Job 10:22

without any order There Chaos reigns; cf. the beautiful description of the effect of light upon the earth, ch. Job 38:12-14.

the light is as darkness The light in that region is

No light, but rather darkness visible.

Job's three friends, strong in their traditional theory and unobservant of facts or indifferent to them, maintained that God's rule of the world was righteous, by which they meant that He rewarded the righteous with outward good and dispensed severe suffering only to the great sinner. Job agreed with them that this oughtto be the way in which God governed the world, and would be the way in which a just ruler would govern it. But his own experience and much that he could perceive taking place in the world convinced him that the world was not governed in this way in fact. This feeling not only disturbed but threatened to transform Job's whole idea of God. His unbearable sufferings and this thought of God's injustice together suggested to his mind the conception of the supreme Power in the world as an omnipotent, cruel Force, that crushed all, good and evil, alike, and mocked at the despair of the innocent. This is the tone of Job's mind in ch. 9, in which he does not address God but speaks of Him in a kind of agitated soliloquy, as if fascinated by the omnipotent unmoral spectre which his imagination has conjured up. The difference between Job's ways of thinking and those prevailing in our own day can readily be seen. In our day we have reached an ideal of God, to which, if there be any God, he must correspond. And even if we took the same pessimistic view of the world as Job did we should hesitate to believe that the conception was embodied in any Being; we should probably conclude that there was no God. But such a conclusion could not suggest itself to an Oriental mind. God's existence and personality were things which Job could not doubt. Hence he had no help but invest God with the attributes of evil which he thought he saw reflected in the world.

It might seem that Job is now on the high road to renounce God, as Satan had predicted he would do. But Job does not find renouncing God quite so easy a thing. And he enters upon a course in ch. 10 which, though at first it appears to take him a step further in this direction, is really the beginning of a retreat. He endeavours to set before his mind as broad a view of God as he is able, in order that by thinking of all that he knows of God he may catch the end of some clue to his calamities. This makes him realize how much he is still sure of in regard to God. And first, he cannot doubt that He is all-knowing and omnipotent (Job 10:3-7). But he goes further. He cannot help seeing in the carefulness and lavish skill with which he was fashioned round about in all his being by the hands of God, not only wisdom, but a gracious Benevolence, and in the preservation of his spirit a Providence which was good. And he dwells on these things, not in the cold manner of a philosopher making an induction, but with all the fervour of a religious mind, which felt that it had fellowship with the Being whose goodness it experienced, and still longed for this fellowship. Yet God's present treatment of him seemed in contradiction to all this. Thus Job balances God against Himself. Others have done the same, asking the question whether the order of the world inclines to the side of benevolence or of evil; and some have professed themselves unable to answer. So strong is Job's present sense of misery that he concludes that the universal Ruler is evil. His present treatment of him displays His real nature, and His former goodness was but apparent (Job 10:13-17). Thus this singular method adopted by Job of balancing God against God seems to have led him further into darkness. Yet there is no other method by which he can reach the light; and though the balance inclines in one direction meantime, by and by it will incline in another. See notes on chap. Job 16:18 seq.