Then Job answered and said. Job 19 Complaints and confidences Homilist. I. JOB BITTERLY COMPLAINING. 1. He complains of the conduct of his friends, and especially their want of sympathy. (1) They exasperated him with their words. (2) With their persistent hostility. (3) With their callousness. (4) With their assumed superiority.Nothing tends more to aggravate a man's suffering than the heartless and wordy talk of those who controvert his opinions in the hour of his distress. 2. He complains of the conduct of his God. God had "overthrown and confounded him": had "refused him a hearing and hedged up his way." He complains that he was utterly "deprived of his honours and his hope." God had even treated him as "an enemy, and sent troops of calamities to overwhelm him." God had put "all society against him." These complainings reveal — (1) a most lamentable condition of existence; (2) considerable imperfections in moral character. II. JOB FIRMLY CONFIDING. He still held on to his faith in God as the vindicator of his character. 1. His confidence arose from faith in a Divine vindicator. 2. A vindicator who would one day appear on the earth. 3. Whom he would personally see for himself, 4. Who would so thoroughly clear him that his accusers would be filled with self-accusation. "But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?" ( Homilist. ) Know new that God has overthrown me. Job 19:6, 7 The difficulties of unbelief C. Beard, B. A. One thing is to be noticed, with both Job and his friends the existence of God is a part of the problem, not to be discharged from it even hypothetically. The misfortunes of the good, the prosperity of the wicked, the inequalities and the caprices of fate — these are just what have to be reconciled with the existence of a just and all-powerful God. The discussion starts from the supposition of a temporal Providence. All the debate is on what the debaters take to be religious ground. In a certain sense, the idea of God introduces a difficulty into the discussion. If we could look out upon the world as if it had no moral order dependent upon the will of One infinitely good and wise, then the particular difficulty of reconciling things as they are with any worthy conception of Divine power and goodness would suddenly disappear. It is suggested that, when a belief in God is dropped, the difficulty and confusion will disappear. The world, it is true, will be no brighter for the abandonment of faith; but at least no delusive marshfires will lead us astray from the true objects of life. We shall know neither whence we came, nor whither we are going; but we shall live our little day, neither vexed by vain questionings, nor relying upon baseless hopes. No doubt this is true to a certain extent, but only to that limited extent which involves essential and absolute untruth. Theism brings its own difficulties with it into the physical and moral problem of the universe. But what right have we to suppose that any hypothesis, as alone we can conceive it, will explain everything? And have we not the right to turn round upon rival theories, and ask if they can explain more than ours, or whether to them the mystery of the world is not mysterious still? Theism, with all that it is commonly held to involve, is an explanation of the mysteries of nature and of life; but not a complete explanation. Taking its pretensions at the lowest, and the least, it gathers up the facts of life into a unity, and supplies us with a theory in the light of which they may be correlated and understood. More than this, it furnishes a practical rule of living. It is precisely this which the opposite theory cannot do. The very necessity of its nature is to explain nothing. It leaves the obscurities of life just as it finds them. Pain and sin and loss are with it ultimate facts; nor has it the faintest glimmer of light to throw upon their absolute blackness The case might be different had human nature no side of relation to the infinite, or even were that relation apprehended only by one here and there. The mystery of the universe would be nothing to us if we had no faculty of knowing and feeling it. But, with a few and partial exceptions, this attempt to pass beyond the finite into the infinite belongs ineradicably to us all. A shrewd thinker once said, that if there were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one. Men will never permanently consent to the narrowing of power and life. Eternity and infinity may still hold their secrets in inexorable grasp, but we shall never cease to go in search of them, and to hold ourselves higher and better for the quest. Granting for a moment that these aspirations and longings are mistakes, remnants of a lower state, things out of which we shall grow, is the aspect of the case materially altered? I am still face to face with the facts of existence: I have still to meet, and bear, and make the best of my fate. We cannot permanently silence curiosity as to the universe simply by rejecting a single familiar explanation of it. In ceasing to believe in a God, you bare made absolutely no progress in explaining the mystery of the universe. You have only returned to the standpoint of absolute uncertainty and blank perplexity. Take the mystery of pain, and its correlative mystery of wrong — evil, that is, on its physical and on its moral side. Theism will not explain it. It points out palliations of it. It suggests that it is related to the power of choice in man, and so necessary to the moral government of the world. Still, these answers do not cover the whole question. But is Atheism better off or worse? Are pain and wrong any more endurable, any less weight upon the sympathetic conscience, because they are looked upon as bare, blank, absolutely unexplained facts? Atheism escapes from the characteristic difficulties of Theism only at the price of encumbering itself with a difficulty of its own. According to any theory, there is at least a set of humanity in an upward direction. Theism has hard work to account for the evil in the world; Can Atheism explain the good? How should the whole creation move, to one "far-off event," and rise upon the circling wheels of time higher and ever higher, unless at the call and under the inspiration of God? One more illustration. We all know too well the meaning of human waste and loss. You tell me this is simply a matter of physical law. But, in so saying, have you explained what needs explanation? I cannot answer those questions, I know; but dream not that they do not weigh upon you too. You have to face them as well as I, and to bear the heartache, and the desolation, and the thought of severance, without the hope of immortality, and the stay of a Divine presence. ( C. Beard, B. A. ) My kinsfolk have failed. Job 19:14 Fickleness of friends Gotthold. What is sweeter than a well-tuned lute, and what is more delightful than a faithful friend, who can cheer us in sorrow with wise and affectionate discourse? Nothing, however, is sooner untuned than a lute, and nothing is more fickle than a friend. The tone of the one changes with the weather, that of the other with fortune. With a clear sky, and a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty; but let fortune frown, and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove like the strings of the lute, of which you will tighten ten before you will find one that will bear the tension, or keep the pitch. ( Gotthold. ) And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. Job 19:20 A narrow escape T. De Witt Talmage. Job had it hard. What with boils, and bereavements, and bankruptcy, and a foolish wife, he wished he was dead. His flesh was gone, and his bones were dry. His teeth wasted away until nothing but the enamel seemed left. He cries out, "I am escaped with the skin of my teeth." There has been some difference of opinion about this passage. St. , and Schultens, and Doctors Good and Peele and Barnes, have all tried their forceps on Job's teeth. You deny my interpretation, and say, "What did Job know about the enamel of the teeth?" He knew everything about it. Dental surgery is almost as old as the earth. The mummies of Egypt, thousands of years old, are found today with gold filling in their teeth. Ovid, and Horace, and Solomon, and Moses wrote about these important factors of the body. To other provoking complaints, Job, I think, had added an exasperating toothache; and putting his hand against the inflamed face, he says, "I am escaped with the skin of my teeth." A very narrow escape, you say, for Job's body and soul; but there are thousands of men who make just as narrow escape for their soul. There was a time when the partition between them and ruin was no thicker than a tooth's enamel; but as Job finally escaped, so have they. ( T. De Witt Talmage. ) Have pity upon me, for the hand of God hath touched me. Job 19:21 Christ's passion F. Close, A. M. Apt illustration of a more perfect sufferer — one more holy than Job, and one involved in deeper sorrow. I. IN MANY RESPECTS THERE IS AN ANALOGY BETWEEN THE SUFFERERS. 1. Christ was an innocent and benevolent sufferer. 2. But when was He not a sufferer? 3. How His sufferings increased as He approached His end. 4. It was the hand of God that had touched Him. 5. Job suffered for himself, and for his own benefit; Christ, not for Himself, but for us, and in our stead. II. HOW OUR PITY SHOULD BE EVINCED. 1. By the ordinary movement of our feelings. 2. We should awaken these feelings by the use of all means. 3. Our pity should be evinced by hatred of sin. 4. If our compassion is sincere, we shall feel a deep interest in the result of his sufferings. ( F. Close, A. M. ) Compassion a human duty W. Enfield. Afflictions like Job's were sufficient, one would have imagined, to have extorted a tear of pity from his most implacable foe. It would surely require none of the warm attachments and tender sensibilities of friendship to awaken compassion in the heart on such an occasion as this. With the common feelings of humanity, one would imagine it impossible to behold the afflictions of Job, and not to weep over them. These so-called friends, however, turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and under the cloak of friendship continued to wound him by the most ungenerous and inhuman treatment. The world in which we live is full of misery. Distress appears before us in a thousand different forms; and in every shape she supplicates our notice, with an importunity which the humane and generous heart is unable to resist. Of all others, the most affecting scene of calamity which we can behold is, when a fellow creature is at once oppressed with the difficulties of want, and tormented with the pains of bodily affliction. Every man should consider himself as immediately addressed in supplications like this; for every man is, or ought to be, a friend to the wretched. Compassion is a debt which one human creature owes to another; a debt which no distinction of sect or party, no imperfection of character, no degree of ingratitude, unkindness, or cruelty will cancel, Compassion is a plant which flourishes in the human heart, as in its native soil. So great is the satisfaction which results from the sentiments of humanity, that there is scarcely any consideration which more fully vindicates the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being, in permitting the numerous ills of human life, than this, that they afford us an opportunity of exercising the most amiable affections, and partaking of the noblest pleasures. The exercise of this disposition is, likewise, necessary to gain the esteem and love of our brethren. And to show compassion to such as are in distress is the way to qualify ourselves for the Divine acceptance at the great day. Let us remember that to be compassionate is not merely to feel and cherish the emotions of pity in our hearts, but to embrace every opportunity of expressing them by our actions. ( W. Enfield. ) Hindrances to sympathy