Expositor's Bible: The Book of Job

Put aside the thought that all this is said to Job, and it is surely a counsel of wisdom. To the proud and self-righteous it shows the way of renewal. Away with the treasures, t...

Time has passed sufficient for the realisation by Job of his poverty and bereavement. The sense of desolation has settled on his soul as morning after morning dawned, week after...

Striking indeed is the remonstrance that follows. A struggle against that belief in grim fate which has so injured Oriental character gives vehemence to his appeal; for God must...

Though Zophar fails like the other two, he is not to be called a mere echo. It is incorrect to say that, while Eliphaz is a kind of prophet and Bildad a sage, Zophar is a common...

The personification of death here is natural, and many parallels to the figure are easily found. Horror of death is a mark of strong healthy life, especially among those who see...

"_But I know it: my Redeemer liveth; And afterward on the dust He will stand up; And after my skin they destroy, even this, And without my flesh shall I see Eloah, Whom I shall...

Men talk nowadays as if the penury and distress prevalent in our large towns proved the churches to be unworthy of their name and place. It may be so. If this can be proved, let...

"_Then I said, I shall die in my nest, And I shall multiply my days as the Phœnix; My root shall spread out by the waters, And the dew shall be all night on my branch; My glory...

For this new and most pathetic effort to reach a benignant fidelity in God which all his cries have not yet stirred, the former speeches have made preparation. Rising from the t...

The topic is access to God by prayer, that sense of security which depends on the Divine friendship. There comes one moment at least, there may be many, in which earthly possess...

Against the identification of Job with the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah liii. there is one objection, and it is fatal. The author of Job has no thought of the central idea in th...

It is not difficult to imagine three speakers differing far more from each other. For example, instead of Bildad we might have had a Persian full of the Zoroastrian ideas of two...

It is significant that both Elihu and his representations are ignored in the winding up of the action. The address of the Almighty from the storm does not take him into account...

Here it was the author of Job found the thought of his people. With this he had to harmonise the other beliefs--peculiarly theirs--that the lovingkindness of the Lord is over al...

If further it be asked why this is not made prominent in the course of the Almighty's address from the storm, an answer may be found. The hope did not remain clear, inspiring, i...

We may suppose an interval of release from pain or at least a pause of expectancy, and then, in verse twenty-third, Job begins his cry. The language is less vehement than we hav...

And here we join issue with the agnostic, who denies this vital demand of the soul. Our thought dwelling on life and all its varied experience--sorrow and fear, misery and hope,...

Sooth to say, there is no reasoning, nothing but affirmation. He discusses no doubtful case, enters into no careful discrimination of the virtuous who enjoy from the godless who...

Job is already asserting to himself the reality of his own virtue, for he resents the suspicion of it. Indeed, with all the mystery of his affliction yet to solve, he can but th...

Passing at present from the charge of impiety, Elihu takes up the suggestion that Divine providence is unjust and sets himself to show that, whether men delight themselves in th...

As yet, even to Job, though he has gazed beyond death, its mystery is oppressive; and he is right in urging that mystery upon his friends to convict them of ignorance and presum...

And now there is a change of tone. His mind, revolting from its own conclusion, turns toward the thought of reconciliation. While as yet he speaks of it as an impossibility ther...

The writer means us to enter into the feelings of this man, to think with him, for the time, sympathetically. It is no moral fault to be over-jealous for the Almighty, although...

The years of Job have passed hitherto in unbroken prosperity. He has long enjoyed the bounty of providence, his children about him, his increasing flocks of sheep and camels, ox...

Striking is the thought that, while the prophets Amos and Hosea were fiercely or plaintively assailing the luxury of Israel and the lives of the nobles, among those very men who...

The section closes with a strophe (vv. 22-25) which, calling for submission to the Divine ordinance and praise of the doings of the Almighty, forms a transition to the main them...

The Book of Job is the first great poem of the soul in its mundane conflict, facing the inexorable of sorrow, change, pain, and death, and feeling within itself at one and the s...

Job makes no confession of sin. His friends and Elihu, all of whom endeavour to find evil in his life, are entirely at fault. The repentance is not from moral guilt, but from th...