Job 19
SIBJob replied, Will ye never cease tormenting my soul, and bruising me as in a mortar, with your senseless revilings!
Job 19:3
Ye have too often wounded me with the vilest reproaches. Ye have been shamelessly obstinate in your rebukes and cruel usage of me
Job 19:4
If I indeed had been mistaken in my opinion or practice, I have sufficiently smarted for it in my own person and estate; and so am a fit object of pity rather than of your reproach
Job 19:5
If you will still insolently declaim against me, and allege my debasing calamities as a proof of my impiety
Job 19:6
Know that I am sensible that it is God who hath in this fearful manner cast me down from my prosperity, and compassed me about with unavoidable miseries
Job 19:7
And my case is the more pitiable that, while friends abuse me with reproach, God, to whom I have repeatedly committed my cause, refuses to redress my wrongs, or vindicate my innocency
Job 19:8
Nay, his plagues so surround me on every side that I can find no way of escape; and I am so overwhelmed with perplexity that I know not whither to turn myself
Job 19:9
He has deprived me of all my dignity, authority, wealth, and family
Job 19:10
In respect of children, wealth, honour, authority, and health, he has entirely destroyed me; and all my hopes of future comfort in this world he hath plucked up by the roots
Job 19:12
He has in the most violent and furious manner afflicted me, as if I had been one of his principal enemies
Job 19:13
Whole armies of troubles have, by his order, invaded me; and, as with raised batteries, so straitly besieged me that not the smallest comfort I had could escape their fury
Job 19:14-16
While friends and neighbours are alienated from me, and refuse to do me any office of kindness, my maidens and men servants treat me with the utmost disobedience and contempt. 6 I 17. My wife regards my complaints and cries no more than if she were a mere stranger, though I have begged her sympathy for the sake of our dear children, who have been so dreadfully hurried into death
Job 19:18
The very children and ignorant people about, following the example of the rust, despise me, and treat me with the most abusive language
Job 19:19
The very men whom I had trusted with my secrets, and who had received the most distinguished tokens of my affection, abhor and hate me
Job 19:20
I am wasted with afflictions till I am little more than skin and bone; I am bruised till the teeth have fallen out of my head; and I have scarcely left me a mouth to complain
Job 19:21
O my friends, have pity upon me, when God’s afflicting hand has so grievously smitten and wounded me!
Job 19:22
Why do ye persecute and harass me, as if ye were an avenging God! Why, as if unsatisfied with my external calamities, do ye cruelly torment my spirit?
Job 19:23
O that my protestations of uprightness, and appeals to God, were in the most legible and indelible manner registered in a book of public records for my vindication, and for the encouragement of other upright persons under sore troubles!
Job 19:24
O that they were registered in the most indelible manner in some marble rock or pillar, to continue legible to all generations!
Job 19:25
For, notwithstanding these present miseries, I by faith know, and am firmly persuaded, that Jesus Christ, my Kinsman-Redeemer, liveth, having life in himself; and shall victoriously stand as the last Adam, upon the dust of the earth, in his incarnation, resurrection, and appearance to judgment
Job 19:26
And, though these vermin, bred, or breeding, in my afflicted body, should quickly devour the whole of it, yet even in this body, when fashioned like unto his glorious body, shall I see God in my nature!
Job 19:27
Whom I shall see for my own particular comfort, in my own person, when raised from the dead. Though at present I am at the point of death through sore trouble, and earnestly longing for deliverance
Job 19:28
Ye should therefore say, Why do we persecute one in whom there is such soundness and strength of faith, and who hath the right cause in the present debate?
Job 19:29
Beware, lest God punish your inhuman cruelty to me with some terrible judgments. Such rage as yours deserves, and such wrath as God’s, provoked by your sin, will bring fearful calamities upon you, that ye may know, to your cost, that God vindicates his own people and punishes their enemies
REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XIX.—Hard is the trial when inward vexation and outward reproach meet together; and distressing the situation when those who ought to comfort us again and again reproach and disquiet us; and especially when men abuse us with revilings, and God shuts out our prayer, and loads us with trouble! But, when God strikes a saint, almost every person and thing is ready to second his blow; and then the sparing of his relations becomes a heavier cross than the removal of them by death. It is hard to discern God’s love and endeared affection amidst many and heavy strokes of paternal wrath. But happy are those who, when earth is turned into a kind of hell to them, can by faith solace themselves with the views of a future judgment, and of being for ever with Jesus Christ—their Relation, their Husband, their Deliverer, their Lord! It is dangerous to persecute the saints while their Kinsman-Redeemer lives, and sees, and shall quickly judge the world. But here let me stand still, and with pleasure remark that there is a Kinsman-Redeemer provided for fallen men; that he is a living and divine Redeemer; that I have a new covenant interest in him, and know that I have it; that there will be a last day, when time shall be no more; that then my Redeemer, who stood as the last Adam upon earth, shall appear without sin unto my salvation! and so shall I be for ever with the Lord! I shall be like him, for I shall see him as he is!—Let me blush to behold an ancient patriarch, amidst his darkest nights of trouble, with clearer views of Jesus and eternal things, and his happy interest therein, than I, upon whom the light of the glorious gospel hath so clearly shined