention and understanding, to doubt concerning the righteousness of the Divine government. A righteous and just man may be depended upon that he will not do an unjust thing; much more, therefore, "far be it from the Almighty, far be it from the Supreme Lord and Governor of all things, that He should commit iniquity." Many things mysterious, many things incomprehensible, there needs must be in the nature of the Supreme Being; but injustice or iniquity, hard or unrighteous dealing with any of His creatures—this, above all things, far ought we to keep it from all our notions and conceptions of Him. Objections will be started and difficulties arise, but whether we can answer them or no, we are sure they must be false; because no evidence in proof of any particular doctrine inconsistent with this notion can be so strong as are the arguments which prove in general the truth of the Divine justice. S. Clarke. If at any time we have any unbecoming thoughts of the justice of God, either that He afflicts the good without reason or prospers the wicked against it, all this ariseth from our ignorance or the shortness of our sight. We have not a full or perfect prospect of things; we see but a little way backward; we are not wise to compare what is past with what is present, nor can we at all infallibly foresee anything future or discern what shall be. Whereas God at once hath all things before Him; He seeth what is past as well as what is present, and what shall be hereafter as well as what hath been; and so the completeness and indefectibility of His own justice in all. And when we in the great day shall see all the works of God in the world brought and presented together as in one view, we shall then say, from the evidence of sight as now we ought from the evidence of faith, that the Almighty hath not in any one thing perverted judgment. And therefore the apostle doth most appositely call that day "The day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." Caryl. 11. The work of a man shall be render unto Him. Good works shall be rewarded, and evil works either punished or satisfied for; so that sooner or later in this world or in that to come He will cause every man to find according to his ways. This is the standing rule of distributive justice, to give to every man according to his works. Say to the righteous, it shall be well with them; woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him. If services persevered in now go unrewarded and sins persisted in now go unpunished, yet there is a day coming when God will fully render to every man according to his works, with interest for the delay. H.—Let us, then, cultivate the sense of stewardship. It is a very hard thing for us to keep fresh the feeling that all which we are and have is given to us, and that not for ourselves, but for God. The beginning of evil is the weakening of that sense of responsibility, and the dawning of the dream that we are our own. The prodigal son's downfall began with saying, "Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me." And the next step came naturally after that: "He gathered all together and went away into a far country." And the next step came just as naturally after that: "He wasted his substance in riotous living." If sense of stewardship and responsibility is weakened within us, the mainspring of all good is weakened within us, and we shall become self-willed, self-indulgent, self-asserting, God-forgetting. If we think that the talent or the pound is ours, we shall spend it for our own purposes, and that is "waste." And is it not a sad commentary on the tendency of human nature to forget stewardship, and to lose the impression of responsibility, that that very word "talents," which is borrowed from Christ's parable, is used in common speech without the slightest sense that it suggests anything about stewardship, faithfulness, or reckoning? Let us, then, take care to cultivate the sense of responsibility. A. M. 13-15. Elihu first lays down the simple proposition that the Almighty is just in all His dealings. He then proceeds to prove it. The first proof is the absoluteness of God's government. "Who hath given him a charge?" The inference to be drawn is that God administers the government out of His own free will; He is not, like the subordinate duties of the heathen, merely in possession of a delegated authority; He has none to consult; when we reach Him we reach the last, highest, absolute source of all justice. Cook. Elihu says this to assert God's sovereignty, and the bearing of this on the main argument is, if God be sovereign and amenable to no superior, then He can have no motive for doing what is otherwise than right. Carey.—If the Lord be supreme, then let us set Him up as supreme in all things. Let His ends be above our ends. Let us design God in all we do. He who is over all ought to be honored by all. All our actions, as so many lines, ought to centre in His honor who is the centre of power. Caryl. 13-15. The first thought of Elihu is that the earth, the world, is not intrusted to God by another; He Himself arranged it all as it is; there is therefore no motive to injustice. This is one side of His ideas; the other (v. 14) is that the fact of the creation and sustaining of all things and creatures by God is proof of unselfish benevolence, for if God thought of Himself, and ceased to send forth His Spirit, all flesh would perish. A. B. D. 16-30. The second proof that God deals justly is, that as a matter of fact He deals with all men impartially; princes and people, rich and poor, are alike in His sight; none of their works escape Him; He overthrows the powerful oppressor, hears the cry of the afflicted, and overthrows the hypocrite. Elihu's argument here is not new; it has been partly anticipated by Job's friends, and far more broadly and strongly stated by Job himself; at the same time there is so much reverence, so deep a conviction that God's almightiness and omniscience are essentially one with righteousness, that the address is calculated to prepare Job for the final manifestation of God Himself. Cook. 16-19. The thought is, without justice rule is impossible; and therefore injustice in the Supreme Ruler is inconceivable. The thought is one that finds repeated expression in Scripture, as in the words of Abraham, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" and in those of Paul, "Is God unrighteous? God forbid; for then how shall God judge the world?" A. B. D.—Nowhere in the book, except in the address of the Almighty, are there to be found grander ethical and theological ideas; God cannot do wrong; He cannot be a despiser of right who binds the world in harmony; His very continuance of man and the world shows this; oh, that Job's sufferings would allow him to see it! Nothing in the speeches of Eliphaz and Zophar comes up to this. T. Lewis. 20-28. God's strict justice may be seen in His government of the peoples and their princes alike. His justice is unerring, for it is guided by omniscient insight. Punishing oppression, it avenges the cause of the poor and afflicted. A. B. D. 20. They die. What cannot He do that has all the powers of death at His command? Observe the suddenness of this destruction. In a moment they die. It is not a work of time with God. 21,22. God is omniscient, and can discover that which is most secret. As the strongest cannot oppose His arm, so the most subtle cannot escape His eye; and therefore, if some are punished either more or less than we think they should be, instead of quarrelling with God, it becomes us to ascribe it to some secret cause known to God only. For everything is open before Him. His eyes are upon the ways of man; not only they are within reach of His eye, so that He can see them, but His eye is upon them, so that He actually observes and inspects them; He sees us all and sees all our goings; go whither we will we are under His eye; all our actions, good and evil, are regarded and recorded and reserved to be brought into judgment when the books shall be opened. Nothing is or can be concealed from Him. There is no darkness nor shadow of death so close, so thick, so solitary, so remote from light or sight, as that in it the workers of iniquity may hide themselves from the discovering eye and avenging hand of the righteous God. H. 25-30. This continues the thought that dominates what has gone before—that is, that because of God's omniscience He knows every man's actions, and that His omnipotence is actively engaged in works of retributive judgment, overthrowing the wicked in their evil designs, avenging the cause of the poor, and by His authority establishing peace, so that the godless may not reign—that crime and violence shall not prosper. Curry. 29. The frowns of all the world cannot trouble those whom God quiets with His smiles. If God give outward peace to a nation, He can secure what He gives, and disable the enemies of it to give it any disturbance. If God give inward peace to a man only, the quietness and everlasting assurance which are the effect of righteousness, neither the accusations of Satan nor the afflictions of this present time, no, nor the arrests of death itself can give trouble. The smiles of all the world cannot quiet those whom God troubles with His frowns; for if He in displeasure hide His face, and withhold the comfort of His favor, who then can behold Him?—that is, who can behold a displeased God so as to bear up under His wrath or turn it away. H. 29,30. So completely is man dependent upon God, for good or ill, that the word of peace from God is above all creature power to bring condemnation, while only the hiding His face, which none can hinder, is death. So God deals with men and nations, and because He is righteous the godless shall not triumph, nor the people always suffer. Curry. 31-33. Elihu gradually approaches the conduct of Job. He supposes the case of one animadverting on the Divine procedure and complaining of unjust affliction. This is presumption, and implies that one usurps the government of the Most High. A supposition is put: Has any one said unto God? where God is emphatic, the emphasis implying the unseemliness and presumption of the act. The case is put generally, but the case is that of Job, as v. 33 reveals. The meaning of the passage is that the complainer under affliction protests his innocence (v. 31); disclaims knowledge of any offence; desires, as Job frequently expressed his desire, to know what his sin was; and professes his readiness to desist from it, when it is made clear to him (v. 32). Elihu's answer to this complaint (v. 33) is that it is a claim to regulate the government of God, to give laws to Him how He shall act, and to decide how He shall recompense. Such a position the complainer takes—but for himself Elihu repudiates it: Thou must choose, not I. In the concluding words, speak that which thou knowest, Elihu invites Job to state that method of "recompense" which shall be "according to his mind" and better than that observed in God's rule of the world. A. B. D. 32. That which I see not teach Thou me. What we all want is direct teaching—the teaching of Almighty God. God has many lesson-books out of which He teaches. But the Teacher Himself is always apart from and above the lesson-book. The power is all in His secret agency. That instructs; that elevates. It is a real, personal God, using all, pervading all, impressing all, a spirit working with the spirit of a man. There is only one way to secure God's own teaching. You must go into that school with clean hands and a pure heart. Over the portal of the palace of truth is the inscription—as strict in its stipulation as it is large in its undertaking—"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." J. V. I will do iniquity no more. A gracious heart is willing to know and see the worst of himself. He would have God teach him what iniquity he hath done. A godly man never thinks he seeth his sin enough. How little soever he sins, he thinks he sins too much, and how much soever he sees his sin, he thinks he sees it too little. Caryl.—Lavish and liberal as the Gospel is of its forgiveness for the past, it has no toleration either for the purposes or for the practices of sin for the future. The same Gospel which sheds an oblivion over the sinfulness of the past enters upon a war of extermination against all future sinfulness. It cannot be said of us that grace has abounded unto the forgiveness of our sins, unless there be seen in us an honest and determined habit of exertion against the continuance of sin. T. C. 33. As Thou wilt? God will take His own way, fulfil His own counsel, and recompense according to the sentence of His own justice, whether thou art pleased or displeased; He will neither ask thy leave nor thy advice, but what He pleases that will He do; it is therefore thy wisdom to make the best of that which is, because it is out of thy power to make it otherwise. If thou pretend to choose and refuse—that is, to prescribe to God, and except against what He does, so will not I, I will acquiesce in all He does. H. No one has all he wishes or exactly what he wishes. Many have a great deal in the life-lot which they deprecate, object to, resent, and strive against with all their might, albeit in vain. If the will is strong and the view of life and duty defined and decisive, then between the soul and events there will be continual collision. There will be toiling and fretting; the building up again of things which have been cast down, a looking about for things that are wanting, vain regrets for what is lost, and a constant wonder, animated almost by a sense of injury, that things will not take their right shape—all this will be, unless there shall come in, happily, the explanation and corrective of a trustful faith, of true religion—unless the baffled one shall take time and thought, and quietly put to himself the question, "But should it be according to my will?" If things were "according to our will," all the rain and all the darkness would be at once swept away, and the realms of pure enjoyment opened, and the sun of the eternal summer set high in the heavens, never to be obscured again. Not so does God arrange the seasons and times of our growing. Not such is His preparation of His children for the good things He has prepared for them. The thorn, the wilderness, the cross—hunger, and cold, and thirst, and weariness—such things as these, mingled no doubt with their opposites, are like the signs and fingerposts of the old consecrated way. A short new way into the land of promise, green and flowery, by the banks of murmuring streams, and under the shadow of the woods, has never been discovered. It is still the old way, across the sands, among the rocks, hither and thither, as the cloud may move. Of course we form our opinion of things as they happen, and take our measures for safe journeying day by day, according to the wisdom we have. But the supreme wisdom is always this—that we shall have our eye upon the cloud, and hold ourselves ready for movement along the line where the shadow of it passes; or where its fire burns. "Thy will" is, not to move; but you must—for see! the cloud is moving. "Thy will" is, to stay no longer here. 'Tis high time you were up and away. Nay, not so fast; for see! there is no movement from on high. All is yet quiet and still. And should it be, then, according to thy will? Raleigh. How it would smooth the troubled sea if we would yield ourselves to be borne peacefully on its waves, instead of entering into contest with its surges! It is our self-will, our controversy with events, or rather with God, that is the grand source of our unhappiness under the trials that befall us. Oh, could we set God always before us; could we live surrounded by the visible forms of His perfections and make our will one with His, how it would soothe and cheer this weary pilgrimage on earth! In the darkest hour and amid all the terrors and dismay of the heaviest tempest, light would beam upon us from the eternal throne; and that voice be heard: "It is I, be not afraid!" Trusting in God, I can stand on a falling universe and triumph there. N. W. Taylor. 36,37. Elihu's judgment of Job extends far beyond the mere bearing of the latter under his afflictions; it embraces Job's former life. And the language exceeds in harshness almost anything that the three friends had said. A. B. D.—Harsh as the words are, they are not without some justification. Elihu, of course, could not see into Job's heart, and his offence at the tone of Job's expostulations was natural. His own conviction that all chastisements proceed from love necessarily involved the condemnation of one who could see in them nothing but indications of enmity. Cook. 1. MOREOVER Elihu answered and said, 2 Thinkest thou this to be thy right, Or sayest thou, My righteousness is more than God's, 3. That thou sayest, What advantage will it be unto thee? And, What profit shall I have, more than if I had sinned? 4. I will answer thee, And thy companions with thee. 5 Look unto the heavens, and see; And behold the skies, which are higher than thou. 6 If thou hast sinned, what doest thou against him? And if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him? 7. If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? Or what receiveth he of thine hand? 8 Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; And thy righteousness may profit a son of man. 9 By reason of the multitude of oppressions they cry out; They cry for help by reason of the arm of the mighty. 10 But none saith, Where is God my Maker, Who giveth songs in the night; 11 Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, And maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven? 12 There they cry, but none giveth answer, Because of the pride of evil men. 13. Surely God will not hear vanity. Neither will the Almighty regard it. 14. How much less when thou sayest thou beholdest him not, The cause is before him, and thou waitest for him! ELIHU proceeds to deal with the assertion that a life of righteousness had brought Job no corresponding blessings; he argues that man's righteousness constitutes no claim upon God (vs. 1-8); and that when God disregards appeals to His justice it is because they are urged without humility and faith (vs. 9-13); hence the duty of submitting to Him with full trust in His justice. Cook.—Job's complaint that under God's government of the world it availed a man nothing to be righteous, to which Elihu had referred (34:9), is now taken up and disposed of. The passage has three parts: 1. (vs. 1-4) Elihu states Job's complaint that godliness avails a man nothing, and undertakes to answer it. 2. (vs. 5-8) his answer. Neither godliness nor irreligiousness can affect God, who is too exalted to be touched by anything human. Their influence therefore must be on men, to their advantage or hurt. 3. (vs 9-16) having made this philosophical retort, Elihu proceeds to dispose of some cases that might seem exceptions to his principle or anomalies. There are cases where apparently religious men are not heard when they cry to God; men cry out because of oppression and there is no answer. But why? Because they cry amiss. Their appeal to heaven is the mere instinctive cry of suffering like that of the lower creatures, without trust in God—they say not, Where is God my Maker? And Elihu ends, as before, with a charge of foolish talking. 1-4. Throughout Elihu's speeches there runs the idea of a cause or plea between Job and God. Job is regarded by Elihu as maintaining that he has a right or just cause against God. Elihu here asks, if Job considers that the rectitude of his cause will appear in his maintaining that godliness profits a man nothing?—the word "this" in v. 2, refers to the questions in v. 3. If Job could successfully maintain this contention his cause against God would be good. Therefore Elihu controverts his assertion, contending that righteousness does avail a man, as it must. A. B. D. 5. Look unto the heavens. This is a sublime sentiment in a plain dress. One view, says he, of the magnificent scenery of the lofty sky will extinguish all low conceptions of its Almighty Author. It will strike the mind 15. But now, because he hath not visited in his anger, Neither doth he greatly regard arrogance; 16. Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vanity; He multiplieth words without knowledge. with a vast idea of His infinite superiority to all other beings, and of the impossibility of His gaining or suffering by the good or bad behavior of His reasonable creatures. Scott. 6. If thou sinnest, what dost thou hurt Him? Is His holiness, justice, power the less, because thou hast transgressed? Is aught diminished from His essence by this offence? Bishop H. 6-8. The drift of this is that there is no such relation between God and man as to make happiness a reward due to righteousness. When granted, it is a matter of favor and grace; when withdrawn, complaints imply a wrong conception of our position before God. Cook.—What objection should Job raise in justification of his complaints concerning his affliction against such sentiments as these—that goodness bears its reward and evil its punishment in itself, and that God's reward of goodness is not a work of indebtedness, nor His punishment of evil a work of self-defence. Before such truth he must hold his peace. A. B. D. 7. The great God cannot possibly receive any benefit by man, and therefore cannot be supposed to lie under any obligation to man; for if He be obliged by His purpose and promise it is only to Himself. That is a challenge which no man can take up (Rom. 11:35). Who hath first given to God let him prove it, and it shall be recompensed to him again. Why should we demand it as a just debt to gain by our religion (as Job seemed to do), when the God we serve does not gain by it?—8. To men like ourselves we are in a capacity either of doing injury or of showing kindness. And in both these the sovereign Lord and Judge of all will interest Himself, will reward those that do good and punish those that do hurt to their fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects. H. 9. The oppressed cry, saith Elihu, but not with a right frame of heart; they cry rather as oppressed with the weight of their own sufferings, than as touched with a sense of their sins, or as having faith in Him for their deliverance, or quiet submission to His will; these may either be said not to pray at all, or they pray not with such holy aims and designs, with such integrity and uprightness of heart as become the people of God. They pray under the control of impatience, or moved with envy at the power of their adversaries, or with a desire of the utmost revenge; and therefore God takes no notice of their prayers (vs. 12, 13). "There they cry, but none giveth answer; surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it." Caryl.—If the cries of the oppressed be not heard the fault is not in God, He is ready to hear and help them; but the fault is in themselves; they ask and have not, but it is because they ask amiss (James 4:3). They cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty, but it is a complaining cry, a wailing cry, not a penitent, praying cry, the cry of nature and passion, not of grace. They do not inquire after God nor seek to acquaint themselves with Him under their affliction (v. 10). But none saith, Where is God my Maker? Afflictions are sent to direct and quicken us to inquire early after God (Psalm 78:34). But many that groan under great oppressions never mind God nor take notice of His hand in their troubles; if they did they would bear their troubles more patiently and be more benefited by them. Of the many that are afflicted and oppressed, few get the good they might get by their affliction. It should drive them to God; but how seldom is this the case! 10. He gives songs in the night—that is, when our condition is ever so dark, and sad, and melancholy, there is that in God, in His providence and promise, which is sufficient not only to support us, but to fill us with joy and consolation, and enable us in everything to give thanks, and even to rejoice in tribulation. H.—Those who raise these songs of praise are believers under severe trial; pilgrims amid gloom, who cannot see a step before them. There is many a night in and around us in which a dirge appears infinitely more natural than a joyous song. It is much if we can hold our peace to God in the dark hours; more when we pray under suffering; but to sing songs, how much deeper the faith! Verily, such songs in the night relieve the suffering heart and strengthen it to bear that which would otherwise be intolerable. It is God who gives these songs, first in the heart, and in His own good time in the mouth; who else but He can give them? and again, what can He give higher than this? Blessed is he who through faith has learned to see in God his Maker, and in this Maker the Rock of his salvation! Van O. 12, 13. "There"—that is, in that state of mind, without piety and faith, so that although they really suffer wrong their cry is but vanity, and is therefore disregarded. Elihu thus meets the reiterated complaints of Job that his cry is unanswered. Cook.—They are proud still, therefore they do not seek unto God (Psalm 10:4); or if they do cry unto Him, therefore He does not give answer, for He hears only the desire of the humble (Psalm 10:17). They are not sincere and upright and inward with God in their supplications to Him, and therefore He does not hear and answer them. The case is plain, then, if we cry to God for the removal of the oppression and affliction we are under and it is not removed, the reason is not because the Lord's hand is shortened or His ear heavy, but because the affliction has not done its work; we are not sufficiently humbled, and therefore must thank ourselves that it is continued. H. God will not hear vanity. A worldly spirit hinders prayer. Let one be bent on the accumulation of property; let the most sensitive part about him on which you can lay your finger be his purse; let his meditations be upon the best means of making ten dollars a hundred, and his labors be to effect this transformation, and he will have but little time and thought for prayer. Let one be eager for style in houses or furniture or equipage or dress, studying continually in any or all of these particulars to be as good as the best, selecting and rejecting and arranging not in obedience to a law of self-respect and convenience and pure taste, but with a reference to the judgment of others and the eye of the world, and the spirit of prayer will have narrow quarters in that heart. Let one be devoted to the amusements of society, the things invented to make time pass quickly and pleasantly, the gayeties and frivolities of idle circles, the modes of fashionable entertainment, and there will be little relish left for prayer. The form of it may be kept up, but the spirituality of it will be at a low ebb indeed. Let one be greatly absorbed in political contests, watching with intensest interest the movements of the hostile parties, in every part of the field, punctual at all the gathering places of those with whom he sides and votes, and the probability is, that he will have little ardor to spare for the cause of Christ, and there is danger that the thing which takes such strong hold of him will hinder his prayers. Anon. 15,16. God is not always exhibiting His special vengeance against the multiplicity of human sins. He is "not strict to mark iniquity," or He would be always striking. Besides His longsuffering, so often spoken of in the Old Testament, there is the great (final) judgment always before Him. No cause is really forgotten. There is a greatness in Elihu's views unsurpassed by anything in the book outside of the Divine address, and that is a sufficient answer to those who would argue the spuriousness of this portion, because there is no mention of his being answered with the rest. T. Lewis. 1. ELIHU also proceeded, and said, 2. Suffer me a little, and I will shew thee; For I have yet somewhat to say on God's behalf. 3. I will fetch my knowledge from afar, And will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. 4. For truly my words are not false: One that is perfect in knowledge is with thee. 5. Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: He is mighty in strength of understanding. 6. He preserveth not the life of the wicked: But giveth to the afflicted their right. 7. He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: But with kings upon the throne He setteth them for ever, and they are exalted. 8. And if they be bound in fetters, And be taken in the cords of affliction; 9. Then he sheweth them their work, And their transgressions, that they have behaved themselves proudly. 10. He openeth also their ear to instruction, And commandeth that they return from iniquity. 11. If they hearken and serve him, They shall spend their days in prosperity, And their years in pleasures. 12. But if they hearken not, they shall perish by the sword, And they shall die without knowledge. 13. But they that are godless in heart lay up anger: They cry not for help when he bindeth them. 14. They die in youth, And their life perisheth among the unclean. 15. He delivereth the afflicted by his affliction, And openeth their ear in oppression. 16. Yea, he would have led thee away out of distress Into a broad place, where there is no straitness; And that which is set on thy table should be full of fatness. 17. But thou art full of the judgment of the wicked: Judgment and justice take hold on thee. 18. Let not wrath stir thee up against chastisements; Neither let the greatness of the ransom turn thee aside. 19. Will thy riches suffice, that thou be not in distress, Or all the forces of thy strength? 20. Desire not the night, When peoples are cut off in their place. 21. Take heed, regard not iniquity: For this hast thou chosen rather than affliction. 22. Behold, God doeth loftily in his power: Who is a teacher like unto him? 23. Who hath enjoined him his way? Or who can say, Thou hast wrought unrighteousness? 24. Remember that thou magnify his work, Whereof men have sung. 25. All men have looked thereon; Man beholdeth it afar off. IN his former speeches Elihu was intent upon correcting the false principles in regard to God enunciated by Job; in his present speech he keeps still before him the same great object—namely, to present just thoughts of God; but having in the former speeches corrected the false ideas of Job, he proceeds now more positively to present his own elevated conceptions of the Creator. The object of the passage is to extol the greatness of God in all His operations, both among men and in the world. Thus the passage falls into two parts: First (36:1-25), in which the greatness of God in His providential treatment of men is extolled. Here the speaker gives a fuller statement of his theory of the meaning of the afflictions sent on men by God (vs. 1-15), and exhorts Job to recognize God's purpose in his sufferings, and to unite with all men in exalting Him. Second (36:26-33; 37:1-24), in which the greatness, wisdom, and unsearchableness of God, as these are manifested in the phenomena of the heavens, are magnified, and Job is exhorted to lay these great wonders to heart and to bow beneath the wisdom and power of God, who far transcends man's comprehension. Chap. 36: 1-25. God's gracious designs in afflicting men; and exhortation to Job to unite with all men in extolling His greatness. First (vs. 1-4). In some words of introduction Elihu beseeches Job to listen to him still further, for he has yet something to say on God's behalf; and he will speak what is true, for he has perfect knowledge. Second (vs. 5-15). Then he proceeds to his theme—the greatness of God, a greatness of mind and understanding, which does not despise the weak but rules all with goodness and wisdom. Afflictions are but instances of this gracious wisdom, for by them He opens the ear of men to instruction. Third (vs. 16-25), application of this doctrine of the meaning of afflictions to Job—God is through them alluring him into a prosperous and happy life. And the speaker adds a warning against murmuring, and an exhortation to adore and magnify as all men do the great God. 3. Righteousness to my Maker. Elihu gives here in a word the ruling idea of his discourses; they are all meant to ascribe righteousness or right to God; they are a defence of God against the charges of Job. The expression rendered my Maker does not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. A. B. D. 4. Perfect in knowledge. By this Elihu means that he speaks with a perfect conviction of the truth of his arguments; perfectness means honesty, integrity, and is a word often applied to good men, to Job, for instance, both by himself and by the Lord. 5. Despiseth not any. This refers to Job's reproaches of God for neglecting and despising his cause. No created being is too mean to be regarded by Him. Cook.—God despises not any; which is a good reason why we should honor all men. He is mighty in strength and wisdom, and yet does not look with contempt upon those that have but a little strength and wisdom if they but mean honestly. Nay, therefore He despises not any, because His wisdom and strength are incontestably infinite; therefore, the condescensions of His grace can be no diminution to Him. They that are wise and good will not look upon any with scorn and disdain. 7. He withdraws not His eyes from the righteous. Though they may seem sometimes neglected and forgotten, and that befalls them which looks like an oversight of Providence, yet the tender, careful eye of their Heavenly Father never withdraws from them. If our eye be ever toward God in duty, His eye will be ever upon us in mercy, and when we are at the lowest will not overlook us. H.—God's unceasing watchfulness over the righteous is shown equally in their prosperity and in their adversity. The words "with kings upon the throne" describe the ordinary, and in all cases the final result of God's love to the righteous; they are kings and priests to their God, inheritors of His kingdom. Elihu's words are even more true than he knows. Cook.—How significant is this in a Christian sense, now that God has made the humble and meek to "sit together with Christ Himself in heavenly places," and Christ, who is King of kings, says, "To him that overcometh will I give to sit with Me on My throne." Wordsworth. 8-12. Elihu reverts again to his fundamental principle of the design of suffering, making special application of it to the case of Job. Afflictions, he repeats, are sent upon the righteous for their good; and such an experience is fraught with solemn responsibility to the afflicted themselves. If they recognize the gracious purpose of God in their sorrows, and heed the lesson they involve, then the design of this painful dispensation will be accomplished, and it will be itself removed. If, on the contrary, they disregard the voice of love and warning which speaks to them in these distresses, they will incur the Divine displeasure and bring God's judgment on themselves in the form of still heavier sorrows than they have yet experienced. W. H. G.—Herein Elihu sets forth more fully an idea which is essential to the complete treatment of the subject—the idea of suffering as a means of purification. By this means Elihu begins to soften the heart of Job, so much wounded by the cruelty of his friends; he thus prepares the way for that complete submission which is to be consummated by the appearance of Jehovah. He was the forerunner of Jehovah. Godet. 8-10. If life often appears to present a different picture and men are seen in affliction, this affliction is a discipline needful to warn them and bring their evil before them. The expression "fetters" (v. 8) is rather to be taken figuratively, meaning affliction or adversity, as "cords of affliction" in the next clause suggests. The meaning of afflictions—they are a Divine warning and stimulus to rouse men out of a sinful lethargy and bring their sin to their remembrance. A. B. D.—The words which describe afflictions which of all the righteous are purposely chosen to indicate their direct object—viz., to arrest and chastise them when they are going wrong. Fetters and bonds are to be understood figuratively, though the literal sense is defensible. Cook. Afflictions are God's voice showing to men their sinfulness, and warning them, by a salutary discipline, of their evil way and the dangers to which it exposes them. And while His providence is engaged in chastising, His spirit is acting in their hearts, opening their ears to instruction, and persuading the hitherto disobedient to return from iniquity. The thoughts here expressed approach very nearly to the lessons of Christian submission to God's dealings with His children given in the New Testament. Curry.—Though afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure. We are not sufficiently sensible how great an evil sin is till we feel the effects and consequences of it. And, therefore, to rectify our apprehensions concerning it, God makes us to suffer by it. Thus Elihu describes the happy effects of affliction in these verses. God doth but invite and entreat us by His mercies, but His judgments have a more powerful and "commanding" voice. When He "holds man in cords of affliction, then He openeth their ear to instruction." In prosperity we are many times incapable of counsel, but when we are under God's correcting hand, then we are fit to be spoken with. Archbishop Tillotson. 11. If the affliction do its work and accomplish that for which it is sent, He will comfort them again according to the time that He has afflicted them; if they hearken and serve Him, if they comply with His design and serve His purpose in these dispensations, if when the affliction is removed they continue in the same good mind that they were in when they were under the smart of it, if they perform the vows they made and live in obedience to God's commands, then they shall spend their days in prosperity again and their years in true pleasures. Piety is the only sure way to prosperity and pleasure; this is a certain truth, yet few will believe it. H. Pleasures. The original word expresses a finer and more inward sense of enjoyment; but "pleasures" is frequently used in our Version for the deepest and highest happiness. "Prosperity" is also too outward a word. The original has "in good," which includes all sources of pure enjoyment. Cook. 12. God would have instructed them by their afflictions, but they received not instruction, would not take the hints that were given them; and, therefore, they shall die without knowledge, notwithstanding the means of knowledge which they were blessed with. They that die without knowledge die without grace, and are undone forever. H. 15. The verse goes back to the great general principle of the use of affliction in God's hand (v. 8), in order to connect with it the case of Job, and to found an exhortation to him upon it (v. 16). The word in affliction, in oppression, might mean through affliction, etc. 16-25. Application to Job of the principles in regard to affliction just enunciated by Elihu. A. B. D. 16. The design of Job's afflictions being for his good, they are spoken of as means by which God in His mercy sought to lead (allure) him away from distress—a condition that was full of peril by reason of his self-righteousness. Out of such a perilous state God desired to bring him into a broad place, a condition of safety, where also the Divine blessing might be showered upon him freely. The figure of an abundantly supplied table is in harmony with the facts and sentiments of patriarchal life. The idea stripped of all poetic imagery seems to be, that because God saw that Job was in some danger of coming short of the single-minded devotion that is alone acceptable to Him He had subjected him to chastisement in order to his correction, which, as the event shows, was thoroughly effectual, and Job's later prosperity is the fulfilment of all that is suggested in the last line of this verse. 17. Instead of accepting God's instructions, given in the form of chastisements, with a submissive and docile spirit, Job had looked upon them in a spirit of rebellious anger, because he was, in respect to them, "full of the judgment of the wicked." He refused to see in them the hand of a just and merciful Father. Curry. 18. Elihu's doctrine is that afflictions are not the expression of God's wrath but of His disciplinary mercy; and his great object is to warn Job against putting this false construction on God's dealing with him. In the second clause he warns Job against being led astray by the greatness of the ransom, by which he means Job's severe afflictions; he admonishes Job not to allow himself to be drawn from the right way by the greatness of the ransom required of him as the price of his restoration to happiness—namely, humble submission to the Divine chastisements, as though this ransom were exceeding great. 19. No other ransom will avail—not riches nor all the power of wealth. Only the purification of suffering will cleanse him from his evil (34 : 36) and deliver him. Elihu demands with emphasis whether all his riches will be accepted as a ransom? It need not be said that the question is put merely for the purpose of heightening the effect of the idea in v. 18, that suffering is the only ransom possible. A similar thought is expressed in Psalm 49 : 7. A. B. D. 20. It was the repose of the grave for which Job longed—for that “night” of death whose successive generations sink down to the world beneath them. Conant.—Such was Job’s conception of the night of death. But Elihu here reminds him that the night of death would be at the same time the night of Divine judgment, and that so terrible is that judgment that it can sweep off whole peoples on the spot; how much less, then, could he, single-handed and alone, hope to face it without perishing! Let him rather repent. Evans. 21. Again, Job is reminded of the one way of escape still open to him—that of genuine repentance; and the faithful admonition is repeated that in the past he has chosen to abide in impenitence, instead of accepting God’s chastisements in the spirit of true obedience. Curry. 22. None is so fit to direct our actions as He; none teaches with such authority and convincing evidence, with such condescension and compassion, nor with such power and efficacy as God does. He teaches by the Bible, and that is the best book; teaches by His Son, and He is the best Master. H. 23. God is a Teacher without a rival; it therefore becomes men to heed His lessons and obey His instructions. It is the key-note of Elihu’s song that God’s ineffable glory is the sure pledge of the righteousness of His dispensations. He chooses His own way as a sovereign, and by what He does He teaches what is right. It is not for man to test the rectitude of what God does or may do in the exercise of His power, but to learn with unanswering docility by what God does what is righteousness and judgment, for in these his throne abides. Curry. 24. Look which way we will, we see the productions of God’s wisdom and power; we see that done and that doing concerning which we cannot but say, This is the work of God; the finger of God; it is the Lord’s doing. Every man may see afar off the heaven and all its lights, the earth and all its fruits, to be the work of Omnipotence; much more when we behold them nigh at hand. The eternal power and God-head of the Creator are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made. The beauty and excellency of the work of God, and the agreement of all the parts of it, are what we must remember to magnify and highly extol; not only justify it as right and good, but magnify it as wise and glorious, and such as no creature could contrive or produce. Man may see His works and is capable of discerning His hand in them (which the beasts are not), and therefore ought to praise them and give Him the glory of them. H. The Creator did not bestow so much exquisite workmanship and skill upon His creatures to be looked upon with a careless, incurious eye, especially to have them slighted or contemned; but to be admired by the rational part of the world, to magnify His own power, wisdom, and goodness throughout all the world and the ages thereof. The more we search and discover of His works, the greater and more glorious we find them to be—the more worthy of and the more expressly to proclaim their great Creator. To make such researches, then, is to answer the ends for which God hath bestowed so much art, power, and wisdom about His works, as well as given us senses to view and survey them, and an understanding and curiosity to search into them; it is to follow and trace Him where and whither He leads us, that we may see and admire His handiwork ourselves and set it forth to others, that they may see, admire, and praise it also. Such is the recommendation of Elihu: “Remember that thou magnify His work.” Anon. 36: 26 BEHOLD, God is great, and we know him not; The number of his years is unsearchable. 27. For he draweth up the drops of water, Which distil in rain from his vapour: 28. Which the skies pour down And drop upon man abundantly. 29. Yea, can any understand the spreadings of the clouds, The thunderings of his pavilion? 30. Behold, he spreadeth his light around him; And he covereth the bottom of the sea. 31. For by these he judgeth the peoples; He giveth meat in abundance. 32. He covereth his hands with the lightning; And giveth it a charge that it strike the mark. 33. The noise thereof telleth concerning him, The cattle also concerning the storm that cometh up. 37: 1 Yea, at this my heart trembleth, And is moved out of its place. 