_But I have understanding as well as you._ THE EFFECT OF THE FRIENDS’ SPEECHES UPON JOB The whole world, Job feels, is against him, and he is left forlorn and solitary, unpitied in his misery, unguided in his perplexity. And he may well feel so. All the religious thought of his day, all the traditi... [ Continue Reading ]
_I am as one mocked of his neighbour, who calleth upon God, and He answereth._ THE MAN WHO GETS ANSWERS MAY MOCK HIM WHO GETS NONE The antecedent to “who” seems to be uncertain. It may be Job; it may be the neighbour about whom Job speaks. They who have had experience of God’s tenderness to help t... [ Continue Reading ]
_But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee._ AN APPEAL TO THE LIVING CREATURES Rosenmuller supposes that this appeal to the inferior creation should be regarded as connected with Job 12:3, and that the intermediate verses are parenthetic. Zophar had spoken with considerable parade of the wi... [ Continue Reading ]
_Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee._ THE TEACHING OF THE EARTH To the attentive ear all the earth is eloquent; to the reflecting mind all nature is symbolical. Each object has a voice which reaches the inner ear, and speaks lessons of wise and solemn import. The stream murmurs unceasingly... [ Continue Reading ]
_Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?_ GOD AND NATURE If one could possibly laugh the laugh of the scornful, surely there is temptation enough in the teachings of a modern science, and in the attempt to build up before us a self-created world without God. But we... [ Continue Reading ]
_Behold, He breaketh down._ JOB’S MAXIMS Perhaps Job uses this lofty language concerning God for two reasons. 1. To show that he could speak as grandly of the Eternal as his friends had spoken. 2. To show that he had as correct and extensive a view of God’s agency as they had. He gives them here... [ Continue Reading ]
_Taketh away the understanding of the aged._ INSANITY The text is part of an address in which Job enumerates a variety of events in which, more or less prominently, the interference of Divine providence was to be traced. I. The peculiar dispensation which the text brings before us. Job is not sta... [ Continue Reading ]