Could I but see His face,
And hear His voice,
Oh! then I think My heart would well forth love. As from a fountain full, And service would be my delight !
Yet if He showed His face
And spake to me,
Should I in truth Arise to love and serve Him as I ween? Alas! I trust not my deceitful heart.
78 I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH
E'en if I saw and heard
Him as I wish,
Would not dark doubts Ere long invade my soul ? And I should wondering ask — Was't true that He appeared and spake ?
E'en so, my Lord, 'tis so;
And therefore I
Will be content. That Thou Thyself reveal By making strong, true, glad My foolish, sad, inconstant heart.
And when my sinful heart
Is purified,
Made fair and fit For Thine abode : Oh ! then My Lord, show Thou Thy face And speak: so shall I love and serve.^
1. What are we to understand by the term " redeemer " ? We find that the word is frequently used of God as the deliverer of His people out of captivity, and also as the deliverer of individuals from distress. Among men the Goel was the nearest blood-relation, on whom it lay to perform certain offices in con- nexion with the deceased whose Goel he was, particularly to avenge his blood, if he had been unjustly slain. Job here means God is his Goel. The passage stands in close relation with ch. xvi. 18, 19, where he means God is his " witness " and " sponsor " or representative. It is probable, therefore, that there is an allusion to the Goel among men — Job has in God a Goel who liveth. This Goel will vindicate his rights against the wrong both of men and of God. At the same time, this vindication is regarded less as an avenging of him, at least on others, than as a manifestation of his innocence. This manifestation can be made only by God's appearing and showing the true relation in which Job stands to Him, and by Job's seeing God. For his distress lay in God's hiding His face from him, and his redemption must come through his again beholding God in peace. Thus the ideas of Goel and redeemer virtually coincide.
1 D. W, Simon in Life, by F, J, Powicke.
JOB XIX, 25-27 79
^ " Whoever alters the work of my hand," says the conqueror called Sargon, " destroys my constructions, pulls down the walls which I have raised — may Asshur, Nineb, Eaman and the great gods who dwell there pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Invocation of the gods in this manner was the only resource of him who in that far past feared oblivion and knew that there was need to fear. But to a higher God, in words of broken eloquence, Job is made to commit his cause, seeing beyond the perishable world the imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a Hebrew poet breathed into the wandering air of the desert that brave hope which afterwards, far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be fulfilled.^
2. Job says that this redeemer liveth. The term " liveth " is emphatic. Job may die, but his Vindicator cannot die. The order of the world, of which Job has caught a glimpse in his own life, is eternal. Job's cause, the truth for which he so strenuously fought, is undying ; for it is the expression of an infinite life which rules above all mortal destiny. Job sets the life of his Vindicator over against his own death. It is by bearing this opposition in mind, by emphasizing the undying life of the Vindicator over against the mortality of the vindicated that we see the fulness of the hope to which Job rises at this point in his conflict.
^ Historical events and characters to some extent sway the hearts of men. Trafalgar and Nelson quicken " every man this "^ day to do his duty." But Nelson is dead, and Trafalgar among the things of the past. Waterloo and Wellington kindle a memory of unsurpassed British bravery, but Wellington is no more, and Waterloo is not a living force in the national life of to-day. Calvary lives because its Hero lives, "I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen. And have the keys of hell and of death." He further says, " I live, and ye shall live also." The widow says of her departed husband, "Had he been alive, things would have been very different with me from what they are." The orphan says of the sainted father, " Had he been alive, I should not have been compelled to ask you this favour." Faith leans on a living bosom, and draws its comfort from a living heart.^
0 Thou the Lord and Maker of life and light ! Full heavy are the burdens that do weigh Our spirits earthward, as through twihght gray We journey to the end and rest of night; 1 R. A. Watson, The Book of Job, 232. ^ x. Davies, Sermons, 35,
8o I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH
Tho' well we know to the deep iuward sight, Darkness is but Thy shadow, and the day Where Thou art never dies, but sends its rays Through the wide universe with restless might.