Behold, He breaketh down.
Job’s maxims
Perhaps Job uses this lofty language concerning God for two reasons.
1. To show that he could speak as grandly of the Eternal as his friends had spoken.
2. To show that he had as correct and extensive a view of God’s agency as they had. He gives them here at least six different ideas of God’s agency.
I. That it is active both in the mental and the moral world.
II. That it is destructive as well as restorative. “Behold, He breaketh down, and it cannot be built again.”
III. That it extends to individuals as well as to communities. “He shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.”
IV. That it is absolutely sovereign and resistless.
V. That it operates in the unseen, as well as in the visible. “He discovereth deep things out of darkness,” etc.
VI. That it in no case appears to recognise moral distinctions among men. Not a word does Job here say about the righteous and the wicked in relation to God’s agency. His object being to show that God did not treat man on the ground of moral character. (Homilist.)