of Gods afflicting righteous men yet here he speaks also of hypocrites Not that any truly godly person can turn an hypocrite and be cut off as such but that he may clear how of Professours of godliness who meet with affliction some are sincere and others but dissemblers and that the tryal contributes to the discovering of both and the seperating of the chaffe from the wheat 2. He doth not here make mention of hypocrites with any design to reflect upon Job as one of them but partly to vindicate Gods righteousness in afflicting them who profess piety considerirg that not only he hath holy ends in dealing so with such as really are what they profess of which he hath spoken already and more is added v. 15. but that there are many unsound Professours whom in his holy Providence he discovers by affliction Partly that he may detert Job from some pranks under trouble particularly his complaining more than he did pray he lets him see that they were the pranks of hypocrites and therefore not to be persisted in by him who was a godly man 3. Albeit there was an alternative propounded in speaking of the duty of godly men under trouble v. 11 12. Yet v. 15. he mentions only their profiting by the rod and nothing of their incorrigibleness because that is the ordinary fruit that real Saints get of the rod and it is nor so usual for them when they are in trouble to provoke God by their miscarriages to cut them off And therefore he asserts of them indefinitely or more generally that they are delivered and their cars opended in oppression From v. 13 14. Learn 1. Hypocrisie is an ordinary evil cleaving to profession of Religion So that Hypocrites are very ordinarily and frequently mixed among sincere Professours For so is here supposed in that when Elihu is vindicating Gods dealing with Saints he insinuates this as one plea for him that there is need of affliction upon men of their profession were it but to discover and purge out hypocrites from anâ—â—â—g them So that men should not think it enough that they are Professours if they have no more and even sincerest of Professours have need to guard against hypocrisie which so frequently cleaves to profession 2. The hypocrisie of some may be so closely conveighed and hid in their hearts that in ordinary it doth not appear For there are hypocrites in heart who do not much appear visibly to be such 3. God is so ill pleased even with the most refined of hypocrisie that he will sooner or later have the mark pulled off it and cause the hypocrite appear in his own colours As here it is supposed that they will appear to be under wrath 4. Albeit many times prosperity will discover the unsoundness of some who flattered God under trouble Psal 78.34 35 36 37. Yea albeit close and refined hypocrites may pass through many tryals undiscovered till their tryal which toucheth upon their Idol come Yet a day of adversity is the ordinary touchstone of hypocrisie which will at last find it our and discover it As here it is in affliction and when God binds them that they appear in their colours and the scorching heat of the Sun or the fiery furnace will make the varnish to fall off See Is 33.14 So that hypocrites had need of fair weather for a shower will stain them and make them cast their borrowed colour 5. Hypocrites are especially discovered by their not crying to God in trouble As here they cry not when he bindeth them And albeit this seem to contradict other Scriptures which say they cry only when they are in trouble Psal 78.34 Yet this may also hold true of them or of some of them that when they are in trouble they may at first give over to cry as being madded that they should be in trouble or confounded with it or hoping to find relief another way And if they come to God in trouble they will soon weary and give over if they be not speedily relieved Is 58.3 Mal. 3.13 14. And to express this character of hypocrites more distinctly we may take it up thus 1. If they goe to God in trouble yet there is more of murmuring than prayer in their addresses 2. They are ready to cry more upon the account of what they want than because God binds them or because they see his hand and quarrel in their affliction Hos 7.14 16. 3. They cry more that they may get ease of their trouble than they repent of their sins which procured them 4. There is little fervency or crying in their addresses or what fervour seems to be therein flows not from humility love or hope but from pride bitterness and diffidence 5. Their first recourse is not to God so long as they have any shift beside 6. They lose all hope and weary to cry on if their strait grow and continue while they are crying 2 King 6.30 33. All these should warn us to try and examine our prayers and to look upon it as sad when trouble produceth no prayer or no right prayer Doct. 6. Though hypocrites â—â—e alwayes under wrath yet their miscarriages and discovering of themselves under trouble draws on a greater and more insupportable weight and burden of it For by this they heap of wrath Which should warn all to look to their carriage under trouble 7. Gods wrath against hypocrites will not alwayes evidence it self only by with-holding of favours or speaking sad words to them but will at last break forth in visible effects upon impenitent hypocrites to the destruction both of Soul and Body And especially if trouble be not well improved when God hath begun to reckon with them he will not be dallyed with nor spare them For they dye or their Soul or Life dyeth that is both their Soul and Life dyeth Or the phrase may have relation to the thoughts that hypocrites have of their bodily and animal life which they so esteem as if Soul and Life and all consisted in living here Or it serves to aggravate their fault who have a rational Soul as well as an animal Life and yet dare hazard to draw on death upon themselves in wrath It is true this threatening against hypocrites may admit of an exception in the visible Church Psal 78.34 38. as to the grant of a national pardon to the body of a people Numb 14.20 21 Psal 99.8 Yet God will reckon with particular hypocrites 8. As the Lord seeth it fit sometimes to cut off hypocrites early and some of them by a violent death So it is true of all of them that they dye before they be full of dayes Psal 55.23 they still abhorring death and before they cease and give over their youthfull folly and become wise in God For thus and in these respects they dye in youth 9. Hypocrites especially when they do not improve trouble are justly ranked among the worst of men and dealt with accordingly For their life is cut off
are worth the waiting for albeit we be kept in a furnace of affliction These are some of Jobs infirmities which without further descanting upon the words we are to take notice of in this discourse not to conclude him wicked but passionate and to point out what tentations and infirmities we are especially to provide against in an hour of tryal For which end it is that God will have all that Job spake and said ver 2. here recorded To shew that he takes notice of his peoples behaviour under afflictions and to set up a Beacon to all after-ages in the experience of this holy man Vers 11. Why died I not from the womb why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly 12. Why did the knees prevent me or why the breasts that I should suck In these verses we have Jobs second wish to which reasons as subjoyned v. 13. 19. His wish is set down by way of Expostulation of which see on v. 20. And it amounts in sum to this That since his former wish was to no purpose seeing he was born and came into the world he now wisheth he had died so soon as he was born And therefore regrates that in the birth ha was not left in that helpless hour by the Mid-wife or that ever any care was taken of him by laying him when he was born upon their knees or by giving him suck without which he had soon perished From this complaint no less passionate then the former Observe 1. The mercies which he complains to have received of knees preventing him and breasts to give him suck do insinuate to us That so soon as we come into the world we have so many seeds of death in us that every step of our life needs a proof of mercy to preserve it Without the knees to bear us and the breasts to give us suck we would soon return to dust again So that we may truly be said to be born to die and to be going to death from the day wherein we first receive life 2. Job having quit his former wish as unprofitable and impossible he is not for all that brought to submit but bends his wit to devise new ways of his own and with a great deal of Oratory paints them out as plausible Teaching That is no easie task to bring our minds to a conformity with Gods way and will but many divers courses and shifts will we essay rather then submit to God and follow that way of relief which he hath pointed out to us Submission and patience was a nearer and more ready case of Jobs grievances then any of those yet he wâ—ll rather multiply impossible wishes then come to that 3. We may observe how all these mercies of his birth care of him in his infancy c. wherof Saints have esteemed much and made good use Psal 22.9 10 11. are now all become crosses in his account Which as it flows from great ingratitude in him or whosoever shall be found guilty of the like So it teacheth us not to place our happiness in these or any the like common mercies which may be so soon and easily imbittered and made grievous to our frail and corrupt nature Vers 13. For now should I have lien still and been quiet I should have slept then had I been at rest 14. With kings and counsellers of the earth which built desolate places for themselves 15. Or with princes that had gold who filled their houses with silver 16. Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been as infants which never saw light 17. There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary be at rest 18. There the prisoners rest together they hear not the voyce of the oppressour 19. The small and great are there and the servant is free from his master His reasons whereby he endeavours to render his passionate wish plausible may be summed up in this one the great rest and quiet like a sleep which he fancieth in death ver 13. This he further amplifieth 1. That whereas he is now abased he had then been equal with the best even with Kings and great Counsellers who built themselves stately Houses or Monuments where desolations had formerly been ver 14. and who had their Houses replenished with wealth ver 15. 2. That at least if he had died from the womb he had been in no worse case then an Abortive and so had prevented all those miseries which befel him since his birth ver 16. 