Job 37:1-13

Hear attentively the noise of His voice.

What is Elihu’s message

What he really contributes to the main argument of the book is, that suffering may be medicinal, corrective, fructifying, as well as punitive. The friends had proceeded on the assumption, an assumption abundantly refuted by Job, that his calamities sprang, and only could spring from his transgressions. In their theology there was no room for any other conclusion. But, obviously, there is another interpretation of the function of adversity which needs to be discussed, if the discussion is to be complete; and this wider interpretation Elihu seeks to formulate. According to him, God may be moved to chastise men by love, as well as by anger; with a view to quicken their conscience, to instruct their thoughts, and give them a larger scope; in order to purge them, that they may bring forth more and better fruit; to rouse them from the lethargy into which, even when they are spiritually alive, they are apt to sink, and to save them from the corruption too often bred even by good customs, if these customs do not grow and change. His main contention has indeed, since his time, become the merest commonplace. But this pious commonplace was sufficiently new to Job and his friends to be startling. To them Elihu, when he contends that God often delivers the afflicted by and through their afflictions, must have seemed to be either uttering a dangerous heresy, or speaking as one who had received new light and inspiration from on high. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)

The phenomena of nature

Elihu regarded nature--

I. As the result of the Divine agency. He speaks of the thunder as the voice of God. “The sound that goeth out of His voice,” “the voice of His Excellency.” He speaks of the lightning as being directed under the whole heaven by Him, even unto the “ends of the earth.” Modern science spreads out theoretic schemes between nature and God. It speaks of laws and forces. This was not the science of Elihu; he regarded man as being brought face to face with God in nature.

II. As the revealer of the Divine character. He recognised--

(1) His majesty. “In the thunder.”

(2) His ubiquity. He saw Him everywhere, in the little as well as in the great.

(3) His inscrutableness,--he could not follow Him in all His movements.

III. As the instrument of the Divine purpose. “And it is turned round about by His counsels; that they may do whatsoever He commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth. He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for His land, or for mercy.” (Homilist.)

For He saith to the anew.

The lessons of the snowflakes

I. We learn that what God gives is pure. The beautiful snow, in its purity, is a type of His gifts. To be pure is certainly a state to earnestly desire, and strenuously endeavour to attain. It requires the crucible of affliction and discipline to reach it, and God often, yea, indeed, constantly uses it.

II. That what God gives is beautiful. Nothing is so beautiful as a field of fresh-fallen snow. The snow grows more beautiful when you examine it closely. But think of the source from whence they come, and each little form will be to you a profitable teacher. God gave the snow, and it is thus beautiful; so beautiful are all His gifts. Beauty is a quality in objects not to be ignored. When God makes beauty, how infinitely superior it is in beauty to the beauty constructed by the hand of man.

III. That what God gives is good. Were it not for the kindly snow, in some countries, not one grain of wheat would live through the rigorous cold of the winter. But the very wheat is warmed into life by the protection of the snow.

IV. The snow teaches us to be impartial. In this it accords with the Word of God. It bestows its benefits upon a community, it neglects none.

V. We learn a lesson of caution. How easily soiled is the snow, because of its very whiteness and cleanness. Its susceptibility to soil and dirt is a constant pleading that one be careful not to soil it. The fairer, whiter, cleaner a thing is, the more easily is it soiled.

VI. One more lesson--the evanescence of all earthly things. The fields, now hidden from view by their snowy covering, will soon be seen again; and when the snow is gone, how brief will seem to have been the season of its sojourn! Out of this lesson comes another--the duty of readiness to meet the Bridegroom. (Wallace Thorp.)

The snowstorm

I. The snow in its interesting phenomenon. The snow falls in beautiful showers almost every year, and covers the face of nature. Multitudes admire its beauties, but few understand its singular formation, important uses, and varied design. These things ought not so to be. We should make ourselves acquainted with the works of God, especially such common gifts as the rain, and wind, and snow. This would lead our thoughts from nature to nature’s God; and then His wisdom, and power, and goodness as seen therein would excite our admiration. The snow, this wonderful creature of God, has been thus described--“Snow is a moist vapour drawn up from the earth to, or near the middle region of the air, where it is condensed, or thickened into a cloud, and falls down again like carded wool, sometimes in greater and sometimes in lesser flakes. The snow and the rain are made of the same matter, and are produced in the same place, only they differ in their outward form, as is obvious to the eye, and in their season. Rain falls in the warmer seasons, the clouds being dissolved into rain by heat; snow falls in the sharper seasons, the clouds being thickened by the cold. The place where the snow is generated is in the air, from thence it receives a command to dispatch itself to the earth, and there to abide.” Three things respecting the snow may just be noticed.

