^ Memoir oj Norman Macleod, ii. 321 .
' "W. L. Watkinson, The Education of the Heart 26.
I Know that my Redeemer Liveth.
n
Literature.
Clifford (J.), Daily Strength for Daily Living, 305.
Davidson (A. B.), Waiting upon God, 79.
Da vies (T.), Sermons and Homiletical Expositions, 30.
Lockyer (T. F.), Seeking a Country, 41.
Magee (W. C), Christ the Light of all Scripture, 207.
Metcalf (R.)> The Abiding Memory, 77.
Price (A. C), Fifty S&rmons, xi. 209.
Ramage (W.), Sermons, 245.
Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, 1st Ser., 147.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, ix. (1863), No. 504 ;
1. (1904), No. 2909. Stone (H. E.), From Behind the Veil, 89. Thomas (J.), Myrtle Street Pulpit, ii. 49. Christian World Pulpit, xxx. 188 (Johnson), 345 (Boardman). ^Churchman's Pulpit : Easter Day and Season, vii. 294 (Keble). Homiletic Review, New Ser., xvi. 358 (Davis). Sermon Year Book, ii. 48 (Skinner).
I Know that my Redeemer Liveth.
But I know that my redeemer liveth,
And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth :
And after my skin hath been thus destroyed,
Yet from my flesh shall I see God :
Whom I shall see for myself,
And mine eyes shall behold, and not another.
My reins are consumed within me.
Job xix. 25-27.
1. The author of this book was a poet who felt the iron of suffering pass deeply into his own soul, and had been driven by the cold consolations of well-meaning, though unsympathetic, friends into open revolt against the God of popular imagination. He has fought his way through despair and doubt, if not to clear light on the problem of suffering, yet to a freer and nobler faith in the living God. And in the poem he has opened his heart, and spoken out all the feelings that passed through his soul in his agony of grief, till he found rest again in God.
2. The hero of the poem is depicted as suffering under the load of accumulated sorrows, until he regards death as the only possible release from trouble. Again and again Job returns, fascinated, to this thought. But as he gazes into the misty depths of Sheol, the horror of death seizes him. The place of the dead is
a land of darkness and murk, A laud of thick darkness and chaos, Where the light itself is like pitch.
It is a land, too, whence there is no return. Therefore in Sheol Job can no longer hope to see the vindication of his rights, but must go down to posterity as a godless man. The thought is intolerable, and he revolts against it. The first gleam of a hope
74 I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH
beyond breaks from ch. xiv. — a passage of almost midnight gloom. Job is mourning over man's brief and troublous life and swift, untimely end. There is hope of the tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again. Its root may be old and decayed, and its stock cut down to the ground ; yet at the scent of water it will bud, and put forth boughs like a fresh, young plant.
But man dieth, and is laid in the dust ; He yieldeth his breath, and is gone. ; As the waters fail from the sea, i
And the river dries up and is vanished, Till the heavens be no more, he shall not awake, Nor be roused out of his sleep.
But the hope of the tree suggests to the despairing soul a possible hope for man as well. If man too may die and live again, God may perchance bring him down to Sheol, to hide him there till His wrath is past, and then " appoint him a set time and remember him." If he could only entertain this hope, he should wait patiently, and endure the cruellest pains, all the days of his warfare, till his release came ; and when at last God called, he would answer joyfully, and forget the misery of the past in the bliss of his new life with God. It is a hope, however, too high for him to grasp ; and he is plunged into deeper darkness than before.
The waters w^ear the stones, The floods wash off the dust ;
So Thou destroyest man's hope — He sleepeth, and riseth no more.
Thou prevailest against him for ever ;
Thou changest his face, and dost banish him.
And the lot of the dead man in Sheol is utterly miserable. He knows nothing more of what passes in this upper sphere. He cannot follow the fortunes even of his dearest ones.
His sons are honoured, but he knoweth it not; They are brought low, but he marketh it not.
Nor is the sleep of the dead unbroken rest. He sleeps — " per- chance to dream ! " Though he knows nothing of his friends on earth.
Yet his own flesh hath pain,
And his own soul mourneth. '
JOB XIX. 25-27 75
The sorely wounded sufferer seeks to move his friends to pity by the spectacle of all his accumulated woes : his glory stripped away, his hope plucked up by the root, his path enshrouded in dark- ness, his dearest friends estranged from him, and no one to hear his cry and bring him redress, for it is God that hath " subverted his rights." But the friends are cold and pitiless as God Him- self. In his despair Job turns for his vindication to posterity. If only he could write his defence in a book, or engrave it on the rock with iron stylus and beaten lead, future generations would read it, and judge justly, and attest his righteousness. But the record on the rocks is impossible. Thus he turns once more to his Witness in heaven.