3. That as he fancieth the rest of death is a singular rest beyond any ease he could find here For wicked troublers cannot pursue men thither but they who are wearied with oppression get leave to rest there ver 17. particularly prisoners or slaves are free from their oppressing creditors and exacters ver 18. and death doth so level all as Masters and Servants are equal and Servants are no more under the power of their imperious Masters ver 19. In sum he points out death as a common rest from outward violence and oppression from weakness weariness servitude or any the like toil reflecting in some of those upon his own sufferings by the Sabeans and Chaldeans and upon the wearied and tossed condition of his body In this Reason we may remark those Truths 1. That death is a rest to man from outward troubles whatever they be As is here at length deduced Which in its own kind is a mercy that outward troubles will follow us no further then death if all be well beside 2. That as nothing temporal gives men a priviledge against death Psal 49.6 7 c. So albeit there be diversity of ranks of men here yet death levels all and makes them equal Ezek. 32.21 22 c. For Kings Princes Oppressours the weary small and great the Servant and his Master do all tryst at death and are all alike there But in Jobs reasoning from these considerations and in reference to his scope we will find many mistakes 1. Whatever rest and ease be in death yet it was not the will of God that Job should be resting now but fighting and serving his Generation by the will of God after which he was in due time to fall asleep as Acts 13.36 Now it is our great fault to see a beauty in any temporal condition save in so far as it is the will of God to make it out lot who makes every thing beautiful in its season Eccles 3.11 2. His reasoning imports that his great drift in wishing he had died is his own case Now ease how desirable soever it appear is not to be impatiently sought after But we should rather acquiesce to be on service as it is carved out wherein we may meet with many proofs and experiences of what is in ourselves and in God for us 3. Albeit desires and longings after death be the fools only back-door in trouble Yet death and the rest thereof in it self considered ought nor to be so
sends on the trouble which we take occasion to be imbittered at and giveth way to mens own spirits yet it flows from their own passion pride and haste that they are so imbittered 5. Whatever be in the troubles of Saints whether really or in their apprehension Yet nothing of that warrants them to complain of God and his dealing or to be weary of their own life and lot For whatever Jobs case was yet his trouble was no relevant reason why he should so passionately desire to die Some are indeed more peevish and absurd then others in this particular who upon the very least discontent and crossing of their humor were it in never so great mercy would lie down and die as Jonah 4.2 3. Yet let men be able to instruct their case to be most really sad that is no reason why they should so desire death as to complain and expostulate if they be not satisfied The like sentence may we pass upon all our reasonings against any of Gods dealing Vers 21. Which long for death but it cometh not and dig for it more then for hid treasures 22. Which rejoyce exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave The second reason of his Expostulation and an effect of the former is taken from his earnest desire after death though it succeeded not That though he betook himself to no ill shift which might take away his life yet in his desires he longed as seriously for it as men do labour for treasures v. 21. And was not as all men naturally are afraid of death and the grave but would be glad to meet with it ver 22. Now his nature was afflicted to want what he desired and therefore he longs to be at it and expostulates that he is not satisfied If we look to the strength of this Argument Though it be the advantage of a godly man such as Job was that the testimony of his Conscience leads him to look death thus confidently in the face Yet not only doth Job now pursue this desire rather in Passion than with an eye to his Integrity and looking rather to death as the common end of all mens outward trouble then to what is beyond death But did his desire flow from never so holy a principle he soars too high and is too peremptory in it For we find that Saints in cold bloud have deprecated death in such gloomy days As we will find in many of the Psalms In particular In this reasoning we may Observe 1. He is too earnestly bent for death which was an evidence he was wrong and that God would not give it For God by his Providential Dispensation in continuing him alive retorted the Argument that because he doated much on death therefore it was not fit he should meet with it Whatever outward lot our hearts are bent upon under tentation we may suspect it is an Idol And that God will guide those whom he loveth rather any way than that 2. The excess of his inclination after death made the want of it a cross so that he complaineth it cometh not whereas if he had been sober he might have found another out-gate and however yet his grief through the want of it had been less This teacheth Partly that it is an evidence of mens insobriety in desiring lawful things when they cannot brook a disappointment nor are content having done their duty to submit to what God shall think best For if Job had soberly desired death he would not have added but it cometh not Partly that many augment their own afflictions by unsober doating on out-gates of their own which being denyed them it heightens their grief their own Affections adding Oil to the flame As Jobs vehement longing after death renders the disappointment bitter He longs and digs for death but it cometh not Whereas sobriety affords a present out-gate of Gods providing His Salvation of his allowance and carving is near Psal 85.9 when salvation of our prescribing and desired by us is far off 3. His argument is ill founded That because he exceedingly desires death Therefore he may complain and quarrel if God do not yield it to him There is no reason that our will should be a law not only whereby we will walk our selves but pointing out and prescribing to God what he should do to us And yet this is the exercise of many They have an irregular lusting will and then they repine if it be not satisfied As if they were not to acknowledge a Lord over them Vers 23. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid and whom God hath hedged in 24. For my sighing before I eat and my roarings are poured out like the waters In these verses Job repeats the first reason of his Expostulation taken from his afflicted condition and doth enlarge it yet further that he may confirm the former reason that he did justly desire death so earnestly as he did And 1. He propounds the case in general ver 23. That any man may desire death and complain if it be with-held whose way is hid and hedged in or who is so over-whelmed with darkness and confusion and involved in a labyrinth of perplexities that he knows not what to make of his case nor whether to turn him and when he would turn himself to any hand to seek relief he finds God hedging him in on all hands without any hope of relief 2. He propounds his own case in particular v. 24. to instruct that he was a man so afflicted Shewing that his ordinary refreshments did not abate nor divert his sorrows but even before the face of his meat and while it was set before him his sighing and sorrow continued without intermission Yea his sorrows were so great as made him roare and that so impetuously and abundantly as a current of waters running down Not to insist on what hath been before marked That supposing all this were true of Jobs case yet he had his own imbittered spirit to blame for much of this disorder following upon his trouble And albeit the Lord had dealt so with him it was not a relevant reason why he should decline to stoop under Gods hand so long as he pleased leaving it upon God to order his dark path and submitting to digest his reâ—eshments with sorrow We may further from ver 23 learn 1. When people are in trouble it contributes to the heightning thereof that they do constantly pore upon it in all the aggravations thereof For Job is so much taken up with this subject that he returns to it again alter what he had said v. 20. 2. It is much to be adverted unto by these in trouble that self-love do not lead them to aggravate afflictions more because theirs then they would do if they were on others or then impartial observers would esteem of them Therefore both here and ver 20. he propounds the matter in Thesi and of any man whosoever thus afflicted to shew that he was not
partial to himself in this cause It is true Self-love in such a case is not easily discerned nor is Job to be assoiled even as to this yet his way of speaking insinuates that he held this to be a duty 3. It is to be expected that how clear soever men be in their light before trouble cometh yet trouble and tentation come accompanied with darkness and confusion so that they will hardly be able to judge any thing aright of their case or to know what to do For his way wherein he would walk toward an issue is hid See Lam. 3.1 2. Hence we may gather That the sad apprehensions of Saints under trouble ought to be looked upon as the conjectures of these who are groping the dark And they had need to examine well any light they get in an hour of tentation 4. Darkness confusion and perplexity are the immediate fruits of bitterness of spirit whereunto when men give way they involve themselves in a thick cloud much whereof might be prevented by meekness and patience whereby they possess their souls For upon that v. 20 that he is bitter in soul it followeth here his way is hid 5. Whatever way confusion and darkness come upon troubled Saints yet it is a very humbling exercise to be in a strait without knowing Gods mind in it or what to do for relief For this pressed Job to his impatient wishes that his way is hid This layeth a man as an object of great compassion at Christs feet 6. It is another great addition to the perplexities of Saints when as their light is darkned so their attempts to get relief are in vain and where-ever they turn them they are hemmed in with insuperable difficulties till they lose all hope of out-gate For this is a part of his grievous complaint that he is hedged in See Job 19.8 Lam 3.7 This may point out that mens troubles are never insupportable were they never so sad so long as there appeareth any hope of out-gate 7. Mens natural courage will be so far from bearing out under Gods hand that it will only contribute to heighten thâ—ir distemper and disorder when it is crushed and borne down For his complaint is that a strong stout man as the word in the Original is should have his way hid c. His courage and strength cannot shake it off but makes him repine the more 8. It is the duty and great advantage of men in trouble not to lose a sight of Gods hand in their troubles and perplexities Even albeit in stead of meekness which should be the result of that sight it should afflict them the more that their Rock should seem to sell them For Job loseth not this fight that God hath hedged him in though he fail in bâ—ing imbittered at it And albeit Job had a great hand in his own perplexities Yet God is the over-ruler and orderer even of that dispensation And this ought to be looked unto both to humble us when we see that God giveth us up to that confusion and perplexity which we sinfully choose and lets us lie under it till we see the folly of our passions and when we are humbled to encourage us considering that God who hath a holy