2. Hear, oh, hear the noise of his voice, And the sound that goeth out of his mouth. 3. He sendeth it forth under the whole heaven, And his lightning unto the ends of the earth. 4. After it a voice roareth; He thundereth with the voice of his majesty: And he stayeth them not when his voice is heard. 5. God thundereth marvellously with his voice; Great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. 6. For he saith to the snow, Fall thou on the earth; Likewise to the shower of rain, And to the showers of his mighty rain. 7. He sealeth up the hand of every man; That all men whom he hath made may know it. 8. Then the beasts go into coverts, And remain in their dens. 9. Out of the chamber of the south cometh the storm: Chaps. 36: 26-33; 37. The entire passage has two sections. First, to the end of 37: 13, the incomprehensible greatness of God, seen in the phenomena of the atmosphere; in the formation of the rain drops; in the thunder- And cold out of the north. 10. By the breath of God ice is given: And the breadth of the waters is straitened. 11. Yea, he ladeth the thick cloud with moisture; He spreadeth abroad the cloud of his lightning: 12. And it is turned round about by his guidance, That they may do whatsoever he commandeth them Upon the face of the habitable world: 13. Whether it be for correction, or for his land, Or for mercy, that he cause it to come. 14. Hearken unto this, O Job: Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God. 15. Dost thou know how God layeth his charge upon them, And causeth the lightning of his cloud to shine? 16. Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, The wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge? 17. How thy garments are warm, When the earth is still by reason of the south wind? 18. Canst thou with him spread out the sky, Which is strong as a molten mirror? 19. Teach us what we shall say unto him; For we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness. 20. Shall it be told him that I would speak? Or should a man wish that he were swallowed up? 21. And now men see not the light which is bright in the skies: But the wind passeth, and cleareth them. 22. Out of the north cometh golden splendour: God hath upon him terrible majesty. 23. Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out; he is excellent in power: And in judgment and plenteous justice he will not afflict. 24. Men do therefore fear him: He regardeth not any that are wise of heart. storm; in snow and ice, which seals up the hand of man and makes him powerless before the mighty power of God; in His lading the cloud with moisture and guiding it to the fulfilment of His varied behests upon the whole earth. Second (37 : 14-24), Elihu exhorts Job to consider these marvels of Him which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working, and to let them duly impress him ; bidding him behold the wonderful balancing of the summer cloud in the heavens, when the earth is still with the south wind (vs. 14-17), and the burnished sky is stretched out like a molten mirror (v. 18). With what words shall man come before the Omnipotent to contend with Him ! Man, who is dazzled by the light of the sky, how should he behold the terrible glory around God ! Therefore all men do fear Him ; and He hath not respect to those that are wise in their own understanding (v. 19-24). A. B. D. 26. God is great.** Great in power, for He is omnipotent and independent ; great in wealth, for He is self-sufficient and all-sufficient ; great in Himself, great in all His works ; great, and therefore greatly to be praised ; great, and therefore we know Him not ; we know that He is, but not what He is ; we know what He is not, but not what He is. We know in part, but not in perfection. This comes in here as a reason why we must not arraign His proceedings nor find fault with what He does, because it is speaking evil of the things that we understand not and answering a matter before we hear it. We know not the duration of His existence, for it is infinite ; the number of His years cannot possibly be searched out, for He is eternal, there is no number of them ; He is a being without beginning, succession, or period, who ever was and ever will be, and ever the same, the great I AM. This is a good reason why we should not prescribe to Him or quarrel with Him, because as He is such are His operations, quite out of our reach. H. Elihu affirms that God is great, and therefore He must also be just. He shows that Job's allegation that he has been unrighteously handled, and his impeachment of God's righteousness, are contraventions of His nature as manifested in creation. The omnipotence and wisdom of God, which are everywhere apparent in the universe, furnish a testimony to God's righteousness. All attributes of the Divine nature are rays proceeding from one centre ; where one is, there also of necessity must the others be. How can the being who everywhere shows Himself in creation to be most perfect be defective at this one point ? Every witness, therefore, in nature to God's greatness as a Creator rises against an arraignment of God's righteousness. Whoso will bring a charge against God's justice must measure himself with the Divine omnipotence. Wordsworth. 27,28. Rain always presents itself first to an Oriental mind as the greatest source of all blessings. The words are graphic and carefully chosen. Cook.—Elihu, to affect Job with God's sublimity and sovereignty, had directed him (35 : 5) to look unto the clouds ; in these verses he shows us what we may observe in the clouds we see which will lead us to consider the glorious perfections of their Creator. The clouds are as springs to this lower world ; the source and treasure of its moisture, and the great bank through which it circulates a necessary provision, the stagnation of which would be as hurtful to this lower world as of the blood to the body of man. H. Consider the vast amount of water which is stored up in the atmosphere. The average quantity of aqueous vapor, or water held in the air, is estimated to be 54,460,000,000,000 tons. The annual amount of rainfall is estimated to be 186,240 cubic miles. If this rain were at any one moment equally spread over the land portion of the globe, it would cover all the continents—Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America—with water three feet deep. Of course this water did not originate in the sky ; some time or other it must have ascended. Reflect now that water in its natural state, i.e., water as water, is 773 times heavier than air. Water as vapor occupies 1600 times larger space than water as liquid. Hence water in its vapor state is vastly lighter than air, and naturally ascends. That is the whole secret. By the simple, noiseless, generally invisible process of evaporation, this stupendous weight is raised to and kept suspended at this tremendous height. You know that the countless rivers of earth are evermore, day and night, pouring their vast volumes into the seas. Did you ever think why the seas do not overflow ? E.g., the narrow River Jordan alone annually discharges into the Dead Sea, say, a billion tons of water, and the Dead Sea has no apparent outlet ; and yet it does not overflow. And why ? Because as much water soars from it as flows into it. Did you ever think why the vast, inconceivable quantity of water suspended in the air does not fall on you in smiting, annihilating avalanches ? It is simply because the mists and clouds are but stupendous aerial reservoirs of water, oftentimes thousands of feet in thickness and tens of thousands of acres in breadth. The august system which supplies this vast earth with water is but a gigantic system of water-works, occupying very many thousands of miles in space, having its countless pumps of evaporation and reservoirs of clouds. G. D. B. Design in water. In studying the evidence of design in water, consider that its specific gravity has been so adjusted that our ships float, and the oceans are made great highways for the nations; that it is easily converted into vapor, and as easily condensed to fertilizing rain and refreshing dew, which nourish the growing plants, fill the springs, and keep the rivers, the great arteries of the globe, in circulation; that at a comparatively low temperature it is changed into highly elastic steam, which, imprisoned by man in his iron boilers, has become the great civilizer of the world; that it has been so exceptionally constituted that the great mass cannot be cooled below forty degrees, and again has been made such a poor conductor of heat that, when the surface is frozen, the very ice becomes a protection against the cold; that to this same liquid there has been given a very great capacity for heat, and that thus it has been made the means of tempering materially the climates of the globe. Add to this that water has been made an almost universal solvent; that from the substances it holds in solution the crustacea form their shells and the coral polypi build their reefs; that it fills the cavities of the rocks with gems and their fissures with useful ores. Besides this host of wonderful mechanical adaptations, remember that water has been made a chemical agent of great energy and power; that there have been united in it the apparently incompatible qualities of blandness and great chemical force; that although in the laboratory of nature it corrodes the most resisting rocks, it also circulates through the leaflets of the rose and the still more delicate human lungs; that it forms the greater part of all organized beings, from the lichen to the oak, and from the polyp to man. Reflect, now, that these are only a few of the grosser qualities and functions of this remarkable compound, gleaned here and there from many others no less wonderful, and you will form still but a very imperfect conception of the amount of design which has been crowded into it. Attempt to find a liquid which, if in sufficient quantity, might supply its place, and you will be still further impressed by this evidence of intelligence and of thought. Of all the materials of our globe, water bears most conspicuously the stamp of the Great Designer, and as in the Book of Nature it teaches the most impressive lesson of His wisdom and power, so in the Book of Grace it has been made a token of God's eternal covenant with man, and still reflects His never-fading promise from the painted bow. Cooke. 30. Spreadeth His light around Him. Think how silent and gentle, though mighty, is the action of the light. Morning by morning God's great mercy of sunrise steals upon a darkened world in still, slow, self-impartation; and the light which has a force that has carried it across gulfs of space that the imagination staggers in trying to conceive, yet falls so gently that it does not move the petals of the sleeping flowers, nor hurt the lids of an infant's eyes, nor displace a grain of dust. Its force is gigantic, but, like its author, its gentleness makes its dependents great. So should we live and work, clothing all our power in tenderness, doing our work in quietness, disturbing nothing but the darkness, and with silent increase of beneficent power filling and flooding the dark earth with healing beams. A. M. 31,32. He makes use of the clouds for quite contrary ends; both to punish mankind by lightning, tempests, and floods, and to make a plentiful provision for them by fruitful showers. Bishop Patrick. 37:1. At this my heart trembleth. There is no break or pause in the thought between chaps. 36 and 37; the division is strictly arbitrary. The idea of the thunderstorm is dominant, with its awe-inspiring power, expressed by the figure of the melting of the heart, and its removal out of its place. It is a well-known fact that the boldest as well as the most timid are awed by the darkness, the glare of the lightning, and the loud peals of the thunder at the coming on of these storms. Even the irrational animals partake of the same feeling. Curry. 2-5. The passage contains a most vivid description of a rising storm, apparently one which was then coming on, preparing the minds of all present for the manifestation of the Godhead in the whirlwind. Cook.—The description is equally graphic and true to nature. (See Psalm 77:16-19.) These descriptions of meteorological phenomena in this marvellous poem have attracted the attention and commanded the admiration of both literary and scientific writers, notably Humboldt, who, referring to this very chapter, remarks: “The meteorological processes which take place in the atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapor, according to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its colors, the generation of the hail, and the rolling of thunder, are described with individualizing accuracy, and many questions are propounded which we, in the present state of our physical knowledge, may, indeed, be able to express under more scientific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily.” 6-8. The snowfall, the small rain of the beginnings of the rainy season, and the mighty rain that comes on when the seasons are at their height, are all sketched in one verse. The next verse (7) tells of its immediate effects upon men—the hand of every man is sealed up—shut up from ordinary labor—while the world is given over to a force before which men are powerless; and v. 8 tells of the effects produced upon the beasts, which hide away in their dens, some species to sleep away the season of storms in complete inaction. Curry. 6. To the snow, Fall thou on the earth. The smallest snowflakes are formed with the exactest skill and wisdom by the same hand that weighed out the mountains, poured forth the seas, hung the firmament with its radiant spheres, rolled every globe upon its own axis, and flung them whirling through unfathomed space. Creative power Divine, and a skill that mocks imagination's utmost stretch, are here displayed in infinite minuteness. Truly, not the loud thunder of the cataract, nor the roar of ocean, nor the rush of mightiest avalanches, nor the heights sublime of vast majestic mountains, can more overwhelmingly impress the soul with a sense of the incomprehensible, unwearied, ever-active Omnipresence of the Mind of God! An atheist is baffled by a snowflake, by a raindrop, by a shooting ray of light; and so, too, is the man who can deny the Omnipresent and particular providence of God. G. B. C. 7. He sealeth up. Brings all human labors to a standstill, so that men may meditate upon His work, or that men who are His work may have a season for reflection. Elihu here reverts to his fixed thought, whatever God does has man's instruction for its object. Cook.—He seals up the hand of every man. In frost and snow husbandmen cannot follow their business, nor some tradesmen, nor travellers when the weather is extreme; the plough is laid by, the shipping laid up, nothing is to be done, nothing to be got, that men, being taken off from their own work, may know His work, and contemplate that and give Him the glory of that; and, by the consideration of that work of His in the weather which seals up their hands, be led to celebrate His other great and marvellous works. H. 9,10. These verses are a description of stormy, cold, and frosty weather; winds, cold, and freezing are still among "the great things which God doeth, and which we cannot comprehend." Scott. 10. Snowflakes and crystals of frost present under the microscope, and sometimes to the naked eye, wheels within wheels, orbs concentric and eccentric, radii, sectors, lunes, and polygons, with figures and angles of every kind which the highest magnifying power only exhibits in a still higher perfection. What is yet more wonderful, all these beautiful forms come by a very rapid process from the chaotic vapor of the clouds, or from formless drops so strangely transformed into other and far different appearances. This change is here declared to be wrought by the Spirit or breath of God. Crystallization is a beautiful term, but it furnishes no explanation of the phenomena themselves. Science knows no more of the hidden power at work among these particles of vapor than of what is going on in the mysterious nebula of Orion. It is from the same breath, too, come apparently the most opposite results—"hailstones and coals, or flames of fire" (Psalm 18:12). T. Lewis. 11-13. These verses express still more fully and graphically the Divine agency in the lower heavens, in the formation of the clouds and distribution of the rain over the earth, sometimes to scourge, sometimes to bless the land and to display God's mercy; and in all these things He challenges our confidence and obedience. Curry. 12. And it is turned round about by His guidance. The irregular motions of the clouds proceed not from any power of their own, but from His superior direction; they, like all other created things, may be said to receive their commission from their Maker. Chappelow. 13. Rain sometimes turns into a judgment; it is a scourge to a sinful land; as once it was for the destruction of the whole world, so it is now often for the correction or discipline of some parts of it, by hindering seeding and harvest, raising the waters, and damaging harvests and dwellings. At other times it is a blessing; it is for His land that that may be made fruitful. See what a necessary dependence we have upon God, when the very same thing, according to the proportion in which it is given, may be either a great judgment or a great mercy, and without God we cannot have either a shower or a fair gleam. H. 14-20. Hearken unto this, O Job. Elihu makes his final appeal to Job, again reminding him of God's great power and wisdom and of man's helplessness and ignorance before Him. If Job is able to plead his cause before God, as he had desired, he is challenged to declare what men shall say to God, or how they might order their speech were they permitted to plead before Him. Job is reminded of his weakness by the contrast between God's power over His works—the lightning and the clouds—and his own feebleness, as shown in the fact that he must be protected by his garments, and yet find these to be a burden when the hot south wind of the desert blows upon him. A glance at the face of the sky, spread out like a mirror, which God made and upholds, and to which man cannot reach, should teach him humility and uncomplaining submission. Curry. 14. Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God. Through all the works of nature God has displayed such manifold and amazing instances of perfect art and consummate skill; has placed before our eyes such a variety of glorious scenes, and framed everything in such order and beauty, harmony and proportion, that it may seem strange men should ever need to be called on to consider them. To consider and admire the wondrous works of God and to behold His government of the universe will doubtless be a principal branch of future felicity. Good reason therefore there is why we should now begin to accustom ourselves to this blessed study. Balgny. 16. We know not how the clouds are poised in the air, the balancing of them, which is one of the wondrous works of God. They are so balanced, so spread, that they never rob us of the benefit of the sun; even the cloudy day is day; so balanced that they do not fall at once or burst into cataracts or waterspouts; the rainbow is an intimation of God's favor in balancing the clouds so as to keep them from drowning the world. Nay, so are they balanced that they impartially distribute their showers on the earth, so that, one time or other, every place has its share. H.—After all that science can tell us of the clouds, and how they are balanced in the air, there yet remains the deep and glorious mystery about them in which all things are embosomed. And after all our scientific knowledge is gained, that man sees the clouds most truly who sees them as the tokens of God, of His power and presence in the world. W. R. Brooks. 17. He describes an Arabian noonday in the height of summer, when the sun is in his full strength, and not a breath of wind stirring to cool the sultry air. The word "wind" is not in the original. "The south" means the south quarter of the heavens, when the sun is in the meridian. The excessive heat and bright transparency of the air in a summer's noon, especially in the warmer climates, perplex philosophy with many difficult questions. 19-21. These concluding verses are the peroration; wherein he represents to Job the rashness and danger of disputing with God; sets forth the incomprehensibility of the schemes of providence; insists that they are planned and executed with most perfect equity and justice; and exhorts him and all mankind to annihilate themselves before their Maker, in profoundest reverence of His adorable majesty. Scott. 21,22. The meaning of this passage is: As, when the light of the sun is hidden from the sight of man by a cloud, the sun is nevertheless shining in the atmosphere, and presently again unveils itself to the eye, so God, though His interposition is often concealed from us, is surrounded by pure light; and as the dark north bears gold in its bosom, so also is there pure light behind the obscurity of God's dispensations. Thus Elihu shows that man is not obliged to resign himself to such conclusions as Job had done, but may, from perceiving that there is a purpose in the Divine dealings, at least attain to so much knowledge that instead of arrogantly censuring providence, he may confidently look for a solution of its enigmas. O. 21. The text represents man's life under the figure of a cloudy day. The sun is in the heavens, and there is always a bright light on the other side of the clouds; but only a dull, pale beam pierces through. Still, as the wind comes at length to the natural day of clouds, clearing them all away, and pouring in, from the whole firmament, a glorious and joyful light, so will a grand clearing come to the cloudy and dark day of life, and a full effulgence of light, from the throne of God, will irradiate all the objects of knowledge and experience. While we live under a cloud, yet there is abundance of light on the other side of the cloud and above it. All our experience in life goes to show that the better understanding we have of God's dealings, the more satisfactory they appear. Things which seemed dark or inexplicable, or even impossible for God to suffer without wrong in Himself, are really bright with goodness in the end. What, then, shall we conclude but that on the other side of the cloud there is always a bright and glorious light, however dark it is underneath. Further, the cloud we are under will break away and be cleared. Precisely what is to be the manner and measure of our knowledge, in that fuller and more glorious revelation of the future, is not clear to us now, for that is one of the dark things, or mysteries, of our present state. But that there will be a great and sudden clearing of God's way, as we enter that world, and a real dispersion of all the clouds that darken us here, is doubtless to be expected; for when our sin is completely taken away (as we know it then will be) all our guilty blindness will go with it, and that of itself will prepare a glorious unveiling of God and a vision of His beauty as it is. H. B. The truth, here expressed in figure, touching the mixed experiences but happy issue of the believer's life, is repeated in another form by Paul. "For now," says the apostle, affirming it first plainly and then under another figure, "for now we know in part, but then we shall know as we are known; now we see through a glass darkly"—that is, through a partially obscured medium, "but then face to face." So Elihu intimates, under a simple, appropriate image: The day of life is overclouded, but, though men see it not, the light is above and shineth dimly through the clouds; at the end the clouds shall all be cleared away, at even-time of the believer's day it shall be light. God's dealings with the believer are made up of blended light and shade. But at the end the darkness shall be dispelled, and all shall be light. There is an obvious necessity, wisdom, and kindness in blending shade with light, adversity with prosperity, trial with enjoyment, which many fail to observe and apprehend. An English queen once commanded her portrait to be taken without a shade upon the canvas. With an ignorance as great and infinitely more serious many would have life without its shadings of sorrow and sickness, of suffering and bereavement. They would have life without its moral discipline, without its needful, wise, kind effects of trial. Blessed be God that He knoweth and doeth better than they; that He understands and carries out the law of spiritual portraiture by setting in the shade to bring forth a truthful life to the light. B. 22. A golden sheen; literally, gold. From the context there cannot be a doubt that by this word Elihu means an appearance of a peculiar kind in the heavens, and approaching them from the north. It is something which seems to combine the beautiful with the terrible. That there was something of this fearful fascination about it is evident from the sudden cry, "With God is dreadful majesty!" rendered by Renan, "O admirable splendeur de Dieu!" Nothing but some wonderful glory before his eyes, something that filled him at the same time with wonder and alarm, could have called out such an exclamation. Some such strange appearance (as Ezekiel's vision, 1:4), represented in the distance mainly by its golden color, appears to Elihu as coming from the same direction (the north). Ezekiel calls it "the likeness of the glory of God," and falls upon his face; Elihu cries out, "O awful glory of Eloah!" and this is followed by one of those doxologies which appear to have been common to the ancient as well as to the later Arabians—Allah akbar, God is very great (vs. 23, 24), incomprehensible, vast in strength and righteousness, He will not oppress. T. Lewis. 23. This sublime sentiment is the sum of his whole speech in justification of God. The incomprehensibility and infinite perfection of God silence all objections to His government. This is a sufficient answer even to those two perplexing difficulties in the measures of providence which Job had started; the destruction of the righteous with the wicked in general calamities, and the prosperity of so many profligate men to the very end of their lives. Scott.—An admirable summary of the whole scope and bearing of Elihu's speech; all God's attributes harmonize with each other, and find their perfect manifestation in love. He will not afflict. He will not afflict greatly, or willingly; affliction is not an end but a means. Cook. Elihu rejects the hard law of retribution. God's purpose in chastisement he declares to be the purification of His servants. If He puts those whom He loves into the crucible, it is to purge away their dross, to cleanse them from past sins, and to keep them from falling in the future. Here, certainly, is a step in advance. We are standing on a loftier platform. We are breathing a purer atmosphere. To see a purpose of love in the affliction is to turn it into a blessing. Even if the conscience does not acknowledge it as merited, to be able to say, "It is a Father's hand that chastens, and He is wiser than I"—this is surely to rob chastisement of its sting. And you will observe that Job accepts in silence this interpretation of his suffering. Evidently it has wrought in him that submission which prepared him for the words of Jehovah, when He answers him out of the whirlwind, and for the humble confession that follows. Perowne. 24. Elihu closes with the practical inference: Therefore men—namely, of the right sort, of sound heart, uncorrupted and unaffected, "fear him." He does not regard the wise in heart—that is, those who imagine themselves such, and are proud of their "understanding." Delitzsch.—Fear Him. This great instruction is the point of aim throughout Elihu's speech; this is the sublime moral of the whole poem. To establish this primary duty of all religion by His own authority, the Deity Himself at last ap- pears; the design of whose speech to Job is to reduce him to this reverent submission, and by his example to enforce it upon all others. Scott. 1. ELIHU also proceeded, and said, 2. Suffer me a little, and I will shew thee; For I have yet somewhat to say on God's behalf. 3. I will fetch my knowledge from afar, And will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. 4. For truly my words are not false: One that is perfect in knowledge is with thee. 5. Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: He is mighty in strength of understanding. 6. He preserveth not the life of the wicked: But giveth to the afflicted their right. 7. He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: But with kings upon the throne He setteth them for ever, and they are exalted. 8. And if they be bound in fetters, And be taken in the cords of affliction; 9. Then he sheweth them their work, And their transgressions, that they have behaved themselves proudly. 10. He openeth also their ear to instruction, And commandeth that they return from iniquity. 11. If they hearken and serve him, They shall spend their days in prosperity, And their years in pleasures. 12. But if they hearken not, they shall perish by the sword, And they shall die without knowledge. 13. But they that are godless in heart lay up anger: They cry not for help when he bindeth them. 14. They die in youth, And their life perisheth among the unclean. 15. He delivereth the afflicted by his affliction, And openeth their ear in oppression. 16. Yea, he would have led thee away out of distress Into a broad place, where there is no straitness; And that which is set on thy table should be full of fatness. 17. But thou art full of the judgment of the wicked: Judgment and justice take hold on thee. 18. Let not wrath stir thee up against chastisements; Neither let the greatness of the ransom turn thee aside. 19. Will thy riches suffice, that thou be not in distress, Or all the forces of thy strength? 20. Desire not the night, When peoples are cut off in their place. 21. Take heed, regard not iniquity: For this hast thou chosen rather than affliction. 22. Behold, God doeth loftily in his power: Who is a teacher like unto him? 23. Who hath enjoined him his way? Or who can say, Thou hast wrought unrighteousness? 24. Remember that thou magnify his work, Whereof men have sung. 25. All men have looked thereon; Man beholdeth it afar off. IN his former speeches Elihu was intent upon correcting the false principles in regard to God enunciated by Job; in his present speech he keeps still before him the same great object—namely, to present just thoughts of God; but having in the former speeches corrected the false ideas of Job, he proceeds now more positively to present his own elevated conceptions of the Creator. The object of the passage is to extol the greatness of God in all His operations, both among men and in the world. Thus the passage falls into two parts: First (36:1-25), in which the greatness of God in His providential treatment of men is extolled. Here the speaker gives a fuller statement of his theory of the meaning of the afflictions sent on men by God (vs. 1-15), and exhorts Job to recognize God's purpose in his sufferings, and to unite with all men in exalting Him. Second (36:26-33; 37:1-24), in which the greatness, wisdom, and unsearchableness of God, as these are manifested in the phenomena of the heavens, are magnified, and Job is exhorted to lay these great wonders to heart and to bow beneath the wisdom and power of God, who far transcends man's comprehension. Chap. 36: 1-25. God's gracious designs in afflicting men; and exhortation to Job to unite with all men in extolling His greatness. First (vs. 1-4). In some words of introduction Elihu beseeches Job to listen to him still further, for he has yet something to say on God's behalf; and he will speak what is true, for he has perfect knowledge. Second (vs. 5-15). Then he proceeds to his theme—the greatness of God, a greatness of mind and understanding, which does not despise the weak but rules all with goodness and wisdom. Afflictions are but instances of this gracious wisdom, for by them He opens the ear of men to instruction. Third (vs. 16-25), application of this doctrine of the meaning of afflictions to Job—God is through them alluring him into a prosperous and happy life. And the speaker adds a warning against murmuring, and an exhortation to adore and magnify as all men do the great God. 3. Righteousness to my Maker. Elihu gives here in a word the ruling idea of his discourses; they are all meant to ascribe righteousness or right to God; they are a defence of God against the charges of Job. The expression rendered my Maker does not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. A. B. D. 4. Perfect in knowledge. By this Elihu means that he speaks with a perfect conviction of the truth of his arguments; perfectness means honesty, integrity, and is a word often applied to good men, to Job, for instance, both by himself and by the Lord. 5. Despiseth not any. This refers to Job's reproaches of God for neglecting and despising his cause. No created being is too mean to be regarded by Him. Cook.—God despises not any; which is a good reason why we should honor all men. He is mighty in strength and wisdom, and yet does not look with contempt upon those that have but a little strength and wisdom if they but mean honestly. Nay, therefore He despises not any, because His wisdom and strength are incontestably infinite; therefore, the condescensions of His grace can be no diminution to Him. They that are wise and good will not look upon any with scorn and disdain. 7. He withdraws not His eyes from the righteous. Though they may seem sometimes neglected and forgotten, and that befalls them which looks like an oversight of Providence, yet the tender, careful eye of their Heavenly Father never withdraws from them. If our eye be ever toward God in duty, His eye will be ever upon us in mercy, and when we are at the lowest will not overlook us. H.—God's unceasing watchfulness over the righteous is shown equally in their prosperity and in their adversity. The words "with kings upon the throne" describe the ordinary, and in all cases the final result of God's love to the righteous; they are kings and priests to their God, inheritors of His kingdom. Elihu's words are even more true than he knows. Cook.—How significant is this in a Christian sense, now that God has made the humble and meek to "sit together with Christ Himself in heavenly places," and Christ, who is King of kings, says, "To him that overcometh will I give to sit with Me on My throne." Wordsworth. 8-12. Elihu reverts again to his fundamental principle of the design of suffering, making special application of it to the case of Job. Afflictions, he repeats, are sent upon the righteous for their good; and such an experience is fraught with solemn responsibility to the afflicted themselves. If they recognize the gracious purpose of God in their sorrows, and heed the lesson they involve, then the design of this painful dispensation will be accomplished, and it will be itself removed. If, on the contrary, they disregard the voice of love and warning which speaks to them in these distresses, they will incur the Divine displeasure and bring God's judgment on themselves in the form of still heavier sorrows than they have yet experienced. W. H. G.—Herein Elihu sets forth more fully an idea which is essential to the complete treatment of the subject—the idea of suffering as a means of purification. By this means Elihu begins to soften the heart of Job, so much wounded by the cruelty of his friends; he thus prepares the way for that complete submission which is to be consummated by the appearance of Jehovah. He was the forerunner of Jehovah. Godet. 8-10. If life often appears to present a different picture and men are seen in affliction, this affliction is a discipline needful to warn them and bring their evil before them. The expression "fetters" (v. 8) is rather to be taken figuratively, meaning affliction or adversity, as "cords of affliction" in the next clause suggests. The meaning of afflictions—they are a Divine warning and stimulus to rouse men out of a sinful lethargy and bring their sin to their remembrance. A. B. D.—The words which describe afflictions which of all the righteous are purposely chosen to indicate their direct object—viz., to arrest and chastise them when they are going wrong. Fetters and bonds are to be understood figuratively, though the literal sense is defensible. Cook. Afflictions are God's voice showing to men their sinfulness, and warning them, by a salutary discipline, of their evil way and the dangers to which it exposes them. And while His providence is engaged in chastising, His spirit is acting in their hearts, opening their ears to instruction, and persuading the hitherto disobedient to return from iniquity. The thoughts here expressed approach very nearly to the lessons of Christian submission to God's dealings with His children given in the New Testament. Curry.—Though afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure. We are not sufficiently sensible how great an evil sin is till we feel the effects and consequences of it. And, therefore, to rectify our apprehensions concerning it, God makes us to suffer by it. Thus Elihu describes the happy effects of affliction in these verses. God doth but invite and entreat us by His mercies, but His judgments have a more powerful and "commanding" voice. When He "holds man in cords of affliction, then He openeth their ear to instruction." In prosperity we are many times incapable of counsel, but when we are under God's correcting hand, then we are fit to be spoken with. Archbishop Tillotson. 11. If the affliction do its work and accomplish that for which it is sent, He will comfort them again according to the time that He has afflicted them; if they hearken and serve Him, if they comply with His design and serve His purpose in these dispensations, if when the affliction is removed they continue in the same good mind that they were in when they were under the smart of it, if they perform the vows they made and live in obedience to God's commands, then they shall spend their days in prosperity again and their years in true pleasures. Piety is the only sure way to prosperity and pleasure; this is a certain truth, yet few will believe it. H. Pleasures. The original word expresses a finer and more inward sense of enjoyment; but "pleasures" is frequently used in our Version for the deepest and highest happiness. "Prosperity" is also too outward a word. The original has "in good," which includes all sources of pure enjoyment. Cook. 12. God would have instructed them by their afflictions, but they received not instruction, would not take the hints that were given them; and, therefore, they shall die without knowledge, notwithstanding the means of knowledge which they were blessed with. They that die without knowledge die without grace, and are undone forever. H. 15. The verse goes back to the great general principle of the use of affliction in God's hand (v. 8), in order to connect with it the case of Job, and to found an exhortation to him upon it (v. 16). The word in affliction, in oppression, might mean through affliction, etc. 16-25. Application to Job of the principles in regard to affliction just enunciated by Elihu. A. B. D. 16. The design of Job's afflictions being for his good, they are spoken of as means by which God in His mercy sought to lead (allure) him away from distress—a condition that was full of peril by reason of his self-righteousness. Out of such a perilous state God desired to bring him into a broad place, a condition of safety, where also the Divine blessing might be showered upon him freely. The figure of an abundantly supplied table is in harmony with the facts and sentiments of patriarchal life. The idea stripped of all poetic imagery seems to be, that because God saw that Job was in some danger of coming short of the single-minded devotion that is alone acceptable to Him He had subjected him to chastisement in order to his correction, which, as the event shows, was thoroughly effectual, and Job's later prosperity is the fulfilment of all that is suggested in the last line of this verse. 17. Instead of accepting God's instructions, given in the form of chastisements, with a submissive and docile spirit, Job had looked upon them in a spirit of rebellious anger, because he was, in respect to them, "full of the judgment of the wicked." He refused to see in them the hand of a just and merciful Father. Curry. 18. Elihu's doctrine is that afflictions are not the expression of God's wrath but of His disciplinary mercy; and his great object is to warn Job against putting this false construction on God's dealing with him. In the second clause he warns Job against being led astray by the greatness of the ransom, by which he means Job's severe afflictions; he admonishes Job not to allow himself to be drawn from the right way by the greatness of the ransom required of him as the price of his restoration to happiness—namely, humble submission to the Divine chastisements, as though this ransom were exceeding great. 19. No other ransom will avail—not riches nor all the power of wealth. Only the purification of suffering will cleanse him from his evil (34 : 36) and deliver him. Elihu demands with emphasis whether all his riches will be accepted as a ransom? It need not be said that the question is put merely for the purpose of heightening the effect of the idea in v. 18, that suffering is the only ransom possible. A similar thought is expressed in Psalm 49 : 7. A. B. D. 20. It was the repose of the grave for which Job longed—for that “night” of death whose successive generations sink down to the world beneath them. Conant.—Such was Job’s conception of the night of death. But Elihu here reminds him that the night of death would be at the same time the night of Divine judgment, and that so terrible is that judgment that it can sweep off whole peoples on the spot; how much less, then, could he, single-handed and alone, hope to face it without perishing! Let him rather repent. Evans. 21. Again, Job is reminded of the one way of escape still open to him—that of genuine repentance; and the faithful admonition is repeated that in the past he has chosen to abide in impenitence, instead of accepting God’s chastisements in the spirit of true obedience. Curry. 22. None is so fit to direct our actions as He; none teaches with such authority and convincing evidence, with such condescension and compassion, nor with such power and efficacy as God does. He teaches by the Bible, and that is the best book; teaches by His Son, and He is the best Master. H. 23. God is a Teacher without a rival; it therefore becomes men to heed His lessons and obey His instructions. It is the key-note of Elihu’s song that God’s ineffable glory is the sure pledge of the righteousness of His dispensations. He chooses His own way as a sovereign, and by what He does He teaches what is right. It is not for man to test the rectitude of what God does or may do in the exercise of His power, but to learn with unanswering docility by what God does what is righteousness and judgment, for in these his throne abides. Curry. 24. Look which way we will, we see the productions of God’s wisdom and power; we see that done and that doing concerning which we cannot but say, This is the work of God; the finger of God; it is the Lord’s doing. Every man may see afar off the heaven and all its lights, the earth and all its fruits, to be the work of Omnipotence; much more when we behold them nigh at hand. The eternal power and God-head of the Creator are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made. The beauty and excellency of the work of God, and the agreement of all the parts of it, are what we must remember to magnify and highly extol; not only justify it as right and good, but magnify it as wise and glorious, and such as no creature could contrive or produce. Man may see His works and is capable of discerning His hand in them (which the beasts are not), and therefore ought to praise them and give Him the glory of them. H. The Creator did not bestow so much exquisite workmanship and skill upon His creatures to be looked upon with a careless, incurious eye, especially to have them slighted or contemned; but to be admired by the rational part of the world, to magnify His own power, wisdom, and goodness throughout all the world and the ages thereof. The more we search and discover of His works, the greater and more glorious we find them to be—the more worthy of and the more expressly to proclaim their great Creator. To make such researches, then, is to answer the ends for which God hath bestowed so much art, power, and wisdom about His works, as well as given us senses to view and survey them, and an understanding and curiosity to search into them; it is to follow and trace Him where and whither He leads us, that we may see and admire His handiwork ourselves and set it forth to others, that they may see, admire, and praise it also. Such is the recommendation of Elihu: “Remember that thou magnify His work.” Anon. 36: 26 BEHOLD, God is great, and we know him not; The number of his years is unsearchable. 27. For he draweth up the drops of water, Which distil in rain from his vapour: 28. Which the skies pour down And drop upon man abundantly. 29. Yea, can any understand the spreadings of the clouds, The thunderings of his pavilion? 