Job 22:21-30

Job 22:21-30

21. Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee.

22. Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, and lay up his words in thine heart.

23. If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.

24. Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.

25. Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver.

26. For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.

27. Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows.

28. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.

29. When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.

30. He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands.

Reconciliation and Results

That is all the three friends could, in substance, say. It is difficult to read the exhortation of another man. We are, indeed, apt to put our own tone into all reading, and thereby sometimes we may do grievous injustice to the authors or speakers whom we seek to interpret. Of one thing, however, we may be quite sure, namely, that when a man so seer-like, so prophet-like as Eliphaz, concluded his controversy with Job, observing the suffering and the sorrow of the patriarch, he would be certain to drop his voice into the music of consolation, and would endeavour, whilst speaking words of apparently legal and mechanical preciseness, to utter them with the tone of the heart, as if in the very sorrow were hidden a gracious gospel, and as if duty might, by some subtle power, be turned into the most precious of delight. All hortatory words may be spoken with too much voice, with too strong a tone, so as to throw them out of proportion in relation to the hearer, whose sorrow already fills his ears with muffled noises. Let us imagine Eliphaz eldest of the counsellors, most gracious of the speakers laying his hand, as it were, gently upon the smitten patriarch, and approaching his ear with all the reverence of affectionate confidence, and giving him these parting instructions: then the exhortation becomes music; the preacher does not thunder his appeal, but utters it persuasively, so that the heart alone may hear it, and the soul be melted by the plea. May it not be so with us also? We do not need the strong exhortation, but we do need the consolatory appeal and stimulus. We may frighten a man by calling out very loudly when he is within one inch of a brink; the nearer the man is to the precipice, the more subdued, the less startling, should be the appeal: we might whisper to him as if nothing were the matter, rather lure his attention than loudly and roughly excite it; and then when we get firm hold of him bring him away to the headland as urgently and strongly as we can. May it not be that some hearts are so far gone that one rude tone from the preacher would break up what little hope remains? Should we not rather sometimes sit down quite closely to one another and say softly, "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace": think of what all thy life comes to, poor soul, and see if even now, just at the very last, the flickering lamp cannot be revived and made strong and bright: come, let us pray? Who can tell in what tone the Lord said, "Come now, and let us reason together," as if we were equals; for the time being let us be as brothers; let the case be stated on both sides, and argued out with all the urgency and zeal of truest love? Never regard the Gospel as having come roughly, violently, but as always coming like the dawn, like the dew, like music from afar, which having travelled from eternity stops to accommodate itself to the limitations of time. Still the exhortation has the strength within it. Speak it as we may, it is the strongest exhortation that can be addressed to human attention. You may soften it as to tone, you may pray God for many days that when you do come to utter your message you may speak it without offence, lovingly, tenderly, with a voice full of tears; yet, even when so spoken, the Gospel has within it fire and sword and force almighty. When the tone is softened, it is not that the law has given up the pursuit of the soul, or has ceased to press its infinite claims upon the trespasser. Do not mistake the persuasions of the Gospel for the weaknesses of the preacher, and do not regard the errors of the preacher as implying in any degree defect on the part of his message.

