“Can you fathom the mystery of God? Or can you probe the limits of the Almighty?
Parallel Translations
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“Can you fathom the mystery of God? Or can you probe the limits of the Almighty?
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Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
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Canst thou find out the deep things of God? Canst thou attain unto the purpose of the Almighty?
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (2)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (12)
Passages linked to Job 11:7 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Romans 11:33 Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!
- Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can’t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end.
- Psalms 145:3 Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised! His greatness is unsearchable.
- Job 5:9 who does great things that can’t be fathomed, marvelous things without number;
- Job 37:23 We can’t reach the Almighty. He is exalted in power. In justice and great righteousness, he will not oppress.
- Psalms 77:19 Your way was through the sea; your paths through the great waters. Your footsteps were not known.
- Isaiah 40:28 Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
- Ephesians 3:8 To me, the very least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
- Job 26:14 Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. How small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?”
- Matthew 11:27 All things have been delivered to me by my Father. No one knows the Son, except the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him.
- 1 Corinthians 2:10 But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
- 1 Corinthians 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him?” But we have Christ’s mind.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Job 11:7 Canst thou by searching find out God?…
Job 11:7 Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
Ver. 7. Canst thou by searching find out God?] i.e. The nature of God, or the course of his providence, and the reason of his proceedings? thou canst never do it. Neither did Job ever take upon him to do it, but had excellently and accurately set out the same things, Job 9:4, &c., that Zophar here doth; so that he might well have spared his pains in this discourse as to Job; but that being too pertinacious in his evil opinion of him, he chose rather to thwart him than to close with him, as contentious people use to do.
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Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?] No, nor the brightest angel in heaven, the highest graduate in glory. Find him we may possibly, but not find him out, much less find him out to perfection. Tantum recedit, quantum capitur, so much slips away and how much is retained, saith Nazianzen. The nearer you draw unto God the farther off he is from you, and you are as much to seek as ever; he is indeed like the pool Polycritus writeth of (cited by Aristotle), which in compass at the first scarce seemed to exceed the breadth of a shield, but if any went in to wash, it extended itself more and more. A country fellow thinks, if he were upon such a mountain he could touch heaven, and take a star in his hand; but when he comes thither heaven is as far off as it was, &c. So it is here, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," &c., 1Co 2:9. Chrysostom, speaking of God’s love in Christ, saith, I am like a man digging in a deep spring; I stand here, and the water riseth up upon me, and I stand there, and still the water riseth upon me. What the apostle saith of this infinite love of God, that it passeth knowledge, as having all the dimensions, Eph 3:18-19, the same is true of the wisdom of God, as Zophar setteth forth in the following verses.
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 Find out God, i.e. discover all the depths of…
Find out God, i.e. discover all the depths of his wisdom, and the reasons of all his actions.
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 Zophar here speaks very good things concerning God and…
Zophar here speaks very good things concerning God and his greatness and glory, concerning man and his vanity and folly: these two compared together, and duly considered, will have a powerful influence upon our submission to all the dispensations of the divine Providence.
I. See here what God is, and let him be adored.
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1. He is an incomprehensible Being, infinite and immense, whose nature and perfections our finite understandings cannot possibly form any adequate conceptions of, and whose counsels and actings we cannot therefore, without the greatest presumption, pass a judgment upon. We that are so little acquainted with the divine nature are incompetent judges of the divine providence; and, when we censure the dispensations of it, we talk of things that we do not understand. We cannot find out God; how dare we then find fault with him? Zophar here shows, (1.) That God's nature infinitely exceeds the capacities of our understandings: "Canst thou find out God, find him out to perfection? No, What canst thou do? What canst thou know?" Job 11:7, Job 11:8. Thou, a poor, weak, short-sighted creature, a worm of the earth, that art but of yesterday? Thou, though ever so inquisitive after him, ever so desirous and industrious to find him out, yet darest thou attempt the search, or canst thou hope to speed in it? We may, by searching find God (Act 17:27), but we cannot find him out in any thing he is pleased to conceal; we may apprehend him, but we cannot comprehend him; we may know that he is, but cannot know what he is. The eye can see the ocean but not see over it. We may, by a humble, diligent, and believing search, find out something of God, but cannot find him out to perfection; we may know, but cannot know fully, what God is, nor find out his work from the beginning to the end, Ecc 3:11. Note, God is unsearchable. The ages of his eternity cannot be numbered, nor the spaces of his immensity measured; the depths of his wisdom cannot be fathomed, nor the reaches of his power bounded; the brightness of his glory can never be described, nor the treasures of his goodness reckoned up. This is a good reason why we should always speak of God with humility and caution and never prescribe to him nor quarrel with him, why we should be thankful for what he has revealed of himself and long to be where we shall see him as he is, Co1 13:9, Co1 13:10. (2.) That it infinitely exceeds the limits of the whole creation: It is higher than heaven (so some read it), deeper than hell, the great abyss, longer than the earth, and broader than the sea, many parts of which are to this day undiscovered, and more were then. It is quite out of our reach to comprehend God's nature. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us, Psa 139:6. We cannot fathom God's designs, nor find out the reasons of his proceedings. His judgments are a great deep. Paul attributes such immeasurable dimensions to the divine love as Zophar here attributes to the divine wisdom, and yet recommends it to our acquaintance. Eph 3:18, Eph 3:19, That you may know the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, of the love of Christ.
2. God is a sovereign Lord (Job 11:10): If he cut off by death (margin, If he make a change, for death is a change; if he make a change in nations, in families, in the posture of our affairs), - if he shut up in prison, or in the net of affliction (Psa 66:11), - if he seize any creature as a hunter his prey, he will gather it (so bishop Patrick) and who shall force him to restore? or if he gather together, as tares for the fire, or if he gather to himself man's spirit and breath (Job 34:14), then who can hinder him? Who can either arrest the sentence or oppose the execution? Who can control his power or arraign his wisdom and justice? If he that made all out of nothing think fit to reduce all to nothing, or to their first chaos again, - if he that separated between light and darkness, dry land and sea, at first, please to gather them together again, - if he that made unmakes, who can turn him away, alter his mind or stay his hand, impede or impeach his proceedings?
3. God is a strict and just observer of the children of men (Job 11:11): He knows vain men. We know little of him, but he knows us perfectly: He sees wickedness also, not to approve it (Hab 1:13), but to animadvert upon it. (1.) He observes vain men. Such all are (every man, at his best estate, is altogether vanity), and he considers it in his dealings with them. He knows what the projects and hopes of vain men are, and can blast and defeat them, the workings of their foolish fancies; he sits in heaven, and laughs at them. He takes knowledge of the vanity of men (that is, their little sins; so some) their vain thoughts and vain words, and unsteadiness in that which is good. (2.) He observes bad men: He sees gross wickedness also, though committed ever so secretly and ever so artfully palliated and disguised. All the wickedness of the wicked is naked and open before the all-seeing eye of God: Will he not then consider it? Yes, certainly he will, and will reckon for it, though for a time he seem to keep silence.
II. See here what man is, and let him be humbled, Job 11:12. God sees this concerning vain man that he would be wise, would be thought so, though he is born like a wild ass's colt, so sottish and foolish, unteachable and untameable. See what man is. 1. He is a vain creature - empty; so the word is. God made him full, but he emptied himself, impoverished himself, and now he is raca, a creature that has nothing in him. 2. He is a foolish creature, has become like the beasts that perish (Psa 49:20, Psa 73:22), an idiot, born like an ass, the most stupid animal, an ass's colt, not yet brought to any service. If ever he come to be good for any thing, it is owing to the grace of Christ, who once, in the day of his triumph, served himself by an ass's colt. 3. He is a wilful ungovernable creature. An ass's colt may be made good for something, but the wild ass's colt will never be reclaimed, nor regards the crying of the driver. See Job 39:5-7. Man thinks himself as much at liberty, and his own master, as the wild ass's colt does, that is used to the wilderness (Jer 2:24), eager to gratify his own appetites and passions. 4. Yet he is a proud creature and self-conceited. He would be wise, would he thought so, values himself upon the honour of wisdom, though he will not submit to the laws of wisdom. He would be wise, that is, he reaches after forbidden wisdom, and, like his first parents, aiming to be wise above what is written, loses the tree of life for the tree of knowledge. Now is such a creature as this fit to contend with God or call him to an account? Did we but better know God and ourselves, we should better know how to conduct ourselves towards God.
