The Answer of Job.
WHAT Bildad urged, Job admits might be and was true enough; yet he feels that not only his own first appeal to his friends for their pity had failed, but the real point was in no wise reached, while the suggestion of hidden sin was as false as it was uncharitable. He therefore deals unsparingly with their reasonings.
We can see how immense is the difference when the gospel reveals the righteousness of God. It is no longer the question, How shall man be just with God? It has been proved fully by the law, not to speak of the coming of Christ, that man has no righteousness for God; but now is revealed in the gospel God’s righteousness, and hence all on man’s part is excluded but faith, that it might be wholly grace on God’s part, though resting on the foundation of Christ’s suffering for sins, just for unjust, that He might bring us to God. Therefore does the apostle say that in the gospel is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith. It is from faith, not from works of law, so that Jewish boasting is shut out; and it is to faith, so that the blessing of justification is equally open to the Gentile, as to the Jew, who believes. But this wondrous, present revelation of divine righteousness, justifying the believer who, so far from having works to boast, openly confesses his own guilt and ruin, was still future, in due time predicted by the prophets as it was prefigured in the types of the law, but now preached in the gospel, proclaimed as a present thing to everyone who believes, instead of being held out as a promise merely. Hence “we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith,” that is, not for righteousness or justification, but for the hope to which such righteousness entitles, even heavenly glory with Christ. But we must now return to the earlier questions.
And Job answered and said,
Verily I know that [it is] so,
But how shall mortal man be just with God?
If He desire to dispute with him,
He cannot answer Him one of a thousand:
Wise in heart, and mighty in strength!
Who hath held out against Him, and been unhurt?
He removeth mountains, and they know not
That He hath overturned them in His wrath;
He shaketh the earth out of its place,
And the pillars of it rock themselves;
He commandeth the sun, and it riseth not,
And He setteth a seal about the stars,
Spreading out the heavens Himself alone,
And treading on the heights of the sea,
Making Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades,
And the chambers of the south;
Doing great things past finding out,
And unravelling things past reckoning.
Lo, He passeth by me, and I see Him not.
And He glideth before me, and I perceive Him not,
Lo, He snatcheth away: who shall turn Him away?
Who saith to Him, What doest Thou?
God turneth not from His wrath:
The helpers of pride have stooped under Him.
How much less should I answer Him—
Choose out my words with Him?
Whom, though I were just, I would not answer;
For mercy would I plead with my Judge.
Though I had cited Him, and He had answered me,
I would not believe that He would listen to me,
For He bruiseth me with a storm,
And multiplieth my wounds without cause.
He suffereth me not to draw my breath,
But surfeiteth me with bitternesses.
If [I turn] to might, lo, [He is] strong,
If to judicial trial, who will cite me?
If I justify myself, my mouth would condemn me.
I perfect! He would prove me perverse.
I perfect! I should not know my own soul,
I should despise my life.
It [is] all one: therefore I said,
He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.
If the scourge slay suddenly,
He laugheth at the trial of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked,
The face of the judges He veileth:
If not then, who [is] he?
And my days are swifter than a runner,
They flee, they see not good;
They have swept past like skiffs of reed,
As an eagle swoopeth on the prey.
If I say, I will forget my plaint,
I will leave off my looks, and brighten up;
I shudder at all my sorrows,
I know that Thou wilt not hold me innocent.
For me, Jam to be guilty! why labor I then in vain
If I wash myself with snow-water,
And cleanse my hands with lye,
Then wouldest Thou plunge me in the ditch,
And mine own clothes would abhor me.
For [He is] not a man as I [that] I should answer Him.
Let us come together in judgment,
There is between us no arbiter,
Who might lay his hand on us both.
Let Him take His rod from off me,
And let not His terror frighten me;
I would speak, and not fear Him,
But not thus I with myself.
Chapter 10.
My soul is weary of my life;
I will give way to my plaint,
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul,
I will say to God, Condemn me not;
Let me know why Thou contendest with me,
[Is it] good to Thee that Thou oppressest,
That Thou despisest the work of Thy hands,
And hast shone on the counsel of the wicked?
Hast Thou eyes of flesh?
Seest Thou as mortal man seeth?
[Are] Thy days as the days of mortal man?
[Are] Thy years as the days of a man,
That thou inquirest for my guilt,
And searchest after my sin,
Upon Thy knowledge that I am not guilty,
And that none can deliver out of Thy hand?
Thy hands have carved me, and fashioned me round about,
And yet Thou destroyest me!
