It fell on a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, that there came a messenger to Job, and said, “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabeans attacked, and took them away. Yes, they have killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, there also came another, and said, “The fire of God has fallen from the sky, and has burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, there came also another, and said, “The Chaldeans made three bands, and swept down on the camels, and have taken them away, yes, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, there came also another, and said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, and behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young men, and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you.”
Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked will I return there. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be Yahweh’s name.” In all this, Job didn’t sin, nor charge God with wrongdoing.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22 That is, the Arabians.
That is, the Arabians.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv13–22 Job 1:13 And there was a day when his…
Job 1:13 And there was a day when his sons and his daughters [were] eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
Ver. 13. And there was a day] A dismal day it proved to Job, "a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness," as Zep 1:15. That subtle serpent set upon mischief, purposely picketh out such a time to do it as wherein such a sad and sudden change was least of all looked for; and then lays on amain (as if he were wood) with the hail shot, hell shot of sharpest afflictions. He knows well, that as mercies and deliverances, the more unexpected they are the more welcome, as Abraham’s receiving his son Isaac after a sort from the dead; Israel’s eduction out of Egypt, when they were forsaken by their hopes; Jonah’s being drawn out of the belly of hell (as he phraseth it, Jon 2:2); so crosses, the more suddenly they befall men the more they amate them; and finding weak minds secure, they make them miserable, leave them desperate.
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When his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine] Wherewith, if their hearts were overcharged (and what more easy? the devil foiled our first parents by inordinate appetite, and finding it then so successful a weapon, he maketh use of it still), that day might come upon them unawares, Luk 21:34. That was Satan’s drift surely, however it happened; and so to destroy body and soul together. But it is to be hoped that he was disappointed in his aim; and that death was sent in haste to Job’s children, as an invitant to a better feast; and that they might do as our Saviour did, who being at a feast at Bethany, fell into a meditation and discourse of his death and burial, Joh 12:7-8. Sure it is, that although the wicked may die sinning, and shall die in their sins, Joh 5:21, and so be killed with death, as Jezebel’s children were, Rev 2:23; yet God’s children shall not die before their time, Ecc 7:17, or till the best time, till their work is done, Rev 11:7. No malice of man or devil can antedate my end a minute (saith one), while my Master hath work for me to do. It is the happiness of a saint, that he is sure not to die till that time, when as, if he were but rightly informed, he would even desire to die. Happy is he, that after due preparation is passed through the gates of death ere he be aware, as Job’s children were.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv14–22 i.e. Beside the oxen, therefore both were taken away…
i.e. Beside the oxen, therefore both were taken away together.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv13, 20 We have here a particular account of Job's troubles.
We have here a particular account of Job's troubles.
I. Satan brought them upon him on the very day that his children began their course of feasting, at their eldest brother's house (Job 1:13), where, he having (we may suppose) the double portion, the entertainment was the richest and most plentiful. The whole family, no doubt, was in perfect repose, and all were easy and under no apprehension of the trouble, now when they revived this custom; and this time Satan chose, that the trouble, coming now, might be the more grievous. The night of my pleasure has he turned into fear, Isa 21:4.
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II. They all come upon him at once; while one messenger of evil tidings was speaking another came, and, before he had told his story, a third, and a fourth, followed immediately. Thus Satan, by the divine permission, ordered it, 1. That there might appear a more than ordinary displeasure of God against him in his troubles, and by that he might be exasperated against divine Providence, as if it were resolved, right or wrong, to ruin him, and not give him time to speak for himself. 2. That he might not have leisure to consider and recollect himself, and reason himself into a gracious submission, but might be overwhelmed and overpowered by a complication of calamities. If he have not room to pause a little, he will be apt to speak in haste, and then, if ever, he will curse his God. Note, The children of God are often in heaviness through manifold temptations; deep calls to deep; waves and billows come one upon the neck of another. Let one affliction therefore quicken and help us to prepare for another; for, how deep soever we have drunk of the bitter cup, as long as we are in this world we cannot be sure that we have drunk our share and that it will finally pass from us.
III. They took from him all that he had, and made a full end of his enjoyments. The detail of his losses answers to the foregoing inventory of his possessions.
1. He had 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 she-asses, and a competent number of servants to attend them; and all these he lost at once, Job 1:14, Job 1:15. The account he has of this lets him know, (1.) That it was not through any carelessness of his servants; for then his resentment might have spent itself upon them: The oxen were ploughing, not playing, and the asses not suffered to stray and so taken up as waifs, but feeding beside them, under the servant's eye, each in their place; and those that passed by, we may suppose, blessed them, and said, God speed the plough. Note, All our prudence, care, and diligence, cannot secure us from affliction, no, not from those afflictions which are commonly owing to imprudence and negligence. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman, though ever so wakeful, wakes but in vain. Yet it is some comfort under a trouble if it found us in the way of our duty, and not in any by-path. (2.) That is was through the wickedness of his neighbours the Sabeans, probably a sort of robbers that lived by spoil and plunder. They carried off the oxen and asses, and slew the servants that faithfully and bravely did their best to defend them, and one only escaped, not in kindness to him or his master, but that Job might have the certain intelligence of it by an eye-witness before he heard it by a flying report, which would have brought it upon him gradually. We have no reason to suspect that either Job or his servants had given any provocation to the Sabeans to make this inroad, but Satan put it into their hearts to do it, to do it now, and so gained a double point, for he made both Job to suffer and them to sin. Note, When Satan has God's permission to do mischief he will not want mischievous men to be his instruments in doing it, for he is a spirit that works in the children of disobedience.
2. He had 7000 sheep, and shepherds that kept them; and all those he lost at the same time by lightning, Job 1:16. Job was perhaps, in his own mind, ready to reproach the Sabeans, and fly out against them for their injustice and cruelty, when the next news immediately directs him to look upwards: The fire of God has fallen from heaven. As thunder is his voice, so lightning is his fire: but this was such an extraordinary lightning, and levelled so directly against Job, that all his sheep and shepherds were not only killed, but consumed by it at once, and one shepherd only was left alive to carry the news to poor Job. The devil, aiming to make him curse God and renounce his religion, managed this part of the trial very artfully, in order thereto. (1.) His sheep, with which especially he used to honour God in sacrifice, were all taken from him, as if God were angry at his offerings and would punish him in those very things which he had employed in his service. Having misrepresented Job to God as a false servant, in pursuance of his old design to set Heaven and earth at variance, he here misrepresented God to Jacob as a hard Master, who would not protect those flocks out of which he had so many burnt-offerings. This would tempt Job to say, It is in vain to serve God. (2.) The messenger called the lightning the fire of God (and innocently enough), but perhaps Satan thereby designed to strike into his mind this thought, that God had turned to be his enemy and fought against him, which was much more grievous to him than all the insults of the Sabeans. He owned (Job 31:23) that destruction from God was a terror to him. How terrible then were the tidings of this destruction, which came immediately from the hand of God! Had the fire from heaven consumed the sheep upon the altar, he might have construed it into a token of God's favour; but, the fire consuming them in the pasture, he could not but look upon it as a token of God's displeasure. There have not been the like since Sodom was burned.
3. He had 3000 camels, and servants tending them; and he lost them all at the same time by the Chaldeans, who came in three bands, and drove them away, and slew the servants, Job 1:17. If the fire of God, which fell upon Job's honest servants, who were in the way of their duty, had fallen upon the Sabean and Chaldean robbers who were doing mischief, God's judgments therein would have been like the great mountains, evident and conspicuous; but when the way of the wicked prospers, and they carry off their booty, while just and good men are suddenly cut off, God's righteousness is like the great deep, the bottom of which we cannot find, Psa 36:6.
4. His dearest and most valuable possessions were his ten children; and, to conclude the tragedy, news if brought him, at the same time, that they were killed and buried in the ruins of the house in which they were feasting, and all the servants that waited on them, except one that came express with the tidings of it, Job 1:18, Job 1:19. This was the greatest of Job's losses, and which could not but go nearest him; and therefore the devil reserved it for the last, that, if the other provocations failed, this might make him curse God. Our children are pieces of ourselves; it is very hard to part with them, and touches a good man in as tender a part as any. But to part with them all at once, and for them to be all cut off in a moment, who had been so many years his cares and hopes, went to the quick indeed. (1.) They all died together, and not one of them was left alive. David, though a wise and good man, was very much discomposed by the death of one son. How hard then did it bear upon poor Job who lost them all, and, in one moment, was written childless! (2.) They died suddenly. Had they been taken away by some lingering disease, he would have had notice to expect their death, and prepare for the breach; but this came upon him without giving him any warning. (3.) They died when they were feasting and making merry. Had they died suddenly when they were praying, he might the better have borne it. He would have hoped that death had found them in a good frame if their blood had been mingled with their feast, where he himself used to be jealous of them that they had sinned, and cursed God in their hearts - to have that day come upon them unawares, like a thief in the night, when perhaps their heads were overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness - this could not but add much to his grief, considering what a tender concern he always had for his children's souls, and that they were now out of the reach of the sacrifices he used to offer according to the number of them all. See how all things come alike to all. Job's children were constantly prayed for by their father, and lived in love one with another, and yet came to this untimely end. (4.) They died by a wind of the devil's raising, who is the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2), but it was looked upon to be an immediate hand of God, and a token of his wrath. So Bildad construed it (Job 8:4): Thy children have sinned against him, and he has cast them away in their transgression. (5.) They were taken away when he had most need of them to comfort him under all his other losses. Such miserable comforters are all creatures. In God only we have a present help at all times.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv13–22 And there was a day,.... Which according to the…
And there was a day,.... Which according to the Targum was the first day of the week, but this is not certain, nor material; nor can it be said whether it was the day following that, Satan had leave to do what he would with Job's substance, nor how long this was after that; for though Satan was no doubt eager upon it, and in haste to do mischief; yet besides its requiring some time to get the Sabeans and Chaldeans to march out of their own country into Job's, so he would contrive and fix upon the most proper time to answer his ends and purposes, which was
when his (Job's) sons and daughters were eating, and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; it should rather be rendered, "in the house of their brother, the firstborn"; that is, of Job; for relates not to brethren, but to parents, as Gussetins observes (b): this was either the beginning of a new turn, or rotation of their feasting with each other, which might begin with the elder brother; or this was his birthday; see Job 1:4 and this was the day Satan pitched upon to bring all the following calamities and distresses upon Job; partly that they might fall with the greater weight upon him, and more sensibly affect him, coming upon him while his family was feasting; and while he was pleasing himself with the thoughts of having brought up his children to men's and women's estate, and of the affluent circumstances they were in; and of the unity, harmony, and love that subsisted amongst them, of which their present feasting to gether was a proof; and partly that these afflictions might the more look like the judgments of God upon him, just as the men of the old world were eating and drinking when the flood came and destroyed them all, Luk 17:27 and for the same reasons these were all brought upon him in one day, to crush him the more; and that it might be thought the hand of God was in it, in a way of wrath and vengeance, and so irritate him to curse him to his face, which was what Satan aimed at; see Isa 47:8.