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 Canst thou by searching find out God?.... God is…
Canst thou by searching find out God?.... God is not to be found out by human search; that there is a God may be found out by inquiring into the book of nature, by considering the creatures that are made, who all proclaim some first cause or maker of them, who is God; but then it cannot be found out what God is, his nature, being, and perfections: an Heathen philosopher (i), being asked by a certain king what God was, required a day to give in his answer; when that was up he desired a second, and still went on asking more; and being demanded the reason of his dilatoriness, replied, the more he had considered the question, the more obscure it was to him: the world by wisdom, or the wiser part of the Heathen world, knew not God; though they knew there was one, they knew not who and what he was; and therefore in some places altars were erected to the unknown God, Act 17:23, and though some of the perfections of God may be investigated from the works of nature, such as the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, Rom 1:19; yet not all his perfections, such as his grace, mercy, &c. proclaimed and displayed in Christ; nor indeed his counsels, purposes, and decrees, which lie in his eternal mind, are the thoughts of his heart, the deep things of God, which none but the Spirit of God searches, knows, and reveals; and since Zophar's request was, that God should show to Job "the secrets of wisdom", these may be meant here, either evangelical wisdom, the wisdom of God in a mystery hid in his heart from everlasting, and the mysterious truths and doctrines or it, things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man to conceive of; these are not to be found out by human search, but are by the revelation of God; or else the reasons of the proceedings of God in Providence, which are out of the reach of men, dark, intricate, mysterious, unsearchable, and past finding out:
canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? to the uttermost of his nature and perfections; all his attributes, the last of them, and the extremity thereof: that God is perfect and entire, wanting nothing, and is possessed of all perfections, may be found out, or otherwise he would not be God; but his essence and attributes, being infinite, can never be traced and comprehended by finite minds; there are some perfections of God we have no idea of, but are lost in confusion and amazement as soon as we think of them and reason about them, as his eternity and immensity particularly; for, when we have rolled over in our minds millions and millions of ages, we are as far off from eternity as when we began; and when we have pervaded all worlds, and every space and place, we have got no further into immensity than at first; we are confounded when we think of a Being without beginning and without bounds, unoriginated, and unlimited; yea, even it is but a small part of the works of God in creation that is known by men, or of God in and by them; nay, by divine revelation, which gives the clearest and most enlarged view of him, whereby he has proclaimed his name, a God gracious and merciful, &c. yet it is only his back parts that are shown, not his face; it is only through a glass, darkly, we now see; indeed, in the other world, we shall see him face to face, and as he is, yet then never comprehend his essence: and, after all, it is only in Christ that God is to be found, to saving purposes; in him is the most glorious display of him; being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person; and not only all his perfections are in him, as a divine Person, but they are glorified by him as Mediator; every step in salvation is taken in Christ, and every blessing of grace comes through him; what of the divine Presence and communion with God is enjoyed is by him; and he will be the medium of the enjoyment of God, and of all the glory and happiness of the saints in the world to come.
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(i) Simonides, apud Cicero, de Nat. Deor. l. 1.
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 Find out - Discover all the depths of his…
Find out - Discover all the depths of his wisdom, and the reasons of his actions?
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 7. Canst thou by searching find out God?]…
Verse 7. Canst thou by searching find out God?] What is God? A Being self-existent, eternal, infinite, immense, without bounds, incomprehensible either by mind, or time, or space. Who then can find this Being out? Who can fathom his depths, ascend to his heights, extend to his breadths, and comprehend the infinitude of his perfections?
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Job 11:7-8. Canst thou by searching find out God?…
Job 11:7-8. Canst thou by searching find out God? — That is, discover all the depths of his wisdom, and the reasons of all his actions. It is as high as heaven — Thou canst not measure the heights of the visible heavens, much less of the divine perfections; what canst thou do? — Namely, to find him out. Deeper than hell; what canst thou know? — Concerning him and his ways, which are far out of thy sight and reach. God is unsearchable. The ages of his eternity cannot be numbered, nor the spaces of his immensity measured; the depths of his wisdom cannot be fathomed, nor the extent of his power bounded: the brightness of his glory can never be described, nor the treasures of his goodness counted. This is a good reason why we should always speak of God with humility and caution, and never prescribe to him, or quarrel with his dispensations; why we should be thankful for what he has revealed of himself, and long to be there where we shall see him as he is.
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 Canst then, by searching, find out God? - In…
Canst then, by searching, find out God? - In order to illustrate the sentiment which he had just expressed, that the secrets of divine wisdom must be far above our comprehension, Zophar introduces here this sublime description of God - a description which seems to have the form and force of a proverb. It seems to have been a settled opinion that man could not find out the Almighty to perfection by his own powers - a sentiment, which is as true now, as it was then, and which is of the utmost importance in all our inquiries about the Creator. The sentiment is expressed in a most beautiful manner; and the language itself is not unworthy of the theme. The word “searching,” חקר chêqer, is from חקר châqar to search, to search out, to examine; and the primary sense, according to Gesenius, lies in searching in the earth by boring or digging - as for metals. Then it means to search with diligence and care. Here it means that by the utmost attention in examining the works of God, it would be impossible for man to find out the Almighty to perfection. All the investigations which have been made of God, have fallen short of the object; and at the present time it is as true as it was in the days of Job, that we cannot, by searching, find him out. Of much that pertains to him and his plans we must be content to remain in ignorance, until we are admitted to the revelations of a higher world - happy and thankful now that we are permitted to know so much of him as we do, and that we are apprized of the existence of one infinite and perfect mind. It is an inexpressible privilege to know “anything” of God; and it is proof of the exalted nature of man, that he is now capable of becoming in any degree acquainted with the divine nature.
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 Perfectly? If not, it is rash to find fault.…
Perfectly? If not, it is rash to find fault. (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 Rather, "Penetrate to the perfections of the Almighty" (Job…
Rather, "Penetrate to the perfections of the Almighty" (Job 9:10; Psa 139:6).
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 Second division, double strophe — THE PERFECTION OF DIVINE…
Second division, double strophe — THE PERFECTION OF DIVINE WISDOM NECESSITATES AN IMMEDIATE AND COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HEART, Job_11:7-12.
a. God’s wisdom is unsearchable — heaven, hell, earth, and sea may be measured, but this divine wisdom knows no limits, Job_11:7-9.
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7. By searching find out God — Furst, Zockler in Lange, etc., read, “Canst thou reach the deep things (depths) in God;” but Umbreit, Hit-zig, (die Forschung Gottes erreichen,) Hengstenberg, etc., read substantially as in the A.V. The former interpret החקר, the depths of God. Compare 1Co_2:10, τα βαθη, the depths of God. The latter translate it, the searching of God, (Eloah,) either of which meanings the word will bear. The most satisfactory reading of the text is that of Delitzsch, Canst thou find out the nature of God — “The hidden ground of God,” (Ewald,) a reading favoured by the Hebraic order of the words. To attribute to hheker the idea of search savours too much of tautology. Simonides, asked by Hiero what God is, desired a day to deliberate. When questioned the next day, he asked for two more; and after this doubled the days, until Hiero, wondering, again asked for his answer, when he replied, The longer I consider, the more obscure the subject appears to me. And Cicero declares, if asked the same question, he should follow the example of Simonides. — De Nat., i, sec. 22. (Compare Rom_1:19-20. Meth. Quar. Revelation, 1869, p. 173, and In Memoriam, sec. 123.)
Almighty unto perfection — Thus Conant, justified by the parallelism and the accentuation. Others interpret it, “Penetrate to the uttermost parts in the Almighty,” (Dillmann and Zockler,) a harsh reading; “canst thou arrive at the limit of God, “(Wordsworth;) “canst thou reach the perfection of the Almighty,” (Davidson and Hitzig,) both of which are questionable. (See a sermon by Archbishop Tillotson on “The Incomprehensibleness of God.”)