30. Behold, he spreadeth his light around him; And he covereth the bottom of the sea. 31. For by these he judgeth the peoples; He giveth meat in abundance. 32. He covereth his hands with the lightning; And giveth it a charge that it strike the mark. 33. The noise thereof telleth concerning him, The cattle also concerning the storm that cometh up. 37: 1 Yea, at this my heart trembleth, And is moved out of its place. 2. Hear, oh, hear the noise of his voice, And the sound that goeth out of his mouth. 3. He sendeth it forth under the whole heaven, And his lightning unto the ends of the earth. 4. After it a voice roareth; He thundereth with the voice of his majesty: And he stayeth them not when his voice is heard. 5. God thundereth marvellously with his voice; Great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. 6. For he saith to the snow, Fall thou on the earth; Likewise to the shower of rain, And to the showers of his mighty rain. 7. He sealeth up the hand of every man; That all men whom he hath made may know it. 8. Then the beasts go into coverts, And remain in their dens. 9. Out of the chamber of the south cometh the storm: Chaps. 36: 26-33; 37. The entire passage has two sections. First, to the end of 37: 13, the incomprehensible greatness of God, seen in the phenomena of the atmosphere; in the formation of the rain drops; in the thunder- And cold out of the north. 10. By the breath of God ice is given: And the breadth of the waters is straitened. 11. Yea, he ladeth the thick cloud with moisture; He spreadeth abroad the cloud of his lightning: 12. And it is turned round about by his guidance, That they may do whatsoever he commandeth them Upon the face of the habitable world: 13. Whether it be for correction, or for his land, Or for mercy, that he cause it to come. 14. Hearken unto this, O Job: Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God. 15. Dost thou know how God layeth his charge upon them, And causeth the lightning of his cloud to shine? 16. Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, The wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge? 17. How thy garments are warm, When the earth is still by reason of the south wind? 18. Canst thou with him spread out the sky, Which is strong as a molten mirror? 19. Teach us what we shall say unto him; For we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness. 20. Shall it be told him that I would speak? Or should a man wish that he were swallowed up? 21. And now men see not the light which is bright in the skies: But the wind passeth, and cleareth them. 22. Out of the north cometh golden splendour: God hath upon him terrible majesty. 23. Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out; he is excellent in power: And in judgment and plenteous justice he will not afflict. 24. Men do therefore fear him: He regardeth not any that are wise of heart. storm; in snow and ice, which seals up the hand of man and makes him powerless before the mighty power of God; in His lading the cloud with moisture and guiding it to the fulfilment of His varied behests upon the whole earth. Second (37 : 14-24), Elihu exhorts Job to consider these marvels of Him which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working, and to let them duly impress him ; bidding him behold the wonderful balancing of the summer cloud in the heavens, when the earth is still with the south wind (vs. 14-17), and the burnished sky is stretched out like a molten mirror (v. 18). With what words shall man come before the Omnipotent to contend with Him ! Man, who is dazzled by the light of the sky, how should he behold the terrible glory around God ! Therefore all men do fear Him ; and He hath not respect to those that are wise in their own understanding (v. 19-24). A. B. D. 26. God is great.** Great in power, for He is omnipotent and independent ; great in wealth, for He is self-sufficient and all-sufficient ; great in Himself, great in all His works ; great, and therefore greatly to be praised ; great, and therefore we know Him not ; we know that He is, but not what He is ; we know what He is not, but not what He is. We know in part, but not in perfection. This comes in here as a reason why we must not arraign His proceedings nor find fault with what He does, because it is speaking evil of the things that we understand not and answering a matter before we hear it. We know not the duration of His existence, for it is infinite ; the number of His years cannot possibly be searched out, for He is eternal, there is no number of them ; He is a being without beginning, succession, or period, who ever was and ever will be, and ever the same, the great I AM. This is a good reason why we should not prescribe to Him or quarrel with Him, because as He is such are His operations, quite out of our reach. H. Elihu affirms that God is great, and therefore He must also be just. He shows that Job's allegation that he has been unrighteously handled, and his impeachment of God's righteousness, are contraventions of His nature as manifested in creation. The omnipotence and wisdom of God, which are everywhere apparent in the universe, furnish a testimony to God's righteousness. All attributes of the Divine nature are rays proceeding from one centre ; where one is, there also of necessity must the others be. How can the being who everywhere shows Himself in creation to be most perfect be defective at this one point ? Every witness, therefore, in nature to God's greatness as a Creator rises against an arraignment of God's righteousness. Whoso will bring a charge against God's justice must measure himself with the Divine omnipotence. Wordsworth. 27,28. Rain always presents itself first to an Oriental mind as the greatest source of all blessings. The words are graphic and carefully chosen. Cook.—Elihu, to affect Job with God's sublimity and sovereignty, had directed him (35 : 5) to look unto the clouds ; in these verses he shows us what we may observe in the clouds we see which will lead us to consider the glorious perfections of their Creator. The clouds are as springs to this lower world ; the source and treasure of its moisture, and the great bank through which it circulates a necessary provision, the stagnation of which would be as hurtful to this lower world as of the blood to the body of man. H. Consider the vast amount of water which is stored up in the atmosphere. The average quantity of aqueous vapor, or water held in the air, is estimated to be 54,460,000,000,000 tons. The annual amount of rainfall is estimated to be 186,240 cubic miles. If this rain were at any one moment equally spread over the land portion of the globe, it would cover all the continents—Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America—with water three feet deep. Of course this water did not originate in the sky ; some time or other it must have ascended. Reflect now that water in its natural state, i.e., water as water, is 773 times heavier than air. Water as vapor occupies 1600 times larger space than water as liquid. Hence water in its vapor state is vastly lighter than air, and naturally ascends. That is the whole secret. By the simple, noiseless, generally invisible process of evaporation, this stupendous weight is raised to and kept suspended at this tremendous height. You know that the countless rivers of earth are evermore, day and night, pouring their vast volumes into the seas. Did you ever think why the seas do not overflow ? E.g., the narrow River Jordan alone annually discharges into the Dead Sea, say, a billion tons of water, and the Dead Sea has no apparent outlet ; and yet it does not overflow. And why ? Because as much water soars from it as flows into it. Did you ever think why the vast, inconceivable quantity of water suspended in the air does not fall on you in smiting, annihilating avalanches ? It is simply because the mists and clouds are but stupendous aerial reservoirs of water, oftentimes thousands of feet in thickness and tens of thousands of acres in breadth. The august system which supplies this vast earth with water is but a gigantic system of water-works, occupying very many thousands of miles in space, having its countless pumps of evaporation and reservoirs of clouds. G. D. B. Design in water. In studying the evidence of design in water, consider that its specific gravity has been so adjusted that our ships float, and the oceans are made great highways for the nations; that it is easily converted into vapor, and as easily condensed to fertilizing rain and refreshing dew, which nourish the growing plants, fill the springs, and keep the rivers, the great arteries of the globe, in circulation; that at a comparatively low temperature it is changed into highly elastic steam, which, imprisoned by man in his iron boilers, has become the great civilizer of the world; that it has been so exceptionally constituted that the great mass cannot be cooled below forty degrees, and again has been made such a poor conductor of heat that, when the surface is frozen, the very ice becomes a protection against the cold; that to this same liquid there has been given a very great capacity for heat, and that thus it has been made the means of tempering materially the climates of the globe. Add to this that water has been made an almost universal solvent; that from the substances it holds in solution the crustacea form their shells and the coral polypi build their reefs; that it fills the cavities of the rocks with gems and their fissures with useful ores. Besides this host of wonderful mechanical adaptations, remember that water has been made a chemical agent of great energy and power; that there have been united in it the apparently incompatible qualities of blandness and great chemical force; that although in the laboratory of nature it corrodes the most resisting rocks, it also circulates through the leaflets of the rose and the still more delicate human lungs; that it forms the greater part of all organized beings, from the lichen to the oak, and from the polyp to man. Reflect, now, that these are only a few of the grosser qualities and functions of this remarkable compound, gleaned here and there from many others no less wonderful, and you will form still but a very imperfect conception of the amount of design which has been crowded into it. Attempt to find a liquid which, if in sufficient quantity, might supply its place, and you will be still further impressed by this evidence of intelligence and of thought. Of all the materials of our globe, water bears most conspicuously the stamp of the Great Designer, and as in the Book of Nature it teaches the most impressive lesson of His wisdom and power, so in the Book of Grace it has been made a token of God's eternal covenant with man, and still reflects His never-fading promise from the painted bow. Cooke. 30. Spreadeth His light around Him. Think how silent and gentle, though mighty, is the action of the light. Morning by morning God's great mercy of sunrise steals upon a darkened world in still, slow, self-impartation; and the light which has a force that has carried it across gulfs of space that the imagination staggers in trying to conceive, yet falls so gently that it does not move the petals of the sleeping flowers, nor hurt the lids of an infant's eyes, nor displace a grain of dust. Its force is gigantic, but, like its author, its gentleness makes its dependents great. So should we live and work, clothing all our power in tenderness, doing our work in quietness, disturbing nothing but the darkness, and with silent increase of beneficent power filling and flooding the dark earth with healing beams. A. M. 31,32. He makes use of the clouds for quite contrary ends; both to punish mankind by lightning, tempests, and floods, and to make a plentiful provision for them by fruitful showers. Bishop Patrick. 37:1. At this my heart trembleth. There is no break or pause in the thought between chaps. 36 and 37; the division is strictly arbitrary. The idea of the thunderstorm is dominant, with its awe-inspiring power, expressed by the figure of the melting of the heart, and its removal out of its place. It is a well-known fact that the boldest as well as the most timid are awed by the darkness, the glare of the lightning, and the loud peals of the thunder at the coming on of these storms. Even the irrational animals partake of the same feeling. Curry. 2-5. The passage contains a most vivid description of a rising storm, apparently one which was then coming on, preparing the minds of all present for the manifestation of the Godhead in the whirlwind. Cook.—The description is equally graphic and true to nature. (See Psalm 77:16-19.) These descriptions of meteorological phenomena in this marvellous poem have attracted the attention and commanded the admiration of both literary and scientific writers, notably Humboldt, who, referring to this very chapter, remarks: “The meteorological processes which take place in the atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapor, according to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its colors, the generation of the hail, and the rolling of thunder, are described with individualizing accuracy, and many questions are propounded which we, in the present state of our physical knowledge, may, indeed, be able to express under more scientific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily.” 6-8. The snowfall, the small rain of the beginnings of the rainy season, and the mighty rain that comes on when the seasons are at their height, are all sketched in one verse. The next verse (7) tells of its immediate effects upon men—the hand of every man is sealed up—shut up from ordinary labor—while the world is given over to a force before which men are powerless; and v. 8 tells of the effects produced upon the beasts, which hide away in their dens, some species to sleep away the season of storms in complete inaction. Curry. 6. To the snow, Fall thou on the earth. The smallest snowflakes are formed with the exactest skill and wisdom by the same hand that weighed out the mountains, poured forth the seas, hung the firmament with its radiant spheres, rolled every globe upon its own axis, and flung them whirling through unfathomed space. Creative power Divine, and a skill that mocks imagination's utmost stretch, are here displayed in infinite minuteness. Truly, not the loud thunder of the cataract, nor the roar of ocean, nor the rush of mightiest avalanches, nor the heights sublime of vast majestic mountains, can more overwhelmingly impress the soul with a sense of the incomprehensible, unwearied, ever-active Omnipresence of the Mind of God! An atheist is baffled by a snowflake, by a raindrop, by a shooting ray of light; and so, too, is the man who can deny the Omnipresent and particular providence of God. G. B. C. 7. He sealeth up. Brings all human labors to a standstill, so that men may meditate upon His work, or that men who are His work may have a season for reflection. Elihu here reverts to his fixed thought, whatever God does has man's instruction for its object. Cook.—He seals up the hand of every man. In frost and snow husbandmen cannot follow their business, nor some tradesmen, nor travellers when the weather is extreme; the plough is laid by, the shipping laid up, nothing is to be done, nothing to be got, that men, being taken off from their own work, may know His work, and contemplate that and give Him the glory of that; and, by the consideration of that work of His in the weather which seals up their hands, be led to celebrate His other great and marvellous works. H. 9,10. These verses are a description of stormy, cold, and frosty weather; winds, cold, and freezing are still among "the great things which God doeth, and which we cannot comprehend." Scott. 10. Snowflakes and crystals of frost present under the microscope, and sometimes to the naked eye, wheels within wheels, orbs concentric and eccentric, radii, sectors, lunes, and polygons, with figures and angles of every kind which the highest magnifying power only exhibits in a still higher perfection. What is yet more wonderful, all these beautiful forms come by a very rapid process from the chaotic vapor of the clouds, or from formless drops so strangely transformed into other and far different appearances. This change is here declared to be wrought by the Spirit or breath of God. Crystallization is a beautiful term, but it furnishes no explanation of the phenomena themselves. Science knows no more of the hidden power at work among these particles of vapor than of what is going on in the mysterious nebula of Orion. It is from the same breath, too, come apparently the most opposite results—"hailstones and coals, or flames of fire" (Psalm 18:12). T. Lewis. 11-13. These verses express still more fully and graphically the Divine agency in the lower heavens, in the formation of the clouds and distribution of the rain over the earth, sometimes to scourge, sometimes to bless the land and to display God's mercy; and in all these things He challenges our confidence and obedience. Curry. 12. And it is turned round about by His guidance. The irregular motions of the clouds proceed not from any power of their own, but from His superior direction; they, like all other created things, may be said to receive their commission from their Maker. Chappelow. 13. Rain sometimes turns into a judgment; it is a scourge to a sinful land; as once it was for the destruction of the whole world, so it is now often for the correction or discipline of some parts of it, by hindering seeding and harvest, raising the waters, and damaging harvests and dwellings. At other times it is a blessing; it is for His land that that may be made fruitful. See what a necessary dependence we have upon God, when the very same thing, according to the proportion in which it is given, may be either a great judgment or a great mercy, and without God we cannot have either a shower or a fair gleam. H. 14-20. Hearken unto this, O Job. Elihu makes his final appeal to Job, again reminding him of God's great power and wisdom and of man's helplessness and ignorance before Him. If Job is able to plead his cause before God, as he had desired, he is challenged to declare what men shall say to God, or how they might order their speech were they permitted to plead before Him. Job is reminded of his weakness by the contrast between God's power over His works—the lightning and the clouds—and his own feebleness, as shown in the fact that he must be protected by his garments, and yet find these to be a burden when the hot south wind of the desert blows upon him. A glance at the face of the sky, spread out like a mirror, which God made and upholds, and to which man cannot reach, should teach him humility and uncomplaining submission. Curry. 14. Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God. Through all the works of nature God has displayed such manifold and amazing instances of perfect art and consummate skill; has placed before our eyes such a variety of glorious scenes, and framed everything in such order and beauty, harmony and proportion, that it may seem strange men should ever need to be called on to consider them. To consider and admire the wondrous works of God and to behold His government of the universe will doubtless be a principal branch of future felicity. Good reason therefore there is why we should now begin to accustom ourselves to this blessed study. Balgny. 16. We know not how the clouds are poised in the air, the balancing of them, which is one of the wondrous works of God. They are so balanced, so spread, that they never rob us of the benefit of the sun; even the cloudy day is day; so balanced that they do not fall at once or burst into cataracts or waterspouts; the rainbow is an intimation of God's favor in balancing the clouds so as to keep them from drowning the world. Nay, so are they balanced that they impartially distribute their showers on the earth, so that, one time or other, every place has its share. H.—After all that science can tell us of the clouds, and how they are balanced in the air, there yet remains the deep and glorious mystery about them in which all things are embosomed. And after all our scientific knowledge is gained, that man sees the clouds most truly who sees them as the tokens of God, of His power and presence in the world. W. R. Brooks. 17. He describes an Arabian noonday in the height of summer, when the sun is in his full strength, and not a breath of wind stirring to cool the sultry air. The word "wind" is not in the original. "The south" means the south quarter of the heavens, when the sun is in the meridian. The excessive heat and bright transparency of the air in a summer's noon, especially in the warmer climates, perplex philosophy with many difficult questions. 19-21. These concluding verses are the peroration; wherein he represents to Job the rashness and danger of disputing with God; sets forth the incomprehensibility of the schemes of providence; insists that they are planned and executed with most perfect equity and justice; and exhorts him and all mankind to annihilate themselves before their Maker, in profoundest reverence of His adorable majesty. Scott. 21,22. The meaning of this passage is: As, when the light of the sun is hidden from the sight of man by a cloud, the sun is nevertheless shining in the atmosphere, and presently again unveils itself to the eye, so God, though His interposition is often concealed from us, is surrounded by pure light; and as the dark north bears gold in its bosom, so also is there pure light behind the obscurity of God's dispensations. Thus Elihu shows that man is not obliged to resign himself to such conclusions as Job had done, but may, from perceiving that there is a purpose in the Divine dealings, at least attain to so much knowledge that instead of arrogantly censuring providence, he may confidently look for a solution of its enigmas. O. 21. The text represents man's life under the figure of a cloudy day. The sun is in the heavens, and there is always a bright light on the other side of the clouds; but only a dull, pale beam pierces through. Still, as the wind comes at length to the natural day of clouds, clearing them all away, and pouring in, from the whole firmament, a glorious and joyful light, so will a grand clearing come to the cloudy and dark day of life, and a full effulgence of light, from the throne of God, will irradiate all the objects of knowledge and experience. While we live under a cloud, yet there is abundance of light on the other side of the cloud and above it. All our experience in life goes to show that the better understanding we have of God's dealings, the more satisfactory they appear. Things which seemed dark or inexplicable, or even impossible for God to suffer without wrong in Himself, are really bright with goodness in the end. What, then, shall we conclude but that on the other side of the cloud there is always a bright and glorious light, however dark it is underneath. Further, the cloud we are under will break away and be cleared. Precisely what is to be the manner and measure of our knowledge, in that fuller and more glorious revelation of the future, is not clear to us now, for that is one of the dark things, or mysteries, of our present state. But that there will be a great and sudden clearing of God's way, as we enter that world, and a real dispersion of all the clouds that darken us here, is doubtless to be expected; for when our sin is completely taken away (as we know it then will be) all our guilty blindness will go with it, and that of itself will prepare a glorious unveiling of God and a vision of His beauty as it is. H. B. The truth, here expressed in figure, touching the mixed experiences but happy issue of the believer's life, is repeated in another form by Paul. "For now," says the apostle, affirming it first plainly and then under another figure, "for now we know in part, but then we shall know as we are known; now we see through a glass darkly"—that is, through a partially obscured medium, "but then face to face." So Elihu intimates, under a simple, appropriate image: The day of life is overclouded, but, though men see it not, the light is above and shineth dimly through the clouds; at the end the clouds shall all be cleared away, at even-time of the believer's day it shall be light. God's dealings with the believer are made up of blended light and shade. But at the end the darkness shall be dispelled, and all shall be light. There is an obvious necessity, wisdom, and kindness in blending shade with light, adversity with prosperity, trial with enjoyment, which many fail to observe and apprehend. An English queen once commanded her portrait to be taken without a shade upon the canvas. With an ignorance as great and infinitely more serious many would have life without its shadings of sorrow and sickness, of suffering and bereavement. They would have life without its moral discipline, without its needful, wise, kind effects of trial. Blessed be God that He knoweth and doeth better than they; that He understands and carries out the law of spiritual portraiture by setting in the shade to bring forth a truthful life to the light. B. 22. A golden sheen; literally, gold. From the context there cannot be a doubt that by this word Elihu means an appearance of a peculiar kind in the heavens, and approaching them from the north. It is something which seems to combine the beautiful with the terrible. That there was something of this fearful fascination about it is evident from the sudden cry, "With God is dreadful majesty!" rendered by Renan, "O admirable splendeur de Dieu!" Nothing but some wonderful glory before his eyes, something that filled him at the same time with wonder and alarm, could have called out such an exclamation. Some such strange appearance (as Ezekiel's vision, 1:4), represented in the distance mainly by its golden color, appears to Elihu as coming from the same direction (the north). Ezekiel calls it "the likeness of the glory of God," and falls upon his face; Elihu cries out, "O awful glory of Eloah!" and this is followed by one of those doxologies which appear to have been common to the ancient as well as to the later Arabians—Allah akbar, God is very great (vs. 23, 24), incomprehensible, vast in strength and righteousness, He will not oppress. T. Lewis. 23. This sublime sentiment is the sum of his whole speech in justification of God. The incomprehensibility and infinite perfection of God silence all objections to His government. This is a sufficient answer even to those two perplexing difficulties in the measures of providence which Job had started; the destruction of the righteous with the wicked in general calamities, and the prosperity of so many profligate men to the very end of their lives. Scott.—An admirable summary of the whole scope and bearing of Elihu's speech; all God's attributes harmonize with each other, and find their perfect manifestation in love. He will not afflict. He will not afflict greatly, or willingly; affliction is not an end but a means. Cook. Elihu rejects the hard law of retribution. God's purpose in chastisement he declares to be the purification of His servants. If He puts those whom He loves into the crucible, it is to purge away their dross, to cleanse them from past sins, and to keep them from falling in the future. Here, certainly, is a step in advance. We are standing on a loftier platform. We are breathing a purer atmosphere. To see a purpose of love in the affliction is to turn it into a blessing. Even if the conscience does not acknowledge it as merited, to be able to say, "It is a Father's hand that chastens, and He is wiser than I"—this is surely to rob chastisement of its sting. And you will observe that Job accepts in silence this interpretation of his suffering. Evidently it has wrought in him that submission which prepared him for the words of Jehovah, when He answers him out of the whirlwind, and for the humble confession that follows. Perowne. 24. Elihu closes with the practical inference: Therefore men—namely, of the right sort, of sound heart, uncorrupted and unaffected, "fear him." He does not regard the wise in heart—that is, those who imagine themselves such, and are proud of their "understanding." Delitzsch.—Fear Him. This great instruction is the point of aim throughout Elihu's speech; this is the sublime moral of the whole poem. To establish this primary duty of all religion by His own authority, the Deity Himself at last ap- pears; the design of whose speech to Job is to reduce him to this reverent submission, and by his example to enforce it upon all others. Scott. Elihu, in fact, supplies just what Job had repeatedly called for, a confutation of his opinions, not effected by an overwhelming display of Divine power, but by rational and human argument; such a confutation as would not, like the arguments of the other opponents, rest upon false, bigoted, or hypocritical assertions, but would befit a truthful and candid reasoner. The reasonings of Elihu, moreover, are really needed for the full development of the subject-matter of the book. Cook. Elihu is himself such a “messenger” as he describes (33:23, 24), “an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness.” He had been selected from all others and sent of God to expound to Job the Divine will and purpose in this mysterious dispensation, and to make known to him his duty in the case. And this was with the result that he had foreshown. “Then He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.” Elihu acts the part of a Divinely commissioned and effectual instructor, a teacher who is the instrument of salvation to his suffering and needy friend. He fulfils in a lower sense the very function of the great teacher and prophet of the Lord, in response to whose prevalent vindication the same reply is given, “Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.” Only the ransom is then no longer limited to the figurative sense in which Elihu uses it of the sufferer’s own improved spiritual state as an adequate ground or reason for his release from further endurance. The great Teacher has provided a ransom in the strict and proper sense for the release of His people, now and forever, from the bondage that oppresses them. Elihu’s task, of removing misapprehensions from Job’s mind and correcting his mistakes, is now fulfilled. But it was not given him to accomplish for Job the full and blessed effects of his temptation. This work the LORD reserved for Himself, to be performed by Him in His own Person. Elihu is but His messenger sent before His face to prepare His way before Him. And now even while he is speaking the rumbling is heard of distant thunder; heavy masses of cloud begin to darken the sky, and the advancing tempest betokens the Lord’s approach. W. H. G. 1. THEN the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said 2. Who is this that darkeneth counsel By words without knowledge? 3. Gird up now thy loins like a man; For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 4. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. 5. Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it? 6. Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof; 7. When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8. Or who shut up the sea with doors, When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb; 9. When I made the cloud the garment thereof, And thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, 10. And marked out for it my bound, And set bars and doors, 11. And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; And here shall thy proud waves be stayed? 12. Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days began, And caused the dayspring to know its place; 13. That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, And the wicked be shaken out of it? 14. It is changed as clay under the seal; And all things stand forth as a garment; 15. And from the wicked their light is withholden, And the high arm is broken. 16. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep? 17. Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee? Or hast thou seen the gates of the shadow of death? 18. Hast thou comprehended the earth in its breadth? Declare, if thou knowest it all. 19. Where is the way to the dwelling of light, And as for darkness, where is the place thereof; 20. That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, And that thou shouldest discern the paths to the house thereof? 21. Doubtless, thou knowest, for thou wast then born, And the number of thy days is great! 22. Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow, Or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hall, 23. Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, Against the day of battle and war? 24. By what way is the light parted, Or the east wind scattered upon the earth? 25. Who hath cleft a channel for the water- flood, Or a way for the lightning of the thunder; 26. To cause it to rain on a land where no man is; On the wilderness, wherein there is no man; THE thirty-eighth chapter of Job may almost be called a poetical parallel to the prose of the Mosaic account. The first of Genesis is evi- dently in view, and some marks of its order may be traced. God is represented as speaking out of the thunder cloud, and challenging Job's ignorance in a series of questions clothed in the highest garb of poetry—such poetry as we find nowhere else in all the remains of classical an- tiquity. T. Lewis.—The Almighty's speech, in this and the following chapters, is by much the finest part of the noblest and most ancient poem in the world. Longinus has a chapter on interrogations, which shows that they contribute much to the sublime. This speech of the Almighty is made up of them. Interrogation seems indeed the proper style of Majesty in- censed. It differs from other manner of re- proof, as bidding a person execute himself does from a common execution; for he that asks the guilty a proper question makes him, in effect, pass sentence on himself. Dr. Young. The design of this appearance of the Almighty is not to vindicate the injured character of Job. Neither is the design of this speech to decide the controversy in the dialogues about the ways of 27. To satisfy the waste and desolate ground; And to cause the tender grass to spring forth? 28. Hath the rain a father? Or who hath begotten the drops of dew? 29. Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 30. The waters hide themselves and become like stone, And the face of the deep is frozen. 31. Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? 32. Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train? 33. Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth? 34. Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover thee? 35. Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go, And say unto thee, Here we are? 36. Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the mind? 37. Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven, 38. When the dust runneth into a mass, And the clods cleave fast together? providence, for the decision of that dispute was reserved for the subsequent history. The scope of the speech is to humble Job; and to teach others, by his example, to acquiesce implicitly in the disposals of God, from an unbounded con- fidence in His wisdom, equity, and goodness. Scott.—Job had been instructed and strength- ened by the intensity of the struggle which had been forced upon him. He was now in a state of readiness to welcome a new Divine communi- cation; and this had been brought about by the trials through which he had passed. Satan meant to have sundered him from the Lord; he, in fact, opened the way for larger and fuller impartations of Divine knowledge and grace. He had but prepared the way of the Lord, who was now to come to Job with a nearness and fulness of manifestation as never before. W. H. G. The discourse expatiates on the mighty works of God, the vastness and variety of creation. At first sight it appears a not very direct or suitable answer to difficulties about providence; but it was really the very best teaching for Job, be- cause it expanded his thought beyond the limits of his own trouble, impressed him with a vivid sense of the Divine wisdom and majesty, and thus rebuked his disposition to complain and remonstrate, as if God were a man like himself. D. F.—When the Almighty at length speaks, in answer to Job's repeated challenge, it is not to argue, it is not to answer, but to unfold the glory and wonder of creation in a series of living pictures, "to point, with mighty but tender irony, to the arch of the rainbow and the fountains of the dawn, and to amaze, to startle, to humble the dust and ashes of mortality with the miracles of His power; to convince them that man is nothing-perfect, and that God is All-complete." But it is not only to convict man of his inability to comprehend the movements of the Divine mind that Job is catechised on his knowledge of the laws of nature, on the diffusion of light, the formation of rain, or the marvels of the treasure-house of ice and snow. It is not merely to convince him of the nothingness of his puny strength that, after he has "girt his loins like a man," he is confronted one by one with inferior creatures which yet defy his dominion and laugh at his pretension and pride, so that the "lord of creation" is left "encircled with a universal chorus of contempt." He is to learn that "God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor our ways as His ways;" but at the same time he is to learn that in the outward manifestation of Himself in nature there is enough to confirm the testimony of conscience to a moral order, founded on perfect justice and directed by perfect wisdom. Aglen. And what is the Divine revelation? Just the unending miracle that passes before our eyes every day. In the heavens above, in the earth beneath, in the great events of creation and phenomena of nature, in the myriad life that fills land and air and ocean, we are made to see that there is Wisdom and Power sufficient for everything, to make every creature fulfil its part in one infinite purpose and will. No esoteric disclosure for some exceptionally favored disciple, but what every one may lift up his eyes and see. No apologies for mysterious dealings, nor little systems of men corrected, but the perpetual self-justifying course of a harmonious universe. Is it not sublimer so? Would we desire the God of the ages to measure reasoning with mortals, and argue out a case? J. F. G.—The intellectual solution of problems can never be the question between Jehovah and His servants; the question is the state of their hearts toward Himself. He asks of Job, "Who am I?" and "What art thou?" In a series of splendid pictures from inanimate creation and the world of animal life He makes all the glory of His being to pass before Job. A. B. D.—The whole address is but the unfolding of the thought, I am the infinite and all-perfect God. And this truth is set before his mind by a series of appeals to the grandeur of God's works, by which His perfections are so strikingly displayed in contrast with the utter insignificance of man. Job is made to feel at once who it is that is speaking to him; and how completely he had stepped out of his province, and of what incredible arrogance and presumption he had been guilty in venturing to pass his judgment upon the doings of the Most High. W. H. G. Jehovah appears; twice He overwhelms Job with the majesty of His words. In the first discourse He treats of this question: Thou who pretendest to be able to judge My ways, canst thou understand this universe? The second turns upon this: Wilt thou try to govern the world in My place, and to do so better than I? This is the development of the second of the two subjects treated by Elihu, but with a more magnificent richness of language, and a more triumphant power. Godet.—The Lord's answer to Job out of the storm contains two questions: First (38:1; 40:5), Shall mortal man contend with God? Second (40:6; 42:6), Shall man charge God with wrong in His rule of the world? The two questions, however, are hardly kept apart, for the first implies the second, inasmuch as a man's contention with God will naturally be because of His unjust treatment of himself. The object of the Lord's answer is twofold, to rebuke Job, and to heal him—to bring home to his heart the blameworthiness of his words and demeanor toward God, and to lift him up out of his perplexities into peace. The two things hardly differ; at least both are effected by the same means—namely, by God's causing all His glory to pass before Job. . . . The trial has been successfully borne; for though Job has sinned under it, his sin has not been of the kind predicted by the Adversary; he has continued to cleave to God, and even sounded deeps of faith profounder than ever he had reached before (ch. 19), and tasted the sweets of righteousness with a keener delight than during his former godly life (17:9). At the point at which we are now arrived the sole object of interest is Job's mind in its relations to God. Though the trial has been successfully borne upon the whole, Job has not come out of it scathless. His demeanor toward God, especially in presuming to contend with Him, has been at many points profoundly blameworthy. It might be supposed at first that the simplest way of restoring Job to peace would have been to reveal to him that his afflictions were not due to his sin, but were the trial of his righteousness, and in this way solve the problem that perplexed him. But the elements of blameworthiness in Job's conduct forbade this simple treatment. The disease had spread in his mind, and developed moral symptoms which required a broader remedy. Besides, it is God who now speaks to Job; and in His teaching of men He never moves in the region of the mere understanding, but always in that of the religious life. He may remove perplexities regarding His providence and ways from men's minds, but He does not do so by the immediate communication of intellectual light, but by flushing all the channels of thought and life with a deeper sense of Himself. This is the meaning of God's manifestation to Job out of the storm. He brings Himself and His full glory near to Job, and fills his mind with such a sense of Him as he had never had before—"Now mine eye seeth thee" (42 : 5). At this sight of God Job is humbled and lays his hand upon his mouth in silence; such thoughts of God as he had never had before fill his heart; his former knowledge of Him was like that learned from hearsay, dim and imperfect, now he saw Him eye to eye, and he repents his former words and demeanor in dust and ashes. A. B. D. The mind of Job had been prepared for the Theophany, or manifestation, first by the careful review of his past life and of the principles which lay at the foundation of his religious creed; and then by the discourses of Elihu, in which the loving purposes of Divine interpositions were for the first time distinctly enunciated. All that he now needs is a personal revelation, to be brought face to face with Him whom in the midst of his great misery he had ventured to arraign. The Lord God does not, strictly speaking, reason with His creatures; but He does more, He reproves Job, and brings before his mind a vast and most comprehensive picture of His providential administration of the universe. The discourse contains the deepest and highest view which the mind of a patriarch, under Divine teaching, could conceive of the mysteries of existence. Job learned thoroughly the lesson, which in his better nature he had all along adopted as the living principle of his faith, that although the special object which God may have in any one of His works may be wholly undiscoverable, if not incomprehensible to man, yet that they each and all display a manifold wisdom, an all-pervading and all-controlling Providence, an adaptation of means to ends, which are inseparably connected with absolute goodness, and should teach man to submit, without a question, without struggles or reluctance, to whatever He, the Almighty Maker and King, may ordain or permit. Chaps. 