hand in these distempers can remove them though insuperable by us and can give in due time some meat out of that eater and some blessed advantage and fruit even of our folly From ver 24. Learn 1. It concerns persons in trouble to guard welâ— that they make not a noise without cause For if it be sinful enough to be imbittered when trouble is saddest much more when they are so under very easie trouble Therefore Job to clear that he complained not without cause subjoyns to what he had said to the case in general what his case in particular was which drew on bitterness darkness and perplexity For my sighing cometh c. 2. It is the duty and commendable practice of godly men that how much soever they be weary of life Yet they dare use no unlawful shift to take it away nor neglect any mean of preserving life For while Job is complaining that his life is continued he still makes use of meat as resolving to wait Gods time and way of taking away that life which is so great a burden to him 3. When the spirits of men are broken with trouble whatever diversion lawful Recreations may sometime afford them yet they will not be always effectual Nor will Natural comforts at any time cure Spiritual exercise of mind For saith he my sighing cometh before the face of my meat He had not so much respite as â—o eat without sighing 4. A child of God may be under much perplexity and distress who yet is not able to vent it much through the abundance thereof over whelming him For he mentions his trouble as great even when he doth express it but by sighing and can do no more 5. When great distress of mind once gets an open vent it will be very impetuous and violent so long at the mind is unsubdued before God and the more violent that it bath been long restrained For from more secret sighing he proceeds to roarings lik a Lion who is rather violently over-powered then voluntarily yieldeth This is an expression usually made use of to represent the complaints of those whose great spirits have not yet learned to stoop to God nor have set about repentance Ezek. 24.23 Where in the Original it is Yee shall not mourn nor weep but roar one toward another and Prov. 5.11 the Adulterer shall roar at last as the Hebrew hath it See also Is 59.11 6. The impetuous disorders of mens spirits being once broken loose are not soon stopped in their course but they will abundantly overflow all to the weakning and exhausting of their spirits if grace prevent it not For his roarings were poured out like the waters in respect of the aboundance of them and in respect of the effects of them dissolving and pouring him out like water as Psal 22.14 7. Though Job do thus insist to aggravate his trouble that he may justifie his desire of death and complain that it is denied him Yet the argument is not sufficient to inferr that desire For neither is God to be quarelled nor pleaded with whatever he do nor was Job himself free of bringing on these distempers through his Passion And therefore he had no cause to blame God when himself had perverted his own way Prov. 19.3 Nor ought he to prescribe an out-gate of death to himself whereas he might find a nearer relief by his own patience and meekness And whatever his condition was which made his life heavy and grievous to him Yet it was great cowardise to long to be away only that he might be rid of trouble Sense of sin which cleaveth fast to us while we are in this life or a desire to be with Christ may justifie a moderate desire after death Phil. 1.23 Yea the tâ—oubles we
moment of the day Or being but short-lived like that creature which is said to live but one day See Psal 39.5 Or being cut off in a short time when God begins to deal with him Isa 38.12 Psal 90.5 6. Or his whole life and every day of it from morning to evening being but a daily dying and travelling from the womb to the grave All these do well enough sute the scope and may teach us 1. That death in it self is a destroying or breaking and braying in pieces as making havock of the poor man crushing his imagined excellencies and irreparably ruining him in his being though without prejudice to the power of God to be exerted in his future Resurrection Therefore it is said They are destroyed or broken in pieces 2. As death is terrible in it self so man lieth under so great hazard of it as may keep him low before God being a creature that is dying daily though he consider it not being uncertain what moment it may arrest him being unable to hinder the stroke of death to do its work in a short time and having but a short while of life if well considered how long soever it be forborn All these humbling considerations are imported in their being destroyed from morning to evening 2. That in regard the death of man is ordinary it is but little regarded ver 20. That they perish for ever is not to be understood here of eternal destruction for this sentence is true of all men even godly men But that men are continually dying and perishing in all times and ages and that though this be a great stroke and a perishing for ever without any hope of restitution to this life again Yet it is but little noticed or emproved Neither do they who are left behind make the use of that which they so ordinarily see nor do they who die ever return to give any proof of their proficiency by that stroke This teacheth 1. Death is in this respect a great stroke that it cuts off a man irrecoverably from all his enjoyments and from all opportunity of emproving any condition in this life So that if a man do not emprove time while he hath it and have no hope of somewhat beyond time he is in a poor condition In this respect all men at death perish for ever without hope of returning to this life 2. It is the constant course of divine Providence that as one generation is coming so another is going And that at all times death is still snatching some from there idols liberating others from their toil separating dearest friends and preaching the doctrine of Mortality to all For thus also they perish for ever in all ages and times 3. Albeit it be the duty of the sons of men to emprove every document of mortality which is laid before them in the experience of others Eccl. 7.2 Yet such is the stupidity of most that they profit nothing thereby nor are made to study the uncertainty of mans life or the vanity of many of mens projects on earth Luk. 12.19 20. For thus they perish without any regarding See Psal 49.13 14. 4. Such is the stupidity and corruption of men that even remarkable dispensations becoming ordinary are sleighted and do not affect them For albeit death be a singular stroke yet being ordinary for ever in all times there is no regarding or emproving of it As wonders will nor profit them who do not emprove the ordinary means Luk. 16.31 So the more ordinary and frequent wonders be our corrupt hearts will regard them the less 3. That by death men are stript of all their excellency which is in them ver 21 Which is not so much to be understood of the souls leaving the body as of their parting with all their external pomp and glory at death For both in sickness before death the memory judgment and other endowments of the mind do perish in some beauty and strength of body do languish in all and at death there is nothing left but a loathsome carcass and all worldly pomp and splendour is cut off from them It is here to be remembred that the Spirit of God doth not hear speak of men as to their eternal state but as to their externall condition which they enjoyed in the world And it teacheth 1. God is very bountiful to the sons of men in conferring many excellencies upon them both in their bodies minds and outward estate For there is supposed an excellency in them And albeit it be mans fault to value these too highly as their chief and only excellency yet their own true worth and Gods bounty in conferring of them ought not to be forgotten 2. God is also so kind as to continue all or many of these excellencies with men even to the grave For so is here supposed that their excellency doth not go away till then 3. Whatever forbearance the sons of men get in this life yet death will strip them of all their outward splendour and pomp For then all their excellency doth go away See Psal 49.17 Isa 14.9 10. c. 4. It is a very great fault and a gross neglect in men that this ordinary plain lesson of the vanity of outward excellencies is so little studied For this Question Doth not their excellency which is in them go away doth import that it is a clear case and yet withal that many do so walk as if they did not believe nor heed it and therefore must be posed if they do not believe and consider it 4. That they die without wisdom ver 21. or they die and there is no wisdom This may be true generally of all men that though some have profited much better in their life then others yet all may confess that they die before they be so wise as to understand as they ought what it is to live well or to emprove the examples of mortality which they have seen in their time It may also be understood only of the wicked who die without the knowledge of God and without that wisdom which floweth from right numbering of their days Psal 49.20 90.12 But it is more safe to understand it generally in this sense That they die without having any skill or wisdom how to avoid death And it teacheth however wicked men play many pranks with their wit in their lives and do nimbly extricate themselves imminent hazards though a prudent man foreseeing the storm may be able to avoid it Prov. 22.3 27.12 Yet death will triumph over all their skill and parts their wit cannot deliver them from death nor afford them any way to escape it Thus they die even without wisdom See 2 Sam. 3.33 Eccl. 2.16 CHAP. V. In this Chapter Eliphaz yet continueth his Discourse to Job consisting as was marked on Chap. 4. of a reprehension wherein he labours to convince Job of wickedness or hypocrisie and of some Exhortations to amend his life and turn to God considering the hand of