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 7. The verse means, Canst thou fathom or conceive…
7. The verse means, Canst thou fathom or conceive God? The special side of God’s being, which Zophar declares to be unfathomable, is His wisdom or omniscience. This is the point in question, for it is this which discovers Job’s heart and his sins; and Zophar desires to put this omniscience before Job to bring him to take a right place before it, just as Eliphaz brought the holiness of God before him. Literally the verse reads: Canst thou find the deeps of (or, that which has to be searched out in) God, canst thou reach to the perfection (the outmost, the ground of the nature) of the Almighty? Cf. ch. Job_26:10, Job_28:3.
7–12. Panegyric on the Divine Wisdom or Omniscience. This wisdom cannot be fathomed by man (Job_11:7). It fills all things (Job_11:8-9). And this explains the sudden calamities that befall men, for God perceives their hidden wickedness (Job_11:10-11). But man is of no understanding (Job_11:12).
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 (7) Canst thou by searching find out God? Literally,…
(7) Canst thou by searching find out God? Literally, Canst thou attain to the searching out of God?
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 Canst thou by searching find out God? literally, Canst…
Canst thou by searching find out God? literally, Canst thou attain to the searching out of God? Canst thou suppose, that is, that, whatever thy wisdom, learning, subtlety, sagacity, power of insight, thou wilt be able to search out and fully know the character, attributes, modes of thought and action, of the Most High? No. In one sense, all men do well to profess them. selves "Agnostics not that they can know nothing of God, but that they can never know him fully, never exhaust the knowledge of him. As the apostle says, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?". (Rom_11:33, Rom_11:34) Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? rather. Canst thou attain to the perfection of the Almighty? understand, i.e. , his inconceivable perfectness.
Vers. 7-12. Zophar to Job: 2. God"s wisdom and man"s folly.
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I THE PERFECTION OF DIVINE WISDOM.
1. Unsearchable. Zophar"s interrogations (ver. 7) may signify either that man can never fully understand God, or that man"s wisdom can never fully equal God"s. Taken either way, they mean that the Divine wisdom, already described as "fold upon fold" (ver. 6), transcends the comprehension of a finite mind. Whether the knowledge of God attainable by the speculative reason is a real and immediate knowledge of God as he is, or "nothing more than a tissue of ambitious self-contradictions which only indicate what he is not" (Mansel, "Limits of Religious Thought," lect. 4.) may be relegated to philosophers and metapyhsicians to determine. It is certain the Divine Being is unsearchable by man in his essence, (Job_36:26 Job_37:23) in his Person, (Gen_32:29 Jud_1:13:18 Joh_1:1 Joh_10:30) in his attributes, (Psa_147:5) e.g. in his wisdom, (Isa_40:28 Rom_11:33) in his works, (Job_5:9 Job_9:10) and in his ways. (Nah_1:3 Rom_11:33) Hence man"s wisdom can never equal God"s. Man"s wisdom at the best can be fully comprehended; God"s cannot.
2. Infinite. That which renders the Divine wisdom unsearchable is its infinitude (vers. 8, 9). The wisdom displayed by Deity in the creation, decoration, and preservation of the universe does not exhaust the fulness that his Godhead contains. Could the human mind explore the former in every possible direction, there would still remain in each an infinitude beyond, representing the deep things of Eloah, and the perfection of Shaddai. Most impressively does the language convey the thought of man"s inferiority to God in respect of wisdom. For if man by his utmost efforts cannot reach unto the perfection of the erect urea if there be heights in heaven which he cannot scale, and depths in Sheol to which he cannot penetrate, if even the wide-rolling, far-resounding sea baffles him with its mystery how much less should he hope to reach unto the perfection of the Creator?
3. Irresistible. "If he," i.e. the Almighty, acting under the guidance of his wisdom, "cut off literally, "should arrest and shut up," or imprison, "and gather together," i.e. a court to try man his prisoner, "then who can hinder him?" (ver. 10). A graphic picture representing
(1) God"s ability to pursue, arrest, and shut up In prison those who offend against his holy Law, as he did with Adam and Eve, (Gen_3:8, Gen_3:9) with Pharaoh, (Exo_14:23) with Jon_1:4; as he still does with wicked men, pursuing them with the hot foot of an avenging providence, (Pro_13:21) apprehending them with the strong hand of an awakened conscience, (Act_2:37 Act_16:30) and as he will yet do with the finally impenitent who despise his offered grace. (Mat_10:28 2Th_1:9)
(2) The certainty that God will yet bring the ungodly into judgment at the last day, (Job_21:30 Ecc_3:17 Mat_24:30 Mat_25:31 Rom_14:10 Heb_9:27) since he often does so prelusively and premonitorily on earth. (Pro_11:31 Psa_58:11) And
(3) the impossibility of any one being able to either contend with him in argument or outwit him with chicanery. (Job_9:4, Job_9:12, Job_9:14) Men may seem at present to reply successfully against God, denying his existence, ignoring his providence, impeaching his justice, vindicating themselves and repudiating the charges of his Law; but when God holds the great assize it will be seen how utterly vain as well as preposterously foolish have all their endeavours been.
4. Omniscient. God knows vain men, and thoroughly comprehends their wickedness, without requiring to reflect upon either them or it. His knowledge of men is
(1) universal: "He knoweth men," i.e. he knows them all;
(2) particular: "He knoweth vain men," he knows their characters and their works;
(3) continuous, he constantly observes them; and
(4) intuitive, he knows them at once and thoroughly, with all-seeing, all-searching glance. And this omniscience lays the basis for God"s invincibility in judgment.
II THE CONSUMMATION OF HUMAN FOLLY. In contrast to the transcendent wisdom of Eloah, Zophar depicts men, and in particular Job, as:
1. Morally worthless. "Vain men," literally, "men of nothingness," men devoid of principle, and "hollow men," he styles them. The appellation is by no means incorrect, as descriptive of man"s natural condition; man being now, in consequence of sin, emptied of all goodness and spiritual understanding.
2. Naturally witless. Prone to entertain exalted notions of his own wisdom, man is naturally senseless as a wild ass"s colt which also is not wholly astray from the truth, the estate of man from his birth being one of much ignorance, especially with regard to things Divine.
3. Essentially heartless. Zophar designs to say that hollow-hearted man can only be humanized by the salutary discipline of affliction. The change wrought upon him by the fierce discipline of life is as great as it would be for a wild ass"s colt to become a man. But this implies that man is by sin dehumanized and without a heart.
4. Absolutely hopeless. Delitzsch reads, "But before an empty head gaineth understanding, a wild ass would become a man;" thus teaching that man"s folly is irremediable. This black picture, however, is not in all points according to truth. Sinful man may be born again, may obtain a new heart, may acquire an enlightened understanding, and may eventually be arrayed in stainless moral purity.
Learn:
1. To revere the transcendent majesty of him who is infinite and unsearchable in wisdom.
2. To trust the providential government of him who is "wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.
3. To believe the gracious revelations of him "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
4. To accept the heavenly gifts of him who "hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence.
5. To cherish deep humility before him "whose foolishness is wiser than men," and before whom man"s highest wisdom is but folly.
6. To be thankful to him whose manifold wisdom" hath been revealed for the enlightenment and salvation of foolish men.
Vers. 7-12. Man humbled before God.
Vain man reasons upon the ways of God, and presumes to penetrate to the depths of the Divine wisdom. A professed wisdom lands him in folly. To scale the heavens is as easy as to "find out the Almighty to perfection," to fathom the depths of the Divine designs. Job and his friends and hosts of others of us attempt to explain the name and ways of God, but our efforts are vain, and but expose a folly equal to our ignorance.
I THE DIVINE NATURE AND THE DIVINE PURPOSES INFINITELY BEYOND THE POSSIBLE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. How soon may a prudent reflection on either of these assure men that they "cannot attain unto" them! "High as heaven, deeper than hell," "longer than the earth," "broader than the sea, these are the terms used by Zophar in his just description. As well may man attempt to touch the height of heaven, to reach to the depth of Hades, to stretch his arms to compass sea and land from the far cast to the distant west, as to pretend to comprehend, within the compass of his feeble and limited knowledge, an adequate estimate of the Divine nature, an adequate understanding of the Divine counsels, find out God.