38, 39. The first discourse is arranged in seven sections, each complete in itself. First, the creation of the earth, sea and light (38 : 1-15). The mysteries of creation, the depths of ocean and of sheol, the sources of light and darkness, of snow, hail, lightning, storm, of rain, dew, ice, and frost (vs. 16-30); the government of the stars, of heaven and earth, of lightning and cloud, and the wisdom thereto required (vs. 31-38); the sustenance of animals, the lion and raven (vs. 38-41). Their generation, the gazelle and hind (39 : 1-4). The comparison of wild and tame animals, the wild ass, the oryx (vs. 5-12); the peculiar characteristics of the ostrich, the war-horse, the hawk, and the eagle (vs. 13-30). Cook. The awful and overpowering phenomena of nature and of life were revealed to Job. He is carried back to the regions of earth and sea and light, and with each question comes, as it were, a lightning flash of poetic beauty. We hear the angelic host, the morning stars, the stars of dawn, fitly hailing the dawn of life in a newborn world, "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy;" or the wild and capricious sea subjected to law and order—"Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed;" or we see the sudden sunrise in a land of briefest twilight flash on the dark earth, and its scenery coming out sharp and clear as the shapeless clay receives the impress of a seal. The sunshine even there hath a glorious birth. Where wast thou, said the Voice, when these things had their birth? and then his brain is made dizzy by challenges to penetrate now the homes of light and darkness; now the regions of stored and accumulated snows; now the clouds feeding here the streams that, swift or slow, mould the mountains and shape the earth; now falling on the broad desert steppes in beneficent and fertilizing rain; now the realms of ice, the frozen seas; now the majestic heavens and the laws that move the stars. "Where is thy hand? what is thy knowledge among these things?" he is asked. And then he—and Job is here the type of all our race, though the language used to him is couched, of course, in a form suited to his day and generation—is bidden to look upon the forms of wild, untamed, untamable life that filled, in those early days, so vast a portion of the earth's surface. He is called to look upon those kingly lions that needed not the aid of man; on the wild ravens whose cry to the poet's ear went up as a very prayer to the Father of all life; and the rock goats and the wild ass, creatures so strong, so vigorous, so rude, so free, rejoicing in a noble liberty, scorning, he is told, the multitudes of the city, neither regarding the cry of the driver; then on the mighty and primeval buffalo, unfortunately rendered by the meaningless heraldic unicorn, whom none can train to draw the plough, none force to carry home the garnered wheat; then the sullen ostrich, so dull to natural feeling, so hardened against her young ones, yet able to put to scorn the steed and its rider. Then the words, "Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" usher in the stirring, the splendid description of the horse, not, as with the Greek poet, the servant of man, but in the form known to Hebrew or Arab or Egyptian, as the fiery, neighing, snorting war-horse of the Arabians, "who saith among the trumpets, Ha! Ha! who smelleth the battle afar off." And the list of pictures which began with the king of beasts ends with that of the queen of birds, who builds her nest upon the rock. The language, we all feel, reaches the very high-water mark of poetic beauty. Nothing in the world can exceed its dignity, its force, its majesty, or the freshness of its pictures of nature and of life. Dean Bradley. 38:1. The Lord answered Job. Granting the human elements of the story, in all their human and natural grandeur, the supernatural seems but its fitting complement. It is true that to those who are eye-witnesses of the event the miracle is the attestation of the doctrine; but for minds that read or contemplate it the converse holds: it is the glory of the truth that makes the miracle easy of belief. T. Lewis. Out of the whirlwind. Rather, out of the storm. Jehovah, even when condescending to speak with men, must veil Himself in the storm cloud in which He descends and approaches the earth. Even when He is nearest us, clouds and darkness are round about Him. His revelation of Himself to Job, at least, was partly to rebuke him, for he had sinned against His majesty, and He veils Himself in terrors. A. B. D. 3. Gird up now thy loins. Job had expressed strong confidence in respect to the righteousness of his cause, and great bravery of soul in declaring his readiness to meet God in judgment, and now God meets him and challenges him to bring all his boasted manhood to the hearing. Curry. 4-38. A survey of the inanimate creation, the wonders of earth and sky—the earth (vs. 4-18; the heavens (vs. 18-38). A. B. D. 4-11. Earth and sea. 4. Where wast thou? The sentiment conveyed in these striking interrogations is that He alone who made the world is capable of judging how it ought to be governed. This and the three following verses speak of the creation of the earth; and in terms of architecture which denote exact proportion, nice arrangement, and durable solidity. Scott. Laid the foundations of the earth. There was a time when this planet did not exist; a time when our sun was not lighted, nor any world of our system launched. There was a time when no star twinkled in the abyss of space, and no seraph winged his flaming path through the vast empyrean. There was a time when sound was sleeping and light was still unborn. But even then this silent, orbless immensity was full of a latent joy, for it was full of God. Shrouded in their own light inaccessible, filled with mutual delight and complacency, and exchanging communion high and sweet, the Father, Son, and Spirit rejoiced together, and the bosom of Godhead was an ocean of bright, unfathomed blessedness. And so from eternity to eternity the Creator might have continued the silent hiding-place of His own power, the radiant retreat of His own sanctity, the glorious abyss of His own joyful all-sufficiency. Even then God was love. And that love welled so deep and rose so high that at last it overflowed. Creation is the brimming over of the Creator's love, the emanations of that exuberant goodness which must needs relieve its excess of joy by making blessed beings to see and share it. Hamilton. 6,7. The creation of the earth is likened to the rearing of a great edifice, whose extent was determined by line, whose pillars were sunk in their bases, and its corner-stone laid with shoutings and songs of rejoicing among the heavenly hosts. The stars and the angels are here, as usual, conjoined, and the morning stars are named as the brightest and most glorious, as also because the earth rose into existence at the morning dawn. A B. D. Here the imagination is directed to the building of a temple; and then there is brought in that other poetical imagery, than which nothing can be conceived more glorious or more animating, although drawn from one of the customs of the earth: "When the stars of the morning sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The metaphor itself is derived from the songs and processions which in all ages have been used at the commencement, or laying the corner-stone of great public buildings. As in Zech. 4 : 7 : "They shall bring forth the corner-stone with shoutings, Grace, grace, unto it ;" or, Ezra 3 : 10, where it is said : "They laid the foundations of the temple of the Lord, and the priests stood with their trumpets, and the sons of Asaph with their loud sounding cymbals, and all the people sang aloud in great triumph, and the voice was heard afar." And so the Hosts of Heaven tone jubilee when earth's corner-stone was laid, the beginning of this new temple in which there are to be such rich displays of the Divine glory. T. Lewis. 7. Those luminous worlds which adorn the vault of heaven are called morning stars, because to the sacred poet it appeared morning when God founded the earth. The songs of praise with which they greeted the morn of creation were that silent yet eloquent language with which, according to Psalms 19 : 1, they still declare the glory of their Creator. Equally clear is it that the expression, "sons of God," refers to the angels who surround the throne of God to execute His behests (Job 1 : 6 ; Psalms 29 : 1 ; 89 : 6 ; 103 : 21). They are called angels in virtue of their office as messengers ; sons of God in virtue of their nature. These titles point to their superiority over weak and sinful man as being the holy inhabitants of heaven, the messengers of Omnipotence, and the reflection of Divine Majesty. . . . Let it be borne in mind that angels are always called the sons of God, but not of Jehovah. The term Elohim designates the Divine Being as the fulness and source of life, of power, of blessedness, of holiness, of glory, and majesty. The term Jehovah describes Him as merciful and gracious, as the Saviour and Redeemer who humbled Himself in order to deliver fallen man from His ruin and to draw him upward. The sons of Elohim are, therefore, those in whom shines forth, and who are the media of His power and glory. The sons of Jehovah are those who receive and are the vehicles of His redeeming mercy. In this sense Israel is called the first-born son of Jehovah (Ex. 4 : 22). Kurtz. "Sons of God." Sons they are, as all other intelligent creatures are, by creation. This is the first and obvious manner of sonship ; but they are sons of God emphatically, as being dutiful, obedient, affectionate sons ; sons who know their relation to their Father and act according to it ; sons who in act and spirit, in desire and love, exhibit the lines and features of the character of their Father ; who imitate because they love Him, and love Him the more as, by imitating, they obtain a deeper and more intimate knowledge of Him. They are the elder brothers of God's family ; elder in creation, elder in obedience, elder in present privilege—elder sons who are ever with Him and yet feel no jealousy, but rather loyal joy in heaven when any of the younger outcast prodigals of the same blood returns. We hear of no self-originated schemes, whether of mercy or wisdom, among them. They are servants of God who do His pleasure ; excellent indeed in strength and far surpassing us in knowledge and power, but yet loyally keeping within the bounds of their appointed service, not venturing to press into secret knowledge, however much they desire to look into it, finding their sufficient joy and fulness of nature in filling up the measure of their prescribed duty. Stoughton. The angels rejoiced at the laying of the foundation-stone of the earth, the natural temple of God's glory. And the angels sang hymns of joy at the laying of the foundation-stone of the temple of the new creation in the nativity of Christ. And there will be a universal hallelujah of angels and saints at the building of the New Jerusalem of the glorified in heaven. Wordsworth.—The Scriptures mention three occasions in which the angelic orders evinced sympathetic joy. The first was on the creation of man and his world. "Then the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The second, when the Son of God became man. "A multitude of the heavenly host was with the angel praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men." The third is the occasion mentioned by Jesus : "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." From collating these three occasions we would be led, naturally enough, to the inference that there is some high, mysterious importance attached by the universe of purely spiritual beings to the calling into existence of this new and peculiar order of being, the compound creature man ; a creature not after the angelic order of a separate, individual, immaterial existence, but capable, through the connection of his spirit with matter, of communicating the power of an endless life to a whole race of beings propagated from him. Hence possibly the concern at the failure of the experiment in his trial ; and therefore the joy and praising God at the near completion of the scheme for his restoration ; hence the special joy at every instance of the success of that scheme in the repentance and return of the sinner. S. R. 8-11. This refers to Gen. 1:9. It is a magnificent realization of the mighty rush of the waters when the mountains were upheaved. The words "gathered together" in Genesis expresses a rapid, simultaneous motion. The ocean is here personified as a new-born giant, shut in, confined, wrapt and swaddled in the first outburst of its might. Cook.—The figures in these verses are very splendid. First, the ocean is represented as an infant giant, breaking forth from the womb. Then the infant ocean was swathed in clouds, and thick clouds were its swaddling bands. Finally, the new-born monster must be tamed by almighty power, and an impassable bound set to its proud fury. A. B. D. 11. And said, Hitherto shalt thou come. There is a character of great magnificence in all that precedes; but this is signally sublime. We are struck with admiration to see the vast and ungovernable ocean receiving commands and punctually obeying them; to find it, like a managed horse, raging, tossing, and foaming but by the rule and direction of its Master. Dr. Young.—The sea is God's, for He made it, He restrains it; He says to it, Here shall thy proud waves be stayed. This may be considered as an act of God's power over the sea; though it is so vast a body, and though its motion is sometimes extremely violent, yet God has it under check; its waves rise no higher, its tides roll no further than God permits; and it is mentioned as a reason why we should stand in awe of God (Jer. 5:22), and yet why we should encourage ourselves in Him; for He that stops the noise of the sea, even the noise of her waves, can, when He pleases, still the tumult of the people (Psalm 65:7). It is also to be looked upon as an act of God's mercy to the world of mankind, and an instance of His patience toward that provoking race; though He could easily cover the earth again with the waters of the sea. H. The Lord has hitherto appointed limits in the natural world; and in the time to come that world will not deviate from His rule, according to which temporary disturbances are ever becoming of less significance. He has hitherto set limits to every outbreak of human passions; to all the complications that have arisen from men's conflicting dispositions and wishes, up to the present time; He has thrown over the kingdom of grace, the defence that He promised to Him whom He set on His right hand; and He will do so still in the future. Through all the sufferings of the Christian Church, she has fought her way to a blessed liberation from the bondage of human authority, and to a clearer light of truth. And so it will be with all the troubles that may be before us in the future. God the Lord will set bounds and limits to them with the same result as before, and not without an equal blessing; and we may indulge the special hope that the Church of God, although passing through many forms of strife and division, will, as the salt of the earth, be ever attaining a closer likeness to the perfection of Him in whom, as the express image of God, there can be nothing discordant, but all is holy unity and blessed peace. Schleiermacher. 13. Ends of the earth. Literally, skirts or wings of the earth. The figure is beautiful; the dawn as it pours forth along the whole horizon, on both sides of the beholder, lays hold of the borders of the earth, over which night lay like a covering; and seizing this covering by its extremities it shakes the wicked out of it. The wicked flee from the light. The dawn is not a physical phenomenon merely, it is a moral agent. A. B. D. 12-15. These very remarkable figures occur only in this passage. They represent vividly two effects of light, the one moral—evil-doers are discomfited by it; the other physical—earth assumes new form and beauty. The earth is represented as a vast expanse, the light seizes at one rush its extremities, and causes, so to speak, a concussion or shock by which the children of darkness are panic-struck, and, as it were, shaken off its surface. In chap. 24 Job represented the evildoers as working with impunity in darkness; here he is told that the light, which they hate and dread, has a direct mission to overthrow them. Cook. 14. It is changed as clay under the seal. As plastic clay receives and retains the figures of the seal, so the earth, under the sun's illumination, seems to receive new forms of life and beauty. The righteous rejoice in the light, but the wicked slink away at its coming. Curry.—The objects of the earth stand forth, when the morning sun has lighted them up, like a beautiful garment embroidered with bright tissue and variegated colors. Wordsworth.—During the darkness of the night the earth is a perfect blank, in which state it resembles clay that has no impression. By the morning light falling upon the earth, innumerable objects make their appearance upon it; it is then changed, like clay which has received the stamp of the seal. Such appears to be the meaning of this elegant simile. Sealing upon clay is still practised in the East. When the corn-granary at Grand Cairo belonging to the Sultan is full, the inspectors, says Norden, having shut the door, put on their seal upon a handful of clay, which they make use of instead of wax. Scott. 15. And from the wicked their light is withholden. By a bold figure the wicked are here said to be deprived of their light when the morning has dispelled the darkness; for darkness is light to them, whose "high arm" is said to be "broken," because in the morning they lose their boldness and hide themselves through fear, but in the night they are daring and resolute. Rosenmüller. 16-19. The impossibility of knowing the origin, end, object, or course of creation is shown by reference to the depths of ocean, to the unseen world, to the extent of earth, and to the alternations of light and darkness. Modern science continually extends the sphere of our knowledge, but leaves those limits untouched; in fact, the wider the sphere of our vision the vaster the regions of the unknown brought home to our consciousness. Cook. 17. The gates of death. Isaiah calls them "the gates of sheol"—that is, the entrance into the region of the dead, the world of departed souls. The general receptacle of departed spirits was called in Hebrew Sheol, and in Greek Hades; and is defined by Job, "The house of assembly for all living" (30:23). Scott.—The gates of the shadow of death! Rightly considered, there is surely something exceedingly awful in this expression. Death here, Shadow or Skeleton, is the King of Terrors, because we know him not till we get beyond, within those unseen portals whence this vast, wide, creeping, desolating shadow issues and enshrouds us. Death! Its shadow covers the world, darkens it, and fills all hearts with gloomy fears and forebodings. All their lifetime, through fear of death, men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is here, but its substance and its power are the power of an endless life, life in death, and death in life, conflicting forever. The reality of death is in eternity. And that death is called in Scripture the second death. This is that of which the first death is but the shadow. Salvation from that is, indeed, salvation. Cheever. 19. Where is the way where light dwelleth? This question differs from that in vs. 12-15. That related to the morning and its benefit to mankind; this to settling the precise boundary of light and darkness—that is, day and night. One half of the earth is enlightened, the other half is in darkness at the same instant. Job is now asked whether he was witness to that operation of creation by which the limits of light and darkness were fixed, and knew the extent both of one and the other. The question is put in figurative language. Light and Darkness are represented as persons; each has its separate dwelling-place and peculiar jurisdiction; the bounds of one never encroach on those of the other. Scott.—20, 21. Job is asked if he knows the way to the dwelling-place of light and darkness, so that he might take them back to the place of their abode. The words "thou knowest" refer to the question (v. 19), Which is the way? Job knows the way to the place of light (v. 21), for he was born contemporary with it; he is as old as the day-spring which morning by morning has overspread the earth since creation's dawn. A. B. D. Science has taken many a step of progress; she has explored phenomenon after phenomenon, but has she really arrived at those ultimate truths to which all these questions point? Is she really any nearer to them than in the days of Job; or, is she not still on the outside in respect to the ineffable facts, or first workings of nature, that this sublime challenge has preeminently in view? Does she truly "know where light dwelleth"? Can she even explain one of its most common phenomena? The sciolist may talk of science having "rendered obsolete the language of the Bible," but it required the far deeper science and deeper philosophy of a Humboldt to observe, "that, though in the present state of our physical knowledge, many of these questions propounded to Job may be expressed under more scientific definitions, yet it can scarcely be said that we can answer them more satisfactorily." T. Lewis.—The Bible frequently refers to natural facts as illustrations of spiritual truths, asserting thereby an analogy between the natural and spiritual worlds. Where it does this, the accuracy of its references is remarkable—unexampled in so far as I know in any other literature. We find, both in the shorter references to nature, and in such larger and more elaborate compositions as the concluding chapters of Job, a treatment of nature worthy of a revelation from God, and whose minute accuracy is constantly being confirmed by the researches of scientific travellers. Dawson. 22. Treasuries of the snow. The best treasures of nature are the truths it teaches concerning God and ourselves. In the production of the snow is disclosed the power and skill of the Great Creator. In a moment He changes the vapor of the atmosphere into myriads of crystal gems. Every snowflake is as perfectly crystallized as a diamond. Captain Scoresby has delineated ninety-six different forms of crystals, and says: "The extreme beauty and endless variety of objects revealed by the microscope in the animal and vegetable kingdoms are fully equalled, if not surpassed, in both beauty and variety, by the crystals of snow;" and there are 27,000 of these crystals in every square inch of the carpet which covers the earth. From the snow, too, we learn that God loves beauty. The earth's winter garment might have been as warm without being as fairy-like and radiant as it is. Its exquisite texture and dazzling whiteness repeat, in winter, the lesson of the summer flowers. And in the snow we read the goodness of our God. "He giveth snow like wool," says the Psalmist. Yes, it is the wool of the clouds, cast lovingly over the slumbering vegetation to protect it from the fierceness of the winter storm. The farther north we go, the deeper the snow; the feathery blanket is made thicker. Anon. Two things about the snow we do not often think of connecting together. One is silentness, and the other is power. The strongest things in the world are the most silent. The snow is strong and silent. Your lives would be stronger if they were silent. Another thing about snow is that it joins together two things not always together—beauty and usefulness. The snow, which we talk of as cold, is the thing that keeps the life and warmth in the roots in the earth. It keeps out the cold and keeps in the moisture. T. T. Shore.—And the snow is God's own symbol of the regenerated heart. "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." "Come, now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Anon. 23. Snow and hail are represented as having been created and laid up in great storehouses in the heavens or above them, from whence God draws them forth for the moral ends of His government. The idea may be suggested by observation of the vast masses in which snow falls. Job, no doubt (so it is ironically assumed), has inspected these treasuries, or was present when at creation the Almighty filled them! A. B. D. 24. The light, the east wind. The origin of the force by which "the light" diffuses itself through space is among the many things upon which physical science, even in our day, sheds no light. The blowing of "the wind," even when apparently regulated by times and seasons, though known as a fact, is unknown in respect to its cause; and Christ's words to Nicodemus (John 3:8) are as true of the present day as they were of the time when they were first spoken. Curry. 25-41. Hitherto, God had put such questions to Job as were proper to convince him of his ignorance and shortsightedness. Now he comes in the same manner to show his impotency and weakness. As it is but little that he knows and, therefore, he ought not to arraign the Divine counsels, so it is but little that he can do and, therefore, he ought not to oppose the proceedings of Providence. Let him consider what great things God does and try whether he can do the like, or whether he thinks himself an equal match for Him. God has thunder, and lightning, and rain, and frost, at command, but Job has not, and therefore let him not dare to compare with God or to contest with Him. H. 26,27. To cause it to rain. As God by His power sends His "rain" upon the earth, so also, in His sovereign wisdom, He causes it to fall where it may please Him, and not as man's wisdom might determine. God's care, even in the earth, is not confined to man. The wilderness where is no man, and the desolate places are all cared for by Him, and by considering these things Job might learn humility and submission. Curry.—Man is not, as he might think, the only object of God's regard. God is great and His providence very wide. His goodness is over all His works. He satisfies with rain the thirsty wilderness where no man is, that the tender grass may be refreshed. A. B. D. 28-30. These questions refer not to the analysis of phenomena or of natural laws, but to the inner principles of which science now professes to know nothing. Cook.—Vs. 25-27 refer to the rain as it falls and to its effect upon the earth; these verses to the more secret action of the vapor as it is condensed into rain and dewdrops and frozen into snow and hail, and how the fluid water is solidified into ice, making the face of the deep like stone. Here, too, the mysteries of nature elude man's wisdom, but God knows and performs it all. Curry.—There has been great lack of attention to the momentous fact that so much of this language of generation or of evolution, or production by birth (one thing coming out of another), is employed in Scripture. (See Psalms 90:2; Prov. 8:22; Gen. 1:2.) It is all so different from those ideas of mechanical or magical creation which distinguish so many pagan (and also the Mohammedan) mythologies. It is a Divine evolution, through an outgoing word, and the term should not be given up to the naturalists, who discard the idea of semination, and thereby make it an eternal, uninterfered-with, self-evolving of the higher as lying hid in the lower—in the lowest even—from an infinite eternity. T. Lewis. 28. The formation of the dew is represented in Scripture as the work of God and not of man; and its descending to refresh and fertilize the earth is mentioned as His peculiar gift, and in opposition to human means of rendering the earth more fruitful. And the prophet Micah declares that “the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.” R. Dixon. 31-38. He is now asked whether he has power over the heavenly bodies to direct their motions, control their action upon the earth, and prevent the seasons and weather which they are apt to produce. Scott.—From the upper atmosphere—the region of clouds and vapor—the scene is now removed to the firmament, or place of the stars, and this whole section refers to the direction of the regular movements of the heavenly bodies and their influence upon the earth. The term “Pleiades” is commonly understood to indicate the well-known seven stars—a group of seven small stars (only six visible to the naked eye) in the neck of the constellation Taurus. Curry.—The word correctly rendered Pleiades denotes a “heap” or “group” (see 9:9), and probably was intended merely to describe the appearance of that beautiful constellation, which, as well as Orion, in Syria is far more brilliant, and remains longer above the horizon, being at an altitude seventeen degrees higher than in our climate. Cook. It is a curious fact that the revelations of science have led astronomers of our own day to the discovery that the sun is not the dead centre of motion, around which comets sweep and planets whirl; but that it, with its splendid retinue of worlds and satellites, is revolving through the realms of space at the rate of millions of miles in a year, and in obedience to some influence situated precisely in the direction of the star Aleyone, one of the Pleiades. We do not know how far off in the immensities of space that centre of revolving cycles and epicycles may be; nor have our oldest observers or nicest instruments been able to tell us how far off in the skies that beautiful cluster of stars is hung, whose influences man can never bind. In this question alone, and the answer to it, is involved both the recognition and exposition of the whole theory of gravitation. Maury.— It was the impressive conclusion of M. Maedler that this visible universe of suns and their systems is moving around some grand centre in a ceaseless and, to us, mysterious march. Guided by analogy, Herschel reached this inference; and since that time definite reasoning has confirmed it. M. Maedler's conclusion that the star, Aleyone, one of the Pleiades, the well-known seven stars, represents the common centre of the cosmical system, has in its support such concurrent approval that it may be accepted. Not only is the language of Job very definite, but its precision is beginning to be recognized as in harmony with scientific discovery. The more we learn of the mechanism of the heavens, the more significant does Job's inquiry become. For many centuries mystery so shrouded the question, "Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?" that men concluded it was meaningless. It is now intelligible. The word rendered Pleiades—Chimah in the original—while held by some to represent a "heap" or "group," is said by others to mean literally a hinge, that around which other bodies turn or move. The phrase legitimately suggests the idea of a controlling power which connects with this centre the circling march of the universe. W. Fraser. The isolated group of the “Seven Stars,” from the singularity of its appearance, has been distinguished and designated by an appropriate name from the earliest ages. The learned priests of Belus carefully observed its risings and settings nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. By the Greeks it was called Pleiades, from the word pleein, to sail, because it indicated the time when the sailor might hope to undertake a voyage with safety; and also Vergiliæ, from ver, the spring, because it ushered in the mild vernal weather favorable to farming and pastoral employments. The Greek poets associated it with that beautiful mythology which in its purest form peopled the air, the woods, and the waters with imaginary beings, and made the sky itself a concave mirror from which came back exaggerated ideal reflections of humanity. The Seven Stars were supposed to be the seven daughters of Atlas, by Pleione—one of the Oceanides—placed in the heavens after death. But an interest deeper than any derived from mythical association or classical allusion is connected with this group of stars by the use made of it in Scripture. In the apparently simple and passing allusion to it in Job lies hid the germ of one of the greatest of physical truths—a germ lying dormant and concealed in the pages of Scripture for ages, but now brought into air and sunlight by the discoveries of science. The question recently began to be raised among astronomers, “Does the sun stand still, or does it move round some other object in space, carrying its train of planets and their satellites along with it in its orbit?” Attention being thus specially directed to this subject, it was soon found that the sun had an appreciable motion, which tended in the direction of the constellation of Hercules—a lily-shaped group of small stars underneath the Plough in the northwestern quarter of the heavens. This motion of the sun—while it gave a higher meaning to the grand description contained in the nineteenth Psalm, showing it to be no mere popular language or poetical metaphor, but a strict astronomical truth—also accounted in the most accurate manner for several curious discrepancies in regard to the positions of the stars observed on comparing ancient and modern catalogues, which were formerly inexplicable. Toward the constellation of Hercules the stars seem to be opening out; while at the opposite point of the sky their mutual distances are apparently diminishing—as if they were drifting away from the goal of the sun’s course. When this great physical truth was established beyond the possibility of doubt, the next subject of investigation was the point or centre round which the sun performed this marvellous revolution; and after a series of elaborate observations and most ingenious calculations this intricate problem was also satisfactorily solved—one of the greatest triumphs of human genius. M. Maedler, of Dorpat, found that Alcyone, the brightest star of the Pleiades, is the centre of gravity of our vast solar system—the luminous hinge in the heavens round which our sun and his attendant planets are moving through space. The very complexity and isolation of the system of the Pleiades, exhibiting seven distinct orbs closely compressed to the naked eye, but nine or ten times that number when seen through a telescope—forming a grand mechanism, whose individuals are united with each other more closely than with the general mass of stars, indicate the amazing attractive energy that must be concentrated in that spot. Vast as is the distance which separates our sun from this central group—a distance thirty-four millions of times greater than the distance between the sun and our earth—yet so tremendous is the force exerted by Alcyone that it draws our system irresistibly around it at the rate of 422,000 miles a day, in an orbit which it will take nineteen millions of years to complete. With this new explanation, how remarkably striking and appropriate does the original word for Pleiades appear! What a lofty significance does the question of the Almighty receive from this interpretation! “Caust thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?” Canst thou arrest or in any degree modify that attractive influence which it exerts upon our sun and all its planetary worlds, whirling them round its pivot in an orbit of such inconceivable dimensions, and with a velocity so utterly bewildering? In this vast and complex arrangement not one wheel jars or creaks—not a single discordant sound disturbs the deep, solemn quietude of the midnight sky. Smoothly and silently each star performs its sublime revolutions. Although composed of so many bodies—differing in size, form, and consistence—they are all exquisitely poised in space in relation to one another, and to their common centre; their antagonistic forces are so nicely adjusted as to curb every orb in its destined path, and to preserve the safety and harmony of the whole. Moons revolve around planets, comets and planets around the sun, the sun around Alcyone, and Alcyone round some other unknown sun, hid far away in some unexplored depths of our galaxy; and grand beyond conception, this cluster of systems around the great centre of ten thousand centres—the white throne of the Eternal and the Infinite; and all with a rhythm so perfect that we might almost believe in the old poetic fable of “The Music of the Spheres.” In this vision of orbits and revolutions, more awful and stupendous than Ezekiel’s vision of wheels within wheels, we see seated on the throne above the firmament, not a blind chance or a passionless fate, but one like unto the Son of Man—He whom John saw in Patmos, holding the mystery of the seven stars in His right hand—possessed of infinite love as well as infinite power—binding and loosing the sweet influences of Pleiades solely for the order and good of His creation. Man's lifetime is a mere moment—nay, the history of our race, with all its great and varied events, is but a handbreadth compared with the duration of the orbit of our system. During the 6000 years of our existence on the earth, we have traversed thousands of millions of miles; and yet all that time we have obtained no new view of the heavens. All things have continued as they were; the same stars and constellations, in nearly the same positions in the sky, gleam down upon us which appeared to the shepherds on the midnight plains of Chaldea in the time of Job. So vast is the orbit of our system that from the creation of man to the present day, we have described but an infinitesimal arc of it. Our annual progress, though expressed by one hundred and fifty millions of miles, would appear, if viewed from the nearest fixed star, as little more than one third of a second of space. We know not how long our race may exist in this world; but if it be destined to outlive the completion of this vast course, strange and unimagined glories will be revealed to future generations. The heavens of our time will wax old and disappear; constellations with which we are now familiar will give place to unknown combinations; and ever as our system rolls on through space it will pass into new collocations; new suns and systems will advance, open out their splendors, and fill the sky with their glory, and then recede—so that when time shall be no more, the human race in prospect and retrospect of this vast aerial journey will have a higher conception than is now possible of the boundless domains and the inexhaustible riches of the Infinite God. Canst thou loose the bands of Orion? This cluster of stars—the Kesil of the ancient Chaldeans—is by far the most magnificent constellation in the heavens. The constellation of Orion is composed of four very bright stars, forming an elongated square, with three equidistant stars in a diagonal line in the middle. The two upper stars, called Betelgeux and Bellatrix, form the shoulders; in the middle, immediately above these, are three small, dim stars, close to each other, forming the cheek or head. These stars are distinctly visible only in a very clear night. The feet are composed of two very bright stars, called Rigel and Saiph; the three stars in the middle are called the belt or girdle, and from them depends a stripe of smaller stars, forming the hunter's sword. The whole constellation, containing seventeen stars to the naked eye, but exhibiting seventy-eight under an ordinary telescope, occupies a large and conspicuous position in the eastern or southern heavens, below the Pleiades; and is often visible, owing to the brightness and magnitude of its stars, when all other constellations, with the exception of the Plough, are lost in the mistiness of night. Orion is not only the most striking and splendid constellation in the heavens; it is also one of the very few clusters that are visible in all parts of the habitable world. The equator passes through the middle of it; the glittering stars of its belt being strung, like diamonds, on its invisible line. The ubiquity of this constellation may have been one of the reasons why it was chosen to illustrate God's argument with Job, in a book intended to be read universally wherever the human race should extend. The three bright stars which constitute the girdle or bands of Orion never change their form; they preserve the same relative position to each other, and to the rest of the constellation from year to year, and from age to age. They present precisely the same appearance to us which they did to Job. No sooner does the constellation rise above the horizon, however long may have been the interval since we last beheld it, than these three stars appear in the old familiar position. They afford to us one of the highest types of immutability in the midst of ceaseless changes. And yet in the profound rest of these stars there is a ceaseless motion; in their apparent stability and everlasting endurance there is constant change. In vast courses, with inconceivable velocities, they are whirling round invisible centres, and ever shifting their positions in space, and ever passing into new collocations. Mysterious triplet of stars, that are ever changing, and yet never seeming to change! How wonderful must be the Power which preserves such perfect order amid all their complex arrangements, such sublime peace and everlasting permanence amid the incalculable distances to which they wander, and the bewildering velocities with which they move! What answer can Job give to the question of the Almighty? Can man whose breath is in his nostrils and who is crushed before the moth, separate these stars from one another, or alter their relative positions in the smallest degree? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ Elihu, in fact, supplies just what Job had repeatedly called for, a confutation of his opinions, not effected by an overwhelming display of Divine power, but by rational and human argument; such a confutation as would not, like the arguments of the other opponents, rest upon false, bigoted, or hypocritical assertions, but would befit a truthful and candid reasoner. The reasonings of Elihu, moreover, are really needed for the full development of the subject-matter of the book. Cook. Elihu is himself such a “messenger” as he describes (33:23, 24), “an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness.” He had been selected from all others and sent of God to expound to Job the Divine will and purpose in this mysterious dispensation, and to make known to him his duty in the case. And this was with the result that he had foreshown. “Then He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.” Elihu acts the part of a Divinely commissioned and effectual instructor, a teacher who is the instrument of salvation to his suffering and needy friend. He fulfils in a lower sense the very function of the great teacher and prophet of the Lord, in response to whose prevalent vindication the same reply is given, “Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.” Only the ransom is then no longer limited to the figurative sense in which Elihu uses it of the sufferer’s own improved spiritual state as an adequate ground or reason for his release from further endurance. The great Teacher has provided a ransom in the strict and proper sense for the release of His people, now and forever, from the bondage that oppresses them. Elihu’s task, of removing misapprehensions from Job’s mind and correcting his mistakes, is now fulfilled. But it was not given him to accomplish for Job the full and blessed effects of his temptation. This work the LORD reserved for Himself, to be performed by Him in His own Person. Elihu is but His messenger sent before His face to prepare His way before Him. And now even while he is speaking the rumbling is heard of distant thunder; heavy masses of cloud begin to darken the sky, and the advancing tempest betokens the Lord’s approach. W. H. G. 1. THEN the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said 2. Who is this that darkeneth counsel By words without knowledge? 3. Gird up now thy loins like a man; For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 4. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. 5. Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it? 6. Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof; 7. When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8. Or who shut up the sea with doors, When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb; 9. When I made the cloud the garment thereof, And thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, 10. And marked out for it my bound, And set bars and doors, 11. And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; And here shall thy proud waves be stayed? 12. Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days began, And caused the dayspring to know its place; 13. That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, And the wicked be shaken out of it? 14. It is changed as clay under the seal; And all things stand forth as a garment; 15. And from the wicked their light is withholden, And the high arm is broken. 16. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep? 17. Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee? Or hast thou seen the gates of the shadow of death? 18. Hast thou comprehended the earth in its breadth? Declare, if thou knowest it all. 19. Where is the way to the dwelling of light, And as for darkness, where is the place thereof; 20. That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, And that thou shouldest discern the paths to the house thereof? 21. Doubtless, thou knowest, for thou wast then born, And the number of thy days is great! 22. Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow, Or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hall, 23. Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, Against the day of battle and war? 24. By what way is the light parted, Or the east wind scattered upon the earth? 25. Who hath cleft a channel for the water- flood, Or a way for the lightning of the thunder; 26. To cause it to rain on a land where no man is; On the wilderness, wherein there is no man; THE thirty-eighth chapter of Job may almost be called a poetical parallel to the prose of the Mosaic account. The first of Genesis is evi- dently in view, and some marks of its order may be traced. God is represented as speaking out of the thunder cloud, and challenging Job's ignorance in a series of questions clothed in the highest garb of poetry—such poetry as we find nowhere else in all the remains of classical an- tiquity. T. Lewis.—The Almighty's speech, in this and the following chapters, is by much the finest part of the noblest and most ancient poem in the world. Longinus has a chapter on interrogations, which shows that they contribute much to the sublime. This speech of the Almighty is made up of them. Interrogation seems indeed the proper style of Majesty in- censed. It differs from other manner of re- proof, as bidding a person execute himself does from a common execution; for he that asks the guilty a proper question makes him, in effect, pass sentence on himself. Dr. Young. The design of this appearance of the Almighty is not to vindicate the injured character of Job. Neither is the design of this speech to decide the controversy in the dialogues about the ways of 27. To satisfy the waste and desolate ground; And to cause the tender grass to spring forth? 