Bible Commentaries

Humbling Questions

Job 15:7

I. "Art thou the first man that was born?" There must have been a first man. He might possibly have had some measure of independence from a merely superficial view of himself, but he had no real independence, he was part of the next man that was coming, and thus we belong to posterity as well as ancestry, and we hand on the life which we have often stained and spoiled. If I am not the first man that was born, if I am not the only Job 15:8

Compare Fitzgerald's remark (Letters, i. p231) about a certain vicar, "he is a good deal in the secrets of Providence".

"I had a letter from Edward Irving the other day," wrote Carlyle in1826 to his brother. ""The Lord," he says, "blesses him; his Church rejoices in the Lord"; in fact, the Lord and he seem to be quite hand and glove."

Reference.—XV:11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No2099.

Job 15:21

Some apparent advantages followed for a season from a rule which had its origin in a violent and perfidious usurpation, and which was upheld by all the arts of moral corruption, political enervation, and military repression. The advantages lasted long enough to create in this country a steady and powerful opinion that Napoleon the Third's early crime was redeemed by the seeming prosperity which followed. The shocking prematureness of this shallow condonation is now too glaringly visible for any one to deny it. Not often in history has the great truth that "morality is the nature of things" received corroboration so prompt and timely.

—Morley, Compromise, pp25 , 26.