The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 239

Vers. 7-15.-Job to God: 3. .A glimpse into the life beyond. I. "IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?" No ! 1. The voice of nature is against it. "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again," etc. (vers. 7-9). But nothing like this occurs in the case of man, of whom rather the cheerless proverb holds that, as the tree falls, so shall it lie (Eccles. xi. 3). Hewn down by the axe of death, or laid prostrate by age beneath the sod, there is in his decaying body no vital germ which can send forth tender sprouts. The earth contains no revivifying principle for him e.s for trees. The fine manly fellow, rejoicing in his vigorous health, begins to droop and to die; be gives up the ghost, or expires, and where is be? (ver. 10). There is no subsequent resuscitation for him. Nol Man's appropriate emblem is not the trees, but the streams and the lakes. When man dies, he disappears completely from the present scene, like the dried-up waters of a lake, or of a mountain torrent that have forsaken their accustomed bed. 2. The testimony of ea;perience ia against it. A phenomenon ao stupendous as the return of a dead and buried man to life has never once been witnessed. With a terrible uniformity of eadness, each age has followed its predecessor to the tomb. Alld there are those who affirm that this dreary monotony has never been inten-a.pted; that the sum of human experience is the same to-day as it was in Job's time; that "manlieth down, and risetb not" (ver.12); and that there is no reason to anticipate that it ever will be different, but much cause to conclude that for evermore it will continue the same (Eccles. i. 9). But (1) uniformity of past experience cannot with absolute finality determine future events in a world governed by Omniscient Wisdom and Infinite Power; (2) in numerous in.stances already the principle of reckoning from past uniformity has been found to be unsafe, as e.g. the successive appearance of new species of living creatures on earth, according to either geological science or biblical revelatioo, the occurrence of the Deluge, the manifestation of Christ; (3) in particular the uniformity of experience referred to, viz. of the non-return of men from their graves, has, on the evidence of human testimony, been broken at least once by the resurrection of Christ; and (4) even had it not been broken once, such uniformity of past experience cannot be regarded as valid against the doctrine of a resurrection such as Scriµture teaches, viz. a return of mankind to the earth, not successively at different times and in divers parts and parcels, but simultaneously in one united body. 3. The verdict of science is against it. Not of true science, but of arroga·,tly talking, much asserting, materialism. What Job uses as beautiful simili- tud.ei! (vers. 7, 11, 18, 1!:1) modern sages employ as scieutific truth. Man, according to their findings, is of a piece with the great material world by which he is surrounded, ill which there is oontiuually going ou a resistless process of disiutegration and dis- Olt, xtt, 1-22.] THE B'i>OK OF JOB. 249