Bible Commentaries

After the Storm

Job 42:1-6

What does it all come to? We have been much excited by the process, what is its consummation? Is the end worthy of the beginning? Is the literary structure well put together, and does it end in domes and pinnacles worthy of its magnitude and original purpose? Or is this a lame and impotent conclusion? Let us deal frankly with the facts as they are before us.

It is difficult to avoid the feeling of some disappointment as we come to the conclusion of the Book of Job. On first reading, the last chapter seems to be the poorest in all the work. If the writer was a dramatist, he seems to have lost his cunning towards the close. This chapter appears, when first looked at, to have been written by a wearied hand. The writer seems to be saying, I would I had never begun this drama of Job: parts of it were interesting enough to me, but now I have come to sum it all up I find a want of glory; I have not light enough to set above the whole tragedy; I thought to have ended amid the glory of noontide, and I find myself writing indistinctly and feebly in the cool and uncertain twilight. Should any man so express himself he must vindicate his position by the chapter as it stands at the close of the Book of Job. Is Job alive? Did we not expect him to go down under the cataract of questions which we had been considering? Does he not lie a dead drowned man under the tremendous torrent? To what shall we liken the course of Job? Shall we say, A ship at sea? Then verily it was a ship that never knew anything but storms: every wind of heaven had a quarrel with it; the whole sky clouded into a frown when looking upon that vessel; the sea was troubled with it as with a burden it could not carry, and the lightnings made that poor ship their sport. Did the ship ever come into port? or was it lost in the great flood? Shall we compare Job to a traveller? Then he seems to have travelled always in great jungles. Quiet, broad, sunny, flowery roads there were none in all the way that Job pursued: he is entangled, he is in darkness, the air is rent by roars and cries of wild beasts and birds of prey. It was a sad, sad journey. Is there anything left of Job? The very weakness of the man's voice in this last chapter is the crowning perfection of art. If Job had stood straight up and spoken in an unruffled and unhindered voice, his doing so would have been out of harmony with all that has gone before. It was an inspiration to make him whisper at the last; it was inspired genius that said, The hero of this tale must be barely heard when he speaks at last; there must be no mistake about the articulation, every word must be distinct, but the whole must be uttered as it would be by a man who had been deafened by all the tempests of the air and affrighted by all the visions of the lower world. So even the weakness is not imbecility; it is the natural weakness that ought to come after such a pressure. Old age has its peculiar and sweet characteristic. It would be out of place in youth. There is a dignity of feebleness; there is a weakness that indicates the progress and establishment of a moral education. Job 42:7-17

How God rebukes the wisdom of the wise! How God humiliates the very men who supposed that they were defending and glorifying him! How even Christian ministers may misrepresent God! We may be talking about religion without being religious. These are the thoughts which are excited by the circumstance that when all the comforters had exhausted their accusatory eloquence they had neither comforted Job nor pleased God. It is right The tone that is to comfort the world is not a tone of exasperation: when the world is really comforted in its inner heart it will be by music, by the singing of angels, by the reception of gospels, by communion with the loving God. How sad a thing is this, that men may suppose they are serving God at the very time they are angering him! How infinitely sad it is that a man may suppose he is preaching the gospel when he neither understands what he is saying nor feels it in all its pathos! Are there any critics so intolerable, so discouraging; to Job 42:7, "my servant Job"; Job 42:8, "my servant Job"; Job 42:8, again, "my servant Job." Who can tell how these words were said? They are attributed to the divine lips, and they are not to be read by us with all the fulness of their emphasis and signification. When the Lord said, again and again and again, "my servant Job ," who can tell what music was in his tone, what unction, what recognition, what benediction? The anthem closes upon its key-note: at the very first the Lord said "my servant Job"; at the end he says "my servant Job." It is possible for us to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant," and merely to utter these as so many syllables more or less beautiful; but when Jesus Christ pronounces the very same syllables they will mean heaven. Words are not the same in different mouths. Some men have no gift of emphasis, no gift of expression; their words are dissociated, they are unrelated, they are cold, they are not fused by that mysterious power of sympathy and affection which runs them into consolidated beauty and blessing. When the Lord says "my servant Job"—a word Job had not heard these many days—he forgets his sorrow, and springs as Mary sprang when the supposed gardener addressed her by her name. There was a gardener's way of speaking and a Christ's way: when the Son of God said "Mary," all the past came back instantly, and heaven came more than half-way down to inclose the resuscitated heart in its infinite security. There may, therefore, be a better ending than we had at first supposed. The chapter may not be wanting in the highest force of expression when we really look into its syllables, when we really listen to its palpitation.

"The Lord turned the captivity of Job"—took off his fetters, his manacles, and the devil-forged chain that was cast about him, and gave him liberty. Do not ask a free man what liberty means: ask an emancipated slave. "The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." This expression "twice as much" is arithmetical, and is but symbolic; it is in no sense literal. "Twice as much" means a million times as much multiplied by itself again and again. When God gives, he gives good measure, heaped up, pressed down, running over: "He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." So it may be with you, poor suffering friend: this is the month of trial, this is the year of testing, this is the period of affliction and baffling, of bewilderment and stupefaction: hold on; cease from mere argument in words; pray, look heavenward, hope steadfastly in the loving One, and at the end you shall have "twice as much"—as God interprets the word "twice."

