But Job answered and said.
Job’s answer to Eliphaz
We must come upon grief in one of two ways and Job seems to have come upon grief in a way that is to be deprecated. He came upon it late in life. He was in solid prosperity and positive and genuine comfort. Grief must tell heavily whenever it comes upon a man in such a condition. This accounts for his lamentation, and whine, and long-drawn threnody. He was not accustomed to it. Some have been born into trouble, and they have become acclimatised. Blessed are they who come upon grief in that method. Such a method appears to be the method of real mercy. Grief must come. The devil allows no solitary life to pass upward into heaven without fighting its way at some point or other. Grief delights in monologue. Job seems scarcely to lay himself down mentally upon the line adopted by Eliphaz. It is most difficult to find the central line of Job’s speech. Too much logic would have spoiled the grief. Reasoning there is, but it comes and goes; it changes its tone; it strikes the facts of life as the trained fingers of the player might strike a chord of music. Note how interrogative is Job’s speech. More than twenty questions occur in Job’s reply. Grief is great in interrogation. Job is asking, “Are the old foundations still here? Things have surely been changed in the nighttime, for I am unaccustomed to what is now round about me.” Notice how many misunderstandings there are in the speech of the suffering man! Job not only misunderstood his friends and his pain, he misunderstood all men, and the whole system and scheme of things. How suffering not rightly accepted or understood colours and perverts the whole thought and service of life! Job thinks life not worth living. So much depends on our mental mood, or our spiritual condition. Hence the need of our being braced up, fired, made strong. We are what we really are in our heart and mind. Keep the soul right and it will rule the body. The Bible never shrinks from telling us that there is grief in the world, and that grief can be accounted for on moral principles. The Bible measures the grief, never makes light of it. But it can be sanctified, turned into blessing. Any book which so speaks as it does deserves the confidence of men who know the weight and bitterness of suffering. Do not come to the Bible only for condolence and sympathy; come to it for instruction, inspiration, and then you may come to it for consolation, sympathy, tenderest comfort, for the very dew of the morning, for the balm of heaven, for the very touch of Christ. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Job’s first reply
In his reply to Eliphaz, Job first takes hold of the charge of impatience and hasty indignation made in the opening of the fifth chapter. He is quite aware that his words were rash when he cursed his day and cried impatiently for death. But had Eliphaz duly considered his state, the weight of his trouble causing a physical sense of indescribable oppression? We need not fall into the mistake of supposing that it is only the pain of his disease which makes Job’s misery so heavy. Rather is it that his troubles have come from God; they are “the arrows of the Almighty.” Mere suffering and loss, even to the extremity of death, he could have borne without a murmur, But he had thought God to be his friend. Why on a sudden have these darts been launched against him by the hand he trusted? What does the Almighty mean? The evil-doer who suffers knows why he is afflicted. The martyr, enduring for conscience’ sake, has his support in the truth to which he bears witness, the holy cause for which he dies. Job has no explanation, no support. He cannot understand Providence. The God with whom he supposed himself to be at peace suddenly becomes an angry, incomprehensible Power, blighting and destroying His servant’s life. Existence poisoned, the couch of ashes encompassed with terrors, is it any wonder that passionate words break forth from his lips? A cry is the last power left to him. So it is with many. The seeming needlessness of their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery of the pain confounds the mind and adds to anguish and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness. Sometimes the very thing guarded against is that which happens; a man’s best intelligence appears confuted by destiny or chance. Why has he, amongst the many, been chosen for this? Do all things come alike to all, righteous and wicked? The problem becomes terribly acute in the case of earnest, God-fearing men and women who have not yet found the real theory of suffering. Endurance for others does not always explain. All cannot be rested on that. Nor, unless we speak falsely for God, will it avail to say, These afflictions have fallen on us for our sins. For even if the conscience does not give the lie to that assertion, as Job’s conscience did, the question demands a clear answer, why the penitent should suffer--those who believe--to whom God imputes no iniquity. If it is for our transgression we suffer, either our own faith and religion are vain, or God does not forgive excepting in form, and the law of punishment retains its force. We have here the serious difficulty that legal fictions seem to hold their ground even in the dealings of the Most High with those who trust Him The truth is, that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin, but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting in the individual and the race. (Robert A. Watson, D. D.)
Job’s great suffering
It was--
I. Unappreciated by men. This is the meaning of the first five verses. Eliphaz had no conception of the profundity and poignancy of Job’s suffering. There are two things indicated here in relation to them.
1. They were unutterable. “My words are swallowed up.” His whole humanity was in torture.
(1) He suffered in body. “He was smitten with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of the head, and he took a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and sat down amongst the ashes.”
(2) He suffered in mind. “The arrows of the Almighty were within him, whose poison drank up his spirits.”
2. They were irrepressible. “Doth the wild ass bray when tie hath grass? Or loweth the ox over his fodder?” The idea here is, I cannot but cry; my cries spring from my agonies. Had not the wild ass his grass, he would bray with a ravenous hunger; and had not the ox his fodder, he too would low in an agony for food; this is nature, and my cries are natural--I cannot help them. Who can be silent in torture? His suffering was--
II. Misunderstood by friends. “Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?” This language seems to me to point to Job’s impression of the address which Eliphaz had delivered to him. Job seemed to feel--
1. That the address of Eliphaz was utterly insipid. “Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?” As if he had said, your speech lacks that which can make it savoury to me; it does not apply: you misunderstand my sufferings: I suffer not because I am a great sinner, as you seem to imply: my own conscience attests my rectitude: nor because I need this terrible chastisement, as you have said: you neither understand the cause nor the nature of my sufferings, therefore your talk is beside the mark.
2. That the address of Eliphaz was truly offensive. “The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meats.” Does not this mean what Dr. Bernard says, “the things you speak--your unmeaning, insipid words and similes--are as the loathsomeness of my food, or are as loathsome to my soul as food now is to my body”? You intrude remarks on me that are not only tasteless, because of their unsuitability, but that are as disgusting as loathsome food.
III. Intolerable to himself. He longed for death; he believed that in the grave he would have rest.
1. Though his life was unbearable, he would not take it away himself. He felt that he Was not the proprietor, only the trustee of his life.
2. He was not forgetful of his relation to his Maker. “I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.” I have not shunned to declare my attachment to Himself and His cause. His sufferings did not obliterate his memory of his Creator, drive him from His presence, or impel him to blasphemy or atheism. No, he still held on. God was the Great Object in his horizon; he saw Him through the thick hot steam of his fiery trials.
3. Though his life was unbearable, he knew that it could not last long. “What is my strength that I should hope? and what is mine end that I should prolong my life?” etc. Whether God will loose His hand and cut me off, and thus put an end to my existence or not, I cannot endure long. I am not made “of stone or brass,” and I cannot stand these sufferings long. However powerful the human frame may be, great sufferings must sooner or later break it to pieces.
4. Though his life was unbearable, he was conscious of an inner strength. “Is not my help in me? And is wisdom driven quite from me?” No strength like this, physical strength is good, intellectual strength is better, but moral strength is the best of all. (Homilist.)