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old expositors, as Seb. Schmid and J. H. Michaelis, have correctly perceived the relation: liberabit Deus et propter puritatem manuum tuarum alios, quos propria innocentia ipsos deficiens non esset liberatura. The purity of the hands (Psa 18:21) is that which Job will have attained when he has put from him that which defiles him (comp. Job 9:30 with Job 17:9). Hirzel has referred to Mat 6:33 in connection with Job 22:24; one is here reminded of the words of our Lord to Peter, Luk 22:32 : σύ ποτὲ ἐπιστρέψας στήριξον τοὺς ἀδελφούς σου. Eliphaz, although unconsciously, in these last words expresses prophetically what will be fulfilled in the issue of the history in Job himself.
The speech of Eliphaz opens the third course of the controversy. In the first course of the controversy the speeches of the friends, though bearing upon the question of punishment, were embellished with alluring promises; but these promises were incapable of comforting Job, because they proceeded upon the assumption that he is suffering as a sinner deserving of punishment, and can only become free from his punishment by turning to God. In the second course of the controversy, since Job gave no heed to their exhortations to penitence, the friends drew back their promises, and began the more unreservedly to punish and to threaten, by presenting to Job, in the most terrifying pictures of the ruin of the evil-doer, his own threatening destruction. The misconstruction which Job experiences from the friends has the salutary effect on him of rooting him still more deeply in the hope that God will not let him die without having borne witness to his innocence. But the mystery of the present is nevertheless not cleared up for Job by this glimpse of faith into the future. On the contrary, the second course of the controversy ends so, that to the friends who unjustly and uncharitably deny instead of solving the mystery of his individual lot, Job now presents that which