Job 23:1-17

Job's Review of the Controversy

Job 23:0

With the exception of a short interruption by Bildad, the Shuhite, the great conference is at an end. In the twenty-third and through several succeeding chapters, Job conducts a very striking and instructive colloquy. The three comforters have practically said all they have to say, and they have left Job very much as they found him. They have eloquently expressed all that they knew of the way and purpose of God. And we must not hold them guilty of ignorance; they were true up to the time in which they lived; they did the best they could for their friend. It is easy to go back from the end of the book to the beginning, and to chastise them with rods; but this is not, from a literary point of view, fair or just. If they had wilfully kept back anything, then we might have charged them with selfishness and with injustice to the spirit of truth and the ministry of sympathy; but having made their speeches, one by one, and word by word, we are hardly going too far in saying that they had evidently told all they knew. There is a good deal in seeing a witness, in hearing the tone of his voice, in observing how he conducts himself under examination and cross-examination. This, of course, is a condition we cannot now enjoy: but all the words are here, singular words they are, full of colour, full of life, ardent, resolute, fearless; there is no sign about them of anything being wantonly or purposely withheld. It is sad to see men turn away who came to do us good, and who have failed in their purpose. Watch them retiring! They would have healed Job if they could, but they did not know the cure for this malady, it was wholly unfamiliar; maxim, and nostrum, and moral law, and well-ascertained precept, went for nothing in the fierceness of this unknown distress. It seemed as if they were throwing pieces of paper into a furnace: the paper was written all over with good words, but the fire crinkled and cindered it. The men had not instruments adapted to their work. Who could empty the Atlantic with a thimble? Their hands were too short; they could not reach the reality of the case. Many short-handed comforters there be; men of little strength, little knowledge; men of letters; men of information but not of inspiration; men who know only what they have been told, who have never by some marvellous spirit of strength forced themselves to new positions along the line of human wisdom. But a very good thing has been done: Job has been driven back upon himself. He has said, No: these men have not touched the reality of the case yet: they have had surgical instruments enough, liniment enough, nostrums enough, but they did not know what disease they were treating; so their wisdom became folly, and their energy wasted itself in well-meant exertions. It is something when a man is driven back upon himself to think religiously. Herein is a happy effect of an imperfect sermon: the hearer can always profit himself by delivering a better, silently if he can. Herein is the advantage of reading books that were written under the impression that they would solve everything and have ended by solving nothing. Could the preacher but drive the hearer back into his own consciousness, into the sanctuary of his own thought, into the mystery of his own being, and get him to ask great questions, there would be some hope of the Christian ministry even yet. Job said in effect: You have not touched me: you have made a false diagnosis of my disease; you have been like doctors who have been treating asthma as if it were a case of rheumatism; you have been wrong in all your inferences regarding my state; in a sense I could contemn you and sneer at you: miserable comforters are ye all: the moment you showed anything like coarseness and impertinence I felt angry with you; only when your voices fell into soft and tender tones did I say, These men mean well, I had better hear them; but they do not know my case, and therefore I must look elsewhere for help. It is in that "elsewhere" that we find our subject.

Job looks round for God, as a man might look round for an old acquaintance, an old but long-gone friend. Memory has a great ministry to discharge in life: old times come back, and whisper to us, correct us or bless us, as the case may be; old hymns and psalms that now in our higher culture we despise and quote with suggestive emphasis, even these sometimes come singing round the corner, as if they would attract our attention without being rude or violent; sometimes in the aching heart there comes up a longing to get back to the old altar, the old sanctuary, the old pastor; after listening to all new doctors the heart says, Where is your old friend? where the quarter whence light first dawned? recall yourself: think out the whole case. So Job would seem now to say, Oh that I knew where I might find him! I would go round the earth to discover him; I would fly through all the stars if I could have but one brief interview with him; I would count no labour hard if I might see him as I once did. We are not always benefited by a literally correct experience, a literally correct interpretation even. Sometimes God has used other means for our illumination and release, and upbuilding in holy mysteries. So Job might have strange ideas of God, and yet those ideas might do him good. It is not our place to laugh even at idolatry. There is no easier method of provoking an unchristian laugh, or evoking an unchristian plaudit, than by railing against the gods of the heathen. Job's ideas of God are not ours, but they were his; and for a man to live out his own ideal of religion is the beginning of the right life: only let a man with his heart-hand seize some truth, hold on by some conviction, and support the same by an obedient spirit, a beneficent life, a most charitable temper, a high and prayerful desire to know all God's will, and how grey and dim soever the dawn, the noontide shall be without a cloud, and the afternoon shall be one long quiet glory. Hold on by what you do know, and do not be laughed out of initial and incipient convictions by men who are so wise that they have become fools.

Job says, Now I bethink me, God is considerate and forbearing:

"Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me" ( Job 23:6 ).

