( Job 25) continually brought things to the surface and said to
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only the people who "get out and shove" who really make things go. The men who are up against things just now and who are determined to get at Reality at all costs, and will not accept a thing on the religious line unless that line states Reality—these are the men who are paying the price for the next generation. The reason we are here in the natural world is because our mothers struggled for our existence, and the more unhindered the birth pangs the stronger and healthier the child. A thing is worth just what it costs.
there is trouble on he comes out with these redundant phrases. Job does not get annoyed with Bildad, he is full rather of pity for him. Eliphaz stings Job because he takes up a superior position; he knows why Job suffers; he stands strong for his set of principles, but he is not in touch with Reality. Bildad is in touch with nothing, he is courageously heartless; he never thinks when he talks, but simply pours it out. The "Bildad" type is often met with in the pulpit; men roll out phrases and talk the most ponderous stuff with nothing in it. It is like a roll of thunder over your head when what you want is real nourishment. These men continually brought things to the surface and said to Job, "This is what you want." What a man wants is somewhere to rest his mind and heart, and the only place to rest in is God, and the only way to come to God is by prayer. Much of our praying has nothing in it; it is not the talk of a child to his Father when he has come up against things or is hurt. "Ask, and it shall be given you," Jesus says. We do not ask, we worry, whereas one minute in prayer will put God's decree at work, viz., that He answers prayer on the ground of Redemption. Jesus Christ did not say, "Ask what you like, and it shall be done unto you," but "ask what you will, ask when your will is in the thing that is a real problem to you," and God has pledged His honour that you will get the answer every time.
4. The Redundant Sonorousness of Position ( Job 25) Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, Dominion and fear are with Him, He maketh peace in His high places. Is there any number of His armies? And upon whom doth not His light arise? ( Job 25:1–3).
We have the modern and insidious type of Pharisaism, the unconscious hypocrite, the man or woman not of fraud, but of pose, not of deep and dark design, but of subtle egotism, prompt certainty and facile religiosity.
Dr. Forsyth
Bildad's utterances here are inadvertent and wildly away from the theme. The modern Pharisee of the "Bildad" type is the man who has a pose to keep up; he is not touched by any problem himself, and when
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Job 26–31 Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow.
explanation of it is not to be found in its own expression, but only in the domain of the Designer of life. Job says that the explanation his friends give of his earthly story is hopeless, they are nowhere near understanding it; God alone is the Source from whence will come the explanation of all he is going through.
Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust; And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
1. God and the Sublimities ( Job 26) Lo, these are parts of His ways: but how little a portion is heard of Him? But the thunder of His power who can understand? ( Job 26:14)
Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing And weave their petty cells and die.
The sublime things in Nature swamp our intelligent understanding of them; rugged mountain scenery, for instance, will awaken a sense of the sublime. The man who has never had the sense of the sublime awakened in him is scarcely born. The story of the earth itself is so full of sublimities that it requires God, not man, to expound it. If a man cannot expound the sublimities of Nature, he need not expect to be able to expound the sublimity of the human soul. The sublimities of Nature
Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife. And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day.
Tennyson
A parable is an earthly story which does not explain itself. Every one of us has an earthly story and the