Bible Commentaries

Miserable Comforters

Job 16:2, Job 16:4).

There was no reserve between the men or amongst them who sustained these wondrous colloquies. They spoke to one another with startling simplicity. It was altogether more like a controversy than an exercise of condolence. We are, however, endeavouring to understand the narrative, and not endeavouring to reinvent or reconstruct it. Still, it is noticeable that all the men were marked by extreme frankness of spirit. Nearly each speech begins with words which could hardly be deemed courteous in modern days. Job was equal to the occasion; whenever anything was said to him that was unwelcome, unsuitable, he answered in the tone of the speaker to whom he replied. But it is equally noteworthy that begin as the speeches might they ended in great sublimity. In this respect they are beautiful types of the best kind of human growth; difficulty at the first, and some rudeness and brokenness, but soon settling down into right relation, proportion, ultimate meaning, the whole culminating in brightness and glory. Job now puts himself into a position which we can easily comprehend. He says: I could talk as you do, if I were as unrestrained. There are no limits to the audacity of ignorance. The less a man knows the more eager is he to make it known. Some men cannot be fluent, because they see on the road spectres, angels, difficulties, possibilities, that do not come within the sweep of the unspiritual imagination; so they halt, they balance sentences, they go round the whole wealth of words to see if there be one that will fitly and precisely express the passing thought. Job says: I could be a fluent speaker if I had a fluent mind: you talk easily because you have nothing to say; not one of you has made a solitary original contribution towards the solution of my difficulty; you have a genius for quotation; you are clever in recalling what other men have said; you are reciters, not authors or creators; you act a dramatic part; you speak what other men have written: but Job 16:5). He supposes that they would sympathise rather than argue. But even Job is not to be taken at his word, for he did not know what he was talking about throughout the whole of this controversy: he will have to recall many a word, Job 16:13-16).

This is the devil's work! Whoever has been unfaithful in this melancholy business, the devil cannot be charged with infidelity. He makes men weep; he sends his darts and arrows into every point of body and estate; he breaks man with breach upon breach, he runs upon man like a giant, and he brings down the horn of power to the dust. What good thing did the devil ever do? Can any poor woman say, My home was unhappy until we yielded ourselves to the dominion of the evil one, Job 16:17)

Do we not sometimes say that a good conscience will help a man to bear anything? There is a sense in which that is true, but there is another sense in which it is perfectly untrue and simply impossible. Suffering unjustly calls up the conscience to question-asking. Unjust suffering excites suspicion. The sufferer says Why is this? If this is the way a righteous man is treated, where is the spirit of justice, the spirit of law, the genius of rectitude? Unjust suffering discourages prayer. Unjust suffering tempts the enemy to triumph, saying, "Where is now thy God?" Stuff thy throat with thine unanswered prayers, thou poltroon, thou Christian fool! Why serve a God who treats thee so? But these were temporary questions. Again and again we have had to say that if the whole discourse lay within four given points, no man could vindicate much that occurs in human life: but nothing is to be judged by a short line, by a limited and empty hour; everything is to be judged by God's line and by God's eternity. There are men who can say that all that happened in their lives of an adverse kind has come to be explained, and has been proved to be needful to the larger and better culture of the life. If we could establish one such instance in our own experience, that one instance would carry the whole case. The mountains are very high when we stand at their base, but could we be elevated just above the surface of the earth, and see the little globe wheeling round, we should be unable to discover that there is a single mountain upon it. We must, therefore, take the astronomic view, and not look upon the great disparities of the surface, when those disparities are crowding themselves upon our vision, but look upon them from some distance, and then the Dawalagiri, the Rocky Mountains, the Himalayas, sink into the surface, and the earth seems to be without wart or scar or tumulus. So it will be in the end!

Job gets some notion of the reality of things when he traces all to God, saying,—

"God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked" ( Job 16:11).

We begin to feel that even the devil is but a black servant in God's house. There is a sense, perhaps hardly open to a definition in words, in which the devil belongs to God as certainly as does the first archangel. There is no separate province of God's universe: hell burns at the very footstool of his throne. We must not allow ourselves to believe that there are rival powers and competing dynasties in any sense which diminishes the almightiness of God. If you say, as some distinguished philosophers have lately said, God cannot be almighty because there is evil in the world, you are limiting the discussion within too narrow a boundary. We must await the explanation. Give God time. Let him work in his eternity. We are not called upon now to answer questions. Oh! could we hold our peace, and say, We do not know: do not press us for answers: let patience have her perfect work: this is the time for labour, for education, for study, for prayer, for sacrifice: this poor twilight scene is neither fair enough nor large enough to admit the whole of God's explanation: we must carry forward our study to the place which is as lofty as heaven, to the time which is as endless as eternity. We all have suffering. Every man is struck at some point. Let not him who is capable of using some strength speak contemptuously of his weak brother. It is easy for a man who has no temptation in a certain direction to lecture another upon going in that direction. What we want is a juster comprehension of one another. We should say, This brother cannot stand such and such a fire; therefore we try to come between him and the flame: this other brother can stand that fire perfectly well, but there is another fire which he dare not approach; therefore we should, interpose ourselves between him and the dread furnace, knowing that we all have some weakness, some point of failure, some signature of the dust. Blessed are they who have great, generous, royal, divine hearts! The more a man can forgive, the more does he resemble God.