28. Hath the rain a father? Or who hath begotten the drops of dew? 29. Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 30. The waters hide themselves and become like stone, And the face of the deep is frozen. 31. Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? 32. Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train? 33. Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth? 34. Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover thee? 35. Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go, And say unto thee, Here we are? 36. Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the mind? 37. Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven, 38. When the dust runneth into a mass, And the clods cleave fast together? providence, for the decision of that dispute was reserved for the subsequent history. The scope of the speech is to humble Job; and to teach others, by his example, to acquiesce implicitly in the disposals of God, from an unbounded con- fidence in His wisdom, equity, and goodness. Scott.—Job had been instructed and strength- ened by the intensity of the struggle which had been forced upon him. He was now in a state of readiness to welcome a new Divine communi- cation; and this had been brought about by the trials through which he had passed. Satan meant to have sundered him from the Lord; he, in fact, opened the way for larger and fuller impartations of Divine knowledge and grace. He had but prepared the way of the Lord, who was now to come to Job with a nearness and fulness of manifestation as never before. W. H. G. The discourse expatiates on the mighty works of God, the vastness and variety of creation. At first sight it appears a not very direct or suitable answer to difficulties about providence; but it was really the very best teaching for Job, be- cause it expanded his thought beyond the limits of his own trouble, impressed him with a vivid sense of the Divine wisdom and majesty, and thus rebuked his disposition to complain and remonstrate, as if God were a man like himself. D. F.—When the Almighty at length speaks, in answer to Job's repeated challenge, it is not to argue, it is not to answer, but to unfold the glory and wonder of creation in a series of living pictures, "to point, with mighty but tender irony, to the arch of the rainbow and the fountains of the dawn, and to amaze, to startle, to humble the dust and ashes of mortality with the miracles of His power; to convince them that man is nothing-perfect, and that God is All-complete." But it is not only to convict man of his inability to comprehend the movements of the Divine mind that Job is catechised on his knowledge of the laws of nature, on the diffusion of light, the formation of rain, or the marvels of the treasure-house of ice and snow. It is not merely to convince him of the nothingness of his puny strength that, after he has "girt his loins like a man," he is confronted one by one with inferior creatures which yet defy his dominion and laugh at his pretension and pride, so that the "lord of creation" is left "encircled with a universal chorus of contempt." He is to learn that "God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor our ways as His ways;" but at the same time he is to learn that in the outward manifestation of Himself in nature there is enough to confirm the testimony of conscience to a moral order, founded on perfect justice and directed by perfect wisdom. Aglen. And what is the Divine revelation? Just the unending miracle that passes before our eyes every day. In the heavens above, in the earth beneath, in the great events of creation and phenomena of nature, in the myriad life that fills land and air and ocean, we are made to see that there is Wisdom and Power sufficient for everything, to make every creature fulfil its part in one infinite purpose and will. No esoteric disclosure for some exceptionally favored disciple, but what every one may lift up his eyes and see. No apologies for mysterious dealings, nor little systems of men corrected, but the perpetual self-justifying course of a harmonious universe. Is it not sublimer so? Would we desire the God of the ages to measure reasoning with mortals, and argue out a case? J. F. G.—The intellectual solution of problems can never be the question between Jehovah and His servants; the question is the state of their hearts toward Himself. He asks of Job, "Who am I?" and "What art thou?" In a series of splendid pictures from inanimate creation and the world of animal life He makes all the glory of His being to pass before Job. A. B. D.—The whole address is but the unfolding of the thought, I am the infinite and all-perfect God. And this truth is set before his mind by a series of appeals to the grandeur of God's works, by which His perfections are so strikingly displayed in contrast with the utter insignificance of man. Job is made to feel at once who it is that is speaking to him; and how completely he had stepped out of his province, and of what incredible arrogance and presumption he had been guilty in venturing to pass his judgment upon the doings of the Most High. W. H. G. Jehovah appears; twice He overwhelms Job with the majesty of His words. In the first discourse He treats of this question: Thou who pretendest to be able to judge My ways, canst thou understand this universe? The second turns upon this: Wilt thou try to govern the world in My place, and to do so better than I? This is the development of the second of the two subjects treated by Elihu, but with a more magnificent richness of language, and a more triumphant power. Godet.—The Lord's answer to Job out of the storm contains two questions: First (38:1; 40:5), Shall mortal man contend with God? Second (40:6; 42:6), Shall man charge God with wrong in His rule of the world? The two questions, however, are hardly kept apart, for the first implies the second, inasmuch as a man's contention with God will naturally be because of His unjust treatment of himself. The object of the Lord's answer is twofold, to rebuke Job, and to heal him—to bring home to his heart the blameworthiness of his words and demeanor toward God, and to lift him up out of his perplexities into peace. The two things hardly differ; at least both are effected by the same means—namely, by God's causing all His glory to pass before Job. . . . The trial has been successfully borne; for though Job has sinned under it, his sin has not been of the kind predicted by the Adversary; he has continued to cleave to God, and even sounded deeps of faith profounder than ever he had reached before (ch. 19), and tasted the sweets of righteousness with a keener delight than during his former godly life (17:9). At the point at which we are now arrived the sole object of interest is Job's mind in its relations to God. Though the trial has been successfully borne upon the whole, Job has not come out of it scathless. His demeanor toward God, especially in presuming to contend with Him, has been at many points profoundly blameworthy. It might be supposed at first that the simplest way of restoring Job to peace would have been to reveal to him that his afflictions were not due to his sin, but were the trial of his righteousness, and in this way solve the problem that perplexed him. But the elements of blameworthiness in Job's conduct forbade this simple treatment. The disease had spread in his mind, and developed moral symptoms which required a broader remedy. Besides, it is God who now speaks to Job; and in His teaching of men He never moves in the region of the mere understanding, but always in that of the religious life. He may remove perplexities regarding His providence and ways from men's minds, but He does not do so by the immediate communication of intellectual light, but by flushing all the channels of thought and life with a deeper sense of Himself. This is the meaning of God's manifestation to Job out of the storm. He brings Himself and His full glory near to Job, and fills his mind with such a sense of Him as he had never had before—"Now mine eye seeth thee" (42 : 5). At this sight of God Job is humbled and lays his hand upon his mouth in silence; such thoughts of God as he had never had before fill his heart; his former knowledge of Him was like that learned from hearsay, dim and imperfect, now he saw Him eye to eye, and he repents his former words and demeanor in dust and ashes. A. B. D. The mind of Job had been prepared for the Theophany, or manifestation, first by the careful review of his past life and of the principles which lay at the foundation of his religious creed; and then by the discourses of Elihu, in which the loving purposes of Divine interpositions were for the first time distinctly enunciated. All that he now needs is a personal revelation, to be brought face to face with Him whom in the midst of his great misery he had ventured to arraign. The Lord God does not, strictly speaking, reason with His creatures; but He does more, He reproves Job, and brings before his mind a vast and most comprehensive picture of His providential administration of the universe. The discourse contains the deepest and highest view which the mind of a patriarch, under Divine teaching, could conceive of the mysteries of existence. Job learned thoroughly the lesson, which in his better nature he had all along adopted as the living principle of his faith, that although the special object which God may have in any one of His works may be wholly undiscoverable, if not incomprehensible to man, yet that they each and all display a manifold wisdom, an all-pervading and all-controlling Providence, an adaptation of means to ends, which are inseparably connected with absolute goodness, and should teach man to submit, without a question, without struggles or reluctance, to whatever He, the Almighty Maker and King, may ordain or permit. Chaps. 38, 39. The first discourse is arranged in seven sections, each complete in itself. First, the creation of the earth, sea and light (38 : 1-15). The mysteries of creation, the depths of ocean and of sheol, the sources of light and darkness, of snow, hail, lightning, storm, of rain, dew, ice, and frost (vs. 16-30); the government of the stars, of heaven and earth, of lightning and cloud, and the wisdom thereto required (vs. 31-38); the sustenance of animals, the lion and raven (vs. 38-41). Their generation, the gazelle and hind (39 : 1-4). The comparison of wild and tame animals, the wild ass, the oryx (vs. 5-12); the peculiar characteristics of the ostrich, the war-horse, the hawk, and the eagle (vs. 13-30). Cook. The awful and overpowering phenomena of nature and of life were revealed to Job. He is carried back to the regions of earth and sea and light, and with each question comes, as it were, a lightning flash of poetic beauty. We hear the angelic host, the morning stars, the stars of dawn, fitly hailing the dawn of life in a newborn world, "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy;" or the wild and capricious sea subjected to law and order—"Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed;" or we see the sudden sunrise in a land of briefest twilight flash on the dark earth, and its scenery coming out sharp and clear as the shapeless clay receives the impress of a seal. The sunshine even there hath a glorious birth. Where wast thou, said the Voice, when these things had their birth? and then his brain is made dizzy by challenges to penetrate now the homes of light and darkness; now the regions of stored and accumulated snows; now the clouds feeding here the streams that, swift or slow, mould the mountains and shape the earth; now falling on the broad desert steppes in beneficent and fertilizing rain; now the realms of ice, the frozen seas; now the majestic heavens and the laws that move the stars. "Where is thy hand? what is thy knowledge among these things?" he is asked. And then he—and Job is here the type of all our race, though the language used to him is couched, of course, in a form suited to his day and generation—is bidden to look upon the forms of wild, untamed, untamable life that filled, in those early days, so vast a portion of the earth's surface. He is called to look upon those kingly lions that needed not the aid of man; on the wild ravens whose cry to the poet's ear went up as a very prayer to the Father of all life; and the rock goats and the wild ass, creatures so strong, so vigorous, so rude, so free, rejoicing in a noble liberty, scorning, he is told, the multitudes of the city, neither regarding the cry of the driver; then on the mighty and primeval buffalo, unfortunately rendered by the meaningless heraldic unicorn, whom none can train to draw the plough, none force to carry home the garnered wheat; then the sullen ostrich, so dull to natural feeling, so hardened against her young ones, yet able to put to scorn the steed and its rider. Then the words, "Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" usher in the stirring, the splendid description of the horse, not, as with the Greek poet, the servant of man, but in the form known to Hebrew or Arab or Egyptian, as the fiery, neighing, snorting war-horse of the Arabians, "who saith among the trumpets, Ha! Ha! who smelleth the battle afar off." And the list of pictures which began with the king of beasts ends with that of the queen of birds, who builds her nest upon the rock. The language, we all feel, reaches the very high-water mark of poetic beauty. Nothing in the world can exceed its dignity, its force, its majesty, or the freshness of its pictures of nature and of life. Dean Bradley. 38:1. The Lord answered Job. Granting the human elements of the story, in all their human and natural grandeur, the supernatural seems but its fitting complement. It is true that to those who are eye-witnesses of the event the miracle is the attestation of the doctrine; but for minds that read or contemplate it the converse holds: it is the glory of the truth that makes the miracle easy of belief. T. Lewis. Out of the whirlwind. Rather, out of the storm. Jehovah, even when condescending to speak with men, must veil Himself in the storm cloud in which He descends and approaches the earth. Even when He is nearest us, clouds and darkness are round about Him. His revelation of Himself to Job, at least, was partly to rebuke him, for he had sinned against His majesty, and He veils Himself in terrors. A. B. D. 3. Gird up now thy loins. Job had expressed strong confidence in respect to the righteousness of his cause, and great bravery of soul in declaring his readiness to meet God in judgment, and now God meets him and challenges him to bring all his boasted manhood to the hearing. Curry. 4-38. A survey of the inanimate creation, the wonders of earth and sky—the earth (vs. 4-18; the heavens (vs. 18-38). A. B. D. 4-11. Earth and sea. 4. Where wast thou? The sentiment conveyed in these striking interrogations is that He alone who made the world is capable of judging how it ought to be governed. This and the three following verses speak of the creation of the earth; and in terms of architecture which denote exact proportion, nice arrangement, and durable solidity. Scott. Laid the foundations of the earth. There was a time when this planet did not exist; a time when our sun was not lighted, nor any world of our system launched. There was a time when no star twinkled in the abyss of space, and no seraph winged his flaming path through the vast empyrean. There was a time when sound was sleeping and light was still unborn. But even then this silent, orbless immensity was full of a latent joy, for it was full of God. Shrouded in their own light inaccessible, filled with mutual delight and complacency, and exchanging communion high and sweet, the Father, Son, and Spirit rejoiced together, and the bosom of Godhead was an ocean of bright, unfathomed blessedness. And so from eternity to eternity the Creator might have continued the silent hiding-place of His own power, the radiant retreat of His own sanctity, the glorious abyss of His own joyful all-sufficiency. Even then God was love. And that love welled so deep and rose so high that at last it overflowed. Creation is the brimming over of the Creator's love, the emanations of that exuberant goodness which must needs relieve its excess of joy by making blessed beings to see and share it. Hamilton. 6,7. The creation of the earth is likened to the rearing of a great edifice, whose extent was determined by line, whose pillars were sunk in their bases, and its corner-stone laid with shoutings and songs of rejoicing among the heavenly hosts. The stars and the angels are here, as usual, conjoined, and the morning stars are named as the brightest and most glorious, as also because the earth rose into existence at the morning dawn. A B. D. Here the imagination is directed to the building of a temple; and then there is brought in that other poetical imagery, than which nothing can be conceived more glorious or more animating, although drawn from one of the customs of the earth: "When the stars of the morning sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The metaphor itself is derived from the songs and processions which in all ages have been used at the commencement, or laying the corner-stone of great public buildings. As in Zech. 4 : 7 : "They shall bring forth the corner-stone with shoutings, Grace, grace, unto it ;" or, Ezra 3 : 10, where it is said : "They laid the foundations of the temple of the Lord, and the priests stood with their trumpets, and the sons of Asaph with their loud sounding cymbals, and all the people sang aloud in great triumph, and the voice was heard afar." And so the Hosts of Heaven tone jubilee when earth's corner-stone was laid, the beginning of this new temple in which there are to be such rich displays of the Divine glory. T. Lewis. 7. Those luminous worlds which adorn the vault of heaven are called morning stars, because to the sacred poet it appeared morning when God founded the earth. The songs of praise with which they greeted the morn of creation were that silent yet eloquent language with which, according to Psalms 19 : 1, they still declare the glory of their Creator. Equally clear is it that the expression, "sons of God," refers to the angels who surround the throne of God to execute His behests (Job 1 : 6 ; Psalms 29 : 1 ; 89 : 6 ; 103 : 21). They are called angels in virtue of their office as messengers ; sons of God in virtue of their nature. These titles point to their superiority over weak and sinful man as being the holy inhabitants of heaven, the messengers of Omnipotence, and the reflection of Divine Majesty. . . . Let it be borne in mind that angels are always called the sons of God, but not of Jehovah. The term Elohim designates the Divine Being as the fulness and source of life, of power, of blessedness, of holiness, of glory, and majesty. The term Jehovah describes Him as merciful and gracious, as the Saviour and Redeemer who humbled Himself in order to deliver fallen man from His ruin and to draw him upward. The sons of Elohim are, therefore, those in whom shines forth, and who are the media of His power and glory. The sons of Jehovah are those who receive and are the vehicles of His redeeming mercy. In this sense Israel is called the first-born son of Jehovah (Ex. 4 : 22). Kurtz. "Sons of God." Sons they are, as all other intelligent creatures are, by creation. This is the first and obvious manner of sonship ; but they are sons of God emphatically, as being dutiful, obedient, affectionate sons ; sons who know their relation to their Father and act according to it ; sons who in act and spirit, in desire and love, exhibit the lines and features of the character of their Father ; who imitate because they love Him, and love Him the more as, by imitating, they obtain a deeper and more intimate knowledge of Him. They are the elder brothers of God's family ; elder in creation, elder in obedience, elder in present privilege—elder sons who are ever with Him and yet feel no jealousy, but rather loyal joy in heaven when any of the younger outcast prodigals of the same blood returns. We hear of no self-originated schemes, whether of mercy or wisdom, among them. They are servants of God who do His pleasure ; excellent indeed in strength and far surpassing us in knowledge and power, but yet loyally keeping within the bounds of their appointed service, not venturing to press into secret knowledge, however much they desire to look into it, finding their sufficient joy and fulness of nature in filling up the measure of their prescribed duty. Stoughton. The angels rejoiced at the laying of the foundation-stone of the earth, the natural temple of God's glory. And the angels sang hymns of joy at the laying of the foundation-stone of the temple of the new creation in the nativity of Christ. And there will be a universal hallelujah of angels and saints at the building of the New Jerusalem of the glorified in heaven. Wordsworth.—The Scriptures mention three occasions in which the angelic orders evinced sympathetic joy. The first was on the creation of man and his world. "Then the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The second, when the Son of God became man. "A multitude of the heavenly host was with the angel praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men." The third is the occasion mentioned by Jesus : "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." From collating these three occasions we would be led, naturally enough, to the inference that there is some high, mysterious importance attached by the universe of purely spiritual beings to the calling into existence of this new and peculiar order of being, the compound creature man ; a creature not after the angelic order of a separate, individual, immaterial existence, but capable, through the connection of his spirit with matter, of communicating the power of an endless life to a whole race of beings propagated from him. Hence possibly the concern at the failure of the experiment in his trial ; and therefore the joy and praising God at the near completion of the scheme for his restoration ; hence the special joy at every instance of the success of that scheme in the repentance and return of the sinner. S. R. 8-11. This refers to Gen. 1:9. It is a magnificent realization of the mighty rush of the waters when the mountains were upheaved. The words "gathered together" in Genesis expresses a rapid, simultaneous motion. The ocean is here personified as a new-born giant, shut in, confined, wrapt and swaddled in the first outburst of its might. Cook.—The figures in these verses are very splendid. First, the ocean is represented as an infant giant, breaking forth from the womb. Then the infant ocean was swathed in clouds, and thick clouds were its swaddling bands. Finally, the new-born monster must be tamed by almighty power, and an impassable bound set to its proud fury. A. B. D. 11. And said, Hitherto shalt thou come. There is a character of great magnificence in all that precedes; but this is signally sublime. We are struck with admiration to see the vast and ungovernable ocean receiving commands and punctually obeying them; to find it, like a managed horse, raging, tossing, and foaming but by the rule and direction of its Master. Dr. Young.—The sea is God's, for He made it, He restrains it; He says to it, Here shall thy proud waves be stayed. This may be considered as an act of God's power over the sea; though it is so vast a body, and though its motion is sometimes extremely violent, yet God has it under check; its waves rise no higher, its tides roll no further than God permits; and it is mentioned as a reason why we should stand in awe of God (Jer. 5:22), and yet why we should encourage ourselves in Him; for He that stops the noise of the sea, even the noise of her waves, can, when He pleases, still the tumult of the people (Psalm 65:7). It is also to be looked upon as an act of God's mercy to the world of mankind, and an instance of His patience toward that provoking race; though He could easily cover the earth again with the waters of the sea. H. The Lord has hitherto appointed limits in the natural world; and in the time to come that world will not deviate from His rule, according to which temporary disturbances are ever becoming of less significance. He has hitherto set limits to every outbreak of human passions; to all the complications that have arisen from men's conflicting dispositions and wishes, up to the present time; He has thrown over the kingdom of grace, the defence that He promised to Him whom He set on His right hand; and He will do so still in the future. Through all the sufferings of the Christian Church, she has fought her way to a blessed liberation from the bondage of human authority, and to a clearer light of truth. And so it will be with all the troubles that may be before us in the future. God the Lord will set bounds and limits to them with the same result as before, and not without an equal blessing; and we may indulge the special hope that the Church of God, although passing through many forms of strife and division, will, as the salt of the earth, be ever attaining a closer likeness to the perfection of Him in whom, as the express image of God, there can be nothing discordant, but all is holy unity and blessed peace. Schleiermacher. 13. Ends of the earth. Literally, skirts or wings of the earth. The figure is beautiful; the dawn as it pours forth along the whole horizon, on both sides of the beholder, lays hold of the borders of the earth, over which night lay like a covering; and seizing this covering by its extremities it shakes the wicked out of it. The wicked flee from the light. The dawn is not a physical phenomenon merely, it is a moral agent. A. B. D. 12-15. These very remarkable figures occur only in this passage. They represent vividly two effects of light, the one moral—evil-doers are discomfited by it; the other physical—earth assumes new form and beauty. The earth is represented as a vast expanse, the light seizes at one rush its extremities, and causes, so to speak, a concussion or shock by which the children of darkness are panic-struck, and, as it were, shaken off its surface. In chap. 24 Job represented the evildoers as working with impunity in darkness; here he is told that the light, which they hate and dread, has a direct mission to overthrow them. Cook. 14. It is changed as clay under the seal. As plastic clay receives and retains the figures of the seal, so the earth, under the sun's illumination, seems to receive new forms of life and beauty. The righteous rejoice in the light, but the wicked slink away at its coming. Curry.—The objects of the earth stand forth, when the morning sun has lighted them up, like a beautiful garment embroidered with bright tissue and variegated colors. Wordsworth.—During the darkness of the night the earth is a perfect blank, in which state it resembles clay that has no impression. By the morning light falling upon the earth, innumerable objects make their appearance upon it; it is then changed, like clay which has received the stamp of the seal. Such appears to be the meaning of this elegant simile. Sealing upon clay is still practised in the East. When the corn-granary at Grand Cairo belonging to the Sultan is full, the inspectors, says Norden, having shut the door, put on their seal upon a handful of clay, which they make use of instead of wax. Scott. 15. And from the wicked their light is withholden. By a bold figure the wicked are here said to be deprived of their light when the morning has dispelled the darkness; for darkness is light to them, whose "high arm" is said to be "broken," because in the morning they lose their boldness and hide themselves through fear, but in the night they are daring and resolute. Rosenmüller. 16-19. The impossibility of knowing the origin, end, object, or course of creation is shown by reference to the depths of ocean, to the unseen world, to the extent of earth, and to the alternations of light and darkness. Modern science continually extends the sphere of our knowledge, but leaves those limits untouched; in fact, the wider the sphere of our vision the vaster the regions of the unknown brought home to our consciousness. Cook. 17. The gates of death. Isaiah calls them "the gates of sheol"—that is, the entrance into the region of the dead, the world of departed souls. The general receptacle of departed spirits was called in Hebrew Sheol, and in Greek Hades; and is defined by Job, "The house of assembly for all living" (30:23). Scott.—The gates of the shadow of death! Rightly considered, there is surely something exceedingly awful in this expression. Death here, Shadow or Skeleton, is the King of Terrors, because we know him not till we get beyond, within those unseen portals whence this vast, wide, creeping, desolating shadow issues and enshrouds us. Death! Its shadow covers the world, darkens it, and fills all hearts with gloomy fears and forebodings. All their lifetime, through fear of death, men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is here, but its substance and its power are the power of an endless life, life in death, and death in life, conflicting forever. The reality of death is in eternity. And that death is called in Scripture the second death. This is that of which the first death is but the shadow. Salvation from that is, indeed, salvation. Cheever. 19. Where is the way where light dwelleth? This question differs from that in vs. 12-15. That related to the morning and its benefit to mankind; this to settling the precise boundary of light and darkness—that is, day and night. One half of the earth is enlightened, the other half is in darkness at the same instant. Job is now asked whether he was witness to that operation of creation by which the limits of light and darkness were fixed, and knew the extent both of one and the other. The question is put in figurative language. Light and Darkness are represented as persons; each has its separate dwelling-place and peculiar jurisdiction; the bounds of one never encroach on those of the other. Scott.—20, 21. Job is asked if he knows the way to the dwelling-place of light and darkness, so that he might take them back to the place of their abode. The words "thou knowest" refer to the question (v. 19), Which is the way? Job knows the way to the place of light (v. 21), for he was born contemporary with it; he is as old as the day-spring which morning by morning has overspread the earth since creation's dawn. A. B. D. Science has taken many a step of progress; she has explored phenomenon after phenomenon, but has she really arrived at those ultimate truths to which all these questions point? Is she really any nearer to them than in the days of Job; or, is she not still on the outside in respect to the ineffable facts, or first workings of nature, that this sublime challenge has preeminently in view? Does she truly "know where light dwelleth"? Can she even explain one of its most common phenomena? The sciolist may talk of science having "rendered obsolete the language of the Bible," but it required the far deeper science and deeper philosophy of a Humboldt to observe, "that, though in the present state of our physical knowledge, many of these questions propounded to Job may be expressed under more scientific definitions, yet it can scarcely be said that we can answer them more satisfactorily." T. Lewis.—The Bible frequently refers to natural facts as illustrations of spiritual truths, asserting thereby an analogy between the natural and spiritual worlds. Where it does this, the accuracy of its references is remarkable—unexampled in so far as I know in any other literature. We find, both in the shorter references to nature, and in such larger and more elaborate compositions as the concluding chapters of Job, a treatment of nature worthy of a revelation from God, and whose minute accuracy is constantly being confirmed by the researches of scientific travellers. Dawson. 22. Treasuries of the snow. The best treasures of nature are the truths it teaches concerning God and ourselves. In the production of the snow is disclosed the power and skill of the Great Creator. In a moment He changes the vapor of the atmosphere into myriads of crystal gems. Every snowflake is as perfectly crystallized as a diamond. Captain Scoresby has delineated ninety-six different forms of crystals, and says: "The extreme beauty and endless variety of objects revealed by the microscope in the animal and vegetable kingdoms are fully equalled, if not surpassed, in both beauty and variety, by the crystals of snow;" and there are 27,000 of these crystals in every square inch of the carpet which covers the earth. From the snow, too, we learn that God loves beauty. The earth's winter garment might have been as warm without being as fairy-like and radiant as it is. Its exquisite texture and dazzling whiteness repeat, in winter, the lesson of the summer flowers. And in the snow we read the goodness of our God. "He giveth snow like wool," says the Psalmist. Yes, it is the wool of the clouds, cast lovingly over the slumbering vegetation to protect it from the fierceness of the winter storm. The farther north we go, the deeper the snow; the feathery blanket is made thicker. Anon. Two things about the snow we do not often think of connecting together. One is silentness, and the other is power. The strongest things in the world are the most silent. The snow is strong and silent. Your lives would be stronger if they were silent. Another thing about snow is that it joins together two things not always together—beauty and usefulness. The snow, which we talk of as cold, is the thing that keeps the life and warmth in the roots in the earth. It keeps out the cold and keeps in the moisture. T. T. Shore.—And the snow is God's own symbol of the regenerated heart. "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." "Come, now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Anon. 23. Snow and hail are represented as having been created and laid up in great storehouses in the heavens or above them, from whence God draws them forth for the moral ends of His government. The idea may be suggested by observation of the vast masses in which snow falls. Job, no doubt (so it is ironically assumed), has inspected these treasuries, or was present when at creation the Almighty filled them! A. B. D. 24. The light, the east wind. The origin of the force by which "the light" diffuses itself through space is among the many things upon which physical science, even in our day, sheds no light. The blowing of "the wind," even when apparently regulated by times and seasons, though known as a fact, is unknown in respect to its cause; and Christ's words to Nicodemus (John 3:8) are as true of the present day as they were of the time when they were first spoken. Curry. 25-41. Hitherto, God had put such questions to Job as were proper to convince him of his ignorance and shortsightedness. Now he comes in the same manner to show his impotency and weakness. As it is but little that he knows and, therefore, he ought not to arraign the Divine counsels, so it is but little that he can do and, therefore, he ought not to oppose the proceedings of Providence. Let him consider what great things God does and try whether he can do the like, or whether he thinks himself an equal match for Him. God has thunder, and lightning, and rain, and frost, at command, but Job has not, and therefore let him not dare to compare with God or to contest with Him. H. 26,27. To cause it to rain. As God by His power sends His "rain" upon the earth, so also, in His sovereign wisdom, He causes it to fall where it may please Him, and not as man's wisdom might determine. God's care, even in the earth, is not confined to man. The wilderness where is no man, and the desolate places are all cared for by Him, and by considering these things Job might learn humility and submission. Curry.—Man is not, as he might think, the only object of God's regard. God is great and His providence very wide. His goodness is over all His works. He satisfies with rain the thirsty wilderness where no man is, that the tender grass may be refreshed. A. B. D. 28-30. These questions refer not to the analysis of phenomena or of natural laws, but to the inner principles of which science now professes to know nothing. Cook.—Vs. 25-27 refer to the rain as it falls and to its effect upon the earth; these verses to the more secret action of the vapor as it is condensed into rain and dewdrops and frozen into snow and hail, and how the fluid water is solidified into ice, making the face of the deep like stone. Here, too, the mysteries of nature elude man's wisdom, but God knows and performs it all. Curry.—There has been great lack of attention to the momentous fact that so much of this language of generation or of evolution, or production by birth (one thing coming out of another), is employed in Scripture. (See Psalms 90:2; Prov. 8:22; Gen. 1:2.) It is all so different from those ideas of mechanical or magical creation which distinguish so many pagan (and also the Mohammedan) mythologies. It is a Divine evolution, through an outgoing word, and the term should not be given up to the naturalists, who discard the idea of semination, and thereby make it an eternal, uninterfered-with, self-evolving of the higher as lying hid in the lower—in the lowest even—from an infinite eternity. T. Lewis. 28. The formation of the dew is represented in Scripture as the work of God and not of man; and its descending to refresh and fertilize the earth is mentioned as His peculiar gift, and in opposition to human means of rendering the earth more fruitful. And the prophet Micah declares that “the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.” R. Dixon. 31-38. He is now asked whether he has power over the heavenly bodies to direct their motions, control their action upon the earth, and prevent the seasons and weather which they are apt to produce. Scott.—From the upper atmosphere—the region of clouds and vapor—the scene is now removed to the firmament, or place of the stars, and this whole section refers to the direction of the regular movements of the heavenly bodies and their influence upon the earth. The term “Pleiades” is commonly understood to indicate the well-known seven stars—a group of seven small stars (only six visible to the naked eye) in the neck of the constellation Taurus. Curry.—The word correctly rendered Pleiades denotes a “heap” or “group” (see 9:9), and probably was intended merely to describe the appearance of that beautiful constellation, which, as well as Orion, in Syria is far more brilliant, and remains longer above the horizon, being at an altitude seventeen degrees higher than in our climate. Cook. It is a curious fact that the revelations of science have led astronomers of our own day to the discovery that the sun is not the dead centre of motion, around which comets sweep and planets whirl; but that it, with its splendid retinue of worlds and satellites, is revolving through the realms of space at the rate of millions of miles in a year, and in obedience to some influence situated precisely in the direction of the star Aleyone, one of the Pleiades. We do not know how far off in the immensities of space that centre of revolving cycles and epicycles may be; nor have our oldest observers or nicest instruments been able to tell us how far off in the skies that beautiful cluster of stars is hung, whose influences man can never bind. In this question alone, and the answer to it, is involved both the recognition and exposition of the whole theory of gravitation. Maury.— It was the impressive conclusion of M. Maedler that this visible universe of suns and their systems is moving around some grand centre in a ceaseless and, to us, mysterious march. Guided by analogy, Herschel reached this inference; and since that time definite reasoning has confirmed it. M. Maedler's conclusion that the star, Aleyone, one of the Pleiades, the well-known seven stars, represents the common centre of the cosmical system, has in its support such concurrent approval that it may be accepted. Not only is the language of Job very definite, but its precision is beginning to be recognized as in harmony with scientific discovery. The more we learn of the mechanism of the heavens, the more significant does Job's inquiry become. For many centuries mystery so shrouded the question, "Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?" that men concluded it was meaningless. It is now intelligible. The word rendered Pleiades—Chimah in the original—while held by some to represent a "heap" or "group," is said by others to mean literally a hinge, that around which other bodies turn or move. The phrase legitimately suggests the idea of a controlling power which connects with this centre the circling march of the universe. W. Fraser. The isolated group of the “Seven Stars,” from the singularity of its appearance, has been distinguished and designated by an appropriate name from the earliest ages. The learned priests of Belus carefully observed its risings and settings nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. By the Greeks it was called Pleiades, from the word pleein, to sail, because it indicated the time when the sailor might hope to undertake a voyage with safety; and also Vergiliæ, from ver, the spring, because it ushered in the mild vernal weather favorable to farming and pastoral employments. The Greek poets associated it with that beautiful mythology which in its purest form peopled the air, the woods, and the waters with imaginary beings, and made the sky itself a concave mirror from which came back exaggerated ideal reflections of humanity. The Seven Stars were supposed to be the seven daughters of Atlas, by Pleione—one of the Oceanides—placed in the heavens after death. But an interest deeper than any derived from mythical association or classical allusion is connected with this group of stars by the use made of it in Scripture. In the apparently simple and passing allusion to it in Job lies hid the germ of one of the greatest of physical truths—a germ lying dormant and concealed in the pages of Scripture for ages, but now brought into air and sunlight by the discoveries of science. The question recently began to be raised among astronomers, “Does the sun stand still, or does it move round some other object in space, carrying its train of planets and their satellites along with it in its orbit?” Attention being thus specially directed to this subject, it was soon found that the sun had an appreciable motion, which tended in the direction of the constellation of Hercules—a lily-shaped group of small stars underneath the Plough in the northwestern quarter of the heavens. This motion of the sun—while it gave a higher meaning to the grand description contained in the nineteenth Psalm, showing it to be no mere popular language or poetical metaphor, but a strict astronomical truth—also accounted in the most accurate manner for several curious discrepancies in regard to the positions of the stars observed on comparing ancient and modern catalogues, which were formerly inexplicable. Toward the constellation of Hercules the stars seem to be opening out; while at the opposite point of the sky their mutual distances are apparently diminishing—as if they were drifting away from the goal of the sun’s course. When this great physical truth was established beyond the possibility of doubt, the next subject of investigation was the point or centre round which the sun performed this marvellous revolution; and after a series of elaborate observations and most ingenious calculations this intricate problem was also satisfactorily solved—one of the greatest triumphs of human genius. M. Maedler, of Dorpat, found that Alcyone, the brightest star of the Pleiades, is the centre of gravity of our vast solar system—the luminous hinge in the heavens round which our sun and his attendant planets are moving through space. The very complexity and isolation of the system of the Pleiades, exhibiting seven distinct orbs closely compressed to the naked eye, but nine or ten times that number when seen through a telescope—forming a grand mechanism, whose individuals are united with each other more closely than with the general mass of stars, indicate the amazing attractive energy that must be concentrated in that spot. Vast as is the distance which separates our sun from this central group—a distance thirty-four millions of times greater than the distance between the sun and our earth—yet so tremendous is the force exerted by Alcyone that it draws our system irresistibly around it at the rate of 422,000 miles a day, in an orbit which it will take nineteen millions of years to complete. With this new explanation, how remarkably striking and appropriate does the original word for Pleiades appear! What a lofty significance does the question of the Almighty receive from this interpretation! “Caust thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?” Canst thou arrest or in any degree modify that attractive influence which it exerts upon our sun and all its planetary worlds, whirling them round its pivot in an orbit of such inconceivable dimensions, and with a velocity so utterly bewildering? In this vast and complex arrangement not one wheel jars or creaks—not a single discordant sound disturbs the deep, solemn quietude of the midnight sky. Smoothly and silently each star performs its sublime revolutions. Although composed of so many bodies—differing in size, form, and consistence—they are all exquisitely poised in space in relation to one another, and to their common centre; their antagonistic forces are so nicely adjusted as to curb every orb in its destined path, and to preserve the safety and harmony of the whole. Moons revolve around planets, comets and planets around the sun, the sun around Alcyone, and Alcyone round some other unknown sun, hid far away in some unexplored depths of our galaxy; and grand beyond conception, this cluster of systems around the great centre of ten thousand centres—the white throne of the Eternal and the Infinite; and all with a rhythm so perfect that we might almost believe in the old poetic fable of “The Music of the Spheres.” In this vision of orbits and revolutions, more awful and stupendous than Ezekiel’s vision of wheels within wheels, we see seated on the throne above the firmament, not a blind chance or a passionless fate, but one like unto the Son of Man—He whom John saw in Patmos, holding the mystery of the seven stars in His right hand—possessed of infinite love as well as infinite power—binding and loosing the sweet influences of Pleiades solely for the order and good of His creation. Man's lifetime is a mere moment—nay, the history of our race, with all its great and varied events, is but a handbreadth compared with the duration of the orbit of our system. During the 6000 years of our existence on the earth, we have traversed thousands of millions of miles; and yet all that time we have obtained no new view of the heavens. All things have continued as they were; the same stars and constellations, in nearly the same positions in the sky, gleam down upon us which appeared to the shepherds on the midnight plains of Chaldea in the time of Job. So vast is the orbit of our system that from the creation of man to the present day, we have described but an infinitesimal arc of it. Our annual progress, though expressed by one hundred and fifty millions of miles, would appear, if viewed from the nearest fixed star, as little more than one third of a second of space. We know not how long our race may exist in this world; but if it be destined to outlive the completion of this vast course, strange and unimagined glories will be revealed to future generations. The heavens of our time will wax old and disappear; constellations with which we are now familiar will give place to unknown combinations; and ever as our system rolls on through space it will pass into new collocations; new suns and systems will advance, open out their splendors, and fill the sky with their glory, and then recede—so that when time shall be no more, the human race in prospect and retrospect of this vast aerial journey will have a higher conception than is now possible of the boundless domains and the inexhaustible riches of the Infinite God. Canst thou loose the bands of Orion? This cluster of stars—the Kesil of the ancient Chaldeans—is by far the most magnificent constellation in the heavens. The constellation of Orion is composed of four very bright stars, forming an elongated square, with three equidistant stars in a diagonal line in the middle. The two upper stars, called Betelgeux and Bellatrix, form the shoulders; in the middle, immediately above these, are three small, dim stars, close to each other, forming the cheek or head. These stars are distinctly visible only in a very clear night. The feet are composed of two very bright stars, called Rigel and Saiph; the three stars in the middle are called the belt or girdle, and from them depends a stripe of smaller stars, forming the hunter's sword. The whole constellation, containing seventeen stars to the naked eye, but exhibiting seventy-eight under an ordinary telescope, occupies a large and conspicuous position in the eastern or southern heavens, below the Pleiades; and is often visible, owing to the brightness and magnitude of its stars, when all other constellations, with the exception of the Plough, are lost in the mistiness of night. Orion is not only the most striking and splendid constellation in the heavens; it is also one of the very few clusters that are visible in all parts of the habitable world. The equator passes through the middle of it; the glittering stars of its belt being strung, like diamonds, on its invisible line. The ubiquity of this constellation may have been one of the reasons why it was chosen to illustrate God's argument with Job, in a book intended to be read universally wherever the human race should extend. The three bright stars which constitute the girdle or bands of Orion never change their form; they preserve the same relative position to each other, and to the rest of the constellation from year to year, and from age to age. They present precisely the same appearance to us which they did to Job. No sooner does the constellation rise above the horizon, however long may have been the interval since we last beheld it, than these three stars appear in the old familiar position. They afford to us one of the highest types of immutability in the midst of ceaseless changes. And yet in the profound rest of these stars there is a ceaseless motion; in their apparent stability and everlasting endurance there is constant change. In vast courses, with inconceivable velocities, they are whirling round invisible centres, and ever shifting their positions in space, and ever passing into new collocations. Mysterious triplet of stars, that are ever changing, and yet never seeming to change! How wonderful must be the Power which preserves such perfect order amid all their complex arrangements, such sublime peace and everlasting permanence amid the incalculable distances to which they wander, and the bewildering velocities with which they move! What answer can Job give to the question of the Almighty? Can man whose breath is in his nostrils and who is crushed before the moth, separate these stars from one another, or alter their relative positions in the smallest degree? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 40 : 1 MOREOVER the LORD answered Job, and said, 2. Shall he that cavilleth contend with the Almighty ? He that argueth with God, let him answer it. 3. Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 4. Behold, I am of small account ; what shall I answer thee ? I lay mine hand upon my mouth. 5. Once have I spoken, and I will not answer ; Yea twice, but I will proceed no further. 6. Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 7. Gird up thy loins now like a man : I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 8. Wilt thou even disannul my judgment ? Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be justified ? 9. Or hast thou an arm like God ? And canst thou thunder with a voice like him? 10. Deck thyself now with excellency and dignity ; And array thyself with honour and majesty. 11. Pour forth the overflowings of thine anger : And look upon every one that is proud, and abase him. 12. Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low ; And tread down the wicked where they stand. 13. Hide them in the dust together ; Bind their faces in the hidden place. 14. Then will I also confess of thee That thine own right hand can save thee. 15. Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee ; He eateth grass as an ox. 16. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, And his force is in the muscles of his belly. 17. He moveth his tail like a cedar : The sinews of his thighs are knit together. 18. His bones are as tubes of brass ; His limbs are like bars of iron. 19. He is the chief of the ways of God : He only that made him giveth him his sword. 20. Surely the mountains bring him forth food ; Where all the beasts of the field do play. 21. He lieth under the lotus trees, In the covert of the reed, and the fen. 22. The lotus trees cover him with their shadow ; The willows of the brook compass him about. 23. Behold, if a river overflow, he trembleth not : He is confident, though Jordan swell even to his mouth. 24. Shall any take him when he is on the watch, Or pierce through his nose with a snare ? 41 : 1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with a fish hook ? Or press down his tongue with a cord ? 2. Canst thou put a rope into his nose ? Or pierce his jaw through with a hook ? 3. Will he make many supplications unto thee ? Or will he speak soft words unto thee ? 4. Will he make a covenant with thee, That thou shouldest take him for a servant for ever ? 5. Wilt thou play with him as with a bird ? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens ? 6. Shall the bands of fishermen make traffic of him ? Shall they part him among the merchants ? 7. Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons, Or his head with fish spears ? 8. Lay thine hand upon him ; Remember the battle, and do so no more. 9. Behold, the hope of him is in vain : Shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him ? 10. None is so fierce that he dare stir him up : Who then is he that can stand before me ? 11. Who hath first given unto me, that I should repay him ? Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine. 12. I will not keep silence concerning his limbs, Nor his mighty strength, nor his goodly frame. 13. Who can strip off his outer garment ? Who shall come within his double bridle ? 14. Who can open the doors of his face ? Round about his teeth is terror. 15. His strong scales are his pride, Shut up together as with a close seal. 16. One is so near to another, That no air can come between them. 17. They are joined one to another ; They stick together, that they cannot be sundered. 18. His neesings flash forth light, And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. 19. Out of his mouth go burning torches, And sparks of fire leap forth. 20. Out of his nostrils a smoke goeth, As of a seething pot and burning rushes. 21 His breath kindleth coals, And a flame goeth forth from his mouth. 22 In his neck abideth strength, And terror danceth before him. 23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: They are firm upon him; they cannot be moved. 24 His heart is as firm as a stone; Yea, firm as the nether millstone. 25 When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid: By reason of consternation they are beside themselves. 26 If one lay at him with the sword, it cannot avail; Nor the spear, the dart, nor the pointed shaft. 27 He counteth iron as straw, And brass as rotten wood. 28 The arrow cannot make him flee: Slingstones are turned with him into stubble. 29 Clubs are counted as stubble: He laugheth at the rushing of the javelin. 30 His underparts are like sharp potsherds: He spreadeth as it were a threshing wain upon the mire. 31. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: He maketh the sea like ointment. 32 He maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary. 33 Upon earth there is not his like, That is made without fear. 34 He beholdeth every thing that is high: He is king over all the sons of pride. 42:1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2. I know that thou canst do all things, And that no purpose of thine can be restrained. 3 Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not, Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 5 I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine eye seeth thee, 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent In dust and ashes. As if the purpose of the preceding survey of creation might be lost in the brilliancy of the individual parts of it, the Divine Speaker gathers up its general effect and brings it to bear on Job directly, demanding whether he will persevere in his contention with Jehovah—will the reprover contend with the Almighty? (vs. 1, 2). Job is abased by the glory of God which He has made to pass before him, and brought to silence—I am too mean, what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand upon my mouth (vs. 3-5). A. B. D. 2. Contend with the Almighty. The great point is thus determined; any reasoning which implies a right to remonstrate with the Almighty, or to dictate the course which He ought to adopt, is presumption. Job had fully recognized the wisdom and omnipotence of God, but had questioned His righteousness; he had to learn that God's ways are not man's ways, nor within his competence to judge. Cook. Job has desired to "bring his cause" before God; this indeed has been his most constant longing, and for this we left him all ready when he ceased speaking. Has he still the same desire, after all this view of the various wisdom mlaid in nature? Will he still "contend" (the legal term) as a reprover and critic, after he has seen so much that is beyond and above him? The following words of Robert Buchanan interpret well the significance of the Lord's question here, as related to the review of creation that has just been given: "Because there is sin and misery in the world, because hearts ache and bodies die, shall we turn upon this sublimely exhaustless Being, and demand explanation? Is it not something to know how He delights in making, in endless creating, and that One who thus delights cannot be cruel? The explanation will come."—Let him answer. He that is great enough to "censure," to pass judgment on God, is great enough to answer his own questions; if to him God's way is not self-justifying, no answer from outside himself would justify it. J. F. G. 3-5. The nature of the preceding interrogations, the pungency of their rapid succession, the majesty of the speaker, and the circumstances of terror that accompanied his speaking could not fail of having a powerful effect. Job is now sensible of his own blindness, weakness, and littleness; of the rashness of his complaints, and the excess of his self-justification. These convictions produced the confession here related. 4. He retracts by this expression the too high value he had set on his own rectitude. "I am of small account" in the immensity of Thy works, and am so now in my own eyes. Scott. 5. I have spoken once and again foolishly, but I will not defend what I have unadvisedly said, nor proceed further in such presumptuous expressions and accusations of Thy providence. Clark.—Job has come to feel his utter and incomparable inferiority before God, and to realize the highly reprehensible character of the words that he has spoken. He finds that he has nothing to answer. He has spoken at large once, twice, but he now sees the impropriety of all that he had said, and wisely resolves to proceed no further. His changed tone is commendable, but as yet no expression of penitence is heard. Curry. The first effects are humiliation and submission; but silence and submission are not enough. What is wanted is teachableness and perfect trust, of which this first confession of Job does not give any clear indication; hence the occasion for a second address. Cook. CHAPS. 40 : 6 ; 42 : 6. THE LORD'S SECOND ANSWER TO JOB OUT OF THE STORM. Shall Man Charge God with unrighteousness in His Rule of the World? All that the first speech of the Lord touched upon was the presumption of a mortal man desiring to contend with the Almighty. The display from creation of that which God is had the desired effect on Job's mind; he is abased and will no more contend with the Almighty. But Job had not only presumed to contend with God, he had charged Him with unrighteousness in His rule of the world and in His treatment of himself. This is the point to which the second speech from the storm is directed. The passage has two parts: First (vs. 6-14), as Job had challenged the rectitude of God's rule of the world, he is ironically invited to clothe himself with the Divine attributes and assume the rule of the world himself. Then follows (40 : 15 ; 41 : 34) a lengthy description of two monsters, behemoth and leviathan. Second (42 : 1-6), Job's reply to the Divine challenge. He confesses that he spoke things which he understood not. He had heard of God by the hearing of the ear, but now his eye saw Him, and he abhorred his former words and demeanor and repented in dust and ashes. A. B. D. 6-8. Job has come to see that he has no wisdom wherewith to enter the lists against the infinite Wisdom of the world and pass judgment on what is so complex. The Lord now takes him one step farther back and asks him why he should separate God's cause from his own, as if they must be antagonists. Is there not room, in such a universe, for both God's right and Job's? Nay, and such belligerent assertion of a mortal's "rights"—which assertion we will remember Job has not yet withdrawn—is that the attitude for utter weakness to assume before infinite Power? Questioning like this, and from such a source, fulfils Elihu's wish as no words of the friends could do; it "tries Job to the utmost," revealing and refining the real gold of his character. J. F. G. 7. Gird up thy loins now like a man. The same challenge as before (38 : 2). It answers Job according to his own folly expressed in his desiring to meet God in order to justify himself against the implication of guiltiness in God's treatment of him. Curry. 8. By "disannulling God's judgment" is meant "condemning God," as the latter sentence explains it. Job's complaints and manner of justifying himself amounted to charging God with injustice. Scott.—This is precisely the issue that Job had made, and continued to reiterate, as was also charged against him by Elihu. To convict the ruler of injustice is to "disannul" his "judgment," since all judgment must abide in righteousness. Job had transgressed in other and less serious matters, but this (so the word "even" plainly implies) is the most presumptuous of all his offences. In justifying himself Job had condemned God. Curry. 9-14. He who presumes to argue with God must, like Him, be arrayed with majesty, able, like Him, to reduce all creatures to subjection. The moral law of the Divine government is briefly intimated in vs. 11-13. Cook. 10. Deek thyself now with majesty. The magnificent scenery in this and the four following verses presents to us the Almighty arrayed in the splendors of Divine majesty, exerting His supreme dominion, and manifesting His righteous vengeance by thundering and lightning on the heads of haughty tyrants and hurling them down to the bottom of Hades. (See Isa. 30 : 30.) Job is ironically required to invest himself with the attributes of Deity, and to assume the glorious ensigns of Divine majesty; that he may execute judgment on proud oppressors and other profligate men, of whose impunity and prosperity he had so loudly complained. Scott.—Array thyself with glory and beauty. To understand those expressions in Scripture which speak of Jehovah being arrayed or clothed with majesty, strength, honor, or the like, we must recollect the glorious manner in which He vouchsafed to appear to His people in fire, light, and clouds. Parkhurst. 10-14. As Job questions the manner of the Almighty's rule of the world, God invites him to deck himself with the thunder and majesty of the Supreme Ruler, and himself undertake the government of the world; and in the execution of this government to bring low all that is proud (comp. Isa. 2:12, seq.), to subdue and keep down the forces of evil, and hide the faces of the wicked in darkness. Under this ironical invitation to Job there lie two general thoughts: First, that omnipotence is necessary in the Ruler of all; and, second, that the rule of the world consists in keeping in check the forces of evil. This is the idea under which the rule of the world is conceived; in other words, it is regarded as necessarily moral; and it is assumed that God's rule is, in fact, a rule of this kind. In his present frame of mind Job probably would not now contest this. But if God's rule be moral, on the whole, it must be so in every particular; real exceptions are inconceivable, however like exceptions many things may appear. A. B. D. 14. Then will I also confess of thee. Job's right to sit in judgment on God's administration of affairs must be sustained by the display of the requisite power to govern. This God challenges Job to display, with the promise that, having done so, his claim shall be recognized. Curry.—He is for once to put on the robes of the King of kings, and send forth his wrath over pride and evil-doing for their complete removal. Try it only for once—this is the collective thought—to act like Me in the execution of penal justice, I would praise thee. D.—That thine own right hand can save thee. That thou art self-sufficient, the author and preserver of thy own happiness; therefore a god and a match for Me. This humiliating sarcasm makes way for another mortification; for the Almighty next sends him to two of His creatures, behemoth and leviathan, and bids him prove his high courage in an open encounter with either of them. Scott. In vs. 6-14 Jehovah invited Job to assume the rule of the world, and to bring low all opposing forces of evil. He is able to do this, seeing he challenges the rule of the Almighty. And to bring to his consciousness whether he is able or not, two creatures, the work of God's hand like himself, are brought before him and the question put, Is he able to enter into conflict with them and subdue them? Is he, therefore, able to assume the rule of the world or to enter into conflict with the Creator of these formidable monsters? "Who then will stand before Me?" (41:10). A. B. D. 15-24. Description of Behemoth. 15. "Behold now behemoth, and consider whether thou art able to contend with Him who made that beast and gave him all the power he has, and whether it is not thy wisdom rather to submit to Him and make thy peace with Him." H.—In the Book of Job God has thrown open to us the heart of a man apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except humility We are here shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest and stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, when the Deity Himself has willed to end the temptation and to accomplish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him, still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or confound him by laying open before his eyes the book of his iniquities. He opens before him only the arch of the dayspring and the fountains of the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds and on the heaving waves He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride. "Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee!" And the work is done. Ruskin. Behemoth. Bochart first identified this animal with the hippopotamus, and showed the accuracy of the description. At present the point is universally admitted by scholars. Dr. Tristram says: "It is clear that the description suits the hippopotamus exactly, and it alone." The word in Hebrew probably means the great beast, or the beast of beasts, that which combines in the highest degree the marvellous powers and instincts of the graminivorous animals. 19. Chief of the ways. The masterpiece, so to speak, of creation; an expression which refers either to its bulk (it reaches seven feet in height and thirteen in length, which exceeds that of the elephant, Hirz.), or, more probably, to its unequalled strength, a point directly bearing upon the argument touching the feebleness of man. 23. Behold, if a river ravageth, he trembleth not; he is steadfast, if the Jordan burst upon his mouth! The word "ravageth" means literally "does injury"—i.e., by overflowing its banks. The ravages of the Nile when the inundation is unusually high are terrible. In 1864 the whole country was submerged, the cattle destroyed, and the villagers all but ruined. The quiet confidence with which the heavy brute bears the rush of the formidable inundation may be contrasted with the terror and flight of beasts of prey. Cook.—The swollen, rushing stream has no terrors for him. The Jordan was a familiar name and an object of interest to all the descendants of Abraham; and among them would most naturally be named as the representative of any large and powerful stream. It is not implied, therefore, that the river-ox was an inhabitant of the Jordan. Conant. 41:1-34. Description of Leviathan. 1. Leviathan. The word, which properly means a large creature, lithe or folded, may apply either—as in 3:8—to a dragon (see note); or—as in Psalms 104:26—to a whale; or—as in this chapter—to the crocodile; a point upon which all commentators are now agreed. This interpretation rests upon the accuracy of the description, which, though highly poetical, is neither legendary nor hyperbolical. 1,2. These two verses evidently imply that the huge crocodile was not, and could not be taken. There were, however, many species—five are now counted by naturalists, and the hieroglyphics indicate a still greater number. The leviathan of this chapter describes the largest and most formidable of all, probably one which no one, in Job's time, dreamed of attacking. 10,11. These verses point the application of this second discourse. If God's creatures are so great, what must be the terrors of His majesty? Cook.—The lesson of these portrayals drawn. Both beasts are vastly more powerful than man—the one mild, the other fierce, yet both owing all they are to God. Shall man alone, who belongs to God in the same sum of things, bring to his Maker an unpaid demand? In all these things has God left man's life unprovided for? We are reminded of the lesson drawn in Isaiah 40:26-28. J. F. G. 13. "His outer garment" seems to mean the upper side or surface of his coat of scales—his armor; and the question is, Who has turned back or removed this scaly covering? The question seems a general, preliminary one, as the scales are more particularly described in v. 15. A. B. D. Come within his double bridle. The double row of teeth. The two most prominent characteristics are the scales and the jaws, which are dwelt upon in the eight verses following. 14. Round about his teeth is terror. The neck of the war horse is clothed with terror, so terror has its permanent abode in the jaw of the crocodile. Cook.—The jaws of the crocodile are very extended; the two rows of long, pointed teeth, thirty-six, it is said, above, and thirty beneath, being bare, as the mouth has no lips, present a formidable appearance. 15-17. His armor of scales. His scales are his pride. Rather, the rows of his shields are a pride. Each of his scales is a shield, and they are disposed in rows, or courses—literally, pipes, so called from their being curved or bossed. Of these rows there are said to be seventeen. The second clause describes the firmness and closeness with which each scale adheres to the body. The sixteenth and seventeenth verses refer to the close coherence of the scales to one another. 18. The eyelids of the morning. The reference may be to the shining of the reddish eyes of the animal, which are seen even under the water before its head comes to the surface. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs the eyes of the crocodile are a symbol of the dawn. A. B. D. 19-21. Bartram has observed on the American alligator that as it comes on the land a thick smoke issues from its distended nostrils with a thundering sound. The thick, hot steam produces the impression of a fire existing beneath and bursting forth. The subjective truth of this impression is faithfully but poetically reproduced. D.—He is here described as emerging from the water, and violently forcing out the heated breath and steam, which glisten in the sunlight (vs. 20, 21) like smoke and flame from burning coals. These strong expressions are not mere poetic exaggeration. They are such as an eye-witness might use in communicating to others the actual impressions made upon himself, and are therefore the most suitable for conveying the same impressions to us. Conant. 22. This translation but imperfectly expresses the magnificent personification of the original, "On his neck dwelleth strength; before him leapeth horror." Horror or despair is described with a terrible irony as exulting in the presence of its lord. Cook.—Terror personified as the avant courrier of the mighty beast, running joyfully and dancing before him. T. Lewis.—A bold and striking personification of the two closely related qualities, strength and the dread it inspires. His neck is the abode of strength, for there resides the force which wields his powers of destruction. Dances before him, aptly describes the imbecility of terror. Conant. 24. Its heart is firm and obdurate, as though it were of cast brass, hard as stone, and in fact as the nether millstone, which, because it has to bear the weight and friction of the upper, must be particularly hard. It is not intended of actual stone-like hardness, but only of its indomitable spirit and great tenacity of life; the activity of its heart is not so easily disturbed, and even fatal wounds do not so quickly bring it to a stand. D. 31. Lastly comes the movement through the water; the images are exact, the chief object of Oriental descriptive poetry, which aims at definiteness and life, regardless of conventional notions of dignity; the immense size of the beast and the impetuosity of his movement throws the whole stream into violent commotion; it seethes and heaves like a caldron of boiling oil. Cook. 33. The armor with which the upper part of the body is covered may be numbered among the most elaborate pieces of nature's mechanism. In the full-grown animal it is so strong and thick as easily to repel a musket-ball. The whole animal appears as if covered with the most regular and curious carved work. The mouth is of vast width, the gape having a somewhat flexuous outline, and both jaws being furnished with very numerous, sharp-pointed teeth. The number of teeth in each jaw is thirty or more, and they are so disposed as to alternate with each other when the mouth is closed. The legs are short, but strong and muscular. In the glowing regions of Africa, where it arrives at its full strength and power, it is justly regarded as the most formidable inhabitant of the rivers. Shaw. What impression was such a description calculated to produce? We must remember the profoundly religious and serious character of the Eastern patriarch. When images were presented to his mind which spoke of tremendous power and purposes utterly beyond his conception, he could have no thought but of his own nothingness. It never entered into his spirit to doubt of God's wisdom; but when he reflected upon the marvellous care which God bestowed upon every part of an animal so utterly useless to man, he must have felt that the goodness which was to him but another word for perfect wisdom, must be something far different from that which in his narrowness and presumption man is wont to assume. Cook. —That the Lord has a right to reign over us; and that we are bound to a cheerful submission to His dispensations toward us, not because we see the reasons of them, but because it is His will concerning us, and we know that He cannot but will our essential good—still form proper grounds of argument with the afflicted, and sometimes indeed amount to nearly all that can be urged. Kitto. The argument of omnipotence insisted on in these four chapters, when duly considered, includes in it a full, perfect, and sufficient vindication of the ways of God with man. For if "He can do all things," and "nothing is impossible with God," He can have no temptation to do wrong; for "God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man," though for wise and salutary purposes, for correction, for discipline, for purification of heart and life, and preparation for a better world, He tries the best men, like Job, and proves them in the furnace of affliction, that "they may come forth like gold;" while by His all-governing and all-controlling providence He restrains the craft and subtilty of the devil or man working against them, to shake their faith and "sift them as wheat;" saying to the former, as to the ocean originally, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." At the same time, of His infinite mercy and goodness He is not severe to mark what they have done amiss upon their hearty repentance and true faith; for "He knoweth whereof they are made, He remembereth that they are but dust." Dr. Hales. This complete submission contains, 1. A full acknowledgment of God's almighty power and supreme dominion (v. 2). By thus glorifying the sovereign authority of God, Job tacitly condemns himself for not having meekly submitted to it. 2. A like acknowledgment of the unsearchable wisdom of Divine providence, with an explicit condemnation of himself for his objections and murmurings against it (v. 3). 3. He humbly begs of God to vouchsafe a gracious audience to his petition, and to instruct him further in his duty (v. 4). 4. He declares that this visible manifestation of the Almighty to him had impressed him with a deeper and more reverent sense of the Divine perfection and majesty than he had before conceived by means of instruction only (v. 5). Lastly he expresses his repentance in the strongest terms of self-condemnation and humble sorrow (v. 6). This complete submission discloses an alteration infinitely more important and beneficial than any change of Job's outward condition; it shows an alteration in the temper and state of his mind. He is brought back to his duty, and his soul returns to its rest in God. Scott. The Lord has said nothing to crush and exasperate His servant, as the three friends had done. It is better to fall into the hand of God than into the hands of men. In His Word He is patient and kind, and diverts the thought of the sufferer from his own sad case to the contemplation of other objects of Divine care and proofs of Divine wisdom and might. The result is Job's lowly and contrite confession before God. D. F. In Job's repentance all the marks of evangelical repentance are found—submission and abasement (v. 2); confession of sin (v. 3); humble and believing prayer (v. 4); the revelation of God to the soul (v. 5); and then the blessed result—self-knowledge, self abhorrence, true, deep, lasting repentance: "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (v. 6). E. Bayley.—The only skill of this excellent wrestler (as one calls him) was to cast himself down at God's foot. There is no way of getting in to God or prevailing with Him but by submitting to Him. The Lord layeth down His rod when we lay down our pride, and casts His sword out of His hand when we cast ourselves at His feet. Caryl. 2. The meaning is that there is no purpose which the Almighty cannot carry out. Though literally the words seem merely an acknowledgment of power, they are also an admission of wisdom, the plans or purposes of which may be beyond the understanding of man (v. 3). Job's confession corresponds to the Almighty's address to him. That address did not insist on any one Divine attribute, but rather presented God in the whole circle of His attributes—power and wisdom, but also goodness—for He refreshes the thirsty ground where no man is, He feeds the ravens, and presides over the birth-pangs of the goats of the rock, and His omnipotence goes hand in hand with His moral rule (40:9, seq.). The Divine nature is not a segment but a circle. Any one Divine attribute implies all others. Omnipotence cannot exist apart from righteousness. Similarly, Job's reply reflects the great general impression of God now made on him. The exercise of the Divine wisdom as it operates in nature has led him to feel that within his own history also there is a Divine "thought" or "counsel," though he is unable to understand it. It can hardly, however, be the author's purpose to teach the general principle that the "counsel" of God is incomprehensible, because he gives an explanation of it in the prologue. He is not teaching general principles here, but showing the position which just thoughts of God will induce a man to take even when God's dealings may be beyond his understanding. A. B. D. 3. Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? The opening of the Lord's address. Job brings it distinctly before his mind and recognizes its justice; clear and bright as his own reasoning had seemed to be, it was but a darkening of counsel. Cook.—The very words that had been spoken to Job in reproof he now repeats in the spirit of humiliation and confession. He had spoken unwisely, irreverently, because of his want of spiritual understanding, and had assumed to sit in judgment on the Divine administration in human affairs. This he now sees, and humbles himself with contrition and confession. Curry.—He indeed knew previously what he acknowledges (v. 2), but now this knowledge has risen upon him in a new divinely-worked clearness, such as he had not hitherto experienced. Those strange but wondrous works of God are proof to him that God is able to put everything into operation, and that the plans according to which He acts are beyond the reach of human comprehension. He repeats to himself the chastening Word of Jehovah (38:2), while he chastises himself with it; for he now perceives that his judgment was wrong, and that he consequently merited the reproof. D. Which way soever we turn in our search after knowledge, we run against mystery at the second or third step. And a great part of our misery, a still greater of our unbelief, and all the lunatic rage of our scepticism arises in the fact that we either do not, or will not see it to be so. Ignorance trying to comprehend what is inscrutable, and out of patience that it cannot make the high things of God come down to its own petty measures, is the definition of all atheism. There is no true comfort in life, no dignity in reason, apart from modesty. We wrangle with Providence and call it reason, we rush upon God's mysteries, and tear ourselves against the appointments of His throne, and then, because we bleed, complain that He cruelly mocks our understanding. All our disputings and hard speeches are the frothing of our ignorance maddened by our pride. Oh, if we could see our own limitations, and how little it is possible for us to know of matters infinite, how much less, clouded by the necessary blindness of a mind disordered by evil, we should then be in a way to learn, and the lessons God will teach would put us in a way to know what now is hidden from us. After all his labored disputings and lofty reasons with his friends, Job turns himself to God and says, "I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." Bushnell. 4. Job now wished to be heard as an earnest inquirer seeking for instruction. The conviction of his own ignorance caused a desire to be instructed by God Himself. The spirit of the confession in the next verse also dominates this; he sees the folly of his own self-assurances and turns to God, who only can teach man true wisdom. Curry. 5. Job's eyes are open at last to perceive the universality both of God's power and wisdom; an all-pervading care in which he is content to take his place, hushing all complaints and trusting where he cannot see. This is the grand outcome of Job's experience; an outcome not merely in a completed argument, but in a chastened, obedient, enlightened character. J. F. G. —Humility and repentance are the result of large acquaintance with God. Job said, I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee. It expresses two kinds of knowledge—the one speculative, the other practical. He had formerly a distant and vague acquaintance of God, without contemplating Him by that faith which seeth Him who is invisible. He now had an intimate, a deep and practical sense of God, very different from the mere vague conceptions he had when he only heard of Him; that knowledge which is practical, deep, intimate, and profound. The two effects were humility and repentance. Humility is produced by the sight of His greatness, repentance by a knowledge of His purity. It is the union of these that form the idea of God. R. Hall. Mine eye seeth Thee. Man instinctively closes his eyes to see God when he worships or prays, naturally feeling that it is by making himself spiritually conscious of God that he is to meet Him. Yet this is the true meeting, the real encounter. For me to know that I am in the presence of God, and know that He is conscious of me, and know that He knows I am conscious of Him—this is for me to see God—nay, it is far more, it is to meet Him in the most perfect sense. W. R. Brooks. 6. I abhor. Not myself (though that may be a secondary thought), but it—that is, my former misconceptions and rebellion. I retract my proud utterances with deepest abhorrence—I repudiate them. Curry.—Job confesses now that he had not really heard God's word before—that is, received it in its full meaning; it was, so far as regarded the special cause of his spiritual trial, as though he knew it not. It was a mere hearing with the ear of sense, but now he sees God with the eye of the spirit; now he can see himself in his true proportions, and he submits with utter humiliation of heart. Does this imply that he now surrenders his righteousness, thus doing just that which was the object of all the temptations of Satan and of his misjudging friends to induce him to do? Yes, in one sense, inasmuch as he no longer holds to it as a principle on which he may trust in a controversy with his Maker; but not in a sense which was contemplated by the author of those temptations, for Job knows that his relative righteousness—sincerity of intention and singleness of heart—is recognized by God, and proved by His condescension in answering and satisfying his inward craving. Cook. This humble confession and self-abasement of Job was graciously accepted; it covered all his imperfections; his passionate complaints wrung from him by the extremity of sufferings, corporeal and mental; his despair and weariness of life; his frequent wishes for death; his eagerness to enter upon his trial; his earnest request, and even expostulations with his Judge, to bring him to it, or, at least, to acquaint him with the reasons of such severe afflictions. Such shades and blemishes in the character of this illustrious Patriarch argue somewhat of impatience in this heroic pattern of patience. But God is ever ready to pass over the frailties and infirmities of human nature, where there is a tried and resolute integrity, determined to adhere to God in all trials and temptations, whatever may be the result. Dr. Hales. The past hard experience has brought Job immeasurably nearer to God. The grand conclusion, the sum total is expressed not in words, but in life: "Now mine eye seeth Thee." Need one whose eyes are opened by such a hard schooling ask why it was given? The answer is self-evident. Less than such stern discipline would not have produced such beauty and strength of human character. Less than such severe chastening would not have quickened Job's vision to see how subtly selfish motives may work to impair the friendships and the wisdom of earth, and how sufficing is the refuge provided in the eternal Love beyond this life. And the answer thus embodied in the Patriarch's experience is a world-answer, pointing to that mystery of travail and suffering which everywhere underlies the deepest insight, the highest achievements. Shall we ask why God invades our ease and scourges us onward and upward to the table-lands of vision? The new horizon and the purer air and the stronger muscles are the sufficient reason. J. F. G. Job's afflictions have not abated yet. His terrible losses are still as great as they were, and his bodily sufferings are as grievous. But the cloud is gone. He has lost all disposition to murmur or repine. He can trust the infinitely holy and mighty and wise and gracious One to do whatsoever seemeth Him good. It is good if God does it; it is the best thing possible; no man at least, nor any finite being, could alter it for the better; and Job would not have it otherwise. The temptation is not vanquished now; it has disappeared. Job has now come to the end of the third, which is the last and most fearful stage of the temptation. The struggle has been tremendous. It has been a long and a wearisome and a desperately contested conflict. But the issue is glorious. The forces of the enemy are not merely driven back, and left to rally and return again to the charge. They are positively annihilated, and the victory is complete and final. Sublime as was Job's resignation in the first and second stages of his afflictions, it is sublimer now. W. H. G. Strange to tell, the closing picture of Job is not that of a conqueror, but a confessor, not of an enthroned prince, but of a kneeling penitent. The unexpected revolution is effected by the revelation of God to the eye of the soul. Job knows God as he did not know Him before. The character of his knowledge is changed, heightened, vitalized, intensified, personalized. God is no longer a voice crying in the wilderness, but a Presence in his heart and before his spiritual eye. Here then is one signal value of the knowledge of God, even of His immense power and greatness. By the knowledge of God is the knowledge of self, in the knowledge of self is the knowledge of sin, through the knowledge of personal sin we come to repentance, and by a baptism in the fiery waters of repentance we pass to the reality and strength of life. Such God-inspired penitence swiftly vindicates itself in the pure sincerity and holy brotherhood it creates and the reconciliation it effects between man and men and man and his lot. The voice of prayer is exchanged for the clash of debate; the incense of reconciling sacrifice ascends in place of the smoke of anger and scorn. J. Clifford. Surely when men indulge the fancy that they may stand before God on the meritorious ground of their own virtues they forget what God is, with whom they have to do. They forget both His perfect holiness and His omniscience. Would the best of us be willing that even an earthly friend should be privy to all his words, all his actions, all his thoughts, all his desires, all his purposes, all his emotions? Think, then, of Him who "searcheth the heart and the reins." He is "greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things." He knows whether we think about Him, often or seldom; and when we do think of Him, what our thoughts of Him are, worthy or unworthy. He knows whether we bow the knee to Him in secret, whether frequently or rarely; and whether the heart is bowed with the knee. He follows us from the closet to the family, and from the family to the intercourse of public life. He searches our hearts all the while. He knows how much greater influence, in restraining us from what is evil, the thought of some fellow-creature's presence has than the assurance of His. He knows all our sins of omission as well as commission; how often we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done. He has known all from the beginning, every moment; and the entire catalogue of our demerits is, at the same instant, present to His mind, who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon sin." Such considerations may well draw from every heart the exclamation of Job: "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." And whither, with this overwhelming conviction on his conscience and heart, can the sinner betake himself but to the cross? There alone are forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace and hope to be found. There the omniscient God, with the full knowledge of all the sinner's guilt, cancels it forever when that sinner makes the cross and the blood shed on it his plea for mercy. R. Wardlaw. 