Job 19:29

29. Be ye afraid A continuation (the apodosis) of the preceding verse.

The punishments of the sword עונות means iniquities, which in this case deserved the punishment of the sword, succinctly called “sins of the sword.” With the Hebrew the sword was the symbol of the divine judgments, (Job 15:22, Deuteronomy 32:41; Psalms 7:12, etc.) It was also the insignia of the judge, and pointed to the judgment he executed. The last two Hebrew words stand as the equivalent, as well as the outcome of the first, “wrath.” The sense, then, is not far from that of our translators, wrath is, or bringeth, death. By “wrath” Hengstenberg understands that wrath of God, which visits capital misdeeds those which deserve the sword. See note on Job 36:18. A judgment שׁדין , a compound word, the first letter of which is an abbreviation of אשׁר , signifying that. Ewald’s objection, that such a compounding of words would be solitary in our book is invalid, since a like use of the pronoun appears once in Deborah’s song, (Judges 5:7,) and only once besides in the same book, (Judges 6:17.) Dillmann’s reading, “Almighty,” would require a radical change of the word. Divine judgments await the wrong doer here, and serve as so many indices of the judgment to come. “If there were no other argument for a life to come, SIN would furnish one never to be refuted.” The incomplete punishment of sin in this life necessitates punishment in the next.

EXCURSUS V.

THE INSCRIPTION.

This memorable passage has given rise to more comment, and probably to a greater division of sentiment, than any other in the Old Testament Scriptures. The history of these opinions does not lie within our scope, except to remark in general that the olden faith, that these lines referred to the Messiah and the resurrection of the body, has, to a great extent, given place in modern times to the view that the deliverance was altogether confined to this life, and that the earnest desire of Job was answered by the disclosure of Deity at the end of the debate, a view which is shared by such commentators as Albert Barnes, Stuart, and Noyes. More recent interpreters, however, incline to the opinion that Job speaks of a vision of God after death; though these do not for the most part acknowledge the teaching of a resurrection of the body. The question of Job’s faith in such a resurrection is so closely allied to the other question, of his belief in the existence of the soul after death, that the admission of the one seems quite to involve that of the other. J.J.S. Perowne, who doubts that the passage alludes to an after life, admits, “most certainly if there be any expression here of a hope reaching beyond this world, then there can be no doubt, I think, that Job looks for a resurrection, not merely for a future life.” HULS. Lec. on Immortality, p. 80.

I. The evidently great importance, in Job’s estimation, of the inscription. Job desires that it should be chiselled into the rock, and in such a manner as to endure forever. The temporal theory, which looks to the vindication of Job’s character and the restoration of his loss, fails to present us an inscription with a purport worthy of such high consideration.

The experience of the Church in all ages proves that the vindication of character in this life, and the restoration of temporal loss, are not of so much consequence in the divine estimate. The Scriptures assume, rather, that loss and ignominy are incidental to the life of the good man, and that restitution and vindication are to take place in the life to come. It is of more importance that the moral government of God in this world should be vindicated; a demand that can be met only in a future life, comprehending within itself redemption for the entire man.

II. The natural impression that the language, literally interpreted, makes upon the mind. Mr. Barnes concedes that the language which is used is such as would properly describe the coming Messiah and the future resurrection of the dead. “This,” he says, “is undoubted, though more so in our translation than in the original; but the original would appropriately express such an expectation.” This may account for the marked unanimity among the ancient interpreters of this passage. Although the Septuagint, in the opinion of some, is of doubtful meaning, its rendering is, “For I know that he is eternal who is about to deliver me, and to raise up upon the earth my skin (the Codex Alexandrinus has σωμα , body) that endures these” ( sufferings.) The Targum, the Vulgate, Clemens Romanus, Ephraim, Epiphanius, Augustine, and many others of the fathers; of more recent Continental interpreters, Schultens, J.H. and J.D. Michaelis, Rosenmuller, Kosegarten, Pareau, Welte, and Velthusen; and of English commentators, Adam Clarke, Good, Hales, Carey, Pusey, Wordsworth, and others; have seen in this inscription either a prophecy of, or an allusion to, the resurrection of the dead. The objection that nothing is said in reply to the startling thoughts of Job may be met by the consideration that no reply is made to other startling expressions. as those of a Daysman, (Job 9:33.) hope within sheol, (Job 14:13-16,) and advocacy of God with God, (Job 16:21.) The objection would be equally good against any possible interpretation of the inscription, for there is no direct reference made to it in the replies of the friends. It confessedly stands out alone a vein of golden ore in the adamantine rock.

In the earlier ages truth was given in fragments. It was isolated, succinct, compressed, not unlike the utterances of oracles. The reader will be reminded of the gospel given in the garden, the prediction by Enoch of a judgment to come, the promise of Shiloh, and the prophecies through the Gentile Balaam. They who thus became agents for the transmission of divine truth may have failed to comprehend it in all its bearings, but the truth is on that account none the less rich and comprehensive. In the living Goel who shall stand upon the dust, Job may not have seen Christ in the fulness of the atonement; nor in the view of God “from the flesh,” have grasped the glories of the resurrection morn; but the essential features of these two cardinal doctrines of Scripture are there, identical with those we now see in greater completeness; even as the outlines of a landscape, however incompletely sketched, are still one with those of the rich and perfected picture.

