Bible Commentaries

Job 19:9-10

Compare the use of this passage by Scott in the affecting interview between Jeanie Deans and her sister, when the latter (Heart of Midlothian, chap. xx.) upbraids herself for having forgotten "what I promised when I faulded down the leaf of my Bible. "See," she said, producing the sacred volume, "the book opens aye at the place o" itsell. O see, Jeanie, what a fearfu" scripture!" Jeanie took her sister's Bible, and found that the fatal mark was made at this impressive text in the book of Job: "He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath He removed like a tree." "Isna that ower true a doctrine?" said the prisoner—"Isna my crown, my honour removed? and what am I but a poor wasted, wan-thriven tree, dug up by the roots, and flung out to waste in the highway, that man and beast may tread it under foot? I thought o" the bonny bit thorn that our father rooted out o" the yard last May, when it had a" the flush o" blossoms on it; and then it lay in the court till the beasts had trod them a" to pieces wi" their feet I little thought, when I was wae for the bit silly green bush and its flowers, that I was to gang the same gate mysell!""

Job 19:21

"Men," wrote Luther in1527 , "who ought to have compassion on me are choosing the very moment of my prostration to come and give me a final thrust. God mend them and enlighten them!"

Job 19:24

How insignificant, at the moment, seem the influences of the sensible things which are tossed and fall and lie about us, Job 19:25

Yes, the Redeemer liveth. He is no Jew, or image of a Job 19:26-27

When Madame de Gasparin, author of The Near and Heavenly Horizons, lay dying, her faith was strengthened, after a transient crisis of doubt, by the words of this passage. She pronounced with a calm, strong, and confident voice the text: "Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold and not another".

—La Comtesse Agénor de Gasparin et sa Famille, p379.

References.—XIX:28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No105. Ibid. vol. xxvii. No1598.