Job 9:23

If the scourge slay suddenly,.... Not Satan, as Jarchi and Bar Tzemach; but any sore calamity which surrounds a man, lashes, cuts, and distresses him, as a whip or scourge; such as any of God's sore

If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.

If the scourge slay suddenly; either, 1. If some common and deadly judgment come upon a people, which destroys both good and bad. Or, 2. If God inflicts some grievous and unexpected stroke upon an innocent person, as it follows. He will laugh at the trial of the innocent; as he doth at the destruction of the wicked, . His outward carriage is the same to both; he neglects the innocent, and seems not to answer their prayers, and suffers them to perish with others, as if be took pleasure in their ruin also. But withal, he intimates the matter and cause of his laughter or complacency which God takes in their afflictions, because to them they are but trials of their faith, and patience, and perseverance, which tends to God’ s honour, and their own eternal advantage.

Job 9:23 If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.Ver. 23. If the scourge slay suddenly] By scourge here is meant a common calamity, such as rides circuit, compassing a country as a scourge doth a man’ s body round about. Any sweeping judgment is a swinging scourge in God’ s hands; such as is the sword, Isaiah 10:26, which when it rides circuit (as a judge) it is in commission, Ezekiel 14:17 Jeremiah 47:6-7, devouring flesh and drinking blood. Thus Attila, the Hun, styled himself God’ s scourge. Tamerlane was commonly called the wrath of God, the terror of the world. Think the same of famine, pestilence, wild beasts, Ezekiel 14:12, &c., these oft slay suddenly, Isaiah 30:13 Jeremiah 18:22, as did the sweating sickness here in England, the massacre of France, and that later of Ireland, that scourge, if ever any, slew suddenly the perfect and the wicked. When an overflowing storm sweeps away the wicked, the tail of it may dash their best neighbours. He laugheth at the trial of the innocent] The Vulgate readeth, He will not laugh at the trial of the innocent; but it is not there in the original. Others thus, will he laugh at the trial of the innocent? q.d. no, he will not. God may seem to slight his own in affliction, as Psalms 77:2-3. The lion lets her whelps roar sometimes, till they do almost kill themselves with roaring. The truth is (and I think the true sense of this Scripture), God scorneth the allegation of innocence, or the justification and plea of the most upright man breathing, in the way of exemption or prevention of his just and wise dispensations, when he pleaseth to inflict them, involving good and bad in the same common calamity (Mr Abbot).

(23) The scourge slay suddenly.—Probably meaning that in the case of hidden calamity overtaking an innocent man, He, God, will laugh at it: that is to say, take no more notice of it than if it furnished Him with sport. The very fact of such calamity befalling, as it often does, the innocent is at all events, in one view, a proof of His indifference to it who, by the exercise of His providence, could easily interpose to prevent it, and so looks as if He verily winked at it. Job’s argument is the argument of a man who wilfully shuts out faith in his estimate of God’s dealings; not that Job is devoid of faith, but in the course of arguing with his friends, who maintain the strict, rigid justice of God, he confronts them with the severe logic of facts, which they can neither contradict nor explain. Of course, for the very requirements of argument, he takes the pessimist view of the Divine providence, and declares even that the earth is given over into the hands of the wicked man. “He covereth the face of the judges thereof; and if it is not He that doeth this, who is it? there can be none other. He either doeth the evil Himself, or He permits it to be done; and what is the difference, supposing Him able to prevent it?” When we review the disorders of the earth—and how much more in Job’s days was it so—all must admit that faith is sorely tried; and even faith can render but a very partial explanation of them, so that such a line as this is fully justified, when the adversary is determined to maintain that all is rose-coloured, happy, and equal as Job’s friends did. They had before them an instance of inequality in the Divine conduct, and they must either make it square with the Divine justice or give up the contest. They could not do the one, and were unwilling to do the other; it only remained, therefore, for Job to assert the inequality of the Divine dealings, and he puts the case as strongly as he can, all the time, it must never be forgotten, holding fast his faith in God, so that at the last he is even justified by God, who says to his friends, “Ye have not spoken of me that which is right, like my servant” (Job 42:8).

23. Further illustration of this character of God. the scourge] i. e. the plague, as pestilence, famine, war, and the like, Isaiah 28:15. will laugh at the trial] Or, mocks at the despair, cf. Job 6:14.

If the scourge slay suddenly - If calamity comes in a sudden and unexpected manner. Dr.

23. Jerome remarks that “in the whole book Job says nothing more bitter than this” — a volcanic outbreak of unspeakable misery. He will laugh — Schultens and others read, it will laugh, referring to the scourge.