Job

Satan’s charge is about motive: “Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him” (1:9–10). Take the hedge away, he says, and Job will curse God to his face. The LORD gives leave twice and sets the limit both times: “only upon himself put not forth thine hand” (1:12), and “but save his life” (2:6). The adversary can do nothing the LORD does not allow. The word for nought returns when the LORD says, “thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause” (2:3), and Job, who knows nothing of the council, says God “multiplieth my wounds without cause” (9:17). His answer to the first blow settles the charge: “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (1:22).

The friends argue from one rule, which Eliphaz states first: “who ever perished, being innocent?” (4:7). Bildad applies it to Job’s children (8:4), and by the third round Eliphaz charges Job with sins he did not commit (22:5–9), which Job answers under oath (31:16–22). Much of what the friends say about God is true. Paul quotes Eliphaz as Scripture: “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Corinthians 3:19; Job 5:13). Their error was to read Job’s heart from his suffering. The LORD rebukes both sides. To Job he says, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” (38:2). Against the friends his wrath is kindled, and they are accepted only by a burnt offering and Job’s prayer (42:7–9).

Forsaken by kin and friends (19:13–19), Job says what he knows: “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth” (19:25). The word is the kinsman’s, used of the next of kin who buys back what a poor brother has sold (Leviticus 25:25), and Job expects to see him “in my flesh” (19:26). Chrysostom names the two ways it is read: Did Job know the doctrine of resurrection? I believe so, and the doctrine concerning the resurrection of the body, unless he says here that the resurrection that he speaks about is the deliverance from the afflictions that pressed him. Gregory held the first: Whereas the ‘skin’ is expressly named, all doubt of a true resurrection is removed. On the second, the promise is kept when the LORD turns Job’s captivity (42:10).

Chapter 28 asks what the speeches cannot settle: “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?” (28:12). Men cut shafts into the rock for silver, gold and sapphires, but wisdom cannot be dug out or bought. “God understandeth the way thereof” (28:23), and he has told man where his part lies: “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (28:28). When the LORD answers out of the whirlwind, he does not tell Job about the council in heaven. He asks, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4), and shows him the sea, the dawn, the snow, the wild beasts, behemoth and leviathan. Job is answered by seeing who speaks: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee” (42:5).