William H Green
At the beginning of this book, things are disclosed to the readers that are concealed from the human beings involved in it. The veil that hides the unseen world is partially drawn aside to give us a glimpse of a spiritual agent who is to give a new turn to events. The arch-enemy of man has had his eye upon Job. True to the instincts of his vile nature, he has no faith in the reality of goodness. He sees in the piety of Job nothing but a refined form of selfishness. Job serves God because it is in his interest to do so. God protects and blesses him, and as a matter of course he inclines to the quarter from which the favours come; but if these favours were to cease, the tempter urges, Job’s piety would vanish with them. His goodness has its spring in the rewards that follow it: withhold the latter, and Job will soon leave God and His service, which no longer yields him any advantage.
Satan is allowed to bring to an issue the question which he has raised. He may put Job’s piety to the test, and in him he may test the question whether there is such a thing as real piety in the earth, a piety that is not merely self-seeking and actuated by a hope of gain, but one which heartily loves what is right and cleaves to it, and chooses the service of God though no hope of profit can attach to so doing. Job is on trial, though he does not know it; and unfriendly eyes are eagerly watching for his halting. He is on trial not merely for himself; in him is represented the cause of religion, the cause of God on earth. Yet Job is also unconscious of the dignity of his position and of the sacredness of the interest which he is set to sustain, and of the fact that the eyes of the Lord of all are turned upon him with approval and with a lively concern for the favourable issue of the struggle in which he is engaged.
Of the spiritual significance of this transaction, Job is profoundly ignorant. He feels the terrible pressure of his heavy sorrows, but he is not aware that they have been sent upon him as a test of character. He knows nothing of Satan’s malicious designs, who seeks to prove that his piety is a pretence. He knows nothing of the sovereign purpose of God, who means to establish the reality and power of his piety to the confusion of the tempter.
It is with trembling apprehension that we see such power granted to this unseen adversary, with liberty to use it against the unsuspecting patriarch: “Behold, all that he hath is in thy power”; “Behold, he is in thine hand”. The contest seems fearfully unequal between this arch-fiend and mortal man – however firm his integrity, whatever the sincerity and strength of his piety.
1Taken, with editing, from The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded. Green (1825-1900) was a Professor of Old Testament in Princeton Theological Seminary.
But we are somewhat reassured when we observe that the tempter is, after all, limited and restrained by Job’s almighty Guardian and Friend.
The fiend cannot frame and carry out his malevolent designs unchecked. He acts only by sufferance. He must have leave from the Most High before he can touch Job at all to harm him or lay his hand on anything that he has. And, when permission is given, it is within fixed limits which he may not overstep. When Job’s property was put at Satan’s disposal, it was with the accompanying restriction: “Only upon himself put not forth thine hand”. When Job’s own person was further subjected to his power, it was with the added requirement, “But save his life”. With all the limitations, however, a tremendous range was conceded to this enemy of all righteousness, and the assault which he makes is a frightful one. Can Job endure the shock?
In order properly to appreciate Job’s conduct in his affliction, we must take a further consideration into account: Job went into his trial destitute of many of those firm grounds of consolation which are now so plentifully supplied to suffering saints. Those revelations had not yet been made upon which the believer now so firmly rests his hope in times of deep distress. Truths which, in the gracious disclosures of the gospel, are as familiar to us as household words, had never yet been clearly revealed. Perhaps it may be said that the faintest conceptions of them had scarcely dawned on any human consciousness.
The king’s broad highway through the wilderness of earthly sorrow, along which suffering pilgrims can now pass in comparative safety and comfort, had not then been constructed. Its route had not even been surveyed, nor a pathway broken. Job was one of the hardy pioneers to whom this primary task was committed. He had to make his own way, without guide or chart or knowledge of the ground, through the tangled, trackless, howling waste, with no light to relieve the darkness of the night that enveloped him, but the lone pole star of his unshaken trust in God – and this, alas, often obscured by the black, threatening clouds which swept across his sky, though ever and anon peering forth afresh; unsheltered too from the tempest, which broke over him without mercy. Precipices yawned at his feet, swollen streams ran across his route, and there were treacherous bogs in which he might be hopelessly mired.
