"_Behold, of wrong I cry, but I am not heard; I cry for help, but there is no judgment._"
Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death draws nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one neglected, outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way fenced in so that he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by the hand of God.
Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless. He would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought him near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God? Might they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against providence in his mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy reacts on his language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than in previous speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood.
"_He hath stripped me of my glory And taken my crown from my head. He hath broken me down on every side, Uprooted my hope like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath against me And counted me among His adversaries. His troops come on together And cast up their way against me And encamp around my tent._"
So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of it? Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt though he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man, stricken with disease, unable to help himself, the heavens frowning upon him--why should they harden their hearts?
And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are clouded. They must be on God's side against Job. Yea, God Himself has moved them to this.
"_He hath put my brethren far from me, And my confidants are wholly estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed And my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in my house and my maids count me for a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. I call my servant and he gives me no answer, I must entreat him with my mouth. My breath is offensive to my wife, And my ill savour to the sons of my body. Even young children despise me; If I would arise they speak against me. My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth._"
The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected by all who once loved him, forced to entreat his servants, become offensive to his wife and grandsons; jeered at even by children of the place. The case appears to us unnatural and shows the almost fiendish hardness of the Oriental world; that is to say, if the account is not coloured for dramatic purposes. The intention is to represent the extremity of Job's wretchedness, the lowest depth to which he is reduced. The fire of his spirit is almost quenched by shame and desolation. He shows the days of his misery in the strongest shadow in order to compel, if possible, the sympathy so persistently withheld.
"_Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, For the hand of God hath touched me. Why do ye persecute me as God, And are not satisfied with my flesh?_"
Now we understand the purpose of the long description of his pain, both that which God has inflicted and that caused by the alienation and contempt of men. Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has entered, that he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory perishes from the earth, whose name is driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world. Is it to be so with him? That were indeed a final disaster. To bring his friends to some sense of what all this means to him--this is what he struggles after. It is not even the pity of it that is the chief point, although through that he seeks to gain his end. But if God is not to interpose, if his last hour is coming without a sign of heaven's relenting, he would at least have men stand beside him, take his words to heart, believe them possibly true, hand down for his memorial the claim he has made of integrity. Surely, surely he shall not be thought of by the next generation as Job the proud defiant evil-doer laid low by the judgments of an offended God--brought to shame as one who deserved to be counted amongst the offscourings of the earth. It is enough that God has persecuted him, that God is slaying him--let not men take it upon them to do so to the last. Before he dies let one at least say, Job, my friend, perhaps you are sincere, perhaps you are misjudged.