here made to such a particular case as we may hear But all those together do contain in the opinion of Eliphaz the sum of Gods gracious purpose concerning his people in all their tryals that he will deliver or hide keep them from evil make them laugh c. All which promises may be admitted in a sound sense though they contain not a perfect enumeration of all the good things which God intends unto his afflicted people We may take up both the sense and the use of those promises in these few lessons 1. As the tryals of the people of God are many and various So every one of those tryals need a Promise and Cordial from God For here a word is added to every one of them An ordinary hazard as well as a singular calamity hath a promâ—se and needs a promise a new exercise after we have essayed and gone through many even the seventh trouble after we have gone through six needs new influence and furniture The change of one tryal for another needs a promise from God And as this points out the fulness of Gods allowance who answers all our cases So it warns us in every one of those to be upon our guard lest we succumb when we least expect it Least an ordinary exercise drive us off our feet through want of faith and dependence while through faith we prove victorious in sharper tryals and least multiplicity variety or change of tryals prove a sharp tryal if in all these cases we do not eye God in the promises 2. In so far as is for the good of Gods people they may expect either that their troubles shall be prevented or they delivered from them if it be needful they be inflicted for time For those two are the main branches of this promise That of deliverance is expressed ver 19. and divers of the rest being taken in their latitude and full of extent may be so understood and that of prevention is held out in that promise ver 23. We ought to study both those mercies For our not observing of preventing mercies makes us need delivering mercies and preventing mercy ought to be studied even in the midst of trouble Lam. 3.22 3. Albeit the Lord neither prevent nor keep off troubles Yet it is a mercy we are not under the power or hand of trouble but still in Gods hand v. 20. 4. It is also a mercy that there is a deliverance in trouble ver 19. as well as from trouble when we succumb not 2 Cor. 4.8 9. 16.9 10. and when we meet with much of God under trouble to uphold our hearts Psal 31.7 5. It is a great evidence of deliverance in trouble when God keeps men from the evil of trouble that it do not touch nor hurt them nor prove deadly or to death though they be in the midst of it As is promised ver 19.20 This was miraculously performed to the three Children Dan. 3. and to Daniel himself Dan. 6. and is performed to every believer who finds all things even troubles work together for good Rom. 8.28 6. Albeit God do not hide his people from the outward dint of trouble yet they are richly made up who are hid in the secret of Gods presence that so they may get no hurt by it For so is that promise ver 21. expounded Psal 31.20 7. Though troubles do their worst yet they are conquerours who are delivered from the slavish fear of trouble ver 21 See Dan. 3.16 17. 8. God is sometime pleased so far to support his people in the midst of trouble as not only to deliver them from fear but to make them triumph and glory over them For it is here promised they shall laugh Not that God allows stupidity or unseasonable carnal mirth But they laugh and rejoyce in trouble 1. As a mean of doing them much good Rom. 5.3 4. 1 Pet. 4.14 2. As affording them many opportunities to act for God and to give proof of the grace of God in them of their love faith self-denial c. and in this they rejoyce as the valiant souldier rejoyceth and touzeth up his spirits in a day of battel so also the couragious horse Job 40.19 20 c. 3. As being a fore-runner of much good to follow if trouble be well improved Heb. 12.11 Luk. 21.26 28. 4. As being in their better part and in their happiness above the reach of trouble Rom. 35.36 c. 2 Cor. 4.16 17. Doct. 9. It doth commend the great kindness of God to hâ—s people that when their tryals are greatest and doubled upon them then he communicates most of his refreshments and supporting grace unto them For this promise that he shall laugh is more particularly applyed to the time when the sad strokes of Destruction and Famine and those both at once are imminent or incumbent Hence Saints do not only rejoyce but even glory in pressing tribulations Rom. 5.3 10. It is also a special kindness that in performing those promises there is a redemption of the godly ver 20. Either he delivers them by a strong hand as redemption is taken Isa 52.3 Or if he do not that he puts a difference betwixt them and the wicked though they be in one and the same trouble as the word redemption imports Exod. 8.22 23. in the Original And above all whatever he do for them it is a fruit of their redemption by the bloud of the Son of God And this last 11. is further cleared from that Promise that they shall be in league with the Stones of the Field Or that Covenant which God hath made with them in Christ shall be forth coming to them in less and more even to secure them against the Stones and Beasts See Hos 2.18 19 20. Matth. 6.33 As no mercy is sweet to a right discerner if it flow not from special love much less if it be sent in anger So it is the advantage of the godly that their common mercies come to them by purchase and as a reward promised in the Covenant of Grace As all the Creatures are Enemies to faln Man so being reconciled all things become his so far as may do him good and so far as they may not prejudge his true happiness Rom. 8.28 1 Cor. 3.21 22 23. And their confederate God and Father doth concern himself in all their affairs both less and more As all those particulars are very refreshful to the godly So this may crown all That however they are put to acquiesce in one or more of these Promises here mentioned according as God is pleased to dispense that he may humble and exercise and yet support them Yet in the issue they will see a blessed end of all their troubles Psal 34.19 and get their hand beyond all their sorrows Thus died old Jacob Gen. 48.16 and David 1 King 1.29 Vers 24. And thou shalt know that thy Tabernacle shall be in peace and thou shalt visit thy habitation and shalt not sin 25. Thou shalt
know also that thy seed shall be great and thine off spring as the grass of the earth 26. Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season The other Head of Encouragement is That he shall not only have deliverance from trouble but restitution to his former condition instanced in these particulars 1. A peaceable Habitation ver 24. 2. That he shall visit his Habitation and not sin ver 24. whereby I do not only understand that in going about his affairs he shall not err as the word signifieth and is rendred Judg. 20.16 but shall succeed in his enterprises As godliness hath the promise c. even of a gift of good thrift Psal 112.5 But chiefly this is the meaning That he shall be taught a better and more sinless way of going about his affairs 3. That he shall have a great and numerous issue ver 25. 4. And fulness of days He should not be cut off as he now apprehended but should continue to old age and come ripe to his grave as ripe Corn is brought to the Barn ver 26. These Promises relating to things temporal must be understood with the usual Scripture cautions which assure us that all these things are put in the Believers Charter but the dispensing thereof left in the hand of their wise and tender Father With this caution we may from this purpose Learn 1. Godly men when in a right frame are taught to look upon their most prosperous condition as transitory and not their true rest For he calls Jobs house but a Tabernacle not so much because he dwelt in a Tent for his Children had Houses Chap. 1.13 18 19. and himself Chap. 42.11 as because the godly accounted so of their fairest houses 2. To a truly godly man the charge of a family is of great concernment so that the peace of it is a promise and great encouragement to him As this promise to Job imports 3. As Prosperity and Family-peace and concord therewith are a great blessing So Piety hath the promise thereof which is still fulfilled in so far as godly families may have true peace whatever befal them So much may safely be gathered from this promise Thy Tabernacle shall be in peace 4. It is no small mercy when the truth of a Promise is experimentally confirmed to us and much more when we are made to discern that it is so and made to acquiesce and be satisfied therewith So much is imported in this Thou shalt know that thy Tabernacle shall be in peace Thou shalt discern the accomplishment of this promise and be refreshed therewith So also ver 25. To discern a mercy is a new mercy in the bosome of it 1 Cor. 2.12 without which we may starve beside our food 5. Such as expect Gods blessing upon their family and affairs ought to wait on him in the diligent use of means about them For Thou shalt visit thine Habitation or go about thine affairs 6. So carnal are our hearts and so entangling are wordly affairs though lawful that without Gods special leading and assistance we cannot avoid much guilt in them For it needs a Promise not to sin when we visit our habitation 7. A truly godly man is so tender as he doth not so much mind success in his imployments as grace to keep the Conscience undefiled and in true peace And the obtaining of this will encourage him whatever his success be For this Promise is an encouragement to the godly man Thou shalt visit thy Habitation and he saith not thou shalt prosper but not sin 8. None are in a neerer capacity to go about their imployments in an holy spirituall and sober manner then those who have been bred in the School of Afflictions and to whom they have been blessed and who so attain this have an evidence that they have profited by their tryals For this Promise is made to Job upon supposition that Job will not despise the chastening of the Almighty ver 17. 9. Albeit neither all the godly nor only they have the gift of posterity but some of them will need other promises to make up that want Isa 56.4 5. Yet Children in themselves are a blessing and the more of them the greater blessing Psal 127.3 4 5. and when they are given to the godly they are the reward of Piety Psal 128.1 2 3 4. and accordingly should be improved as blessings Therefore is a promise made concerning those Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great and thy off-spring as the grass of the Earth 10. Whatever hazards we be exposed to in the world yet our times are in Gods hand to lengthen or shorten them as he pleaseth Therefore God undertakes to determine when man shall come to the grave Psal 31.15 11. Albeit as death is certain so it matters not much how the godly be sent away and liberate from their toil and warfare yet in it self it is a mercy to die a peaceable death For it is a Promise Thou shalt come to thy grave which imports not only that he should get a grave which is denied to many in times of calamity Psal 79.2 But that he should get his grave and die at home And it is indeed a crowning mercy when after the former mercies a peaceable and sweet close of all is granted 12. Albeit the godly lose nothing but gain much when by dying soon they are sent the sooner to Heaven yet as it is terrible to have our days shortened for sin Psal 55.23 so long life is in it self a blessing and is given to the godly for a blessing that they may meet with many proofs of Gods love may do much service to him in their generation and the many times that pass over them may sow liberally here that they may reap liberally the reward of free-grace hereafter and may get leave to prepare for their dissolution and the pins of their Tabernacle be taken down insensibly and at leisure For it is also a Promise Thou shalt come to thy Grave in a full age 13. Albeit all the godly are not continued to old age in the world yet they are blessed with satisfaction in their days and with ripeness and readiness to die anger being taken away doubts cleared Gods salvation seen Luk. 2.29 30. and it may be also satisfaction given in some particulars which they longed to see before their death As Gen. 48.30 1 King 1.48 For this being the chief thing in the Promise to die in a full age like as a shock of Corn cometh in in his season the promise is performed to every Saint who is ripe for death let him die never so young All these Promises as they intimate Gods condescendence to notice every particular concernment of his people and how easie it is for him to restore them if he please So they ought to perswade us to draw neer and keep neer God that so we may be assured that the
