My bones are burned with heat— My bones are dried up with heat or drought: Heath and Houb. Organ, in the next verse, should be read pipe.
REFLECTIONS.—1st, We have here a long account of Job's distresses; among the chief of which he reckons the insults that he sustained from the vilest abjects around him.
1. He describes them as younger than himself, persons of the meanest extraction, whose parents were so despicable, that they were unworthy to be set over the dogs of his flock; yea, scarcely fit company for them: so slothful, that they were useless cumberers of the ground: so battered with vices, that they never reached old age: or so foolish, that all the wisdom which usually attends long life was perished in them. Poor as idle, famine came upon them; and while they refused to work, to such sturdy beggars none cared to give; so that their distresses drove them to the deserts, to live upon roots and fruits which grew wild among the bushes. Vagabonds on the earth, and plagues of their country, for their crimes they were driven from the society of men, and every one was glad to be rid of them. Under the rocks and in caves they hid themselves; like wild asses famished, they brayed for hunger; and under the nettles, or thorn hedges, were gathered together, a generation of folly and infamy, the very scum of the earth. Note; (1.) They who can work and will not, have no right to eat. (2.) It is a relief to society, when the idle vagrants, the pests of the public, are driven from the hive. (3.) This beggarly world is full of the devil's poor, whose vices and sloth concur to make their being as miserable to themselves, as their sins make them odious to God and man.
2. Even these dared to shew their insolence and abuse to this afflicted man. They derided him; made him the subject of their ballads; perhaps turned his name into a proverb for hypocrisy and wickedness; they abhorred him for the vigilance with which, as a magistrate, he had animadverted upon them; and shunned him as a plague, or, if they came near, it was but to add the vilest insults to him, to spit in his face, or trip up his heels, that they might sport themselves at his fall. Because God had afflicted him, and loosed his cord (his power as a magistrate to punish them), they cast off all reverence and restraint. The very children, taught by their ungodly parents, rose up to mock at his calamities. They imputed to him the cause of all their sufferings, and sought to revenge themselves upon him in his destruction. They obstructed him in the exercises of devotion, or treated his holy walk with contempt, they added bitterness to his affliction, and they have no helper, or no helper is against them, none to take my part. Like the waters when the mound is broken down, or a besieging army when the breach is opened in the wall, they came rolling themselves as if to overwhelm him in his present desolations, taking advantage of his weakness, and eager to make an utter end of him. Note; (1.) Insult is what generous spirits can with the greatest difficulty brook. (2.) The best of men have suffered the most contempt and ridicule from an ungodly world: we must not think it strange, therefore, if we share with them. (3.) They who in their prosperity were almost adored, in adversity will often be trampled upon by every foot.
3. Thus was the "greater than Job" treated in his distresses, mocked, spat upon, pushed at in sport, and abhorred; yet he never appeared greater in the eyes of God than when most despised and rejected of men.
2nd, Many and grievous were the tribulations that Job endured both in body and mind, of which he here feelingly complains.
Internal terrors fixed on his spirit, from the apprehension of God as an enemy: and, as the wind, swift in succession and resistless, they pursued him. His welfare or salvation, his prosperity, passed away as the cloud vanishes. Dissolved with anguish, his soul melted within him, and affliction had seized on him as its prey. His body tortured with pains, his bones aching, and his sinews as if stretched upon the rack, prevented sleep from closing his weary eyes. The discharge from his boils discoloured and stiffened his very garments, so that they were not only noisome, but pressed hard and painfully on his inflamed ulcers. Like one cast in the mire, so loathsome he appeared; and as more than half dead, his flesh seemed already turned to corruption, and fit only for the grave. Vain, as it appeared to him, were his prayers, his tears; God gave him no answer, as if disregarding his request. Yea, worse, God seemed to deal with him as a cruel enemy; and, as if armed with omnipotence, opposed him on every side. Caught up as the stubble before the wind, he thought that God sported with his misery, and by the blasts of his displeasure dissipated all his substance. No prospect of relief appeared; but, wretched as he was, he expected to be brought to the grave, the house appointed for all the living since sin entered and death followed at his heels. Yea, even the death unto which he was appointed was delayed, and he was kept in torment; or God would not rescue him from going down to the pit, notwithstanding the prayers and pleadings of those who interested themselves for him, in his present ruinous and miserable estate. His compassions to the poor and afflicted had been tender and constant; and he might have hoped to have met with like compassion from God; but how greatly was he disappointed, when, instead of the good he looked for, evil came upon him; and, instead of light and comfort in his troubles, darkness, and despair of their end, had compassed him about. A burning fever scorched him up within, and days of anguish rushed on him as an enemy, and surprised him as a thief in the night. No gleam of sunshine lightened up the dark valley of affliction: even amid the greatest concourse of those who assembled for worship, or gathered round him, he roared out in his pains, desolate and wailing, as the dragons and the owls, and finding none to pity him. His skin was black with his disease, and it burnt to the very bones and marrow. The voice of joy was fled, his harp and organ lay neglected by, unable now to relish the swelling notes, when weeping and mourning were the melancholy discordant sounds that ever grated in his ears. Note; (1.) They who dwell in corruptible bodies, must expect often to feel sickness and pain, the preludes of death. (2.) It is a folly, as well as a sin, to be proud of that body which the stroke of disease can make so loathsome. (3.) Whatever houses men build for themselves, let them remember that there is one dwelling prepared for them, where they must make their longest abode. (4.) Bodily trials are heavy; but a sense of God's displeasure, and a wounded spirit, are the bitterest of all our burdens. (5.) Music is a pleasing entertainment; but disease untunes the nerves, and loosens the silver cord, and then the sounds of harmony can delight no longer.