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.