O remember now that as clay Thou formedst me,
And yet Thou bringest me back to dust!
Didst Thou not pour me out as milk,
And curdle me like cheese,
Clothe me with skin and flesh,
And fence me with bones and sinews?
Life and favour hast Thou shown me,
And Thy care bath preserved my spirit;
And these things hast Thou hid in Thy heart!
I know that this [was] with Thee.
If I should sin, Thou wouldest mark me,
And not in mine iniquity hold me guiltless.
If I be guilty, woe unto me!
And righteous, I durst not raise my head,
Filled with shame, and seeing my misery;
And should it hold itself up, as a lion
Thou wouldest hunt me,
And turn again, and act wondrously against me.
Thou wouldest renew Thy witnesses against me
And multiply Thy displeasure against me—
Reinforcements, and a host upon me.
Why then didst Thou bring me forth from the womb?
I might have expired, and no eye had seen me
I might have been as though I had not been;
I might have been borne from the belly to the grave.
[Are] not my days few? Let Him leave me
And put Himself from me, that I may brighten up a little,
Before I go, and return not,
To a land of darkness and death-shade,
A land of gloom, like pitch-darkness itself,
Death-shade, without order,
And the shining like pitch-darkness itself.
Bildad had talked truisms as to God’s dealing with the wicked and the righteous, but he had not faced the question how mortal man can have a standing of righteousness with God. For his own part he owned man’s incapacity, and God’s title to act according to His power. In fact, it was exactly what Job himself experienced when Jehovah put His questions to him at the close of the book. To dispute it is to court destruction. To impute his sufferings, therefore, to secret wickedness was ignorance of God’s sovereign ways. For he turns from God’s power in creation and providence to His overwhelming collision with feeble and failing man, who cannot so much as perceive Him as He sweeps by in His irresistible might.
If it be thus in the outer world, equally hopeless is the struggle morally, as Job proceeds next to show. How vain to think of a favorable issue in a suit with God! It would be derogatory to His glory to think that He could stoop to such a contest, or give hearing to a creature plea against His ways. Not only must He crush all opposition, but man’s own mouth would condemn him, and himself be proved perverse. So he would not dare to think for himself of such a plea, but of crying out for mercy. For the dealings of God externally do not for the present discriminate among men. It is all one so far whether men are guilty or blameless. Job grows bolder and says it out, though his piety still withholds the name of God, as in verses 22 et seqq., as he shrank from seeming to arraign His government of the world. But he does speak bitterly of His patience while judgment lingers, as if mocking at the trial of the innocent. This is what no saint should draw from His permission of wrong and sorrow for a little while. But there is no denying that He veils the faces of judges, the wicked being in the highest seats of the world’s authority: if not so, who is it? Can Bildad or Eliphaz contradict the fact, or leave God out of it?
But Job felt that he need not go beyond his own case. God does afflict the blameless as well as the wicked. Job’s days had slipped away so that he had scarce tasted what good is: no runner on land, no light skiff on the waters, nor eagle in the air, faster than they; and not this merely, but with painful dread that He could if He would hold him as guilty. Efforts at cheerfulness were therefore as vain for him as endeavors to cleanse himself with the most efficacious detergents. It is not that his conscience was bad; but he sees that, if God enters into judgment with His servant, no man living can be justified. His light would detect every fault, so that the clothes would shrink with horror from the wearer. Job therefore yearns after an umpire or mediator between God and man, who might lay his hands on both, instead of being left in his weakness and failings before the awful and inflexible and withering judgment of a Being so infinitely removed from him.
If He would only remove His rod, he would not fear to speak; but he could not in his actual state.
What could Job do then, but complain and deprecate God’s condemnation of him, without knowing why He so contended, while He shone on the counsel of the wicked? It was the harder to understand, as God was not blind or fleeting like man, needed no inquisition for sin, and knew the innocence of the sufferer, who could not escape and yet was His own curiously elaborated creature, preserved from first to last as if for these things, inevitably doomed right or wrong, and afraid to assert the right, lest it should provoke worse. Why, if not removed from birth, was there not some respite before going to the land of darkness? But in this grievous expostulation against God, it will be, as it has been, remarked, that Job addresses and entreats God, even while he is as unjust toward God as he thinks God unjust toward him. He had yet to learn the pitifulness and tender mercy of God, spite of and above Satan’s malice, though the day was not yet come for the Only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father to declare the God whom no man has seen, and as the Son of man to glorify God, even as to sin, in the cross, whereon He also hue our sins who believe. How little we appreciate the value of the true light that now shines!