Bible Commentaries

Job's Reply to His Three Friends.
V.

Job 12:3

This may be a mere boast, or it may contain truth which is of great spiritual significance.—The spirit of defiance ought to be taken out of it, and the substantial suggestion should be adopted by every man who wishes to make real progress in Christian instruction and experience.—The poorest man may say to the greatest—I am not inferior to you in my desire to appreciate my life and make the most of it; therefore I cannot be turned aside by vain quibbling or frivolous criticism, but I must go to the fountain of knowledge itself, and there make my own inquiries and decisions.—So the poor man may say—I am not inferior to you in the sight of God; social distinctions there are in abundance, often invidious, vexatious, troublesome, sometimes rational, useful and beneficent; but after all, the true judgment of man is with God, and God looks upon the rich and the poor alike, with an eye of love and interest.—This being the case, he may continue the argument and say, God will also take care of me and my children; he has spoken kinder words to the poor than he ever spoke to the rich; he seems to have made his promises on purpose for those who were desolate, and helpless, and sad.—Then he may cheer himself with the thought that there are inferiorities which are only for the time being,—they are transient, and the true standard of superiority will by-and-by be worked out, and God will put every man in his legitimate place; the first shall be last, and the last shall be first; it is not for us to say who shall go forward, and who shall be thrust behind; our function is to discover our duty, to accept it, to do it with both hands earnestly, and to leave the whole result of classification and promotion to him who ruleth over all.—In speaking of inferiority and superiority, the spirit of vexatious criticism or envious defiance should always be suppressed and destroyed, and this only can be done by the reigning and superabundant grace of God.—He who boasts himself of himself is a fool; he who appeals to the divine standard and abides by the divine discrimination is a wise Job 12:10

Observe, not only "every living thing," but actually the soul of it.—There is great meaning in this expression; it shows that we do not see the life in its innermost recesses and springs, but only some appearance or shape of it from the outside.—We have often said that no man has seen himself: the man is within the man; the life is within the life.—This rule holds good with regard to everything round about us; notably, it holds good with regard to the Church, for the Church is within the Church, that is to say it is a spiritual reality, of which the visible Church is but the outward embodiment; and if we are not members of the spiritual kingdom it is of no importance what eminence we have attained with regard to formal position or membership.—The rule holds good also in regard to the Bible: in an emphatic sense, the Bible is within the Bible; a man may read the merely literary Bible from end to end, and know absolutely nothing about the revelation of God: that revelation is only granted to the wise and understanding heart, to those who are simple of mind, single and earnest in purpose, whose one desire is to know what God has said, and to do it: hence criticism can never get out of the Bible the soul of its living things: only sympathy with God, pureness of heart, and all the quiet graces of love, meekness, and docility, can reap great spoils in the harvest-field of the Bible.—The rule holds good also with regard to all ecclesiastical sacraments: they may be good or bad, useful or useless, just as we approach them or appropriate them.—We may turn them into mere idols and so may actually sin against the very purpose of their constitution; or we may regard them as instruments, mediums, or vehicles, through which God is pleased in some way to show himself to the waiting and expectant heart; used in this latter way, they become in very deed means of grace, valueless when viewed purely and absolutely in themselves but infinitely precious when regarded as the medium through which God descends upon the loving heart.—The same rule applies to the right interpretation of what is called material nature: who can tell what is behind it all? Agnostics themselves acknowledge that even in matter there is something which they cannot comprehend. Agnosticism, or know-notism, is not, therefore, confined to what are usually known as spiritual subjects, but has a direct bearing upon things which are substantial and visible.—All these secrets of life being more or less beyond us, we are led up at once to the great principle that only God can be judge of all.—We know nothing as it really is.—He alone is the critic, whose penetration can pierce to the innermost thought, motive, and purpose of the heart; with him, therefore, must be left all judgment and all destiny.—It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man.

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"He... maketh the judges fools."— Job 12:17

This is for their good.—If they were not rebuked, they would go on from one presumption to another, until they utterly forgot themselves and idolised their own ability.—It is good for the wise man to be made to know the measure of his Job 12:25

Here are men who are drunk, but not with wine; men who suppose themselves to be highly gifted, and yet who do not know their way home again when they have once gone astray.—God controls all physical substance and faculty: he toucheth the strength of a man, and it fades away: he waves his hand, so to say, across his brain, and all power of thinking is for ever suspended: he turneth a man's purposes upside down.—The deplorable and lamentable thing, viewed from a human standing-point, is that the men appear to be as strong and prosperous as ever, when their right hand has forgotten its cunning and their tongue can no longer speak familiar words: they represent death in life; they are as walking sepulchres: all the framework is there in its entirety, but the spirit within is humiliated, dispossessed, or quenched.—What, then, is our security? What is the guarantee that to the end we may possess sanity of mind, strength and dignity of judgment?—We are only safe in proportion as we keep company with God; as we invoke the abiding presence and ministry of the Holy Ghost; as we remember that we are nothing and have nothing, and that every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights.—We sometimes ascribe great failures of mind and body to small causes.—We should remember that there is a great Sovereign above all, who appoints and disappoints, who leads forward and smites backward, who makes the first last, and the last first, not according to some arbitrary will, but according to a law of grace and love, the full scope of which we have not yet comprehended.—Better to be abased in this world, than to be destroyed in the next.—Better to understand here and now that we are only servants than to be taught hereafter that there is no hope for us.—This is the time of school, of drill, of discipline, of all the educational processes which may end in mature wisdom and strength.—Here, again, we come upon the salutary exhortation, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom."—We are limited on every side.—Our wisdom is but partial.—Our greatest intellectual successes are but beginnings.—We shall begin to go down in all the best qualities of our soul, when we suppose we have approached the point of finality, because then we may turn round and make demands upon society, which are unsupported by reason and justice.—Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: put thine hand round about me, then I shall no longer stagger like a drunken man. What is my hope? What is my confidence? Yea, what is my expectation? Truly I will think nothing of myself, and attempt to be nothing in my own power and right: I will live as God's servant, I will pray as God's little child, I will have no way of my own from morning to night; in life, in death, my cry shall be:—Not my will, but thine, be done.