James, Psychology. Sympathy is peculiarly liable to inhibition from other instincts which its stimulus may call forth. The traveller whom the Good Samaritan rescued may well have prompted such instinctive fear or disgust in the priest and Levite who passed in front of him, that their sympathy could not come to the front. Then, of course, habits, reasoned reflections, and calculations may either check or reinforce one's sympathy, as may also the instincts of love or hate, if these exist, for the suffering individual. The hunting and pugnacious instincts, when aroused, also inhibit our sympathy absolutely. This accounts for the cruelty of collections of men hounding each other on to bait or torture a victim. The blood mounts to the eyes, and sympathy's chance is gone. ( James, Psychology. ) Oh that my words were now written! Job 19:23, 24 Job longing for a permanent memorial J. Guthrie, D. D. Job's wish has been gratified; his memorial has found inscription on a tablet compared with which the granite rock is rubbish, and lead a withered leaf. It has found entry in the "Word of God, which liveth and endureth forever." No temple of fame like this. This dying desire of Job to find memorial is much too natural to be at all strange. Nothing is more common in death scenes than to find the departing one rally his failing strength, and eagerly utilise his last few breaths to give final charges that shall be religiously honoured, and with painfully wistful looks try to speak after vocal power is gone. Many and impressive are the lessons that here crowd into the mind. 1. Let us say what we have to say, and do what we have to do, in time, that during life we may so live that in the hour of death we may have only to die. 2. Let us be careful to say and do nothing in life which we shall long in death — alas! unavailingly — to unsay or undo. 3. Let us, above all, speak for God and the Gospel; for that, be assured, if we are conscious and in our right mind, will be what at death we shall be most eager to do, that every word might photograph itself on the everlasting rock, and speak in its living influence long years after we are dead. ( J. Guthrie, D. D. ) Job's wish for a permanent record R. A. Watson, D. D. As one accustomed to the use of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be, and asses to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he the Emeer of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was accursed by men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this befell him unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would stand there in the way of the caravans of Lema for succeeding generations to read. Kings represent on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of royal dignity Job would use the same means of continuing his protest and his name. ( R. A. Watson, D. D. ) The Redeemer J. E. Coming, D. D. The secular view is that Job is here expressing a confident hope of recovery from his leprosy, and of justification in the sight of men. The spiritual view is that Job is looking beyond death, and is expressing his belief either in the future life of the soul, or in the resurrection of the body. It is necessary to say a few words, first on the external evidence for the meaning of the passage, and then on the internal. Both seem to me to point decisively to its spiritual interpretation. I. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE is in its favour. 1. Job did not expect recovery at all, much less was he confident of it as a certain thing which could not fail to happen. What his expectation of life was we see from such words as these ( Job 17:1 ): "My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me"; or these ( Job 17:11, 15 ): "My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart,...Where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?" Even if he wavered between hope and fear, he could not use such language as implies the utmost certainty. 2. The Septuagint translation (made by Jews who must, be supposed capable of understanding the Hebrew words, and made by them long before Jesus Christ brought immortality to light, and taught the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead) gives the spiritual sense of the passage: "He shall raise up my body, after these present things have been destroyed." 3. The Jewish Targum on the passage (which must be free from all Christian bias) is also wholly in favour of the spiritual sense. I give its rendering by a great Hebrew scholar (Delitzsch, to which one of our most competent British Hebraists tells me he has nothing to add): "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and hereafter His redemption will arise (become a reality) over the dust (into which I shall be dissolved); and after my skin is again made whole, this will happen, and from my flesh I shall again behold God." II. THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE is even more strongly in favour of the spiritual sense. 1. Observe the great solemnity with which the declaration is introduced (ver. 23), and how inconsistent this is with the idea that Job refers to recovery from his leprosy, and desires to inscribe that fact on the rock for the teaching of posterity. 2. Mark next the perfect assurance of the writer, which is fully in accord with the strong conviction of spiritual faith, but is quite out of place with regard to a secular expectation. 3. The sublime and spiritual keynote of the whole passage seems thoroughly out of keeping with any feeling which ends in mere temporal blessing. 4. To "see God," which is the burden of his confidence, is surely something more and deeper than the recovery of health. Not to dwell longer then on questions of interpretation, and avoiding minute verbal criticism, I give in substance the probable meaning of the passage, and pass on to consider the spiritual teaching which it implies in anticipation of the Gospel. It is to be regarded as a rock inscription. I know that my Goal liveth ever, and that He, as survivor, shall stand over my dust, and after this skin of mine is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; whom I shall see again; mine eyes shall see Him, and not another for me; for this also my reins do long. I. WHO AND WHAT IS THE REDEEMER? 1. He is the Goel. The word has two meanings, and it has been disputed which is the correct one here. It means the avenger of blood, and it means the kinsman. Those who have adopted the secular view of the passage have contended that it must bear the former meaning only. But they have surely forgotten that the office of the avenger of blood could not be executed till after the death of the person to be avenged; and that this is one of the indications that not recovery, but something after death is looked forward to by Job. But if we ask what is the root-meaning, the original idea in the Goel, it surely is not difficult to determine. Did a man become kinsman to the murdered one because he was the avenger of his blood? Or did he not become the avenger because he was already the kinsman, and was therefore called on to avenge him? The latter is the truth; and hence kindred is the first idea of the Goel: "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." Avenger is the next thought involved in the word: one seeking reparation for our death, and therefore protecting our life by the thought that his sword is behind it. And a third idea is that of deliverance .and redemption, as of family property, by one "whose right is to redeem." Job then is looking forward to such a kinsman — a kinsman in the largest sense, who, being the ideal, shall fulfil all the meanings of the institution; who shall be of the same blood; who shall protect and avenge that blood, after death, of which Job is to taste; and who shall also redeem for him the lost inheritance. Here, too, the dim finger of want and of hope points onward to Him who said of every doer of the will of God: "The same is My brother and sister"; our "kinsman, according to the flesh." 2. The Redeemer or Goal is an everliving person. So the Septuagint aptly, renders the words, "My Redeemer liveth." Job is thinking of and expecting his own death; but he has full confidence that after that there shall arise his kinsman and Redeemer. Yet is it certain that He too may not pass away through death? The reply of Job's soul is, No; He cannot pass, for He lives forever. After my flesh is dust; after, perhaps, all flesh is dust, yet He, the survivor, shall stand over the earth. This is a kinsman "whose years are throughout (and beyond) all generations"! 3. Still further and more remarkably Job's kinsman is Divine. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that He who is the redeeming kinsman of the 25th verse is also the God of the 26th. And the whole interest of the passage centres in this, that Job's kinsman-Redeemer is a Divine person, who shall interpose on Job's behalf hereafter, by revealing Himself after death! II. WHAT IS THE EXPECTED REDEEMER TO DO? ( J. E. Coming, D. D. ) Job finding comfort for himself R. Glover. The words and efforts of Job's comforters were not in vain. Sometimes in bodily inflammations a lenitive is the best treatment, and sometimes a counter-irritant. It is not very different in inflammations of the soul. In Job's case, perhaps, mere condolence would have completed his despair. But when they accuse him of hypocrisy of the basest kind, — when they arraign him as being rejected of God, and lying under the special curse of the Almighty, — then his manhood gathers strength in endeavour to crush the great lie. 1. Job's first step towards recovery was when he found his voice, — though only to curse the day of his birth. The friends who sat silently beside him did this for him. They revived him from the stupor of his grief. Sometimes a sense of pain, and an exhibition of impatience, is a sign of a favourable turn in serious disease; so is it in diseases of the soul. "She must weep, or she will die," sings the poet of the widow, when "home they brought her warrior dead." And so the stupor of despair is always one of the gravest signs. It is true that a terrific lamentation breaks forth from him (chap. Job 3.), unexampled in literature, — a model on which again and again our great dramatist has formed his representations of blank despair. Solomon's despair in the Book of Ecclesiastes is the result of the cynical surfeit of luxury, which finds nothing in life sufficiently important for its regard. But this is the despair of agony and grief, natural and seemingly incurable. Still it marks a slight advance. It is a feeble symptom of returning vigour. Hearts break with silent, not with uttered, grief. Speech is a sort of safety valve. 2. Job's second step towards comfort was praying for death (chaps. 