Is it strange if his stout heart quailed at the terrors which surrounded him? Is it strange if groans of distress were extorted from him? Yet, in spite of all, he pushed his way through, and the path which he opened has defined the route for many travellers since. There is not a weary sufferer in Christendom who is not indebted to the patriarch of Uz, who has not been helped by his example of fortitude and constancy, and has reason to be grateful for the lessons of comfort and hope transmitted to us from him. He grappled with
the mystery of affliction in all its unexplained darkness and difficulty, until his soul found rest. Those cheering views of truth to which he fought his way, or which were graciously vouchsafed to him in his trial, have been the heritage of God’s people ever since.
Think for a moment what it would be to encounter crushing sorrows, not only without Calvary and Gethsemane and the sympathy of the incarnate Son of God – who is Himself touched with the feeling of our infirmities, for He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Think what it would be to go into trials that offer no bright spot on this side the grave, with no clear views of that eternal blessedness, in comparison with which all earthly sorrows, however grievous in themselves and long continued, are nevertheless light and momentary – without the assurance that present griefs and sufferings shall be outweighed by that far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. What would it be to encounter frowning providences without the distinct understanding that these are nevertheless consistent with the abiding, unchanging love of a heavenly Father?
They are not tokens of His displeasure; they are not evidences that He has withdrawn His love or has shut up His tender mercies. On the contrary, whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. There is a paternal discipline in affliction. It has a gracious design, and will have a salutary result. The rod is in a loving Father’s hand; its strokes are not capriciously nor unkindly given; they are administered solely for His children’s good.
Deprive the sufferer of the consolation afforded by his knowledge of these precious truths, hide from him the benefit to be derived from affliction, take away his consciousness of the divine love in the midst of it all, and remove from him the assurance of the everlasting reward which, infinitely, shall more than compensate all that he now endures, and how defenceless would he appear in the presence of heavy griefs! These wellsprings of consolation had not yet been opened. These comforting truths had never been expressed in human speech. Simple and obvious as they now appear to us from frequent repetition, they had never been distinctly formulated and no clear conception of them had ever been reached.
Job must fight the battle without the aids which his experience, as well as later revelations, have furnished us. His sorrows came upon him, not for his own sake merely, but for ours. A new lesson was to be given to the world; and Job was to be the medium of instruction. The stream of adversity swells around him, until he is in danger of sinking and is compelled to struggle with all his might to get upon the sure foundation. Where he finds firm footing, other children of sorrow may safely tread.
The spectacle before us is that of this eminent man of God, chosen to be
the leader of the band of sufferers in their mortal conflict with evil and the evil one. He goes into the strife unpractised and unawares. The onset of the foe is fierce and furious. Will even Job be able to stand in the evil day?
The conflict unfolds itself in three successive stages of growing violence, and the demeanor of this holy man is depicted to us in each. In the first, we behold him in one evil day suddenly and irretrievably despoiled of all his possessions. In the morning his sky was without a cloud. He was in the midst of the prosperous abundance which he had long enjoyed and he seemed to have every reason to expect it to continue. It was in fact a day of special festivity and family reunion; so far from leading him to anticipate evil, it was an occasion of more than ordinary joy. Happy in his children and his possessions, and in the respect universally accorded to him, his cup of blessing overflowed. And there was nothing to suggest the likelihood of a coming reverse. And yet, before that day was ended, everything was gone. To such destitution was he reduced that his condition is aptly likened to that of a newborn child. He came naked into the world; and, now that he had been stripped of all, he shall leave it as naked as he came.
Suddenly and without a moment’s warning, the storm of calamity burst over the head of the doomed patriarch. One messenger of evil chased another with tidings of disaster. One had not ended his tale of loss before another came with a tale more doleful still. His oxen and his asses were driven off by the wild tribe of the Sabeans; his sheep were consumed by fire from heaven; his camels were carried away by plundering bands of Chaldeans; and his servants were put to the sword. And, to complete the dismal tidings of woe, the house in which his children were enjoying themselves was overturned by a tornado and fell upon them all, crushing them to death. In one moment of terrible reverse, the stricken patriarch is bereaved of his children and loses his property. All is taken from him in an instant; and, of all that he had prized of earthly good, he has nothing left.
