And none spake a word unto him.
Silence, not speech, the best service of friendship in sorrow
Here is a demonstration of true friendship. Note the way in which these friends at first endeavoured to comfort Job. They did not speak.
I. Silence is the strongest evidence of the depth of our sympathy towards a suffering friend.
1. The comforting power of a friend lies in the depth of his sympathy.
2. Silence is a better expression of deep sympathy than speech.
II. Silence is most consistent with our ignorance of Divine providence towards our suffering friend. How little we know of God’s procedure in the affairs of human life: So long as these friends kept silence they acted as comforters; but as soon as they launched into speech they became Job’s tormentors.
III. Silence is most congenial with the mental state of our suffering friend. The soul in deep sorrow seeks silence and solitude. Mere word-condolers are soul- tormentors. Then be silent in scenes of sorrow; overflow with genuine sympathy, but do not talk. (Homilist.)
Silent sympathy
Bishop Myriel had the art of sitting down and holding his tongue for hours, by the side of the man who had lost the wife he had loved, or of a mother bereaved of her child. (Victor Hugo.)
For they saw that his grief was very great.--
The trials of Job, and his consolations under them
“They saw that his grief was very great.” Job was the friend of God, and the favourite of heaven: a person known in the gates as an upright judge, and a public blessing; his seasonable bounties made the widow’s heart rejoice, and his liberal charities were as eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. Yet of him it is said: “his grief was very great.” But the faithful and compassionate God, in whom this patriarch placed all his confidence, sustained his fainting mind, and strengthened his heart in his agonising struggles.
I. The nature, variety, and severity of Job’s calamities. His trials began with the loss of all his wealth and property. His afflictions came with an accumulating force. From his honours and usefulness he was driven, with as much rapidity as from his other sources of comfort. The mournful consequences of being visited with a singular distemper, and of his being stripped of his property and bereaved of his children, was the desertion of those who had formerly professed to venerate his character, and the total loss of influence and reputation in the places of concourse. The general opinion was that God had forsaken him, and therefore men might despise and revile him. Even the wife of his bosom added to his distress. And Job sometimes in Ills depression lost all sense of God’s favour.
II. The causes assigned why an unerring and righteous God permitted so great and good a man as Job to be so singularly afflicted. Afflictions cannot come upon us without the Divine permission. But Job’s friends perverted this sentiment.. They urged that all calamities are the punishments of sin secretly allowed, or freely indulged in. Job must have been living in the transgression of the Divine commandments or he would not have been so sorely afflicted. It is made an argument against religion, that its highest attainments cannot exempt the godly from calamities. The just are often more tried than other men. But the truth is, that God is glorified by the afflictions of His children, and their best interests are promoted thereby.
1. Job’s trials were designed and calculated to convince him, and to convince the saints in every age, that God is sovereign in His dispensations. He claims it as His right to order the lot of His children on earth according to His own unerring wisdom. So important is the habitual persuasion of the Divine Sovereignty, that in chapter 38, the Almighty is represented as pleading His own cause in this respect. He is the great First Cause, of whom and for whom are all things. His people may well trust in God, though He hides His countenance; venerate their Heavenly Father, though He corrects them; and walk by faith, not by sight. Much of religion lies in submitting to the sovereignty of God, especially when the events of Providence appear to us peculiarly mysterious.
2. Job was tried in order to correct and remove his imperfections, and to promote in his soul that spiritual life which Divine grace had already begun. History represents Job as devoted to God, eminent for holiness, and distinguished for the most active benevolence and extensive usefulness. But there were certain blemishes which needed the powerful influence of the fiery furnace to purify and eradicate. There was a spirit of dejection, fretfulness, and distrust, which at times prevailed over his heroic patience. And there was a self-righteous opinion of his own goodness. With too presumptuous a confidence he wishes to argue matters even with a holy God. His arrogant language he penitently confesses and laments in the last chapter of the book. His tribulation wrought humility and self-abasement, so did it also work patience. His sufferings also increased his compassion for the afflicted.
3. Job’s trials were intended to convince him, and to convince mankind, that though God afflicts the dearest of His children, yet He most seasonably and graciously imparts to them both support and deliverance. We cannot expect temporal deliverance and exaltation, like that of Job, but we may be sure that we shall receive of the Lord’s hand a double recompense of joy for all our sorrow.