Eliphaz tells Job what he must do; let us read his bill of directions: "Acquaint now thyself with him." Here is a call to mental action. Job is invited to bethink himself. He is exhorted to put himself at the right point of view. Instead of dealing with social questions and personal details, the seer invites the smitten patriarch to betake himself to the sanctuary, and to work out the whole solution in the fear and love of God. There are amongst men questions that are supreme and questions that are inferior. Who would care for the inferior if he could solve the supreme, and fill himself with all the mystery of Deity? What are all our inventions, arts, sciences, and cleverest tricks, and boldest adventures into the region of darkness, compared with the possibility of knowing human thought the power of removing the veil that separates man from man, and looking into the arcana of another soul? But this is kept back from us. We are permitted to dig foundations, to build towers and temples; we are allowed to span rivers with bridges, and bore our way through rocky hills; but we cannot tell what the least little child is thinking about. Given the possibility that a man may, by a certain process of study, qualify himself to read all that is in our minds, who would not avail himself of that opportunity with eagerness and gratitude! All other learning would be contemptible in comparison with an attainment so vast and useful. This is the explanation of men spending their days over crucibles, in hidden places, in darkened dungeons, seeking in the crucible for the particular Something that would dissolve everything that was hard, and reveal everything that was dark. This is the meaning of the quest in which men have been engaged for the Sangreal, the philosopher's stone that marvellous and unnamable something which, if a man had, he would open every kingdom and be at home in every province of the universe. You cannot kill that mysterious ambition of the human heart. It will come up in some form. It is the secret: of progress. Even when men say they have renounced the quest, they may be most busily engaged in the pursuit; when they seem to be most practical and soberminded, and to have given up all thought whatever of sitting upon the circle of the heavens, there may be something in their hearts which says, You are only resting awhile; even yet you will receive the secret, and turn it to highest uses. All this leads to the uppermost thought, namely, that if a man could acquaint himself with God, live with God, would not that be the very highest attainment of all? If he could enter the tabernacles of the Most High, and survey the universe from the altar where burns the Shekinah, what would all other attainments and acquisitions amount to? Yet this is the thing to be aimed at: grow in grace; grow in all life; for it means, in its fruition, acquaintance with God, identification with God, absorption in God; living, moving, having the being in God; taking God's view of everything; made radiant with God's wisdom, and calm with God's peace. Assuming that to be a possibility, how all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory thereof, fade away into the dim distance! How grandly some of the old seers now and again touched the vital point; and how the ages have thrilled with their touch, knowing that at last they had left detail and cloud and mystification, and touched the very pulse of things! Here stands the great truth, the eternal verity: until we have acquainted ourselves with God, by means prescribed in God's own book, our knowledge is ignorance, and our mental acquisitions are but so many proofs of our mental incapacity. Eliphaz, therefore, lifts up the whole discussion to a new level. He will not point to this wound or that, to the sore boil or blain, to the withering skin, to the patriarch's pitiful physical condition; he begins now to touch the great mystery of things, namely, that God is in all the cloud of affliction, in all the wilderness of poverty, and that to know his purpose is to live in his tranquillity.

Then Eliphaz says "Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth": do not have second-hand references, do not be content with what other people have said; but go straight to the fountainhead: there is a law a law of event, accident, progress, providence, retribution; a law of light and darkness; a law that comes and goes like the revolving seasons: there may be even now, poor Job, some scraps of written law: consider everything; take in knowledge from every quarter; if light shall shine from unexpected points, look for it, examine it; if it be light indeed, receive it, and be thankful for it. We need the strong word Law just as we need great corner-stones in the building, and solid beams here and there in the edifice. There may be in the building an abundance of colour, and gold, and fine artistic display; but somewhere in the building, if it have to stand winter and summer, there must be iron, solid woodwork, massive blocks of stone, and great beams of wood. So in the life-house there may be decoration, intellectual accomplishment, all manner of fancy characteristics and advantages, but if that life-house is to stand when the sea roars, when the mountains shake, when all things are tried, there must be in it depth, solidity, massiveness, obedience to the geometry of the universe, complete harmony with all the forces that secure the stability and permanence of material things. We cannot escape this pressure. We speak about the law as if it infringed liberty; whereas the law is the very secret of liberty, its security, and its crown. Is there any law in our spiritual life, any sovereignty in the very charity which softens our heart? Is there any righteousness behind to account for the beauties that are scattered upon the surface? Is the blossoming at the top of the tree fastened on artificially? or does it come up from the black root and tell that its life is hidden in the sun? We have read of men who, having received the word of God gladly, went out and forgot all about it, and became their old selves again, because there was no deepness of earth let us say now, because there was no law, righteousness, sovereignty, government, founded upon wisdom and upon the innermost and completest knowledge of human nature.

