And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.
Ver. 17. And I brake the laws of the wicked] It is a mercy to have judges, saith one, modo audeant quae sentiunt, as the orator hath it (Cic. pro Milone); so they dare do as their consciences tell them they should do. Job was such a judge, he feared not to encounter and keep under those unruly beasts and Belialists, who oppressed the poor, and then doubted not to oppose with crest and breast whatsoever stood in the way of their humours and lusts. Hic forti magnoque animo opus fuit, saith one. Here Job's courage was put to the proof, if ever. Is it nothing to break the jaw bones of the wicked, to take the prey out of the lion's mouth, and to rescue the oppressed from the man that is too mighty for him? Is it nothing to encounter the Hydra of sin, to oppose the current of times and torrent of vice, to turn the wheel over the wicked, and to leave them as powerless as old Entellus in Virgil did Dares; whom his fellows led away well beaten, and well nigh broken,
Iactantemque utroque caput, crassumque cruorem
Ore reiectantem, mistosque in sanguine dentes? - (Virg. Aeneid.)
And plucked the spoil out of his teeth ] i.e. I made him make restitution of his ill gotten goods, whether by fraud or force. So that Job's court, we see, was not vitiorum sentina, sed virtutum officina; his course was, Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos, to help the afflicted and to punish the proud. Augustus, the emperor, was wont to say, That such a one only was fit to be a magistrate that was free from foul offence himself, and could withstand the corruptions of the times, keep a constant countermotion to the evil manners of the multitude; "Oς μητε τι αυτος αμαρτανειν και ταις του δημου σπουδαις ανθιστοσθαι δυνηται (Dio); as Cato was ever inveighing against covetousness and riot in the Roman State. Here also we have in Job the lively picture of a good magistrate, much better than that of Caesar Borgia, that villain, whom Machiavel proposeth as the only pattern for princes to imitate (De Principe, p. 185).