If we look for understanding from a person and do him: not only his creed, but the ordinary sagacity
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with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour! When a few years are come, I shall go the way whence I shall not return. ( Job 16:18, 20–22)
has declared that Job does not love God for Himself, but only for His blessings, and now everything in the way of shelter and comradeship and sympathy has been completely stripped from Job, and he sees that God must have allowed it. This is the deepest line Job has come to as yet, but he still clings to it that God is honourable. "I have lost my family, my wealth, my friends, the consolation of my creed—I have lost everything to which a man can at all look for comfort; yet, though He slay me, I will trust in Him." This is supreme despair, along with extraordinary confidence in God who meantime looks like a moloch.17
This is not the pathos of a whining beggar who "puts it on" in order to awaken sympathy. Job's recounting of his suffering is not the expression of self-conscious pathos; he is stating for his own sake that he is sane, that he is in despair, and, so far as he can see, he is perfectly justified in being pessimistic.
There are many things like this as the outcome of this war, and we have to be careful lest we take on the religious pose, or the evangelical pose, or the denominational pose, or any pose that is not real, when we come across suffering in which there is no deliverance and no illumination. The only thing to do is to be reverent with what we do not understand. The basis of things is tragic; therefore God must find the way out, or there is no way out. Human reasoning and a human diagnosis of things will do exactly what Job's friends did, viz., belittle the grief.
(b) In the Discretion of Men ( Job 17:5–10) Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite. . . . But as for you all, do ye return, and come now; for I cannot find one wise man among you. ( Job 17:8, 10)
Job is recounting the fact that his experiences of sorrow and difficulty have so come about that the wise element of discretion in men must make them pass judgement against him. Everything seems against him: not only his creed, but the ordinary sagacity of men. There is nothing more agonising to a man who knows his own integrity than to find that the best people leave him alone, not because they do not know why he suffers, but because they are sure he is more in the wrong than he says, and their view is backed by their own discretion and knowledge. As in the case of the density of men, this discretion must not be laid at the door of men, but at the predestiny of the way human wisdom is fixed. The predestiny of human wisdom is rationalism. Any number of things happen which are not reasonable, and human discretion is apt to say that the man who suffers unreasonably is to blame; and when it is pointed out that the basis of things is without reason, men say that is only a passing difference. The Bible reveals that the basis of things is not reasonable, but tragic. When a man is driven to the bottom board, he gets to the tragedy, not to the reason; he is alone with God, and if God does not see him through, despair is the only place for him. The more deeply and earnestly and directly a man thinks, the more he finds what Solomon says is true—"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." It is not Job's humour18 that brings him to a pessimist's point of view, but his plain sanity; he refuses to say that his pessimism is a mood; optimism is a mood. If God does not see Job through, Satan has won his wager; if God does not come on the scene somewhere, it is a forlorn hope, and Satan will have proved that no one loves God for His own sake.
3. The Recognition of Pre-Destiny ( Job 17) If we look for understanding from a person and do not get it, the first feeling is one of revolt and indignation against him; but when we begin to examine things, we may find that after all he is not to blame for his density. It is this element that increases the suffering of Job, while at the same time it clears him from condemnation. Everything at the back of his life and of his creed, goes to justify the conclusion he has come to.
(a) In the Density of Men ( Job 17:1–4) For Thou hast hid their heart from understanding. ( Job 17:4)
When we look for our friends to understand, and find they do not, we accuse them of being dense. In grief the sufferer frequently declares that no one on earth can assist him. This is sometimes a pose, but Job is seeing that his friends' density does not lie with them, but with the fact of predestination. There are some kinds of suffering and temptation and sorrow no one can sympathise with, and by means of them a man gets on to the solitary way of life. It is not the suffering of a man who has done wrong and knows it; it is an isolation in which no one can sympathise, God alone can come near.
The suffering of Job is accounted for by the fact that God and Satan had made a battleground of his life, and he is beginning to discover that it is God who has closed up the understanding of his friends. Satan
17. moloch: a tyrannical power requiring sacrifice in order to be appeased. 18. humour: mood, temperament, or disposition.