40 : 1 MOREOVER the LORD answered Job, and said, 2. Shall he that cavilleth contend with the Almighty ? He that argueth with God, let him answer it. 3. Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 4. Behold, I am of small account ; what shall I answer thee ? I lay mine hand upon my mouth. 5. Once have I spoken, and I will not answer ; Yea twice, but I will proceed no further. 6. Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 7. Gird up thy loins now like a man : I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 8. Wilt thou even disannul my judgment ? Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be justified ? 9. Or hast thou an arm like God ? And canst thou thunder with a voice like him? 10. Deck thyself now with excellency and dignity ; And array thyself with honour and majesty. 11. Pour forth the overflowings of thine anger : And look upon every one that is proud, and abase him. 12. Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low ; And tread down the wicked where they stand. 13. Hide them in the dust together ; Bind their faces in the hidden place. 14. Then will I also confess of thee That thine own right hand can save thee. 15. Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee ; He eateth grass as an ox. 16. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, And his force is in the muscles of his belly. 17. He moveth his tail like a cedar : The sinews of his thighs are knit together. 18. His bones are as tubes of brass ; His limbs are like bars of iron. 19. He is the chief of the ways of God : He only that made him giveth him his sword. 20. Surely the mountains bring him forth food ; Where all the beasts of the field do play. 21. He lieth under the lotus trees, In the covert of the reed, and the fen. 22. The lotus trees cover him with their shadow ; The willows of the brook compass him about. 23. Behold, if a river overflow, he trembleth not : He is confident, though Jordan swell even to his mouth. 24. Shall any take him when he is on the watch, Or pierce through his nose with a snare ? 41 : 1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with a fish hook ? Or press down his tongue with a cord ? 2. Canst thou put a rope into his nose ? Or pierce his jaw through with a hook ? 3. Will he make many supplications unto thee ? Or will he speak soft words unto thee ? 4. Will he make a covenant with thee, That thou shouldest take him for a servant for ever ? 5. Wilt thou play with him as with a bird ? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens ? 6. Shall the bands of fishermen make traffic of him ? Shall they part him among the merchants ? 7. Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons, Or his head with fish spears ? 8. Lay thine hand upon him ; Remember the battle, and do so no more. 9. Behold, the hope of him is in vain : Shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him ? 10. None is so fierce that he dare stir him up : Who then is he that can stand before me ? 11. Who hath first given unto me, that I should repay him ? Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine. 12. I will not keep silence concerning his limbs, Nor his mighty strength, nor his goodly frame. 13. Who can strip off his outer garment ? Who shall come within his double bridle ? 14. Who can open the doors of his face ? Round about his teeth is terror. 15. His strong scales are his pride, Shut up together as with a close seal. 16. One is so near to another, That no air can come between them. 17. They are joined one to another ; They stick together, that they cannot be sundered. 18. His neesings flash forth light, And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. 19. Out of his mouth go burning torches, And sparks of fire leap forth. 20. Out of his nostrils a smoke goeth, As of a seething pot and burning rushes. 21 His breath kindleth coals, And a flame goeth forth from his mouth. 22 In his neck abideth strength, And terror danceth before him. 23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: They are firm upon him; they cannot be moved. 24 His heart is as firm as a stone; Yea, firm as the nether millstone. 25 When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid: By reason of consternation they are beside themselves. 26 If one lay at him with the sword, it cannot avail; Nor the spear, the dart, nor the pointed shaft. 27 He counteth iron as straw, And brass as rotten wood. 28 The arrow cannot make him flee: Slingstones are turned with him into stubble. 29 Clubs are counted as stubble: He laugheth at the rushing of the javelin. 30 His underparts are like sharp potsherds: He spreadeth as it were a threshing wain upon the mire. 31. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: He maketh the sea like ointment. 32 He maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary. 33 Upon earth there is not his like, That is made without fear. 34 He beholdeth every thing that is high: He is king over all the sons of pride. 42:1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2. I know that thou canst do all things, And that no purpose of thine can be restrained. 3 Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not, Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 5 I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine eye seeth thee, 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent In dust and ashes. As if the purpose of the preceding survey of creation might be lost in the brilliancy of the individual parts of it, the Divine Speaker gathers up its general effect and brings it to bear on Job directly, demanding whether he will persevere in his contention with Jehovah—will the reprover contend with the Almighty? (vs. 1, 2). Job is abased by the glory of God which He has made to pass before him, and brought to silence—I am too mean, what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand upon my mouth (vs. 3-5). A. B. D. 2. Contend with the Almighty. The great point is thus determined; any reasoning which implies a right to remonstrate with the Almighty, or to dictate the course which He ought to adopt, is presumption. Job had fully recognized the wisdom and omnipotence of God, but had questioned His righteousness; he had to learn that God's ways are not man's ways, nor within his competence to judge. Cook. Job has desired to "bring his cause" before God; this indeed has been his most constant longing, and for this we left him all ready when he ceased speaking. Has he still the same desire, after all this view of the various wisdom mlaid in nature? Will he still "contend" (the legal term) as a reprover and critic, after he has seen so much that is beyond and above him? The following words of Robert Buchanan interpret well the significance of the Lord's question here, as related to the review of creation that has just been given: "Because there is sin and misery in the world, because hearts ache and bodies die, shall we turn upon this sublimely exhaustless Being, and demand explanation? Is it not something to know how He delights in making, in endless creating, and that One who thus delights cannot be cruel? The explanation will come."—Let him answer. He that is great enough to "censure," to pass judgment on God, is great enough to answer his own questions; if to him God's way is not self-justifying, no answer from outside himself would justify it. J. F. G. 3-5. The nature of the preceding interrogations, the pungency of their rapid succession, the majesty of the speaker, and the circumstances of terror that accompanied his speaking could not fail of having a powerful effect. Job is now sensible of his own blindness, weakness, and littleness; of the rashness of his complaints, and the excess of his self-justification. These convictions produced the confession here related. 4. He retracts by this expression the too high value he had set on his own rectitude. "I am of small account" in the immensity of Thy works, and am so now in my own eyes. Scott. 5. I have spoken once and again foolishly, but I will not defend what I have unadvisedly said, nor proceed further in such presumptuous expressions and accusations of Thy providence. Clark.—Job has come to feel his utter and incomparable inferiority before God, and to realize the highly reprehensible character of the words that he has spoken. He finds that he has nothing to answer. He has spoken at large once, twice, but he now sees the impropriety of all that he had said, and wisely resolves to proceed no further. His changed tone is commendable, but as yet no expression of penitence is heard. Curry. The first effects are humiliation and submission; but silence and submission are not enough. What is wanted is teachableness and perfect trust, of which this first confession of Job does not give any clear indication; hence the occasion for a second address. Cook. CHAPS. 40 : 6 ; 42 : 6. THE LORD'S SECOND ANSWER TO JOB OUT OF THE STORM. Shall Man Charge God with unrighteousness in His Rule of the World? All that the first speech of the Lord touched upon was the presumption of a mortal man desiring to contend with the Almighty. The display from creation of that which God is had the desired effect on Job's mind; he is abased and will no more contend with the Almighty. But Job had not only presumed to contend with God, he had charged Him with unrighteousness in His rule of the world and in His treatment of himself. This is the point to which the second speech from the storm is directed. The passage has two parts: First (vs. 6-14), as Job had challenged the rectitude of God's rule of the world, he is ironically invited to clothe himself with the Divine attributes and assume the rule of the world himself. Then follows (40 : 15 ; 41 : 34) a lengthy description of two monsters, behemoth and leviathan. Second (42 : 1-6), Job's reply to the Divine challenge. He confesses that he spoke things which he understood not. He had heard of God by the hearing of the ear, but now his eye saw Him, and he abhorred his former words and demeanor and repented in dust and ashes. A. B. D. 6-8. Job has come to see that he has no wisdom wherewith to enter the lists against the infinite Wisdom of the world and pass judgment on what is so complex. The Lord now takes him one step farther back and asks him why he should separate God's cause from his own, as if they must be antagonists. Is there not room, in such a universe, for both God's right and Job's? Nay, and such belligerent assertion of a mortal's "rights"—which assertion we will remember Job has not yet withdrawn—is that the attitude for utter weakness to assume before infinite Power? Questioning like this, and from such a source, fulfils Elihu's wish as no words of the friends could do; it "tries Job to the utmost," revealing and refining the real gold of his character. J. F. G. 7. Gird up thy loins now like a man. The same challenge as before (38 : 2). It answers Job according to his own folly expressed in his desiring to meet God in order to justify himself against the implication of guiltiness in God's treatment of him. Curry. 8. By "disannulling God's judgment" is meant "condemning God," as the latter sentence explains it. Job's complaints and manner of justifying himself amounted to charging God with injustice. Scott.—This is precisely the issue that Job had made, and continued to reiterate, as was also charged against him by Elihu. To convict the ruler of injustice is to "disannul" his "judgment," since all judgment must abide in righteousness. Job had transgressed in other and less serious matters, but this (so the word "even" plainly implies) is the most presumptuous of all his offences. In justifying himself Job had condemned God. Curry. 9-14. He who presumes to argue with God must, like Him, be arrayed with majesty, able, like Him, to reduce all creatures to subjection. The moral law of the Divine government is briefly intimated in vs. 11-13. Cook. 10. Deek thyself now with majesty. The magnificent scenery in this and the four following verses presents to us the Almighty arrayed in the splendors of Divine majesty, exerting His supreme dominion, and manifesting His righteous vengeance by thundering and lightning on the heads of haughty tyrants and hurling them down to the bottom of Hades. (See Isa. 30 : 30.) Job is ironically required to invest himself with the attributes of Deity, and to assume the glorious ensigns of Divine majesty; that he may execute judgment on proud oppressors and other profligate men, of whose impunity and prosperity he had so loudly complained. Scott.—Array thyself with glory and beauty. To understand those expressions in Scripture which speak of Jehovah being arrayed or clothed with majesty, strength, honor, or the like, we must recollect the glorious manner in which He vouchsafed to appear to His people in fire, light, and clouds. Parkhurst. 10-14. As Job questions the manner of the Almighty's rule of the world, God invites him to deck himself with the thunder and majesty of the Supreme Ruler, and himself undertake the government of the world; and in the execution of this government to bring low all that is proud (comp. Isa. 2:12, seq.), to subdue and keep down the forces of evil, and hide the faces of the wicked in darkness. Under this ironical invitation to Job there lie two general thoughts: First, that omnipotence is necessary in the Ruler of all; and, second, that the rule of the world consists in keeping in check the forces of evil. This is the idea under which the rule of the world is conceived; in other words, it is regarded as necessarily moral; and it is assumed that God's rule is, in fact, a rule of this kind. In his present frame of mind Job probably would not now contest this. But if God's rule be moral, on the whole, it must be so in every particular; real exceptions are inconceivable, however like exceptions many things may appear. A. B. D. 14. Then will I also confess of thee. Job's right to sit in judgment on God's administration of affairs must be sustained by the display of the requisite power to govern. This God challenges Job to display, with the promise that, having done so, his claim shall be recognized. Curry.—He is for once to put on the robes of the King of kings, and send forth his wrath over pride and evil-doing for their complete removal. Try it only for once—this is the collective thought—to act like Me in the execution of penal justice, I would praise thee. D.—That thine own right hand can save thee. That thou art self-sufficient, the author and preserver of thy own happiness; therefore a god and a match for Me. This humiliating sarcasm makes way for another mortification; for the Almighty next sends him to two of His creatures, behemoth and leviathan, and bids him prove his high courage in an open encounter with either of them. Scott. In vs. 6-14 Jehovah invited Job to assume the rule of the world, and to bring low all opposing forces of evil. He is able to do this, seeing he challenges the rule of the Almighty. And to bring to his consciousness whether he is able or not, two creatures, the work of God's hand like himself, are brought before him and the question put, Is he able to enter into conflict with them and subdue them? Is he, therefore, able to assume the rule of the world or to enter into conflict with the Creator of these formidable monsters? "Who then will stand before Me?" (41:10). A. B. D. 15-24. Description of Behemoth. 15. "Behold now behemoth, and consider whether thou art able to contend with Him who made that beast and gave him all the power he has, and whether it is not thy wisdom rather to submit to Him and make thy peace with Him." H.—In the Book of Job God has thrown open to us the heart of a man apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except humility We are here shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest and stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, when the Deity Himself has willed to end the temptation and to accomplish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him, still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or confound him by laying open before his eyes the book of his iniquities. He opens before him only the arch of the dayspring and the fountains of the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds and on the heaving waves He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride. "Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee!" And the work is done. Ruskin. Behemoth. Bochart first identified this animal with the hippopotamus, and showed the accuracy of the description. At present the point is universally admitted by scholars. Dr. Tristram says: "It is clear that the description suits the hippopotamus exactly, and it alone." The word in Hebrew probably means the great beast, or the beast of beasts, that which combines in the highest degree the marvellous powers and instincts of the graminivorous animals. 19. Chief of the ways. The masterpiece, so to speak, of creation; an expression which refers either to its bulk (it reaches seven feet in height and thirteen in length, which exceeds that of the elephant, Hirz.), or, more probably, to its unequalled strength, a point directly bearing upon the argument touching the feebleness of man. 23. Behold, if a river ravageth, he trembleth not; he is steadfast, if the Jordan burst upon his mouth! The word "ravageth" means literally "does injury"—i.e., by overflowing its banks. The ravages of the Nile when the inundation is unusually high are terrible. In 1864 the whole country was submerged, the cattle destroyed, and the villagers all but ruined. The quiet confidence with which the heavy brute bears the rush of the formidable inundation may be contrasted with the terror and flight of beasts of prey. Cook.—The swollen, rushing stream has no terrors for him. The Jordan was a familiar name and an object of interest to all the descendants of Abraham; and among them would most naturally be named as the representative of any large and powerful stream. It is not implied, therefore, that the river-ox was an inhabitant of the Jordan. Conant. 41:1-34. Description of Leviathan. 1. Leviathan. The word, which properly means a large creature, lithe or folded, may apply either—as in 3:8—to a dragon (see note); or—as in Psalms 104:26—to a whale; or—as in this chapter—to the crocodile; a point upon which all commentators are now agreed. This interpretation rests upon the accuracy of the description, which, though highly poetical, is neither legendary nor hyperbolical. 1,2. These two verses evidently imply that the huge crocodile was not, and could not be taken. There were, however, many species—five are now counted by naturalists, and the hieroglyphics indicate a still greater number. The leviathan of this chapter describes the largest and most formidable of all, probably one which no one, in Job's time, dreamed of attacking. 10,11. These verses point the application of this second discourse. If God's creatures are so great, what must be the terrors of His majesty? Cook.—The lesson of these portrayals drawn. Both beasts are vastly more powerful than man—the one mild, the other fierce, yet both owing all they are to God. Shall man alone, who belongs to God in the same sum of things, bring to his Maker an unpaid demand? In all these things has God left man's life unprovided for? We are reminded of the lesson drawn in Isaiah 40:26-28. J. F. G. 13. "His outer garment" seems to mean the upper side or surface of his coat of scales—his armor; and the question is, Who has turned back or removed this scaly covering? The question seems a general, preliminary one, as the scales are more particularly described in v. 15. A. B. D. Come within his double bridle. The double row of teeth. The two most prominent characteristics are the scales and the jaws, which are dwelt upon in the eight verses following. 14. Round about his teeth is terror. The neck of the war horse is clothed with terror, so terror has its permanent abode in the jaw of the crocodile. Cook.—The jaws of the crocodile are very extended; the two rows of long, pointed teeth, thirty-six, it is said, above, and thirty beneath, being bare, as the mouth has no lips, present a formidable appearance. 15-17. His armor of scales. His scales are his pride. Rather, the rows of his shields are a pride. Each of his scales is a shield, and they are disposed in rows, or courses—literally, pipes, so called from their being curved or bossed. Of these rows there are said to be seventeen. The second clause describes the firmness and closeness with which each scale adheres to the body. The sixteenth and seventeenth verses refer to the close coherence of the scales to one another. 18. The eyelids of the morning. The reference may be to the shining of the reddish eyes of the animal, which are seen even under the water before its head comes to the surface. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs the eyes of the crocodile are a symbol of the dawn. A. B. D. 19-21. Bartram has observed on the American alligator that as it comes on the land a thick smoke issues from its distended nostrils with a thundering sound. The thick, hot steam produces the impression of a fire existing beneath and bursting forth. The subjective truth of this impression is faithfully but poetically reproduced. D.—He is here described as emerging from the water, and violently forcing out the heated breath and steam, which glisten in the sunlight (vs. 20, 21) like smoke and flame from burning coals. These strong expressions are not mere poetic exaggeration. They are such as an eye-witness might use in communicating to others the actual impressions made upon himself, and are therefore the most suitable for conveying the same impressions to us. Conant. 22. This translation but imperfectly expresses the magnificent personification of the original, "On his neck dwelleth strength; before him leapeth horror." Horror or despair is described with a terrible irony as exulting in the presence of its lord. Cook.—Terror personified as the avant courrier of the mighty beast, running joyfully and dancing before him. T. Lewis.—A bold and striking personification of the two closely related qualities, strength and the dread it inspires. His neck is the abode of strength, for there resides the force which wields his powers of destruction. Dances before him, aptly describes the imbecility of terror. Conant. 24. Its heart is firm and obdurate, as though it were of cast brass, hard as stone, and in fact as the nether millstone, which, because it has to bear the weight and friction of the upper, must be particularly hard. It is not intended of actual stone-like hardness, but only of its indomitable spirit and great tenacity of life; the activity of its heart is not so easily disturbed, and even fatal wounds do not so quickly bring it to a stand. D. 31. Lastly comes the movement through the water; the images are exact, the chief object of Oriental descriptive poetry, which aims at definiteness and life, regardless of conventional notions of dignity; the immense size of the beast and the impetuosity of his movement throws the whole stream into violent commotion; it seethes and heaves like a caldron of boiling oil. Cook. 33. The armor with which the upper part of the body is covered may be numbered among the most elaborate pieces of nature's mechanism. In the full-grown animal it is so strong and thick as easily to repel a musket-ball. The whole animal appears as if covered with the most regular and curious carved work. The mouth is of vast width, the gape having a somewhat flexuous outline, and both jaws being furnished with very numerous, sharp-pointed teeth. The number of teeth in each jaw is thirty or more, and they are so disposed as to alternate with each other when the mouth is closed. The legs are short, but strong and muscular. In the glowing regions of Africa, where it arrives at its full strength and power, it is justly regarded as the most formidable inhabitant of the rivers. Shaw. What impression was such a description calculated to produce? We must remember the profoundly religious and serious character of the Eastern patriarch. When images were presented to his mind which spoke of tremendous power and purposes utterly beyond his conception, he could have no thought but of his own nothingness. It never entered into his spirit to doubt of God's wisdom; but when he reflected upon the marvellous care which God bestowed upon every part of an animal so utterly useless to man, he must have felt that the goodness which was to him but another word for perfect wisdom, must be something far different from that which in his narrowness and presumption man is wont to assume. Cook. —That the Lord has a right to reign over us; and that we are bound to a cheerful submission to His dispensations toward us, not because we see the reasons of them, but because it is His will concerning us, and we know that He cannot but will our essential good—still form proper grounds of argument with the afflicted, and sometimes indeed amount to nearly all that can be urged. Kitto. The argument of omnipotence insisted on in these four chapters, when duly considered, includes in it a full, perfect, and sufficient vindication of the ways of God with man. For if "He can do all things," and "nothing is impossible with God," He can have no temptation to do wrong; for "God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man," though for wise and salutary purposes, for correction, for discipline, for purification of heart and life, and preparation for a better world, He tries the best men, like Job, and proves them in the furnace of affliction, that "they may come forth like gold;" while by His all-governing and all-controlling providence He restrains the craft and subtilty of the devil or man working against them, to shake their faith and "sift them as wheat;" saying to the former, as to the ocean originally, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." At the same time, of His infinite mercy and goodness He is not severe to mark what they have done amiss upon their hearty repentance and true faith; for "He knoweth whereof they are made, He remembereth that they are but dust." Dr. Hales. This complete submission contains, 1. A full acknowledgment of God's almighty power and supreme dominion (v. 2). By thus glorifying the sovereign authority of God, Job tacitly condemns himself for not having meekly submitted to it. 2. A like acknowledgment of the unsearchable wisdom of Divine providence, with an explicit condemnation of himself for his objections and murmurings against it (v. 3). 3. He humbly begs of God to vouchsafe a gracious audience to his petition, and to instruct him further in his duty (v. 4). 4. He declares that this visible manifestation of the Almighty to him had impressed him with a deeper and more reverent sense of the Divine perfection and majesty than he had before conceived by means of instruction only (v. 5). Lastly he expresses his repentance in the strongest terms of self-condemnation and humble sorrow (v. 6). This complete submission discloses an alteration infinitely more important and beneficial than any change of Job's outward condition; it shows an alteration in the temper and state of his mind. He is brought back to his duty, and his soul returns to its rest in God. Scott. The Lord has said nothing to crush and exasperate His servant, as the three friends had done. It is better to fall into the hand of God than into the hands of men. In His Word He is patient and kind, and diverts the thought of the sufferer from his own sad case to the contemplation of other objects of Divine care and proofs of Divine wisdom and might. The result is Job's lowly and contrite confession before God. D. F. In Job's repentance all the marks of evangelical repentance are found—submission and abasement (v. 2); confession of sin (v. 3); humble and believing prayer (v. 4); the revelation of God to the soul (v. 5); and then the blessed result—self-knowledge, self abhorrence, true, deep, lasting repentance: "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (v. 6). E. Bayley.—The only skill of this excellent wrestler (as one calls him) was to cast himself down at God's foot. There is no way of getting in to God or prevailing with Him but by submitting to Him. The Lord layeth down His rod when we lay down our pride, and casts His sword out of His hand when we cast ourselves at His feet. Caryl. 2. The meaning is that there is no purpose which the Almighty cannot carry out. Though literally the words seem merely an acknowledgment of power, they are also an admission of wisdom, the plans or purposes of which may be beyond the understanding of man (v. 3). Job's confession corresponds to the Almighty's address to him. That address did not insist on any one Divine attribute, but rather presented God in the whole circle of His attributes—power and wisdom, but also goodness—for He refreshes the thirsty ground where no man is, He feeds the ravens, and presides over the birth-pangs of the goats of the rock, and His omnipotence goes hand in hand with His moral rule (40:9, seq.). The Divine nature is not a segment but a circle. Any one Divine attribute implies all others. Omnipotence cannot exist apart from righteousness. Similarly, Job's reply reflects the great general impression of God now made on him. The exercise of the Divine wisdom as it operates in nature has led him to feel that within his own history also there is a Divine "thought" or "counsel," though he is unable to understand it. It can hardly, however, be the author's purpose to teach the general principle that the "counsel" of God is incomprehensible, because he gives an explanation of it in the prologue. He is not teaching general principles here, but showing the position which just thoughts of God will induce a man to take even when God's dealings may be beyond his understanding. A. B. D. 3. Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? The opening of the Lord's address. Job brings it distinctly before his mind and recognizes its justice; clear and bright as his own reasoning had seemed to be, it was but a darkening of counsel. Cook.—The very words that had been spoken to Job in reproof he now repeats in the spirit of humiliation and confession. He had spoken unwisely, irreverently, because of his want of spiritual understanding, and had assumed to sit in judgment on the Divine administration in human affairs. This he now sees, and humbles himself with contrition and confession. Curry.—He indeed knew previously what he acknowledges (v. 2), but now this knowledge has risen upon him in a new divinely-worked clearness, such as he had not hitherto experienced. Those strange but wondrous works of God are proof to him that God is able to put everything into operation, and that the plans according to which He acts are beyond the reach of human comprehension. He repeats to himself the chastening Word of Jehovah (38:2), while he chastises himself with it; for he now perceives that his judgment was wrong, and that he consequently merited the reproof. D. Which way soever we turn in our search after knowledge, we run against mystery at the second or third step. And a great part of our misery, a still greater of our unbelief, and all the lunatic rage of our scepticism arises in the fact that we either do not, or will not see it to be so. Ignorance trying to comprehend what is inscrutable, and out of patience that it cannot make the high things of God come down to its own petty measures, is the definition of all atheism. There is no true comfort in life, no dignity in reason, apart from modesty. We wrangle with Providence and call it reason, we rush upon God's mysteries, and tear ourselves against the appointments of His throne, and then, because we bleed, complain that He cruelly mocks our understanding. All our disputings and hard speeches are the frothing of our ignorance maddened by our pride. Oh, if we could see our own limitations, and how little it is possible for us to know of matters infinite, how much less, clouded by the necessary blindness of a mind disordered by evil, we should then be in a way to learn, and the lessons God will teach would put us in a way to know what now is hidden from us. After all his labored disputings and lofty reasons with his friends, Job turns himself to God and says, "I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." Bushnell. 4. Job now wished to be heard as an earnest inquirer seeking for instruction. The conviction of his own ignorance caused a desire to be instructed by God Himself. The spirit of the confession in the next verse also dominates this; he sees the folly of his own self-assurances and turns to God, who only can teach man true wisdom. Curry. 5. Job's eyes are open at last to perceive the universality both of God's power and wisdom; an all-pervading care in which he is content to take his place, hushing all complaints and trusting where he cannot see. This is the grand outcome of Job's experience; an outcome not merely in a completed argument, but in a chastened, obedient, enlightened character. J. F. G. —Humility and repentance are the result of large acquaintance with God. Job said, I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee. It expresses two kinds of knowledge—the one speculative, the other practical. He had formerly a distant and vague acquaintance of God, without contemplating Him by that faith which seeth Him who is invisible. He now had an intimate, a deep and practical sense of God, very different from the mere vague conceptions he had when he only heard of Him; that knowledge which is practical, deep, intimate, and profound. The two effects were humility and repentance. Humility is produced by the sight of His greatness, repentance by a knowledge of His purity. It is the union of these that form the idea of God. R. Hall. Mine eye seeth Thee. Man instinctively closes his eyes to see God when he worships or prays, naturally feeling that it is by making himself spiritually conscious of God that he is to meet Him. Yet this is the true meeting, the real encounter. For me to know that I am in the presence of God, and know that He is conscious of me, and know that He knows I am conscious of Him—this is for me to see God—nay, it is far more, it is to meet Him in the most perfect sense. W. R. Brooks. 6. I abhor. Not myself (though that may be a secondary thought), but it—that is, my former misconceptions and rebellion. I retract my proud utterances with deepest abhorrence—I repudiate them. Curry.—Job confesses now that he had not really heard God's word before—that is, received it in its full meaning; it was, so far as regarded the special cause of his spiritual trial, as though he knew it not. It was a mere hearing with the ear of sense, but now he sees God with the eye of the spirit; now he can see himself in his true proportions, and he submits with utter humiliation of heart. Does this imply that he now surrenders his righteousness, thus doing just that which was the object of all the temptations of Satan and of his misjudging friends to induce him to do? Yes, in one sense, inasmuch as he no longer holds to it as a principle on which he may trust in a controversy with his Maker; but not in a sense which was contemplated by the author of those temptations, for Job knows that his relative righteousness—sincerity of intention and singleness of heart—is recognized by God, and proved by His condescension in answering and satisfying his inward craving. Cook. This humble confession and self-abasement of Job was graciously accepted; it covered all his imperfections; his passionate complaints wrung from him by the extremity of sufferings, corporeal and mental; his despair and weariness of life; his frequent wishes for death; his eagerness to enter upon his trial; his earnest request, and even expostulations with his Judge, to bring him to it, or, at least, to acquaint him with the reasons of such severe afflictions. Such shades and blemishes in the character of this illustrious Patriarch argue somewhat of impatience in this heroic pattern of patience. But God is ever ready to pass over the frailties and infirmities of human nature, where there is a tried and resolute integrity, determined to adhere to God in all trials and temptations, whatever may be the result. Dr. Hales. The past hard experience has brought Job immeasurably nearer to God. The grand conclusion, the sum total is expressed not in words, but in life: "Now mine eye seeth Thee." Need one whose eyes are opened by such a hard schooling ask why it was given? The answer is self-evident. Less than such stern discipline would not have produced such beauty and strength of human character. Less than such severe chastening would not have quickened Job's vision to see how subtly selfish motives may work to impair the friendships and the wisdom of earth, and how sufficing is the refuge provided in the eternal Love beyond this life. And the answer thus embodied in the Patriarch's experience is a world-answer, pointing to that mystery of travail and suffering which everywhere underlies the deepest insight, the highest achievements. Shall we ask why God invades our ease and scourges us onward and upward to the table-lands of vision? The new horizon and the purer air and the stronger muscles are the sufficient reason. J. F. G. Job's afflictions have not abated yet. His terrible losses are still as great as they were, and his bodily sufferings are as grievous. But the cloud is gone. He has lost all disposition to murmur or repine. He can trust the infinitely holy and mighty and wise and gracious One to do whatsoever seemeth Him good. It is good if God does it; it is the best thing possible; no man at least, nor any finite being, could alter it for the better; and Job would not have it otherwise. The temptation is not vanquished now; it has disappeared. Job has now come to the end of the third, which is the last and most fearful stage of the temptation. The struggle has been tremendous. It has been a long and a wearisome and a desperately contested conflict. But the issue is glorious. The forces of the enemy are not merely driven back, and left to rally and return again to the charge. They are positively annihilated, and the victory is complete and final. Sublime as was Job's resignation in the first and second stages of his afflictions, it is sublimer now. W. H. G. Strange to tell, the closing picture of Job is not that of a conqueror, but a confessor, not of an enthroned prince, but of a kneeling penitent. The unexpected revolution is effected by the revelation of God to the eye of the soul. Job knows God as he did not know Him before. The character of his knowledge is changed, heightened, vitalized, intensified, personalized. God is no longer a voice crying in the wilderness, but a Presence in his heart and before his spiritual eye. Here then is one signal value of the knowledge of God, even of His immense power and greatness. By the knowledge of God is the knowledge of self, in the knowledge of self is the knowledge of sin, through the knowledge of personal sin we come to repentance, and by a baptism in the fiery waters of repentance we pass to the reality and strength of life. Such God-inspired penitence swiftly vindicates itself in the pure sincerity and holy brotherhood it creates and the reconciliation it effects between man and men and man and his lot. The voice of prayer is exchanged for the clash of debate; the incense of reconciling sacrifice ascends in place of the smoke of anger and scorn. J. Clifford. Surely when men indulge the fancy that they may stand before God on the meritorious ground of their own virtues they forget what God is, with whom they have to do. They forget both His perfect holiness and His omniscience. Would the best of us be willing that even an earthly friend should be privy to all his words, all his actions, all his thoughts, all his desires, all his purposes, all his emotions? Think, then, of Him who "searcheth the heart and the reins." He is "greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things." He knows whether we think about Him, often or seldom; and when we do think of Him, what our thoughts of Him are, worthy or unworthy. He knows whether we bow the knee to Him in secret, whether frequently or rarely; and whether the heart is bowed with the knee. He follows us from the closet to the family, and from the family to the intercourse of public life. He searches our hearts all the while. He knows how much greater influence, in restraining us from what is evil, the thought of some fellow-creature's presence has than the assurance of His. He knows all our sins of omission as well as commission; how often we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done. He has known all from the beginning, every moment; and the entire catalogue of our demerits is, at the same instant, present to His mind, who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon sin." Such considerations may well draw from every heart the exclamation of Job: "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." And whither, with this overwhelming conviction on his conscience and heart, can the sinner betake himself but to the cross? There alone are forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace and hope to be found. There the omniscient God, with the full knowledge of all the sinner's guilt, cancels it forever when that sinner makes the cross and the blood shed on it his plea for mercy. R. Wardlaw. 7. AND it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that 8 is right, as my servant Job hath. Now therefore, take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you; for him will I accept, that I deal not with you after your folly; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job 9 hath. So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: and the LORD accepted Job. 10 And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that THREE things we have met with in this book which have troubled me much; but we find all the three grievances thoroughly redressed in this chapter—everything set to rights. It has been a great trouble to us to see such a holy man as Job was so fretful and peevish, and especially to hear him quarrel with God and speak indecently to Him; but, though he thus fall, he is not utterly cast down, for here he comes to himself and to his right mind again by repentance, is sorry for what he has said amiss, unsays it and humbles himself before God. It has been likewise a great trouble to us to see Job and his friends so much at variance, not only differing in their opinions, but giving one another a great many hard words and passing severe censures one upon another, though they were all very wise and good men; but here we have this grievance redressed likewise, the differences between them happily adjusted, the quarrel taken up, all the peevish reflections they had cast upon one another forgiven and forgotten, and all joining in sacrifices and prayers, mutually accepted of God. It has troubled us to see a man of such eminent piety and usefulness as Job was so grievously afflicted, so pained, so sick, so poor, so reproached, so slighted, and made the very centre of all the calamities of human life; but here we have this grievance redressed too; Job healed of all his ailments, more honored and had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him concerning all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one a ring of gold. 12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: and he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a 13 thousand she-asses. He had also seven sons 14 and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemimah; and the name of the second, Keziah: and the name of the 15 third, Keren-happuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren. And after this Job lived an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even 17 four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days. beloved than ever, enriched with an estate double to what he had before, surrounded with all the comforts of life, and as great an instance of prosperity as ever he had been of affliction and patience. All this is written for our learning, that we, under these and the like discouragements that we meet with, through patience and comfort of the Scripture, may have hope. H. 7-17. Jehovah, having confounded all the false reasonings of Job and sufficiently humbled him, proceeds now to condemn the principle maintained by the three friends, which He affirms "not to be right." As an atonement, therefore, for their behavior He commands them to offer a sacrifice for themselves; and as some compensation to Job, they have the mortifying penance enjoined them of begging his prayers in their behalf. He, whom they had represented as the vilest of men, was the only intercessor whom God would accept. Job is at length not only restored to his former prosperity, but as a recompense for his past sufferings blessings flow in upon him in a double tide, which he enjoys to a very old age, and leaves to a numerous posterity. Heath.