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"I have heard many such things."— Job 16:2

Many unreflecting speeches are made respecting the religious life; also many superficial speeches; especially are many conjectural words uttered regarding human experience.—There has been no lack of answers to the religious reed of man.—Christianity takes its place amongst those answers, and must vindicate itself by the fulness and adequacy of its doctrines.—The heart knows the right speech when it hears it.—The heart is sated with foolish appeals.—Take care of the answering voice which God has put within, and let its tones be well heard when appeals are made for the heart's confidence.—The answer of Christianity to the sorrow of the world is unique; it never can be classed amongst "many such things," for it stands alone in boldness, compass, tenderness.—All other religions have outworn themselves, in fruitless endeavours to give intelligent peace to the human mind; they have wrought apathy or stoicism, indifference, neglect, and even contempt, but profound and enlightened serenity is a miracle which they have never accomplished.—The sorrow of the world is not a commonplace, and therefore it is not to be subdued or mitigated by commonplaces.—When we speak of the sorrow of the world as a whole, we must remember that it is made up of individual distresses and agonies, and only that which applies to the individual can be applied effectually and happily to the whole world.—Who has not heard of fate, or chance, or misfortune, or the necessity of things? Who has not been told, more or less carelessly, to be quiet, patient and hopeful? Who has not been reminded that others are suffering more than themselves? The sufferer may well reply: I have heard many such things, but they have no application to my particular need.—When Jesus Christ comes to the heart it is impossible for the heart to say that many other speakers have said the same things in the same tone. Herein it is true, as everywhere else, "Never man spake like this Man." We wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of his mouth: he needeth not that any should testify of Job 16:11

This is not the speech of ignorance; nor is this a mere ebullition of fretful-ness or peevishness: the man who speaks is a wise Job 16:22

Here is the idea of measured sorrow. A man complains of the road, but he is cheered by the fact that the end is not far away.—The Christian has not only to think of years, but "a few years"—quite a handful of days, a breath or two, a struggle or two, a disappointment or two, and then the end of all is reached.—We should always look out for the mitigations of our condition.—The sufferer here finds it in the brevity of the time which he has to endure; we may always find it in the same direction. Others can find mitigations in different ways, as in the kindness of friends, the brightness of mind under bodily affliction, domestic comfort, and the evident accomplishment of divine purposes in the purification of the character.—We are not called upon in all cases to find consolation at the same point, but every man is called upon as a child of God to find consolation somewhere.—Let him say, "This is my Father's hand: not my will, but thine, be done," and all his afflictions will be turned into sources of joy.—We are to kiss the rod and him who hath appointed it; we are to look upon chastening not as pleasant but as grievous, yet afterwards working the peaceable fruit of righteousness.—The text may be regarded as a refrain to a life-song. However the music may run—now smoothly, now roughly; now harshly, like a strong wind, now softly, like a breeze among the flowers—yet the refrain is, "When a few years are come." "Brief life is here our portion."—The brevity of life which has its mournful aspects has also its aspects of comfort and encouragement.—The misanthropist would say, Life is so short, it is not worth while attempting to do anything great: the tower will not be half-finished, the work will but mock me by an abrupt termination; I will turn away from all activity, and wait for the end: the philanthropist would say, Life is brief, therefore I must be up and doing; I must redeem the time or buy up the opportunity; not a moment is to be lost; I must hoard the hours as a miser hoards gold: the sufferer may say, Presently all will be over; in a day or two I shall see heaven's gate opened, and join the happy throng on high,—at the best, "when a few years are come," this night of time will be forgotten in the brightness of heaven's eternal day; I will encourage myself by this reflection: I will pray that I may be man enough to stand out the whole trial for the little time that yet remains: "he that endureth to the end shall be saved:" may God help me to be faithful unto death; then he will not withhold from me the crown of life.—"Until death," and that is just within sight; the dark shadow is already upon me; the grave is already opening at my feet. Oh, poor, throbbing, suffering heart, hope on: even tomorrow may see thee bearing the banner of victory, and hear thee singing the song of the free.