Job 31:1-32

I made a covenant with mine eyes.

Guard the senses

Set a strong guard about thy outward senses: these are Satan’s landing places, especially the eye and the ear. (W. Gurnall.)

Methods of moral life

Let us look at the kind of life Job says he lived, and in doing so let it be remarked that all the critics concur in saying that this chapter contains more jewels of illustration, of figure or metaphor, than probably any other chapter in the whole of the eloquent book. Job is therefore at his intellectual best. Let him tell us the kind of life he lived: whilst he boasts of it we may take warning by it; the very things he is clearest about may perhaps awaken our distrust. Job had tried a mechanical life--“I made a covenant with mine eyes” (verse 1). The meaning of “a mechanical life” is a life of regulation, penance, discipline; a life all marked out like a map; a kind of tabulated life, every hour having its duty, every day its peculiar form or expression of piety. Job smote himself; he set before his eyes a table of negations; he was not to do a hundred things. He kept himself well under control; when he burned with fire, he plunged into the snow; when his eyes wandered for a moment, he struck them both, and blinded himself in his pious indignation. He is claiming reward for this. Truly it would seem as if some reward were due. What can a man do more than write down upon plain paper what he will execute, or what he will forbear doing, during every day of the week? His first line tells what he will do, or not do, at the dawn; he will be up with the sun, and then he will perform such a duty, or crucify such and such a passion he will live a kind of military life; he will be a very soldier. Is this the true way of living? Or is there a more excellent way? Can we live from the outside? Can we live by chart, and map, and schedule, and printed regulation? Can the race be trained in its highest faculties and aspects within the shadow of Mount Sinai? Or is the life to be regulated from within? Is it the conduct that is to be refined, or the motive that is to be sanctified and inspired? Is life a washing of the hands, or a cleansing of the heart? The time for the answer is not now, for we are dealing with an historical instance, and the man in immediate question says that he tried a scheduled life. He wrote or printed with his own hand what he would do, and what he would not do, and he kept to it; and though he kept to it, some invisible hand struck him in the face, and lightning never dealt a deadlier blow. Job then says he tried to maintain a good reputation amongst men--“If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity. If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out” (verses 5-8). That was a public challenge. There were witnesses; let them stand forth: there was a public record kept; let it be read aloud. This man asks for no quarter; he simply says, read what I have done let the enemy himself read it, for even the tongue of malice cannot pervert the record of honesty. Will not this bring a sunny providence? Will not this tempt condescending heaven to be kind, and to give public coronation to so faithful a patron? Is there no peerage for a man who has done all this? Nay, is he to be displaced from the commonalty and thrust down, that he may be a brother to dragons and a companion to owls? All this has he done, and yet he says, “My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep” (Job 30:30). This is not what we have thought of Providence. We have said, Who lives best in the public eye will be by the public judgment most honourably and cordially esteemed: the public will take care of its servants; the public will stand up for the man who has done all he could in the interests of the public; slave, man or woman, will spring to the master’s rescue, because of remembered kindnesses. Is Job quite sure of this? Certainly, or he would not have used such imprecations as flowed from his eloquent lips:--If I have done thus, and so, then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out: let my wife grind servilely unto another: let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. So then Job himself is speaking earnestly. Yet, he says, though I have done all this, I am cast into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes: though I have done all this, God is cruel unto me, and He does not hear me: I stand up, and He regardeth me not: with His strong hand He opposeth Himself against me: He has lifted me up to the wind, and He has driven me away with contempt: He has not given me time to swallow down my spittle: I, the model man of my day, have been crushed like a venomous beast. Job, therefore, does not modify the case against God. He misses nothing of the argument and withholds nothing of the tragic fact. He makes a long, minute, complete, and urgent statement. And this statement is found in the Bible! Actually found in a Book which is meant to assert eternal providence and justify the ways of God to man! It is something that the Bible could hold within its limits the Book of Job. It is like throwing one’s arms around a furnace; it is as if a man should insist upon embracing some ravenous beast, and accounting him as a member of the household. These charges against Providence are not found in a book written in the interests of what is called infidelity or unbelief; this impeachment is part of God’s own book. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)