Bible Commentaries

The Trial of Job

Job 1:20, Job 1:21.)

Mark in how short a space the sacred name is mentioned three times. The second speech is equal in religiousness to the first:—

"Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" ( Job 2:10.)

Again the divine name is invoked, and set in its right place, at the very centre of things, upon the very throne of the universe. Job's first speech was so full of noble submission, and so truly religious and spiritually expressive, that it has become a watchword in the bitterest Christian experience. Who has not said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord"? Sometimes there has been hesitation as to the close of the sentence; the voice has not been equally steady throughout the whole enunciation: the sufferer has been able to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,"—then came a mark of punctuation not found in the books, not known to writers and scholars—a great heart-stave; and after that the words were added with some tremulousness—"blessed be the name of the Lord." But it is not easy talk. Do not let us imagine that passages like this can be quoted glibly, flippantly, thrown back in easy retort when grief has come and darkened the house and turned the life into a cloud. Words so noble can only be uttered by the heart in its most sacred moments, and then can hardly be uttered in trumpet tone, but in a stifled voice; yet, notwithstanding the stifling and the sobbing, there is a strong tone that goes right through all the bitterness and the woe, and magnifies God. Where have we found these words? We have found them on our tombstones. Walk up and down the cemetery, and read the dreary literature which is often to be found there, and you will in many instances come upon the words of Job 1:3). It is easy to forget sunshine. It is no miracle on our part that we obliterate the past in the presence of an immediate woe. We are accustomed to this obliteration. Our hand, with infernal skill, rubs out the record of yesterday's redemption. To this pass would the devil drive us! We should have no memory of light, music, morning, joy, festival: the past would be one great black cold cloud, without a hint of summer through which the soul has passed. Then again, in the case of Job 3:4); and again—"Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?" ( Job 3:23). This is not the "Lord" of the first speech; this is but invoking Omnipotence to do a puny miracle: it is not making the Lord a high tower, and an everlasting refuge into which the soul can pass, and where it can for ever be at ease. So we may retain the name of God, and yet have no Lord—living, merciful, and mighty, to whom our souls can flee as to a refuge. It is not enough to use the term God; we must enter into the spirit of its meaning, and find in God not almightiness only but all-mercifulness, all-goodness, all-wisdom. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Yet we must not be hard upon Job , for there have been times in which the best of us has had no heaven, no altar, no Bible, no God. If those times had endured a little longer, our souls had been overwhelmed; but there came a voice from the excellent glory, saying, "For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee." Praised for ever be the name of the delivering God!

Note

Cursing the Day.—The translation of this passage is wrong, so far as the second clause is concerned, though the margin of our Bibles gives the word "leviathan" instead of "mourning." Rendered literally the text would run—"Let the curse of the day curse it—they who are skilled to raise up leviathan." Leviathan is the dragon, an astro-mythological being, which has its place in the heavens. Whether it be the constellation still known by the name "draco," or dragon, or whether it be serpens, or hydra, constellations lying farther south, it is not possible to decide. But the dragon, in ancient popular opinion, had the power to follow the sun and moon, to enfold, or even to swallow them, and thus cause night. Eastern magicians pretended to possess the power of rousing up the dragon to make war upon the sun and moon. Whenever they wished for darkness they had but to curse the day, and hound on the dragon to extinguish for a time the lamp that enlightened the world. Job , in his bitterness, curses the day of his birth, and utters the wish that those who control leviathan would, or could, blot that day and its deeds from the page of history.—Biblical Things not Generally Known.