dispositions sutable to their condition whatever it be Vers 8. O that I might have my request and that God would grant me the thing that I long for 9 Even that it would please God to destroy me that he would let loose his hand and cut me off Followeth to ver 14. Jobs desire of death which he laboureth to press and justifie by divers Arguments He bringeth it in upon the back of the former debate thus That though they would not give him leave to complain or desire death yet he seeing no comfort within time nor hope beside would take leave His desire is propounded ver 9. That God who is Soveraign Lord of life would be pleased to destroy him and would not measure out affliction by piece-meal and with a bound up hand but would let loose his hand and make an end of him which he might easily do any death so it were speedy being better as he thought then his present condition This sute he ushers in and presseth from the ardency of his desire ver 8. He had desired it before Chap. 3. and now being the worse of their essays to cure him and of more hopeless of any comfortable issue in this life his longing after death is increased This desire hath been spoken to in part Chap. 3.20 It argues great presumption in limiting of God and doating on a remedy of his own prescribing as if it only could serve his turn And albeit he had the testimony of a good Conscience so that he needed not fear death yet many desires had been more sutable then that he should venture on any death from Gods hand and that as it might seem in justice and when he is already lying under so much of that kind It teacheth 1. God is Lord of our life who can take it away when where and by what means he will For so much doth Job's desire import that he can destroy and cut off at his pleasure 2. An afflicted mind is a great strait and pressure so that many sharp dispensations would be a deliverance if they made men rid of it For Job's pressure of mind is such that it makes him account a violent death a deliverance They who enjoy peace and tranquility of mind in sad times have an easie part of it And men would beware to make a breach upon their inward peace by shifting outward trouble See Matth. 10.28 Many by sinful shifting of trouble have been brought to that extremity that many deaths would have been easier 3. A tentation once fixed in a broken spirit cannot easily be pulled out again For Job cannot be driven from this desire on which he hath once fixed but he presseth it over and over again Men had need to beware of the first rise of such distempers and to crush them in the bud 4. Albeit a Child of God may be pestered and haunted with many sinful passions and desires in his trouble yet it is his mercy to be kept from sinful actings in prosecution of those desires For in the midst of this heat of desire Job's honesty appears in that he will not help God to take away his life how much soever he desire death but will wait on him if he may be pleased to grant his desire in his own way Some sparks of honesty may appear even in the greatest weakness of Saints As to his ardency and fervour in pressing his desire it hath been spoken to Chap. 3.21 22. and that men in their distempers are very earnest that God would do what they desire though yet it were oft-times a sad judgment if God should grant it seeing they may in that case be apt to desire that most which is most prejudicial to them Yea our ardent desires after any outward lot are oft times too great an evidence that we are wrong To these add 1. Job's practice holds forth a right pattern though in a wrong instance of pursuing our lawful desires By praying and requesting for it and a longing expectation backing the Prayer and so renewing the sute often and walking under the delay as they who are afflicted and affected thereby Psal 88.11 12 13. This being Job's practice in so unwarrantable a desire it may give a check to our sluggishness in more honest desires 2. When men give way to sinful tentations they may in Gods holy Providence meet with many occasions to entertain them As Job here longing after death his Friends disappointing of him adds fuel to the fire and makes it more vehement as thinking he was hereby confirmed in the equity of his desires Thus tempters of God fall in snares Mal. 3.15 and hearkners also to false Prophets Deut. 13.1 2 3. This may terrifie men who enter upon a way without a rule and warrant that they may meet with such snares and every confirmation they think they meet with in their way may humble them if they consider that God thereby gives them up to strong delusions Vers 10. Then should I yet have comfort yea I would harden my self in sorrow let him not spare for I have not concealed the words of the holy One The first Argument whereby he labours to justifie this desire is taken from the comfort he expected having the testimony of a good Conscience He professeth that notwithstanding all that had befaln him or could be in a violent death he should yet have comfort if it were a coming or already come And though it might be apprehended that he would repent and cool of that courage when it came to the push He professeth he would harden himself in sorrow he would harden and confirm his heart against that way of death or any sorrow attending it yea or any sorrow in the mean time provided that death were near and the sorrow hastning it forward And for a proof of this his courage and resolution he renews his request and desires that God will not spare Not that he dares desire to be dealt with in justice but it imports only his desire not to be spared as to cutting of him off but the sharper usage the better so it made an end of him And the ground of all this courage was that he had not concealed the words of the holy One he had been a sincere Professour of Gods Truth and had spoken truth in this particular that he was an upright man Or he had not put out the light of Gods Truth in his mind nor cancelled the Seal of his Spirit in his heart by sin Rom. 1.18 and had held forth the Truth of God in his Profession and Practice Psal 40.10 Phil. 2.15 16. And all this he did because God is the Holy One not to be dallied with and who cannot approve of sin By all which he clears that his desire of death was not a desperate wish but grounded upon the testimony of a good Conscience and his hope to be approved when he should come to be judged by God and not by men In this Discourse it flowed indeed from Jobs
or stones that he may need and get many proofs of God and may be afraid to make the strong God his party 2. Mans time is also so short and uncertain as he cannot be able to effectuate and compass great things especially in his declining days and after he is broken with troubles For Job seeth nothing in his end or to be expected now in the latter part of his dayes why he should desire to prolong them See Luke 12.19 20. Isai 2.22 Psal 49.11 12. 146.3.4 3. It is a very sweet disposition to comply with what we conceive to be Gods will by stooping to it Jer. 10.19 As here Job professeth to desire death because he judgeth by his own weakness under trouble that God is calling him to it Beside those General Truths here insinuated Job's mistakes may afford us further instruction in these particulars 1. God may give his people many blessed disappointments of those sad things which they certainly expect For Job expected death considering his strength and yet he lived long after He never expected restitution and yet his former prosperity was restored with advantage See Isa 51.12 13 Lam. 3.18 22. Jon. 2.4 Ezek. 37.11 12. 2 Cor. 6.9 2. Saints do reckon wrong when they reckon only by their inherent strength As Job here did For God can support them to bear much more then their strength can undertake 1 Cor. 10.13 Phil. 4.13 Their weakness may prove strength Heb. 11.34 2 Cor. 12.10 and stronger then the vigour of others Isa 40.29 30 31. He can bring them out of a furnace without a singe of their garment Dan. 3.27 and from among Lions without a scratch Dan. 6.23 3. While Job undervalues his end or any thing to be expected in it as not worth the waiting for Albeit he do not speak of spiritual advantages in order to the Glory of God the Edification of the Church in all Ages and his own profit in the School of Affliction which are of so great excellency and worth that his troubles were not to be compared with his advantages as is said to the same purpose Rom. 8.18 Yet even in reference to those advantages of Wealth Honour Children c. his reasoning is faulty For even to be at work under trouble is beautiful in its season those outward mercies given as visible proofs of love after trouble are singularly sweet were it even but for a short time and though he should not continue long to enjoy them as he apprehended All which may teach us how unfit judges we many times are of what is best for us and how gracious the Lord is who asks not our consent to do that which will be for our good Vers 13. Is not my help in me and is wisdom driven quite from me This ver contains his third Argument wherein also he appeals to their judgment In explicating whereof I shall not insist on the various tortured readings of the words but shall adhere to our Translation and take help and wisdom for the same thing wisdom being a notable help to find out an expedient for relief when we are perplexed and in straits and so a special gift of God especially when it is sanctified The force of the Argument runs thus as if Job had said However I be otherwise afflicted yet I am not so deprived of judgment but that I have better skill to judge of mine own condition how it is with me and what is best for me then you have Therefore I will not renounce my own light and give up my self blind-fold to your conduct and guiding But as I know I am innocent so I who can best judge in this case see nothing better for me then present death This Argument doth contain those truths 1. God doth not take away all his mercies together from his people but when they are deprived of some others are left for their incouragment As here Job marks somewhat that was not dâ—iven quite from him See Lam. 3 18 19.22 2. It is the duty of men to be best acquainted with their own condition As here his argument supposeth See Prov. 20.27 27.21 3. It is a choice and singular mercy under overwhelming pressures to be able truly to discern our case and to know our duty and what is good for us For in this case Wisdom is substantial wisdom as the word is and a singular help They who rightly know their case and duty are not much to be pitied See 2 Chron. 