II As the Divine Name is incomprehensible by man, and the Divine ways past his searching out, so is it equally BEYOND THE POWER OF MAN TO HINDER THE WORKING OUT OF THE DIVINE PURPOSE. In his ways God hides his wise design. He worketh towards a definite end. Men may oppose it in their folly or sinfulness, or seem to hinder it in their error. But like an onflowing tide it bears all before it. "Who can hinder him?" His work is an omnipotent work, as his Name is infinite. Against the might of God it is vain for feeble man to oppose his strength, or the energy of his will. The Divine kingdom ruleth over all.
III It is, therefore, utterly IMPOSSIBLE FOR MAN TO ESCAPE THE RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT OF ALMIGHTY GOD. Zophar would thus shut up Job unto self-abasement. Revealing his impotence before God, his inability so much as to know the Divine Name, or to grasp with his understanding the widespread ways of the Most High, he would compel Job to abasement to a confession of guiltiness, to the wisdom of casting away his vain self-assurance, that of God he may be made wise. All these purposes are good in themselves, but the covert implication God is angry with thee; God judgeth thee; "he seeth" thy "wickedness is harsh and erroneous. Like his brethren, he errs in the method of applying his good principles. Yet is it wise for all men
(1) to learn their impotence before God; to bow to the Divine ways;
(2) to assure themselves of the wisdom and goodness of the hidden purposes of God;
(3) to commit themselves in lowly reverential trust to the overruling power and government of God. Thus the intractable one shall become gentle, docile, and obedient the "wild ass"s colt" will become a man. R.G.
The unsearchable depth of God.
It has been said that Zophar shows "some touch of the base courtier spirit and motive" in thus eulogizing the wisdom of God. He seems to wish to secure God on his side. While he rebukes Job he flatters God. Nevertheless, though his motive may be unworthy, the question which he here raises is real and important.
I GOD"S THOUGHT IS UNFATHOMABLY DEEP.
1. It must be so because God is infinite. If we could understand God completely, it would be clear that he was but as one of us. A dog cannot fathom the thought of a man, because the inferior being can never enter into the depths of the experience of one greater in faculty. No creature can measure the mind of the great Creator.
2. It is found to be so in experience. We are continually baffled by riddles of providence. We are puzzled to find our calculations false, and our explanations unsatisfactory. We fail to understand the object and meaning of God"s mysterious dealings with us.
II WE CANNOT BUT DESIRE TO FATHOM THE DEPTHS OF GOD"S THOUGHT. NO inquiry can be more intensely interesting. God is the Source and controlling Power of our lives, and everything depends on what he thinks about us. Therefore true theology is no idle study of the cloister; it is the most practical inquiry concerning what most intimately affects our vital interests in time and in eternity. But apart from personal considerations, the study of God is the study of what is highest, best, and most wonderful in the universe. Can any more lofty employment for the human intellect be found? Is it not grossly unnatural for the child not to care to know about his father? Surely it is wrong to check an inquiring soul in its search after God, even when it seems to go sounding on through dim and perilous ways.
III MEN HAVE MADE FOOLISH CLAIMS TO HAVE FATHOMED THE DEPTHS OF GOD. Zophar did this even while appearing to honour the vastness and mystery of the Divine thought; for he assumed that he knew God"s idea, and that this was just identical with conventional orthodoxy. His was the common error of extreme dogmatists. Creeds may be excellent as clear, concise confessions of belief; but the moment a finality is claimed for them they cease to be a help, and become a positive stumbling-block and hindrance to truth. We cannot define God; he escapes all the bounds of the largest words. When we attempt to draw a circle about him we tacitly assume that he is not an Infinite Being.
IV OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS REAL, BUT PARTIAL. We cannot "find out the Almighty unto perfection. " We cannot know God perfectly, cannot know all of God. We may know much of him. He is not represented in the Bible as the Unknowable, nor to Christians as "the Unknown God." Indeed Christians can say, "We know that we know him". (1Jn_2:3) Our knowledge is not merely a knowledge of our thought about him; and theology is not simply the science of man"s religion. We know God truly, as far as our knowledge extends. Yet we know but a very little of God. Therefore let us learn humility, patience, faith. We can never know all, but we may know more. Therefore let us "follow on to know the. W.F.A. (Hos_6:3)
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 Canst thou by searching find out God?
Job_11:7
Canst thou by searching find out God?
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The unsearchableness of God
You are not to suppose that your God is to be utterly unknown, and that because your faculties cannot pierce the inmost recesses of His being, therefore you are discharged from the duty of thinking about Him at all. Your faculties were given you for use, and the highest exercise of which they are capable is thought on God.
1. The duty of searching into Divine things is one recognised and acted out by very few. Let your own observations convince you of this. It is only by a knowledge of Gods character that we can hope to keep His law.
2. The proper objects of the search. Such as Gods mind about you. God in His dispensations and His ways. This is practical; and it is far more profitable to spend our energies on such considerations as these, than on speculations which are too deep for us, at least while we are on this side the grave, and in the flesh. To know Gods mind about Himself, I invite even the man that would study the character of the Most High, and would know the Lord.
3. What measure of success in such study may we expect? Success will not be limited to improvement. It will bring consolation. (P. B. Power, M. A.)
God incomprehensible by His creatures
That there is a first and supreme cause, who is the Creator and Governor of the universe, is a plain and obvious truth which forces itself upon every attentive mind; so that many have argued the existence of God, from the unanimous consent of all nations to this great and fundamental truth. But though we may easily conceive of the existence of the Deity, yet His nature and perfections surpass the comprehension of all minds but His own.
I. God is incomprehensible in respect to the ground of His existence. God owes His existence to Himself, yet we are obliged to suppose there is some ground or reason of His existing, rather than not existing. We cannot conceive of any existence which has no ground or foundation. The ground or reason of Gods existence must be wholly within Himself. What that something in Himself is, is above the comprehension of all created beings.
II. God is incomprehensible in respect to many of His perfections.
1. Eternity. God is eternal. He never had a beginning. We can conceive of a future, but not of a past eternity. That a being should always exist without any beginning is what men will never be able to fathom, either in this world, or that which is to come.
2. Omnipresence. The immensity of the Divine presence transcends the highest conceptions of created beings. God is equally present with each of His creatures, and with all His creatures at one and the same instant.
3. Power. God can do everything. His power can meet with no resistance or obstruction. Who can stay His hand? The effects of Divine power are astonishing.
4. Knowledge. That knowledge takes in all objects within the compass of possibility. Such knowledge is wonderful; it is high; we cannot attain unto it.
5. The moral perfections of God in extent and degree surpass our limited views.
III. God is incomprehensible in His great designs. None of the creatures of God can look into His mind and see all His views and intentions as they lie there. His counsels will of necessity remain incomprehensible, until His Word or providence shall reveal them to His intelligent creatures.
IV. He is incomprehensible in His works. Their nature, number, and magnitude stretch beyond the largest views of creatures. No man knows how second causes produce their effects; nor how the material system holds together and hangs upon nothing.
V. He is unsearchable in His providence. Whatever God has done, He always intended to do; but we do not know at present all the reasons of His conduct, nor all the consequences that will flow from it. Respecting future events, God has drawn over them an impenetrable veil. Improve and apply the subject.
1. In a very important sense God is truly infinite. To be incomprehensible is the same as to be infinite.
2. The incomprehensible nature of the Supreme Being does by no means preclude our having clear and just conceptions of His true character.
3. If God be incomprehensible by His creatures, we have no reason to deny our need of a Divine revelation.
4. If God is incomprehensible in His nature and perfections, then it is no objection against the Divinity of the Bible that it contains some incomprehensible mysteries.
5. Then it is very unreasonable to disbelieve anything which He has been pleased to reveal concerning Himself, merely because we cannot comprehend it.
6. Ministers ought to make it their great object in preaching, to unfold the character and perfections of the Deity. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
The incomprehensibleness of God
Job, in the foregoing chapter, carried the justification of his integrity so far that he seemed to entrench somewhat rudely on the justice of providence. Zophar, therefore, to repress this insolence, and vindicate the Divine honour, lays before him the incomprehensibleness and majesty of God.
