20 Behold! God despiseth not the perfect man,
And taketh not evil-doers by the hand.
21 While He shall fill thy mouth with laughing,
And thy lips with rejoicing,
22 They who hate thee shall be clothed with shame,
And the tent of the ungodly is no more.
"To take by the hand," i.e., ready to help as His own, as Isa 41:13; Isa 42:6. Instead of עד (Job 8:21), there is no great difficulty in reading עוד: again (as e.g., Psa 42:6) He will fill; but even עד is supportable; it signifies, like Job 1:18; Psa 141:10, while. On the form ימלּה, vid., Ges. 75, 21, b. This close of Bildad's speech sounds quite like the Psalms (comp. Psa 126:2 with Job 8:21; Psa 35:26; Psa 109:29; Psa 132:18, with Job 8:22). Bildad does all he can to win Job over. He calls the ungodly שׂנאיך, to show that he tries to think and expect the best of Job.
We have seen that Job in his second speech charges God with the appearance of injustice and want of compassion. The friends act as friends, by not allowing this to pass without admonition. After Job has exhausted himself with his plaints, Bildad enters into the discussion in the above speech. He defends the justice of God against Job's unbecoming words. His assertion that God does not swerve from the right, is so true that it would be blasphemy to maintain against him that God sometimes perverts the right. And Bildad seems also to make the right use of this truth when he promises a glorious issue to his suffering, as a substantial proof that God does not deal unjustly towards him; for Job's suffering does actually come to such an issue, and this issue in its accomplishment destroys the false appearance that God had been unjust or unmerciful towards him. Bildad expresses his main point still more prudently, and more in accordance with the case before him, when he says, "Behold! God does not act hostilely towards the godly, neither does He make common cause with the evil-doer" (Job 8:20), - a confession which he must allow is on both sides the most absolute truth. By the most telling figures he portrays the perishableness of the prosperity of those who forget God, and paints in glowing colours on this dark background the future which awaits Job. What is there in this speech of Bildad to censure, and how is it that it does not produce the desired cheering effect on Job?
It is true that nothing that God sends to man proceeds from injustice, but it is not true that everything that He sends to him comes from His justice. As God does not ordain suffering for the hardened sinner in order to improve him, because He is merciful, so He does not ordain suffering for the truly godly in order to punish him, because He is just. What we call God's attributes are only separate phases of His indivisible holy being, - ad extra, separate modes of His operation in which they all share, - of which, when in operation, one does not act in opposition to another; they are not, however, all engaged upon the same object at one time. One cannot say that God's love manifests itself in action in hell, nor His anger in heaven; nor His justice in the afflictions of the godly, and His mercy in the sufferings of the godless.
Herein is Bildad's mistake, that he thinks his commonplace utterance is sufficient to explain all the mysteries of human life. We see from his judgment of Job's children how unjust he becomes, since he regards the matter as the working out of divine justice. He certainly speaks hypothetically, but in such a way that he might as well have said directly, that their sudden death was the punishment of their sin. If he had found Job dead, he would have considered him as a sinner, whom God had carried off in His anger. Even now he has no pleasure in promising Job help and blessing; accordingly from his point of view he expresses himself very conditionally: If thou art pure and upright. We see from this that his belief in Job's uprightness is shaken, for how could the All-just One visit Job with such severe suffering, if he had not deserved it! Nevertheless אתה וישׁר זך אם (Job 8:6) shows that Bildad thinks it possible that Job's heart may be pure and upright, and consequently his present affliction may not be peremptory punishment, but only disciplinary chastisement. Job just - such is Bildad's counsel - give God glory, and acknowledge that he deserves nothing better; and thus humbling himself beneath the just hand of God, he will be again made righteous, and exalted.
Job cannot, however, comprehend his suffering as an act of divine justice. His own fidelity is a fact, his consciousness of which cannot be shaken: it is therefore impossible for him to deny it, for the sake of affirming the justice of God; for truth is not to be supported by falsehood. Hence Bildad's glorious promises afford Job no comfort. Apart from their being awkwardly introduced, they depend upon an assumption, the truth of which Job cannot admit without being untrue to himself. Consequently Bildad, though with the best intention, only urges Job still further forward and deeper into the conflict.