It is something to know so much. Job says, Bad as I am, I might be worse; after all I am alive; poor, desolated, impoverished, dispossessed of nearly everything I could once handle and claim as my own, yet still I live, and life is greater than anything life can ever have: so I am not engaged in a battle against Omnipotence; were I to fight Almightiness, why I should be crushed in one moment: the very fact that I am spared shows that although it may be God who is against me, he is not rude in his almightiness, he is not: thundering upon me with his great strength; he has atmosphered himself, and is looking in upon me by a gracious accommodation of himself to my littleness. Let this stand as a great and gracious lesson in human training, that however great the affliction, it is evident that God does not plead against us with his whole strength; if he did so, he who touches the mountains and they smoke has but to lay one finger upon us nay, the shadow of a finger and we should wither away. So, then, I will bless God; I will begin to reckon thus, that after all that has gone the most has been left me; I can still inquire for God, I can still even humbly pray; I can grope, though I cannot see; I can put out my hands in the great darkness, and feel something: I am not utterly cast away. Despisest thou the riches of his goodness? Shall not the riches of his goodness lead thee to repentance? Hast thou forgotten all the instances of forbearance? Is not his very stroke of affliction dealt reluctantly? Does he not let the lifted thunder drop? Here is a side of the divine manifestation which may be considered by the simplest minds; here is a process of spiritual reckoning which the very youngest understandings may conduct. Say to yourself Yes, there is a good deal left: the sun still warms the earth, the earth is still willing to bring forth fruit, the air is full of life: I know there are a dozen graves dug all around me, but see how the flowers grow upon them every one: did some angel plant them? whence came they? Life is greater than death. The life that was in Christ abolished death, covered it with ineffable contempt, and utterly set it aside, and its place is taken up by life and immortality, on which are shining for ever the whole glory of heaven. Job will yet recover. He will certainly pray; perhaps he will sing; who can tell? He begins well: he says he is not fighting Omnipotence, Omnipotence is not fighting him, and the very fact of forbearance involves the fact of mercy.

Will he grow from this point? will he advance? He will. We shall see that he distinctly advances in his argument:

"But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold" ( Job 23:10 ).

When a man says that, he has come forth; the miracle is done. Why wait for the completed miracle of the universe? It is finished in every grass-blade, in every fowl that flies in the open firmament, in every breath that is in our nostrils. Having given us life, he will never see us die, but by our own rashness; he will not be guilty of manslaughter: the gift of life pledges him in that direction. Hear the patriarch had he lived now he could not have been wiser "He knoweth the way that I take" the dark, sinuous way; not one straight mile in it; sometimes uphill, so that my very strength gives way, and I would almost return to the starting-point, and then suddenly down a deep and threatening declivity, the end of which no eye can see; and then off into stony places, and across broad wildernesses; and then up to the very lips in cold, cold rivers: but he watches all the way; the light and the darkness are both alike unto him; he knoweth my downsitting and mine uprising, my going out and my coming in; he watches me as if I were an only child: blessed be his name for ever: when he hath tried me, tested me, pierced me through and through, thrown me into the fire, watched the burning in all its effect upon me when he has got out the last speck of dross, he will put me into his crown; I shall be for the King's use through eternal day. Who says that Job has fallen, taken the wrong view, lapsed into infidelity? He is now hiding himself in rocks; he is now standing in the very sanctuary of God: see how he pulls himself together! God is forbearing, because he is not issuing against me all his strength: God knows the way that I take, and he is trying me: he knows there is some gold in me: who would try dross, knowing it to be dross only? The very fact of the trial means that there is something to be tried, and something worth saving, and something that God can turn to high uses. Is this an ancient lesson? Are there men who can jeer at this as something spoken three thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago to some poor sorrowing old sheik in the Eastern land? Why, this is the very speech we need. We are being tried. Every man is undergoing a process of investigation, scrutiny, trial, education, drill, evolution, development, call it what you please, there is the substantial truth: nor have we yet found than any one great fact in all the evangelical theology has to be changed in view of the lights that are now shining from real or artificial heavens. We are being chastened, mellowed, really and vitally tried. Is it not so? Look at experience. Let the apostle state it in his Greek way: "No chastening" or trial, or affliction, or temptation, or sorrow "for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward " there is the unknown sphere, the unending time, the ineffable sanctuary of real issues and abiding realities. We are singing a hymn, and that is the refrain; a poet has not yet arisen to put it into form, to yoke it to fit letters, but the hymn is in us, and singing in us, and singing around us, and the refrain is "nevertheless, afterward." How well it comes in! How happily it terminates each verse! "Nevertheless, afterward." We, rise from the bed of affliction saying so; we come back from life's daily battle in the marketplace saying so; we close the letter that has crushed our last hopes saying so; we return from the black churchyard, the pit of bodily death, hardly saying so articulately, but saying so in the heart, so that friends can understand the motion of our lips, saying, Being interpreted, that motion is, "Nevertheless, afterward." The whole creation is saying this, whilst groaning and travailing in pain; it is sustained in its agony by the "nevertheless, afterward" of an eternal promise.