6 and 7; specially Job 6:8-13 ). Some, ignorant of human nature, fancy comfort would be reached by a great leap; and had they from imagination drawn a picture of a Job finding consolation, their story would have consisted of a record of his despair, and of the visit of some gracious prophet declaring God's fatherhood. Such is not the usual experience of men. "First the blade; then the ear; then the full corn in the ear"; so grace always grows. Accordingly, the next step towards comfort is, though a strange, a great one. To lament a sorrow in the ears of men was some relief, but it marks an advance of the grandest kind when the soul lifts it to the ears of God. Job will not admit the accusation of Eliphaz, but he will act on the suggestion to "seek unto God and commit his cause to Him." He is strengthened by the general testimony of Eliphaz to the justice and mercy of God, while repelling his insinuation that God is punishing his crimes. And so poor Job raises his eye again to his God. It is not a proper prayer, it is much too despairing; it has but little faith, and it involves an accusation against the mercy of God's providence. Blessed be His name, God lets us approach Him thus. He casts out none that come unto Him, even though they come with the presumptuous murmurings of an "elder brother," or with the despairing agony of Job. Whatever you have to say, say it to Him. It is not the proper, but the sincere prayer God wants. And when a Job comes to Him, in his desolation asking only to die, the great Father looks through all the faults of woe and weariness, to pity only the great anguish of the soul. It is not to be overlooked that before the prayer ends, he can address God by one of His noblest names: "O Thou Preserver of men" ( Job 7:20 ). Is it the first Bible name of God? 3. As a further step, Job longs for clearing of his character. At first he doubtless cared but little for this. If his character was crushed beneath the judgment of God, it was just one more victim; and in a world of such disorder — where only disappointment reigned — it would have been something beneath his care whether all his fellow men frowned or smiled upon him. But with returning help and grace he wants something more, — that the approval of God might rest on him ( Job 9:32-35 ; Job 8:2 ). This longing for a settlement with God, to know why and wherefore he is afflicted, does it not mark some growing force within him? Only from Him, with whom they wrestled, did either Job or Jacob gather the strength by which they overcame. When Zophar assails him, with still more bitter consolation than the rest, he seems to stimulate Job's faith still more. His faith grows strong enough to declare "though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." "I have ordered my cause; I know that I shall be justified." "He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not stand before Him" ( Job 13:15, 18, 16 ). What a hope was even then reached that God would yet justify him — vindicating his character, owning the integrity of his purpose and the sincerity of his religion. The next stage we notice is — 4. We see, again, that Job prays for some blessedness in the other world. There is a wonderful distance between the prayer of Job 6:9 — "O that it would please God to destroy me"; and the prayer in Job 14:13 — "O that Thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that Thou wouldest keep me secret, until Thy wrath be past, that Thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!" The other world emereges into light. Death is not an end of this life merely; it is a gateway to another state of being — a place where God can remember a man, where He can "call" and be "answered," where He can show the "desire," the favour He has to the work of His hands. It is not yet the exultant hope he reaches, but still a hope exceeding precious. The soul feels itself strangely superior to disease and decay, and begins to speculate on what it will do when it "shuffles off this mortal coil." A prophet-poet of the nineteenth century has sung — "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust, Thou madest man he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die: And Thou hast made him — Thou art just,"Three thousand years ago, through the same sort of baptism of grief, the patriarch was led to the same conclusions. The Sheol, the place of the dead which had seemed so void of life and being, became to his mind a sphere of Divine activities — "O that Thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that Thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me." "Thou shalt call and I will answer Thee." It is not evangelical divines alone that construe this as a dream of finding fellowship with God in the calm of an untroubled afterlife. Even M. Renan, in his translation, takes the same view. Someone says: "The hope of eternal life is a flower growing on the edge of the abyss." Job found it there, and it was worth all his anguish to reach it. It is not yet a conviction. Doubt breaks in with the question — "If a man die, can he live again?" And the doubt is left there, faithfully registered. But felt and faced as the doubt is, the great dream reasserts itself and fastens on his imagination. So, through cloud and sunshine, over hilltops of vision, and through low valleys whose views are narrow, the soul goes on. At the outset death seemed desirable only because it seemed an absolute end. Now the great may-be that is the beginning of a better life, where God's desire towards the work of His hands will be manifested, dawns on him. It will be lost — it will come back to him — it will seem too good news to be true. He has caught now a glimpse of it. In the next valley he will lose it, but it will never fade away again. Some people forget that each has to find his own creed. The creed cannot be manufactured. Others may give you truth; you must find the power of believing it. So the faiths of men are propagated by living seeds of truth falling on living hearts. But if there is something deeply suggestive in the beginning of his great dream, the hope does not stop there, but grows into assured confidence, for Job reaches an assured hope of immortality. You notice a strange increase of calmness in the mind of Job after Eliphaz and Bildad have spoken. Just in the degree in which his friends become angry he becomes calm. The anger even dies out of his replies, and instead of resenting their upbraiding he tenderly pleads for their sympathy. This calmness grew from his praying; his hoping that he still might reason out his cause with God, and that God would even take his part against Himself. He found a wonderful increase of it in the new thought that he might in the land of the dead walk with God. And thus subsiding into a simple faith, at last the great comfort reaches him of a sure and certain hope — of a blessed immortality. Few eyes that have not been washed with tears can look steadfastly into the world to come. Not as the world giveth does God give peace, but in a different way altogether, — by storm and grief and loss and calamity of direst kind. So He bringeth them to their desired haven. The prophets have been all men of sorrows. Sometimes a little unwisdom has been shown in pressing a dubious translation, and gathering from Job's words a testimony to the resurrection of the body. Whether you should translate his words, "In my flesh I shall see God"; or, "apart from my flesh I shall see God," is, indeed, quite immaterial. We shall probably be safest in taking Job's words in their most general meaning, as details of future conditions were hardly to be expected. But taking his words in the lower sense which all interpreters admit they must carry; taking, say, the interpretation of M. Renan himself, what a wonderful hope they express. 1. That God will be his Deliverer, Protector of person and of character, Guardian and Deliverer in the world unseen. 2. That after death and divested of his body, he yet will find himself the subject of richest mercies. 3. His personal identity will be indestructibly maintained. He will not subside into the general life, but forever be a separate soul; he will see God for himself; his eyes shall behold his very self, unchanged, unite another. 4. And in this relieved and rescued, but unchanged personality, he will have the highest of all bliss — he will see God. And so Job found his dunghill become a land of Beulah — delectable mountains from which the city of God was seen. Faults of murmuring and impeachment of God's dignity are still to be corrected, and his comfort is to be perfected by a restoration of earthly comforts.Leaving them, we only note — 1. God's Spirit is never idle where His providence is at work. 2. We are not following cunningly devised fables. In every age the best have been the surest of an immortality of bliss, and such faith is evidence. See we reach that heaven. ( R. Glover. ) For I know that my Redeemer liveth. Job 19:25-27 Of the resurrection Bishop Brownrig. (on Easter Day): — This text is a prophecy and prediction of our Saviour Christ's glorious resurrection. A sacred truth, requiring not only the assent, but the devotion and adoration of our faith. Here Job foresees and foretells the resurrection of Christ. He tells us that Christ, who by His death redeemed him, hath again obtained an endless life. That after His fall by death, He is recovered and got up again; stands, and shall stand, at last upon the earth. And Job prophesies of his own resurrection, that, though he were now in a dying condition, death had already seized upon him; yet he knew there was hope in his death, that he should be raised from the grave of corruption to an ever. living and blessed state and condition. I. JOB'S BELIEF CONCERNING CHRIST. Here is — 1. The saving object of his faith; that is, Chr

Benson Commentary Job 19:1 Then Job answered and said, Job 19:1 . Then Job answered and said — “Tired with the little regard paid by the three friends to his defence, and finding them still insisting on their general maxims, Job desires them calmly to consider his case; to reflect that his failings, whatever they were, had not been at all prejudicial to them; but if, on the strength of their general principle, they thought themselves warranted from his sufferings to infer his guilt, he desires them to take notice that this was God’s particular infliction, Job 19:2-7 ; that he insisted on his innocence, and desired nothing but to bring his cause to an issue, which was, as yet, denied him, Job 19:8-20 ; that God’s inflictions were indeed very grievous; and, to excite their compassion, he makes here a very moving description of them; but tells them that should be a reason why they should pity him, and not add to the load by their unkind suspicions and cruel treatment, Job 19:21-22 ; that he was so far from retracting his plea, that he was desirous it should remain for ever on record, Job 19:23-24 . — Heath. For he was assured a day was coming in which all his afflictions would be fully recompensed, and in which they would wish that they had treated him in a more friendly manner; though he questioned whether that would suffice to avert God’s judgments from them.” — Dodd. Job 19:2 How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words? Job 19:2-3 . And break me in pieces with words — With mere empty words, void of sense or argument; with your impertinent and unedifying discourses and bitter reproaches. These ten times have ye reproached me — That is, many times, a certain number being put for an uncertain. Ye make yourselves strange — You carry yourselves like strangers to me, are not affected with my calamities, and condemn me as if you had never known my integrity and piety. Job 19:3 These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me. Job 19:4 And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself. Job 19:4-5 . Be it that I have erred, &c. — If I have sinned, I myself suffer for my sins, and therefore deserve your pity rather than your reproaches. If you will magnify yourselves, &c. — Use imperious and contemptuous speeches against me; or seek praise from others by outreasoning me: and plead against me my reproach — Declaim against me, and allege my calamities, which have made me contemptible, as an argument to prove me a hypocrite, and condemn me as such. Job 19:5 If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach: Job 19:6 Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net. Job 19:6-7 . Know now — Consider well, that God hath overthrown me — Hath grievously afflicted me in various ways, and therefore it ill becomes you to aggravate my miseries. Hebrew, ????? , gnivetani; hath perverted me; either my state and condition, as has now been said: or my right and cause. He oppresseth me with power, and will not give me a fair hearing, as it follows, Job 19:7 . This is a harsh reflection on God: but such thoughts and expressions have sometimes proceeded from good men when they have been under sore afflictions and temptations, which was now Job’s case. And hath compassed me with his net — With afflictions on every side, so that I cannot escape, nor obtain freedom to plead with him as I desire. Behold, I cry out of