But does, then, the confession of sin on the part of constantly sinful man admit of his regarding the suffering thus appointed to him not merely not as punishment, but also not as chastisement? If a sufferer acknowledges the excessive hideousness of sin, how can he, when a friend bids him regard his affliction as a wholesome chastisement designed to mortify sin more and more, - how can he receive the counsel with such impatience as we see in the case of Job? The utterances of Job are, in fact, so wild, inconsiderate, and unworthy of God, and the first speeches of Eliphaz and Bildad on the contrary so winning and appropriate, that if Job's affliction ought really to be regarded from the standpoint of chastisement, their tone could not be more to the purpose, nor exhortation and comfort more beautifully blended. Even when one knows the point of the book, one will still be constantly liable to be misled by the speeches of the friends; it requires the closest attention to detect what is false in them. The poet's mastery of his subject, and the skill with which he exercises it, manifests itself in his allowing the opposition of the friends to Job, though existing in the germ from the very beginning, to become first of all in the course of the controversy so harsh that they look upon Job as a sinner undergoing punishment from God, while in opposition to them he affirms his innocence, and challenges a decision from God.
The poet, however, allows Bildad to make one declaration, from which we clearly see that his address, beautiful as it is, rests on a false basis, and loses its effect. Bildad explains the sudden death of Job's children as a divine judgment. He could not have sent a more wounding dart into Job's already broken heart; for is it possible to tell a man anything more heart-rending that that his father, his mother, or his children have died as the direct punishment of their sins? One would not say so, even if it should seem to be an obvious fact, and least of all to a father already sorely tried and brought almost to the grave with sorrow. Bildad, however, does not rely upon facts, he reasons only priori. He does not know that Job's children were godless; the only ground of his judgment is the syllogism: Whoever dies a fearful, sudden death must be a great sinner; God has brought Job's children to such a death; ergo, etc. Bildad is zealously affected for God, but without understanding. He is blind to the truth of experience, in order not to be drawn away from the truth of his premiss. He does not like to acknowledge anything that furnishes a contradiction to it. It is this same rationalism of superstition or credulity which has originated the false doctrine of the decretum absolutum. With the same icy and unfeeling rigorism with which Calvinism refers the divine rule, and all that happens upon earth, to the one principle of absolute divine will and pleasure, in spite of all the contradictions of Scripture and experience, Bildad refers everything to the principle of the divine justice, and indeed, divine justice in a judicial sense.
There is also another idea of justice beside this judicial one. Justice, צדקה or צדק, is in general God's dealings as ruled by His holiness. Now there is not only a holy will of God concerning man, which says, Be ye holy, for I am holy; but also a purpose for the redemption of unholy man springing from the holy love of God to man. Accordingly justice is either the agreement of God's dealings with the will of His holiness manifest in the demands of the law, apart from redemption, or the agreement of His dealings with the will of His love as graciously manifested in the gospel; in short, either retributive or redemptive. If one, as Bildad, in the first sense says, God never acts unjustly, and glaringly maintains it as universally applicable, the mystery of the divine dispensations is not made clear thereby, but destroyed. Thus also Job's suffering is no longer a mystery: Job suffers what he deserves; and if it cannot be demonstrated, it is to be assumed in contradiction to all experience. This view of his affliction does not suffice to pacify Job, in spite of the glorious promises by which it is set off. His conscience bears him witness that he has not merited such incomparably heavy affliction; and if we indeed suppose, what we must suppose, that Job was in favour with God when this suffering came upon him, then the thought that God deals with him according to his works, perhaps according to his unacknowledged sins, must be altogether rejected.