—Job's unreserved submission terminates his trial. His integrity is recognized, and his friends are declared not to have spoken the truth, a fault which, however, as proceeding from a mistaken apprehension of Divine justice, is pardoned on the intercession of Job. The restoration of Job's earthly prosperity, which is an inevitable result of the Divine manifestation, symbolizes the final compensation of the righteous for all the sufferings of life. Cook. 7. The Lord blames the three friends for not speaking that which was right concerning Him, not concerning Job; He also commends Job for speaking what was right concerning Him. It is obvious that the three friends spoke many just and profound things concerning God, and that Job, on the other hand, said many things that were both blameworthy and false, things for which he was both rebuked by the Almighty and expressed his penitence. The reference cannot be to such things as these. Neither can the charge made against the friends here be merely that brought against them by Job, that they did not speak in honesty and sincerity, though this may be included. Rather, the friends are blamed for speaking in regard to God that which was not right, or true, in itself; and the reference must be to the theories they put forth in regard to God's providence and the meaning of afflictions. On this point the friends spoke in regard to God what was not right, while Job spoke that which was right. A. B. D. The friends affirmed these great mistakes: that all the sufferings and afflictions which befall man in this world are laid upon him by God as a punishment for sin; that all wicked men sooner or later are visibly punished for sin in this life; that though a good man may possibly suffer grievous afflictions in this life, yet God always delivers him out of them before he departs this life. Hence if a man for long continuance of time be continued in great calamity, that man must be judged wicked, though no apparent wickedness can be charged upon or proved against him. Upon these unsound principles they were all confident to infer that Job was a hypocrite, and that all those troubles which befell him were inflicted by the righteous hand of God as a punishment for his sin. Caryl. To these friends of Job no other idea ever occurs than that a man suffers because he is a sinner. They had never yet caught the great Gospel idea of Jesus and His apostles that a man might be made to suffer more because he is a saint; that his suffering may not always be a punishment, but rather a token of love; a means of ripening glory; a blessing in disguise; so that ofttimes the saint has occasion to say: "It was good for me that I have been afflicted." Thus from reasoning on a false principle to confute Job and bring him to repentance these friends, in seeking to confute and convict him of irreverence, gave all the weight of their influence against God's cause. S. R.—Their ignorance regarding the meaning and design of God's dealings with Job was not reprehensible. This could not have been otherwise, for they had no means of knowing it. But what cannot be excused in them is that they undertook to expound, as though they had full knowledge in the case, what they did not understand; and in so doing rested the Divine procedure on insufficient reasons, and sought to square it by their own limited notions. They were inexcusable in another respect. They not only entered a weak and unsuitable plea as the only one upon which the cause of God could be rested or His providence justified, but they made allegations which they had no means of knowing to be true, and which, in fact, were not true; they were mere inferences from the false premises on which they were conducting the defence of the Divine government. In defending the cause of religion and of piety, as they professed to do, they were guilty of making rash and reckless assertions; they were unjust to Job in not only harboring baseless suspicions, but in venturing upon positive declarations of his guilt in matters of which he was wholly innocent; they were shamefully cruel to their suffering friend, causelessly aggravating his distress, which professedly they had come to soothe, when he was already weighed down by troubles that might have disarmed malice itself and softened hearts of stone. No exigencies of their argument could justify a course like this. And no straits in which the defence of God's righteous government and the claims of religion seemed to be could justify it. If the Divine administration could not be honestly and truthfully defended, and without a resort to what is questionable or false, they should have retired from its defence, and concluded that they were not called of God to be His champions in this particular. More than this, they had really inculpated the providence of God by their professed defence of it. By covering up and ignoring its enigmas and seeming contradictions they had cast more discredit upon it than Job by honestly holding them up to the light. Their denial of its apparent inequalities was more untrue and more dishonoring to the Divine administration, as it is in fact conducted, than Job's bold affirmation of them. Even his most startling utterances wrung from him in his bewilderment and sore perplexity were less reprehensible than their false statements and false inferences. W. H. G. Job hath (spoken of Me the thing that is right). This decision, while not to be interpreted as a sanction of the whole of Job's language, must be understood to convey an approval of its substance and groundwork; and to pronounce that his argument was true, and his feeling legitimate and right in the main. It must be remembered that there is a wide distinction between that movement of natural passion which has a reason and that which has not, and that exactly the same amount of temper which is fretfulness in one case is natural or constitutional anger in another. Mozley.—This expression of approval has a reference to his share in the previous argument with the friends, and is designed to express a comparative preference of the views he had set forth in that argument. This will appear the more clearly when it is borne in mind that the arguments and illustrations adduced by the Lord Himself do not really convey any rebuke of Job's main position, but only to the incidents of temper and character—the impatience, the recklessness, and the presumption which had been manifested by him in the course of the debate. Still this praise is to be taken rather as comparative than as absolute. Both had about equally erred in their views as to the nature of sin; but Job had put this part of the charge against him out of court by his penitent confession. The removal of this fault in his argument, seeing he had expressly recalled it, while it remained on theirs, would alone give the balance in his favor had all else been equal. But, in fact, the main position which Job had defended was correct, though he was unable to grasp all its bearings, and more than that which the friends had upheld, tended to vindicate the Divine government. It is clear that inasmuch as Job had an essentially good case, but marred it by many vain and unseemly utterances; so the friends had an essentially wrong case, although they supported it by many goodly reasons, and by words out of which much holy doctrine may be gathered. Kitto. 7,8. My servant Job. God calls him again and again His servant Job, four times in two verses, and He seems to take a pleasure in calling him so, as before his troubles—" Hast thou considered My servant Job? Though he is poor and despised, he is My servant, and as dear to Me as when he was in prosperity; though he has his faults, and has appeared to be a man subject to like passions as others; though he has contended with Me, has gone about to disannul My judgment, and has darkened counsel by words without knowledge, yet he sees his error and retracts it, and therefore he is My servant Job still." If we still hold fast the integrity and fidelity of servants to God, as Job did, though we may for a time be deprived of the credit and comfort of the relation, we shall be restored to it at last, as he was. The devil had undertaken to prove Job a hypocrite, and his three friends had condemned him as a wicked man; but God will confess those whom He accepts, and will not suffer them to be run down by the malice of hell or earth. If God says, Well done, good and faithful servant, it is of little consequence who says otherwise. H. 8. Jehovah has now risen up as a witness for Job; the spiritual redemption is already accomplished; and all that is wanting is that He who has acknowledged and testified to Job as His servant should also act outwardly and visibly, and in mercy show Himself the righteous One. D. 9,10. Only the compliance of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar with the requirement is named, leaving the natural inference that they were accepted with their offerings. The turning of the captivity of Job is the great point of interest—a phrase that simply indicates that from this point Job's great affliction, comparable to a terrible captivity, was exchanged for returning health and joy and prosperity. Curry. 10. It was an honor put on Job, and likewise a testimony of his meek and loving spirit, that he prayed for his friends. Nor can we have stronger proof that our prayers and intercessions for others, especially for our offending brethren, are acceptable to God than what is here related. For then "the Lord turned the captivity of Job," when his resentment against his accusers was extinguished, and he put up to heaven charitable petitions for them. The sufferer was restored to health, abundance, and prosperity. He received twice as much property as he had before possessed, so that his latter end was better than his beginning. The Lord gave him favor among an extensive acquaintance, a very large property, a numerous issue, and an honorable old age. It is delightful to trace the dealings of God toward His people and their faith in Him, which are the same in all ages. The very truths that supported Job under his sorrows remain to the present day, firm as the pillars of heaven, an unshaken basis of confidence for the people of God. E. Copley. With this simple conclusion the author of the book seems to have ended. The six remaining verses, particularizing the increase, the number of his sons and daughters, and the names of the latter, who, according to primitive usage, were made coheiresses with their brothers; and the number of years that Job survived his trial, form an appendix which, probably, was added in later times by whoever introduced the book into the sacred canon. Hales. 11. When Job had humbled himself and God had accepted him, he quickly turned the hearts of his friends to regard him with kindness. Clark.—Every man also gave him a piece of money. It was an ancient custom, which is still observed in the East, never to visit a person of distinction without paying him the compliment of a present. It is uncertain whether one kind of present made to Job on this occasion was a sheep, or a piece of money that had the figure of a sheep stamped upon it. Scott. 12. So the Lord blessed. The theism of revelation rests upon one fact—the love of God for man; and aims at one fact—the love of man for God. In the relation to one another of two living creatures who love each other tenderly, do we not see how every grief suffered by one in presence of the other strengthens the link of affection which unites them, and calls forth a still more lively manifestation of it? And does not every new act of devotion make the flame of satisfied and even grateful love on the part of the being so faithfully loved break forth into view? It is no question of payment of what has been earned; it is love called forth by love exhibited, and answering to it with eagerness. "So the Lord blessed, not rewarded, the latter end of Job." The restoration of Job does not then rest upon any servile notion of works of merit, but upon the value which love sets upon love. Love appreciates love above all things—loves essentially only it. If God is love, and if, being such, He has willed to be loved, how should He not in His turn, having found what He seeks, manifest Himself emphatically as the loving God? Were He to act otherwise, His creature would be better than Himself. Godet. Job's trials are at length over. He has been convinced, pardoned, vindicated, and accepted. Nor was this all; he was healed of his sore disease, and restored to a prosperous estate. And, yet more—for the Lord is very bountiful to His servants—he was not merely restored to all he had before possessed, but all things were given back in double measure to him; all except children, of whom he eventually gained the same number he had lost. How the restoration of his wealth was effected we are not told, nor are we required to suppose that it took place all at once. We know that in the case of his new family, for instance, the restoration must have been gradual, and so it was probably of the rest. And with regard to Job's possessions being doubled after his recovery from his calamities, it is not necessary to suppose that this was exactly true to the letter. The statement is justified if by the recapture of some of his possessions from the robbers, by the gifts of friends, and by remarkable prosperity in all his doings, his possessions were eventually brought to something nearly double what they were before his trials commenced. In the statement itself there is nothing improbable. Job lived one hundred and forty years after his trials. If he then had only the same measure of prosperity as before, with such assistances as we have indicated to enable him to begin life again, there is nothing improbable in his possessions being doubled. Kitto.—So does God pour out upon Job all the tokens of His love, as if to make up to him for the extreme anguish which he had gone through for the manifestation of His glory both in heaven and in hell. Godet. In the result he is pardoned and restored; and the conclusion is such as to sanction the prevalent idea of the finally retributive character, even in this world, of the Divine government; for "the Lord blessed his latter end more than his beginning," restoring double to him of all his prosperity and wealth. This, in fact, was the argument of the friends of Job; but the fault was that they did not wait "to see the end." Even in their view of the Divine government by temporal retribution, it is visibly impossible safely to pass such judgments as they were in haste to pronounce, until the end of all is seen, for there is no afflicted man whose prosperity may not be restored with large increase; and, while that remains possible, no judgment upon his conduct can be founded upon his condition, which may be but temporary—may be but an incident in his career. Kitto. 16,17. Job lived a hundred and forty years. Abraham lived 175 years, and Moses 120; but if to Job's 140 after his restoration be added 80, or even 60 years, to which age all the facts brought into the light would indicate that he must have lived before his afflictions come upon him, then his whole number of years must have been 200 or more, which is about the age (205) to which Terah, the father of Abraham, attained. It is not altogether unreasonable to presume that by thus signifying the age to which the patriarchal hero of the poem lived, the author meant to indicate the date in the world's history in which he would locate the scenes that he describes. Curvy. The length of days and unexampled prosperity granted to Job should not be regarded as a compensation for sufferings, but as the outward and visible indication of Divine favor, of which the future manifestation was as yet a matter of hope rather than a sure belief founded on revelation. Cook. 17. Job dies, old and full of days. "Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy" (James 5:11). A. B. D. God looks more upon the bright side of the cloud than the dark. "Remember the patience of Job" (James 5:11). It is not, "Remember the murmuring of Job, the complainings of Job, the impatience of Job," but "Remember the patience of Job." God looks upon the pearl, and not upon the spot that is in it. T. Brooks.—All that Job is told is that God most surely loved him; that He will not answer his eager and passionate questions, but that through them all and in spite of them all he is dear to Him because he had loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that for these things God cares, and cares infinitely; and in the sense of this and of God's power and wisdom he must rest content. And he is told also that trouble and affliction do not prove God's displeasure; that the very heaviest, the most overwhelming blows may come from a Maker who is full of love to him on whom they fall—may come, as did Job's, from causes far beyond his power to comprehend or guess, and that he need not look on God as his persecutor or his enemy—not shrink from Him, but draw closer and closer to Him in his trouble, and trust Him more wholly. And his story reminds us of God's mercy and forbearance to those who are under sorrow; of the larger, the other eyes with which He may look on the impatience, the bewilderment, the fretfulness, even the doubts and questionings of His servants. The impatience, as it seems to us, of Job is answered by the patience and pitifulness of Job's God: "The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy"—and this, surely, is much. Dean Bradley. "In your patience, ye shall win your souls," are the words of the Master (Luke 21:19). Patience is active as well as passive. It includes the persistent energy which wins no less than the submissiveness which bears. The popular conception of patience is too narrow. The popular phrase, "As patient as Job," is applied to a man who submits to trouble without murmuring. In this aspect Job's patience is not a model. He chafed under his trouble, not so much indeed at his bodily suffering as at his inability to understand what God meant by it; he murmured and impugned God's justice, and well-nigh blasphemed in his frenzied wrestle with this problem. And yet the core of this struggle reveals the truth of Christ's words. The man's thought was absorbed, not by the relations of this calamity to his flocks and herds and family and health, but by its relations to himself as a son of God and a believer in God. His fear centred in the possibility that God had forsaken his soul; and Job's patience appears in his holding fast by that thought, and in his steadily fighting his way toward God through all that agony, even though at times he raved at the Almighty. He clung to the hand that smote him, even while he struck at it, as the only hand which could unlock the mystery. He pressed his way through the darkness, groping after God. If he could but see God! If he could but come into court with God and make his plea to His face! If God would only speak to him! And at last he prevailed. God did speak to him. Job's soul was calmed, though it was humbled to the dust. He won his soul in his patience. Vincent. The explanation of the sufferings of God's dear children, as suggested by the case of Job, may be embraced in the following particulars. They afford to all gainsayers a palpable test of their integrity. The very intensity of the struggle develops their faith and other graces, and leads them on to clearer views of heavenly truth. These sorrows are sent on the part of God with a gracious design, and afford the occasion of His revealing Himself to chastened souls with new fulness and power, in consequence of which they are brought nearer to Him than ever before, and their happiness and welfare are proportionally promoted. W. H. G.—Job's recorded history shows that God sometimes permits the best men to be afflicted by Satan, and that most grievously, to prove their faith, patience, humility, and resignation to His will; that this world is not a perfect state of retribution for virtue and vice; but that all the inequalities which are to be found here will be completely redressed in a future state, in which the good will be finally rewarded and the wicked punished. Job, indeed, was one of the best men that ever lived; but he was not exempt from the frailties and infirmities of human nature, and he failed under his last and sorest trial. Still, with all his imperfections, he will shine forth to the end of time an admirable example and an heroic pattern of piety and patience, to be exceeded only by that inimitable Standard of perfection who, in His state of humiliation, was “meek and lowly of heart ;” who was “in all points tempted like as we are,” and that “by the devil,” but yet “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth ;” and who was “perfected by sufferings” in this life, that He might be transcendently “exalted at the right hand of God”—the blessed “Seed of the woman,” the man Jesus Christ. Hales. The Book of Job is a book of consolation for the New Testament Church. From it we learn that we have not only to fight with flesh and blood, but with the prince of this world, and to accomplish our part in the conquest of evil, to which from the first promise (Gen. 3 : 15) onward the history of the world tends ; that faith and avenging justice are absolutely distinct opposites ; that the right kind of faith clings to Divine love in the midst of the feeling of wrath ; that the incomprehensible ways of God always lead to a glorious issue, and that the suffering of the present time is far outweighed by the future glory—a glory not always revealed in this life and visible future, but the final glory above. The nature of faith, the mystery of the cross, the right practice of the care of souls—this, and much besides, the Church learns from this book, the whole teaching of which can never be thoroughly learned and completely exhausted. D. "PROVERBS" has become in the LXX, the Vulgate, and the Authorized Version, the common heading of the book. It would seem, however, as if there had been at one time another name given to it as a title of honor. Like the two books of analogous nature in the Apocrypha, which probably took their title from it, it was known as the Book of Wisdom. So it was described in the Talmud. So it was named by the great body of early Christian writers. E. H. P. Properly and strictly speaking, most of Solomon's Proverbs are rather to be called maxims or sentences. A proverb is a short moral sentence which means something else than what the words naturally and literally imply—that is to say, it must be expressed in a figurative manner. When Solomon says, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not onto thine own understanding," this is no proverb, but a moral sentence. When he says, "Drink waters out of thine own cistern," this is a proverb; and it means, "Meddle not with that which belongs to another." These Proverbs of Solomon are a collection of wise and moral sayings, usually plain and concise; they also fall into metre, and, therefore, were the more easily learned and remembered by those in whose language they were written. Jortin.—In its most usual form the proverb is a brief, sententious maxim or saying, naturally conforming somewhat to the laws of Hebrew poetic parallelism, and therefore in two parts, one of which is usually antithetic to the other. Thus (10:1), "A wise son makes a glad father; a foolish son, a heavy-hearted mother." The first half gives the wise son; the second, the foolish. The joy of the father in the former is set over against the grief of the mother in the latter. This antithetic po sition makes the thought more distinct. Contrast heightens its force. This antithesis is not always apparent without close and searching attention. It may lie between what is affirmed in one clause and what is merely implied in the other. Proverbs of this class are a sort of enigma or riddle, "a dark saying" (1:6), designed to test the sagacity and tax the wits of the reader, and so heighten his interest and perhaps deepen the impression of the truth when he has searched it out. Thus in the proverb (10:8), "The wise in heart will receive instruction, but a prating fool shall fall," there is a double antithesis: (1) The wise-hearted man (instead of prating perpetually himself) hears and receives advice; while the fool prates with deaf ears. And (2) the wise man (it is implied) lives and prospers by means of the wise counsels which he both hears and obeys; while the prating fool, neither hearing nor heeding counsel, falls into remediless ruin—this secondary antithesis lying between what is affirmed of the fool and what is left to be inferred of the wise. This proverb is a "dark saying" to the reader until he has studied out this implied idea and has thus reached the full sense. There is, however, a considerable range of diversity in the manner of making up these proverbs. Some of them are comparisons, "As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him" (10:26); or the comparison is blended with the antithetic arrangement, "As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation;" where the passing away of the wicked is first compared to a whirlwind, and then put in contrast with the enduring life and blessedness of the righteous. The proverb proper is complete in a single verse. Of this sort are those which stand in 10-22:16. But in the first nine chapters, and also in the last seven, the same subject is usually continued through two or more successive verses. H. C. This book is attributed (1:1) to Solomon, who was the son of David and his successor on the throne of Israel. The book itself makes the last two chapters an exception, ascribing chap. 30 to one Agur, and chap. 31 to a certain King Lemuel and his mother. The fact that while the book in general is ascribed to Solomon, these special exceptions and these only appear in the book itself, is presumptive evidence that all the rest is the work of Solomon, and was so regarded by the original compilers. A distinct notice of this work of compilation appears in the opening of chap. 25, which is justly supposed to include the five chapters immediately following (25-29) as having been collected and compiled ("copied out") by certain men assigned to this service by King Hezekiah. H. C.—Of his three thousand proverbs, less than one-third are here preserved. Of his thousand and five songs we have a yet smaller proportion. And of his extensive writings upon natural history none remain. B.—The Jewish commentators place the composition of the Proverbs in the middle life of the king. Living about two hundred and sixty years before the reign of Cyrus, under whom the seven wise men of Greece flourished, and six hundred and seventy years before Alexander the Great, under whom lived Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, it is evident that Solomon could have drawn no part of the materials for his collection of proverbs from heathen moralists and philosophers. It seems more probable that they derived much valuable information from the writings of the renowned monarch of Israel. Muen-scher. The proverbs of the Gentile nations are almost all of anonymous origin—concentrations of many men's wisdom, or expressions of a popular humor, or national turn of thought, floating down, in the concise form of the apothegm, from an unknown antiquity. But almost all the proverbs of the Hebrews are due to the wit and wisdom of one man whom God had specially endowed. David was not more thoroughly trained to be the Psalmist of Israel than Solomon was qualified to be the master of practical admonition. From the first he had every princely advantage; he acquired every accomplishment of science and letters, and gifted with extraordinary powers of observation, he knew human character and life thoroughly, and could describe what he knew with wonderful terseness and point, his spirit also being enlightened by the Spirit of the Lord. D. F. In this book Solomon was inspired to use his surpassing wisdom and acquired knowledge and to interpret the lessons of his own wide experience in the setting forth of wise, practical counsels for all that should live after him. This he did in brief moral sentences, using either the proverb, a figurative form of expression, or the maxim, a plain statement. His aim is to set forth the principles and rules of right living in this world. His themes include almost every topic touching personal and social relations, rights and duties, and bearing upon the welfare of the individual, the family, and the community. The book, therefore, embodies an inspired manual of ethics or right acting. For the individual it furnishes all essential counsels pertaining to sobriety, purity and all probity, as well as to industry and economy. And, says Coleridge, it is “the best statesman’s manual that was ever written. An adherence to the political economy and spirit of that collection of apothegms and essays would do more to eradicate from a people the causes of extravagance, debasement, and ruin than all the contributions to political economy of Say, Smith, Malthus, and Chalmers together.” Further, though civilization changes by steady advances and though customs differ, yet man’s nature and acting are the same in every age and among every people. Hence these terse, energetic sentences, each unfolding or summing up some principle of right living in the positive form of counsel or the negative one of warning, must ever have a universal application; and, though not often directly containing distinctive Christian instruction, yet the spirit of their inculcations is always in harmony with the precepts of Christ and His apostles. B. Solomon judiciously sums up his precepts in brief, energetic sentences, which are well contrived for popular instruction. The wisdom of all ages hath chosen to compress its lessons into compendious sentences, which were peculiarly adapted to the simplicity of earlier times; which are readily conceived and easily retained, and which circulate in society as useful principles to be unfolded and applied as occasion may require. The inspired son of David had the power of giving peculiar energy and weight to this style of writing, and his works have been the storehouse from which posterity hath drawn its best maxims. His proverbs are so justly founded on principles of human nature, and so adapted to the permanent interests of man, that they agree with the manners of every age, and may be assumed as rules for the direction of our conduct in every condition of life, however varied in its complexion or diversified by circumstances; they embrace not only the concerns of private morality, but the great objects of political importance. Gray. Although the Proverbs are not a part of the Gospel, in its limited sense, yet they prescribe in morals, manners, and social and relative duties the same things for substance which the Gospel, in its fuller and enlarged sense, requires. We may now employ them to inculcate justice, prudence, temperance, chastity, industry, and, in a word, all the duties usually denominated either moral, social, or industrial; and also reverence for God and for His commandments. We have many and excellent moral and religious precepts in the New Testament, and most of them in a form which is not to be bettered. But the Book of Proverbs touches many points not fully developed in the New Testament, and assists greatly in guiding the simple into the way of wisdom. All the proverbs are adapted to regulate our moral, religious, social, and civil demeanor. Some principle of conduct, some rule of life, some cautions adapted to produce sobriety and regularity, lie upon the face of the whole book. M. S. As we have no book so useful to us in our devotions as David's Psalms, so we have none so serviceable to us for the right ordering of our conversations as Solomon's Proverbs, which, as David says of the commandments, are exceeding broad, containing in a little compass a complete body of Divine ethics, politics, and economics; exposing every vice, recommending every virtue, and suggesting rules for the government of ourselves in every relation and condition, and every turn of conversation. H.—What a vast collection of sayings we have in this book relating to human life, to human duty; the fear of God, charity to man, modesty, humility, forbearance, industry, self-denial! Here we see that one plain use and design of the whole book is to give us a quantity of short and summary expressions of deep truths of practice, such as we can carry about with us and call to mind when we want them. This book will imprint upon our minds the great truths of God's providence and the profundity of God's judgment. The proverbs show Divine justice already partially commenced and exhibited in this life; and the Gospel carries out this view, and completes it in the world of futurity. Mozley. It is impossible for any description of persons to read the Book of Proverbs without profit. Fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, masters, and servants may here also learn their respective duties; and the most excellent rules are laid down not only in reference to morality, but to civil policy and economy. Many motives are employed by the wise man to accomplish the end at which he aims; motives derived from honor, interest, love, fear, natural affection, and piety toward God. The principal object Solomon has in view is to inspire a deep reverence for God, fear of His judgments, and an ardent love for wisdom and virtue. He exhibits injustice, impiety, profligacy, idleness, imprudence, drunkenness, and almost every vice in such lively colors as to render every man ashamed of them who has any true respect for his interest, honor, character, or for himself. And as there is nothing so directly calculated to ruin young men as bad company, debauchery, and irregular connections, he labors to fortify his disciple with the most convincing reasons against all these vices. A. Clarke. The Book of Proverbs is not on a level with the Prophets or the Psalms. It approaches human things and things Divine from quite another side. It has even something of a worldly, prudential look, unlike the rest of the Bible. But this is the very reason why its recognition as a sacred book is so useful. It is the philosophy of practical life. It impresses upon us in the most forcible manner the value of intelligence and prudence, and of a good education. The whole strength of the Hebrew language and of the sacred authority of the book is thrown upon these homely truths. It deals, too, in that refined, discriminating, careful view of the finer shades of human character so necessary to any true estimate of human life. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and the stranger does not intermeddle with its joy." How much is there in that single sentence of consolation, of love, of forethought! And above all it insists over and over again upon the doctrine that goodness is "wisdom" and that wickedness and vice are "folly." There may be other views of virtue and vice, of holiness and sin, higher and better than this. But there will be always some in the world who will need to remember that a good man is not only religious and just, but wise; and that a bad man is not only wicked and sinful, but a miserable, contemptible fool. Stanley. The Book of Proverbs reveals a state of society in the cities of Solomon's empire not unlike what prevails among ourselves. The same passions are seen at work; the same desires; the same strength, and the same feebleness of virtue. A greed of gain, which brought about its owner's ruin and death, meets a reader at the beginning of the book and darkens many a saying to the end. The search for wisdom was neglected for the finding or the making of money. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way. In spite of the curses of a starving people, dealers withheld their corn from sale till enormous gains rewarded them, contrary to the spirit of Hebrew law. Unjust trading in other forms contrived to acquire great revenues, while righteous dealing secured only what is called "a better little." False balances and unjust weights were common, the hope of gain outweighing the loss sure to follow on detection. The pursuit of wealth was thus the fruitful mother of selfishness and wrong-doing in every form. Men broke their words or faithlessly repudiated their engagements. But the extensive commerce of Solomon's reign also presented chances of honorably realizing great riches, which were unknown to the simpler tastes of a former generation. Nor were these chances lightly esteemed by the public sentiment. "In all labor there is profit," says the writer, correctly laying down the first principle of our political economy; "but the talk of the lips tendeth to penury." A mere talker was contemptible in his sight. A true worker was one who profited by honest labor, and of whom the further saying held good, "The crown of the wise is their riches." Wealth, unjustly got, brought many evils in its train. Justice was not always administered with purity: "A mean man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men." Princes and judges gave way also to wine and strong drink. Drunkenness had become common. A staggering winebibber was not an unusual sight in the streets. He is compared to the voyager on a stormy sea, who chooses for his bed the unsteady top of a mast in a swaying, pitching ship. And never was a more graphic description written of the helpless drunkard, muttering incoherent thoughts to himself, than "Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath quarrels? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine" (23:29). Fools attained to high positions which would have been beyond their hopes had not money formed a ladder up which they could climb. A fool without wealth is a fool, and nothing more. A rich fool may be laughed at or used to point the moral of a sharp saying. Sometimes he becomes a danger to society as well as himself. Indecent women seem to have abounded in the cities of Palestine. They are not said to have been of Hebrew birth. As a vast body of heathen laborers were pressed into the king's service and transported from home to the Lebanon woods, many women must have been left destitute and friendless. The indecency which was the curse of Solomon's large cities may have largely arisen from this forcible shifting of the population. Honest women, again, were the fairest ornament and the strongest bulwark of the land. Nothing is more striking in the Book of Proverbs than the contrast drawn between the two classes. Shame and ruin attend the one; wealth and honor follow the other. Deceit and treachery were waiting at street corners to snare unwary youth. Honorable marriage and vows honorably kept enabled thrifty women to place their husbands among the rulers of the land, to clothe all their household in scarlet, and to fill their houses with every good thing. A virtuous wife is compared to "the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from far." What men and women are to-day in the various duties and labors of life, they were also in the age of Solomon. Nothing is changed; but experience has added many an example to confirm the grand aim of his proverbial philosophy, "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life." Sime. This book is the great book in the Bible for the young. The proverbs are the words of a father to his children. The main form of address is "My son," because young men are most exposed and disposed to the sins that destroy character and embitter life. There are frequent repetitions, but these repetitions are helpful as emphasizing the main dangers to which the young are exposed. They are especially warned against four sins—impurity, intemperance, lying, and robbery. The warnings against impurity of life are the most frequent and solemn. With terrible vividness does he describe the subtlety of the temptation, the suddenness of the fall, the bitterness of the awakening, the inevitable and life-long remorse. The man who loses his virtue takes a viper into his heart. He will always hear the hissing and feel the sting. Next to this come the warnings against intemperance, against the wine whose ruddy color tempts the young, but whose use produces an excitement that proves injurious to body and soul. Solomon's advice to the young is total abstinence, from his standpoint of wise expediency, from the havoc he had seen strong drink produce among the youth of his day; and his advice represents the sober judgment of every age. He speaks to the young as a class, whose power of body and mind are still in process of development, and to them he says, what every lover of the young must still say, "Let the wine-cup alone. Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging." Next Solomon strongly advises the young against every form of lying, especially against slander. Veracity, we have been told, is the backbone of modern civilization. In the marts of the world a man's word must be as good as his bond; and it should be said that when you remember the immense sums of money which every day pass from hand to hand, in spite of occasional defalcations, modern commercial life is a grand exhibition of fidelity to trusts. But there may be deception when no promise is broken. Don't lie in word or act. Let there be truth on your lips and love in your heart. Finally, Solomon warns the young against robbery of every kind, whether it be the robbery of violence or the robbery of false weights and measures. Don't steal. Three feet to the yard; sixteen ounces to the pound; a fair equivalent in every bargain you make—that is Solomon's advice, and he was a great merchant as well as a king. This book is full of downright good common sense and is the best practical guide for young men to-day, in its warnings against impurity, intemperance, falsehood and theft. Five great, positive virtues are commended to the young man who cherishes an honorable ambition, and these are regard for parental advice, industry, economy, contentment and piety. The diligent man carves his way to recognition; he stands before kings. The sluggard is advised to learn of the ants, who lay by in store against the winter. Sluggishness and improvidence invite disaster. Laziness and wastefulness are the great enemies of prosperity. Work and save is the Solomonic motto. That may not insure wealth. But the king says, and Agur joins him in the advice, riches are a snare. And finally, the young are exhorted to cultivate an earnest piety, for wisdom is the glory of God and His counsellor from eternity. Behrends. The references to this Book of Proverbs in the New Testament are somewhat numerous, but in general are not designated as quotations. The sacred writers use the book as it was made to be used—that is, for the value of its maxims of wisdom. In one passage (Heb. 12 : 5) the words found (Prov. 3 : 11, 12) are referred to as an "exhortation which speaketh to you as unto children," and which, therefore, must have been recognized as their accredited teacher—i.e., as being words "spoken" in their sacred books. The common form of reference to the proverb appears in Peter's words (1 Pet. 4 : 8), "Charity shall cover the multitude of sins," words taken from Prov. 10 : 12, "Love covereth all sins." So also Prov. 25 : 21, 22 appear in Rom. 12 : 20, and the sentiment of Prov. 17 : 13 about rewarding evil for good appears in similar words Rom. 12 : 17 and 1 Thess. 5 : 15. H. C.—This book is frequently quoted by the apostles, who considered it as a treasure of revealed morality from which Christians were to derive their rules of conduct; and the canonical authority of no part of the Old Testament is so ratified by the evidence of quotations as that of the Proverbs. But it is remarkable that the Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, which has so striking an affinity to the Book of Proverbs, is not quoted in a single instance by the apostles and evangelists; and the difference between canonical and apocryphal is nowhere so strongly marked as in this example. Michaelis. The Proverbs of Solomon are in three divisions: Nine chapters (1-9), addressed chiefly to the young. Fifteen chapters (10-24), more various, and addressed to all ages and ranks. Five chapters (25-29), a later collection made by scribes under the orders of King Hezekiah from extant records of the wisdom of Solomon. There are added two appendices. The words of Agur fill the thirtieth chapter. They are entitled his "prophecy," or rather burden, or weighty deliverance. Of this sage nothing whatever is known. The thirty-first chapter contains the words of Lemuel the king, probably an Arab prince. D. F.