Bible Commentaries

Job 9:10-11

He is always equally present with us: but we are so much taken up with sensible things, that, Lo, He goeth by us, and we see Him not; He passeth on also, but we perceive Him not. Devotion is retirement from the world He has made, to Him alone: it is to withdraw from the avocation of sense, to employ our attention wholly upon Him as upon an object actually present, to yield ourselves up to the influence of the Divine presence.

—Butler.

References.—IX:20.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No350. Ibid. vol. li. No2932.

Job 9:25-26

As in a revolving disc, the further a point lies from the centre, the more rapid is its rate of progression, so it is in the wheel of life; the further you stand from the beginning, the faster time moves for you.

—A. Schopenhauer.

Chateaubriand's Memoirs have as their motto these words, from the Vulgate of this verse: Sicut naves, quasi nubes, velut umbra.

Job 9:30

Some that are coming to Jesus Christ are too much affected with their own graces, and too little taken with Christ's person; wherefore God, to take them off from doting on their own jewels, and that they might look more to the person, undertaking, and merits of His Son, plunges them into the ditch by temptations. And this I take to be the meaning of Job: "If I wash me," saith he, "with snow water, and make myself never so clean, yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me"; Job had been a little too much tampering with his own graces, and setting his excellencies a little too high. But by that the temptations were ended, you find him better taught.

—Bunyan.

References.—IX:30 , 31.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No1908. IX:33.—Ibid. vol. xi. No661.