1. Its whiteness. The whiteness of snow, observe naturalists, is caused by the abundance of air and spirits that are in transparent bodies. “The whiteness of snow,” says Sturm, “may be accounted for thus--it is extremely light, and thin, consequently full of pores, and these contain air. It is further composed of parts more or less thick and compact, and such a substance does not admit the sun’s rays to pass, neither does it absorb them: on the contrary, it reflects them very powerfully, and thus gives it that white appearance which we see in it” (Isaiah 1:18).

2. Form. “The little flakes,” observes the pious author just named, “generally resemble hexagonal stars; sometimes, however, they have eight angles, and at others ten, and some of them are of quite an irregular shape. The best way of observing them is to receive the snow upon white paper, but hitherto little has been said of the cause of these different figures.”

3. Abundance. “Hast thou,” said God to Job, “entered into the treasures of snow?”

II. The snow in its efficient source. The philosopher may explain its secondary, or instrumental causes, but the Christian recognises and acknowledges its first and original cause. Elihu, in the text, and in other parts of this chapter, traces, or notices, the thunder and the lightning, the snow and the rain, the whirlwind and the cold, the frost and the clouds, to their Divine source. “For He saith” (i.e., He commands)

“to the snow, Be thou on the earth.” The source from whence the snow proceeds, illustrates--

1. God’s power. When the Almighty Maker wills a thing, He has only to speak, and it is done.

2. God’s sovereignty. The sovereignty of God means His power and right of dominion over His creatures, to dispose and determine them as seemeth Him good. The snow affords an instance of the exercise of this attribute--on God’s will depends the time, the quantity, and the place.

3. God’s justice. The text itself refers to this very attribute. “For He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for His land, or for mercy.” And Elihu, in the end of the chapter, where he closes his conversation with Job, on the attributes of God, as seen in His works, gives prominence to His justice. “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out: He is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: men do therefore fear Him.” And the Almighty Himself, in the next chapter, tells Job that He sometimes sends His snow and hail in justice, that sinners may be punished for their sins (Job 38:22).

4. God’s goodness.

5. God’s providence.

III. The snow in its varied purposes. “He causeth it,” i.e., “the cloud, with whatever is its burden, to unladen and disburden itself”--“for correction, or for His land, or for mercy.” We must here observe--

1. The Lord sometimes sends the snow in the way of correction. The Hebrew is, for a rod--so we put it in the margin. Thunder and rain is the rod (1 Samuel 12:17). And who can tell but God may send His snow, and wind, and cold, to punish us for our unmindfulness of His mercies, and opposition to His laws?

2. The snow may be sent for the benefit of God’s land. “For His land” (verse 13). “The world is His, and the fulness thereof.” The clouds, therefore, drop down their moisture for the benefit of God’s land, that the beasts may have pasture; plants, nourishment; and that there may be provision for all God’s offspring (Psalms 104:10; Psalms 104:27; Psalms 65:9).

3. The design of God in sending the snow may be merciful.

IV. Our duty as implied in Elihu’s address to Job. “Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God” (verse 14). The works of God are wonderful--wonderful in their magnitude, variety, beauty, usefulness, and order--these are to be considered. Consider them, therefore; many see them, who never consider them. Consider them reverently. Patiently. Calmly. Closely. God’s works will bear inspection. Frequently. Devoutly. Not merely that your minds may be informed, but your heart drawn out towards God, in pious affections. We learn from this subject--

1. The generality of men pay little attention to the wondrous works of God, that such indifference is very criminal, and that it is the duty of ministers to awaken the attention of their people to the subject.

2. Special and particular providences demand special and particular attention. “Hearken unto this.”

3. The perfect ease with which God can punish the wicked, and hurl them to destruction.

4. The present time affords a fine opportunity for the exercise of Christian benevolence.

5. The precious privileges of those who are interested in the favour of God. (The Pulpit.)

The snow and its lessons

I. We may learn from the snow that it is possible to do a great deal of good without making very much noise. The snow is a great blessing. The Psalmist says, “He giveth snow like wool” (Psalms 147:16). Wool, as we know, is very warm. Winter garments are made of wool, and so we keep out the cold. The snow is God’s winter garment for the earth. It covers up the tender roots and plants with its thick clothing, and protects them from the cutting frosts which would otherwise destroy them. Then the snow is useful for the watering of the earth (Isaiah 55:10). When we look upon the beauty of spring, and the many glories of the summer, we must not forget the part which the snow took in producing these things. And yet, while the snow is so useful to the earth, how silently it does its work (Matthew 6:2).