"And lay up his words in thine heart": dispossess the heart of all bad notions by filling it with all true ideas; do not have one little corner in the heart where you can put a sophism; let the heart be so stored with Christly words and Christly wisdom that there shall be no room in it for any superstition. That is the only plan of true education, and the only guarantee of ultimate complete manhood. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." Do not have part of God's word and part of some other word locked up in the heart together, like the ark as it was locked up with Dagon; but fill the whole heart with God's words: they are music, they are law, they are gospel, they are light, they are comfort, they are bread for the hungry, and living water for burning thirst. Feed upon the divine word. Lord, evermore give us this bread! Eliphaz is now a gospel preacher, a great evangelist; he cannot tell the whole range of what he is saying; the morning is not the midday, the spring is not the autumn; but it lies in the right line of it; the autumnal golden glory will come in due time: "in the process of the suns" we shall see the words of Eliphaz completed in the words of Christ.

"If thou return to the Almighty" certain results will accrue. What are those results? Reconstruction: "thou shalt be built up." Comforting word! We know what it is to be shattered, broken all to pieces, to have lost our squareness and completeness, our hold of things and our entire status, and we know by bitter experience what it is to be clashed to atoms. Sin leaves no man whole; evil-doing is destruction: it tears a man as it were limb from limb, and delights in seeing him broken up, thrown into hopeless incoherence. The very first thing true religion does is to gather a man up again; it seems to say to him, We must begin with reconstruction: what are you? where are you? let us grapple with the reality of the situation, however tragical, however hopeless it may be. To tell a man that he may be built up again is to give him hope. Say to some poor overthrown one, Come now! you are not always to live like this: there is hope for you; even you can be put in joint again, even you can be gathered up by the miracle of the Holy Ghost working within you, the miracle of grace: even you can be made a man, and at first the answer may be sullen not because of obduracy of heart, but because of hopelessness of spirit but the man will turn the words over in his heart, he will take them home with him; when the feast spread for the body is all consumed he will say, I have bread to eat that these people know not of: a good brave man told me in the city today that I, even I, could be built up again: oh, God of heaven, is that true? is that a possible miracle? can this bewildered head be made steady again? and can these lips pray any more? Who can tell what the angels may say to the soliloquist then? Man likes to think that he can be built up, re-established, and comforted with great consolation. This is what the Gospel says, or it is no gospel: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy." What are they? that the lost may be found, that the dead may live: believest thou this? All things are possible unto him that believeth. Say, in all broken-heartedness for that is the beginning of strength "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

Then Eliphaz, working according to the light of his time, makes Job a great promise of silver and gold; he says:

"Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir [see note, p. 234] as the stones of the brooks. Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver" ( Job 22:24-25 ).

Was the motive a bad one? Nothing of the kind; otherwise the whole of the Old Testament is vitiated by the suggestion. The Lord has always worked upon this plan of promising men what they could understand, of accommodating his kingdom to some form, parabolic or material, which might touch the imagination and even the senses of the people whom he addressed. Thus the Lord said unto Abram: Arise, come away, and I will give thee a land flowing with milk and honey. Was that an appeal to a selfish motive? Certainly not. It was the only appeal which Abram could then understand. The Lord promised the patriarchs length of days. Now we would not have length of days, for we are weary of old grey time. The period comes when a man says, When is the upper door going to be opened? I would not live alway; I have seen every revolution of this little wheel, and I am tired of watching the tautology; I know spring and summer, and autumn and winter, and birth and marriage, and death, and weal and woe, and loss and gain, and book-keeping and balancing, and profit and disadvantage, and sickness and recovery and dissolution: I am tired of watching that mocking monotony: when will the golden gates swing back, and let me pass where the light is purer, and where the service is without weariness? Did God, then, appeal to a poor motive when he promised length of days? The answer is, Certainly not; he made the only possible appeal that is, the only appeal that could be understood. When life was new, men liked to have plenty of it an abundance of years; yea, life is represented in the ancient books as extending over centuries four and five, and six and eight, and nine centuries, and one man lived nearly a thousand years! So Eliphaz was talking in Old Testament language, in ancient and early terms, when he promised Job heaps of gold and plenty of silver "the gold of Ophir," or "Ophir," which is a symbolical term for gold which could be laid up like the stones of the brooks great stones, small stones, thousands and countless numbers of stones of gold. Now we have come to know that we cannot take away one little pebble with us, that at best we have but the handling of the mocking stuff for a few years, and then, however anxious we may be to begin the next world rich with gold, we must start God's next world without a single penny. Eliphaz was not appealing to selfish motive, to mean ambition; nor was he degrading the kingdom of peace and light and pureness when he thus promised Job reward of gold and silver; he was speaking up to his last point of light and attainment. Now, what is promised to us? All heaven! Blessed be God, we have been born at a period when the next word is "heaven." That brings us very near to God's ultimate purpose. Abram was born in a time when a land flowing with milk and honey filled his imagination. Old Testament men lived in times when length of days was the only possible notion of duration. We live in a time when life and immortality have been brought to light in the Gospel, and now we want no lands flowing with milk and honey, or Ophir, or silver in plentifulness, except for immediate convenience and transient purposes. We seek a country out of sight. We attest the progress of spiritual civilisation by being afflicted with an ambition which nothing can satisfy but God's own dwelling-place the very heavens of eternity.

