Bible Commentaries

Job's Answer to Bildad.
II.

Job 10:2). I cannot tell why; I am not conscious of any reason; the last time we met it was in prayer, in loving fellowship; the last interview I had with heaven was the pleasantest I can remember; lo, I was at the altar offering sacrifices for my children, when the great gloom fell upon my life, and the whole range of my outlook was clothed with thunder-clouds—oh, tell me why! We need not ask whether these words actually escaped Job's lips, because we know they are the only words which he could have uttered, or that this is the only spirit in which he could have expressed himself; he would have been God, not Job 10:3).

"Is it good,"—is it in harmony with the fitness of things; is it part of the music of divine justice? How will this incident be interpreted by those who are looking on? Art thou not doing more mischief by this experiment than good? There are men who are observing me, who knew that I was a man of prayer, a man of spiritual fame, and they will say, If thus God treats the good, is it not better to be wicked? And there are wicked men looking on who are saying, It has come out just as we expected; all this religious sentiment ends in spiritual reaction, and God is not to be worshipped as Job has worshipped him. O living, loving, saving God, Shepherd of the universe, consider this, and answer me! Once shake a man's confidence in right, and he could no longer go to the altar of the God whom he could charge with wrong; once let a man feel that good may come to nothing, and prayer is wasted breath, and that the balances of justice are in unsteady hands, and all religious lectures are properly lost upon him, and all pious appeals are but so much wasted breath. We must have confidence in the goodness of God. We must be able to say to ourselves, The lot is dark, the road is crooked, the hill is steep; I cannot tell why these trials should have come upon me, but see me tomorrow, or the third day, and I shall have an answer from heaven, the enigma shall be solved, and the solution shall be the best music my soul ever listened to.

Job then pleads himself—his very physiology, his constitution:—

"Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again? Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese? Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews" ( Job 10:8-11.)

I am made by thee; didst thou make make me to destroy me? Art thou so fickle? Art thou a potter that fashions a beautiful vase, and then dashes it to the ground? I am all thine, from the embryo—for that is the reference made in the tenth verse: "Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?" I am thine from the very embryo, the very germ; there is nothing about me that I have done myself; I am the work of thine own hands; art thou a fantastic maker, creating toys that thou mayest have the delight of crushing them between the palms of thine hands? A very pathetic inquiry is this—"Thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?"—is this the law of evolution? is this the science or philosophy of development? is all life simply a little beginning, rising out of itself, and returning to itself? and is "dust" the only word appropriate to man? is life a journey from dust to dust, from ashes to ashes, from nothing to nothing? Consider this, O loving Creator! Job says he will reason otherwise. God, who has made so much out of nothing, means to make more out of so much: the very creation means the redemption and salvation and coronation of the thing that was created in the divine image and likeness. Creation does not end in itself: it is a pledge, a token, a sign—yea, a sure symbol, equal in moral value to an oath, that God's meaning is progress unto the measure of perfection. This is how we discover the grand doctrine of the immortality of the soul, even in the Old Testament—even in the Book of Genesis and in the Book of Job. What was it that lay so heavily upon Adam and upon Job? It was the limitation of their existence; it was the possible thought that they could see finalities, that they could touch the mean boundary of their heart's throb and vital palpitation. When men can take up the whole theatre of being and opportunity and destiny, and say, This is the shape of it, and this is the weight, this is the measure, this is the beginning, and this is the end, then do they weary of life, and they come to despise it with bitterness; but when they cannot do these things, but, contrariwise, when they begin to see that there is a Beyond, something farther on, voices other than human, mystic appearances and Job 10:18-22).

Thus he exhausts the Hebrew tongue in piling image upon image by which to signify the everlasting extinction and eternal darkness. Yet he would choose extinction rather than life under a galling sense of injustice. It is so with individual men. It is so with nations of men. There comes a time when the sense of injustice becomes intolerable. Anarchy, the sufferers say, is better; and as for darkness, it is to be chosen in preference to light which is only used for the perpetration of iniquity. "My soul is weary of my life." Is that a solitary expression? We have heard Rebekah say the same words—she would die. We have heard David say, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away,"—a term which indicates distance without measure—"and be at rest." We have heard great Elijah—royal, lion-like, terrible Elijah—say, "Let me die"—give me release from life. What wonder if other men have uttered the same expression. It Job 10:8

The fact is correct, but the reasoning is false.—It often happens so in reasoning under strong feeling.—The argument ought to have proceeded in exactly the opposite way; then Job would have said with the Psalmist, "Thou wilt not forsake the work of thine own hands."—There is a strong temptation to recognise Providence in parts and sections, but not to continue the thought throughout the whole line of human life and experience.—Many persons will acknowledge: a Creator, who do not acknowledge the providential government which touches every detail of existence.—Others, again, will acknowledge Providence. but deny the reality of Redemption.—

Others, again, are devoted to the collection of facts, and yet, when they have brought all their facts into a focus, they seem to be unable to draw the right inferences from them.—Man often perishes at the point of argument.—Man ought often to let argument alone and simply rest upon facts.—Where argument does arise in a case like this, it should take some such terms as the following:—Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; therefore thou hast a living and loving interest in me, and although I cannot understand the discipline through which thou art now making me to pass, I am confident, from the excellence and minuteness of thy creation, that thy providence cannot fall short of what is there so vividly and graciously displayed.—Jesus Christ always reasoned from the lower to the higher:—If God takes care of oxen, will he not take care of you; if he clothe the grass of the field, etc; if he care for the fowls of the air, etc.; if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, etc.—This is the Saviour's argument, always rising upwards towards the unseen, the eternal.—By creating Job 10:15

This is a fact, and ought to be regarded seriously.—Providence is often such as to bewilder our merely intellectual faculties.—Things do not happen in the sequence which we have determined.—We seem, for the moment, at least, to sow one thing and reap another.—All our calculations are upset as to the prosperity of virtue and the degradation of vice.—We make bold to prophesy what will happen tomorrow in the order of God's providence; we say, The wicked man will return from his attempts worsted and ashamed, and yet he comes in successful and glorying in his abundant prosperity.—Being full of confusion, we should (a) wait; (b) take an appointed course of inquiry; (c) not suppose that it lies within our power to comprehend the whole counsel of God.—These broad and frank confessions of confusion or of ignorance are not at all harmful even in the Christian teacher; when he avows his inability to deal with certain questions he acquires for himself an additional measure of confidence in regard to those subjects which he does undertake to elucidate.—The Bible itself does not propose to clear up every mystery, or drive away every cloud.—There is a sense indeed in which the Bible is the greatest mystery of all.—Even in the wildest mental confusion, there are often some points of certainty, some solid facts, histories, or experiences, upon which we can rest the mind.—We should abide there until the storm abates a little, or the light so increases as to create a larger day.—No man need be altogether in confusion if he be frank-minded, really earnest, and religious in spirit.—Some little thing at least will be given to him, which he can seize and hold with a firm hand.—Stand by the one thing which is clear and plain, and from that work onward and outward towards those truths which seem to hang on the distant horizon.