Does Job advance? He strikes again upon the right chord:

"Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?" ( Job 26:14 ).

In other words, These are the lower endings of his ways: this is the ladder-foot; it rests upon the earth, but where is its head? In other words; These are whisperings of his ways, the silences of his going, the mere appearances and throbbings of a mysterious motion: but the fulness of God, in all his meaning, and love, and strength, and redemption, who can tell? That must always be so. There must always be an unknown quantity in God, and we must always be moved by a desire to know that unknown element and force; yet we rejoice that we cannot know God in all the fulness of his being. We know him sympathetically: we know him, as it were, intuitively. If he will not come to us, we will carve a marble slab, and write upon it a Bible of our own. We must have him. If things did not take shape, we should be able to dismiss the idea of God more readily; but events form themselves: there is a building behind us. Our life is not a gathering up of unrelated ideas and circumstances, a mere association created by proximity; life is coherent, symmetric, a palace-like structure, strange in architecture, wonderful in elevation. We see it now! For a long time we thought that one day had no relation to another; that one event was altogether independent of another; we have now discovered the law of sequence, the law of attachment shall I say? the law of chain-making; call it by any name you please, only the result of your naming must be that God's purpose in life takes shape, form, and appeals by its very symmetry and completeness to our highest consciousness, and calls for the confirmation, not of genius, which is rare, but of experience, which is universal. We are dwelling in the lower parts of things, seeing but their beginnings, hearing but their whisperings; we shall be wise when we know that we are ignorant; we shall begin to be great when we know that we are nothing. If any man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself, and nobody else: and self-deception is the profoundest humiliation of mankind. We shall grow in knowledge when we grow in reverence, when we stand before a sunrise or a sunset and fail to see the glory because our tears blind us. Reverence, veneration, sense of infinity, will help any man to grow, to become strong and wise and healthy.

We shall yet see Job released from his captivity. He says that his character is good though his life is troubled. That pains him very much:

"My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live" ( Job 27:6 ).

"If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." Job has lived for us this mystery, namely, that a man may have a perfect integrity (using the term in its human sense) and yet have an afflicted life. We need some men to do things for us. It is not in the power of any one of us to sweep the whole circumference of human experience. We live in one another, and for one another, and we have typical, emblematical men to whom we point, saying, This man has proved it; that man is the evidence of it. Solomon has returned from his voluptuous journey; he sits down in disappointment, in shame, and says, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." We are, therefore, entitled to look at the examples of wicked men, the examples of good men, and to draw inferences bearing upon the whole system of things from what they have seen and been and done. It is something to know that we have maintained our integrity, and yet may have been seized by great temptations, and be subjected to intolerable trials. Such is the mystery of human life "so abject, so august"; so like a tragedy; sometimes fraying itself down into comical associations and relations: still, a wondrous life; its very pain signifying its dignity, its very ambition testifying to its immortality.

So Job lived in a universe that was large, secure, well-governed, and a universe that would consummate itself in goodness. Job has said to us so far in his colloquy for we have confined ourselves to one point The universe is a roomy place, and is not measured by any one man's estate; it is larger than any one man has yet reckoned, and is well-built; its pillars are firm. There is a spirit of righteousness running through all the universe, a spirit of judgment, a spirit of pure criticism that cannot be deceived, and that will not rest until all things fall into massive harmony, or stand up in speckless beauty and purity. Job thus became more and more contented with the world, and being contented with that, it was easy to descend into the little details of his own life. Why not reason so? The argument à fortiori may begin at one of two opposite points; we may reason upward from the little and the known to the unknown, and be pressed with all logical strength to conclusions that seem to baffle us; or we may come from the other end and say, The sky is so secure that probably the roof built over my head by God, which I cannot see, is quite as secure: the laws of nature, so called, whatever they may be, are firm, beneficent, inexorable, and yet not wanting in a kind of weird compassionateness: it may be, therefore, that there are other laws, within those of nature gracious, tender, redeeming, dealing with sin, and dealing with every mystery that makes life sad. So the very heavens may help us, and the strong earth may minister to our spiritual security. It is something to live in a society about whose security we have no doubt. It is something to know that there is a court of law in which justice will be done, whoever falls. This is the comfort of every citizen. Once let there be a doubt about this, and citizenship is fraught with peril and distrust. But in a well-ordered community there is this central feeling: justice will be done; whatever the controversy is, it will be settled in the long run fairly and equitably; criticism will be brought to bear, and learning, and righteousness, and all that dignifies human life, and the issue in this commonwealth will be justice to rich and poor, to strong and helpless. It is surely something to know this about a mere social state. Amplify and spiritualise the argument, and it becomes this: all things are done in righteousness: God sitteth upon the throne: nothing escapes His attention: all things work together for good to them that love God: there is a spirit of redemption in the universe, as well as a spirit of righteousness. The Judge of the whole earth will do right. Time is not reckoned by today, or tomorrow, or the third day: God keeps the time, and when he says, "It is finished," we shall answer, "It is well."