Job’s want of knowledge of his own heart and of God
But the depths of Job’s heart were not yet reached, and to do this was the purpose of God, whatever Satan’s thoughts may have been. Job did not know himself, and up to this time, with all his piety, he had never been in the presence of God. How often it is the case that even throughout a long life of piety the conscience has never been really set before God! Hence peace, such peace as cannot be shaken, and real liberty, are not known as yet. There is a desire after God, there is the new nature; the attraction of His grace has been felt: nevertheless God and His love, as it really is, are not known. If Satan is foiled (the grace of God having kept Job’s heart from murmuring) God has yet His own work to accomplish. That which the tempest that Satan had raised against Job failed in doing, is brought about by the sympathy of his friends. Poor heart of man! The uprightness and even the patience of Job had been manifested, and Satan had no more to say. But God alone can search out what the heart really is before Him; and the absence of all self-will, perfect agreement with the will of God, absolute submission like that of Christ, these things God alone could test, and thus lay bare the nothingness of man’s heart before Him. God did this with Job; revealing at the same time that He acts in grace in these cases for the good of the soul which He loves.
Job’s self-satisfaction; the pride of his heart
If we compare the language of the Spirit of Christ in the Psalms, we shall often find the appreciation of circumstances expressed in almost identical terms; but instead of bitter complaints and reproaches addressed to God, we find the submission of a heart which acknowledges that God is perfect in all His ways. Job was upright, but he began to make this his righteousness; which evidently proves that he had never been really in the presence of God. The consequence of this was that, although he reasoned more correctly than his friends, and showed a heart that felt really far more than they what God was, he attributed injustice to God and a desire to harass him without cause. (See chapter 19, 23:3,13, 13:15-18 and 16:12.) We find also in chapter 29 that his heart had dwelt upon his upright and benevolent walk with complacency, commending himself, and feeding his self-love with it. “When the eye saw me, it gave witness to me.” God was bringing him to say, “Now mine eye seeth Thee and I abhor myself.” It is with these chapters (ch. 29-31), which express his good opinion of himself, that Job ends his discourse; he had told his whole heart out. He was self-satisfied the grace of God had wrought and in a lovely way in him; but the present effect through the treacherousness of the human heart, and not being in God’s presence which detects it, was to make him lovely in his own eyes. If (ch. 9) he confesses man’s iniquity (for who can deny it, and especially what converted man?), it is in bitterness of spirit, because it is useless to attempt being just with such a God. Chapter 6, as well as the whole of his discourse, proves that, whether it was the pride of his heart which could not bear to be found in such a state by those who had known his greatness, a state which pride would have borne in stubbornness alone, or sympathy which, in weakening that had left him to the full sense of it, it was the presence and the language of his friends that was the means of bringing out all that was in his heart. We see also in chapter 30 that the pride of his heart was detected.