Dr. Green wisely remarks that “the resurrection of the body was probably not present to Job’s thoughts, certainly not in the form of a general and simultaneous rising from the dead. And yet it is so linked, seminally at least, with our continued spiritual existence, and it is so natural, and even necessary, for us to transfer our ideas of being, drawn from the present state, to the great hereafter, that it may perhaps be truly said that the germs of the resurrection may likewise be detected here.” The Argument, etc., p. 216.

III. The structure of the language. The keenest dissection of the sentences shows that there is nothing in the words themselves incompatible with a rudimental hope of the resurrection. The exegesis of the present day, as we have seen, accords to them the hope of immortality. The concession, we believe, carries with it the entire bulwark. “When Job says that with his own eyes he shall behold Eloah, it is, indeed, possible by these eyes to understand the eyes of the spirit; but it is just as possible to understand him to mean the eyes of his renewed body… and when Job thinks of himself (Job 19:25) as a mouldering corpse, should he not by his eyes, which shall behold Eloah, mean those which have been dimmed in death, and are now again become capable of seeing?” Delitzsch, 1:371. Those who reject the doctrine of a resurrection are confronted with serious difficulties in the expressions “from my flesh” and “mine eyes.” They who confine the interpretation to the idea of immortality do grammatical violence to the former of the two expressions, “from my flesh,” (see note, Job 19:26,) and the tautology is not to be overlooked, since he has just before uttered the words “after my skin” and at the same time they are constrained to spiritualize the latter “mine eyes.” Job having spoken once and again of the “I” who shall see God, the expression “mine eyes” appears to be expletive, unless he means the eyes of his body after its death. Then, too, we have “upon the dust,” “after my skin,” and “not another,” each of which expressions are excrescences upon the passage if we accept either the theory of deliverance in this life, or the spiritual beholding of God in the life to come. An insignificant and jejune inscription is the rock on which, an the one side, the temporal theory must split; while on the other, the superfluities in an inscription confessedly epigrammatic, make the Charybdis in which those critics who spiritualize the passage must founder. In other words, if the proposed inscription means merely the present life, it is hardly worth inscribing; if it have no idea of a resurrection it has so much that is superfluous, that it is at war with itself; it seems pruned to the utmost degree, and compacted, and yet at the same time is weighed down with redundancies.

IV. The scope of the context. During the course of the debate, Job has frequently given utterance not only to his despair of life, but to a passionate longing for death, (Job 6:8-12; Job 7:15; Job 10:18-21; Job 17:11-16.) Continued life entails inexpressible wretchedness. Therefore he digs for death more than for hid treasures. The glowing descriptions of brighter days that adorned the discourses of his friends sound to him as words of mockery, (Job 16:20; Job 17:2.) This very chapter speaks of his utter destruction, (Job 19:10.) It is, he stays, like that of a house fallen into ruins or a tree plucked up by the roots. Life no longer enters into his estimate. He had at times caught a glimpse of another life. His eye of faith had seen that the gloom of sheol could not last forever. The voice of God should surely call the sentinel from his dreary post, Job 14:13-16.

We are prepared for any notes of triumph from the welkin of a life to come, and even to see Job “plant the flag of victory over his own grave.” Delitzsch. But here to talk of mere temporal life, (vain and barren in its best estate,) of compensation for loss, and an avenger of blood, is as much out of place as “the bloating of sheep and the lowing of oxen “at Gilgal. 1 Samuel 15:14. The view into the dark grave, by contrast reminds him of the view of God on its other side; and site sight of his loathsome body naturally suggests the hope that the time of its renewal should come, and that from his body he should yet see God.

V. The ancient and wide-spread belief in a resurrection, or more properly, a re-vivifying of the body. The objection has been strongly urged against the evangelistic interpretation of this passage that the dogma of a resurrection is of more recent disclosure than the time of Job. This objection now quite disappears beneath the accumulating light of our age.

It now appears that the most ancient of the civilized nations enjoyed high religious light. Frequent discoveries are made of religious truth in what appear most barren fields, which prove to be nuggets of gold from wastes of sand. With almost every Pagan people, the nearer we approach the fountain head of history the purer seems the knowledge of divine things. The history of very ancient nations and we can hardly except the early Hebrew records a loss of spiritual truth.