20.12 4. Men ought not rashly to quit their own light at the perswasion of any other As Job here denieth to do and the doing whereof was so severely punished in that Prophet who came from Judah 1 King 13.21 22 24 Yet these Truths and especially the last admit of these cautions here 1. Men in cleaving to their light would take heed that wilfulness be not cloaked under a pretence of wisdom or light For will may seek shelter under the wings of conscience and light whereof Job was guilty in part 2. Albeit wisdom be not alwayes quite driven from us by trouble Yet it would be remembered that trouble may much confound and perplex the best judgments 2 Chro. 12.20 So that others may discern our case and duty better then our selves And thus was it with Job though not in the stated quarrel betwixt him and his Friends yet in this desire of death 3. Overtures propounded under tentation such as this desire of Job was ought to be narrowly examined ere they be assented unto For tentations light is ordinarily wild-fire 4. Men ought to guard lest conceit cause them to magnifie themselves and undervalue all others See Prov. 26.12 In which regard especially when men are under tentation sobriety is very necessary Phil. 2.3 So was David in his trouble 2 Sam. 18.3 4. And herein also Job's passion made him somewhat exceed 5. Men ought also to guard lest their interests and affections lead and beget their light As Jobs affection and desire after death blinded his judgment And that they do not raise and harbour prejudices against others as Ahab did against Micaiah 1 King 22.8 that so they may more confidently sleight their judgment Thus dealt wicked men with Prophets of old Jer. 5.12 13. Vers 14. To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend but he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty Job having thus endeavoured to justifie his complaints and desire of death he proceeds in the third part of the Chap. sharply to reprove his Friends who instead of comforting him had bitterly censured him and his complaints and so had disappointed him of that kindness he expected from them This challenge he sometime directs against Eliphaz ver 14. who had already spoken and sometime against all his Friends ver 15. who concurred with him in opinion as appears from Chap 5.27 In this verse he layeth cruel inhumanity to the charge of Eliphaz who had added so much to his affliction And 1. He propounds what was the
things may concurr to corrupt the senses of men in particular exigents Prosperity may blunt their tenderness and bribe their light to allow them ease Desertion as befel David in the matter of Bathsheba and Hezekiah in the matter of the Ambassadours of the King of Babylon may draw forth proofs of weakness and good men may miscarry under it especially when they are not sensible that they are deserted but the refreshments of prosperity do supply the the room of spiritual life And troubles do readily produce a feverish distemper of senses especially when false Christs appears in time of trouble Matth. 24 22 23 24. This may teach us to walk in a continual jealousie of our selves and not to lean to our own understanding Prov. 3.5 CHAP. VII Job having in the preceeding Chapter excused his own complaints renewed his desire of Death and sharply rebuked his Friends for their inhumane cruelty and for their being deficient in that duty he might have expected from them in his need and withal having exhorted them that laying aside prejudices they would take a second look of his condition He now in this Chapter for their further Information falls on a new Discourse concerning his case wherein he labours to justifie his desire of death desires pity and commiseration and complains he can find it at no hand So in this Chapter 1. He studies to justifie his desire of death For seeing mans life was not perpetual but had a prefixed period ver 1. and it being lawful for all oppressed creatures to seek a lawful and attainable out-gate ver 2. Why might not he seek that lawful out-gate of death who was afflicted beyond others ver 3 4. and so neer unto death that he expected not ease but by it ver 5 6. 2. He pleads for pity in regard of his frailty and his miserable and hopeless condition ver 7 8 9 10. 3. He complains sadly of Gods dealing toward him and having resolved to ease himself that way ver 11. regrets that his trouble was greater then he needed to tame him ver 12. that it was uncessant ver 13 14. and put him to hard shifts ver 15 16. And that God needed not deal so severely with him either for tryal ver 17 18 19. or for punishment of his sin ver 20 21. Vers 1. Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth are not his days also like the days of an hireling IN this Discourse concerning Job's desire of death I need not debate whether the discourse be directed to God to move him to grant him that desired out-gate or to his Friends to convince them of their errour in the matter as he judged it For both may be intended in the Discourse as spoken in their audience to God His conclusion or particular desire of death is no further expressed here then in that general Proposition v. 2. and as it may be gathered from the Arguments and the account he gives of the causes pressing him to seek after it Only it is more expressly afterward poured out in the complaint His Arguments justifying this desire may be taken up in that one sum set down in the Analysis of the Chapter But for more clear unfolding of the Text I shall take up three Arguments in it Whereof the first in this verse is taken from the condition of mans life which is not to be perpetual but limited by God to such a period at which it shall end as a Souldier hath a set time of his warfare and watching and an hireling of working And therefore he thinks he may safely desire that end of his task and service on which all men ought to be resolving This argument he holds forth in a general Proposition and appeals to God or his Friends Consciences to which soever of them we take the speech to be directed if this were not a truth That there is an appointed time for man upon earth it being prefixed by God and mans frailty as his name here in the Original imports holding out that he cannot be perpetual within time The word rendered an appointed time signifieth also a warfare which is very opposite to the purpose in hand as not only pointing at the condition of mans life being a perpetual toil and a condition of many tentations and hazards such as a souldier is exposed to in wars See Chap. 10.17 But serving also illustrate the matter of prefixing a period to mans life man being like a Souldier who hath a prefixed age for his coming on service and for going off as Miles emeritus Or a certain time for which he is conduced for such a service in war and afterward disbanded and dismissed Or a prefixed time for standing on his Watch as Centinel after which he is relieved And to this purpose also serveth that other similitude of an hirelings days both pointing at their hard service and toil and the prefixed time for which they are hired This General Proposition holds forth these truths 1. The time of our life is prefixed to us by God There is an appointed time to man upon earth See Job 14.5 Which as it gives us no latitude for unwarrantable hazarding of our life for we ought to live according to his appointment who hath appointed our time So it may teach us not to live as those who are Masters of their own time Isa 56.12 Luk. 12.19 20. To be willing to die when God declares we shall live no longer for many are so far from Job's temper here that they come not the length of duty in this and not to fear them who threaten our life for his sake for they will not get our life till his time come Psal 31 13 14 15. 2. Mans life will end his glass will run and his course draw at last to a period For there is but an appointed time for man upon earth Let men think to make themselves never so perpetual yet they cannot avoid death Psal 49.6 c. Which men ought seriously to think upon Gal. 11.9 and not to be excessively eager in seeking great things seeing they must die and leave them all 3. Our life till we come to the period of it is like unto a warfare wherein as good Souldiers we are not to serve or please our selves 2 Tim. 2.4 nor to dispute our Generals Orders and should resolve to be in perpetual motion and travail and watching to â—un many hazards and look for no issue but either absolute victory or death or to be led captives by Satan And it is also like the dayes of an hireling who is bound to many hard services and much toil So much doth the Text hold forth and they who look otherwise on their life will be deceived Yet in all this we have this encouragement That we are doing our Captain and Master service that we are working our own work as well as his for a Souldier earns pay and an hireling wages by his work and that the worst of it will
have an end As for the Inference that Job would draw from this Proposition That because mans life hath a prefixed period therefore he might peremptorily desire to attain this end of his toil It is faulty in divers respects the observing whereof may give light in the rest of his Discourse And 1. The condition of our life before God is not in all respects like the condition of a Souldier or hireling For our task and service is just debt as theirs is not always it is not needed by God as men need the assistance of Souldiers and Servants we have no skill of our selves to do our work as they have nor do we know our term-day as they do and therefore cannot prescribe it Unless we take him up to be God and our selves but creatures we will never steer a steady course especially under trouble 2. It is ill reasoning to say that because God hath determined our time therefore we should fix the end of it when we will For God hath kept up that from us that we may be ready either to die or honour him in the World as he shall please to order 3. Because there is an end of our toil it is ill argued that when toil cometh we should seek presently to be at the end of it Whereas we should rather bear it couragiously remembering the end of the Lord and that it will not be perpetual Jam. 5.11 4. It was unseasonable for Job to wish so eagerly for the end of his warfare and toil when such a dark cloud was betwixt God and him Saints have acknowledged â—t a mercy that death was kept off in such a condition Lam. 3.22 Psal 27 13. But this was an evidence of his great distress and of his distemper of mind which corrupted his sense and discerning Vers 2. As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work 3 So am I made to possess months of vanity and wearisome nights are appointed me 4. When I lie down I say When shall I arise and the night be gone and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day The second Argument which presseth the former and cleareth it is taken from that common liberty allowed to all creatures in their strait to press and long for a possible and lawful out-gate The sum of it is as if Job had said If hirelings being weary do long after refreshment and the end of their task when they shall receive their wages So may I under my troubles long after death which is the appointed end of my toil and that so much tâ— rather as my task is sorer then any of theirs In this Argument Consider First The Proposition of the Argument in a comparison ver 2. That as a wearied servant oâ— hireling longeth after some cool shadow or the shadow of the night wherein he may rest and longeth â—oâ— the time wherein he may receive his wages For to work as it is in the Original is taken not â—o much oâ— the end of work as for the reward