III. The considerations which supported and relieved the mind of Job in his days of adversity and tribulation.
1. Seeing the hand of God in all his afflictions. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”
2. The full persuasion that his Redeemer would never abandon him.
3. The prospect of resurrection from the dead, a believing persuasion, and a lively hope of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Although immortality was not then brought to light by any outward revelation, the Spirit of God wrought in this illustrious patriarch that genuine faith which is the evidence of things not seen, and which enabled him to connect humble faith in an ever-living Redeemer with the lively hope of an inheritance in the heavens. (A. Bonar.)
The calamity
Someone says, “God had one Son without sin, but no Son without sorrow.” The line of saints has been a striking one. Men burdened with terrific duties, overwhelmed with affliction, stoned and sawn asunder, persecuted, afflicted, tormented. There is a matter of subsidiary but yet striking interest to which we must advert, namely, the prominence given to Satan in connection with this affliction. The gospel theory of affliction does not name him. “Whom God loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” But here Satan is the accuser, the adversary, and he, with God’s permission, brings upon Job all his troubles. But although in the early twilight of truth all things are not discerned so clearly as in gospel noonday, it is striking how near the fullest truth the writer comes. There have been darkling thoughts in the minds of men on this matter. Some few shallow spirits have never sufficiently resisted temptation to feel its reality and force; nor sufficiently sympathised with the sorrow of the world to feel the mystery of evil. There have been three great lines of thought on this matter of the principle of evil. There have been those who have thought that the Evil One was the Great God, the Lord Almighty. Sometimes they have developed this into the basis of religion, like the devil worshippers in Santhalistan, in Southern India, and in Ceylon. Sometimes they have made it only the basis of their practical life, as the fraudulent, who, in England, in the nineteenth century, believe the god of falsehood and of fraud a stronger providence than the God of truth and honour; or the despairing and remorseful, who think God vengeance only. Sometimes, as in the old Manichean doctrine, men have shrunk from believing in the supremacy of an Evil Deity, but have believed him equal in power to the Good God, and have explained all the mixing of human conditions by the divided sovereignty which governs all things here. And Ormuzd, the god of light, and Ahriman, the god of darkness, have sat on level thrones, confronting one another in constant but unprogressive conflict. The writer of the Book of Job had never lapsed into the despair that deemed evil supreme, nor into that alarm which feared it was equal in power to God. According to him, Satan is powerless to inflict outward trouble or inward temptation, excepting as permitted by the Lord. Substantially, the doctrine of this book on the power of evil is the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the devout in all ages. Give heed to it. Evil is not Divine in its power, nor eternal in its mastery over men. It works within strictest limits; the enemy only by permission can touch either soul or body. Be not afraid, nor yield to despair. Love is the supreme and the eternal thing; therefore rejoice. Accusing Job--God gives Satan liberty and power to afflict. The affliction is suggested by Job’s enemy, with the hope of destroying his integrity. It is permitted by God with an intent very different; namely, that of developing it. It is no vivisection of a saint that is permitted merely to gratify curiosity as to the point at which the most vigorous vitality of goodness will break down. Little knowing the Divine issue which would proceed from his assault, the enemy goes forth to his envious and hateful task. There is an awful completeness about this calamity of Job. The strokes of it are so contrived that, although some interval may be between them, they are all reported in the same day.
1. Observe that affliction is by God’s ordinance part of the general lot of man. A state of perfect happiness, if such were possible, would not be suitable for a world of imperfect virtue.
2. We should not be astonished when afflictions touch us. We all get into the way of assuming that somehow we are to be exempt from the usual ills.
3. Remember that a universal experience has testified that affliction has its service, and adversity its sweetness. Without affliction who could avoid worldliness? It is the sorrows of this life that raise both eye and expectation to the joys of the life to come. Without affliction there would be but little refinement--no tender ministries, no gracious compassion, no self-forgetful sympathy. All the passive virtues, which are so essential to character, thrive under it--such as endurance, patience, meekness, humility. Prosperity coarsens and scars the conscience; affliction gives it tenderness. The necessity for stronger faith itself strengthens it.
4. It is but a deduction from this to add: Remember, therefore, affliction is not hate, but love. “Whom God loveth He chasteneth.” Lord Bacon forgot Job when he uttered his fine aphorism: “Prosperity was the blessing of the Old Testament, but adversity of the new.” (Richard Clover.).