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(b) Ebr. Comment. p. 127.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 Messenger, &c. - One messenger immediately followed another; Satan…
Messenger, &c. - One messenger immediately followed another; Satan so ordering by God's permission, that there might seem to be more than ordinary displeasure of God against him in his troubles, and that he might not have leisure to recollect himself, but be overwhelmed by a complication of calamities.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 Verse 13. There was a day] The first day…
Verse 13. There was a day] The first day of the week, says the Targum. It no doubt refers to one of those birthday festivals mentioned before.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Job 1:14-15. And the asses feeding beside them —…
Job 1:14-15. And the asses feeding beside them — That is, beside the oxen. And the Sabeans fell upon them — A people of Arabia, who led a wandering life, and lived by robbery and plunder, as Strabo and other heathen writers observe. They were the descendants of Abraham by Keturah, whose son Jokshan begat Sheba, their progenitor. Indeed, the Hebrew here is, Sheba fell upon them; and took them away — The whole five hundred yoke of oxen, and the five hundred asses which he had. Yea, they have slain the servants, &c. — Who faithfully and bravely did their best to defend them. And I only am escaped to tell thee — Him Satan spared no less maliciously than he destroyed the rest, that Job might have speedy and certain intelligence of his calamity.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv13–22 And there was a day - That is, on…
And there was a day - That is, on the day on which the regular turn came for the banquet to be held in the house of the older brother; compare the notes at Job 1:4.
And drinking wine - This circumstance is omitted in Job 1:4. It shows that wine was regarded as an essential part of the banquet, and it was from its use that Job apprehended the unhappy results referred to in Job 1:5.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22 Sabeans, descended from Abraham, in the desert (Calmet) or…
Sabeans, descended from Abraham, in the desert (Calmet) or happy Arabia. These nations lived on plunder. (Pliny, [Natural History?] vi. 28.) (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 JOB, IN AFFLICTION, BLESSES GOD, &c. (Job 1:13-22)
JOB, IN AFFLICTION, BLESSES GOD, &c. (Job 1:13-22)
wine--not specified in Job 1:4. The mirth inspired by the "wine" here contrasts the more sadly with the alarm which interrupted it.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv13–22 FOUR MESSENGERS OF MISFORTUNE, Job_1:13-19.
FOUR MESSENGERS OF MISFORTUNE, Job_1:13-19.
“It is not accidental,” says Hengstenberg, “that there are just four catastrophes divided into two pairs, and corresponding to the fourfold particularization of the righteousness of Job. In them may be seen a sort of irony of destiny touching his and all human righteousness.” The Germans have also remarked upon the peculiarity that the first and third of the calamities are ascribed to human, the second and fourth to celestial agencies. — Evans. The Germans call calamities hiobs-posten — “Job’s posts,” or messengers — a proverbial expression similar to our own “Job’s comforters.”
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13. There was a day — Literally, Now it was the day; the day of festivity, which in the rotation happened to be at the house of the firstborn. On this account it was probably the most marked of all the feasts of the year. It was a feast, too, in which the drinking of wine is specified, to set forth its sumptuousness and hilarity. These two circumstances heighten the precipice down which the family is so soon to be plunged. In the mention of wine-drinking we have, in part, the reason for Job’s anxiety over these festive occasions, and perhaps also the secret of his standing aloof.
Wine-drinking and its drunken effects, even upon women, are portrayed on the monuments of Egypt. The winepresses and offerings of wine to the gods, pictured in the tombs, establish the making of wine as far back as the fourth dynasty, (about 2450 B.C.) This is supposed to be the remotest period from which the manners of the people were thus perpetuated. The culture of the vine was, without doubt, of a vastly greater antiquity, (Gen_9:20,) as is seen in the exceptional fact that substantially the same word is used for wine among almost all eastern and western nations. The basis of the word is found, according to Pott and Kuhn, in the Indo-European language, the former making it from we, to weave, the latter from wan, to love. Gesenius and Furst, on the other hand, hold that it is of Semitic extraction, and cognate to יין, either from a root signifying “burning,” or another, “to tread out grapes.” The oneness of the word in the Indo-European and Semitic languages may be illustrated by comparing the Greek οινος, originally foinos, the Latin vinum, the Welsh g-win, with the Hebrew yayin, the Arabic wain, (a bunch of grapes,) Ethiopic wain, (wine.)
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 13–22. Job’s first trial; and its issue: his reverence…
13–22. Job’s first trial; and its issue: his reverence towards God remains unshaken
Between Job_1:12-13 there is an interval, an ominous stillness like that which precedes the storm. The poet has drawn aside the curtain to us and we know what is impending. Job knows nothing. His children are about him and he thinks the Almighty is yet with him, Job_29:5. The earth smiles to him as it was wont by day; and by night the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades come forth in their silent procession, and the Dragon trails his glittering folds across the heavens overhead, and he looks with wonder into the deep chambers of the South. All is glorious with a constant glory because it is an unchanging hand that leads them forth, the hand of the Holy One from whose words he has never declined, Job_6:10, and whose candle as he deems still shines upon his head, Job_29:3. He does not know that he is being played for like a pawn. Suddenly the catastrophe overtakes him. Messenger after messenger, each taking up his tale of ruin before the other has concluded his, announce that all he had has been taken from him. Heaven and earth have combined to overwhelm him. The forces of nature and the destructive violence of men have united to strip him bare.
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The description has many features of the ideal. First, the catastrophe befell on the day when Job’s children were feasting in their eldest brother’s house, Job_1:13, the day on the morning of which Job had sent for his children and sanctified them and offered sacrifices on their behalf. Job’s godliness and his calamity are brought into the closest contrast. He felt this, and as he regarded every event as wrought by the hand of God immediately, his afflictions threw his mind into the deepest perplexity regarding the ways of God. Again, while heaven and men alternate their strokes upon him, these strokes follow one another with increasing severity, and in each case only one escapes to bring the grievous tidings. The rapid touches of the Author do not suggest any struggle or rising rebelliousness in Job’s mind. He manifests the liveliest grief, but maintains his self-control. And the scene closes upon the sufferer, a solitary man, worshipping God amidst the waste where his rich possessions once had lien.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 (15) The Sabeans.—Literally, Sheba. Three persons named Sheba are…
(15) The Sabeans.—Literally, Sheba. Three persons named Sheba are found in Genesis: (1) The son of Raamah and grandson of Cush (Gen_10:7); (2) the son of Jokshan and grandson of Abraham (Gen_25:3); (3) The son of Joktanand grandson of Eber (Gen_10:28). It is probably the second who is referred to here, whose descendants led a predatory and marauding kind of life in the country bordering on that of Job. (Comp. Eze_38:13.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv13–22 And there was a day when his sons and…
And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother"s house. One of the birthdays, the eldest brother"s probably, had come round, and the ordinary gathering (see ver. 4) had taken place the feasting and drinking had begun, while the father, remaining in his own house, was perhaps interceding with God for his children, or anxiously considering the possibility that, in their light-hearted merriment, they might have put God away altogether from their thoughts, and So have practically renounced him, when the series of calamities began. How often calamity comes to us when we are least expecting it, when all seems quiet about us, when everything is prospering nay, even when a high festival-time has come, and the joy-bells are sounding in our ears, and our "hearts are elated within us! Job was, at any rate, spared the sudden plunge from exuberant joy into the depths of woe. It was his habit to preserve an even temper, and neither to be greatly exalted, nor, unless under an extremity of suffering, to be greatly depressed. He was now, however, about to be subjected to a fiery trial.
Vers. 13-22. The first trial of the patriarch.
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I THE PREPARATION FOR THE TRIAL. The patriarch at the height of his prosperity. The season pitched upon for making an assault upon the patriarch was a day of:
1. Festive rejoicing; when the patriarch"s family were convened at a banquet of unusual magnificence, "eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother"s house;" such a sumptuous entertainment doubtless as became the firstborn to provide.
2. Busy industry; when the whole household of the patriarch was astir with unwonted activity: the ploughmen driving furrows through the soil with the assistance of the patient oxen, while the she-asses cropped the pastures in their vicinity; the shepherds tending the vast droves of sheep which spread themselves across the plain; and the camel-drivers going and returning with their caravans of costly merchandise.
3. Unmingled happiness; in which the patriarch, it may well be imagined, surveying his earthly lot, observing the loving unity and innocent gladness of his children, and beholding the fidelity and diligence of his servants, realized that his cup of terrestrial felicity was full and even overflowing.
4. Fancied security; in which not a cloud appeared in all the wide and clear horizon; not a shadow dimmed the brightness of the sky, not a speck of trouble anywhere could be detected to excite the patriarch"s alarm. It was such a day as seldom falls to the lot of God"s people on earth to enjoy; and the selection of that day above all others for casting down the patriarch from the pinnacle of his greatness and the summit of his felicity was doubtless craftily designed that the very loftiness of the patriarch"s elevation might intensify the depth and severity of his fall.
II THE MANAGEMENT OF THE TRIAL. The patriarch"s prosperity overthrown.
1. The swiftly completed ruin.
(1) Sudden in its coming; the citadel of Job"s integrity being more likely to be carried by a coup de main than by a leisurely and deliberate attack, inasmuch as to be forewarned is also to be forearmed, and dangers that men see they can usually adopt measures to avert.
(2) Universal in its sweep; the devil falling not a step behind, if he could not advance a step beyond, the Divine permission, with one terrible avalanche of disaster descending on the fair scene of the patriarch"s prosperity, and leaving not a spot unvisited by his devouring rage.
(3) Pitiless in its devastation; exempting only four domestics (not sons! which might have been a mitigation; but the devil"s mercies are generally cruel), consigning all the rest to one overwhelming, remorseless destruction.
(4) Cunning in its contrivance; being effected not directly and immediately by the devil himself, but by natural agencies Sabeans and Chaldeans, lightnings and hurricanes so that it might appear to be the work of God"s ordinary providence, and be ascribed by the stricken man to the Deity whom he served and adored.
2. The skilfully arranged report.
a. Messenger following upon messenger, like Ahimaaz speeding after, (2Sa_18:22) so that the full tale of misfortunes might not be declared at once, but with exquisite torture protracted to the utmost.
b. Calamity heaped upon calamity; not a single messenger arriving with happy tidings, but each one with a heavier burden than his predecessor.
c. Stroke descending upon stroke; not one speaker having the grace, like Ahimaaz when reporting Absalom"s death to David, to mitigate the blow to the old man; but, like Cushi, each one with excruciating minuteness of detail dwelling on his tale of misery, and with something like selfish satisfaction emphasizing the fact of his own escape to be the bearer of the appalling news, not perceiving that that might only be an aggravation of the patriarch"s distress; and with no interruption in the awful torrent of adversity, not so much as a moment to breathe in, but on and on in one incessant stream: "While he was yet speaking;" and, "While he was yet speaking;" and, "While he was yet speaking." Clearly if Satan"s craft was conspicuous in his preparation for the trial, it was equally apparent is his management of the same.
III THE ISSUE OF THE TRIAL. The patriarch"s reception of the news.
1. With penitential sorrow; expressed in the symbolic actions of rending his garments (cf. Gen_37:34 Jos_7:6 2Sa_1:11 2Sa_3:31) and shaving his head; (cf. Isa_15:2 Isa_22:12 Jer_7:29 Jer_41:5 Mic_1:16) the first revealing the vehemence and intensity of the patriarch"s emotion, and the second pointing to its calmness and moderation.