wrong — Hebrew, ???? ??? , etsgnack chamas, literally, I cry out injury! violence! namely, from my friends, who show me no pity, but condemn me without cause, and rob me of my good name; or from the Sabeans and Chaldeans, who have plundered me of my substance. Perhaps he also meant to complain that God himself treated him with rigorous justice, and not according to the mercy and benignity which he was wont to show to upright and good men. I cry aloud, but there is no judgment — Neither God nor man relieves or pities me. God, for a time, may seem to turn away his ear from his people, to be angry at their prayers, and overlook their appeals to him, and they must be excused if in that case they complain bitterly. Wo unto us if God be against us. Job 19:7 Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. Job 19:8 He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. Job 19:8-9 . He hath fenced up my way, &c. — So that I can see no means or possibility of getting out of my troubles. He hath set darkness in my paths — So that I cannot discern what course I ought to take. He hath stripped me of my glory — That is, of my estate, and children, and authority, and all my comforts. And taken the crown from my head — All mine ornaments. Job 19:9 He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. Job 19:10 He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree. Job 19:10 . He hath destroyed me on every side — In all respects, my person, and family, and estate. And I am gone — I am a lost and dead man. My hope hath he removed — All my hopes of the present life, but not of the life to come; like a tree — Which, being once plucked up by the roots, never grows again. Hope in this life is a perishing thing. But the hope of good men, when it is cut off from this world, is but removed like a tree, transplanted from this nursery to the garden of God. Job 19:11 He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies. Job 19:12 His troops come together, and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle. Job 19:12 . His troops come together — My afflictions, which are but God’s instruments and soldiers marching under his conduct; and raise up their way against me — Cast up a bank, or make a trench about me, as an army besieging a place; or raise a causeway or path, as pioneers usually do, in low and marshy grounds, for the march of an army: that is, God removes all impediments out of the way, and lays me open to troubles and calamities of every kind. Job 19:13 He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. Job 19:13 . He hath put my brethren far from me, &c. — I looked for some support and comfort from my kindred and friends, but they were so astonished at the number and dreadfulness of my calamities that they fled from me as a man accursed of God: and as for my neighbours, who formerly much courted my acquaintance: they keep aloof from me, as if they had never known me. As we must see the hand of God in all the injuries we receive from our enemies, so likewise in all the slights and unkindnesses we receive from our friends. Job 19:14 My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. Job 19:14 . My kinsfolk — Whom nature inclined to love and befriend me; have failed — To perform the offices of humanity which they owed me: and my familiar friends — To whom I was united by a stronger bond than that of nature; have forgotten me — Have neglected and disregarded me as much as if they had quite forgotten the friendship there was between us. Job 19:15 They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight. Job 19:15-16 . They that dwell in my house — Hebrew, ??? ???? , garei beethei, peregrini domus meæ, the sojourners of my house, that is, those that formerly were kindly entertained at my house, whether strangers, widows, or the fatherless; nay, the people of my family, even my maids, who, by reason of their sex, have commonly more tender and compassionate hearts than men, count me for a stranger — Have forgotten the respect they owe, and were wont to pay to me, and regard my commands and concerns no more than if I were a stranger to whom they had no relation. I called my servant — To do some servile office; and he gave me no answer — He regarded not what I said; no, not when I besought him, as if he had been my master. Job 19:16 I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I intreated him with my mouth. Job 19:17 My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the children's sake of mine own body. Job 19:17 . My breath is strange to my wife, &c. — I am become so loathsome that my wife will not come near me, though I have conjured her to do it, by the dear memory of our children, those common pledges of our mutual love. Houbigant translates the verse, My wife abhors even my breath: the children of my body fly far from my offensive smell: and he observes, that “we are nowhere told that all the children of Job perished, but only such as were feasting in their eldest brother’s house.” It must be observed, however, that when the messenger informed Job of the destruction of his family, the answer which he gave, namely, Naked came I, &c., supposes that there were none who survived that calamity. Some are of opinion that those whom Job calls his children were grandchildren. The LXX. take them for the children of concubines. Sol. Jarchi supposes they were his domestics: but the Hebrew text here does not necessarily imply that there were any children of his then in existence. For there is nothing for the word sake; it is literally, I entreated for the children of my body, which may mean, as interpreted above, for, or by the memory of our children, namely, the children now dead. The general interpretation here supposes that Job’s breath, by reason of his sores and ulcers, was so offensive that his wife could not bear to come near him; but the words do not necessarily imply that: for, as he had just said before, I entreated my servant with my mouth; so, when he immediately adds, My breath is strange: &c., he might mean no more than that his breath or voice was strange also to his wife: that is, she had as little regard to what he said as the servant who gave him no answer when he was called. See Chappelow, who thus paraphrases the passage: “When my servant gave no attention, I called to my wife; but neither did she regard me, though I particularly mentioned to her (as an aggravation of my calamities, and to move her compassion) the loss of my children, whom I had begotten.” Job 19:18 Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me. Job 19:18 . Yea, young children despised me — Or, the wicked, as in the margin; and as the word ?????? also signifies, being derived from ??? , gniv-vel, inique egit, he acted unjustly. Some render it, fools, reading ?????? , evilim, from ??? . If we take the word in any of these senses, we must think that Job had good reason to complain, whether he was despised by children, by wicked men, or by fools. I arose, and they spake against we — To show my respect to them, though they were my inferiors, I rose from my seat, or I stood up, as the word ????? , akumah, means. I did not disoblige, or provoke them, by any uncivil behaviour toward them; but was very courteous and condescending to them, and yet they made it their business to speak against me, and give me abusive words in return for my courtesy. Job 19:19 All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me. Job 19:19 . All my inward friends abhorred me — ??? ???? , methei sodi, The men of my secret, or council; my intimates and confidants, to whom I imparted all my thoughts, counsels, and concerns. And they whom I loved — Sincerely and fervently; are turned against me — So ill do they requite me. He does not say, they who loved me, for had their love been sincere it would have continued, and manifested itself toward him in his affliction as well as in his prosperity. Job 19:20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. Job 19:20 . My bone — Or, bones, the singular collectively being put for the plural: cleaveth to my skin — Namely, immediately, the flesh next to the skin being consumed. The sense is, Afflictions have so wasted me, that I am little more than skin and bone. And to my flesh — Or, As to my flesh; as closely as it does to those remainders of my flesh, which are left in my inward parts. And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth — I am scarcely free from sores in any part of my skin, except that of my gums, which holdeth and covereth the roots of my teeth. Schultens says, that “it seems to be a proverbial expression, for those who lie beaten and covered with wounds from head to foot, and whose mouths also are broken with blows, so that, being half dead, they are scarcely able to breathe.” Heath and Le Clerc render the verse, My bones pierce through my skin, and my flesh and my teeth slip out from my gums. Job 19:21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me. Job 19:21 . Have pity, have pity upon me, O ye my friends — For such you have been, and still pretend to be; and, therefore, fulfil that relation; and, if you will not help me, yet, at least, pity me. “Nothing can be more pathetic,” says Dr. Dodd, “than the repetition in this passage, as well as the immediate application to his friends; as if he had said, ‘You, at least, with whom I have enjoyed so intimate and friendly a correspondence; you, who more especially should exert the tender office of consolation, do you have some pity upon me, since the hand of God hath so fearfully afflicted me.’“ Job 19:22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? Job 19:22 . Why do you persecute me as God? — As if you had the same infinite knowledge which God hath, whereby you could search my heart, and know my hypocrisy, and the same sovereign authority, to say and do what you please with me. And are not satisfied with my flesh — That is, with the consumption and torment of my whole body, but add to it the vexation of my spirit, by grievous censures and reproaches, and are like wolves and lions, which are not contented with devouring the flesh of their prey, but also break their bones. Job 19:23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! Job 19:23-24 . O that my words were now written! — Either, 1st, All his foregoing discourses with his friends, which he was so far from disowning or being ashamed of, that he was desirous all ages should know them, that they might judge between him and them, and decide whose cause was better, and whose arguments were stronger: or, rather, 2d, The words which he was now about to speak, containing a remarkable confession of his faith. O that they were printed in a book! — Or, rather, inserted, or recorded (as the word ???? , jochaku, signifies) in a register. The word printed is certainly used very improperly here, as being a term expressive of an art invented only about three hundred and fifty years ago: and, “especially as it does not, even by an improper expression,” as Dr. Dodd justly observes, “convey the idea of Job, which was the perpetuating his words; records, to which Job refers, being written, not printed among us. Observe, reader, that which Job wished for, God granted. His words are written in God’s book, are entered and preserved in the divine records. So that, wherever those records are read, there shall this glorious confession be declared for a memorial of him. That they were graven with an iron pen — Of which there is also mention Jeremiah 17:1 ; and lead — Job here alludes to the ancient custom of graving the letters on stone or marble, and then filling them up with lead, to render the inscription more legible and lasting. The LXX. however, do not seem to have understood Job thus, but rather to have supposed that he meant the recording of his words, by engraving them on plates of lead. Their words are, ?? ??????? ?????? ??? ?????? ? ?? ??????? ?????????? , To be engraven with an iron pen and lead, (that is, upon lead, ) or on the rocks. And it is very probable