"The Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning." There is a "latter end." By that all things must be judged. If you cut the life of Jesus in twain, you might accuse God of having exposed him to the utmost want, loneliness, and cruelty. We must not interfere with the divine punctuation of the literature of providence; we must allow God to put in all the secondary points, and not until he has put the full period may we venture to look upon what he has done and offer some judgment as to its scope and meaning. Let my latter end be like the good man"s! He dies well; he dies like a hero; he dies as if he meant to live again: this is not dying, it is but crossing a little stream, the narrow stream of death,—a step, and it is passed, and is forgotten. "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." God may do much in one day; he may clear up all the mysteries of a lifetime by one flash of light. Judge nothing before the time. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame—looking upon it as a necessary process, and regarding the end as the explanation of all that had gone before.

"In all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job." In Old Testament times great truths had to be hinted by these outward manifestations or indications of the divine providence. God set beauty before the eyes of him who had suffered much, who had felt the burden of darkness. The name of the first was "Jemima," from the Arabic, dove, gentle bird; or, from another origin, day, day-bright,—the eye of the morning, the gleaming of a new dispensation. The name of the second, "Kezia"—cassia, a fragrant spice. He who had sat long amidst pestilence and rotteness and decay and death, had cassia sent to him from the gardens above. "The name of the third, Kerenhappuch,"—the horn of beauty, or the horn of plenty: a sign of abundance in the house. All the names were histories or commentaries or promises. Thus God blessed Job in a way Job could understand: he sent him back voices to sing in the house, and when the fair girls passed before him, tinted with the vermilion of nature, he said, This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, excellent in counsel, as well as wondrous in working. See God in your family, in that sleeping infant, in that opening mind, in those clinging hands, in those eyes that are quickened into the expression of prayer;—see God in the fields, in the sheep, and the oxen, and all the great abundance which is round about.

"So Job died, being old and full of days." We cannot tell what these words meant to an Old Testament mind. "Full of days." They brought to him a sense of completeness. He was not satiated, but satisfied. He said, The circle is complete; I do not want another hour: now I have completed my career; praise God in eternity. All this was significant of the future. We have seen again and again how earthly things have been invested with religious meanings. Abraham was called to go out into a far country, and promised a land that flowed with milk and honey; and when he came near it he said—I do not want this; I want a country out of sight, a heavenly Canaan, a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God: I am glad I was stirred up from my home, that I am come out, for travelling has done me good; but as the ground has enlarged and I have seen things more clearly in their right proportions and meanings, I do not want the earth; its rivers are too shallow, its oceans too small, its space is a prison: I want heaven. This comes of our training in things inferior and minor and preliminary, if we rightly accept that training. The man who starts with the promise that he shall have gold at the end, if that man should live well, and be industrious with a mind that is honest, when he comes to the gold he will say, There is something beyond this; I am thankful enough for it in the meantime, but is there not a fine gold, a gold twice refined? Is there not some spiritual reward? O clouds! open, and let me see what is above, for I feel that there, even in the great height, must be the gold that would satisfy me. I counsel thee to buy fine gold: seek wisdom; get understanding; for the merchandise of it is better than silver and better and richer than gold.

Then does Job simply die? The Hebrew ends here, but the Septuagint adds a very wonderful verse—"And Job died, old and full of days; and it is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raiseth." There needed some touch of immortality to complete the tragedy. Is there no immortality in the Old Testament? I hold that there is immortality in the very creation of man: to be a man is to be immortal. Where is it said, "The Lord made man rational"? any more than it is said, "God made man immortal"? Everything is said in this word—"In the image of God created he him." That is reason; that is responsibility; that is immortality; that is but minor divinity. Have we laid the right emphasis upon the word "man" when we read of his creation? It would be a most noticeable thing, amounting to a conviction of the righteousness and goodness of God, if the Gentiles knew the doctrine of immortality when the patriarchs and Jews had been denied the realisation of that opportunity. Long before Christ came, and in countries where the name of Christ had never been mentioned until within recent years, the doctrine of immortality was affirmed. Plato, the most spiritual of the philosophers, believed in life after death; Socrates with all his accumulated wisdom taught the doctrine of life after death; in the Indian philosophies we find the declaration of a belief in life after death: these Gentiles were groping in darkness, or in twilight at best: wondrous if Plato, Socrates, and some of the great heathen thinkers in other lands had discovered the doctrine of immortality which was hidden from the men who were specially chosen of God to be the custodians of the truth, the depositaries of the very principles of the Church. I take it therefore, rather, that the whole doctrine of immortality is assumed, as is the reason of man, as is the responsibility of man; that it is involved in the very constitution of man. It is not my belief that God made man mortal. He made man, as to his thought and purpose, immortal: for man was made in the image of his Maker. Whatever may have been the condition of Old Testament saints, there can be no doubt about the position of man now, for life and immortality have been brought to light in the gospel. Jesus Christ boldly proclaimed the great doctrine of life after death, and he brought life and immortality to light; he did not create a new epoch, introduce a new series of thoughts, but he threw light upon ancient obscurities, and showed what marvellous assumptions had underlain the whole scheme of history and providence. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." This is our joy—supreme, triumphant joy. "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and that which shall be left shall be immortality, which being interpreted from the standpoint of Christ's cross means, not only longer life, but larger life, purer life, life consecrated to all high service, still finding its heaven in obedience, still finding its beginning and its ending in the eternal God.