I. Assert and illustrate the doctrine of the text. That God is incomprehensible. If in the Godhead we gaze and pry too boldly into eternal generation and procession, and the ineffable unity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it will but dazzle and confound our weak faculties. All the attributes of God are infinite in their perfection, and whosoever goes about to fathom what is infinite, is guilty of the folly of that countryman, in the poem, who sitting on the bank side, expects to see the stream run quite away, and leave its channel dry; but that runs on, and will do so to all ages. We cannot comprehend the whole extent of Gods moral attributes. Though God were so far discoverable by the light of reason, as served to render the idolatry and wickedness of the pagan world inexcusable (Rom_1:1-32), yet God being infinite, and His perfections a vast abyss, there are therefore mysteries in the Godhead which human reason cannot penetrate, heights which we cannot soar.
II. Reflections upon this proposition. Use it--
1. To let out the tumour of self-conceit.
2. To justify our belief of mysteries.
3. To vindicate the doctrine of providence. The incomprehensibleness of God solves all the difficulties that clog the doctrine of providence. (Richard Lucas, D. D.)
God incomprehensible
That there is a God is almost the universal belief of mankind. There are few absolute atheists. Zophar reproves Job for pretending to a perfect knowledge of God. The charge implies that God is incomprehensible. We cannot perfectly understand His works, His ways, His Word, or His attributes--such as His eternity, power, wisdom, and knowledge, holiness, justice, goodness. Practical lessons--
1. We should learn to be humble.
2. Infer how base a thing is idolatry, or image worship.
3. If God is incomprehensibly glorious, how should we admire and adore Him!
4. Let us calmly submit to all His dispensations in providence.
5. Seeing that the nature of God is so wonderfully glorious, let us study to know Him.
6. Learn the reasonableness of faith.
7. This subject should render the heavenly state exceedingly desirable; for in that state we shall know even as we are known. (G. Burder.)
The incomprehensibleness of God
This term or attribute is a relative term, and speaks a relation between an object and a faculty, between God and a created understanding. God knows Himself, but He is incomprehensible to His creatures. Give the proof of the doctrine--
I. By way of instance or induction of particulars.
1. Instances on the part of the object. The nature of God, the excellency and perfection of God, the works and ways of God, are above our thoughts and apprehensions. We can only understand Gods perfections as He communicates them, and not as He possesses them. We must not frame notions of them contrary to what they are in the creature, nor must we limit them by what they are in the creature. The ways of Gods providence are not to be traced. We take a part from the whole, and consider it by itself, without relation to the whole series of His dispensations.
2. Instances on the part of the subject, or the persons capable of knowing, God in any measure. The perfect knowledge of God is above a finite creatures understanding. Wicked men are full of false apprehensions of God. And good men have some false apprehensions. The angels do not arrive at perfect knowledge of Him.
II. By way of conviction. If the creature be unsearchable, is not the Creator much more unsearchable. He possesses all the perfections which He communicates, and many which cannot be communicated to a creature.
III. The clear reason of it. Which is this--the disproportion between the faculty and the object; the finiteness of our understandings, and the infiniteness of the Divine nature and perfections. Apply this doctrine--
1. It calls for our admiration, and veneration, and reverence.
2. It calls for humility and modesty.
3. It calls for the highest degree of our affection. (J. Tillotson, D. D.)
Doctrine of Trinity not a contradiction to reason
The doctrine of the Trinity is not at all more incomprehensible than others to which no opposition is offered. A man can comprehend the Trinity as well as he can the eternity of God, or the omnipresence of God.
1. Certain considerations from which you will infer the presumption of expecting that the nature of God should be either discernible or demonstrable by reason. If we would but observe how little way our reason can make when labouring amongst things with which we are every day conversant, we should be prepared to expect that when applied to the nature of the Deity, it would be found altogether incompetent to the unravelling and comprehending of it. We are to ourselves a mystery. There is a presumption which outweighs language in expecting that we can apprehend what is God, and how He subsists. A revelation from God may be expected to contain much which must overmatch all but the faith of mankind. We are continually in the habit of admitting things on the testimony of experience, which without such experience we should reject as incredible. We may assert this in respect to many of those operations of nature which are going on daily and hourly around us, e.g., husbandry. We do not, in regard of the things of this lower creation, measure what we believe by what we can demonstrate. Where then is the justice and the reasonableness of our carrying up to the highest investigations of God a rule which, if applied to the facts or phenomena of nature, would make us doubt the one half, and disbelieve the other? If we reject one property of God, because incomprehensible, we must, if consistent, reject almost every other. This is not sufficiently observed. It is customary to fasten on the mystery of the Trinity as the great incomprehensible in God, and to speak of it as tasking our reason in a measure far higher than the rest. We admit that whilst the whole of a revelation may be above our reason, there may be parts which seem contrary to it; and if there exists a repugnance between reason and revelation, we do right in withholding our assent. If it could be shown that the received doctrine of the Trinity did violence to the conclusions of reason, there would be good ground for rejecting that doctrine and regarding the Bible as wrongly interpreted.
2. There is no repugnance to reason in the doctrine of the Trinity. It is above reason, but not contrary to reason. The sense in which God is three, is not the sense in which God is one. The doctrine stated with simplicity, the doctrine that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are so distinct as not to be one with the other, and so united as to be one God, carries nothing on its front to convict it of absurdity. There is no contradiction in three being one, unless it be said that the three are one in the same respect. We are not now endeavouring to establish the fact that Scripture teaches the doctrine of the Trinity; we only show that there is nothing in the doctrine which reason can prove impossible. The testimonies of Scripture to the Divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, are numerous and explicit; the declarations that there is only one God rival these in amount and clearness. You will be told that this doctrine is a speculative thing; that even if it is true, it is not fundamental; and that, whatsoever place it may fill in scholastic theology, it is of little or no worth in practical Christianity. Remember one truth. If the doctrine of the Trinity be a false doctrine, your Redeemer, Jesus Christ, was nothing more than a man. The Divinity of Christ stands or falls with the Trinity or Unity. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Feelings after God
When the Creator formed man He placed within him a religious sentiment, a sense of a superior existence, and this being the nature of the subjective mind, the outer realm became at once peopled with supernatural creatures. The religious feeling in the soul, in the first years of its strivings, saw gods in every storm, and in every ray of sunshine, and in all the shadows of the night. Paul says God so made the rational world, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they may feel after Him, and find Him. All the mythological and theological phenomena of the past are manifestations of this feeling after the true God. Christ stands the nearest of all alleged divinities to any historical fact. There have been claims to Divine honours set up by others. Christ stands farthest from myth, and nearest to reality. Think of the less questionable elements in this historic fact.
1. It was a great gain to our race that at last the search for an Incarnation came up to a real, visible being. Man had gone about as far as he could upon a theology of legend and absurdity. There was no valuable religious faith in the world at the time of the Advent. The Roman Empire had all forms of greatness except religious faith. Mankind will always exchange legend for history. The development of reason works against myth and in favour of the actual. Examine further the quality of this Christ idea. It was the first incarnation lying within the field of evidence. How far was this Christ an-incarnation of the Divine?
2. It should soften our judgment that we do not know the nature of Deity. There is every reason for supposing that man was created in the intellectual likeness of God, and hence for God to become manifest in Christ was only a filling to the full of a cup partly filled in the creation of man. Man himself held a part of the Divine image. Christ held it all. The picture of Jesus Christ is the best picture conceivable of a mingling of the earthly and the heavenly. The whole scene is above life and below the infinite. It was God brought down, and man lifted up. (David Swing.)
How can I know there is a God
A knowledge of God is necessary. It is important to have strong faith in God.
I. I know there is a God, because He has revealed Himself to men. In all ages God has spoken to men, and given them a knowledge of Himself. All along the ages God was constantly speaking to men, and revealing Himself to His people. As large numbers of these men gave their lives as witnesses for Gods revelation, I believe their testimony, and am aided in searching to know God for myself.
