The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 77

on the part of the giver. If to hear and accept rebuke be a sign of gra.ce (Prov. xv. 5) and a pothwo.y to wisdom (Prov. xv. 32) and honour (Prov. xiii. 18), i,t is much more a inil.rk of lender piety and fine Christian sagacity to be able to speak the truth in love (Eph. iv. 16), o.nd to rebuke with long-suffering (2 Tim. iv. Z). Reproof thst lacerates seldom profits. 2. Didasteful to himletf (El·iphaz). Charity dictates that the hcst construction, rather than the worst, should be put upon the condact of the Ternanite. Hence, instead of pronouncing his language coarse, haughty, arrogant, and violent, we regard it, especially in the introduction, as characterized by. delieacy and consideration, hinting, 88 it manifestly does, that Eliphaz had entered on the office of Mentor to his friend with reluctance; and certainly an office. so fitted to give pain, and so apt to produce harmful results, should never be engaged in except with palpable tok,-na of grief. 3. Required by conscience. "But who csn withhold himself from speaking?" The impulse which Eliphaz confessed was not the kindling heat of poetic fire, but the moral constraint of duty. (1) Duty to God (Lev. xiL 17). A safe rule never to dis- tribute censure except when so impelled. Only "compulsion from our own spirit should not be mistaken for impulsion from God's." Men who never speak but under a sense of duty, seldom speak unkindly or in vain. (2) Duty to Job (Prov. xxvii. 5). Unless satisfied of our own sincerity in aiming at the good of those we censure, it is better to be silent;. nay, it is wrong to speak. (3) Duty to himself (Prov. xxviii. 23). The light possessed by. Eliphaz would have made silence on his part both a gross dereliction of duty and an indirect participation in the sin of Job. If, therefore, he would keep his conscience clean, he must "assay to commune with his friend." II. A GENEROUS COMMENDATION, The piety of Job was acknowledged by Eliphaz to have been: 1. OO'TU!picuous. "Behold!" Eminent piety can usually speak for i1self, always secure attention, and seldom fails to elicit commendation. Even so should Christians let their light shine (Matt. v. 16; 1 Pet. ii. 12). 2. Philanthropic. Job's piety was not simply intellectual and emotional, but also practical, aiming at the good of others. Like- the great Exemplar (Matt. :xx. 28; Acts x. 38), of whom in some respects he was a type, this Arabian patriarch went about doing good ( eh. :xxix. 12-17). So Christ instructs his followers to do (Matt. x. 42; Luke x. 37; John xiv. 15; 1 Cor. xiv. 1 ; Gal. v. 14; Col. iii. 12-14). Wbere works of faith and labours of love are entirely absent, there is ground to suspect that genuine religion is not present (Ga.I. v. 22; Ja.s. i. 27; 1 John iii. 17); 3. Manifold. (l) Instructing the ignorant (eh. xxix. 2l-23); giving counsel a.s a prince or magistrate in the gate, or as a Jrie11d and !earl er supplying directions for daily duty. (2) Correcting the wayward-accordiug to another translation-by either the infliction of pena.ldes for wroug-doing or the administration of judicial reprimand. (3) Sustaininst the weak, upholding th.- sinking and fainting hea1·t by kindly sympathy, and strengthening the feeble knees a.nd b,111da by helpful succour. 4. Habitual. The tenses of the verbs inuicate customary actions and. li.felong habits. Isolated good deeds do not necessarily proceed from gracious hearts; there can be no better evidence of saintship than a lifetime of holy walking. III. A DELICATE msINUATION. 1. That Job's piety had/ailed where it ought to have stood. "But now it is come upon thee and, thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled" (ver. 6). Either (1) an expression of sincere astonishment that Job, who bad so often and so efficiently ministered consolation to others, should liave proved faint-hearted when like trou hie fell upon himself,-reminding us tliat it is easier to preach patience than to pract.ise it, that they who counsel others should strive to illustrate their own precepts, and that the world is never slow in remarking the deficiencies of good men; or (2) an utterance of keen invective (if we adopt the unch,uitable view of Eliphaz's language), as if he meant to taunt Job with doing the very thing for which he had so piously admoaished others, exhibiting the same craven spirit in adversity against which he had warned them,-an iuterpretation which, if it is correct, reminds us that good men are long in getting rid of their corruptions, that grace often tiod~ a lo<lgi11g in strange quarters, that the Horntian maxim of seeing an<l approving better things and yet following worse was not unknown to Eliphaz any more than to Paul; but on either hypothesis (3) the record of a fr~quent experience, Job having been neither the first nor the last who has felt himself unequal to the task of practising what he has tried to preach. 2. That Job's confidence had stood where it ought to have jailed. "Is not thy fear thy confidence? And thy hope, is it not the uprightness of thy ways?" (ver. 6),  72 THE BOOK OF JOB. [on. 1v. 1-21.