2. With pious resignation. Acknowledging:
(1) His originally destitute condition: "Naked came I out of my mother"s womb;" so that his calamities had only set him where he was at first an argument for contentment. (1Ti_6:7)
(2) His prospective departure from the world: "Naked shall I return thither;" so that after all he had but experienced a little earlier what was certain to befall him in the end (cf. Ecc_5:15 Ecc_12:7; and "Measure for Measure," act 3. sc. 2) an argument for submission.
(3) His entire dependence upon God for all the blessings of his earthly lot: "The Lord gave;" so that he himself could claim no absolute ownership in anything he had lost (1Co_4:7 Jam_1:17) an argument for acquiescence.
(4) His devout recognition of the hand of God in his afflictions and losses: "The Lord hath taken away;" so that not only had he laid his hand upon him who had perfect right to do so, but in removing his possessions and children he had merely taken what was first his own a fourth argument for resignation.
3. With lowly adoration. Falling on the ground and worshipping; thus giving the lie to Satan"s calumny by retaining his steadfastness and maintaining his integrity; not cursing God to his face, but solemnly, reverently, and devoutly adding, "Blessed be the Name of Jehovah!
IV THE VERDICT ON THE TRIAL. The complete vindication of the patriarch. His triumphant passage through the appalling ordeal is:
1. Commended by God. The statement of the historian we must regard as but the transcript of the Divine judgment upon the trial: "In all this Job sinned not, neither charged God foolishly.
2. Admitted by Satan. This appears from Job_2:4, where, though the devil is prepared with an explanation of the cause, he is yet constrained to admit the fact of Job"s steadfast allegiance to Jehovah throughout his first onslaught.
3. Recorded by the historian. So that wherever this ancient poem finds a reader there shall the courage and fidelity of the stricken patriarch be known and admired.
Learn:
1. That if God has his times and seasons, and Christ has his hours, and man his opportunities for working, so also the devil has his days for his Satanic movements.
2. That the devil"s assaults upon human virtue and Christian fidelity are always characterized by consummate wisdom as regards both the times and the instruments as well as the methods of attack.
3. That the power of Satan to injure man is well-nigh unlimited, at least when God permits.
4. That the most prosperous estate of man may, in a moment, be converted into the profoundest misery, as the brightest day may be followed by the darkest night.
5. That calamities seldom fall upon God"s people singly and alone, are apt to be misconstrued as to their origin and design, but should never fail to lead the heart closer to God.
6. That God"s people should in times of adversity remember their origin and prepare for their end.
7. That, whether suffering or rejoicing, saints should imitate the piety of Job, recognize God"s hand in everything, and "in everything give thanks.
Vers. 13-22. The invasion of trouble, and its first effect on Job.
The lessons on which we have been dwelling, and on which Job had doubtless deeply meditated in the leisure of his prosperous days, were now to receive the illustration of actual experience. A series of waves breaks in upon his peaceful home and heart, and, in the space of a few short hours, turns the smiling scene into utter desolation. We may notice in the story the following points: the calamities of Job, and their first effect upon his mind.
I THE CALAMITIES. Their suddenness and unexpectedness. A bright holiday was selected by Providence for the discharge of those torrents of woe. The young people were making merry in their eldest brother"s house perhaps on his birthday when the bolt out of the blue, without a moment"s warning, struck. The imagination is powerfully affected by such contrasts. We do not pity ourselves or others so deeply when we have had time to prepare for the storm. The shock of the blow is broken when it finds us forewarned and forearmed. Men must all suffer at some time, and at some time must die; but the terror of the unlooked-for sorrow is as great as the joy of the unlooked-for blessing. But since there is a truth in the saying that "the unexpected always happens," how important to secure that only preparation for it which is within our power a mind like Job"s, fixed in principle, because fixed on God!
II THERE WAS GRADATION IN THESE TROUBLES. They began in the inferior elements of life, and quickly rose to their climax in the superior. There was first the loss of property, in three distinct blows. First the oxen and the asses, then the sheep, and then the camels, were destroyed; and the whole of the herdsmen successively swept away. After the first loss, the instinct of Job would doubtless be to say, "Thank God for what is left;" and the same after the second; but the third cuts off these reflections, and strikes home the dreary conviction, "I am a ruined man!" Who can know but those who have suffered it what it is to lose a third or two-thirds of their worldly goods much more to lose one"s all? Shakespeare truly says that tenfold bitterer to lose than "tis great at first to acquire." Still, a noble and loving soul, accustomed to find in affection life"s choicest boon, will be consoled by the thought," My family is left me; and their redoubled tenderness and sympathy, and cares and hopes for them, will still make life worth living." But even this sentiment, if it rose in the mind of the ruined man, is blighted in the bud by the terrible news that his sons and daughters have all perished by a sudden and violent death. Thus did some hidden wrath seem to exhaust its vials of concentrated fury on his devoted head; and he who had basked so long in the sunshine is plunged into the darkness, without apparently a single beam of comfort or of hope from without. Nay, more; that his children should have been cut off in the blossom of their sins, in the very height of their mirth, hurried away without time for further expiation or prayer, seemed, alter all the father"s earnest piety, as if Heaven had abandoned and doomed him.
III We may notice, too, THE VARIETY OF THE SOURCES OF THESE AFFLICTIONS, The first came from the hand of men, from robbers, from men of violence and deceit. The second fell from heaven, in the form of devouring fire. The third, again, was a human outrage; and the fourth and most dreadful again from the tempestuous violence of heaven. For a just man to be the prey of injustice, to know that bad men gain at the expense of his loss, is a bitter experience; but to see mysterious, superhuman power, as it were, in alliance and compact with the wicked, is an awful aggravation.
IV But WHAT IS THE EFFECT ON THE SUFFERER"S MIND? A glorious halo indeed surrounds him in this awful moment. Now is the time to see what there is in goodness, what is the real nature of faith; now or never the accuser must be abashed, and faint hearts must take courage, and God must be glorified. We learn from Job"s behaviour that a true life in God is destined to triumph over all outward change and loss, over darkness, mystery, and death.
1. Faith. He believes in God. Not for a moment is his faith shaken. And his first instinct is to throw himself upon his God. He falls upon "the world"s great altar-stairs which slope through darkness up to God." "Behold, he prays," and Satan already trembles for his wager. Oh, let us ever bend, reed-like, beneath the storm of Heaven-sent trial; not be broken like the rigid oak! He who can say from the heart, like the poor father in the Gospels, (Mar_9:24) "Lord, I believe," shall presently find the floods abating, and a great calm around him.
2. Resignation. Our will has nothing to do with the supreme turns and crises of being. We did not come into this world, we ought not to attempt to go out of it, by an act of our own. We must be resigned to live or to die. A supreme will determines our coming and our going, our entrance and our exit, in this short scene of life. We did not determine the external condition in which we should be born. We all came naked into the world, and shall pass away taking nothing with us. Our bodily composition is earthy, and it must crumble back to earth. To her, the all-receiving mother of human-kind, we must each return. The deep sense of these relations is fitted to impress the habit of resignation. And, on the other hand, the transitoriness and weakness of our earthly estate should throw us upon the great spiritual realities. Resignation is not religious, self-renunciation is not complete, until we learn not only to give up earth and earthly will, but to cast ourselves on the bosom of the Eternal. He gives and he takes away the things that are no part of us, but only that he may hold ourselves, our souls, to him for ever.
3. Thanksgiving. What! thanks to God when he takes, as well as when he gives? Is this natural? is this possible? All is natural, is possible, to faith. For faith rests not upon what God does at this or that moment, but upon what he ever is. His action varies; in himself there is no variableness, nor shadow of a turning. Joy and sorrow, light and darkness, every possible phase of human experience, these are the language of God to the soul. His meaning is one through all tones of his voice. Blessed, then, be the Name, not of the bestowing, health and joy imparting Father of light, Giver of every good and perfect gift; but blessed be the Name of the Eternal, true to himself in all his purposes, true to his children in all his dealings with them for their good. "Blessed be the hand that gives, Still blessed when it takes.
Oh that these songs, e profundis and e tenebris the depth" and "the darkness might be heard more clearly, more unfalteringly, in all our public devotions as well as in all our private prayers! This offering of self to God in trust, submission, thanksgiving, is a" reasonable sacrifice." And as its savour ascends to heaven, it brings its peaceful answer back to the heart. The twenty-second verse reminds us by contrast, of the danger of sinning against God by reproaches and murmurs in our sorrow. "Job sinned not, and gave no offence to God," as the words may, perhaps, be better rendered. And after dwelling so much upon that temper which pleases our heavenly Father, let us enforce the lesson by reflecting on what we are so ready to forget that he is justly displeased by indulgence in doubts of his existence or goodness, rebellion against the course of his providence, and the refusal of praise to his holy Name. J.
Vers. 13-19. Job"s unparalleled calamities.
Everything is done to heighten and intensify the impression of Job"s calamities. Let us note their salient features.
I THEY OCCUR AT A SEASON OF FESTIVITY. It was a feast-day, and Job"s whole family was gathered together in his eldest son"s house. Then of all times the affectionate father would be least prepared for ominous rumours of calamity. The thunderbolt fell from the cloudless blue sky. Without a note of warning, the fearful storm burnt in an overwhelming deluge. This is a lesson against trusting to prosperity, as though it contained a promise of its own certain continuance. But it is no unmerciful arrangement of Providence that the dark future is hidden from us. We are made sad because We look before and after. If we saw all the future, we could not endure the present.
II THEY OCCUR IN RAPID SUCCESSION. So closely do these calamities follow one upon another that, before the first messenger has told his tale, a second herald arrives with more evil news, followed as speedily by a third, and he after no more delay by the last, with his most dreadful message. It has often been noticed how troubles come in batches. In Job"s case we can see the reason. One fearful power of malignity is behind the whole series.
III THEY COME FROM VARIOUS QUARTERS. Though Satan is the ultimate cause of all the calamities, he does not inflict any of them with his own hand. He keeps that hidden, and finds means to send emissaries from all quarters Arabs from the south fall on the home farm; lightning from heaven smites the sheep on the downs; three robber-bands of roving Chaldees from the north swoop down on the caravan of camels that carries Job"s wealth of merchandise; and, worse than all else, a hurricane from the desert smites and fells the house where Job"s sons and daughters are feasting. Who can dwell in security when trouble may come in so many directions? It is impossible for the strongest man to fortify himself against it. None of us can do more than make reasonable preparations, which may all prove useless. But all may trust the providence of him who rules wind and storm and heart of man, and without whose permission not a hair of our head can be touched.
IV THEY ARE AGGRAVATED AS THEY PROCEED. The worst comes last. It is terrible for a rich man to see his wealth melting before his eyes in a few moments. This was Antonio"s trouble when his fleet of merchandise was destroyed ("Merchant of Venice"), but it was not so fearful as Malcolm"s, when all his children were murdered at once ("Macbeth"), or the late Archbishop Tait"s, when one after another his children died of an epidemic of fever. Let the impoverished man be thankful if his family is spared to him. Note:
1. Possibly trouble is softened by coming with successive shocks. Each may drown the effect of its predecessor.
2. Job"s trouble was only once surpassed in Gethsemane. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv16, 20, 21, 22 While he was yet speaking there came also another.
