Job 17

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.