The following hymn, addressed to the mediator, God, (see Excursus iv,) taken from the Assyrian tablets, transmits the faith of the ancient Akkadian and of the later Chaldean-Babylonian on the subject of the resurrection: “Great lord of the land, king of countries, eldest son of Hea, who dost lead (in their periodic movements) heaven and earth great lord of the land, king of countries, god of gods, servant of Anna and Moulge, (that is, of heaven and earth,) the merciful one among the gods the merciful one who dost raise the dead to life: O Silik mouloukhi, king of heaven and earth, king of Babylon…strengthen heaven and earth… strengthen death and life.… Thou art the favourable Colossus. Thou art he who quickens. Thou art he who makes to prosper the merciful one among the gods, the merciful one who raises the dead to life.” LENORMANT, La Magie, etc. Compare George Smith’s Assyrian Discoveries, 202, 203.

In the proximity of Idumaea was another great people with whom the immortality of the soul had ever been a cardinal doctrine of faith. Even if most of the Semitic races of Arabia, Babylonia, and Phenicia, while retaining other spiritual knowledge had lost that of the resurrection of the body, Egypt, it now appears, possessed it, though in a modified form. With the Egyptian, in contradistinction even to the Hebrew, the body was the subject of anxious consideration after death. Its preservation, as all will admit, was for some reason essential to the weal of the soul. (See note, Job 3:14; also BUNSEN, Egypt’s Place, etc., 4:651.) In the fable of Osiris it was taught “that the souls of dead persons, whose bodies had been properly embalmed, descended into hades [the invisible world, see Excursus on Sheol] in the boat of the setting sun; and that after some long period, during which they had many trials to undergo, they would rise again perfectly pure to reunite with the body in the boat of the rising sun. Abydos then took its name, which means ‘the city of the resurrection,’ because at the time it was the highest point up the river to which the valley had been explored, and therefore the place where, according to the fable, the resurgent souls would first reach Egypt. It was, moreover, the doctrine of this fable that Osiris reigned supreme (both as god and king) over the entire destinies of the bodies and souls of the dead. He especially presided over the resurrection. Therefore it was that his city was named Abydos, the city (or place) of the resurrection.” OSBURN, Monumental History of Egypt, 1:332.

“The deceased was to be resuscitated after this subterranean pilgrimage: the soul was to re-enter the body again to give it movement and life, or, to use the language of Egyptian mythology, the deceased was to arrive finally at the boat of the sun, to be received there by Ra, the scarabaeus god, and to shine with a brightness borrowed from him.” LENORMANT, Ancient History, 1:321. “In general, the greater part of the funereal ceremonies, the various wrappers of the mummies, the subjects painted on the interior or exterior of the coffins, have reference to the different phases of the resurrection, such as the cessation of the corpse-like rigidity, the reviving of the organs, the return of the soul.” ( Ibid., 1:311.) Compare chap. clv and clxix of the Book of the Dead, in the latter of which occurs the prayer, “Make his soul in his body again,’ etc.

The Vedas now satisfy the student that the Aryan race between whom and the Semitic there was originally intercommunication of religious light as well as perhaps a primeval oneness of language had some knowledge of a resurrection, though probably not so full and clear as that of the Egyptian and the Assyrian. “It is incontestable,” says Burnouf, ( Essai sur le Veda, p. 438,) “that all ancient India believed in the possibility of the resurrection of the dead.” For the formula of the resurrection, see ibid., 436, 437.

The ancient Persian has been supposed by the Rationalists of the day to have been the great depository from which Job gained his ideas of Satanology; and, later, Israel its knowledge of the resurrection. On this account they have been disposed to ascribe a later origin to the book of Job. But the Parsee now seems to have been less enlightened than either the Egyptian or the Assyrian. On the cardinal doctrines just referred to, Job appears to have had fewer points in common with the Persian than with his other neighbours. Those well qualified to form an opinion deny that there are any traces of the resurrection in the Avesta the sacred books of the Parsee. (See HARDWICK, Christ and other Masters, 2:426.) If Job had not some distinct conception of the revivifying of the dead body, he, the most enlightened of the Gentile world, and evidently possessed of a wide culture, falls below his contemporaries and neighbours, both Egyptian and Assyrian. If he had such knowledge, the words before us the marvellous inscription can be interpreted on no other hypothesis than that of a communication of his faith, which infinitely outshone that of any ancient religion whose light still lingers among men. The faith according to which the patriarchs lived and died, (Hebrews 11:13,) probably embraced a belief in the future reunion of soul and body. Joseph certainly could not have been ignorant of this marked feature of Egyptian lore. This is manifested in his remarkable care for his own mummy, “his bones,” which he commanded to have buried with his brethren in the land of promise and hope. (Hebrews 11:22.) The sun of a primeval revelation shed its light upon the human race as a whole; and Hebrew, Idumaean, Egyptian, and Assyrian enjoyed its quickening power, though subsequently in different degrees, because of the darkening and destructive influences of idolatry, into which some of them sank. If the seventh from Adam, of a line prior to the select Abrahamic race, overlooked the centuries and beheld the Lord coming to judgment, (Jude 1:14,) it is not unreasonable to suppose that the patient sufferer of Uz may have overlooked the grave and seen the same Lord standing triumphantly upon the dust of an entire race, and summoning soul and body to renewed and united life.