Bible Commentaries

Job's Answer to Eliphaz

Job 6:2-3).

Who ever thought that his grief was exactly comprehended by his friends? Job makes much of the grief with which a thousand other men had been familiar all their lives. When the rich man loses any money, what an outcry there is in his house! When the poor man loses something, he says—As usual! well, we must hope that tomorrow will be brighter than today! But let a great, prosperous, space-filling rich man lose any money, and he loses a whole night's sleep immediately after it; he says, "Oh that my grief were throughly weighed!" He likes "thorough" work when the work is applied to sympathising with him. So we misunderstand our friends; then we misunderstand our pain:—

"Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! Then should I yet have comfort" ( Job 6:8-10).

We do not know that our pain is really working out for us, if we truly accept it, the highest estate and effect of spiritual education. No man can enjoy life who has not had at least one glimpse of death. What can enjoy food so keenly as hunger? Who knows the value of money so well as he who has none, or has to work hardly for every piece of money that he gains? Such is the mystery of pain in human education Have not men sometimes said: It was worth while to be sick, so truly have we enjoyed health after the period of disablement and suffering? Pain cannot be judged during its own process. From some pictures we must stand at a certain distance in order to see them in proper focus, and get upon them interpreting and illuminating lights. It is sympathetically so with pain. The pain that tears us now like a sharp instrument, working agony in the flesh, will show its whole meaning tomorrow, or on the third day—God's resurrection day, and day of culmination and perfecting. "Let patience have her perfect work."

Job not only misunderstood his friends and misunderstood his pain, he misunderstood all men, and the whole system and scheme of things. He said::—

"My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away; which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid: what time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish. The troops of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited for them" ( Job 6:15-19).

How suffering not rightly accepted, or not rightly understood, colours and perverts the whole thought and service of life! Job said:—

"Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days also like the days of an hireling? As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work: so am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me" ( Job 7:1-3).

So we return to our starting-point, that sorrow must come. It is difficult for the young to believe this. The young have had but a transient ache or pain, which could be laughed off, so superficial was it. So when preachers talk of days that are nights, and summers that are made cold by unforgotten or fast-approaching winters, the young suppose the preachers are always moaning, and the church is but a painted grave, and it is better to be in the lighted theatre and in the place of entertainment, where men laugh wildly by the hour and take hold of life with a light and easy touch. The preachers must bear that criticism, committing themselves to time for the confirmation of their words, which indicate the burden, stress, and the weariness of life. Life has been one continual grief. Death soon came into the house, and made havoc at the fireside. Poverty was a frequent visitor at the old homestead—lean, wrinkled, husky-voiced poverty, without a gleam of sunlight on its weird face, without a tone of music in its exhausted voice; want painted upon every feature, necessity embodied in every action and attitude: then every enterprise failed; the letter that was to have brought back the golden answer was either never received or never answered. Now the natural issue of sorrow is gloom, dejection, despair of life. To this end will sorrow bring every man who yields himself to it. Suffering will pluck every flower, destroy every sign of beauty, put back the dawn, and lengthen the black night. This is what sorrow, unblessed, must always do. It will blind the eye with tears; it will suffocate the throat with sobs; it will enfeeble the very hand when it is put out to make another effort at self-restoration. But has it come to this, that sorrow must be so received and yielded to? Is there any way-by which even sorrow can be turned into joy? The Bible discloses such a way. The Bible never shrinks from telling us that there is grief in the world, and that that grief can be accounted for on moral principles. The Bible measures the grief: never lessens it, never makes light of it, never tells men to shake themselves from the touch and tyranny of grief by some merely human effort; the Bible says, The grief must be recognised: it is the black child of black sin; it is God's way of showing his displeasure; but even sorrow, whether it come in the form of penalty or come simply as a test, with a view to the chastening of the man's heart and life, can be sanctified and turned into a blessing. Any book which so speaks deserves the confidence of men who know the weight and bitterness of suffering. Look at the old family Bible, and observe where it is thumbed most. Have we not said before that we can almost tell the character of the household from the finger-marks upon the old family Bible? Did we not once say, Turn to the twenty-third Job 6:7