II. Take care what footprints you leave behind you. The fresh snow is a very faithful record of our footsteps. It is in a more serious sense that we also leave our footprints behind us as we walk down the lane of life. I do not mean upon the snow, but upon the memories and characters of those who have known us.

III. Another lesson the snow has taught us is the power of little things. A snowflake is a little thing, but many snowflakes make “a white world.” Success in life consists very much in a constant attention to little things. We cannot always find opportunities of doing great deeds.

IV. The last of our lessons is that God loves holiness. Nothing is whiter than the snow. No sin can enter heaven. (R. Brewin.)

Suggestions of the snow

The Old Testament far more than the New employs the phenomena of nature to symbolise truth. The birth of snow, far up upon soft clouds, or yet more tenuous ether, gives rise to pleasant suggestions of the ways of God in nature. To a child, snow descending is like feathers, as if the great globe were a bird coming to its moulting and shedding all its old plumes. Or, if snow be likened to flowers, then the raindrops in the upper air are buds, and snow is the blossoming or budding raindrops. Or, if the poet renders his thought, the snow is the great husbandman, and plants the moisture borrowed from lake and sea, and in due time shakes down upon the earth the plumy grains that have been reared in the heaven above. Or yet again, as an emblem, Quarles might have noticed the rare beauty of the snow. Each flake of snow is more exquisite in structure than anything mortal hands can make. Why should not the raindrops come pelting down rounded like shot--as they do in summer? The earth, then, it might be thought, had all the beauty of form and flower that it needed; but in winter, cold and barren, the sky is the gelid garden and sends down exquisite bloom, fairer than the lily of the valley. Not only is each flake beautiful, but so are all its weird and witching ways. If undisturbed the snow falls with wondrous levity, as if in a dream or reverie; as if it hardly knew the way, and wavered in the search of the road. It touches the ground with airy grace, as if like a sky bird it touched the bough or the twig only to fly again. But when once embodied, it hangs upon bush and tree, ruffling the black branch with lace, or cushioning the evergreen branch with the rarest and daintiest white velvet. Or, when winds drive it or send it in swirls around and above all obstructions, drifting it into banks with rim and curvature, like which no pencil or tool can match, it still, out of all its agitation, works lines of grace and beauty that have been the admiration of the world from the beginning. This child of the storm is itself beautiful, and the artist of beauty. Consider the weakness and the power of the snow. Can anything be gentler and more powerless? It comes not as a ball from the rifle, or an arrow from the bow, or a swooping hawk descending from the sky for its prey. A child’s hand catches and subdues it; and ere he can see it, it is gone. A baby can master that which masters mankind. Boys gather it, and it is submissive; it resists nothing. All things seem stronger than the snow new born. Yet, one night’s weaving, and it covers the earth through wide latitudes and longitudes with a garment that all the looms of the earth could not have furnished. One day more and it sinks fences underneath it, obliterates all roads, and levels the whole land as spade and plough, and ten thousand times ten thousand engineers and workmen could not do it. It lays its hand upon the roaring engine, blocks its wheels and stops its motion. It stands before the harbour, and lets down a white darkness which baffles the pilot and checks the home-returning ship. It takes the hills and mountains, and gathering its army until the day comes, without sound of drum or trumpet, it charges down; and who can withstand its coming in battle array? What power is thus in the hosts of weakness! So the thoughts of good men, small, silent, gathering slowly, at length are masters of time and of the ages. If such be the power of God’s weakness, what must be the Almightiness of God, the thunder of His power? Consider, also, that the descending snow has relations not alone thus to fancy, but is a worker too. We send abroad to the islands of South America, and to the coast quays, to bring hither the stimulant that shall kindle new life in the wasted soils and bring forth new harvests. Yet from the unsullied air the snow brings down fertility in the endless wastes that are going on,--exhaled gases, from towns and from cities, multiplied forms that are vandals, wanderers in the sky. Caught in the meshes of the snow, the ammoniacal gases and various others are brought down by it and laid upon the soil; and it has become a proverb that the snow, fresh and new-fallen, is the poor man’s manure. It gathers again, then, the waste material of the earth, whose levity carries it above, and lays with equal distribution over all the lands that which brings back to them their needed fertility. (Henry Ward Beecher.)

Winter

What are its mute lessons to us?

1. Winter presents us with a special study, of the richness, wisdom, and greatness of the Divine order of the world. The religion of winter worship is preeminently the religion of the supernatural--the religion of Christ. It is the impulse of a religious spirit to recognise the beauty, the wisdom, the grandeur of these manifestations of the Creator. Power, beauty, and goodness are revealed.

