First of all he tells himself the tale of his restless going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. God is then pleased to single out and speak of His servant: “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?” What does Satan? He turns the divine blessing into an insinuation. Job does not fear God for naught; he has a selfish motive; it is all for what he can gain by it. An evil mind cannot conceive motives other than its own. Have not You hedged him in on every side, blessing him in everything that he has? “But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and—if he curse [bless] thee not!” “And Jehovah said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power [hand]; only upon himself put not forth thine hand.” This was to be the first trial.
Soon are seen on earth the results of the permission. The rest of the chapter shows us disaster following quickly on disaster. Not a finger of Satan appears; yet his hand was in everything. They are earthly events accomplished by ordinary instruments, falling doubtless with extraordinary rapidity, and this was no small part of the trial. It would not have sufficed to allow any very long interval to elapse between the blows. It was most skillfully arranged by the enemy that these calamities should wear the appearance of divinely-sent judgments—unsparing judgments; and yet by outward and earthly means. So, first of all, when the day came, and his sons and daughters were eating and drinking in their eldest brother's house, there came a messenger who announced a raid by the Sabeans on the cattle. “The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword” (Satan's hand most manifestly—the destroyer); “and I only am escaped” just so far as to tell the dismal news, and thus as the solitary survivor to give the more poignancy to all. Had in each case not one escaped, the news could never have come after such a sort. The mischief was consummate; yet Job felt, as we, too, should, that all was under the eye of God. Never let us forget Him. If Satan's hand was hidden under these afflicting strokes, God's hand was above Satan. How sure and great the comfort!
So accordingly, unseen again, comes the rest of these troubles. “While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep” (of course, referring to lightning), “and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans” —an enemy from a totally different quarter— “The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking there came also another and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness.” Thus we find it from all quarters, and then, too, the weightiest of all, the destruction not merely of property, but of all that he had, taken to the very letter. Had he not sons? Had he not daughters? All was swept away, and swept away too in a manner peculiarly distressing to the heart. Was not God above? Does not God take an interest in everything? Had not this been the history of Job's life—the interest and the blessing of God, not merely upon himself, but upon all that he had? And now in one day all that divine blessing had given is gone, and gone most painfully. Had God forgotten? Did God take no heed? “Nay,” says Job, “naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither.” So said this righteous man, as he arose and rent his mantle and shaved his head—for he felt it, and was right to feel it—and fell down upon the ground; but then he worshipped and said, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly"; nothing unsavory or abnormal. The first assault totally failed. Stripped of all, Job sinned not.
Another day came when the sons of God presented themselves once more in heaven, and Satan not only came in their midst, but, here it is added, to present himself before Jehovah (ch. 2). One might have thought that surely he will now be ashamed. He had had all his way, and God was only the more magnified. But no; the unjust—and one need not say that Satan is the leader and spring of such—knoweth no shame; at any rate, there he is. And Jehovah again questions and brings out too that His servant Job, although Satan had tried to set him against Him, “holdeth fast his integrity.” He could add, “although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.” Satan asks for one more trial. “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” “Skin for skin,” like for like, as many take it; or it may be that he lowers all that had passed to a superficial trial, that it had merely touched the surface of things— “Skin for skin.” But he says, Let there be something deeper now, and we shall see. Let it not be “skin for skin,” or a skin-deep trial; “but put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. And Jehovah said unto Satan, Behold he is in thy hand; but save [literally, abstain from] his life.” The reserve of his life was not with the view of mitigating the trial, but in order to the triumph of God for the good of the afflicted, the moral of the book. The trial, in fact, would have been less in every way, and its purport lost, if God had been pleased to let His servant Job be removed like his children; and, when Job broke down, death was exactly what he impatiently desired. It would have been the readiest relief to have died. He had no fear whatever as to God's loving him, if he were only with Him; and the most calamitous plight into which he was reduced by the enemy after this would have found an instantaneous close in quitting the scene of such suffering. But God reserved his life when allowing Satan to do his worst, not, in my judgment, to spare Job anything, which was far indeed from the point, but because it would have interfered with His own gracious purpose of blessing in the face of evil and the enemy. And this is what we find in the book, that God had such a purpose, and that, even great as He is and infinite in His resources, each saint is an object of care to Him, and His purpose alone prevails. Whatever of sorrow may come in, they are but the circumstances of the way, and this not merely now, but then, even in the days before redemption. The great principle is always true, because God is always God, if there be not the manifestation of Christ as yet.
