The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 237

HOMILETIOS. Vers. 1-6.-,Tob to God: 2. 'l'he deat,h-wail of humanity. I. THE WAIL OF HUllANITY IN THE EAR OF Gon. 1. The consUtutional frailty of man. Moses, in the Book of Genesis (i. 26; ii. 7), sets forth the dignity of man (Adam) e.s the crown of creation (PI!. viii. 6), e.s the handiwork of God (eh. x. 8; Ps. c. 3; Isa. xv. 12), as the image of his Maker (Gen. ix. 6; Acts xvii. 29; 1 Cor. xi. 7). Job here supplies the companion picture of the misery of man by representing him a.s: (1) Descended from woman, who was not only taken out of weak man, but is expressly declared to be the weaker vessel (1 Pet. iii. 7), and is the subject of a special doom of weakness in herself and offspring in consequence of having been first in the transgression (Gen. iii. 16; 1 Tim. ii. 14)-11 which may be said to entail on the human race, e.s it w_ere by a threefold necessity, the pitiable heritage of frailty. (2) Sprung from the dust, out of which man emerged, and still emer11:es, like a flower (Ps. ciii. 16; Isa. xl. 6; Jas. i. 10), and to which again, like the flower, he shall in due course return (Gen. iii. 19); in the meanwhile, as be hovers between the cradle and the grave, his birthplace and his place of sepulture, being like the flower, a structure of exquisite loveliness and of admirable symmetry (Ps. cxxxiL 14), but after all delicate and tender as a flower, being, like it, only a handful of dexterously fashioned and beautifully painted dust. (3) Insubsiantial as a shadow, which is not so much a thing as the image and reflection of a thing, the projection on the ground of an opaque body whose dark form intercepts the light of heaven, a metaphor applied already by Bildad to man's days (eh. viii. 9.; cf. Ps. cii. 11; cxliv. 4), but here with greater boldness appropriated to depict the utter insi.,<rni.ficance of man himself. 2. The e:dreme brevity of human life. '!'he period of man's continuance on earth is sorrowfully exhibited as: (1) Of _definite extension (ver. 5; cf. eh. -rii. 1, 2). Uncertain in the eye of man himself (Eccles. ix. 11, 12), the hour of each one's departure from this sublunary •scene is accurately known by God (Jer. xxviii. 16), in whose hands are not only the souls of all Hving things and the breath of all mankind (eh. xii 10), but their times as well (Ps, txxi. 15), to whose all-seeing eye the number of their months is as well known as the number of their hairs (Luke xii. 7), who bath not only appointed the bounds oCtheir habitation (Acts xvii. 26), but also determined their days, setting a bound to their goings on the face of the earth as effectually as he does to the waves of the sea (eh. :a:xviii. 11). And this doctrine of each man on earth having a predestined career is as philosophical as it is scriptural, thfl foreordination of the Almighty;iot interfering.with the operation of natural laws a.nd secondary causes. Nor is it contradicted by those tex-ts of Scripture which seem to teach that the limit of man's pilgrimage is determined by purely accidental circumstances (eh. xv. 32; xxiL 16; l's. lv. 23; Eccles. vii. 17). (2) Of short duration (vers. 1, 2, 5, 6). Whether the expression," of few days," literally, "curtailed as to di.ys," contains an allusion to the fact that human life was shorter than it would have been had man continued innocent, or that in Job's time it was shorter than it had been iu the world's infancy, it is certain that an exceedingly impressive picture is presented by the phrases and images here employed, human lifl' at the longest being characterized as "months," then "days," and these only "few," and e.fter that as "a day," as the brief season during which a flower blooms, as the short time during wLicb the shadow runs. Contrasted with the age of the race, the duration of the earth, the lifetime of God, yea, contrasted with itself in prospective anticipation, the life of man, especially in the retrospect, is "but a hand breadth" (Ps. :nxix. 5). (3) 0( quick transition. Coming forth like a flower, man has scarcely begun to bloom when he is cut down (cf. 'Henry VIII.,' act iii. sc. 2). The few days that God allot,j him to live refuse to linger, but hurry on, like the shadow on the dial, never hastin~, never resting, but ever moving, moving, moving on. c:nt, XIV, 1-22,] THE BOOlt 01!' J013.