II. Because He has revealed Himself to me. In three ways--
1. In His Holy Word.
2. In the world in which I live.
3. In my own heart, and soul, and life.
III. Because He made the world. It could not have made itself.
IV. Because I can see His wisdom in the harmony and design which exist in the world. Wherever you see design, you may be sure there has been a designer. Things do not happen by chance.
V. I am confirmed in my knowledge of God when I learn that men everywhere have believed in God. Go wherever you will, you will find men who believe in God. Rather than be without God, men will make one. The universal failure of man has not been to have no God, but to have too many. (Charles Leach, D. D.)
Searching after God
I. This is a righteous occupation.
1. It agrees with the profoundest instincts of our souls. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. It is the hunger of the river for the ocean--every particle heaves towards it, and rests not until it finds it.
2. It is stimulated by the manifestations of nature. His footprints are everywhere, and they invite us to pursue His march.
3. It is encouraged by the declarations of the Bible. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him whilst He is near.
4. It is aided by the manifestations of Christ. Christ is the brightness of His Fathers glory, etc.
II. This is a useful occupation.
1. There is no occupation so spirit-quickening. The idea of God to the soul is what the sunbeam is to nature. No other idea has such a life-giving power.
2. There is no occupation so spirit-humbling.
3. There is no occupation so spirit-ennobling. When the soul feels itself before God, the majesty of kings, and the splendour of empires are but childish toys.
III. This is an endless occupation. Canst thou by searching find out God? Never fully. The finite can never comprehend the Infinite.
1. This endless work agrees with the inexhaustible powers of our nature. Searching after anything less than the Infinite would never bring out into full and vigorous action the immeasurable potentialities within us.
2. This endless work agrees with the instinct of mystery within us. The soul wants mystery. Without mystery there is no inquisitiveness, no wonder, no adoration, no self-abnegation. (Homilist.)
The Divine nature incomprehensible
Mankind supremely desire knowledge. In the pursuit of it every encouragement should be given. Yet there is a sort of knowledge which some busy and unsatisfied tempers are too inquisitive after. It is out of this arrogant deceit that they take upon them to be so well acquainted with the Divine nature, and to fathom all the deep things of God. As the term God must imply in it every perfection that is conceivable of a power infinitely superior to us, the very idea of such a Being must be sufficient to make us stand in awe and keep our distance. What ought effectually to deter and discourage too bold researches into the Divine nature is--
I. That it seems to be a sin to attempt to find it out. Our lust after knowledge should be put under restraint. It was a forbidden curiosity that ruined the first members of our race. Certain it is that we are under limitations; and it must be very unadvised to pretend to find out God to perfection. And--
II. It is impossible to accomplish it. Neither prophets nor apostles were capable of comprehending all knowledge: at least they were not thought fit to be entrusted with more important discoveries. Some things angels even might not look into. Will reason supply the deficiency? The immensity of the Divine nature, and the weakness of human capacities, will be perpetual discouragements to such a rash experiment. It is true that the eternal power and Godhead of the Creator are so easily deducible from the things that are made, that those are pronounced without excuse that do not discern them, and act agreeably to their conviction. But what is man that he should with so much impatience covet to know the hidden things of God before the time? Secret things belong unto God. Highly then does it concern us to cheek that petulant and wanton desire of prying into things which God hath industriously concealed from us. We may know quite enough to make us religious here, and happy hereafter. It is not unreasonable to believe that it will be one of the beatitudes of good men to have their understandings enlarged at the great day of the manifestation of all things. Let no one fancy he is injured, or that Gods ways are not equal, in not suffering us at present to see Him as He is; since He never intended that this life should be a state of perfection in any kind. Let us be thankful that God has graciously revealed to us the way of salvation, and not be dissatisfied that He hath not given us to understand all mysteries and all knowledge. (James Roe, M. A.)
The incomprehensibleness of the Divine nature and perfection
1. We can apprehend that God is a being of all possible perfection. He is the first, or self-existent being. What has no cause for its existence, we naturally think can have no bounds.
2. We cannot find God out to perfection. Were He less perfect, the attempt might not be so utterly impossible. That we cannot perfectly know God may be argued from the narrowness of our faculties, and from the great disadvantages for knowing God which we lie under in the present state. Moreover God is infinite, and all created understandings are but finite. We cannot fathom infinite perfection with the short line of our reason; or soar to boundless heights with our feeble wing; or stretch our thoughts till they are commensurate to the Divine immensity. Consider some particular perfections--eternity, immensity, omniscience, and omnipotence. Consider the moral attributes of God His holiness, goodness, justice, truth. Practical reflections--
1. Let us adore this incomprehensible Being. It is the grandeur, the infinity of His perfections which makes Him a proper object of adoration.
2. Whenever we are thinking or speaking of God, let us carry this in our minds, that He is incomprehensible. This will influence us to think and speak honourably of Him.
3. This will help us to form a more raised conception of the happiness of the heavenly state. (H. Groves.)
The incomprehensibleness of God
I. As to the creation. That work of God is perfect, with regard to the ends for which it was designed. But our wisdom is not sufficient always to trace out the Divine.
1. We cannot perfectly understand the production and disposal of things at the beginning. Creation is of two kinds: out of nothing, and out of pre-existent matter. Of creation out of nothing, it is not possible that we should form the least conception. Of creation out of preexistent matter we can have some idea, but only an inadequate one.
2. We cannot perfectly understand the causes of things in the stated course of nature. A thousand questions might be started, about which the wisest philosophers can only offer their conjectures. The way of God is too deep and winding for us to find out. We have no reason to boast of our knowledge of the works of God, since what we know not is much more considerable than what we know.
3. We cannot perfectly understand the reasons and ends for which all things are what they are, and their exact adjustment and correspondence to these ends. The general and ultimate end of all things is the glory of God. And we can perceive that things are admirably fitted to answer this end. Yet we do not clearly understand in what manner each thing contributes to this purpose. We should be cautioned against censuring any of the works of God in our thoughts, because we are not able to tell what good they answer.
II. As to providence. We can easily demonstrate that there is a providence, and this, in all its dispensations, consonant to the perfections of God, but we can by no means fathom all the depths of it. Some instances may be given in which the unsearchableness of the ways of providence appears. Such as--
1. Gods manner of dealing with the race of mankind, especially in suffering it to be in a state so full of sin and confusion, of imperfection and misery.
2. The providence of God, as exercised over His Church, is beyond our deciphering. Why is the Church so small; and why has it been so overrun with errors and corruptions?
3. The providence of God in weighing out the fates of kingdoms, nations, and families. Baffled as we are in our attempts to solve a thousand perplexing difficulties which present themselves to our minds, we should inquire with modesty, judge with caution, and always remember that God is not bound to give us any account of His matters.
4. The providence of God in relation to particular persons will be forever inexplicable. Some reasons why the ways of providence are inscrutable may be given. We have not a thorough insight into the nature of man. God governs man according to the nature He has given. The ends of providence are unknown to us, or known very imperfectly; therefore they appear to us so perplexed and intricate.
5. Only a small part of providence comes under our notice and observation. How then can we know the beauty of the whole? The subject teaches the greatest resignation both of mind and heart. (H. Groves.)
Difficulties concerning Gods providence
Zophar reproved Job as if he had replied against God in order to justify himself. The argument upon which Zophar proceeds is this, That after all our inquiries concerning the nature or attributes of God, and the reasons of His conduct, we are still to seek, and shall never be able perfectly to comprehend or account for them. But we may upon a modest and pious search have a true notion of Gods attributes, and justify His providential dispensation. Difficulties--
I. In relation to the Divine attributes. By our strongest efforts we cannot know what the essential properties are of a Being infinitely perfect. By the attributes of God, we are to understand the several apprehensions we have of Him according to the different lights wherein our minds are capable of beholding Him, or the different subjects upon which He is pleased to operate.
1. With respect to Gods power. That power is a perfection will not be disputed. How shall we form to ourselves any perfect idea of infinite power? Especially if we consider Omnipotence as operating on mere privation, and raising almost an infinite variety of beings out of nothing. And if creation implies only the disposing of existing things into a beautiful and useful order, this equally gives us a sublime idea of power.