If the calamity had been less sweeping and universal, it would not have been so overwhelming. If something had been spared him, if only part of his property had been taken, the loss might still have been considerable; it might have involved the greater part of his fortune. Still, if he had not lost all, it would have been easier to bear it with equanimity. Or, even if all his property had been taken, if his beloved children had been spared, it would have been easier to bear the loss. It would have been hard to part with one of that cherished circle that he prized so much and loved so fondly, but to lose all of them, and all at once, this was desolation indeed.
If the blows had not fallen so suddenly and in such quick succession; if he could have had some time in which to steady himself for the shock; if there
had been some intervals of relief in which he could have summoned all his strength to meet the coming blows, it would not have been so crushing as when the whole dire weight came down upon him at a stroke. By this accumulation of sorrows so suddenly sprung upon Job, the violence of the attack was increased to the utmost, and thus his steadfastness was put to the severest test. Can the tempter drive him thus to give up his integrity and abandon his trust in God?
Under the pressure of sore affliction men are in danger of falling into one or other of two opposite extremes, both of which are inconsistent with fidelity to the Lord’s service. The first is repining and murmuring at what God orders; the other is bearing it in a spirit of stoical indifference. The wise man warns us against both: “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him”.
Job avoided both these dangers in that subdued but noble demeanor which has been in all ages since then the model of submissive resignation. The stricken patriarch, bowed with grief, adopts the tokens of the most profound humiliation and sorrow: he rent his mantle, shaved his head and fell down on the ground. He did not sit in sullen silence and brood despondently over the terrible losses which he had sustained; he did not complain of the providence of God, which had dealt so hardly with him; no, he prostrated himself in reverent worship; he bowed with meek submission to Him who had smitten him; his only language was that of grateful adoration to the Source of all blessings, who in removing all had but taken away what He Himself had given. Job fell down upon the ground and worshipped and said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Can humble, trustful piety reach a more sublime utterance than this? He has been cast down from the height of his prosperity; he has suffered the total wreck of his fortune and the loss of all his family; he is weighed to the earth with his crushing sorrows; yet, with bleeding heart and prostrate form, this venerable man utters not one word of complaint. So far is he from giving up his confidence in the goodness of the Lord that he strengthens himself in this confidence by the very greatness of the calamity that he has suffered, and draws his argument of praise for the multitude of God’s mercies from the very bitterness of the cup that is now pressed to his lips.
The submission of Job is not merely that he yields to what is inevitable; that, seeing the stroke of fate has fallen and its blow cannot be turned aside and the past cannot be undone, he resigns himself to what is beyond the possibility of repair. Nor does he merely succumb to Omnipotence, convinced that it is futile to resist what the almighty God has appointed, that none can
stay His hand or prevent the execution of His sovereign will. Nor is it merely the rectitude of the infinite Ruler before which he falls prostrate, who has a right to do as He will with His own and who can dispose of His creatures according to His sovereign pleasure.
Job meekly bows, not before the stroke of inevitable fate, not simply before the resistless energy of almighty power or the righteous control of the sovereign Ruler, but before the goodness of the Lord, a sense of which now fills his heart in proportion to the magnitude of the reverse which he has sustained. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The bitterness of his loss is made the measure of the preciousness of the blessings God had given. The severity of his trial consists in parting with what God has bestowed. Every pang that now rends his heart is a fresh proof of how gracious God has been. The magnitude of the loss determines the value of the gift, and the depth of his anguish enhances his grateful sense of the goodness of the Giver. The more deeply he mourns the treasures which have been taken away from him, the higher is his appreciation of the gracious kindness of Him who bestowed them. Thus the more profoundly he grieves, the more fervently he still blesses the name of the Lord.
Not that he saw the goodness of God in afflicting him. This was a lesson Job had not yet learned. The benefits and uses of affliction, and the gracious design with which it is sent of God, had not yet been revealed. It was through these trials of Job himself, and the disclosure of His purposes thus given, and the providential issue of His dealings with His servant, that the first rays of light were shed on this dark and mysterious subject. It was partly in order to afford an occasion for giving these lessons to the world, which might lighten the sorrows and ease the burdens and mitigate the trials of subsequent sufferers that these distresses were sent on Job. Thus did he in a measure suffer for our sakes, and by his stripes we are healed – as a forerunner and a type of the great Prince of sufferers, of whom this was true in its strictest and highest sense.