who can bear? Job, by asking here, Why hidest thou thy face? teaches us, that when, at any time, we are under the sense of God's withdrawings, we are concerned to inquire into the reason of them; what is the sin for which he corrects us; and what the good he designs us. Job's sufferings were typical of the sufferings of Christ, from whom not only men hid their faces, (Isa. liii. 3.) but God hid his. Witness the darkness which surrounded him on the cross, when he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? If this were done to these green trees, what shall be done to the dry? They will for ever be forsaken.
III. He humbly pleads with God his own utter inability to stand before him: (v. 25.) "Wilt thou break a leaf, pursue the dry stubble? Lord, is it for thine honour to trample upon one that is down already? Or to crush one that neither has, nor pretends to, any power to resist thee?" Note, We ought to have such an apprehension of the goodness and compassion of God, as to believe that he will not break the bruised reed, Matth. xii. 20.
IV. He sadly complains of God's severe dealings with him: he owns it was for his sins that God thus contended with him, but thinks it hard,
1. That his former sins, long since committed, should now be remembered against him, and he should be reckoned with for the old scores; (v. 26.) Thou writest bitter things against me. Afflictions are bitter things; writing of them denotes deliberation and determination, written as a warrant for execution; it denotes also the continuance of his affliction, for that which is written remains, and, "Herein thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth," that is, "thou punishest me for them, and thereby puttest me in mind of them, and obligest me to renew my repentance for them." Note, (1.) God sometimes writes very bitter things against the best and dearest of his saints and servants, both in outward afflictions and inward disquiet; trouble in body and trouble in mind, that he may humble them and prove them, and do them good in their latter end. (2.) That the sins of youth are often the smart of age, both in respect of sorrow within, (Jer. xxxi. 18, 19.) and suffering without, ch. xx. 11. Time does not wear out the guilt of sin. (3.) That when God writes bitter things against us, his design therein is, to make us possess our iniquities, to bring forgotten sins to mind, and so to bring us to remorse for them, as to break us off from them. This is all the fruit, to take away our sin.
2. That his present mistakes and miscarriages should be so strictly taken notice of, and so severely animadverted upon; (v. 27.) "Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, not only to afflict me, and expose me to shame, not only to keep me from escaping the strokes of thy wrath, but that thou mayest critically remark all my motions, and look narrowly to all my paths, to correct me for every false step, nay, for but a look awry, or a word misapplied; nay, thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet, scorest down every thing I do amiss, to reckon for it; or, no sooner have I trodden wrong, though ever so little, than immediately I smart for it; the punishment treads upon the very heels of the sin. Guilt, both of the oldest and of the freshest date, is put together, to make up the cause of my calamity." Now, (1.) It was not true that God did thus seek advantages against him; he is not thus extreme to mark what we do amiss; if he were, there were no abiding for us, Ps. cxxx. 3. But he is so far from this, that he deals not with us according to the desert, no not of our manifest sins which are not found by secret search, Jer. ii. 34. This therefore was the language of Job's melancholy; his sober thoughts never represented God thus as a hard Master. (2.) But we should keep such a strict and jealous eye as this upon ourselves and our own steps, both for the discovery of sin past, and the prevention of it for the future. It is good for us all to ponder the path of our feet.
V. He finds himself wasting away apace under the heavy hand of God, v. 28. He, that is, man, as a rotten thing, the principle of whose putrefaction is in itself, consumes, even like a moth-eaten garment, which becomes continually worse and worse. Or, He, that is, God, like rottenness, and like a moth, consumes me. Compare this with Hos. v. 12. I will be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness: and see Ps. xxxix. 11. Note, Man, at the best, wears fast; but, under God's rebukes especially, he is soon gone. While there is so little soundness in the soul, no marvel there is so little soundness in the flesh, Ps. xxxviii. 3.
CHAP. XIV.
Job had turned from speaking to his friends, finding it to no purpose to reason with them, and here goes on to speak to God and himself. He had reminded his friends of their frailty and mortality; (ch. xiii. 12.) here he reminds himself of his own, and pleads it with God for some mitigation of his miseries. We have here an account, I. Of man's life, that it is, 1. Short, v. 1. 2. Sorrowful, v. 2. 3. Sinful, v. 4. 4. Stinted, v. 5, 14. II. Of man's death, that it puts a final period to our present life, to which we shall not again return, v. 7..12. That it hides us from the calamities of life; (v. 13.) destroys the hopes of life; (v. 18, 19.) sends us away from the business of life; (v. 20.) and keeps us in the dark concerning our relations in this life, how much soever we have formerly been in care about them, v. 21, 22. III. The use Job makes of all this. 1. He pleads it with God, who, he thought, was too strict and severe with him; (v. 16, 17.) begging that, in consideration of his frailty, he would not contend with him; (v. 3.) but grant him some respite, v. 6. 2. He engages himself to prepare for death, (v. 14.) and encourages himself to hope that it would be comfortable to him, v. 15. This chapter is proper for funeral solemnities; and serious meditations on it will help us both to get good by the death of others, and to get ready for our own.
1.MAN that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. 2. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. 3. And dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? 4. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. 5. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee; thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass: 6. Turn from him that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as a hireling, his day.
We are here led to think,
I. Of the original of human life; God is indeed its great Original, for he breathed into man the breath of life, and in him we live; but we date it from our birth, and thence we must date both its frailty and its pollution. Its frailty; Man, that is born of a woman, is therefore of few days, v. 1. It may refer to the first woman, who was called Eve, because she was the mother of all living: of her, who, being deceived by the tempter, was first in the transgression, we are all born, and consequently derive from her that sin and corruption which both shorten our days, and sadden them. Or it may refer to every man's immediate mother. The woman is the weaker vessel, and we know that Partus sequitur ventrem—The child takes after the mother.
