For God shall cast upon him— There is nothing for God in the Hebrew. Houbigant renders the 21st verse, A burning wind shall carry him away, and he shall be gone; it shall hurl him out of his place; and he connects it thus; It shall urge him on, and not spare: driven into flight, he shall flee from its power: Job 27:23. It shall clap with its hands against him, it shall hiss against him out of its place. Heath renders the latter clause of the 22nd verse, he would fain fly out of its reach. The poet here personifies the storm, who carries away, hurls down, claps his hands at, and hisses the wicked man off the stage.
REFLECTIONS.—1st, Though his friends are silent, Job continues his discourse; a parable it is called, as being full of deep and weighty matter, or as abounding with metaphors and allegories.
He solemnly appeals to God, as the everliving God, and Almighty Governor of the world, to witness for his integrity, though he had afflicted his soul, and taken away his judgment, refused to appear to vindicate him, and continued his troubles (a rash expression, for which Elihu reproved him, chap. Job 34:3.). While life and breath endured, he resolved that nothing should make him wickedly and falsely confess himself guilty, when his conscience bore him witness in the Holy Ghost that he was sincere before God. Far, therefore, from justifying them in their charges, by acknowledging the truth of them, he, with indignation, rejects the thought, resolved till death to maintain his past integrity, and, notwithstanding all he suffers, to cleave steadfastly to God, and never quit his plea of the justice of his cause, or suffer his heart to reproach him, by yielding to their cruel suggestions. Note; (1.) An oath is an appeal to the heart-searching God; and, as we must swear by no other, when we swear by him we cannot be too circumspect that we speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Prevarication, or concealment, is as much perjury in the eye of God, as direct falsehood. (2.) We are too apt to charge God foolishly, to faint under his corrections, and to call that his vexation, which flows only from our own impatience. (3.) Whatever circumstances we are in, it is a wise and holy purpose, to hold fast till death in our dependance on God, and unshaken steadiness in the profession of the true religion. (4.) While believers are careful to keep a conscience void of offence, they are in duty bound to turn a deaf ear to Satan's suggestions that they are hypocrites, and not children of God, and to be unmoved by any censures of perverse and uncharitable men. If our conscience condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.
2nd, It had been suggested by his friends, that he was a wicked man, or a hypocrite. No, says he, I know the evil and danger of their state too well. Let mine enemy be as the wicked. If it were permitted him to wish the greatest evil to his enemy, he could not think of any thing so terrible as his sharing with the wicked: not that a good man, like Job, would wish evil to any; but it is expressive of his sense of the dreadfully dangerous and ruinous estate of the ungodly. For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, succeeding in his schemes of worldly advantage, and securing praise and honour among men? How vain and wretched! what a delusion will the whole appear, when God taketh away his soul? A dying hour, or, at farthest, a judgment-day, will terribly undeceive him, and all his professions and outward performances will stand him in no stead at God's bar. Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him? (either the troubles of life, or the fearfulness which at death, or after death, will seize him)—will God then regard his prayer? No; while inward hypocrisy remains, prayer is an abomination; and in the day of vengeance inflexible justice can be prevailed upon by no importunity to reverse the sentence. Will he delight himself in the Almighty? No; his religion is a burden, a task; not a pleasure, or his choice. Will he always call upon God? No; at best he prays only by fits and starts. When he can get nothing by it, or must sustain damage from his profession of religion, the mask is immediately removed. Now Job suggests, that the very contrary of this was his character, and therefore he was no hypocrite. Note; (1.) Miserable is the condition of the hypocrite: we ought to take especial heed that we deceive not ourselves, but prove our ownselves, whether Jesus Christ indeed be formed in us. (2.) Many groan and cry under their troubles, whose prayer, as it proceeds not from an humbling sense of sin, but from mere anguish of pain, returns unanswered. (3.) They who have neglected prayer, or used it in mere formality, will shortly cry out in anguish of soul, when the door is shut, and it is too late to knock. (4.) The religion of hypocrites consists in profession, the performance of some outward ceremonies, and a desire to appear righteous before men; but the heart is unchanged. They know no delight in God; their talk of formal duties is irksome; and an excuse for omitting them, or hurrying them hastily over, is easily admitted. Nor would they pray, or serve God at all, if the fear of hell, or their character in the world, did not more influence them, than any pleasure in his service, or real love to him in their souls.
3rdly, That the wicked are certainly miserable, Job will readily allow; the question only is, Where? not always visibly in this life, though that may be sometimes the case; but assuredly after death the curse will overtake them. This he here undertakes to teach his friends, under the good hand of God, if they desire to learn; and these dispensations of the Almighty's providence he would unfold, which themselves must needs have observed and seen, and therefore the more blameable their censures in condemning him for a hypocrite. The portion of the ungodly and the oppressor then is sure destruction, descending to them as a heritage; and, though in this life they may prosper, they shall receive it from the hand of the Almighty in eternity.
1. Their families, whom they leave behind them, and in whom they hope to perpetuate their name and glory, shall be cut off by the sword, or by famine; and if any yet remain, the pestilence shall sweep them away, hurried to the grave, without a tear dropt over them: either they shall have no widows to lament them, or they shall be so odious to the wives of their bosoms, that they will rather rejoice at their departure.
2. The wealth of the sinner, which with such assiduous care and toil he collected, shall be dissipated through God's ever-ruling providence. The just shall possess the wardrobes that he hath filled, and the innocent divide the silver that he hath accumulated, who will make a better use of the unrighteous Mammon. His stately palace shall moulder into dust, as the feeble house which the moth erects, and be of as short continuance as the shepherd's booth. Note; (1.) When men are dead, frequently their riches strangely vanish: could they look out of their graves, their misery to see how they are disposed of would be greater even than the anxiety and care with which they scraped them together. (2.) The only durable house that we can build, is that not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
3. They themselves shall meet a miserable death, and a more terrible eternity. The rich man shall lie down in the dust of death, but he shall not be gathered to the sepulchre of his fathers, or the congregation of the righteous. He openeth his eyes, which he closed upon his bed, and lo, he is not any longer numbered with the living, but cut off by a sudden stroke, and lifting up his eyes in torment. Terrors take hold on him, resistless as the torrent of waters; and a tempest of divine wrath, as little expected as the approach of the thief, stealeth him away in the night, just when he had been saying, Soul, take thine ease. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth into the regions of eternal darkness; and as a storm, the vengeance of God hurleth him out of his place, from his palace upon earth, down into the horrid caverns of Tophet; for God shall cast upon him the fierceness of his wrath, tribulation, and anguish, and not spare; his punishment will be without measure, and without end, where, though he would fain flee out of his hand, resistance is vain, and the great gulph fixed prevents all escape. Men shall clap their hands at him, or, hands shall clap at him, the righteous upon earth on being delivered from their oppressor, and saints and angels in heaven magnifying God for his righteous judgments, and shall hiss him out of his place, treating his memory with contempt on earth, or expressing their abhorrence of his crimes when he is driven from God's tribunal into everlasting punishment. Note: (1.) They who lie down on their beds know not whether they shall ever awake again among the living. Are we ready then for a sudden summons? (2.) The death-bed of the rich is often a scene of tempest, when they must leave a beloved world, to go where dreadful darkness hides the prospect, and conscious guilt begets a fearful looking-for of judgment. (3.) If once the sinner be ingulphed in the belly of hell, then black despair will add the summit of misery to the intolerable and everlasting burnings.