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 9:20

There are two processes often going on together in human thought,—self-justification and self-condemnation.—The justification is often outward; that is, it takes a social range, going up and down amongst men, asking for charges, indictments, proofs of blame: but even whilst the soul is thus revelling in social applause, when it turns in upon itself, it is with bitterest reproaches.—The hand has been clean, but the heart has been impure; the deed has had all the appearance of charming beneficence, but the motive out of which it came was one of the intensest selfishness.—A man may justify himself logically; that is to say, he may prove a literal consistency in his behaviour; yet when he turns to spiritual considerations, he may overwhelm himself with proofs that all his outward life has been but a series of studied attitudes, a marvel in trickery, invention, and cunning arrangement.—"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he:" "The Lord looketh on the heart:" "Judge not by the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."—It is at this point that the spirituality of the Christian religion is realised.—God searches the heart, and tries the reins of the children of men.—Innocence can be simulated; respectability can be put on like a cloak; even piety itself may be turned into a mere colour of the skin: but all these accessories are stripped by the spirit of divine judgment, and the eye of God looks upon the heart, its motive, its purpose, its supreme desire.—This is at once a terror and a blessing: a terror to the evil man, how clever soever he may have been in his exterior arrangements, a blessing to the pure and genuine heart that has had to struggle against a thousand social disadvantages and oppositions.—The great condemnation is self-condemnation.—In vain the world applauds us, when we know that the applause is undeserved.—The public assembly may welcome us with overwhelming acclamation, yet the soul within may say, All this noise is a tribute to my hypocrisy, not a recognition of my real state; could these people know me as I really am, these welcoming cheers would be turned into thundering denunciations: I do not accept the huzzas of the ignorant multitude, I tremble and cower under my own judgment.—Self-justification is no commendation: he who justifies himself before men, is all the more likely to be guilty before God; for he tries to make up by boisterousness and declamation what is wanting in solidity and spiritual piety.—"Brethren, if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things."—Blessed is the man who condemns himself justly and thoroughly, for only by so doing does he prepare himself for the true revelation of God in the soul.—God never sat down in the heart of self-conceit, but evermore hurled against that heart his judgments and retributions.—The Pharisee justified himself, and was left unjustified by God: the publican condemned himself, and went down to his house justified.