Job 31
Butler1. 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.