Job 23

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.