Job 19

Notes

Job replied, Will ye never cease tormenting my soul, and bruising me as in a mortar, with your senseless revilings! 3. Ye have too often wounded me with the vilest reproaches. Ye have been shamelessly obstinate in your rebukes and cruel usage of me. 4. If I indeed had been mistaken in my opinion or practice, I have sufficiently smarted for it in my own person and estate, and so am a fit object of pity rather than of your reproach. 5. If you will still insolently declaim against me, and allege my debasing calamities as a proof of my impiety, 6. Know that I am sensible that it is God who hath in this fearful manner cast me down from my prosperity, and compassed me about with unavoidable miseries. 7. And my case is the more pitiable, that while friends abuse me with reproach, God, to whom I have repeatedly committed my cause, refuses to redress my wrongs or vindicate my innocency. 8. Nay, his plagues so surround me on every side that I can find no way of escape: and I am so overwhelmed with perplexity that I know not whither to turn myself. 9. He has deprived me of all my dignity, authority, wealth, and family. 10. In respect of children, wealth, honour, authority, and health, he has entirely destroyed me; and all my hopes of future comfort in this world he hath plucked up by the roots. 12. He has in the most violent and furious manner afflicted me, as if I had been one of his principal enemies. 13. Whole armies of troubles have, by his order, invaded me; and as with raised batteries so straitly besieged me, that not the smallest comfort I had could escape their fury. 14-16. While friends and neighbours are alienated from me, and refuse to do me any office of kindness, my maidens and men-servants treat me with the utmost disobedience and contempt. 17. My wife regards my complaints and cries no more than if she were a mere stranger, though I have begged her sympathy for the sake of our dear children, who have been so dreadfully hurried into death. 18. The very children, and ignorant people about, following the example of the rest, despise me, and treat me with the most abusive language. 19. The very men whom I had trusted with my secrets, and who had received the most distinguished tokens of my affection, abhor and hate me. 20. I am wasted with afflictions till I am little more than skin and bone; I am bruised till the teeth have fallen out of my head; and I have scarcely left me a mouth to complain. 21. O my friends, have pity upon me, when God's afflicting hand has so grievously smitten and wounded me! 22. Why do ye persecute and harass me, as if ye were an avenging God? Why, as if unsatisfied with my external calamities, do ye cruelly torment my spirit?—23. O that my protestations of uprightness, and appeals to God, were in the most legible and indelible manner registered in a book of public records, for my vindication, and for the encouragement of other upright persons under sore troubles! 24. O that they were registered in the most indelible manner in some marble rock or pillar, to continue legible to all generations! 25. For, notwithstanding these present miseries, I by faith know, and am firmly persuaded, that Jesus Christ, my Kinsman-Redeemer, liveth, having life in himself; and shall victoriously stand as the last Adam, upon the dust of the earth, in his incarnation, resurrection, and appearance to judgment. 26. And though these vermin, bred or breeding in my afflicted body, should quickly devour the whole of it, yet even in this body, when fashioned like unto his glorious body, shall I see God in my nature. 27. Whom I shall see for my own particular comfort, in my own person, when raised from the dead—though at present I am at the point of death through sore trouble, and earnestly longing for deliverance. 28. Ye should therefore say, Why do we persecute one in whom there is such soundness and strength of faith, and who hath the right cause in the present debate? 29. Beware lest God punish your inhuman cruelty to me with some terrible judgments. Such rage as yours deserves, and such wrath as God's, provoked by your sin, will bring fearful calamities upon you, that ye may know to your cost that God vindicates his own people and punishes their enemies.

Ver. 3. [Ten times. This phrase is said by most expositors to stand for many times. This loose method of speaking seems, however, rather inconsistent with the unparalleled and necessary accuracy of Scripture, as a divine revelation. Is not the expression ten times literally true? Job now had spoken five times (ch. 3. 1; 6. 1; 9. 1; 12. 1; 16. 1), and his friends five times (ch. 4. 1; 8. 1; 11. 1; 15. 1; 18. 1), in all, ten times. C.]

