Job 5

19-21. Men are mortal, and dying. In death they are destroyed, and perish forever as to this world; it is the final period of their lives and all their employments and enjoyments here; their place will know them no more. They are dying daily and continually wasting—destroyed from morning to evening. In death all their excellency passes away; beauty, strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death but die with them; nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power descend after them. Their wisdom cannot save them from death; they die without wisdom, die for want of wisdom, by their own foolish management of themselves. It is so common a thing that nobody heeds it or takes any notice of it; they perish without any regarding it or laying it to heart. The deaths of others are much the subject of common talk, but little the subject of serious thought. H.

1. CALL now; is there any that will answer thee? And to which of the holy ones wilt thou turn?

2. For vexation killeth the foolish man, And jealousy slayeth the silly one.

3. I have seen the foolish taking root: But suddenly I cursed his habitation.

4. His children are far from safety, And they are crushed in the gate, Neither is there any to deliver them.

5. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, And taketh it even out of the thorns, And the snare gapeth for their substance.

6. For affliction cometh not forth of the dust, Neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;

7. But man is born unto trouble, As the sparks fly upward.

8. But as for me, I would seek unto God, And unto God would I commit my cause:

9. Which doeth great things and unsearchable; Marvellous things without number:

10. Who giveth rain upon the earth, And sendeth waters upon the fields:

11. So that he setteth up on high those that be low; And those which mourn are exalted to safety.

12. He frustrateth the devices of the crafty, So that their hands cannot perform their enterprise.

13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: And the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.

14. They meet with darkness in the day-time, And grope at noonday as in the night.

15. But he saveth from the sword of their mouth, Even the needy from the hand of the mighty.

16. So the poor hath hope, And iniquity stoppeth her mouth.

17. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.

18. For he maketh sore, and bindeth up; He woundeth, and his hands make whole.

19. He shall deliver thee in six troubles; Yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.

20. In famine he shall redeem thee from death; And in war from the power of the sword.

21. Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue; Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh.

22. At destruction and dearth thou shalt laugh; Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.

23. For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.

24. And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace; And thou shalt visit thy fold, and shalt miss nothing. 25 Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great,

FIRST SPEECH OF ELIPHAZ—Concluded.

1. Call now. The meaning of this verse is sufficiently clear; if Job does not submit himself to God’s visitation without murmuring, he will find none to sympathize with him in heaven or earth; men and angels are alike subject to God, and have neither the power nor, if good, the will to take part with His enemies. Cook.—Job, in his present mood, need expect no sympathy or help from any quarter. After God has spoken there is none other—holy man or angel—who will either deign or dare to make reply to his (Job’s) complaints. To reply, even, might foster the spirit of rebellion. J. S. Burr.

2. The connection of thought is this: Nothing can be done for a man who indulges such feelings as those which pervade Job’s complaint, for wrath indicates folly or depravity (alluding to 3:1-10), and can have no end but destruction; and envy, which prefers any lot to one’s own, even that of non-existence or death (3:14-19), is sinful infatuation; a word which corresponds to the Hebrew both in meaning and origin. Cook.—The murmurer against God is here designated, twice over, “the foolish;” a term frequently used in the poetic Scriptures to designate a character of unwisdom, in respect to both the understanding and the heart; and although these things are uttered as general truths, still their reference to Job is too manifest to escape recognition. Curry.

Jealousy slayeth. To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and to be acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more; for injuries long dreamt on take away all rest. Browne.—The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself. What good, then, in being a man, if one has neither himself nor a neighbor, nor God. Bishop H.

3-5. Their prosperity is short, and their destruction certain. He seems here to parallel Job’s case with that which is commonly the case of wicked people. Job had prospered for a time, seemed confirmed, and was secure in his prosperity; and it is common for foolish wicked men to do so. I have seen them taking root,

And thine offspring as the grass of the earth. 26 Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, Like as a shock of corn cometh in its season. 27 Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; Hear it, and know thou it for thy good.

planted, and in their own and other’s apprehension fixed, and likely to continue. We see worldly men taking root in the earth; on earthly things they fix the standing of their hopes, and from them they draw the sap of their comforts. The outward estate may be flourishing, but the soul cannot prosper that takes root in the earth. H.

4. His children. An evident reference to the death of Job’s children. Eliphaz dwells with complacency upon the result of a bad man’s ruin; his children are involved in it; they are exposed to every kind of danger; are broken to pieces by litigations (the Hebrew probably implies against one another) in the gate, where the courts of justice were held, and find no helper, none to take up their cause as advocate or intercessor; a terrible picture of the misery which at all times in the East has fallen upon the orphans of criminal or suspected parents. Cook.

