The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 66

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vere. l-26.-77ie eloquence of grief. This book, so entirely true to nature, presents here one of the darkest moods of the grief-stricken heart. The first state is that of paralyzed silence, dumbness, inertia. Were this to continue, den.th must ensue. Stag- nation will be fatal. The currents of thought and feeling must in some way be set flowing in their accustomed channels, as in the beautiful little poem of 'l'ennyson on the mother suddenly bereaved of her warrior-lord- " All her maidens, wondering, said, She must weep or she must die." A period of agitation e11.sues when the mind resumes its natural functions ; and the first mood that succeeds to silent prostration is that of bitter resentment and complaint. As we hail the irritability of a patient who has been deadly sick as the sign of returning convalescence, so we may look upon this petulance of grief when it finds at length a voice. We do not blame; we pity, and are tender towards the irritable invalid whose heart we know to be in its depth patient and true; and he who knows the heart better than we do is forbearing with those wild cries which suffering may wring from ev~n constant and faithful bosoms like Job's. We may read these words of passion with con- sideration if God can listen to them without rebuke. There are three turns in th8 thought here expressed. I. 'fHE SPIRIT OF MAN IN REVOLT FROM LIFE. Curses on the day of his birth. (V ers. 1-10.) There seems to be some reference to the ancient belief, which we find in later times among the Romans, in unlucky or ill-starred ,lays. Such a day, to the sufferer's present fe~ling, must have been the day of his birth. But he will learn better by-and- by, He cannot see things rightly through the present rnedium of pain. True religion teaches us-the Christian religion above aU-that no "black " days are sent us from him who· causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good. It is only ill deeds that uiake ill days. We have met with Job's complaint again and again in differen~ forms. Men and women have complained that they were brought into the world- without their consent being asked, and sometimes passionately exclaim, "I wish I had never been born ! " Let us admit what our calm and healthy judgment dictates- these feelings are morbid and transitory; and they are partial, because they represent only one, and that an extreme, mood of the ever-changing mind. We must take our morning, not our midnight, moods if we would know the truth about ourselves. The instinct which leads us to keep birthdays with joy and mutual congratulation should instruct us in our debt of thankfulness: "Thanks that we were men! " II. THE IRRATIONALITY OF DESPAIR.. (Vers. 11-19.) But such wishes against the inevitable and for the impossible, the mind, even in the paroxysm of despair, feels to be absurd. It sinks to a degree less irrational in the next wish that an early death had pre- vented all this misery. Would that a frost had nipped the just-blown flower (vers.11, 12) I Yet this mood is only a shade less unreasonable thau the former. For does not the instinct which leads us all to speak of death in infancy and early childhood as "untimely, premature," rebuke this fretfulness, and witness to the truth agaiu that life is a good? And does not the common aspiration after "length of days," so marked in the Old Testament, supply another argument in the same direction? Job will yet live to smile, from out of the depths of a serene old age, at these passionate clamours of a turbulent grief. Again, he passes into the contemplation of death with pleasure, with a deep craving for its rest. He describes, iu simple, beautiful language, that final earthly resort, where agitated brains and restless hearts find at last peace (vers. 17-19).  80 THli1 BOOlt OF JOB.