Job_1:16
While he was yet speaking there came also another.
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The calamities of Job
I. Many agents are watching for opportunities to injure us, but are restrained by the power of God. These may be divided into the visible and invisible. There are the invisible, those fallen spirits, of whose apostasy and active malignity so much is said in Scripture. Here you will see how the devil first tried to take away Jobs character for sincerity and virtue, then to insinuate that he was no better than a mercenary hypocrite, then to suggest that if he was but deprived of his outward possessions he would soon prove himself to be a downright blasphemer. Have we any reason to suppose it is otherwise with respect to us? Is not Satan still injuriously active? There are visible foes of our interests and of our peace. Man is not only alienated from God, but also from his fellow creatures. You especially ought to consider the debt you owe to Gods restraining and preserving mercy. Persecution is perfectly natural to depraved man. It is providence which throws chains upon his black and malignant passions.
II. The creatures can be readily converted by God into the authors of our injury or destruction. It is so with the very elements of nature themselves. So with our social connections. A mans foes may be those of his own household. Thus it is also with our secular possessions: they may prove curses rather than blessings.
III. The external dispensations of Gods providence are not infallible criteria by which to form our estimate of human character. Prosperity is not, for it often happens that the horn of the wicked is exalted, and that they flourish like a green bay tree. Adversity is not an unequivocal test. Learn--
1. Our obligations to the protecting care of God.
2. What an illustration has been supplied of the precariousness of that tenure by which all earthly things are held. (John Clayton.)
The testing of Job
The question discussed in the Book of Job is this--Is it possible for man to be actuated by disinterested love for his Maker? Observe the tests to which Job was subjected.
I. He was tried circumstantially. Though bereft of everything, Job does not throw off his allegiance to heaven, nor shriek curses into the ears of the infinite. Desolate he says--Blessed be the name of the Lord.
II. He was tried constitutionally. Satan asks--Let me act on him? He is smitten with a loathsome disease. Does his faith stand this?
III. He was tried theologically. His friends denounced him as a sinner. His nature rebelled. For many a long day he was tortured in his deepest convictions, the tenderest nerves of his soul. Does his loyalty to heaven then give way; does his trust in the Almighty die out? Here, in Job, is the question settled for all time, that the human soul is not essentially selfish. It can fear God for nought. (Homilist.)
The design of affliction
Job and affliction have long been associated together in our minds. Next to the man of sorrows, Job was perhaps the most afflicted of the servants of God. The principle of substitution at once explains the sufferings of the one, but to account for the sufferings of the other seems at first sight more difficult. The Book of Job is the most ancient of all the books of inspiration, and is entirely independent of them. Jobs history is not linked with that of the people of God, nor does it advance in any way the manifestation of the purposes of God. As resulting from the fall, and as stamping the Divine curse upon creation, affliction is the common lot of mankind. Affliction, in one shape or another, is the special portion of Gods people. God is the author of the afflictions of His people. We are apt to ascribe it to second causes, and to lose sight of the great first cause. God has a design in affliction.
I. The design of God in the afflictions of the wicked.
1. He intends to punish the wicked by affliction. But He designs also to awaken them, to arrest their attention, and to show them the nothingness and vanity of all things here. How blessed is that affliction which brings the prodigal back to his fathers house, however severe it may be.
II. The design of God in afflicting His own people.
1. To try the genuineness of their faith. The apostle speaks of the trial of our faith. In all his trial Jobs faith was found genuine, and to the praise and honour of God; Job never does anything which is inconsistent with his being a child of God. Some, when they are put into the furnace of affliction, prove themselves to have been but hypocrites.
2. To discover the latent corruption of their hearts. When a man is first converted he little thinks how much evil there still remains behind! But the trial comes, and then unbelief arises in its former strength. Rebelliousness rages in every region of the soul. Unsubdued passions resume their strength, and he is utterly dismayed at the fearful scene. Job, who was the most patient of all men, then showed impatience. In the days of his prosperity he seemed to be perfect, but affliction showed what was in his heart.
3. To purify and to sanctify them. God puts us into the furnace to purge us from the dross--to make us holy and spiritually minded--to make us seek those things which are above.
4. To call into exercise the graces of the Spirit. There is a great tendency even in the people of God to spiritual sloth and slumber. They have grace, but their grace is not in lively exercise. Their movements are sluggish and lifeless. By affliction God awakens us to a sense of our high responsibilities, and calls forth into exercise our dormant graces.
5. To enhance the value of true religion. What can sustain you when trial and trouble, in various forms, has come upon you, but real, heartfelt piety? What else could have supported Job in his unparalleled and complicated afflictions?
6. God afflicts His people also in order to manifest His own glorious attributes. The great object in all that God does is to manifest His own glory. Learn--
(1) That God has a purpose in all that He does.
(2) Be encouraged by contemplating the case of Job. You are not standing alone in affliction.
(3) Do not only look forward to the time of your deliverance from affliction, but look unto God for His grace, not only to sustain you, but to make that affliction minister to your happiness. (A. S. Cannon.)
Whom He loveth He chasteneth
Among the mysteries of Gods providence there is perhaps no mystery greater than the law by which suffering is meted out in the world. It is not a mystery that sin should bring forth sorrow; it is not a mystery that pain, disease, and death should be the fruit of mans fall. The conscience of men in all ages--the heathen as well as the Jewish and Christian--has acquiesced in the justice of that moral constitution of things by which sin becomes chastisement and suffering the expiation of guilt. The really difficult problem is not the problem of suffering in the abstract: it is the problem of the meting out of suffering on any theory; it is the problem why the innocent are called upon to suffer, whilst the guilty too often escape. This is a problem which comes before us in the Book of Job. Job is a righteous man, living in the fear of God, and eschewing evil. He is a man of large wealth and possessions, but he does not spend his wealth in selfish gratification. He is charitable to the poor, hospitable to the stranger, bountiful to all. He was not only the greatest of all the men of the East--he was the best. But in a moment the sky of his prosperity is overcast; blow follows blow with fearful rapidity. On what principle of justice is such a man made to suffer? Here is a man exemplary in life, devout, pure, charitable, of sterling integrity, earnest piety, and sincere faith in God; Why is he crushed with this awful suffering? Contrast with this the tragedy of Prometheus, written by AEschylus. Prometheus has been the benefactor of mankind. He has entered into a sublime conflict with Zeus, the supreme being, for the good of the race. He is crushed by his adversary and he dies with defiance on his lips. The conception is grand, but the chief element of grandeur lies in the fact that it is power, and not righteousness, which sits on the throne, and rebellion against supreme power which is not supreme right must always be grand. The struggle in the history of Job is far nobler. He knows that the God he worships is not supreme power only, but supreme righteousness also. This it is that makes his trial so hard. With him the difficulty is to reconcile the God of his conscience and his faith with the God who is ruling the world. On the throne of the universe sits one who, judging by the facts of life, is not absolutely righteous. The struggle in the drama of Job is not the defiance of power, it is not the arrogant assertion of self-righteousness: it is the confession of ignorance of self, and ignorance of God; it is the submission of the sorely tried man to the revelation of that God whose revelation he had longed to see. The problem is that of innocent suffering. What is the solution of it? Three answers are given.
1. That of the three friends. Though representing three different types of character, all concur in one thing--they all hold the same theory of the Divine government, and on the strength of that theory they all condemn Job. God is just, and therefore God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. If a man suffers, he suffers because he deserves it. Job may be upright, but he must be cherishing some secret sin, and it is this which has called down on him the vengeance of the Most High. This is their compendious system of theology. But it breaks down. It is not large enough to cover the facts. Centuries of teaching could not root out of mens minds the obstinate belief that suffering is the measure of sin; but the sufferer himself repudiates it. The righteousness of God is the fundamental article of Gods creed; but then comes his cruel perplexity. Job does not maintain absolute freedom from sin. For a moment he is tempted to take refuge in blind submission. But in his inmost heart he cries out, God must be righteous. And so to the very last word he uttered he refused to be convinced of direct sin as the cause of his suffering. We know that Job is right, bat he still needed to learn the greatest lesson of all, that his very righteousness was not his own. He is right in maintaining his own innocence against his friends, right in holding fast his integrity, right in trusting God through all, right in appealing to Him to declare his righteousness when it seems to be hidden.
2. Another theory of suffering is given by Elihu. He is angry with Job for his obstinacy; and with the friends, because they have failed so completely to vindicate the righteousness of God. Elihu represents a younger theology. Gods purpose in chastisement He declares to be the purification of His servant. If He puts those whom He loves into the crucible, it is to purge away their dross, to cleanse them from past sins, and to keep them from failing in the future. Here, certainly, is a step in advance. To see a purpose of love in affliction is to turn it into a blessing. Job accepts in silence this interpretation of suffering.
3. But the mystery of suffering is not fully explained even when this purifying power is assigned to it. There is a suffering which is not even for the salvation or purification of the individual soul, but for the glory of God. In the prelude Satan tells God to His face that His servants serve Him not from disinterested motives or sincere affection, but in the spirit of the hireling, from the lowest and most mercenary, considerations. Doth Job fear God for nought? This is the challenge given, and it is one that strikes at the nature of God Himself. It means that he is incapable of inspiring a genuine, disinterested affection. God accepts the challenge. Job has to learn that suffering comes, because God is honoured in the trial of His people; and surely no more noble part can be assigned to man than to be the champion of God. (Bishop Perowne.)
The mystery of pleasure and pain
Pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, are elements of creaturely experience appointed by God. The right use of them makes life, the wrong use of them mars it. They are ordained, all of them, in equal degrees, to a good end; for all that God does is done in perfect love as well as in perfect justice. It is no more wonderful that a good man should suffer than that a bad man should suffer: for the good man, the man who believes in God and therefore in goodness, making a right use of suffering, will gain by it in the true sense; he will reach a deeper and a nobler life. It is no more wonderful that a bad man, one who disbelieves in God, and therefore in goodness, should be happy, than that a good man should be happy, the happiness being Gods appointed means for both to reach a higher life. The main element of this higher life is vigour, but not of the body. The Divine purpose is spiritual evolution. That gratification of the sensuous side of our nature for which physical health and a well-knit organism are indispensable--paramount in the pleasure philosophy--is not neglected, but is made subordinate to the Divine culture of life. The grace of God aims at the life of the spirit--power to love, to follow righteousness, to dare for justices sake, to seek and grasp the true, to sympathise with men and bear with them, to bless them that curse, to suffer and be strong. To promote this vitality, all that God appoints is fitted--pain as well as pleasure, adversity as well as prosperity, sorrow as well as joy, defeat as well as success. We wonder that suffering is so often the result of imprudence. On the ordinary theory the fact is inexplicable, for imprudence has no dark colour of ethical faultiness. He who by an error of judgment plunges himself and his family into what appears irretrievable disaster may, by all reckoning, be almost blameless in character. If suffering is held to be penal, no reference to the general sin of humanity will account for the result. But the reason is plain. The suffering is disciplinary. The nobler life at which Divine providence aims must be sagacious no less than pure, guided by sound reason no less than right feeling. And if it is asked how, from this point of view, we are to find the punishment of sin, the answer is, that happiness as well as suffering is punishment to him whose sin and the unbelief that accompanies it pervert his view of truth, and blind him to the spiritual life and to the will of God. The pleasures of a wrong-doer who persistently denies obligation to Divine authority and refuses obedience to the Divine law are no gain, but loss. They dissipate and attenuate his life. His sensuous or sensual enjoyment, his delight in selfish triumph and gratified ambition, are real, give at the time quite as much happiness as the good man has in his obedience and virtue, and perhaps a great deal more. But they are penal and retributive nevertheless, and the conviction that they are so becomes clear to the man whenever the light of truth is flashed upon his spiritual state. On the other hand, the pains and disasters which fall to the lot of evil men, intended for their correction, if in perversity or in blindness they are misunderstood, again become punishment, for they too dissipate and attenuate life. The real good of existence slips away while the mind is intent on the mere pain or vexation, and how it is to be got rid of. (Robert A. Watson, D. D.)