of it Psal 10â— 20. Jer. 22.13 So mighâ— he long for death whâ—â—e he expected to find the only true eâ—se of his grievances and reward of his integrity In this reasoning beside the former mistakes we may further add 1. That bâ—â—ng an hireling to so great and so good a Master and so uncertain of the length of his day he ought so to long for the close oâ— it as yet he prescribed not to God 2. It was his fault to look on death as the only out-gate and shadow from this â—oil â—â—â—peâ—â—ing that sufficient grace and proofs of love in the midst of trouble might have relâ—â—sheâ— him 3. It was also his fault to eye so much his own ease and the reward of his integrity and that he 〈…〉 rather condescend to what might honour God and edifie others albeit it were greivous to himself as was Paul's practice Phil. 1.22 25. Every one of those mistakes and faults may afford us Instruction But further these Lessons may be observâ—d in it 1. It pleaseth God to let some of Adam's posterity endure much toil in earning their bread that they may be sensible of sin and that others may learn thankfulness who have an easier lot though they be in the same guilt and of the same lump For so is held out in the instance of those wearied servants and hirelings Yea it is to be marked that though many are not put to those hard pinches yet even the greatest of men want not their own toil 2. It is ordinary for men not to find rest in their present condition but they are driven still to look after somewhat they want before them For so are servants and hirelings put to desire and look for somewhat they want And this holds not only true of men in great misery but generally of all men while they are within time Contentment with every estate is a choice lesson Phil. 4.11 Heb. 13.5 and would be more easily attained if men remembered they are within time where complete satisfaction is not to be expected and if they were studying to get the right use of every lot as it cometh 3. The many tossings and vexations wherewith the godly are essayed within time may allow them to look toward death with submission to the will of God as a sweet issue and to make it welcom when it cometh For this comparison imports that there is a lawful desire of death as the servant desires the shadow See 2 Cor. 5.4 Rom 8.23 A spiritual mind finds many calls thither though with submission and therefore do Saints find so many worms in their goâ—â—ds Only it should be our care that a desire to be freed from sin and a body of death do chiefly prevail with us to look to that issue 4. Death will never be a shadow to a man from his trouble who hath not so walked as he may expect a reward of his integrity then also For so much also doth the similitude import As the hireling looks both for the shadow and reward of his work so they whoÌ„ look comfortably on death must see both these in it And therefore a desperate desire of death in wicked men is abominable Secondly we have to consider the amplification and further pressing of this Argument from his particular case ver 3 4. Where in stead of inferring from that Proposition ver 2. that he might long for death as servants do for the shadow or more earnestly long for that issue then they do for their ease He only sheweth that he had greater cause so to long then they had being more hardly put to it And to prove this he holds out the dissimilitude betwixt his case and an hirelings in two 1. The hirelings task is ordinarily for a day but this was much longer even whole Moneths of vanity or eminently vain for any fruit of ease or comfort otherwise in respect of perfection all
Job's mistake in his reasoning teach us It was his mistake to conclude that he would shortly die were the probabilities never so pregnant since God by his soveraign Providence might interpose as afterward he did Secondly He proves it from a general Proposition of his case ver 6. which may relate especially to the days of his former prosperity not secluding the days of his whole life which were for most part spent in prosperity which were more swiftly passed away then the Weavers shuttle crosseth the breadth of the Web and were spent without hope of recovery And therefore there was nothing for him but death and the fair encouragements they held out to invite him to repentance were to no purpose And so however he complained that days of trouble were long ver 3 4. yet here he complains that his days of prosperity were soon over From this regret we may Learn 1. As the days of our life are short and being over are irrecoverable so men are ready out of partiality and self-love to think that good days end too soon and ill-days though indeed short of them last too long As Job here regrets the speedy spending of his former days while he looks on a short while of trouble as intolerably long 2. Our days of greatest prosperity or our longest life in the world will when it is over seem but short and nothing as here Job reckons See Isa 38.12 Psal 90.9 Which may discover the emptiness of time and of the enjoyments thereof however we delude our selves therewith 3. As hope is a man's last refuge in trouble as here Job when his days are spent looks next if any hope remain So sense will soon lose hopes when there is no cause why it should do so For so doth Job's sense conclude here that his days were spent without hope whereas there was hope in his end And here men ought to guard that they become not so effeminate and delicate through prosperity as a blast of trouble will faint their spirits and ruine their hopes Vers 7. O remember that my life is wind mine eye shall no more see good 8. The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more thine eyes are upon me and I am not 9. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more 10. He shall return no more to his house neither shall his place know him any more The second part of the Chapter may be taken up as an Exhortation to his Friends and particularly to Eliphaz who spake last in name of all the rest for the word is in the singular â—â—mber That considering his case that it was irrecoverable ver 7 8 and he might see it was so ver 8. and that he was shortly to be cut off from all the comforts of time ver 9 10 they would deal more tenderly with him and not crush him or drive him from his confidence in God or feed him with false hopes upon condition of his repentance which he never expected to see But considering that the following complainâ— is directed to God we may rather take this also as a desire directed to God wherein he pleads for pity in regard of his sad case and apprehending present death in its ugly shape and reflecting upon God's dealing with him he is forced to cry unto God that he would pity him and moderate the extremity of his afflictions as David also pleads Psal 39.13 In it we may consider First His case which he layeth out before God in great variety of expressions 1. That his life is wind v. 7 His former prosperity being passed away like a puffe of wind and his life now hanging by a thread of breath ready to pass away and never to return See Psal 78.39 Jam 4.14 2. That his eye shall see no more good ver 7. and the eye of him that hath seen him shall see him no more ver 8. That is He should never enjoy his former prosperity nor others see him repossessed of it or being dead he should be deprived of all worldly comforts and of any opportunity of conversing with his former acquaintance 3. That Gods eye being upon him he is not v. 8. That is being once dead if God should relent and desire to see him and do him good he should not find him of which ver 21. or rather That God thus fastening his eye upon him in anger would look him to nothing 4. He illustrates the state of the dead wherein he expected shortly to share by a similitude ver 9 10. That as a cloud being spent with pouring out of rain evanisheth and doth not return again to wit the same cloud in number otherwise clouds the same in kind do return Eccl. 12.2 so man being once spent by trouble and sent to the grave can no more return or have to do with his house and station then if they had never known one another In all which Discourse we would not understand Job as if he were denying the Resurrection of the body or the good things of heaven after death For in those things he is very clear Chap. 19.25 26 27. But he is only asserting that in ordinary there is no returning after death to this life to enjoy the good things of time as Isa 38.11 Secondly We are to consider his sute in reference to this his case which is comprehended in one earnest desire that God in afflicting him would remember as it is ver 7. this his frailty and how soon he would be shaken out of time By Gods remembring which is spoken of him after the manner of men we are to understand his pondering and weighing of his condition and his strength to bear it as Psal 78.39 and his giving proof of his affection by helping pitying and relenting toward him as he found his need require as the desires of afflicted Saints are elsewhere summarily comprehended in this one word Psal 74.2 From this whole purpose thus explained we may Learn 1. The true means of getting ease in troubles and grievances is neither our reasoning with men or with our selves but our laying out of our case before God As is Job's practice here Without this our counsels in our own hearts will not diminish our sorrow Psal 13.2 See also Gen. 25.22 2. Trouble when sanctified contributes not a little to make common truths be well studied and sensibly pondered For so doth Job in his trouble speak so sensibly of the frailty of his life and his estate in death Whereas want of exercise makes nauseating and unfruitful hearers even of the most precious truths 3. The things of time are indeed good things as Job here call's them See also Luk. 16.25 They supply many of mans defects and prevent many of his anxieties They are evidences of the goodness of God Matth. 5.44 45. especially to those who are themselves pure and to whom the use of those things is sanctified by the Word and