it was customary in those times to engrave inscriptions on plates of lead as well as on stones. One of these ways of engraving must have been intended by Job; for it would be absurd to suppose, that he meant to have the inscription cut on stone with a leaden pen, which could make no impression on so hard a material. Job 19:24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! Job 19:25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: Job 19:25 . For I know, &c. — Job proceeds now to assign the reason of his confidence in the goodness of his cause, and of his willingness to have the matter depending between him and his friends published and submitted to any trial. I know that my Redeemer liveth — I have no knowledge, nor confidence, nor hope of being restored to the prosperities of this life; yet this one thing I know, which is much more comfortable and considerable, and therein I rejoice, though I be now a dying man, and in a desperate condition for this life; I know that I have a living and powerful Redeemer to plead my cause, and vindicate my person from all severe and unjust censures, and to give sentence for me: a Redeemer, whom I call mine, because I have a particular interest in him, and he hath a particular care of me. Hebrew, ????? ???? ?? , jadangti goali chai, I know my living Redeemer; that is, My Redeemer is living, is now living, and I know him: I am acquainted, truly, experimentally, and savingly acquainted with him, because he hath revealed himself to me, and hath given me an understanding to know him. Remember, reader, this knowledge of him, this acquaintance with him, is absolutely necessary to thy salvation. But what Redeemer, and what deliverance, does Job speak of in this and the two following verses? Answer: Some late interpreters understand this passage metaphorically, of God’s delivering Job out of his afflictions and troubles, and restoring him to his former splendour and happiness in this world; it being, they say, a usual thing in Scripture, to call eminent dangers and calamities death, and great and glorious deliverances a quickening or resurrection. But most interpreters, both ancient and modern, understand it of Christ, and of his resurrection, and of Job’s resurrection to life by his power and goodness. And this seems most probable, for many reasons: 1st, Because a proper and literal interpretation of any passage of Scripture is always to be preferred before the metaphorical, where it suits with the text and with other passages. 2d, Because the Hebrew word, ??? , goel, here used, although sometimes used of God, absolutely or essentially considered, yet most properly agrees to Jesus Christ: for this word is primarily spoken of the next kinsman, whose office it was to redeem, by a price paid, the sold or mortgaged estate of his deceased kinsman, Leviticus 25:25 ; and to revenge his death, Numbers 35:12 , and to maintain his name and honour by raising up a seed to him, Deuteronomy 25:5 . All which most fitly agrees to Christ, who is our nearest kinsman and brother, as having taken our nature upon him, Hebrews 2:11 ; who hath redeemed that everlasting inheritance which our first parents had utterly lost, by the price of his own blood; and hath revenged the death of mankind upon the contriver of it, the devil, by destroying him and his kingdom; and hath taken a course to preserve our name, and honour, and persons, to eternity. 3d, Because Job was so far from having a firm confidence, such as is here expressed, that he had not the least degree of hope of any such temporal restoration as that which his friends promised him, as we have often observed in his former discourses, as Job 16:22 ; Job 17:12-13 . And, therefore, that hope which every righteous man hath in his death, and which Job often professes that he had, must necessarily have been fixed on his happiness in a future life. 4th, Because this is a more lofty and spiritual strain than any in Job’s former discourses; which generally savour of dejection and diffidence, and either declare or increase his grief; whereas, this puts him into another and much better temper. And, therefore, it is well observed, that after he uttered these expressions we meet not with any such impatient or despairing passages as we had before, which shows that he was now inspired with new life and comfort. 5th, Because this well agrees with several other passages in this book; wherein Job declares that, although he had no hope as to this life, and the comforts thereof, yet he had a hope beyond death, which made him profess, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him, Job 13:15 . Trust in him for what? Surely, for comfort and happiness. Where? Not in this life, for that he supposes to be lost; therefore it must have been in the next life. And this was one reason why he so vehemently desired death, because he knew it would bring him unto God, and unto true felicity. And this his hope and confidence in God, and in his favour to him, Job opposes to those foul and false aspersions which his friends had cast upon him, as if he had forsaken God, and cast off all fear of him, and hope in him. But it is objected, How is it credible, that Job, in those ancient times, and in that dark state of the church, should know these great mysteries of Christ’s incarnation, and of the resurrection and life to come? Answer, 1st, The mystery of the Messiah’s incarnation was revealed to Adam by that first and noted promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, Genesis 3:15 ; which, being the only foundation of his hopes, for the recovery and salvation of himself and of all his posterity, he would doubtless carefully and diligently explain, as need required, to those that descended from him. 2d, That the ancient patriarchs and prophets were generally acquainted with these doctrines is undeniably evident, from Hebrews 11. and 1 Peter 1:9-12 . 3d, Particularly Abraham, from whom Job is supposed to have descended, had the promise made to him, that Christ should come out of his loins, Genesis 12:3 ; and is said to have seen Christ’s day, and to have rejoiced to see it, John 8:56 ; and had his hopes and desires fixed upon a divine and heavenly city and country, Hebrews 11:10 ; Hebrews 11:16 . And as Abraham knew and believed these things himself, so it is manifest that he taught them to his children and servants, Genesis 18:19 , and to his kindred and others, as he had occasion; and, therefore, it cannot seem strange that Job professes his faith and hope in these things. That my Redeemer liveth — I am a dying man, and my hopes as to this life are dying, but he liveth, and that for ever; and, therefore, though I die, yet he both can and will make me to live again in due time, though not in this world, yet in the other, which is much better. And, though I am now highly censured and condemned by my friends as a great dissembler and secret sinner, whom God’s hand hath found out; yet there is a day coming wherein my cause shall be pleaded, and my name and honour vindicated from all these reproaches, and my integrity brought to light. And that he shall stand in the latter day — In the days of the Messiah, or of the gospel, which are often called the latter or last days, or times, as Isaiah 2:2 ; Hosea 3:5 ; Joel 2:28 ; compared with Acts 2:17 ; 1 Timothy 4:1 ; and 2 Timothy 3:1 ; Hebrews 1:1 . Or at the day of the general resurrection and judgment, which, as those holy patriarchs well knew, and firmly believed, was to be at the end of the world; for this was the time when Job’s resurrection, of which he here speaks, was to take place. So that, in these words, Job may either be considered as professing his faith in the incarnation of the Messiah; that, as certainly as he then lived, as God was in existence, and had been from eternity, he should, in due time, be made man, and stand in human nature upon the earth: or, that he should rise out of the dust, and stand up the first-fruits of them that sleep, by his resurrection. Or he may refer to the day of general resurrection and final judgment, which, as those holy patriarchs well knew and firmly believed, was to be at the end of the world; and which is often termed the last day: see John 6:39-54 ; John 11:24 ; John 12:48 ; 1 Peter 1:5 . Then shall Christ appear and stand upon the earth, or dust, as ??? , gnaphar, properly means; namely, the dust in which his saints and members lie or sleep, whom he will raise up out of it. And therefore he is fitly said to stand upon the dust, or the grave, or death; because then he will subdue and put that, among other enemies, under his feet, as it is expressed 1 Corinthians 15:25 : or, as the Hebrew, ?????? ?? ??? ???? , vaacharon gnal gnaphar jakum, may properly be rendered, The last, or he, the last, shall arise, or stand up against the dust, and fight with it, and rescue the bodies of the saints, which are held in it as prisoners, from its dominion and territories. Job 19:26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body , yet in my flesh shall I see God: Job 19:26 . And though after my skin, &c. — The style of this and other poetical books of the Scripture is concise and short, and therefore many words are to be understood in some places to complete the sense. The meaning here is, Though my skin be now, in a great measure, consumed by sores, and the rest of it, together with this body, shall be devoured by worms, which may seem to make my case quite desperate, yet in my flesh — Hebrew, ?????? , mibbeshari, out of my flesh, or, with my flesh, that is, with eyes of flesh, or bodily eyes; my flesh, or body, being raised from the grave and reunited to my soul: (which is very fitly added, to show that he did not speak of a mental or spiritual, but of a corporeal vision, and that after his death:) shall I see God — The same whom he called his Redeemer, ( Job 19:25 ,) who having taken flesh, and appearing in his flesh or body, with and for Job upon the earth, might well be seen with his bodily eyes. Nor is this understood of a simple seeing of him, but of that glorious and beatifying vision of God which is promised to all God’s people. Job 19:27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. Job 19:27 . Whom I shall see — In the manner before and after expressed. No wonder that he repeats it again, because the meditation of it was most sweet to him; for myself — For my own benefit and comfort, as the phrase is often used. Or, which is of much the same importance, on my behalf, to plead my cause and vindicate me from all your reproaches. Mine eyes shall behold, and not another — Namely, for me, or in my stead. I shall not see God by another’s eyes, but by my own, and by this self-same body which now I have. Hebrew, ??? ?? , velo zar, not a stranger, that is, this privilege shall be granted to me, and to all other sincere servants of God, but not to such as are strangers to God and his people, being alienated from him and his service. And, if I were such a one as you suppose me to be, I could never hope to enjoy that happiness. Though my reins be consumed within me — This I do confidently expect, though at present my case seems hopeless, my very inward parts being consumed with grief; and though, as I have said, the grave and the worms will consume my whole body. Or, without though, for which there is nothing in the Hebrew, My reins are consumed within me: which may be considered as a passionate exclamation, such as we find Genesis 48:18 , and often in the book of Psalms, arising from his confident expectation of this his unspeakable happiness, and expressing his vehement desire and longing for that blessed time and state. The intelligent reader will be glad to see father Houbigant’s translation of these three important verses, which is as follows: Job 19:25 , For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall hereafter arise over the dust: Job 19:26 , And that even I, after my skin is consumed, shall behold my God in my flesh: Job 19:27 , Yes, I shall behold him: my eyes, and not