The three-fold calamity
This sincere, right-hearted man must be passed through the entire round of human troubles. If any usual form of human sorrow is left untried in the case of Job, then the problem of the book is not yet fully solved. According to this poet author, the calamity of human life is three fold.
I. Trouble affects a man through his possessions. The case of Job is quite a model of the troubles that can come to a man through his possessions. He had scarcely time to take breath after hearing one mournful tale before another messenger of woe burst upon him, and the climax of his woe seems utterly heartbreaking. How is it that these changes of circumstances came to press on this man as troubles? Nothing really hurts us save as it affects the mind, and different things affect us differently according as they reach the various parts of our mental and spiritual nature. What part of us, then, is touched by these outward calamities which deprive us of the things that we possess? There is in our nature the desire of acquisition, and its satisfaction is the source of very many of our pleasures. The hurt to the mind which follows on losing our possessions takes its highest form in the loss of our children and friends. So far, however, as such troubles are concerned, our manhood ought to be great enough to enable us to deal with them, and we have no overwhelming admiration for the man who can see all his possessions go and yet maintain his integrity and keep his hold on God.
II. Troubles may come to a man through his body. We could not easily overestimate the relation which health and bodily vigour bear to a bright, hopeful spirit and a cheery, active faith. A vast proportion of the doubts and fears and inward struggles of men have their secret source in conditions of the beds, failure at the springs of vitality, or the presence of insidious disease. The secret relations of the body and the spirit are very mysterious. Consequently you come nearer to a man, you touch him to the quick, you put his spirit to a far higher test, when you bring calamity in upon his body. From the descriptions given it is probable that Jobs disease was what Eastern travellers know as elephantiasis, because the extremities of the body swell enormously, and the skin becomes as hard as the elephants hide. It is hard to bear when disease is painful; harder still when it is prostrating; harder still when it is disfiguring and loathsome; harder still when it involves social disabilities. And Jobs was all this. Can a man so suffer and keep hold of God? These calamities which come through our bodies affect other parts of our nature, and in some senses higher parts. The love of life. The desire of pleasure. The faculty of hope. All these are struck back, pressed down, forbidden to speak, and it is their inward wrestling which makes the bitterness of such trouble-times. But if affliction only reached these two things, our possessions and our bodies, we should not be able to call the testing sublime. Something would still be wanting.
III. Trouble affecting a man through his mind. For this greater testing the outward troubles of Job were but the approach and preparation. These new trials were of a kind, and came in such a way, as was most likely to cause mental confusion. The visit of the friends, and their bad theology and false accusations, were the very things to awaken the inner conflicts of the soul. They offered forms of truth which roused his resistance. They presented creeds, in their grave and formal way, which Job felt were too small to meet his case. They started doubts in his mind which almost swelled into the agony of despair. Jobs mental anguish took one particular form. The facts of his condition were brought into conflict with the formal creed of his day, the creed in which he himself had been brought up. That creed declared that suffering was the exact and necessary accompaniment of every sin; and that great calamity betokened great sin. Job feels sure that this must somehow be wrong. The creed would not fit his case. Scripture provides us with other illustrations of this highest and most imperilling form of human trouble. But the most sublime example is found in the Lord Jesus Himself. Bodily sufferings He had, but no man knows what the Lord has borne for him until he can enter into the spiritual conflict of Christs temptation, and the infinitely mysterious inward distress of Gethsemane and Calvary. We are not alone in these agonies of soul. Not alone while the struggle is being waged, not alone in the blessed victory it may be given us to win. We, too, with Job, may hold fast our integrity. Two things need a passing notice. Observe how the mental struggle was intensified by the influence of the foregoing outward calamities. The loss of all he possessed had humbled him. Grief at the loss of his children had oppressed him. Long-continued suffering of body had wearied him, and now the very spirit was weak. And observe also, that in such times of strain a man may very nearly fail and yet hold his integrity. Sometimes a man is, for a moment, smitten down. Job sometimes fails, and talks foolishly. He seems as if, in his desperation, he set his righteousness against Gods. But from the very borderland of infidelity and despair Job comes back to the trust and the rest of the child heart that finds the Father in God. (Robert Tuck, B. A.)
Usually where God gives much grace, He tries grace much
To whom God hath given strong shoulders, on him, for the most part, He layeth heavy burdens. And so we are come to the second main division of the chapter, which is the affliction of Job; and that is set forth from this verse 6 to the end of verse 19. And lest we should conceive it to have come upon him by chance, it is punctually described four ways.
1. By the causes of it (verse 6, 7, etc.).
2. By the instruments of it (verse 15, 16, etc.).
3. By the manner of it (verses 14, 15, 16, etc.).
4. By the time of it (verse 13). (J. Caryl.)
The tests to which God puts His people
God puts His servants sometimes into these experiments that He may test them (as He did Job), that Satan himself may know how true-hearted Gods grace has made them, and that the world may see how they can play the man. Good engineers, if they build a bridge, are glad to have a train of enormous weight go over it. When the first great exhibition was built they marched regiments of soldiers, with a steady tramp, over the girders, that they might be quite sure that they would be strong enough to bear any crowd of men, for the regular tramp of well-disciplined soldiers is more trying to a building than anything else. So our wise and prudent Father sometimes marches the soldiery of trouble right over His peoples supports, to let all men see that the grace of God can sustain every possible pressure and load. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The severest temptation last
When he thinks we are at the weakest, then he cometh with the strongest assaults. If Satan had sent Job word of the death of his children first, all the rest would have been as nothing to him. We observe in war, that when once the great ordnance are discharged, the soldiers are not afraid of the musket: so when a great battery is made by some thundering terrible judgment upon the soul, or upon the body, or estate of any man, the noise and fears of lesser evils are drowned and abated. Therefore Satan keeps his greatest shot to the last, that the small might be heard and felt, and that the last coming in greater strength might find the least strength to resist it. (J. Caryl.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v13
IV.
THE SHADOW OF GODS HAND
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Job_1:13-22
COMING now to the sudden and terrible changes which are to prove the faithfulness of the servant of God, we must not fail to observe that in the development of the drama the trial of Job personally is the sole consideration. No account is taken of the character of those who, being connected with his fortunes and happiness, are now to be swept away that he may suffer. To trace their history and vindicate Divine righteousness in reference to each of them is not within the scope of the poem. A typical man is taken as hero, and we may say the discussion covers the fate of all who suffer, although attention is fixed on him alone.
The writer is dealing with a story of patriarchal life, and himself is touched with the Semitic way of thinking. A certain disregard of the subordinate human characters must not be reckoned strange. His thoughts, far-reaching as they are, run in a channel very different from ours. The world of his book is that of family and clan ideas. The author saw more than any man of his time; but he could not see all that engages modern speculation. Besides, the glory of God is the dominant idea of the poem; not mens right to joy, or peace, or even life; but Gods right to be wholly Himself and greatly true. In the light of this high thought we must be content to have the story of one soul traced with such fulness as might be compassed, the others left practically untouched. If the sufferings of the man whom God approves can be explained in harmony with the glory of Divine justice, then the sudden calamities that fall upon his servants and children will also be explained. For, although death is in a sense an ultimate thing, and loss and affliction, however great, do not mean so much as death; yet, on the other hand, to die is the common lot, and the quick stroke appears merciful in comparison with Jobs dreadful experiences. Those who are killed by lightning or by the sword do but swiftly and without protracted pain fall into the hands of God. We need not conclude that the writer means us to regard the sons and daughters of Job and his servants as mere chattels, like the camels and sheep, although the people of the desert would have so regarded them. But the main question presses; the range of the discussion must be limited; and the tradition which forms the basis of the poem is followed by the author whenever it supplies the elements of his inquiry.
We have entirely refused the supposition that the Almighty forgot His righteousness and grace in putting the wealth and happiness of Job into the hands of Satan. The trials we now see falling one after the other are not sent because the Adversary has suggested them, but because it is right and wise, for the glory of God and for the perfecting of faith, that Job should suffer them. What is Gods doing is not in this case nor in any case evil. He cannot wrong His servant that glory may come to Himself.
And just here arises a problem which enters into all religious thought, the wrong solution of which depraves many a philosophy, while the right understanding of it sheds a flood of light on our life in this world. A thousand tongues, Christian, non-Christian, and neo-Christian, affirm that life is for enjoyment. What gives enjoyment is declared to be good, what gives most enjoyment is reckoned best, and all that makes for pain and suffering is held to be evil. It is allowed that pain endured now may bring pleasure hereafter, and that for the sake of future gain a little discomfort may be chosen. But it is evil nevertheless. One doing his best for men would be expected to give them happiness at once and, throughout life, as much of it as possible. If he inflicted pain in order to enhance pleasure by and by, he would have to do so within the strictest limits. Whatever reduces the strength of the body, the capacity of the body for enjoyment and the delight of the mind accompanying the bodys vigour, is declared bad, and to do anything which has this effect is to do evil or wrong. Such is the ethic of the philosophy finally and powerfully stated by Mr. Spencer. It has penetrated as widely as he could wish; it underlies volumes of Christian sermons and semi-Christian schemes. If it be true, then the Almighty of the Book of Job, bringing affliction, sorrow, and pain upon His servant, is a cruel enemy of man, to be hated, not revered. This matter needs to be considered at some length.
The notion that pain is evil, that he who suffers is placed at moral disadvantage, appears very plainly in the old belief that those conditions and surroundings of our life which minister to enjoyment are the proofs of the goodness of God on which reliance must be placed so far as nature and providence testify of Him. Pain and sorrow, it was held, need to be accounted for by human sin or otherwise; but we know that God is good because there is enjoyment in the life He gives. Paley, for example, says that the proof of the Divine goodness rests upon contrivances everywhere to be seen for the purpose of giving us pleasure. He tells us that, when God created the human species, "either He wished them happiness, or He wished them misery, or He was indifferent and unconcerned about either"; and he goes on to prove that it must be our happiness He desired, for, otherwise, wishing our misery, "He might have made everything we tasted, bitter; everything we saw, loathsome; everything we touched, a sting; every smell, a stench; and every sound, a discord": while, if He had been indifferent about our happiness we must impute all enjoyment we have "to our good fortune," that is, to bare chance, an impossible supposition. Paleys further survey of life leads to the conclusion that God has it as His chief aim to make His creatures happy and, in the circumstances, does the best He can for them, better far than they are commonly disposed to think. The agreement of this position with that of Spencer lies in the presupposition that goodness can be proved only by arrangements for giving pleasure. If God is good for this reason, what follows when He appoints pain, especially pain that brings no enjoyment in the long run? Either He is not altogether "good" or He is not all-powerful.
