Job 21

Notes

Job immediately replied, 2. Instead of pretending to comfort me, patiently and attentively hear my speech. 3. Permit me freely to declare my mind without interrupting me; and when I have finished my pertinent reasoning mock on as long as you please. 4. I have made my appeal to God; and had it been to man, I could not but be vexed to find myself thus interrupted, reproached, and abused. 5. To see in me a religious and upright man so fearfully afflicted, might overwhelm you with the most confounding astonishment at the awfully dark providence of God, and at least make you willing to hold your peace while I speak. 6. For truly, when I think on it, I am filled with the most terrifying awe of his awful judgments. 7. But if wicked men always meet with such fearful calamities as you have pretended, whence is it that many of them, for a long time, flourish in uncommon prosperity and power? 8. Nay, live to see their children, and children's children, settled and prosperous? 9. Their habitations and families live in peace and security, and are not loaded with any afflictions; 10. While their cattle are extremely healthful, prosperous, and fruitful, 11, 12. Their wives with the greatest ease bring forth multitudes of children, who employ themselves in nothing but carnal joy and mirth. 13. Even unto old age they spend their days in earthly prosperity and carnal indulgence, and at last die very easily, without any sense of pain. 14, 15. Gratified and puffed up with their prosperity, they in the most daring manner testify their dislike and contempt of the knowledge, service, and worship of God. 16. It is God, however, not themselves, who renders them wealthy and powerful. Yet far be it from me to join with them in their impiety; 17. But let facts speak for themselves. How often are wicked men's shining prosperity and honour extinguished by fearful judgments and justly merited destruction? How often does God, as by lot, distribute to them entangling bonds of trouble and sorrow in his anger? 18. How often are they of a sudden fearfully carried away before the sweeping whirlwinds of his awful judgments? 19. How often are either wicked men's children or themselves rewarded with fearful punishments? 20. How often do wicked men on earth experience the distinguishing judgments and hot burning wrath of the Almighty? 21. And though their children should prosper, what pain, care, or pleasure can they have about their house and family when they are cut off by an early death? 22. Dare any of you pretend to teach God how to govern the world, and whom to prosper and whom not? or to prescribe rules by which he must judge men, who, even the highest, are in death but the food of worms? 23, 24. Some men, both good and bad, die in the very prime of their life, and height of their prosperity, and in a very easy manner. 25. Others die amidst torments of body and anguish of mind, without ever partaking of earthly happiness or pleasure: 26. They lie down together in the same condition in the grave, and the vermin make an equal prey of both; so that none can tell who is good or who is bad by any external events. 27. I can indeed easily foresee what you, in your reproachful speeches and imaginations, will think and say. 28. You will ask, What is become of my own once princely family and of the dwellings of my children? And if Providence hath not plainly marked us out for wicked by the fearful judgments which have befallen us? 29, 30. But cannot even the most common passenger tell you that they have observed that wicked men are often preserved, as in a secret place, amidst destructive judgments, and are carried forth with pomp in the day of overflowing wrath, and the punishment of their crimes reserved for the other world? 31. Their power is often so great on earth that nobody dare reprove or can punish them for their crimes. 32. Nay, they are brought in pomp to the grave, and honourably and quietly rest in their tombs. 33. They sleep as quietly in their graves as the best; and all men, whether good or bad, by little and little follow them into that state of the dead, without any visible difference betwixt them. 34. Why then attempt ye to comfort me with unsubstantial hopes of future happiness? And why doth the vilest prevarication, inconsistent with the cause of God or your duty, continue to be the whole sum of your discourses?

Ver. 7. [Job here meets his accusers on their own ground. He shows them that the patent facts of the divine government do not harmonize with the principles laid down by them. According to their theory the wicked alone are judged and punished. But Job points them to the case of wicked men who, notwithstanding notorious wickedness, are yet rich, prosperous, joyous, and full of children. P.]

Ver. 19. [God layeth up his iniquity for his children. Not an unjust, but a most merciful dispensation of God; for many who disregarded themselves have been moved to conversion by seeing the evil consequences their wicked examples and principles were entailing upon their offspring. C.]

Ver. 22. [High. He ruleth those that are on high, the principalities and powers in heaven; who then on earth shall instruct him in its government? C.]

Ver. 26. [All this being true—the wicked, whether in the enjoyment of full temporal prosperity, or pinched by poverty and wasted by disease, come to the same end, and are laid in the same grave. Such being the case, what is become of the law of retribution in this world, as maintained by the friends? P.]

Ver. 34. [This is the summing up—the application of the whole argument. Seeing your arguments are so fallacious, your words so illogical, why do ye attempt to comfort me? It is a mockery and an insult. P.]

Reflections.—Those who are once engaged in hot disputes often lose their way through want of attention to their opponents. But what a mercy it is that saints have a gracious God to complain to when their friends refuse to hear what they say, or to regard their distress! And though the present dispensations of Providence sometimes stagger the faith and hope of the best of men, the last judgment will make all clear and plain. What a certain fact, and often a sad stumbling-block to the godly, is the prosperity of wicked men! It often hardens them in presumptuous impiety to their own destruction; but it will never reconcile a tender saint to their manner of life. It entails upon themselves and families at last the greatest misery. And however different their lot on earth or the manner of their death, or pompous their burial, everlasting punishment in hell shall be their final portion. Let therefore their heart, their counsel, their practice, be far from me. And while I adore the high wisdom of God in his providence, let me never comfort myself with vain words! Where there is no truth there can be no solid comfort.