6,7. Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, but man is born unto trouble. Two important and clearly related truths are here set together: The fact that trouble is the common and unavoidable lot of all men, and the assured truth that these things are not merely accidental. Back of both of these, in the mind of the speaker, is the great and abiding principle of the Divine government, that affliction—trouble—comes upon men as a result of sin; or, as Paul sententiously puts the case, death is the wages of sin. A great truth is thus enunciated, which indeed leaves Job under the judgment of condemnation, but only in common with universal manhood. Curry.—The words rendered “affliction” and “trouble” are the same which occur in the preceding chap., v. 8—i.e., evil and trouble. Eliphaz denies that they take place as results of natural laws, as the spontaneous produce of the soil; wherever they are found they spring up because man’s guilt has ploughed the ground and sowed the evil seed. Eliphaz states the cause of trouble, man inherits it as the portion of his corrupt nature, though it is only brought into activity by his own sin. Cook.

Sorrow is not an accident, occurring now and then, it is the very woof which is woven into the warp of life. It is the law of our humanity, as that of Christ, that we must be perfected through suffering. And he who has not discerned the Divine sacredness of sorrow, and the profound meaning which is concealed in pain, has yet to learn what life is. The cross, manifested as the necessity of the highest life, alone interprets it. F. W. R.—Trouble must have great possibilities of blessing in it, or would not be so common in God’s world. Surely we need not dread it so, when it brings in one hand the peaceable fruit of righteousness and in the other the joys of consolation for so many sorrowing souls. Anon.

How the Christian Scriptures abound with sayings about the necessity of disappointments, the uses of adversity, and the glory of suffering. How full they are of exhortations to be patient, to endure, to be steadfast—all implying our need of discipline. How sublimely, too, they teach us the true secret of endurance, in the life of Him “who, though a Son, learned obedience in the things that He suffered.” In this light we can understand why God makes life a trial. Our characters must be tested. There are evil tendencies in us which remain concealed and unknown, until we are tried—tendencies to a low, grovelling selfishness, which almost rejoices in another’s pain—capacities for the darkest sins, which may burst into action in moments of passion. We fancy we hold the reins of our natures. We think we are strong, and rejoice in our fancied strength. And then God sends us trials, disappointments, bitter lessons of sorrow, and under their startling light we discover our weakness and evil. We grow earth-bound, become wrapped in life’s transient interests; God sends us suffering, and in the long, lonely watchings of pain, we catch glimpses of eternal realities. E. Hull.

You do not suffer because God is indifferent. That your life is tried; that you seem to be resisted at every step by a subtle, spiritual power, that darkens your understanding and blunts your perception, stimulates your carnal nature and injects thoughts of evil into your mind, is no necessary sign that you are not in the very arms of God. Nay, it may be just the reverse, “for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Let none of us think to escape discipline. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. “I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil.” If you are a child of God, you will not escape discipline, but it is the will of the loving heart of Christ that you should be kept safe amid the ordeal. Let us be of a good courage, then, looking unto Jesus, our exemplar. “Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Blessed be God! that is our goal. The end will compensate for the agonies of its attainment. The crown is worth the strife. Think of this when the skies are dark, when the heart fails and the reason falters, when the hand is powerless, when fires are burning quick into the flesh, and even when the gateways into death and the grave are being opened. Aye, think of it when alone and in silence and in sorrow. And even when the white spray of the tempest is over thee like a garment think of this: It will not be long—the wrestling, the ordeal of conflict, the suffering is but for a while, then the God of all grace, who has called us unto His eternal glory, will bring us thither, and we shall at last assume our place and dignity among the thrones and dominion of heaven, and be crowned kings and priests unto God and the Father forever. “Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight.” T. A. Nelson.

9. Marvellous things.—In the progress of his argument, the mind of Eliphaz is dilated with the strong conception of the greatness and wisdom of God as evinced in His works of creation—touching thus incidentally upon that branch of the great argument, which is more adequately produced by the Lord Himself toward the close. God, he says, “doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number.” That in these expressions he has the material creation in view is shown by the context. The sense clearly is, that there is no possibility of computing—that the mind is wholly unable to grasp the great and marvellous things which the universe contains. Kitto.

