The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 420

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-14.-Praiaes of th£ Eternal. I. REPARTEE AND REPROOF. (Vere. 2--4.) The tone seems to be ironical: "How well hast thou helped feebleness, supported the arm of bim that has no .strength, counselled unwisdom, and in fuJness given utterance to good sense! To whom bast thou offered words, and whose breath went forth from thee? By whose inspiration?" possibly pointing to the borrowed character of Bildad's speech. Words may be good in themselves, yet not pleasant or profitable if not spoken in good season. It would have been more to the purpose had Bildad spoken to the wounded spirit of his friend of the tendemess and the compassion rather than the majesty and greatness of God. The minister of God should know how to speak a word in season to the weary (Isa. L 4). "We are often disappointed in our expectations of our friends who shonld comfort us; but the Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, never mistakes in his operations, nor misses his ends." Job takes a noble revenge by painting in far more 11:lowing and noble language the sublime greatness of God, thus showing how true in faith was bis heart at bottom. His petulance and outcries are the involunt.ary irrit.ation of pain; they are superficial; at the core of his being piety lives in all its intensity. II. JOB'S 8URPA86ING DESCRIPTION OF THE MAJESTY OF GoD. (Vere. 6-14.) "Truth, like a torch, the more it's shook, it shines." "It were well if all disputes about religion might end thns, in glorifying God as Lord of all, and our Lord, with one mind and one mouth (Rom. xv. 6), for in that we are all agreed." 1. Bell and lteaven. (Vers. fr---7.) Job begins at the opposite end of the great scale of creation from that with which Bildad began; with the lower world, the region of shadows, thence to rise to the heavenly world. "The shadows arc ruade to tremble below the water and iLs inhabit.ants• (ver. 5). By the shadows are meant the ghostly, bloodless forms as Homer has described them in the eleventh book of the 'Odyssey,' leading a joyless, melancholy existence, deprived of the light of the sun (Ps. l:u:xviii. 11; Prov. ii. 18; ix. 18; IRa. :u:vi 14, 19; comp. eh. xiv. 9, 10). Even in Hades the vast power of the Aln,igbty is felt, and its inhabitants own it and tremble (Ps. c:u:xix. 8; Prov. xv. 11; Jas. iL 19). This lower world is naked to the eyes of God (Heb. iv. 13), and the chasm of Hades has no covering (Prov. xv. 11; ver. 6). The Northern heaven-taken here by a figure, as the part for the whole-is stretched over the void, and the e11rt~ hangs upon nothing (ver. 7). The expression" nothing" here denotes the same as t,he "void "-the vast emptiness of space in which the earth with its heavenly canopy is place<l. Compare the cla.eeical paralleltt in Lucret., ii. 600, llJIJ·; Ovid, 'Faat.,' vi. ~'.i9, sqq. A Persian poet say&- OH. XXVT, 1-14.) THE BOOK OF JOB.