another’s, shall see him. This my hope is reposed in my bosom. Job 19:28 But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? Job 19:28 . But ye should say — Therefore, because this is my case, and my faith and hope are in God, it would become you, and it is your duty on this account, to say, Why persecute we him? — We are blameworthy that we have persecuted him with such bitter invectives, and we will do so no more; seeing the root of the matter — Hebrew, ??? , dabar, of the word; is found in me — That is, since my heart is sincere and upright before God, and the root, or foundation, of true religion is in me. Cum veritas ipsa inveniatur in me, since the truth itself is found in me. — Vatablus. The root of all true religion is living faith in that Redeemer of whom Job had just spoken, and in the truth and grace of God in and through him; faith working by love, overcoming the world, and purifying the heart; faith disarming death of its sting, and inspiring us with a lively, patient, joyful, and grateful hope of eternal life, such as Job had just expressed. This is the root of the matter, other things are but leaves in comparison of it. This, which implies the whole of godliness and righteousness, is the one thing needful. Let us see to it that this be found in us. And, with respect to others, let us believe that many have this root of the matter in them, who are not in every thing of our mind, and who have their follies, weaknesses, and mistakes: and let us be aware that it is at our peril if we persecute any such. Wo be to him that offends or causes to stumble and fall one of these little ones. God will resent and revenge it. Job and his friends differed in their views concerning the methods of Divine Providence, but they agreed in the root of the matter; and, therefore, it was their duty not to have censured and persecuted, but to have lived in love with each other. Job 19:29 Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment. Job 19:29 . Be ye afraid of the sword — Of some considerable judgment to be inflicted on you, which is called the sword; as Deuteronomy 32:41 , and elsewhere. That is, if ye continue to persecute me. So Houbigant understands him, interpreting these words in connection with the preceding, thus: But if ye shall say, Let us persecute him, and devise some cause of accusation against him: then be afraid for yourselves from the threatening sword. Job may be considered, however, as threatening them with punishment on account of their past uncharitable and unrighteous judgment of him, and severe treatment of him. For wrath bringeth the punishment of the sword — That wrath, or fury, which is in your hearts, and breaks forth from your lips against me, deserves and will certainly bring upon you the punishment of the sword, that is, a dreadful judgment from God. The Hebrew word here rendered punishment, ????? , gnavonoth, properly means iniquities, but is sometimes used, by a metonymy, for the punishment of iniquities, which our translators judged was its meaning here. The sense, however, is good, if the word be rendered literally, thus: Wrath (the sin of wrath, or anger against man, especially against one in affliction) bringeth, or implies, iniquities of the sword, that is, iniquities fit to be punished by the sword, or by some eminent judgment. Thus, Job 31:19 , An iniquity of the judges, means an iniquity to be punished by the judges, as our translation has it. That ye may know there is a judgment — I give you this admonition, that you may know in time, and may seriously consider it for your good, that there will be a time of judgment, when God will call men to an account for all their hard speeches and miscarriages, and particularly for their rash and uncharitable censures of their brethren, Matthew 7:1 ; Romans 14:4 ; James 4:11 ; either in this life, or at that last and dreadful day of the general resurrection and judgment, of which I have just spoken. God sees and observes, and will judge all your words and actions, and therefore do not flatter yourselves with vain hopes of impunity. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Job 19:1 Then Job answered and said, XVI. "MY REDEEMER LIVETH" Job 19:1-29 Job SPEAKS WITH simple strong art sustained by exuberant eloquence the author has now thrown his hero upon our sympathies, blending a strain of expectancy with tender emotion. In shame and pain, sick almost to death, baffled in his attempts to overcome the seeming indifference of Heaven, the sufferer lies broken and dejected. Bildad’s last address describing the fate of the godless man has been deliberately planned to strike at Job under cover of a general statement of the method of retribution. The pictures of one seized by the "firstborn of death," of the lightless and desolate habitation, the withered branches and decaying remembrance of the wicked, are plainly designed to reflect Job’s present state and forecast his coming doom. At first the effect is almost overwhelming. The judgment of men is turned backward and like the forces of nature and providence has become relentless. The united pressure on a mind weakened by the body’s malady goes far to induce despair. Meanwhile the sufferer must endure the burden not only of his personal calamities and the alienation of all human friendships, but also of a false opinion with which he has to grapple as much for the sake of mankind as for his own. He represents the seekers after the true God and true religion in an age of darkness, aware of doubts other men do not admit, labouring after a hope of which the world feels no need. The immeasurable weight this lays on the soul is to many unknown. Some few there are, as Carlyle says, and Job appears one of them, who "have to realise a worship for themselves, or live unworshipping. In dim forecastings, wrestles within them the ‘Divine Idea of the World,’ yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. The Godlike has vanished from the world; and they, by the strong cry of their soul’s agony, like true wonder workers, must again evoke its presence. The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas, the New appears not in its stead, the Time is still in pangs of travail with the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid the sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness, and tong watching till it be morning. The voice of the faithful can but exclaim: ‘As yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night: birds of darkness are on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead. walk, the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn.'" As in the twelfth hour of the night, the voices of men sounding hollow and strange to him, the author of the Book of Job found himself. Current ideas about God would have stifled his thought if he had not realised his danger and the world’s danger and thrown himself forward, breaking through, even with defiance and passion, to make a way for reason to the daylight of God. Limiting and darkening statements he took up as they were presented to him over and over again; he tracked them to their sources in ignorance, pedantry, hardness of temper. He insisted that the one thing for a man is resolute clearness of mind, openness to the teaching of God, to the correction of the Almighty, to that truth of the whole world which alone corresponds to faith. Believing that the ultimate satisfying object of faith will disclose itself at last to every pure seeker, each in his degree, he began his quest and courageously pursued it, never allowing hope to wander where reason dared not follow, checking himself on the very brink of alluring speculation by a deliberate reconnaissance of the facts of life and the limitations of knowledge. Nowhere more clearly than in this speech of Job does the courageous truthfulness of the author show itself. He seems to find his oracle, and then with a sigh return to the path of sober reality because as yet verification of the sublime idea is beyond his power. The vision appears and is fixed in a vivid picture-marking the highest flight of his inspiration-that those who follow may have it before them, to be examined, tried, perhaps approved in the long run. But for himself, or at any rate for his hero, one who has to find his faith through the natural world and its revelations of Divine faithfulness, the bounds within which absolute certainty existed for the human mind at that time are accepted unflinchingly. The hope remains; but assurance is sought on a lower level, where the Divine order visible in the universe sheds light on the moral life of man. That inspiration should thus work within bounds, conscious of itself, yet restrained by human ignorance, may be questioned. The apprehension of transcendent truth not yet proved by argument, the authoritative statement of such truth for the guidance and confirmation of faith, lastly, complete independence of ordinary criticism-are not these the functions and qualities of inspiration? And yet, here, the inspired man, with insight fresh and marvellous, declines to allow his hero or any thinker repose in the very hope which is the chief fruit of his inspiration, leaving it as something thrown out, requiring to be tested and verified; and meanwhile he takes his stand as a prophet on those nearer, in a sense more common, yet withal sustaining principles that are within the range of the ordinary mind. Such we shall find to be the explanation of the speeches of the Almighty and their absolute silence regarding the future redemption. Such also may be said to be the reason of the epilogue, apparently so inconsistent with the scope of the poem. On firm ground the writer takes his stand-ground which no thinker of his time could declare to be hollow. The thorough saneness of his mind, shown in this final decision, gives all the more life to the flashes of prediction and the Divine intuitions which leap out of the dark sky hanging low over the suffering man. The speech of Bildad in chapter 18, under cover of an account of invariable law, was really a dream of special providence. He believed that the Divine King, who, as Christ teaches, "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust," really singles out the wicked for peculiar treatment corresponding to their iniquity. It is in one sense the sign of vigorous faith to attribute action of this kind to God, and Job himself in his repeated appeals to the unseen Vindicator shows the same conception of providence. Should not one intent on righteousness break through the barriers of ordinary law when doubt is cast on His equity and care? Pardonable to Job, whose case is altogether exceptional, the notion is one the author sees it necessary to hold in check. There is no Theophany of the kind Job desires. On the contrary his very craving for special intervention adds to his anxiety. Because it is not granted he affirms that God has perverted his right; and when at last the voice of the Almighty is heard, it is to recall the doubter from his personal desires to the contemplation of the vast universe as revealing a wide and wise fidelity. This undernote of the author’s purpose, while it serves to guide us in the interpretation of Job’s complaints, is not allowed to rise into the dominant. Yet it rebukes those who think the great Divine laws have not been framed to meet their case, who rest their faith not on what God does always and is in Himself, but on what they believe He does sometimes and especially for them. The thoughts of the Lord are very deep. Our lives float upon them like skiffs upon an unfathomable ocean of power and fatherly care. Of the treatment he receives from men Job complains, yet not because they are the means of his overthrow. How long will ye vex my soul And crush me utterly with sayings? These ten times have ye reproached me; Ye are not ashamed that ye condemn me. And be it verily that I have erred, Mine error remaineth to myself. Will ye, indeed, exult against me And reproach me with my disgrace? Know now that God hath wronged me And compassed me about with His net. Why should his friends be so persistent in charging him with offence? He has not wronged them. If he has erred, he himself is the sufferer. It is not for them to take part against him. Their exultation is of a kind they have no right to indulge, for they have not brought him to the misery in which he lies. Bildad spoke of the snare in which the wicked is caught. His tone in that passage could not have been more complacent if he himself claimed the honour of bringing retribution on the godless. But it is God, says Job, who hath compassed me with His net. "Behold, of wrong I cry, but I am not heard; I cry for help, but there is no judgment." Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death draws nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one neglected, outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way fenced in so that he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by the hand of God. Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless. He would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought him near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God? Might they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against providence in his mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy reacts on his language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than in previous speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood. He hath stripped me of my glory And taken my crown from my head. He hath broken me down on every side, Uprooted my hope like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath against me And counted me among His adversaries. His troops come on together And cast up their way against me And encamp around my tent. So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of it? Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt though he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man, stricken with disease unable to help himself, the heavens frowning upon him-why should they harden their hearts? And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are clouded. They must be on God’s side against Job. Yea, God Himself has moved them to this. He hath put my brethren far from me, And my confidants are wholly estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed And my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house and my maids count me for a stranger, I am an alien in their sight. I call my servant and he gives me no answer, I must entreat him with my mouth. My breath is offensive to my wife, And my ill savour to the sons of my body. Even young children despise me; If I would arise, they speak against me. My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected by all who once loved him, forced to entreat his servants, become offensive to his wife and grandsons, jeered at even by children, of the place. The case appears to us unnatural and shows the almost fiendish hardness of the Oriental world: that is to say, if the account is not coloured for dramatic purposes. The intention is to represent the extremity of Job’s wretchedness, the lowest depth to which he is reduced. The fire of his spirit is almost quenched by shame and desolation. He shows the days of his misery in the strongest shadow in order to compel, if possible, the sympathy so persistently withheld. "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, For the hand of God hath touched me. Why do ye persecute me as God, And are not satisfied with my flesh?" Now we understand the purpose of the long description of his pain, both that which God has inflicted and that caused by the alienation and contempt of men. Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has entered, that he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory perishes from the earth, whose name is driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. Is it to be so with him? That were indeed a final disaster. To bring his friends to some sense of what all this means to him-this is what he struggles after. It is not even the pity of it that is the chief point, although through that he seeks to gain his end. But if God is not to interpose, if his last hour is coming without a sign of heaven’s relenting, he would at least have men stand beside him, take his words to heart, believe them possibly true, hand down for his memorial the claim he has made of integrity. Surely, surely he shall not be thought of by the next generation as Job the proud, defiant evildoer laid low by the judgments of an offended God-brought to shame as one who deserved to be counted amongst the offscourings of the earth. It is enough that God has persecuted him, that God is slaying him-let not men take it upon them to do so to the last. Before he dies let one at least say, Job, my friend, perhaps you are sincere, perhaps you are misjudged. Urgent is the appeal. It is in vain. Not a hand is stretched out, not one grim face relaxes. The man has made his last attempt. He is now like a pressed animal between the hunter and the chasm. And why is the author so rigorous in his picture of the friends? It is made to all appearance quite inhuman, and cannot be so without design. By means of this inhumanity Job is flung once for all upon his need of God from whom he had almost turned away to man. The poet knows that not in man is the help of the soul, that not in the sympathy of man, not in the remembrance of man, not in the care or even love of man as a passing tenant of earth can the labouring heart put its confidence. From the human judgment Job turned to God at first. From the Divine silence he had well nigh turned back to human pity. He finds what other sufferers have found, that the silence is allowed to extend beneath him, between him and his fellows, in order that he may finally and effectually direct his hope and faith above himself, above the creaturely race, to Him from whom all came, in whose will and love alone the spirit of man has its life, its hope. Yes, God is bringing home to Himself the man whom He has approved for approval. The way is strange to the feet of Job, as it often is to the weary half-blinded pilgrim. But it is the one way to fulfil and transcend our longings. Neither corporate sympathy nor posthumous immortality can ever stand to a thinking soul instead of the true firm judgment of its life that waits within the knowledge of God. If He is not for us, the epitaphs and memoirs of time avail nothing. Man’s place is in the eternal order or he does indeed cry out of wrong and is not heard. From men to the written book, from men to the graven rock, more enduring, more public than the book-will this provide what is still unfound? "Oh that now my words were written, That they were inscribed in a book; That with an iron stylus and with lead They were graven in the rock forever." As one accustomed to the uses of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be and passes to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he, the Emeer of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was accused by men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this befell him unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would stand there in the way of the caravans of Tema for succeeding generations to read. It would stand there till the ages had run their course. Kings represent on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of royal dignity Job would use the same means of continuing his protest and his name. Yet, so far as his life is concerned, what good, -the story spread northward to Damascus, but he, Job, lost in Sheol? His protest is against forms of death: his claim is for life. There is no life in the sculptured stone. Baffled again he halts midway. His foot on a crumbling point, there must be yet one spring for safety and refuge. Who has not felt, looking at the records of the past, inscriptions on tablets, rocks and temples, the wistful throb of antiquity in those anxious legacies of a world of men too well aware of man’s forgetfulness? "Whoever alters the work of my hand," says the conqueror called Sargon, "destroys my constructions, pulls down the walls which I have raised"-may Asshur, Nineb, Raman and "the great gods who dwell there pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Invocation of the gods in this manner was the only resource of him who in that far past feared oblivion and knew that there was need to fear. But to a higher God, in words of broken eloquence, Job is made to commit his cause, seeing beyond the perishable world the imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a Hebrew poet breathed into the wandering air of the desert that brave hope which afterwards, far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be fulfilled. Had he been exiled from Galilee? In Galilee was to be heard the voice that told of immortality and redemption. We must go back in the book to find the beginning of the hope now seized. Already Job has been looking forth beyond the region of this little life. What has he seen? First and always, Eloah. That name and what it represents do not fail him. He has had terrible experiences, and all of them must have been appointed by Eloah. But the name is venerable still, and despite all difficulties he clings to the idea that righteousness goes with power and wisdom. The power bewilders-the wisdom plans inconceivable things-but beyond there is righteousness. Next. He has seen a gleam of light across the darkness of the grave, through the gloom of the underworld. A man going down thither, his body to moulder into dust, his spirit to wander a shadow in a prison of shadows, -may not remain there. God is almighty-He has the key of Sheol-a star has shown for a little, giving hope that out of the underworld life may be recovered. It is seen that Eloah, the Maker, must have a desire to the work of His hands. What does that not mean? Again. It has been borne upon his mind that the record of a good life abides and is with the All-seeing. What is done cannot be undone. The wasting of the flesh cannot waste that Divine knowledge. The eternal history cannot be effaced. Spiritual life is lived before Eloah who guards the right of a man. Men scorn Job, but with tears he has prayed to Eloah to right his cause, and that prayer cannot be in vain. A just prayer cannot be in vain because God is ever just. From this point thought mounts upward. Eloah forever faithful-Eloah able to open the gate of Sheol-not angry forever-Eloah keeping the tablet of every life, indifferent to no point of right, -these are the steps of progress in Job’s thought and hope. And these are the gain of his trial. In his prosperous time none of these things had been before him. He had known the joy of God but not the secret, the peace, not the righteousness. Yet he is not aware how much he has gained. He is coming half unconsciously to an inheritance prepared for him in wisdom and in love by Eloah in whom he trusts. A man needs for life more than he himself can either sow or ripen. And now, hear Job. Whether the rock shall be graven or not he cannot tell. Does it matter? He sees far beyond that inscribed cliff in the desert. He sees what alone can satisfy the spirit that has learned to live. "‘Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want." Not dimly this great truth flashes through the web of broken ejaculation, panting thought. "But I know it: my Redeemer liveth; And afterward on the dust He will stand up; And after my skin they destroy, even this, And without my flesh shall I see Eloah, Whom I shall see FOR ME, And mine eyes shall behold and not the stranger- My reins are consumed in my bosom." The Goel or Redeemer pledged to him by eternal justice is yet to arise, a living Remembrancer and Vindicator from all wrong and dishonour. On the dust that covers death He will arise when the day comes. The diseases that prey on the perishing body shall have done their