If I say, I will forget my complaint.
Concerning Job’s sufferings
I. As too great to render any efforts of self-consolation effective. Three things are suggested.
1. A valuable power of mind. The power to alleviate sufferings. “If I say, I will forget my complaint.” Herein is the implied power. All have it. It is a remedial force that kind heaven has put within us. If he cannot quench the flame, he can cool it; if he cannot roll off the load, he by his own thoughts can make it comparatively light. He can go into a circle of ideas so engrossing and delectable as to experience transports of rapture in the dungeon or in the flames. What is pain but a mental sensation? And wherever that mental sensation may burn, its fires can be quenched in the river of noble thoughts and lofty aspirations.
2. A natural tendency of mind. What is it? The exertion of this mitigating power within us under suffering; an effort to “forget” the “complaint,” to “leave off” the “heaviness,” to “comfort.” Who under suffering does not essay this?
3. A sad defect in mind. “I am afraid of all my sorrows; I know that Thou wilt not hold me innocent.” Why did his mental efforts at self-consolation fail? Simply because he had not the inner sense of innocence. Though he always maintained that he was innocent of the sin of hypocrisy with which his friends charged him, he always felt that before the Holy he was guilty, and herein was the failure of his mind to mitigate his pain. He regards his sufferings--
II. As too deserved to justify any hope of relief.
1. He feels that no self-cleansing would serve him before God. “If I be wicked,”--or, as it should be, I am wicked,--“why then labour I in vain? If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.”
2. He feels that there is no one to act as umpire between him and his Maker. “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.”
3. He feels that his afflictions were directly from God, and until they were removed there was no hope for him. “Let Him take His rod away from me, and let not His fear terrify me; then would I speak, and not fear Him: but it is not so with me.” (Homilist.)