The author of the Book of Job does not enter into the problem of pain and affliction with the same deliberate attempt to exhaust the subject as Paley has made; but he has the problem before him. And in considering the trial of Job as an example of the suffering and sorrow of man in this world of change, we find a strong ray of light thrown upon the darkness. The picture is a Rembrandt; and where the radiance falls all is sharp and bright. But the shadows are deep; and we must seek, if possible, to make out what lies in those shadows. We shall not understand the Book of Job, nor form a just opinion of the authors inspiration, nor shall we understand the Bible as a whole, unless we reach a point of view clear of the mistakes that stultify the reasoning of Paley and plunge the mind of Spencer, who refuses to be called a materialist, into the utter darkness of materialism.
Now, as to enjoyment, we have the capacity for it, and it flows to us from many external objects as well as from the operation of our own minds and the putting forth of energy. It is in the scheme of things ordained by God that His creatures shall enjoy. On the other hand, trouble, sorrow, loss, bodily and mental pain, are also in the scheme of things. They are provided for in numberless ways-in the play of natural forces causing injuries, dangers from which we cannot escape; in the limitations of our power; in the antagonisms and disappointments of existence; in disease and death. They are provided for by the very laws that bring pleasure, made inevitable under the same Divine ordinance. Some say it detracts from the goodness of God to admit that as He appoints means of enjoyment so He also provides for pain and sorrow and makes these inseparable from life. And this opinion runs into the extreme dogmatic assertion that "good," by which we are to understand happiness,
"Shall fall At last far off, at last to all."
Many hold this to be necessary to the vindication of Gods goodness. But the source of the whole confusion lies here, that we prejudge the question by calling pain evil. The light-giving truth for modern perplexity is that pain and loss are not evil, are in no sense evil.
Because we desire happiness and dislike pain, we must not conclude that pain is bad and that, when any one suffers, it is because he or another has done wrong. There is the mistake that vitiates theological thought, making men run to the extreme either of denying God altogether because there is suffering in the world, or of framing a rosewater eschatology. Pain is one thing, moral evil is quite another thing. He who suffers is not necessarily a wrong doer; and when, through the laws of nature, God inflicts pain, there is no evil nor anything approaching wrong. In Scripture, indeed, pain and evil are apparently identified. "Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and shall we not receive evil? Is there evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will bring upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all the evil that I have pronounced against them." In these and many other passages the very thing seems to be meant which has just been denied, for evil and suffering appear to be made identical. But human language is not a perfect instrument of thought, any more than thought is a perfect channel of truth. One word has to do duty in different senses. Moral evil, wrongness, on the one hand; bodily pain, the misery of loss and defeat, on the other hand-both are represented by one Hebrew word [displeased]. In the following passages, where moral evil is clearly meant, it occurs just as in those previously quoted: "Wash you, make you clean, cease to do evil, learn to do well"; "The face of the Lord is against them that do evil." The different meanings which one Hebrew word may bear are not generally confused in translation. In this case, however, the confusion has entered into the most modern language. From a highly esteemed thinker the following sentence may be quoted by way of example: "The other religions did not feel evil like Israel; it did not stand in such complete antagonism to their idea of the Supreme, the Creator and Sovereign of man, nor in such absolute contradiction to their notion of what ought to be; and so they either reconciled themselves as best they could to the evil that was necessary, or invented means by which men could escape from it by escaping from existence." The singular misapprehension of Divine providence which underlies a statement like this can only be got rid of by recognising that enjoyment and suffering are not the good and evil of life, that both of them stand quite apart from what is intrinsically good and bad in a moral sense, and that they are simply means to an end in the providence of God.
It is not difficult, of course, to see how the idea of pain and the idea of moral evil have been linked together. It is by the thought that suffering is punishment for evil done; and that the suffering is therefore itself evil. Pain was simply penalty inflicted by an offended heavenly power. The evil of a mans doings came back to him, made itself felt in his suffering. This was the explanation of all that was unpleasant, disastrous, and vexing in the lot of man. He would enjoy always, it was conceived, if wrong doing or failure in duty to the higher powers did not kindle divine anger against him. True, the wrongdoing might not be his own. The son might suffer for the parents fault. Iniquity might be remembered to childrens children and fall terribly on those who had not themselves transgressed. The fates pursued the descendants of an impious man. But wrong done somewhere, rebellion of some one against a divinity, was always the antecedent of pain and sorrow and disaster: And as the other religions thought, so, in this matter, did that of Israel. To the Hebrew the deep conviction of this, as Dr. Fairbairn has said, made poverty and disease peculiarly abhorrent. In Psalms 89, the prosperity of David is depicted, and Jehovah speaks of the covenant that must be kept: "If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes." The trouble has fallen, and out of the depth of it, attributing to past sin all defeat and disaster from which the people suffer - the breaking down of the hedges, curtailment of the vigour of youth, overthrow in war-the Psalmist cries, "How long, O Lord, wilt Thou hide Thyself forever? How long shall Thy wrath burn like fire? O remember how short my time is: for what vanity hast Thou created all the children of men?" There is here no thought that anything painful or afflictive could manifest the fatherhood of God; it must proceed from His anger and force the mind back upon the memory of sin, some transgression that has caused the Almighty to suspend His kindness for a time.
Here it was the author of Job found the thought of his people. With this he had to harmonise the other beliefs-peculiarly theirs-that the lovingkindness of the Lord is over all His works, that God who is supremely good cannot inflict moral injury on any of His covenanted servants. And the difficulty he felt survives. The questions are still urged: Is not pain bound up with wrong doing? Is not suffering the mark of Gods displeasure? Are they not evil, therefore? And, on the other hand, Is not enjoyment appointed to him who does right? Does not the whole scheme of Divine providence, as the Bible sets it forth, including the prospect it opens into the eternal future, associate happiness with well doing and pain with evil doing? We desire enjoyment, and cannot help desiring it. We dislike pain, disease, and all that limits our capacity for pleasure. Is it not in accordance with this that Christ appears as the Giver of light and peace and joy to the race of men?
These questions look difficult enough. Let us attempt to answer them.
Pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, are elements of creaturely experience appointed by God. The right use of them makes life, the wrong use of them mars it, They are ordained, all of them in equal degree, to a good end; for all that God does is done in perfect love as well as in perfect justice. It is no more wonderful that a good man should suffer than that a bad man should suffer: for the good man, the man who believes in God and therefore in goodness, making a right use of suffering, will gain by it in the true sense; he will reach a deeper and nobler life. It is no more wonderful that a bad man, one who disbelieves in God and therefore in goodness, should be happy than that a good man should be happy, the happiness being Gods appointed means for both to reach a higher life. The main element of this higher life is vigour, but not of the body. The Divine purpose is spiritual evolution. That gratification of the sensuous side of our nature for which physical health and a well-knit organism are indispensable-paramount in the pleasure philosophy-is not neglected, but is made subordinate in the Divine culture of life. The grace of God aims at the life of the spirit-power to love, to follow righteousness, to dare for justice sake, to seek and grasp the true, to sympathise with men and bear with them, to bless them that curse, to suffer and be strong. To promote this vitality all God appoints is fitted-pain as well as pleasure, adversity as well as prosperity, sorrow as well as joy, defeat as well as success. We wonder that suffering is so often the result of imprudence. On the ordinary theory the fact is inexplicable, for imprudence has no dark colour of ethical faultiness. He who by an error of judgment plunges himself and his family into what appears irretrievable disaster, may, by all reckoning, be almost blameless in character. If suffering is held to be penal, no reference to the general sin of humanity will account for the result. But the reason is plain. The suffering is disciplinary. The nobler life at which Divine providence aims must be sagacious no less than pure, guided by sound reason no less than right feeling.
And if it is asked how from this point of view we are to find the punishment of sin, the answer is that happiness as well as suffering is punishment to him whose sin and the unbelief that accompanies it pervert his view of truth, and blind him to the spiritual life and the will of God. The pleasures of a wrong doer who persistently denies obligation to Divine authority and refuses obedience to the Divine law are no gain, but loss. They dissipate and attenuate his life. His sensuous or sensual enjoyment, his delight in selfish triumph and gratified ambition are real, give at the time quite as much happiness as the good man has in his obedience and virtue, perhaps a great deal more. But they are penal and retributive nevertheless; and the conviction that they are so becomes clear to the man whenever the light of truth is flashed upon his spiritual state. We read Dantes pictures of the Inferno, and shudder at the dreadful scenes with which he has filled the descending circles of woe. He has omitted one that would have been the most striking of all, -unless indeed an approach to it is to be found in the episode of Paolo and Francesca, -the picture of souls self-doomed to seek happiness and to enjoy, on whose life the keen light of eternity shines, revealing the gradual wasting away of existence, the certain degeneration to which they are condemned.
On the other hand, the pains and disasters which fall to the lot of evil men, intended for their correction, if in perversity or in blindness they are misunderstood, again become punishment; for they, too, dissipate and attenuate life. The real good of existence slips away while the mind is intent on the mere pain or vexation and how it is to be got rid of. In Job we find a purpose to reconcile affliction with the just government of God. The troubles into which the believing man is brought urge him to think more deeply than he has ever thought, become the means of that intellectual and moral education which lies in discovery of the will and character of God. They also bring him by this way into deeper humility, a fine tenderness of spiritual nature, a most needful kinship with his fellows. See then the use of suffering. The impenitent, unbelieving man has no such gains. He is absorbed in the distressing experience, and that absorption narrows and debases the activity of the soul. The treatment of this matter here is necessarily brief. It is hoped, however, that the principle has been made clear.
Does it require any adaptation or under-reading of the language of Scripture to prove the harmony of its teaching with the view just given of happiness and suffering as related to punishment? Throughout the greater part of the Old Testament the doctrine of suffering is that old doctrine which the author of Job found perplexing. Not infrequently in the New Testament there is a certain formal return to it; for even under the light of revelation the meaning of Divine providence is learnt slowly. But the emphasis rests on life rather than happiness, and on death rather than suffering, in the gospels; and the whole teaching of Christ pointed to the truth. This world and our discipline here, the trials of men, the doctrine of the cross, the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, are not fitted to introduce us into a state of existence in which mere enjoyment, the gratification of personal tastes and desires, shall be the main experience. They are fitted to educate the spiritual nature for life, fulness of life. Immortality becomes credible when it is seen as progress in vigour, progress towards that profound compassion, that fidelity, that unquenchable devotion to the glory of God the Father which marked the life of the Divine Son in this world.