Here we are called upon to recognise the astounding reverses which may take place in life.—It would seem as if nothing were impossible in the way of human reverses.—The most shocking events become commonplaces, and the things that are most dreaded force upon us their unwelcome familiarity.—Sometimes such reverses are good for us.—The dainty soul despises all common life, all democracy, all popular association, and prefers to live in dignified solitude or in luxurious ease.—When such a soul is brought by poverty, or ill-health, or any other circumstance, to mingle with hitherto despised classes, not unfrequently those classes appear in a better light than when seen from a distance.—Many a man has been forced to a better interpretation of society by the loss of position which gave him uniqueness and assured him a large measure of ease and comfort.—We can only be fully trained to the highest life by being changed from one position to another, and by being compelled to associate with those who are supposed to be beneath us, and take part in service which has always been avoided as drudgery.—The poor present many aspects which are far from inviting to the rich; yet when they are approached sympathetically even they can contribute a good deal towards the solid comfort and real progress of their nominal superiors.—Even disease, which when viewed in the abstract is most repulsive and intolerable, may come to create a kind of companionship between itself and the sufferer, so that the sufferer may look to his disease for instruction, chastening, discipline, and many moral advantages.—The Psalmist said: It was good for me that I was afflicted: before I was afflicted I went astray.—He: did not value the affliction for its own sake, but for the sake of the things which it wrought out in the cultivation and perfecting of his character.—Job did not accept the discipline with gratitude when he declared that the things which his soul once refused had become his meat; he did not forget to add the word "sorrowful"; so the text stands as we find it.—Nor may we complain that Job did not at once reach the highest ideal of character, assimilating things evil in themselves, and accounting them as good; there must be a period of training: for who can be at once familiar with sorrow, or immediately excite his affections in the interests of distress and loss and pain?—Keep in view the point, that we may suffer the most violent reverses in fortune, and be compelled altogether to change our tastes and affinities.—We are not separated from any form of disease or sorrow by permanent boundaries: now we are on this side, and now we are on that, and oftentimes it would appear as if we had no control over our position or lot in life.—One thing we can do; we can discourage the spirit of contempt in regard to those whose lot is heavy and bitter, and see in them what we ourselves may one day be: the very thinnest partition divides the richest man from the poorest: the strongest man may be dead tomorrow: one lightning flash, and the most herculean frame may be thrown into decrepitude and helplessness.—So we must learn from one another, and understand that the highest and the lowest are related, and that exchange of position is always within the range of possibility, and may sometimes be necessary to the perfecting of our spiritual culture.

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"... cause me to understand wherein I have erred."— Job 6:24

Job does not admit his error, but inasmuch as he is suffering as if he had erred he wishes to have the mistake definitely pointed out.—All unexplained suffering is made the larger by its very mystery.—We do not always see the errors we have committed; sometimes they require to be distinctly pointed out by him against whom we have transgressed.—Error is not broad, vulgar, and obvious, in all its manifestations.—Sometimes it is spiritual, subtle, beyond the reach of words, and wholly invisible, except when high moral light falls upon it from above.—The patriarch is in a reasonable mood, inasmuch as he desires to have his understanding enlightened as to his faults; at the same time, even our reasonableness may be barbed with a cruel sting: the soft tone does not always convey the soft meaning: even in this exclamation of the sufferer there may be a tone of self-complacency or even of defiance, as who should say, It is impossible to charge me with error: if I am chargeable with it, let me know what it is, for I have no consciousness of it, and if any proof can be furnished it will excite my surprise.—Men are not quick to see their own errors.—Even the best man requires all the light of heaven in which to see himself as he really is.—Comparing ourselves with ourselves, we become wise in our own conceit, but comparing ourselves with the spiritual law of God, we see that even our virtue cannot boast to be without stain or flaw.—The prayer may be turned to high practical uses: Search me, O God, and try me, and see if there be any wicked way in me.—We must get rid of the deception that we fully and absolutely see ourselves as we really are: every day we need God's help to show us our true character, our real motive, our complete design.—We can hide many things under a false exterior which we would not for the world expose to the light of day.—We must insist upon viewing ourselves in the divine light, rather than judging ourselves by social canons and conventional standards.—Let us go to God for full explanations of natural mysteries, personal perplexities, and all social hindrances and vexations.—There is always more in a case of this kind than is obvious on the surface.—All inward trouble does not indicate itself by outward symptoms: hence we need the intervention and guidance of the divine.