13. The counsel of the froward is carried headlong. That is, if men will be winding and turning and thinking to catch others, or overreach the Lord Himself with tricks and turnings of wit, the Lord will meet and answer them in their own kind. He can turn as fast as they; he can put Himself into such intricate labyrinths of wisdom and craft as shall entangle and ensnare the most cunning wrestler of them all. Caryl.

17,18. Happy is the man whom God correcteth, if he make but a due improvement of the correction. A good man is happy, though he be afflicted; for whatever he has lost, he has not lost his enjoyment of God nor his title to heaven; nay, he is happy because he is afflicted; correction is an evidence of his sonship and a means of his sanctification; it mortifies his corruptions, weans his heart from the world, draws him nearer to God, brings him to his Bible, brings him to his knees, works him for and so is working for him a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; happy therefore is the man whom God correcteth. Though He wounds, yet His hands make whole in due time; as He supports His people and makes them easy under their afflictions, so in due time He delivers them and makes a way for them to escape. All is well again; and He comforts them according to the time wherein He afflicted them. God’s usual method is first to wound and then to heal, first to convince, then to comfort, first to humble and then to exalt; and He never makes a wound too great, too deep for His own cure. H.

It is a mercy that He will chastise; you may put your corrections among your mercies. His breakings of you are His blessings, His woundings are your cures; and by your own as by your Lord’s stripes you are healed. And when you shall review and read over all His darker providences, and behold the wisdom and tenderness which is attempered with His severities, evidenced in His laying on so much, and yet no more than was needful, you will then write down with the Psalmist: “Thou in very faithfulness has afflicted me.” Richard Alleine.—God never means harm to our lives when He sends afflictions to us. Our disappointments are God’s appointments, and bring rich compensation. Our losses are designed to become gains to us as God plans for us. There is nothing really evil in the experiences of a Christian, if only God be allowed to work out the issue. Our Father sends us nothing but good. J. R. M.

The more a man is buffeted and wounded, disappointed and humiliated, wronged and persecuted, in this life, the more he comes to fall back upon the sovereign power of God. God is just, loving, omniscient, and almighty. The reins of the world never slip nor slacken in His hand. He is never mistaken, never forgetful nor negligent, never defeated, and nothing eventuates contrary to His will. Though He tolerate wrongs temporarily, He will right them. Though He permit suffering, He sees clearly the path along which it will find culmination in peace and joy. God is as good as He is strong, benevolent as He is wise, true as He is great. We can trust in Him, rest in Him, and we can assure ourselves that all that there is of Him in power, wisdom, love—is ours. The weakest of us is in Him stronger than all the powers of time, circumstance or enemies that may be arrayed against us. God is our Father, and no earthly father’s love is so pure and true as His love. But for suffering and danger and disaster we should never know how wondrous a heritage we have in God. Interior.

If it be wise for us to pursue the greatest good, is it not kind in God to lift off our burdens, and to mingle bitterness with the pleasures which tend to make us linger? Is He not kind, and kind as no friend was ever kind before, in waking us from unsafe repose, in hastening us on with His rod, in giving wings to the objects we attempt to grasp by the way, and which, taken and retained, would defeat our better aims? The sum, then, of all our sorrows is this, that we are denied lesser to prepare for greater goods; inferior enjoyments are embittered or taken away, to sharpen the relish and looking for those which are full, unmixed, and eternal. Thus it is that our “light afflictions,” which are but for a moment, for time at most, “work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” H. H.

Not prosperity, but adversity, commonly quickens and intensifies faith. It is when all else seems to fail, that God’s loving control stands out as unfailingly sure. When you find a man of exceptionally strong faith, you find a man who has had exceptionally trying experiences. And when you are called to unlooked-for and severe trials, you may feel that here is a fresh proof that God loves you, and is drawing you closer to Himself by the surest means of faith promoting. H. C. T.—Sorrow and suffering, bereavement, disappointment, and “hope deferred,” seem to have but one mission—to develop, refine and enlarge the susceptibilities, and to newly capacitate the mind for the reception of new and higher forms of blessedness than were before possible. Each special form of sorrow is attended with some special and correlative manifestation of the character, love, or grace of Christ—a manifestation which ever after remains in the mind as a source of everlasting consolation and “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Among the aspects of Christ’s character and grace—aspects which induce the fullest and most abiding blessedness—are those which the Spirit has unveiled to the mind when some great sorrow lay upon the heart. Hence it is that afflictions, tribulations, and great heavinesses become almost sacred in the mind’s regard, followed as they all are, and that so soon, with such “everlasting consolations and good hope through grace.” A. Mahan.