Observe, it is not denied that joy is and will be desired, that suffering and pain are and will remain experiences from which human nature must recoil. The desire and the aversion are wrought into our constitution; and just because we feel them our whole mortal discipline has its value. In the experience of them lies the condition of progress. On the one hand pain urges, on the other joy attracts. It is in the line of desire for joy of a finer and higher kind that civilisation realises itself, and even religion lays hold of us and lures us on. But the conditions of progress are not to be mistaken for the end of it. Joy assumes sorrow as a possibility. Pleasure can only exist as alternative to the experience of pain. And the life that expands and reaches finer power and exaltation in the course of this struggle is the main thing. The struggle ceases to be acute in the higher ranges of life; it becomes massive, sustained, and is carried on in the perfect peace of the soul. Therefore the future state of the redeemed is a state of blessedness. But the blessedness accompanying the life is not the glory. The glory of the perfected is life itself. The heaven of the redeemed appears a region of existence in which the exaltation, enlargement, and deepening of life shall constantly and consciously go on. Conversely the hell of evildoers will not be simply the pain, the suffering, the defeat to which they have doomed themselves, but the constant attenuation of their life, the miserable wasting of which they shall be aware, though they find some pitiful pleasure, as Milton imagined his evil angels finding theirs, in futile schemes of revenge against the Highest.
Pain is not in itself an evil. But our nature recoils from suffering and seeks life in brightness and power, beyond the keen pangs of mortal existence. The creation hopes that itself "shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption." The finer life is, the more sensible it must be of association with a body doomed to decay, the more sensible also of that gross human injustice and wrong which dare to pervert Gods ordinance of pain and His sacrament of death, usurping His holy prerogative for the most unholy ends. And so we are brought to the Cross of Christ. When He "bore our sins in His own body on the tree," when He "suffered for sins once, the Righteous for the unrighteous," the sacrifice was real, awful, immeasurably profound. Yet, could death be in any sense degrading or debasing to Him? Could evil touch His soul? Over its most insolent assumption of the right to injure and destroy He stood, spiritually victorious in the presence of His enemies, and rose, untouched in soul, when His body was broken on the cross. His sacrifice was great because He bore the sins of men and died as Gods atonement. His sublime devotion to the Father whose holy law was trampled under foot, His horror and endurance of human iniquity which culminated in His death, made the experience profoundly terrible. Thus the spiritual dignity and power He gained provided new life for the world.
It is now possible to understand the trials of Job. So far as the sufferer is concerned, they are no less beneficent than His joys; for they provide that necessary element of probation by which life of a deeper and stronger kind is to be reached, the opportunity of becoming, as a man and a servant of the Almighty, what he had never been, what otherwise he could not become. The purpose of God is entirely good; but it will remain with the sufferer himself to enter by the fiery way into full spiritual vigour. He will have the protection and grace of the Divine Spirit in his time of sore bewilderment and anguish. Yet his own faith must be vindicated while the shadow of Gods hand rests upon his life.
And now the forces of nature and the wild tribes of the desert gather about the happy settlement of the man of Uz. With dramatic suddenness and cumulative terror stroke after stroke descends. Job is seen before the door of his dwelling. The morning broke calm and cloudless, the bright sunshine of Arabia filling with brilliant colour the far horizon. The day has been peaceful, gracious, another of Gods gifts. Perhaps, in the early hours, the father, as priest of his family, offered the burnt offerings of atonement lest his sons should have renounced God in their hearts; and now, in the evening, he is sitting calm and glad, hearing the appeals of those who need his help and dispensing alms with a generous hand. But one comes in haste, breathless with running, scarcely able to tell his tale. Out in the fields the oxen were ploughing and the asses feeding. Suddenly a great band of Sabeans fell upon them, swept them away, slew the servants with the edge of the sword: this man alone has escaped with his life. Rapidly has he spoken; and before he has done another appears, a shepherd from the more distant pastures, to announce a second calamity. "The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped to tell thee." They scarcely dare to look on the face of Job, and he has no time to speak, for here is a third messenger, a camel driver, swarthy and naked to the loins, crying wildly as he runs. The Chaldaeans made three bands-fell upon the camels-swept them away-the servants are slain-I only am left. Nor is this the last. A fourth, with every mark of horror in his face, comes slowly and brings the most terrible message of all. The sons and daughters of Job were feasting in their eldest brothers house; there came a great wind from the wilderness and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell. The young men and women are all dead. One only has escaped, he who tells the dreadful tale.
A certain idealism appears in the causes of the different calamities and their simultaneous, or almost simultaneous, occurrence. Nothing, indeed, is assumed which is not possible in the north of Arabia. A raid from the south, of Sabeans, the lawless part of a nation otherwise engaged in traffic; an organised attack by Chaldaeans from the east, again the lawless fringe of the population of the Euphrates valley, those who, inhabiting the margin of the desert, had taken to desert ways; then, of natural causes, the lightning or the fearful hot wind which coming suddenly stifles and kills, and the whirlwind, possible enough after a thunderstorm or simoom, -all of these belong to the region in which Job lived. But the grouping of the disasters and the invariable escape of one only from each belong to the dramatic setting, and are intended to have a cumulative effect. A sense of the mysterious is produced, of supernatural power, discharging bolt after bolt in some inscrutable mood of antagonism. Job is a mark for the arrows of the Unseen. And when the last messenger has spoken, we turn in dismay and pity to look on the rich man made poor, the proud and happy father made childless, the fearer of God on whom the enemy seems to have wrought his will.
In the stately Oriental way, as a man who bows to fate or the irresistible will of the Most High, Job seeks to realise his sudden and awful deprivations. We watch him with silent awe as first he rends his mantle, the acknowledged sign of mourning and of the disorganisation of life, then shaves his head, renouncing in his grief even the natural ornament of the hair, that the sense of loss and resignation may be indicated. This done, in deep humiliation he bows and falls prone on the earth and worships, the fit words falling in a kind of solemn chant from his lips: "Naked came I forth from my mothers womb, and naked I return thereto. Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away. Let Jehovahs name be blessed." The silence of grief and of death has fallen about him. No more shall be heard the bustle of the homestead to which, when the evening shadows were about to fall, a constant stream of servants and laden oxen used to come, where the noise of cattle and asses and the shouts of camel drivers made the music of prosperity. His wife and the few who remain, with bowed heads, dumb and aimless, stand around. Swiftly the sun goes down, and darkness falls upon the desolate dwelling.
Losses like these are apt to leave men distracted. When everything is swept away, with the riches those who were to inherit them, when a man is left, as Job says, naked, bereft of all that labour had won and the bounty of God had given, expressions of despair do not surprise us, nor even wild accusations of the Most High. But the faith of this sufferer does not yield. He is resigned, submissive. The strong trust that has grown in the course of a religious life withstands the shock, and carries the soul through the crisis. Neither did Job accuse God nor did he sin, though his grief was great. So far he is master of his soul, unbroken though desolated. The first great round of trial has left the man a believer still.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv13, 20 I. Occasion of the trial (Job_1:13).
FOURTH PART OF INTRODUCTION.—INFLICTION OF THE TRIAL
I. Occasion of the trial (Job_1:13).
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“There was a day.” Satan watches for the time best suited for his designs. The occasion chosen that the trial might fall the more grievous (Isa_21:4). Diabolical wisdom in doing mischief. Satan’s terrible malignity.—“His sons and his daughters were eating, and drinking wine.” The children’s hilarity to be an aggravation of the father’s calamity. The more unexpected and unprepared for, the heavier the stroke. Satan likes to make his stroke tell. Turns mirth into mourning. Job’s children to die when most likely to be sinning (Job_1:5). Satan’s object to destroy both body and soul at one stroke. Satan as well as Job knew the dangers incident to wine. God’s judgments often come when men are most secure (Luk_12:19-20; 1Th_5:2). Good to rejoice as though we rejoiced not (1Co_7:30). The Saviour’s caution (Luk_21:3-4). Changes in circumstances to be prepared for (Pro_27:1). A day may have a fair beginning and a foul ending. ‘In the greatest calm provide for a storm’ [Queen Elizabeth],—“In their elder brother’s house.” Hence no ordinary feast. The celebration of the eldest son’s birthday chosen with characteristic malignity.
II. The trial itself in its four particulars
1. Attack of the Sabeans on the oxen and asses (Job_1:14-15). “There came a messenger,”—spared in Satan’s malice to carry the news. A “cruel messenger” to be sent to Job, as if a “rebellions man” (Pro_17:11).—“The oxen.” Satan begins with the cattle. The trial must rise in a climax.—“Were ploughing,”[1] preparing for the next year’s crop, thus also to be lost.—“Asses feeding beside them,” so arranged that both might share the same fate. The picture of security and repose heightens by contrast the calamity of the attack.—“Sabeans.” A warlike marauding people in the north parts of Arabia Deserta. Those in South Arabia, or Arabia Felix, merchants, not marauders (Job_6:19; 1Ki_10:1). Bedoween incursions able to reduce a rich man to poverty in a few days. Satan at no loss for instruments to do his work. Possesses a mysterious power to influence men’s minds to evil. The ungodly already prepared for that influence. Satan’s temptations suited to men’s natural inclinations. Bad men often used by God for the trial and chastening of his children.—“Fell on them,”—rushed on them with a view to spoil. An unprovoked attack. Exceptions to the general rule in Pro_16:7.—“Slain the servants.” Preparation for death to be taken into daily duties. Blessed to be ready when the Master calls. Sudden death then sudden glory.—“I only am escaped,” by God’s special Providence and Satan’s malice. Some escape from danger as “brands plucked out of the burning” (Amo_4:11).
[1] Oriental ploughing, as in the south of Europe, done by oxen. Plough of wood, consisting of a share, two handles, and a pole or beam. Drawn by two oxen yoked together, and guided by a ploughman using a goad.
2. Destruction of the sheep by lightning (Job_1:16). “While he was yet speaking.” Fiendish rapidity of Satan’s work. Aims at stunning and overwhelming the sufferer. Trials often like rapidly succeeding billows. Deep calleth unto deep (Psa_62:7). Troubles seldom single. “Welcome misfortune, if you come alone” [Basque Proverb].—“Fire of God.”—Marg., “a great fire,” (like Psa_104:16). “Hot thunderbolts” (Psa_78:48). Rapid lightnings, apparently sent by God though really by Satan. A cut in the words put into the mouth of the shepherds. Act of an angry God. The object to represent God as cruel and unjust, and so bring Job to curse Him. A limited mysterious power given to Satan over the elements of nature (Eph_2:2).—“From heaven.” From the upper regions of the air, but apparently from God. The air or lower heavens the place of Satan’s special presence and operations (Luk_10:8; Eph_2:2; Eph_6:12).—“Sheep.” The greatest part of Job’s wealth (Job_1:3.) Most frequently used in sacrifice. Smitten, though sanctified by frequent offerings. God’s ways often dark and mysterious.
3. Capture of the camels (Job_1:17). “Chaldæans,” Heb. “Chasdim.” The name related to that of Chesed, Abraham’s nephew (Gen_22:22). Two such peoples mentioned in Genesis:—
(1) The old Semitic Chaldæans of the mountains, in the north of Assyria and Mesopotamia (Gen_10:22; Gen_11:28; Gen_11:31); Abraham himself of these (Gen_11:28).
