The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 143

Yers. 5, 6.-Tk picture ofa good man's home. I. A PRAYING HOME. Where by both parents and children private and family devotion is observed. . II. A PIOUS ROHE. Where such devotion is the outcome and expression of inward spiritual life. III. A PEACEFUL ROHE. Where the inmates enjoy the blessed calm of forgiveness,: and dwell in love towards one another. IV. A PROTECTED HOME. Where the eye of God continually rests upon the habita- tion and a.II who dwell therein. V. A PROSPEROUS BOHE. Where true spiritual riches are possessed, and as much tempornl fortune is enjoyed ae God's wisdom appoints. - Vers. 8-22.-Budad to Job : 2. Wisdom from the an~ts. I. THE TEAOHEBs. The world's gra.y fathers, not the immediate predecessors of Job, Bildad, and their contemporaries, but the progenitors of these-their remote ancestors, who are here dc6cribed as: 1. Early born. In contrast to the men of Job's time, who are charac- terized as being late born, literally, " yesterday; " i.e. of yesterday, as if ascending the• stre:tm of time meant the same thing as approaching the primal fountains of truth-a_ popular fallacy which the royal Preacher corrects (Eccles. vii. 10). Antiquity is no sure test of truth ; novelty is no sure mark of error. Rather error has a tendency to array itself in a quai.'i-sanctity derived from age. Many respectable fallacies and popular delu- sions have descended from remote times. Yet truth that bears the stamp of successive generations is all the more valuable on that account. 2. Long-lived. In comparison with their sucoeBSOrs, who are here depicted' as a. short-lived generation : "Our days upon earth are a shadow" (ver. 9) ; the probability being that Bildad alluded to the remark- able longevity of antediluvian times, and of the patriarchal era immediately eucoeediug, as affording greater opportunity for making and collecting the results of observation, than the brief span of human life at the period when Job and he flourished. Yet the loug leisure enjoyed by the Macrobii is now more than counterbalanced by the appli-' ances of mociero civilization. So that the results gathered in an ephemeral and shadowy life may rest upon a. broader basis of experience than those collected by primeval 1111ges in the course of centuries. Still, were each age dependent on the· amount of knowledge it could accumulate for itself, the world's advancement would be tedious, if not practice.Uy at a standstill. Hence the duty of recognizing our obligations to the past, and of transmitting to posterity, not diminished, but if possible augmented, the gathered stores of matured wisdom inherited from bygone generations. 8. Deep-thinkiug. As men who with powers fully exercised employed the leisure of centuries in observing the phenomena of Divine providence, in comparing their apriori theories with life's facts; in investigating the profound problems of religion, and, after carefully elaborating the results, crystallized them in brief, sententious maxims, apothegms, parables, "bearing the impress of deep thought, and often deeply trying experience" (Davidson), which were passed along from age to age for the instruction of succeeding generations, in contrast with whom the contemporaries of Bildad and Job, and indeed the short-lived sages of modem times "know nothing." Bildad's estimate of the relative values of ancient and modern thought subject to correction on the groun<is above.indicated. OH, VIII, 1-22,] THE BOOK OF JOB.