Those painful sores, and all thy losses, show
How Heaven regards the foolish saints below.
Incorrigibly pious! Can't thy God
Reform thy stupid virtue with his rod?
Thus Satan still endeavours to draw men from God, as he did our first parents, by suggesting hard thoughts of him, as one that envies the happiness, and delights in the misery, of his creatures, than which nothing is more false. Another artifice he uses, is, to drive men from their religion, by loading them with scoffs and reproaches for their adherence to it: we have reason to expect it, but we are fools if we heed it: our Master himself has undergone it, we shall be abundantly recompensed for it, and with much more reason may we retort it upon the scoffers, "Are you such fools as still to retain your impiety, when you might bless God, and live?"
2. She urges him to renounce his religion, to blaspheme God, set him at defiance, and dare him to do his worst; "Curse God, and die; live no longer in dependence upon God, wait not for relief from him, but be thine own deliverer, by being thine own executioner, end thy troubles by ending thy life, better die once than be always dying thus; thou mayest now despair of having any help from thy God, even curse him, and hang thyself." These are two of the blackest and most horrid of all Satan's temptations, and yet such as good men have sometimes been violently assaulted with: nothing is more contrary to natural conscience than blaspheming God, nor to natural sense than self-murder; therefore the suggestion of either of these may well be suspected to come immediately from Satan. Lord, lead us not into temptation, not into such, not into any, temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
III. He bravely resists and overcomes the temptation, v. 10. He soon gave her an answer, (for Satan spared him the use of his tongue, in hopes he would curse God with it,) which showed his constant resolution to cleave to God, to keep his good thoughts of him, and not to let go his integrity.
See, 1. How he resented the temptations; he was indignant at having such a thing mentioned to him; "What! Curse God? I abhor the thought of it; get thee behind me, Satan." In other cases. Job reasoned with his wife with a great deal of mildness, even when she was unkind to him; (ch. xix. 17.) I entreated her for the children's sake of my own body. But when she persuaded him to curse God, he was much displeased; Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. He does not call her a fool, and an atheist, nor does he break out into any indecent expressions of his displeasure, as those who are sick and sore are apt to do, and think they may be excused; but he shows her the evil of what she said, that she spake the language of the infidels and idolaters, who, when they are hardly bestead, fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, Isa. viii. 21. We have reason to suppose, that, in such a pious household as Job had, his wife was one that had been well-affected to religion, but that now, when all their estate and comfort were gone, she could not bear the loss with that temper of mind that Job had; but that she should go about to infect his mind with her wretched distemper, was a great provocation to him, and he could not forbear thus showing his resentment. Note, (1.) Those are angry and sin not, who are angry only at sin, and take a temptation as the greatest affront; who cannot bear them that are evil, Rev. ii. 2. When Peter was a Satan to Christ, he told him plainly, Thou art an offence to me. (2.) If those whom we think wise and good, at any time speak that which is foolish and bad, we ought to reprove them faithfully for it, and show them the evil of what they say, that we suffer not sin upon them. (3.) Temptations to curse God ought to be rejected with the greatest abhorrence, and not so much as to be parleyed with: whoever persuades us to that, must be looked upon as our enemy, to whom if we yield it is at our peril. Job did not curse God, and then think to come off with Adam's excuse, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she persuaded me to it, (Gen. iii. 12.) which had in it a tacit reflection on God, his ordinance, and providence; no, if thou scornest, if thou cursest, thou alone shalt bear it.
2. How he reasoned against the temptation; Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil also? Those whom we reprove, we must endeavour to convince; and it is no hard matter to give a reason why we should still hold fast our integrity, even when we are stripped of every thing else. He considers that though good and evil are contraries, yet they do not come from contrary causes, but both from the hand of God; (Isa. xlv. 7. Lam. iii. 38.) and therefore that in both we must have our eye up unto him, with thankfulness for the good he sends, and without fretfulness at the evil. Observe the force of his argument,
(1.) What he argues for; not only the bearing, but the receiving, of evil; Shall we not receive evil? that is, [1.] "Shall we not expect to receive it? If God give us so many good things, shall we be surprised, or think it strange, if he sometimes afflict us, when he has told us that prosperity and adversity are set the one over-against the other?" 1 Pet. iv. 12. [2.] "Shall we not set ourselves to receive it aright?" The word signifies to receive as a gift, and denotes a pious affection and disposition of soul under our afflictions, neither despising them nor fainting under them, accounting them gifts; (Phil. i. 29.) accepting them as punishments of our iniquity; (Lev. xxvi. 41.) acquiescing in the will of God in them; ("Let him do with me as seemeth him good;") and accommodating ourselves to them, as those that know how to want as well as how to abound, Phil. iv. 12. When the heart is humbled, and weaned, by humbling weaning providences, then we receive correction, (Zech. iii. 2.) and take up our cross.
(2.) What he argues from; "Shall we receive so much good as has come to us from the hand of God, during all those years of peace and prosperity that we have lived; and shall we not now receive evil, when God thinks fit to lay it on us?" Note, The consideration of the mercies we receive from God, both past and present, should make us receive our afflictions with a suitable disposition of spirit. If we receive our share of the common good in the seven years of plenty, shall we not receive our share of the common evil in the years of famine? Qui sensit commodum, sentire debet et onus—He who feels the privilege, should prepare for the privation. If we have so much that pleases us, why should we not be content with that which pleases God? If we receive so many comforts, shall we not receive some afflictions, which will serve as foils to our comforts, to make them the more valuable; (we are taught the worth of mercies, by being made to want them sometimes;) and as allays to our comforts, to make them the less dangerous, to keep the balance even, and to prevent our being lifted up above measure? 2 Cor. xii. 7. If we receive so much good for the body, shall we not receive some good for the soul; that is, some afflictions, by which we partake of God's holiness; (Heb. xii. 10.) something which, by saddening the countenance, makes the heart better? Let murmuring, therefore, as well as boasting, be for ever excluded.
IV. Thus, in a good measure, Job still held fast
