Job 4

Job 4:2

Thou wilt doubtless be incensed by the slightest attempts to offer a reply: but who can restrain himself from speaking the truth upon such a pressing occasion?

Job 4:3

Behold, in former times thou hast, with great pains and success, instructed many under trouble, and corrected their mistakes; and by thy kind and pertinent advices, hast mightily encouraged the dispirited

Job 4:4

By thy discourse thou hast encouraged and supported those whose hearts were ready to sink; and hast settled them who trembled under the burdens of their adversity

Job 4:5

But now, when fallen into their condition, thou canst not practise thy own lessons, but faintest, and art struck with consternation

Job 4:6

Is not this the time to exercise thy piety, thy confidence in God, thy hope of blessings, and thy integrity of conversation? Or shall all thy religious appearances turn out a mere nothing?

Job 4:7

Too good reason hast thou to suspect thyself an hypocrite: for think if thou canst remember one instance of an innocent and godly man who was ever punished with such remarkable strokes of divine vengeance as thou art

Job 4:8

For my part, aged as I am, I have always observed that it is the wicked devisers and practisers of horrible crimes who reap the fruit of their works in such a manner

Job 4:9

By the blasting and burning influence of God’s fearful judgments, they are more suddenly, or more gradually, reduced to misery and ruin

Job 4:10

And though, like thee, and thy sons, they be oppressors, fierce and strong as liens, their power and influence are broken, and themselves afflicted

Job 4:11

The mightiest tyrants, and their posterity, are in due time stripped of their ill-gotten wealth and violently reduced to misery and servitude

Job 4:12-16

Moreover, in a vision, which exceedingly terrified me, I heard a spirit, whose form I could not comprehend, amidst profound silence all around, say, 17. Shall a wretched man be more righteous than God or justified before him? or even the most excellent man be sure before his Maker?

Job 4:18

Behold! he put no firmness in his heavenly ministers, and can put no trust in them; and in his angels he has placed no ground of boasting, and can perceive defect of service and readiness to slide

Job 4:19

How thou can be perceive perfection in mortal and sinful men, 4 whom he can crush as easily as, or before the face of, a moth!

Job 4:20

They are pricked, and bruised in a mortar of trouble, through their whole life; and quickly perish for ever, without any oppressing them, or regarding their fall

Job 4:21

Is not all their power and excellency a plucked-up nothing, is it not destroyed together? They pine and melt away for want of, and without ever attaining, wisdom, or any solid and well-connected good. And, though their dignity be ever so great, and their posterity ever so numerous, they die like so many beasts, which have no understanding of their latter end

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. IV.—Such as are in sore trouble ought to be spoken to and dealt with in great tenderness. But affection must not hinder, but promote, faithfulness in our reproofs and admonitions. We must not for fear of offending, suffer sins upon our brother. And it is very edifying, when such as are noted in their profession lay out themselves for the instruction and encouragement of others in the Lord’s way; warning the unruly, supporting the weak, and comforting the feeble minded. Yet, through the corruption of our nature, it is far easier to give good counsel than to take it. Extremely trying is the situation when Satan employs the saints’ godly friends to make them raise their hopes, and acknowledge themselves hypocrites. The charge of hypocrisy is most frequently laid against the people of God, and is one of the hardest to be borne. But exceeding sinful is the indulgence of a censorious spirit. We must never judge of a man’s state from a particular failing, or from his outward lot. Though tyrannical oppressors, and other sinners, be recompensed in this life, yet no man knows either love or hatred by all that is before him. What singular intimacy with God might saints enjoy, if duly weaned and withdrawn from the things of this life! Were our tempers duly holy, even our dreams might be means of our noted fellowship with God. O how men’s spirits shrink under visits from the other world! What then must be the terrible majesty, infinite holiness and equity, of God himself! Insignificant and impure are all creatures in comparison of him. Mean are men while they live; and wretched in death, if driven away in their sins. But for senseless, sinful, dying, worms to impeach the wisdom, goodness, or equity, of JEHOVAH’s dispensations of providence, or to plead their own worth and excellency in his presence, is the boldest presumption. How strange is it that, amidst so many and remarkable warnings of an entrance into eternity, most men should live entirely unconcerned about it! And scarcely less strange that even good men should so often wrest God’s oracles to serve their own humours. This oracle, which Eliphaz heard, gave ground to rebuke Job for his murmuring, but none to condemn him as an hypocrite