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 7:11

This is natural, but unwise.—A spirit that is in anguish cannot take a fair and full view of any question.—Anguish and justice can hardly dwell together.—To speak in an agony of sorrow is to attach undue meanings to words, to burden them with unjust weight, and to shut out elements and considerations which are essential to impartial and philosophical conclusions.—No man ought to speak in the anguish of his spirit concerning divine providence; otherwise he may charge God foolishly, bringing together all the inequalities, severities, and miscarriages of life, and urging them against the goodness of divine providence.—We should be silent in sorrow, for to speak without self-control is to speak without wisdom.—Let him speak who has passed through sorrow and seen something of its true purpose: then will he be likely to speak with the sobriety of experience and with the deep feeling of sympathy.—We could not speak fairly about a friend in the moment in which he has caused us grief or severe anxiety; we should fall into an accusatory strain and charge him with having been inconsiderate if not cruel towards us.—Time is required for many an explanation, social and divine.—Sometimes we boast that in the course of a year or two the friend whom we have now annoyed or grieved will see the wisdom of our course and thank us for our decision or counsel: in the strength of this we support ourselves, sometimes indeed we plume ourselves with pardonable conceit; and when in the lapse of time our judgment is vindicated we hail our friend with the expectation that he will bless us for counsel that appeared to be unsympathetic or for a decision which was so stern as to be momentarily cruel.—There are indeed countless incidents in life calculated to bring anguish upon the spirit, to excite scepticism in the heart, and to depose faith from its calm and absolute sovereignty: virtue is thrown down in the streets, vice has everything its own way, men who never pray are satisfied with abundance, and thus Providence appears to be on the side of wickedness and selfishness of every degree.—Under such circumstances the spirit is filled with anguish, and when it speaks it is in tones of disapprobation or fretful-ness or unbelief.—We should pray for the calm spirit, for the spirit of patience and longsuffering, and only speak after we have been in profound and continuous communion with God.—Even a believing Job 7:16

Here, again, is a natural exclamation, but one which we must train ourselves to stifle.—No man can be let alone and yet live; in other words, life is an expression of communion and not of isolation.—It is pleasant for the moment only to be left to oneself; even then the pleasure is a mere sensation, and is not the expression of a deep and permanent satisfaction.—Can the branch say to the tree, Let me alone?—Can the limb say to the body, Let me exist by myself?—Can the hand live without being attached to the heart?—Trace every human life in its finest expressions and issues, and it will be found that even the most lonely are not without association with the greatest, yea, even with God himself.—Sometimes, for a moment, we may wish that even God himself would withdraw from us, at least in all controversial and judicial aspects: he presses us with too many questions, he impoverishes us by too many demands, he exhausts us by appeals too numerous to be answered.—When we ask to be let alone, it is our weakness that speaks, not our strength: our exhaustion, not our reason.—The one prayer we should constantly offer is, not to be let alone, but to be evermore an object of divine solicitude, and to be evermore called upon to answer divine claims.—When God lets a man alone the man's doom is sealed.—In the Book of Amos we find the words, "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone";—preservation from this state should be our continual and ardent desire,—When the sun lets the earth alone, the earth is chilled into ice. When the mother lets the infant alone, the infant dies.—Let us take heart, for all the controversy through which we pass is but so much discipline, and the end of all discipline sent by Heaven and properly accepted by man is culture, strength, satisfaction.