(4) For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them. (5) He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail. (6) He hath made me also a byword of the people; and aforetime I was as a tabret. (7) Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow. (8) Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite. (9) The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger. (10) В¶ But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find one wise man among you.
We shall do well in these calamities of Job, to look beyond the man of Uz, and contemplate him whose sufferings were unequalled. When CHRIST as the surety of his people, bore all the billows of wrath due to the sinner, it was no small aggravation of his calamity, that he endured also the contradiction of sinners against himself. He was reproached as a false prophet, as a sabbath breaker, a deceiver, nay, as in league with the devils, casting out evil spirits, by Beelzebub the prince of them. He was not only scourged, and his sacred head crowned with thorns; but laughed at in the midst of his agonies, and tauntingly required to come down from the cross. Precious JESUS! how do all sorrows sink to nothing in the view of thine? Never was there any like unto that sorrow wherewith the LORD afflicted the sinner's surety in the day of his fierce anger! Lamentations 1:12.