Many of the world’s best things have been born of affliction. The sweetest songs ever sung on earth have been called out by suffering. The richest things we inherit from the past are the purchase of suffering and sacrifice. Our redemption comes from Gethsemane and Calvary. Whatever is purest and most valuable in life anywhere has been in the fire. Our love for one another may be strong and true in the sunny days, but it never reaches its holiest and fullest expression until pain has touched our hearts and called out the hidden treasures of affliction. Even the love of a mother for her child, deep and pure as it is, never reaches its full wondrousness of devotion and sacrifice until the child suffers, and the mother bends over it in yearning and solicitude. The same is true of all the home loves; the best and divinest qualities in them come out only in the fires. The household that has endured sorrow in the true spirit of love and faith emerges from it undestroyed, untarnished, with purer, tenderer affections, with less of passion, of selfishness, and of earthliness. J. R. M.—There are gains through loss, there are joys through sorrow, there are richest blessings through greatest trials. Only as we meet and overcome enemies, can we have the rewards of victory: Only as we learn the lessons of bereavement, can we experience the comforts of Christ’s most precious ministry of consolation. Jesus loves those most tenderly who are in greatest need of His tender love; and no call on Him is surer of an instant and helpful response than the call of a crushed and trusting heart. Says a quaint religious writer: “Music is sweetest near or over rivers, where the echo thereof is best rebounded by the water. Praise for pensiveness, thanks for tears, and blessing God over the floods of affliction makes the most melodious music in the ears of heaven.” H. C. T.

19. The Lord can deliver us as often as we need deliverance; in six troubles, yea, in seven. This should bear up our hearts in the multiplied returns of troubles. The Lord hath a succession of mercies for our succession of sorrows. Say not, then, We have got off this trouble, but what if another come? If another come, you have the same God, and He can give you another deliverance. Caryl.—As afflictions and troubles recur, supports and deliverances shall be graciously repeated, be it never so often. In six troubles, He shall be ready to deliver thee; yea, and in seven. This intimates that, as long as we are here in this world, we must expect a succession of troubles, that the clouds will return after the rain; after six troubles may come a seventh. After many, look for more; but out of them all will God deliver those that are His. Former deliverances are earnests of, not (as among men) excuses from further deliverances. Whatever troubles good men may be in, there shall no evil touch them, they shall do them no real harm; the malignity of them, the sting, shall be taken out. The evil one toucheth not God’s children (1 John 5:18). Being kept from sin, they are kept from the evil of every trouble. H.—God saves and delivers His people from all evil, even while they are in the midst of trouble. If God be with us, though all evils are upon us, yet no evil touches us. The presence of the Chief Good is banishment to every evil. Caryl.

21. The scourge of the tongue. There is a certain irony, Schlottman remarks, in the fact that Eliphaz should mention, as one of the chief evils from which his friend would be hid, that very calamity of which Job had afterward occasion to complain as his sorest affliction. Curry.

23. The whole of nature will be at peace with thee: the stones of the field, that they do not injure the fertility of thy fields; the wild beasts of the field, that they do not hurt thee and thy herds. Delitzsch.—Our covenant with God is a covenant with all the creatures, that they shall do us no hurt, but be ready to serve us and do us good.

24. Their houses and families shall be comfortable to them. Peace and piety in the family will make it so. “Thou shalt know and be assured that thy tabernacle is and shall be in peace; thou mayest be confident both of its present and its future prosperity.” That peace is thy tabernacle, so the word is. Peace is the house in which they dwell who dwell in God and are at home in Him.

25. God has blessings in store for the seed of the faithful, which they shall have, if they do not stand in their own light and forfeit them by their folly. It is a comfort to parents to see the prosperity, especially the spiritual prosperity, of their children; if they are truly good they are truly great, how small a figure soever they make in the world. H.

It will be observed that the supreme blessing here contemplated by Eliphaz is essentially the restoration of Job’s former state, the blessing of prosperity and peace and long life and numerous offspring. After such blessings Job does not seem to seek; one result of his suffering is that all other desires give way in time to the supreme longing for God’s presence. It is in this longing that Job disappoints Satan and leaves his friends far behind; such pure aspiration they neither cherish nor appreciate. J. F. G.

