Fresh Discourse of Job Begins
Bildad has been answered as well as Eliphaz; and now Zophar, the remaining or third censor, is silent. Not so Job; he has more to say, to which he gives a sententious form. He swears by the living God that, though he had not been vindicated as yet by Him, but, on the contrary, called still to a most bitter trial, he would never while he lived admit that the surmises against him were right, nor give up the assertion of his integrity—that they indeed were the guilty people who falsely accused him. For what is the hope of the impure (or hypocrite) when God deals with his soul? Does he delight himself in Shaddai, or call on Him at all times? They had all seen such a case, and therefore had no excuse for confounding Job's with it, and so speaking the merest trash. At any rate, as they had proved themselves incapable of a just application, he would let them know the sure end of ungodliness: calamities, without and within, for his offspring as for himself, till every trace of ill-gotten gain vanished, and death opened the inevitable doom for the man whom men, if not the wind itself, hissed out of his place, exulting over his destruction.
And Job continued to utter his parable, and said,
God [El] liveth! He hath turned aside my right,
And the Almighty hath embittered my soul;
All the while Thy breath [is] in me,
And God's spirit in my nostrils,
My lips shall not speak wickedness,
Nor my tongue utter deceit.
Abomination to me if I justify you
Till I expire I will not part from mine integrity:
I hold to my righteousness, and will not let it go:
Of my days my heart reproacheth not.
Mine enemies be as the wicked,
And mine adversary as the unrighteous.
For what [is] the hope of the impure that he shall gain,
When God shall draw out his soul?
Doth God [El] hear his cry when trouble cometh on him?
Doth he delight in the Almighty? Doth he call on God at all times?
I will teach you of the hand of God:
What [is] with the Almighty I hide not.
Behold, ye all of you have seen; and why this—years altogether vain?
This [is] the portion of a wicked man with God,
And the heritage of oppressors they receive from the Almighty.
If his children multiply, [it is] for the sword,
And his offspring have not enough of bread;
His residue are buried in death, and their widows weep not.
If he heap up silver as dust, and prepare clothing as clay,
He prepareth, but the righteous shall put [it] on,
And the innocent shall divide the silver,
He hath built his house as a moth, and as a booth the watchman needeth.
He lieth down, but shall not be gathered;
He openeth his eyes, and he is not.
Terrors overtake him as waters, by night a tempest stealeth him away.
An east wind taketh him up, and he is gone, and it sweepeth him out of his place;
And it casteth at him, and spareth not; from its hand he would gladly flee.
It clappeth its hands at him, and hisseth him out of his place.
The opening language, differing from all that introduces Job's words hitherto, seems to imply that he paused, after his reply to Bildad, long enough to show that Zophar and the rest had nothing more to say, though no doubt as yet unconvinced. He begins again with unwonted solemnity. He appeals to the living El, though owning that He it was who turned aside His judgment, and made his soul bitter for the present, that as long as he breathed his lips should not speak wickedness, nor his tongue murmur deceit. It would be but profanation for him to allow them to be in the right; so to his dying breath he would stand to his integrity, and hold fast his righteousness, without letting it go. For indeed his conscience was good; his heart reproached none of his doings. He was conscious of nothing to account for his trials; yet thereby he had allowed already that he was not justified. But what could he think of those who availed themselves of the trials that pressed him down? He could come to no other conclusion than that, if he were innocent, they who took the place of his enemy must be regarded as the wicked party, and those who assailed him as the unrighteous. He was at least as sure as they that the hope of the hypocrite or profane must perish when God shall summon his soul, and that as God hears not his cry when the long-deferred trouble falls on him, so he neither delights in God at any time, nor calls on Him at all times. That Job had claimed for himself continual clinging to God and vindication of His honor, spite of his own unparalleled sorrows at His hand, the friends well knew; and, because they could not reconcile the two things, they had betrayed themselves into the guilt of surmising Job to be guilty.
In the latter part of the chapter Job expatiates with great force on a case which they had before their eyes no less than he, but which he must expound for them, as they had utterly failed to lay it before him. It is the end of the godless, a theme he would have avoided if his conscience were not good. They had trifled vainly with the matter. He would teach them of God's hand, and not keep back what is with Shaddai. For his children, however many, come the sword and want; they fall, unburied and unwept even of those nearest to them. His treasures go to strangers who are worthy. The house he built turns out as frail as a moth, like a shed the watchman puts up by the way. He lies down rich, to wake up to his ruin before God; and his destruction too is as sudden as overwhelming, terrors overtaking him as waters, like a whirlwind by night, which snatches him up, and whirls him away, spite of pitiful efforts to escape, as if it really mocked his misery and the place that once knew him.
In 1 John 5 there seems to be (in the witness that eternal life is in the Son, not in Adam, as heretofore noticed) a double testimony: the water and the blood, which tell of death, the breach with all of the first man, that not till Christ was dead, or otherwise than by death, was there cleansing; the Spirit, witness of life according to the glory of the second Adam. Life is in the Son; but the Son, as man on the cross, as come in the midst of the old thing, has been rejected, and died, and died for atonement and cleansing. But the Son is also glorified man, and as such Head of the new thing in power.