IN THESE two chapters we have Job’s answer to Eliphaz. “Even today is my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.” No doubt Job’s sufferings were becoming inure bitter to him, under the constant proddings of his friends.
“Oh that I knew where I might find Him! ... I would order my cause before Him.” Like the needle on the compass which may waver but always returns to the pole, so true faith may waver under trial and suffering, but will always return to God as its center. So it was with Job. He seems to feel that God did not know all that he was passing through, and if he could only find Him, and lay his cause before Him, he believes He would deliver him. “Would He plead against me with His great power?” That is how his friends thought God would deal with him, but “No,” Job says, “He would give heed unto me,” Job feels that as an upright man, he could reason with Him. But while Job was not guilty of what his friends charged him with, he had not really taken to heart what he had said earlier as to God’s ways with him, in making his own clothes to abhor him (Job 9:31).
Sometimes it seemed as though the light was about to break through as in verse 10: “But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” And after all, that was what God was doing with Job—He was burning out the dross, as gold is refined.
Looking back Job says: “My foot hath held His steps, His way have I kept, and not declined. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of His lips.” vv. 11, 12. Perhaps this was so, but it is not the expression of the faith of one whose heart has been laid bare in the Lord’s presence and who is conscious of his own nothingness. For if by grace we have in any measure been able to follow the Lord, we ought not to find satisfaction in that, but rather we ought to glory in His grace which has picked us up and gone on with us.
In verse 12 also Job seems to refer to something that had been handed down from Noah. “I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” Then in the last few verses he seems to lose some of his self-confidence, and says, “I am troubled at His presence.” It had searched his heart that God had not cut him off suddenly.
In chapter 24 Job asks, “Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know Him not see His days?” Evidently he is referring to the fact that his three friends did not understand more of God’s ways. Then follows a discourse on the evil doings of men, how seemingly they go on without God interfering with their wicked ways. But he concludes that God’s eyes are upon their ways, even though He has allowed them to go so far unpunished. “They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought low; they are taken out of the way as all other, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn. And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar, and make my speech nothing worth?” There is nothing in what Job says here about repentance and redemption which the gospel proclaims, no looking on to Christ who would bring salvation. How thankful we can be that though “all have sinned,” “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and His precious blood cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7.)
ML-05/29/1960