26. Like as a shock of corn cometh in in its season. Cometh to the threshing-floor at the season of harvest. Bishop

Stock.—The Eastern people used not anciently to stack their corn in the straw to remain for a considerable time, as we do; but to carry it together in heaps, and then presently thresh it in the field; and they observe the same practice to this day. “As a heap of corn comes up” (on the threshing floor, namely) “in its season”—that is, when fully ripe. Parkhurst.—An easy death in a good old age, a worthy and respected character, and an honorable interment, are the ideas conveyed in this rural comparison. Scott.—To die seasonably, as the corn is cut and housed when it is full ripe; not till then, but then not suffered to stand a day longer lest it shed. Our times are in God’s hand; it is well they are so, for He will take care that those who are His die in the best time; however their death may seem to us untimely it will be found not unseasonable. H.

“As I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young,” says Cicero in his treatise on old age. Beautiful is the old age of those who are full of hope, and of the fruits of righteousness and of the blessings of peace. They have lost much, but they have gained more; the thrill of early passion is over, but the peace of God keeps guard over their heart. The glory of the morning has faded into the light of common day, but it is a day in which their sun no more goes down. Anon.—Death is not destruction. Death is not even decay. Death is harvesting; and the design of the harvest is the preservation of the grain. With death end all processes of tillage. No longer the plough and the pruning-knife, the driving wind and rain. Henceforth only the serenely sheltered garner. This analogy is transcendent to our experience, and therefore to our understanding. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived, the bright reality. This much only can we understand, that the risen spirit is advanced at death not simply to frames of intense rapture, but to spheres of transcendent usefulness in the kingdom of God. And as we rejoice over the value and uses of our secured harvests, so does all heaven exult, as things precious unto God, over the spirits of just men made perfect in glory. And as angel-reapers gather them and bear them upward in flaming chariots along yon highway of sapphires unto the heart and throne of the Eternal Father, heaven will open wide its joyful gates, and all the shining creatures that stand before God strike their harps to the anthem of the great harvest-home, because perfected man cometh to his end “as a shock of corn cometh in in its season!” Charles Wadsworth.

27. Thus closes this beautiful picture, founded on a poetical view of God’s providence and admirably adapted to good men in prosperity. But Job had now reached a point not rare in the experience of the pious, demanding deeper insight into the mysteries of the Divine government, where all such commonplaces (see 6:5-7) are stale, flat, and unprofitable. T. Lewis.—Job is thus promised the exact reverse of all that he had experienced: a safe home, flocks untouched, a happy and prosperous family, a peaceful old age. It must have sounded like a bitter mockery, and as such he resents it. Cook.—The intent of this speech is very plain; it was to bring Job to a confession of some secret wickedness, some great enormity, of which his friends supposed him to be guilty. And so, we find, Job understood it; for he complains of the unkindness of the suspicion in the following reply (6:14, 15, 25). Peters.

Eliphaz is right in censuring Job’s vehement passion. He is right in so grandly asserting the sinfulness of the creature in the light of the Creator’s holiness. He is right in asserting man’s inheritance of sorrow through sin, and in insisting that his true refuge is in God’s compassion. Right, too, in saying that suffering is meant to lead him to God. But he does not see that suffering, along with its intent to awaken to sin, may carry with it the intent to purify character. He does not see that the purpose of suffering may be to test fidelity and to show to the sufferer himself and to men about him that neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come can separate him from the love of God. He did not know that this was the great purpose of Job’s affliction. He could not know it, for he had not heard the discussion in the heavenly conclave on the question whether Job served God for nought. He did not see that suffering may be without any special connection with sin—sent for God’s sake rather than for man’s—even as the Psalmist says and Paul quotes: “For Thy sake we are killed all the day long.” Vincent.

The appeal to Job’s piety, as though this should quiet his sorrows, and cause him to maintain a cheerful confidence in his overwhelming distress, shows a lack of due consideration for the condition of the sufferer. Greater tenderness of manner, and a more sympathetic appreciation of Job’s sorrows, was especially needed in one who should attempt the office of comforter to one so afflicted. Eliphaz’s

assumption rejecting the immediate connection in the Divine government of suffering and sin is quite too broad and unqualified. On general principles, all he assumes is true, but there is something fallacious in making the principles universally applicable, and terribly cruel in rigidly enforcing them in respect to Job’s case. The general sinfulness of men may account for human sorrows so far as they are uniformly distributed; and a like principle may be applied where they are plainly graduated in proportion to the demerit of the sufferers. But special suffering, not involving special guilt, cannot be thus accounted for. A sinfulness common to all cannot be the reason why one is singled out rather than another, and made to endure extraordinary sorrows.