So Satan goes forth, “and smote Job with sore boils [the collective singular, a grievous sore] from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes. Then said his wife unto him” —it was a great aggravation of his suffering that she should fall, yet not Job; but she who ought to have been a helpmeet to him was wearied of the strain, and says in her bitterness— “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse [lit. bless] God and die.” It was a frightful speech, but through Satan's instigation wrung out of her, and as undoubtedly through her lack of looking up to God. Indeed we do not know what or who Job's wife was; it forms no particular part of that which God brings before us; it is her one appearance in the history of the book. “But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one” —for even here we find a wonderful measure of patience in his words. He does not say, “Thou speakest as a foolish woman;” he goes no further than, “Thou speakest as one of the foolish ones.” It is well known that the word “foolish” has a morally bad sense in scripture. It is no question of feeble intellect, but of that worst moral depravity, which blots out God, and so makes nothing of His word. Ill as she had spoken, he does not charge her with this; but simply that she spoke like such. “What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” Satan had no resource more. Job owned God's title to take all he had, and smite himself from head to foot. It was evident that Job served God at all cost.
But at this point a change ensues, and a new trial. It is the more to be observed, because not merely does the wife disappear from view, but, what is still more striking, Satan also is spoken of no more. We never hear a word of him again. Satan is completely defeated. And it is an immense comfort for all assailed by him to know that Satan is never the conqueror, though he may gain temporary success. It does not matter what it is you look at, Satan never triumphs but for a little moment. He may win a battle but he is beaten in the war. He who always has his way is God Himself; and when we know who and what He is, what a comfort! Of course, I am speaking now of the children of God, and of God's dealings with them; and I affirm that Satan only comes in by the way, does his worst, fails, and vanishes. Such has been and is his history, and it will be so to the end. So it was found here. Not a word more is said about him. The great problem remains, which God still pursues. God would bring out the true lesson of trial, and the supremacy of Himself over evil.
Three friends then, pious men, too, heard of all this evil that was come upon him, and “they came everyone from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.” The trouble must have evidently gone on for a considerable time. We are not to suppose that job's trial was measured by a few days. It was limited by God, but this was not necessarily of a brief time. The terrible disease which had followed after the destruction of his property, family, everything here below, was known to friends who lived at comparatively distant points; and so they had to make an appointment to come together. This alone supposes the lapse of some time, and what we find in Job's complaints afterward entirely falls in with and corroborates it. “And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not” —so extreme the change in what, after all, could have been no long while, so distressing the change, whatever the time might be— “they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.” Those wrong them who deny their true affection for Job: the failure lies altogether elsewhere. It is an entire mistake of the point and instruction of the book to conceive that their feelings were shallow, or that they had but little love for their friend. Not so: God is showing us the insufficiency of every one and everything but Christ. This the book of Job proves; and consequently, the more you lower Job or his friends, you gather the less of its profit. Let us give them each and all their value, still they are immeasurably below Him in and by whom we know the Father. We are told then that they came and “sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights” —one does not often find such friends with such reality, or at any rate such depth and display of sympathy— “and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.”
Here begins the great action of the book. Job, who stands such a model of patience up to this point; Job, who had bowed to God under such a weight, and such a breadth, and such a rapid succession of calamities as never met a single individual from the beginning of the world till then; Job, who had honored God even more in his trouble than in his prosperity—who could find fault with him? Had the trial stopped at this point the lesson of the book would have been lost. We should have heard of the patience of Job and seen him honor God as unflinchingly in abject misery as when blessed on every side. We should have seen what Satan is on his unwearied and audacious and causeless malice, and seen him defeated utterly; but we should have lost that which it was the great object of this book to communicate in what follows.
But now God brings forward three men of weight, old, real, and worthy friends that felt deeply for him. Who can reasonably doubt it? The description of their grief proves it. For all that, here begins the saint's failure, which we shall find running its course through. It was their theory which misled them on the one hand, while Job on the other adhered to his conscious integrity, till he was driven from all thought of self to stand on what God is to him, not what he had been and was. For God loves His saints too well to allow anything derogatory to Himself unknown to themselves which would hinder the fullest blessing, and He graciously employs trial in order to accomplish that blessing. He gives us the inexpressible consolation of knowing that it is not Satan who purposes and effects aught, but Himself, and that it is Himself in perfect wisdom and righteousness, but withal the God of grace, spite of even these tremendous calamities which sin has introduced, and which Satan is allowed to wield against His servants.
This is unraveled gradually in what follows. Job must know himself, as he never could have conceived otherwise. To know one's self is a very different thing from being converted to God, and necessary if we are to be fully blessed. Further, the friends had to learn as well as Job, being objects of similar grace, though far below Job. They were pious men; but a man might be so and have never been practically in the presence of God for himself: I mean now for thorough judgment of self measured by God Himself. This is what the book opens out to us, as far as it could be before Christ came. [W. K.) (To be continued)