work. In the grave the flesh shall have passed into decay; but the spirit that has borne shall behold Him. Not for the passing stranger shall be the vindication, but for Job himself. All that has been so confounding shall be explained, for the Most High is the Goel; He has the care of His suffering servant in His own hand and will not fail to issue it in clear satisfying judgment. For the inspired writer of these words, declaring the faith which had sprung up within him; for us also who desire to share his faith and to be assured of the future vindication, three barriers stand in the way, and these have successively to be passed. First is the difficulty of believing that the Most High need trouble Himself to disentangle all the rights from the wrongs in human life. Is humanity of such importance in the universe? God is very high; human affairs may be of little consequence to His eternal majesty. Is not this earth on which we dwell one of the smaller of the planets that revolve about the sun? Is not our sun one amongst a myriad, many of them far transcending it in size and splendour? Can we demand or even feel hopeful that the Eternal Lord shall adjust the disordered equities of our little state and appear for the right which has been obscured in the small affairs of time? A century is long to us; but our ages are "moments in the being of the eternal silence." Can it matter to the universe moving through perpetual cycles of evolution, new races and phases of creaturely life arising and running their course-can it matter that one race should pass away having simply contributed its struggle and desire to the far-off result? Conceivably, in the design of a wise and good Creator, this might be a destiny for a race of beings to subserve. How do we know it is not ours? This difficulty has grown. It stands now in the way of all religion, even of the Christian faith. God is among the immensities and eternities; evolution breaks in wave after wave; we are but one. How can we assure our hearts that the inexterminable longing for equity shall have fulfilment? Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the individual life. To enjoy the hope, feel the certainty to which Job reached forth, you or I must make the bold assumption that our personal controversies are of eternal importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in a very narrow circle. He has done little, he knows little. His sorrows have been keen, but they are brief and limited. He has been held down, scorned, afflicted. But after all why should God care? To adjust the affairs of nations, to bring out the world’s history in righteousness may be God’s concern. But suppose a man lives bravely, bears patiently, preserves his life from evil, though he have to suffer and even go down in darkness, may not the end of the righteous King be gained by the weight his life casts into the scale of faith and virtue? Should not the man be satisfied with this result of his energy and took for nothing more? Does eternal righteousness demand anything more on behalf of a man? Included in this is the question whether the disputes between men, the small ignorances, egotisms, clashing of wills, need a final assize. Are they not trifling and transient? Can we affirm that in these is involved an element of justice which it concerns our Maker to establish before the worlds? The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How is our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and consciously we shall have our share in the clearing up of the human story and be gladdened by the "Well done, good and faithful servant" of the Judge? That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the faithful servant live to hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite the resurrection of Christ, despite the words He has spoken, "I am the resurrection and the life," even to Christians the vision is often clouded, the survival of consciousness hard to believe in. How did the author of Job pass this barrier-in thought, or in hope? Are we content to pass it in hope? I answer all these questions together. And the answer lies in the very existence of the idea of justice, our knowledge of justice, our desire for it, the fragmentariness of our history till right has been done to us by others, by us to others, by man to God, and God to man-the full right, whatever that may involve. Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who made us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human life and everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth all depends, and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the mind of man lies that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more it unsettles him, keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme of ethic and society. He is ever making compromises, waiting for evolutions; but nature knows no compromises and gives him no clue save in present fact. Is it possible that He who made us will not overpass our poor best, will not sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in our imperfect economy? The passion for righteousness comes from him; it is a ray of Himself. The soul of the good man craving perfect holiness and toiling for it in himself, in others, can it be greater than God, more strenuous, more subtle than the Divine evolution that gave him birth, the Divine Father of his spirit? Impossible in thought, impossible in fact. No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science has taught us very little if it has not banished the notion that the small means the unimportant, that minute things are of no moment in evolution. For many years past science has been constructing for us the great argument of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the small details into the vast evolutionary design. The micoscopist, the biologist, the chemist, thee astronomer, each and all are engaged in building up this argument, forcing the confession that the universe is one of inconceivably small things ordered throughout by law. Finish and care would seem to be given everywhere to minutiae as though, that being done, the great would certainly evolve. Further, science even when dealing with material things emphasises the importance of mind. The truthfulness of nature at any point in the physical range is a truthfulness of the Overnature to the mind of man, a correlation established between physical and spiritual existence. Wherever order and care are brought into view there is an exaltation of the human reason which perceives and relates. All would be thrown into confusion if the fidelity recognised by the mind did not extend to the mind itself, if the sanity and development of the mind were not included in the order of the universe. For the psychological student this is established, and the working of evolutionary law is being traced in the obscure phenomena of consciousness, subconsciousness, and habit. Is it of importance that each of the gases shall have laws of diffusion and combination, shall act according to those laws, unvaryingly affecting vegetable and animal life? Unless those laws wrought in constancy or equity at every moment all would be confusion. Is it of importance that the bird, using its wings, shall be able to soar into the atmosphere; that the wings adapted for flight shall find an atmosphere in which their exercise produces movement? Here again is an equity which enters into the very constitution of the cosmos, which must be a form of the one supreme law of the cosmos. Once more, is it of importance that the thinker shall find sequences and relations, when once established, a sound basis for prediction and discovery, that he shall be able to trust himself on lines of research and feel certain that, at every point, for the instrument of inquiry there is answering verity? Without this correspondence man would have no real place in evolution, he would flutter an aimless unrelated sensitiveness through a storm of physical incidents. Advance to the most important facts of mind, the moral ideas which enter into every department of thought, the inductions through which we find our place in another range than the physical. Does the fidelity already traced now cease? Is man at this point beyond the law of faithfulness, beyond the invariable correlation of environment with faculty? Does he now come to a region which he cannot choose but enter, where, however, the cosmos fails him, the beating wing cannot rise, the inquiring mind reaches no verity, and the consciousness does flutter an inexplicable thing through dreams and illusions? A man has it in his nature to seek justice. Peace for him there is none unless he does what is right and can believe that right will be done. With this high conviction in his mind he is opposed, as in this Book of Job, by false men, overthrown by calamity, covered with harsh judgment. Death approaches and he has to pass away from a world that seems to have failed him. Shall he never see his right nor God’s righteousness? Shall he never come to his own as a man of good will and high resolve? Has he been true to a cosmos which after all is treacherous, to a rule of virtue which has no authority and no issue? He believes in a Lord of infinite justice and truth; that his life, small as it is, cannot be apart from the pervading law of equity. Is that his dream? Then any moment the whole system of the universe may collapse like a bubble blown upon a marsh. Now let us clearly understand the point and value of the argument. It is not that a man who has served God here and suffered here must have a joyful immortality. What man is faithful enough to make such a claim? But the principle is that God must vindicate His righteousness in dealing with the man He has made, the man He has called to trust Him. It matters not who the man is, how obscure his life has been, he has this claim on God, that to him the eternal righteousness ought to be made clear. Job cries for his own justification; but the doubt about God involved in the slur cast upon his own integrity is what rankles in his heart; from that he rises in triumphant protest and daring hope. He must live till God clears up the matter. If he dies he must revive to have it all made clear. And observe, if it were only that ignorant men cast doubt on providence, the resurrection and personal redemption of the believer would not be necessary. God is not responsible for the foolish things men say, and we could not look for resurrection because our fellow creatures misrepresent God. But Job feels that God Himself has caused the perplexity. God sent the flash of lightning, the storm, the dreadful disease; it is God who by many strange things in human experience seems to give cause for doubt. From God in nature, God in disease, God in the earthquake and the thunderstorm, God whose way is in the sea and His path in the mighty waters-from this God, Job cries in hope, in moral conviction, to God the Vindicator, the eternally righteous One, Author of nature and Friend of man. This life may terminate before the full revelation of is made; it leave the good in darkness and the evil flaunting in pride; the believer may go down in shame and the atheist have the last word. Therefore a future life with judgment in full must vindicate our Creator; and every personality involved in the problems of time must go forward to the opening of the seals and the fulfilment of the things that are written in the volumes of God. This evolution being for the earlier stage and discipline of life, it works out nothing, completes nothing. What it does is to furnish the awaking spirit with material of thought, opportunity for endeavour, the elements of life; with trial, temptation, stimulus, and restraint. No one who lives to any purpose or thinks with any sincerity can miss in the course of his life one hour at least in which he shares the tragical contest and adds the cry of his own soul to that of Job, his own hope to that of ages that