2. With respect to Gods eternity. Who can distinctly apprehend how one single and permanent act of duration should extend to all periods of time, without succession of time? But how the eternity of God should be one single and permanent act of duration, present to all past as well as future time, is a difficulty sufficient to turn the edge of the finest wit, and the force of the strongest head.
3. With respect to the immensity of God. That a single individual substance, without extension or parts, should spread itself into and over all parts; that it should fill all places, and be circumscribed to no place, and yet be intimately present in every place; are truths discoverable by reason and confirmed by revelation. To say that God is present only by His knowledge does not solve the difficulty of conceiving His ubiquity. Where God is present in any attribute, He is essentially present.
4. With respect to the omniscience of God. God does not only foreknow what He has effectually decreed shall come to pass, but what is of a casual and contingent nature, and depends on the good or ill use man will make of his liberty. So that we must suppose in God a certain and determinate knowledge of events, which yet are of arbitrary and uncertain determination in their causes. The best answer is, that God is present to all time, and to all the events which happen in time. Futurity in respect to Him is only a term we are forced to make use of, from the defects of our finite capacity. The difficulty, however, of His predictions remains. We have more clear and distinct ideas of the moral perfections of His nature, than of His incommunicable properties.
II. In relation to the Divine providence.
1. How far is Gods wisdom affected or impeached by the sufferings of good men? One of the principal designs of God is to promote the interests of religion. The sufferings of good men appear to obstruct such a design, as they seem to lessen the force of those arguments which we draw from the temporal rewards of religion; and as circumstances of distress are commonly supposed to sour and embitter the spirits of men. The promises made to the Jews rap all along upon temporal blessings and enjoyments. But the principal motives to our Christian obedience are taken from the happiness and rewards of a life after this. Religion does, however, entitle men to the temporal advantages of life, but the Christian promises relate principally to the inward peace and tranquillity of mind which naturally flow from a religious conduct; or to the inward consolations wherewith God is sometimes pleased more eminently to reward piety in this life. The necessary supports of life are assured. To lay too great a stress on the temporal rewards of religion seems of ill consequence to religion on two accounts. As it tends to confirm people in the opinion that the happiness of human life consists in the abundance of things that a man possesses. And men are hereby tempted to suspect the truth of religion itself, or to make false and uncharitable judgments on persons truly religious. Such judgments the friends made of suffering Job.
2. Prejudices against the goodness of God. The notion we have of goodness is, that it disposes to good and beneficent actions. But pain and sickness, etc., are things naturally evil. Such things seem inconsistent with the nature of God. But God may have special ends in view in afflicting, and He may be treating men as a parent treats his child.
3. Prejudices concerning the justice of God. But the best of men are conscious to themselves of many sins and defects which might justly have provoked God to inflict what they suffer upon them. And this life is not properly a state of rewards and punishments, but of trial and discipline. So the afflictions of good men are parts of the training work of Divine goodness and mercy. Seek then to have the best and largest thoughts of the Divine perfections you possibly can. Frequently reflect on the moral perfections of the Divine nature. Since we cannot by searching find out the Almighty to perfection, nor even discover all the particular reasons of His providence in this world, let us labour for eternity. There our minds will not only be united to God in perfect vision, but our hearts in perfect love. (R. Fiddes.)
God searchable and yet unsearchable
Job sometimes spake a language difficult to be interpreted by his friends, and easy to be mistaken by his enemies. The men who came to comfort him made no allowance for the anguish that his flesh suffered, and hence they took undue advantage of every self-justifying word that fell from his lips, to humble him with reproaches, and to declare him guilty of some heinous sins in the sight of God, of which the world knew nothing. These so-called friends mistook chastening for punishment. There is something singularly ungenerous in the way that Zophar delivers his thought here. He makes assertions without proofs, and states fallacies, which he calls truths. His heart was overflowing with rancour. As if he would strip this holy man of all the brightness of hope, he proposes two questions to him which, although to a certain extent true in themselves, were, in Jobs ease, most unsympathising and comfortless.
I. All the natural searching in the world cannot find out God. Mans reason is not equal to the work of apprehending the spiritual. We are compelled to rest conjecturally upon visible impressions; we can go no further. Supposing we are intelligent enough to set every faculty to this searching work, the result would be the same. The world by wisdom never yet knew God; common earthly intelligences move in every ether direction than towards heaven. Philosophy deals with things on the earth, under the earth, and above the earth; but not one tittle of that which relates to God forms any part of it. The high-class moralists of the most civilised heathen states have no standing at all in their religious creeds. In them you perceive at once the utmost length that an unenlightened understanding can go.
II. There is a searching which can find out God, yet not unto perfection. Search the Scriptures. For thousands of years there was a dispensation in which terror prevailed over hope, and a hard bondage over spiritual liberty. It was deeply covered with a veil which hid the wonderful workings of God, as a pardoning and a reconciled Father in Christ Jesus. But when the mind has become acquainted with Scripture facts, what is its real gain? It knows more, but does it ascend higher? By such searching no man profitably finds out God. Notwithstanding all that the best searching achieves, in the way of experimental knowledge, not the holiest saint that ever searched the most, is able to find out the Almighty in His perfection.
III. In what manner are we to glorify God in the discovery of His redemptive character? Our desires must be longing and panting after fuller flowings in of His love. It is in the heart that we are the most sensible of the tender relationship which He bears to us. (F. G. Crossman.)
The unsearchableness of God
It is scarcely a paradox to say that God is at once the most known Being in the whole universe, and yet the most unknown. Our subject is the inevitable limits which are placed to the human intelligence; not only in relation to all Divine subjects, but extending, more or less, to every department of human inquiry. The claim to unlimited knowledge is never put forth by the true philosopher.
1. We find evidence of the unsearchableness of God in His own Being and perfections. Hence all the humiliating failures of the ancients in their endeavours to find out God. In the economy of nature and providence. In those providential aspects which more immediately concern our own happiness.
Practical lessons.
1. We should be prepared for some corresponding difficulties in the written word.
2. We should show great diffidence and caution in interpreting the disclosures which God has been pleased to make of Himself, whether in nature or revelation.
3. We should cherish a feeling of thankfulness for the knowledge we already possess. (D. Moore, M. A.)
The incomprehensible character of God
I. Of what we cannot find out. These are things both in providence, nature, and grace. What wonder that there is a mystery in the Trinity, that the mode of the Deitys existence is too high for earthly thought? The inability which we may feel to understand the reason of a fact, does not in the slightest degree interfere with the fact being credible. A great moral lesson is taught us. The propensity of man is to self-exaltation. He overvalues his own righteousness, his own wisdom, his own power. There is both a wisdom and an utility in the fact that we cannot by searching find out the Almighty to perfection. There are truths which, as facts, we must receive, though the reasons of them we may be inadequate to apprehend. Still we must remember,, that nothing like a blind unreflecting credulity is imposed upon us.
II. What we may reach to. Though we cannot in the abstract comprehend how the three in their essence are but One, yet what Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are to us we may know, together with the unity of their will and purpose, so as to exhibit to us most clearly our consolation and salvation.
1. The Father is displayed in this unapproachable Godhead, the Former and Maintainer of all created things.
2. Whereas the Father in shewing mercy must not obliterate justice, it is in His Son, the eternal wisdom of God, that these two, apparently so opposite, are brought into union.
3. Though we cannot comprehend how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, yet the necessity of the new birth is plain enough; and the might of the Spirit to effect it is sufficiently described. Thus, while we cannot find out the Almighty to perfection, we have enough of His dealings exhibited to guide our conduct. And remember that it is necessary to search into truth, not speculatively, but experimentally and practically. (John Ayre, M. A.)