God does not punish His own; and when He chastises them, it is not an act of His retributive justice, but of His disciplinary love. This motive of love, indeed, belongs to chastisement in common with trial; and the believer who clearly discerns this love will be able to look upon even the severest affliction as chastisement without being led astray, because he knows that sin has still great power in him; and the medicine, if it is designed to heal him, must be bitter. If, therefore, Bildad had represented Job's affliction as the chastisement of divine love, which would humble him in order the more to exalt him, then Job would have humbled himself, although Bildad might not be altogether in the right. But Bildad, still further than Eliphaz from weakening the erroneous supposition of a hostile God which had taken possession of Job's mind, represents God's justice, to which he attributes the death of his children, instead of His love, as the hand under which Job is to humble himself. Thereby the comfort which Job's friend offers becomes to him a torture, and his trial is made still greater; for his conscience does not accuse him of any sins for which he should now have an angry instead of a gracious God.
But we cannot even here withhold the confession that the composition of such a drama would not be possible under the New Testament. The sight of the suffering of Christ and the future crown has a power in calming the mind, which makes such an outburst of sorrow as that of Job impossible even under the strongest temptation. "If the flesh should murmur and cry out, as Christ even cried out and was feeble," says Luther in one of his consolatory letters (Rambach, Kleine Schriften Luthers, S. 627), "the spirit nevertheless is ready and willing, and with sighings that cannot be uttered will cry: Abba, Father, it is Thou; Thy rod is hard, but Thou art still Father; I know that of a truth." And since the consciousness of sin is as deep as the consciousness of grace, the Christian will not consider any suffering so severe but that he may have deserved severer on account of his sins, even though in the midst of his cross he be unable clearly to recognise the divine love. Even such uncharitable, cold-hearted consolation as that of Eliphaz and Bildad, which bids him regard the divine trial as divine chastisement, cannot exasperate him, since he is conscious of the need for even severer divine chastisement; he need not therefore allow the uncharitableness of the friend to pass without loving counter-exhortations.
Hengstenberg observes, in the Excursus to his Commentary on the Psalms, that the righteousness on which the plea to be heard is based in the Psalms, like Psa 17:1-15; Psa 18:21., Psa 44:18-23, is indeed a righteousness of conduct resting on righteousness by faith, and also this again is only to be considered as the righteousness of endeavour; that moreover their strong tone does not sound altogether becoming, according to our consciousness. We should expect each time, as it happens sometimes urgently (e.g., Psa 143:2), the other side, - that human infirmity which still clings to the righteous should be made prominent, and divine forgiveness for it implored, instead of the plea for deliverance being based on the incongruity of the affliction with the sufferer's consciousness of righteousness towards God. We cannot altogether adopt such psalms and passages of the Psalms as expressive of our Christian feeling; and we are scarcely able to read them in public without hesitation when we attempt it. Whence is this? Hengstenberg replied, "The Old Testament wanted the most effectual means for producing the knowledge of sin - the contemplation of the sufferings of Christ. The New Testament, moreover, possesses a more powerful agency of the Spirit, which does not search more into the depths of the divine nature than it lays open the depths of sin. Hence in Christian songs the sense of sin, as it is more independent of outward occasions than formerly, so it is also more openly disclosed and more delicate in itself; its ground is felt to lie deeper, and also the particular manifestations. It was good that under the Old Covenant the cords of sinful conviction were not strung too rightly, as the full consolation was still not to be found. The gulph closed up again when the sufferings were gone."
(Note: Vid., Hengstenberg's Commentary on the Psalms, iii., Appendix. p. lxiii. Clark's Foreign Theological Library. 1654.)
Such is the actual connection. And this development of the work of redemption in the history of mankind is repeated in the individual experience of every believer. As the individual, the further he progresses in the divine life, becomes the more deeply conscious of the natural depravity of man, and acquires a keener and still keener perception of its most subtle working; so in the New Testament, with the disclosure of actual salvation, a deeper insight into sin is also given. When the infinite depth and extent of the kingdom of light is unveiled, the veil is for the first time removed from the abyss of the kingdom of darkness. Had the latter been revealed without the former in the dispensation before Christ, the Old Testament would have been not only what it actually was in connection with the then painful consciousness of sin and death, - a school of severe discipline preparatory to the New Testament, a school of ardent longing for redemption, - but would have become an abyss of despair. |