2. Winter may be made the text of an important social study. It has potent influences upon character, and upon the duties and sympathies of life. What a lesson it is in the distribution of God’s gifts. Everywhere nature--God’s order--rebukes selfishness. Winter is potent as a social civiliser. Home is fully realised only in winter climes. Winter appeals to human charities and sympathies.

3. Winter is a fine moral study, full of spiritual lessons and analogies, such as Christ would have elicited. It is something that there is a break upon mere acquisition--a season when accumulation is arrested, when even God does not seem to be lavishing gifts. Winter brings a due recognition of the beauty and glory of the earth that God has made, its wondrous forms and forces. It brings a sense of obligation to the marvellous providence of the earth’s economy--the relation of seed time to sowing, of winter to summer; and all the while the uniform wants of life supplied, one season providing for another which produces no supplies. How transient all earthly conditions and forms of beauty and strength! How unresting, how unhasting the law of change. The supreme analogy of winter is death. To this winter of human life we all must come. (Henry Allon, D. D.)

Lessons of the snow

I. Consider its beauty. Its shape and colour have always charmed the naturalists and the poets. Its beauty is its own, unique, artistic, Divine. This beauty suggests a higher beauty, as articulated in thought, in character, and life. The beauty of any life consists in that circlet of excellences called the fruit of the Spirit. That life is beautiful whose touch is healing, whose words are comforting, and whose influence is ennobling. Delicacy and sweetness belong to the highest music. The purer the soul, the more of delicacy and sweetness will be in it. A beautiful life carries the Christ heart. Not only is each snow crystal a thing of beauty, but its ways are ways of pleasantness. How graceful the curves and beautiful the lines of falling snowflakes! How gently they touch the earth! With feathery softness they weave about the trees and bushes the rarest lace work, defying all the looms of the modern world. The snow is an artist unequalled in all the world. Its ways are full of grace and beauty. And beauty in the soul expresses itself in comely ways and winsome deeds. Spirituality will not only transfigure the countenance, but clothe the hands and feet with tenderness and grace.

II. Consider the purity of the snow. It is clean, white, and bright. But when it comes in contact with soot, its purity is defiled and its comeliness destroyed. What a pitiable sight is a soul defiled by the soot of sin! Snow undefiled is bewitchingly beautiful, but when tainted it is repulsive. The sight of doves and snow made David yearn for a pure heart.

III. Consider the variety of the snowflakes. The snowflake has been examined by the microscope, and its revelations disclosed. Revelations of crowns studded with brilliants, of stars with expanding rays, of bridges with their abutments, and temples with their aisles and columns. “Scientific men have observed no less than a thousand different forms and shapes in snow crystals. While they shoot out stars like chiselled diamonds, they reveal endless variety. O what a God is ours! Everywhere in nature we see diversity. We stand amazed before the various types of mind. When we say the snow crystal is a picture of God’s thought, we also are forced to believe it is expressed in a thousand different ways.

IV. Consider the usefulness of the snow. It is a stimulant and fertiliser. Exhausted soils are enlivened and strengthened by the snow. Gases are captured by it, and they descend in showers to enrich and beautify the fields. Utility is a widespread law. Waste material is caught up and made to serve another purpose. See how the snow covers with its woollen mantle uncomely objects, and simultaneously protects those hidden potencies which under the vernal equinox unfold into bud and leaf, blossom, fruit. Beneath that white shroud the forces of spring are allying and marshalling, like soldiers on the field. Snow is a source of irrigation. In countries of great elevation, where the rains are only periodical, the inhabitants depend wholly on the snow to enrich and fertilise their fields. Viewing human life in the light of a Divine philosophy, we are forced to the conclusion that the winter of our trials is essential to soul-fruitage. Lowell saw in the first fall of snow the picture of a great sorrow, but a sorrow sweetened by the elements of hope. Reposing in the thought of a universal Father, and having assurances that winter will give place to spring and the melodies of birds, let us see in our trials and afflictions the means ordained for our entrance into glory. In Haydn’s Creation the opening passage abounds in dissonances, a fit representation of chaos; but they soon give way to harmonies, choral and symphonic, that fill the soul with dreams of immeasurable glory and unearthly peace. And as in music, so in life, discords will end in harmonies, and sweet strains fill earth and sky. Death may seem to silence the harp of life, yet it is only as a pause in music that is preparatory to richer, sweeter, and fuller tones. (J. B. Whitford.)