The souls way to God
We hope for the reconciliation of science and faith. At present the struggle continues in undiminished intensity. A strict philosophical justification of faith is hard to find, and the intellect of man is always failing in the attempt to show the reasonableness of religious emotion. But whether religion can be logically justified or not, it lives. The questioning and the believing instinct, the faculty of criticism, and the faculty of faith, are equally ineradicable, and yet, apparently, essentially irreconciliable. Are we driven to the sad alternative of believing without any justification of reason, or of suffering reason to lead us into the grey twilight of unbelief? Both these tendencies of human thought and feeling are represented in the Old Testament. The moral difficulty of the universe is that which weighed upon the Jew. There were those who broke their minds against problems of providence, and could not comprehend how the good should be afflicted, and the bad be suffered to erect himself in pride of place, and one fate to befall all the children of men. Among the Greeks the speculative instinct was strong, and the religious instinct feeble, and there we find theories of the universe in plenty, physical and theological, theistic, pantheistic, atheistic. Something is to be learned from the constant inability of philosophy to arrive at a consistent and satisfactory theory of the universe. The long outcome of philosophical speculation is not simply the rejection of the religious theory of the universe, it is the rejection of all theories upon a subject which is too vast and too complicated for human thought. When the materialistic philosophy of our day bids us confine ourselves to phenomena, it does not deny the existence of that which it proclaims itself unable to comprehend. There is a point where physics and metaphysics touch, and when that is reached, men are involved in mysteries not less blinding than those of religion itself. The nature of God is not the only unintelligible thing in the world. If we are told that through physical science is no path to God, it is of the greatest importance to show that physical science, pressed with her own ultimate problems, cannot help admissions which make room for, and even point to, the thought of Him. If philosophy shrinks from the affirmations of theism, and will own no more than a possibility, what can be more necessary than to point out that the philosophic method is not the one by which God can be surely approached? We have been accustomed to speak of God as the Eternal, the Omnipresent, the Omnipotent, the Absolute, the Infinite. These are wide words, and, taken at their widest essentially unintelligible to us, for the very reason that their opposites accurately describe the limitations of our own nature. Still, we put into them as much meaning as we can, and make of them the most that the extent of our knowledge and the force of our imagination will permit. (C. Beard, B. A.)
The incomprehensibility of God
The nature of God is the foundation of all true religion, and the will of God is the rule of all acceptable worship. Therefore the knowledge of God is of the greatest importance. To know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, is eternal life. The mysteriousness of the Divine nature and government is no reason why we should neglect what may be known concerning Him. Give one the spirit of adoption and self-renunciation, and he cannot be frightened from the presence of his Maker either by the lustre or the darkness round about His throne. The doctrine of this text is, that there is in the nature and ways of God much that is incomprehensible to us.
1. The adorable first person of the Trinity, the Father, is and must ever be beyond the grasp of our senses and faculties. It is generally agreed that the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, is, and ever will be, beyond the direct and immediate notice of all creatures. He is far beyond the grasp of both our bodily and mental faculties. The brightest manifestation of the Godhead is in the incarnation of the Son of God. We may behold His glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father, but we can go no further. This manifestation is for all practical purposes sufficient. But even in Christ divinity shone forth under great obscuration. Whatever eludes all our senses and faculties is to us necessarily clad with mysteriousness. Whatever is concealed from every perceptive power excludes the possibility of original knowledge. In such a case learning without instruction is impossible.
2. The incomprehensibility of Gods nature and ways is often asserted in His Word. Nowhere is the incomprehensibility of God spoken of in Scripture as cause of sorrow to the pious. Our inability to find out the Almighty to perfection is not merely moral, but natural. The same would have been true if man had not sinned.
3. So very wonderful are the perfections of God, compared with the attributes of the most exalted creature, that His nature and ways must always be mysterious, just in proportion to our knowledge of their extent. How should man, as compared with God, have knowledge either extensive or absolute? Gods plans are founded on the most perfect knowledge of all things. Mans information is very imperfect both in scope and degree. The moral character of God presents greater wonders than His natural attributes. His moral character--holiness, justice, goodness, truth, faithfulness--is presented in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
4. God has shown Himself to be incomprehensible in His works of creation. Out of nothing God made all things, our bodies and our souls, all we are, all we see, all that is within us, above us, beneath us, around us. Most of our knowledge of God is negative. Our positive knowledge of Him is very limited. There will ever be topless heights of Divine knowledge, to which we shall have to look up with inquiring awe.
5. In Gods government and providence are several things which must ever make them incomprehensible to us. How noiseless are most of His doings. But when He chooses He can make our ears to tingle. God hides His works and ways from man by commonly removing results far from human view. Gods ways respecting means are very remarkable. He, apparently, often works without means. Perceiving no causes in operation, we expect no effects. God also employs such instruments as greatly confound us. We often tremble to see God pursuing a course which, to our short sight, seems quite contrary to the end to be gained.
Lessons--
1. The Christian lives and walks by faith, not by sight.
2. As the object of God in all His dealings with His people is His own glory and their eternal good, so they ought heartily to concur in these ends, and labour to promote them. Gods glory is more important than the lives of all His creatures.
3. Let us put a watch upon our hearts and lips, lest we should think or say more about Gods nature and ways than befits our ignorance and our selfishness.
4. Note how excellent are Divine things. Divinity is the haven and Sabbath of all mans contemplations. Every honest effort to spread the knowledge of God is praiseworthy. (W. S. Plumer, D. D.)
Man can never apprehend first causes
All our knowledge is limited, and we can never apprehend the first causes of any phenomena. The force of crystallisation, the force of gravitation and chemical affinity remain in themselves just as incomprehensible as adaptation and inheritance or will and consciousness (Haeckel, History of Creation.)
Mans imperfect knowledge of God
If I never saw that creature which contains not something unsearchable; nor the worm so small, but that it affordeth questions to puzzle the greatest philosopher, no wonder, then, if mine eyes fail when I would look at God, my tongue fail me in speaking of Him, and my heart in conceiving. As long as the Athenian inscription doth as well suit with my sacrifices, To the unknown God, and while I cannot contain the smallest rivulet, it is little I can contain of this immense ocean. We shall never be capable of clearly knowing, till we are capable of fully enjoying; nay, nor till we do actually enjoy Him. What strange conceivings hath a man, born blind, of the sun and its light, or a man born deaf of the nature of sounds and music; so do we yet want that sense by which God must be clearly known. I stand and look upon a heap of ants, and see them all, with one view, very busy to little purpose. They know not me, my being, nature, or thoughts, though I am their fellow creature, how little, then, must we know of the great Creator, though He with one view continually beholds us all. Yet a knowledge we have, though imperfect, and such as must be done away. A glimpse the saints behold, though but in a glass, which makes us capable of some poor, general, dark apprehensions of what we shall behold in glory. (R. Baxter.)
Natures testimony of God insufficient
All nature is incapable of discovering God in a full manner as He may be known. Nature, like Zaccheus, is of too low a stature to see God in the length and breadth, height and depth of His perfections. The key of mans reason answers not to all the wards in the lock of those mysteries. The world at best is but a shadow of God, and therefore cannot discover Him in His magnificent and royal virtues, no more than a shadow can discover the outward beauty, the excellent mien, and the inward endowments of the person whose shadow it is.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Can you understand God by searching for him? Can…
Can you understand God by searching for him? Can you comprehend the Almighty perfectly?
These two parallel questions are asking the same thing. The writer uses the form of a question to add emphasis. AT: "You cannot understand God by searching for him, and you will never completely understand the Almighty!" (See: Parallelism and Rhetorical Question)
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The matter
This refers to understanding God. AT: "To understand God" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
is as high as heaven ... deeper than Sheol
The impossibility of understanding God is spoken of as if it were impossible to go to these extremely far away places. AT: "is as inaccessible as the highest places in heaven ... is more inaccessible than the deepest places in Sheol" (See: Parallelism and Simile)
what can you do?
Zophar uses this question to show that a person cannot do anything to understand God fully. AT: "you cannot do anything." or "you cannot understand him fully." (See: Rhetorical Question)
what can you know?
Zophar uses this question to show that a person cannot do anything to know God fully. AT: "you cannot know God fully." or "you cannot know all there is to know." (See: Rhetorical Question)
Its measure
Possible meanings are that this refers to 1) God's greatness or 2) the greatness of God's wisdom.
is longer than the earth ... wider than the sea
God's greatness or wisdom is spoken of as if it could be measured in distance. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
God
Almighty
heaven
Hades
know
earth
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 11:7 No one can discover everything about the Almighty…
11:7 No one can discover everything about the Almighty (literally find out the limits of the Almighty), who is beyond the limits of the heavens, underworld, land, and sea (11:8-9).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.