Then Eliphaz promised Job a plentiful intercourse with God:

"For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God. Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows" ( Job 22:26-27 ).

But Eliphaz also points out a result which is full of practical instruction:

"When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person" ( Job 22:29 ).

The meaning is, when you are right with God, you will be a fountain of consolation and strength to weak men. Why, here is an anticipation of the time when the whole commandment of God, ranging over every point of life, shall be divisible into two thoughts the love of God, and the love of neighbour. "When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up." And thou shalt prove it, for thou shalt say, I too was cast down, and behold I am lifted up; I too was broken in pieces, and now I am built and established, and I enjoy a sense of incorporation with the whole scheme of things planned, fashioned, and formed by the Living One. This is the test of our piety. How do weak men regard us? Do they say when listening to us, That is the man who will help me in trouble; that is the counsellor to whom I should go were I in perplexity; that is the man to whom I would tell all the tale of sin and shame, had I such a tale to relate; I would seek him out, and he would receive me and listen to me; he might insist that I told him everything that is in my heart, but having done so, he would put his strong arms around me and say, Wanderer, prodigal, foolish soul, even yet there is hope for thee! Our piety is a pretence if it be not available to men who are in distress, in weakness, and in hopelessness. This is the mystery of the divine kingdom, that it does not run up into metaphysics only, and lose itself in transcendent thoughts, but that, having been up there amid the transfiguring glory, it comes down to heal the sick and show the wanderer the way straight home.

Note

Ophir is a seaport or region from which the Hebrews, in the time of Solomon, obtained gold in vessels which went thither in conjunction with Tyrian ships from Ezion-geber, near Elath, on that branch of the Red Sea which is now called the Gulf of Akabah. The gold was proverbial for its fineness, so that "gold of Ophir" is several times used as an expression for fine gold (Psalms 45:10 ; Job 28:16 ; Isaiah 13:12 ; 1Ch 29:4 ); and in one passage ( Job 22:24 ) the word "Ophir" by itself is used for gold of Ophir, and for gold generally. In addition to gold, the vessels brought from Ophir almug wood and precious stones.

The precise geographical situation of Ophir has long been a subject of doubt and discussion. The two countries which have divided the opinions of the learned have been Arabia and India, while some have placed it in Africa. There are only five passages in the historical books which mention Ophir by name; three in the Book of Kings (1 Kings 9:26-28 , 1 Kings 10:11 , 1Ki 22:48 ), and two in the Book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 8:18 , 2Ch 9:10 ). The latter were probably copied from the former. In addition to these passages, the following verse in the Book of Kings has very frequently been referred to Ophir: "For the king ( i.e. Solomon) had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks" ( 1Ki 10:22 ). But there is not sufficient evidence to show that the fleet mentioned in this verse was identical with the fleet mentioned in 1 Kings 9:26-28 , and 1 Kings 10:11 , as bringing gold, almug trees, and precious stones from Ophir. If the three passages of the Book of Kings are carefully examined, it will be seen that all the information given respecting Ophir is that it was a place or region accessible by sea from Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, from which imports of gold, almug trees, and precious stones were brought back by the Tyrian and Hebrew sailors. Smith's Old Testament History.