Ver. 6. [Job's visitors had traced all his calamities to sins which, according to them, he had hypocritically concealed. Job, however, indignantly denies that in this respect he is guilty. He traces all his sufferings to God; he can assign no cause for them; he leaves the impression on the mind that he is hardly, if not unjustly, dealt with. Job's friends were unquestionably in error, and they were harsh and cruel; but Job himself was far from the truth. P.]

Ver. 17. [In aggravated forms of elephantiasis, the mouth and throat become ulcerated; breathing is difficult, and the breath is foul. In fact, as the disease progresses the limbs decay, and the half-putrid members emit a most offensive odour. P.]

Ver. 22. [The meaning of this reproachful question is, that Job regarded his persecutors as usurping to themselves a judicial divine authority over him. They were at best only his equals; they were not infallible; they might be mistaken; they had no right therefore to condemn him. P.]

Ver. 25. [From the depth of his affliction and despair, so far as regards earthly happiness and even life, the faith of the patriarch rises clear and triumphant, and finds utterance in these noble words:—'And I know, my Redeemer (my judge and vindicator) liveth (he is in existence; he knows, and will save me), and he will arise the last one (the final judge and disposer of all things) from (or over) the dust (of the grave, to call from it those who sleep, and to raise the mortal to immortality).' P.]

Ver. 26. [Yet in my flesh shall I see God. 'Worms' and 'body' are not in the original, so that we are not bound to contemplate them in the exposition. May not the verse be paraphrased thus: 'Though as my skin is destroyed by disease, this flesh beneath it be destroyed by death, yet in my (resurrection) flesh shall I see God,' 1 Jn. 3. 2. C.]

Ver. 27. [These words may be rendered as follows. There is a terseness and concentration of thought in them, such as characterize the most ancient literature of the Shemitic race:—'And after my skin (after its decay—after death), thus destroyed (rent and torn by the ravages of my loathsome disease), and without my flesh (in a disembodied state, when my soul is freed from this vile body), I shall see God (I shall see him with my spirit); whom I shall behold for myself (for my good, for my vindication from the unjust and cruel accusations of those now before me), and mine eyes shall see him and no other (no accuser, no stranger, but my own redeeming God)—my reins consume within me (i.e. I languish and pine here for that glorious vision).' P.——Not another—not estranged as you, my friends, nor ashamed to call me brother, He. 1. 11. C.]

Ver. 29. [There is a threat implied in this verse. God, in whom Job trusts, and who will in the end vindicate him, will prove a judge to those who now persecute him. P.]

Reflections.—Hard is the trial when inward vexation and outward reproach meet together; and distressing the situation when those who ought to comfort us, again and again reproach and disquiet us; and especially when men abuse us with revilings, and God shuts out our prayer, and loads us with trouble! But when God strikes a saint, almost every person and thing is ready to second his blow; and then the sparing of his relations becomes a heavier cross than the removal of them by death. It is hard to discern God's love and endeared affection amidst many and heavy strokes of paternal wrath. But happy are those who, when earth is turned into a kind of hell to them, can by faith solace themselves with the views of a future judgment; and of being for ever with Jesus Christ—their Relation, their Husband, their Deliverer, their Lord! It is dangerous to persecute the saints while their Kinsman-Redeemer lives and sees, and shall quickly judge the world. But here let me stand still, and with pleasure remark, that there is a Kinsman-Redeemer provided for fallen men; that he is a living and divine Redeemer; that I have a new-covenant interest in him, and know that I have it; that there will be a last day, when time shall be no more; that then my Redeemer, who stood as the last Adam upon earth, shall appear without sin unto my salvation; and so shall I be for ever with the Lord; I shall be like him, for I shall see him as he is! —Let me blush to behold an ancient patriarch, amidst his darkest nights of trouble, with clearer views of Jesus and eternal things, and his happy interest therein, than I, upon whom the light of the glorious gospel hath so clearly shined.