(2) The later Chaldæans of Mesopotamia, descended from Nahor, Abraham’s brother (Gen_22:22). Called by Jeremiah an “ancient nation” (Jer_5:15). A fierce and warlike people (Heb_1:6; Heb_1:11). First subdued by the Assyrians. In time overcame their masters, and formed the Chaldæan or Babylonian Empire under Nabopolassar, a viceroy in Babylon, about 600 B.C. Their empire overthrown by Cyrus, who took Babylon, 583 B.C. In Job’s time a body of hardy monntaineers. Always strong enough to make such a raid. More fierce and powerful than the Sabeans. Strokes increase in severity. Satan inflames his instruments with his own. murderous passions.—“Three bands.” To attack in various directions and let nothing escape. (So Gen_14:15). Three bands under so many captains, Satan really commander-in-chief.—“Fell upon the camels.” Marg. “rushed.” Made a raid upon them, as 1Sa_23:27; 1Sa_30:14. Arabs sometimes make a raid twenty or thirty days’ march from their tents.—“Carried them away.” Three thousand camels no slight loss. Satan goes the full length of his cord. More grevious to be stripped of riches than to be always poor.
4. Loss of all his children (Job_1:18-19). “While he was yet speaking.” Satan never at rest till he has done all the mischief he is permitted. Good to be always ready for another and a worse encounter. Seneca says, ‘Cæsar sometimes put up his sword, but never put it off.’—“Thy sons.” The trial reaches its climax. His sons the object of his greatest solicitude. The subjects of so many prayers might have been expected to be spared, or at least some of them. The mystery increases.—“Were eating and drinking.” When Job feared most they might be sinning (Job_1:5). Possible to be taken from the festive board to the Judgment-seat. Festivity unsafe without God and His blessing in it. Well to be prepared to pass from earthly joys to heavenly ones.—“Behold.” Marks the greatness of the calamity. Seven sons and three daughters,—the whole of Job’s children,—all arrived at maturity,—all prosperous and happy,—cut off at one stroke,—suddenly and unexpectedly,—amid the hilarity of a feast!—“A great wind.” A tornado, cyclone, or whirlwind. Common in the East. Mysterious power of Satan to excite the atmosphere into a storm. ‘Prince of the power of the air.’ Wind in God’s hand, but now for His own purpose, partially and for a time, transferred to Satan’s” (Pro_30:4).—“From the wilderness.” Whence the fiercest winds came (Jer_4:11; Jer_13:24). From the south part of the great North Arabian Desert (Isa_21:1; Hos_13:15).—“Smote the four corners of the house.” At once or successively; coming with force and steady aim as under Satan’s direction. All the appearance of the work of an angry God.—“And it fell.” The object for which Satan raised the storm. Such catastrophes not uncommon in the East. Houses of comparatively frail construction (Mat_7:27). Well-known violence of tornadoes. One in England, in 1811, tore up plantations and levelled houses with the ground, carried large trees, torn up by the roots, to the distance of twenty or thirty yards; lifted cows from one field to another; and carried haystacks to a considerable distance. Camels sometimes lifted off their legs by Eastern whirlwinds. God able to make our plagues wonderful (Deu_28:59).—“Upon the young men.” Mentioned as more likely to overwhelm the father; sisters included.—“And they are dead.” Crashing tidings for a father’s ears. All dead,—dead all at once,—dead prematurely,—dead by a sudden, unusual, and miserable death,—dead as if by the hand of God Himself, as Bildad regarded them,—dead at the time that Job had most need of their comfort under his other calamities. Job reduced, in one short day, from being one of the happiest of fathers to a state of childlessness and misery. Our heaviest trials often through our sweetest comforts. The sharpest thorns on the same tree with the loveliest flowers. The beauty of all earthly blessings quickly blasted (Isa_60:6; Isa_60:8). Too much not to be expected from God, nor too little from the creature.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v21
Job
SORROW THAT WORSHIPS
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Job 1:21.
This book of Job wrestles with the problem of the meaning of the mystery of sorrow. Whether history or a parable, its worth is the same, as tortured hearts have felt for countless centuries, and will feel to the end. Perhaps no picture that was ever painted is grander and more touching than that of the man of Uz, in the antique wealth and happiness of his brighter days, rich, joyful, with his children round him, living in men’s honour, and walking upright before God. Then come the dramatic completeness and suddenness of his great trials. One day strips him of all, and stripped of all he rises to a loftier dignity, for there is a majesty as well as an isolation in his sorrow.
How many spirits tossed by afflictions have found peace in these words! How many quivering lips have tried to utter their grave, calm accents! To how many of us are they hallowed by memories of times when they stood between us and despair!
They seem to me to say everything that can be said about our trials and losses, to set forth the whole truth of the facts, and to present the whole series of feelings with which good men may and should be exercised.
I. The vindication of sorrow.
He ‘rent his clothes’-the signs and tokens of inward desolation and loss.
It is worth our while to stay for one moment with the thought that we are meant to feel grief. God sends sorrows in order that they may pain. Sorrow has its manifold uses in our lives and on our hearts. It is natural. That is enough. God set the fountain of tears in our souls. We are bidden not to ‘despise the chastening of the Lord.’ It is they who are ‘exercised’ thereby to whom the chastisement is blessed.
It is sanctioned by Christ. He wept. He bade the women of Jerusalem weep for themselves and for their children.
Religion does not destroy the natural emotions-sorrow as little as any other. It guides, controls, curbs, comforts, and brings blessings out of it. So do not aim at an impossible stoicism, but permit nature to have its way, and look at the picture of this manly sorrow of Job’s-calm, silent, unless when stung by the undeserved reproaches of these three ‘orthodox liars for God,’ and going to God and worshipping.
II. The recognition of loss and sorrow as the law of life.
‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb.’
We need not dwell on the figure ‘mother,’ suggesting the grave as the kindly mother’s bosom that gathers us all in, and the thought that perhaps gleams forth that death, too, is a kind of birth.
But the truth picturesquely set forth is just the old and simple one-that all possessions are transient.
The naked self gets clothed and lapped round with possessions, but they are all outside of it, apart from its individuality. It has been without them. It will be without them. Death at the end will rob us of them all.
The inevitable law of loss is fixed and certain. We are losing something every moment-not only possessions, but all our dearest ties are knit but for a time, and sure to be snapped. They go, and then after a while we go.
The independence of each soul of all its possessions and relations is as certain as the loss of them. They may go and we are made naked, but still we exist all the same. We have to learn the hard lesson which sounds so unfeeling, that we can live on in spite of all losses. Nothing, no one, is necessary to us.
All this is very cold and miserable; it is the standing point of law and necessity. An atheist could say it. It is the beginning of the Christian contemplation of life, but only the beginning.
III. The recognition of God in the law.
‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’ That is a step far beyond the former. To bring in the thought of the Lord makes a world of difference.
The tendency is to look only at the second cause. In Job’s case there were two classes of agencies, men, Chaldeans and Sabeans, and natural causes, fire and wind, but he did not stop with these.
The grand corrective of that tendency lies in the full theistic idea, that God is the sole cause of all. The immanence of Deity in all things and events is our refuge from the soul-crushing tyranny of the reign of law.
That devout recognition of God in law is eminently to be made in regard to death, as Job does in the text: ‘The number of his months is with Thee.’ Death is not any more nor any less under His control than all other human incidents are. It has no special sanctity, nor abnormally close connection with His will, but it no more is exempt from such connection than all the other events of life. The connection is real. He opens the gate of the grave and no man shuts. He shuts, and no man opens.
Job did not forget the Lord’s gifts even while he was writhing under the stroke of His withdrawings. Alas! that it should so often need sorrow to bear into our hearts that we owe all to Him, but even then, if not before, it is well to remember how much good we have received of the Lord, and the remembrance should not be ‘a sorrow’s crown of sorrow,’ but a thankful one.
IV. The thankful resignation to God’s loving administration of the law.
The preceding words might be said with mere submission to an irresistible power, but this last sentence climbs to the highest of the true Christian idea. It recognises in loss and sorrow a reason for praise.
Why?
Because we may be sure that all loss is for our good.
Because we may be sure that all loss is from a loving God. In loss of dear ones, our gain is in drawing nearer to God, in being taught more to long for heaven. In our relation to them, a loftier love, a hallowing of all the past. Their gain is in their entrance to heaven, and all the glory that they have reached.
This blessing of God for loss is not inconsistent with sorrow, but anticipates the future when we shall know all and bless Him for all.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v13 Job’s Great Affliction
Job’s Great Affliction
v. 13. And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, at one of their customary banquets;
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v. 14. and there came a messenger unto Job and said, The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them, grazing in the meadows nearby,
v. 15. and the Sabeans, a nomadic tribe of Northeastern Arabia, fell upon them, and took them away, took everything along as welcome plunder; yea, they have slain the servants, those in charge of the work, with the edge of the sword, sparing none whom they could find; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee, the only survivor of the massacre.
v. 16. While he was yet speaking, before he had even finished his message of misfortune, there came also another and said, The fire of God, evidently a shower of fire and brimstone, is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, completely destroying also this part of Job’s possessions; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
v. 17. While he was yet speaking, there came also another and said, The Chaldeans, at that time a nomadic tribe living near the Euphrates, made out three bands, attacking in three divisions, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword, sparing none; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
v. 18. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, a fourth messenger of evil, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house;
v. 19. and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, a violent tornado from the east or northeast, and smote the four corners of the house, taking hold upon the whole house or tent at one time, and it fell upon the young men, upon all the young people there assembled, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. In each case the messenger implies that his escape was effected only with the greatest difficulty, and each message increases the sense of the greatness of the calamity.
v. 20. Then Job, who was more deeply affected by the information of the death of his children than by the loss of his entire property, arose and rent his mantle, showing the violence of his grief, and shaved his head, another sign of deep mourning among certain ancient nations, and fell down upon the ground, and worshiped, in the attitude of the most humble and submissive adoration,
v. 21. and said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither, that is, into the bosom of the earth, from which man was originally made, departing as poor and as helpless as when he came. The Lord, the great Jehovah, gave, from Him had all the blessings come which Job had enjoyed, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord! This is an example of most patient submission, of bowing to the will of the Lord in childlike trust and in firm confidence. It is in this sense that all believers must learn to think of God as praiseworthy at all times, whether His wisdom sees fit to give or to take away.
v. 22. In all this Job sinned not, not even in questioning God’s decrees, nor charged God foolishly, attributing senseless or foolish acting to God. It is this phase of Job’s character, a patient submission to the will of God at all times, which believers should be zealous to copy.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv13, 16, 18, 20 the Sabeans
the Sabeans
This refers to a people in a region in modern day Yemen. Here it represents a group of raiders or bandits. (See: How to Translate Names and Metonymy)
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fell on them
Here "fell" represents the idea of attacking. AT: "attacked them" (See: Metaphor)
have struck
Here striking represents killing. (See: Metonymy)
the edge of the sword
Here "edge" represents the part of swords that kill people, that is, either the point or the sharp edge. Also, all the swords of the Sabeans are spoken of as if they were only one sword. (See: Metaphor and Generic Noun Phrases)
translationWords
son
wine
brother
messenger
cow
donkey
servant
sword
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv13, 15, 16, 19, 20 1:13-19 These attacks destroyed the blessings enumerated in 1:2-3;…
1:13-19 These attacks destroyed the blessings enumerated in 1:2-3; Job was left alone with the four ominous messengers who came to report and a wife who offered misguided counsel. • The repetition of while he was still speaking emphasizes the relentlessness of the attacks (see Jer 51:31). The repetition of I am the only one who escaped to tell you emphasizes the total obliteration of Job’s resources.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.