which case breathing times would be sweet But to have new troubles added to the former when they are expecting ease from them For Job expecting ease in his Bed and Couch hath affrighting dreams and terrifying visions super-added to his former sorrows This may affright men from being unruly under their present Rods lest they get sharper rods added to them 8. The Lord may permit his people to add to their own trouble by promising themselves ease that so their disappointments may heighten their afflictions For Job's Dreams and Visions are so much the more bitter as he said my Bed shall comfort me my Couch shall ease my complaint Who so study sobriety in their expectations under trouble do take away much fuel from the flame of their own bitterness and discontentments Vers 15. So that my soul chooseth strangling and death rather then my life 16. I loath it I would not live alway let me alone for my days are vanity The third Argument whereby he pleads against his being so afflicted is taken from the hard shifts to which his trouble did drive him These are recorded here as the result of his restlesness of which he had complained ver 13.14 That he was so incessantly tossed sleeping and waking that he turned desperate So that were the matter in his option he had rather be strangled and die a violent and ignominious death yea his soul choosed and desired it very earnestly rather then thus to live without any intermission of pain torture and vexation And he had rather be dead then have his bones as it is in the Original which only were now left him the flesh being consumed away Job 16.8 and to which also the pain had reached ver 15. And although some may so inordinately love life as they would have an eternity of it yet he loathed his life and would not live alway ver 16 The meaning whereof is not barely this that he declined to continue always and eternally in this life For to dâ—sire that were to wish what is impossible and to decline it would speak little of his haste to be gone But that he loathed to live any longer at all A moment of longer continuance being an eternity to him Oâ— the meaning is as the words will also read That he was so full and weary of his life that it should never be at any time that he should desire to live nothing he could ever meet with in time should make him enamoured of life This is indeed a fit of very great despair yet so bridled as he dare not hasten death unto himself though he would gladly be at it as not casting off hopes of the life to come And it teacheth 1. Much oppression will make wise men mad and constant continued troubles and disappointments of all expectations of case may drive serious and sober men to hard shifts For Job gives this as the result of his former restless condition So that my soul chooseth strangling c. A day of tentation will discover strange things and involve men in sad perplexities 2. Even the breasts of the most godly and the spirits of strong Believers have seeds of despair in them which may break forth under tryal as here we see in Job Which may teach the godly to be humble in their walking that they be not led into tentation And may affright the stout-hearted who when their Consciences are wakened may meet with this or worse 3. However there be an inclination in corrupt men who have their portion in this life to have an eternity of time and to live always in it Yet God when he pleaseth can make their being in the world their greatest burden For so it was with Job I choose strangling and death rather then my life I loath it I would not live alway 4. It is Gods way with his people not to over-charge them with exercise but when they are over-driven he will moderate his dealing For Job's scope in laying before God this his desperate fit is to plead that since he was so over-charged therefore God may be pleased to pity and not deal so severely with him See Isa 57.16 Psal 99.4 Job 37.23 24. Only we would take heed that by our unbelief misconstruction impatience c. we do not make our lot insupportable when God hath not made it so For that will be no argument to plead for pity till first we be humbled for it as our weakness Psal 77.8 9 10. 5. The Lord so orders the tentations and conflicts of his people as even when they are in the height of their fits his grace doth one way or other appear in them For when Job would most gladly be at death yet he dare not cut off himself So my God which is the language of faith is the doubters designation of God in the height of his diffidence and complaints Psal 22.1 Isa 49.14 Beside the sin of despair in this discourse these failings may further be marked which ought not to be justified and may be drawn to our use 1. That by expecting ease as is marked on ver 13 14. and meeting with disappointment his heart swells at his condition and so he falls in the snare Humility and sobriety would prevent much vexation and toil to us and cut off many tentations 2. That he speaks his tentation so broadly and without any reluctancy as appears from his doubled and fervent expressions as his confirmed judgment It is too much that a rash word of diffidence and despondency escape us although faith and repentance presently follow after to recal and correct it But it is more gross when he spake and abide by it as if we had reason for it See Jonah 4.8 9. 3. That he contemns his life and any moderation in his affliction calling all that was left him his BONES when yet God in whom we live and move and have our being had great glory in preserving such an exhausted man amidst so many pressures and perplexities Much of Gods glory may shine in many of our lots wherewith notwithstanding our peevish hearts are not satisfied 4. That he was so peremptory in his own opinion that death was his only desirable issue as if he were wiser then God who had carved out another lot for him It is our duty to believe That God hath innumerable issues for his people in his hand That he can make any thing he pleaseth an issue to them and That issues prescribed by our selves particularly that of death when we are in perplexity are ordinarily none of the best 5. That he measures all things by his present humour as if because he now loathed life therefore he would never hereafter in any case desire it Little do Saints know what changes God may work as in other things so in their dispositions and inclinations and cause them see and acknowledge mercy where they could find nothing but bitterness Upon this his desperate resolution and choice he infers a sute ver 16. That seeing
and in such a way 4. No rod is so sad to a Child of God as a dumb rod when he can know nothing of the cause end or use of it that he might walk accordingly and justifie God For this makes God seeming to condemn Job â—ad unto him when he knew not wherefore he contended with him 5. Mens afflictions may be so involved and intricate through their own mistakes or otherwise that even Saints when they are under trouble may feel the stroke but see no more till God teach them who when he hath inflicted a stroke must give light to discern his mind in it and grace to make use of it For when Job is sadly afflicted he is yet left in the dark till God shew him wherefore he contended with him Where his ignorance did not slow so much from his present desertion and confusion as from this false Principle that God was condemning him as a wicked man In which case it was no wonder if he could see no cause for that having the testimony of a good Conscience However Saints in trouble may expect to have other perplexities beside this and that when they have taken up the nature of their trouble aright only as a tryal or chastisement they may yet be kept in the dark about the particular cause of it or the special use they should make of it Beside those Truths we may here also observe some failings and weaknesses in Job and his reasonings which may serve for caution and instruction to us 1. It was but his mistake while he judged by his present sense that God was condemning him and this raised the tempest in his soul It is our weakness to fasten mistakes upon Gods dealing and by so doing make our lot more unsupportable then really it is Likewise It should seriously be looked upon as a mistake That even saddest afflictions do always speak Gods condemning of the afflicted For he may chastise them most sharply whom he approves 2. Albeit God were not condemning him to perish eternally with the wicked for neither could that be nor did Job believe it was so but dealing with him in outward corrections as he useth to deal the wicked when he plagues them for their wickedness yet it was his fault not to see sufficient cause of all this within himself but he will put God to it to shew wherefore he contended For the best of Saints have sins which deserve more then all this Psal 130.3 143.2 and even Original sin in man doth justifie God in inflicting saddest corrections For the wages thereof is death Rom 5 12 14. 3. Though he had never so much integrity and could see no procuring cause of his afflictions yet there was cause enough why God should exercise even an innocent and much more why he should try him to draw forth what either of weakness or of grace was in him 4. Though he could neither see a procuring cause nor the final cause of Gods dealing yet it became not him to quarrel with God as if his dealing were unjust For absolute soveraignty in God might silence him and God is not bound to give a reason of his ways as himself acknowledged Chap 9.12 Vers 3. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands and shine upon the counsel of the wicked Followeth Job's Prosecution of the complaint which he had propounded v. 2. wherein he presseth his Expostulation and desire by several other Arguments beside those formerly insinuated in the Rise and Proposition of his complaint In all which he leaveth to his Friends to judge of the relevancy and justness of his complaint by the strength of his reasons propounded to God to whom alone he makes his address So the third Argument pressing his expostulation and desire in this verse doth prosecute what he had propounded v. 2. and give some general hints of what is further enlarged in the â—est of his discourse In it he points out his apprehension of what was in Gods severe dealing in condemning him and dealing with him as a wicked man 1. That it seemed to be an oppression of a righteous man 2. That it seemed to speak Gods despising of him who was the work of his hands both by Creation and by Grace for so it may be interpreted by what he subjoyns in this discourse both of Gods creating of him and of his grace in him 3. That God by his dealing toward him seemed to give favourable countenance to the plots projects and courses of the wicked Partly while the wicked as well as his Friends were ready to judge him to be a wicked man because afflicted Partly while God seemed to concur with and approve the deeds of the Sabeans and Chaldeans who robbed him and to give occasion to other wicked men to insult over him and abuse him now when he had afflicted him as Chap. 30.1 14. But chiefly while the wickeds prosperity and his adversity confirmed them who measure all things by outward advantages in this opinion that piety is of no worth Thus the counsel of the wicked is expounded of their sleighting of Piety because of their own prosperity Ch. 21.7 15. with 16. See Eccl. 8.11 Mal. 2.17 3.14 15. Upon these apprehensions Job founds his Argument which he propounds by way of question to God Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress c The meaning whereof is as if he had said Lord doth it beseem thy Nature and Goodness or can it be any pleasure or profit to thee thus to oppress and sleight thy own creature and servant and to seem as if thou would confirm and harden the wicked in their evil way The sense and use of this Argument and Expostulation may be reduced to these three General Heads First As to the way of propounding this Argument as also some that follow it is by way of question to God Is it good to thee that thou shouldest oppress c Wherein we have the language of two parties within him his sense and his faith His sense would absolutely have concluded all this to be true of God that he delighted to oppress and despise him and shine upon the counsel of the wicked But faith could not subscribe to all these conclusions and not being able to refute them yet it stands as it were a great stone in an impetuous River to stop the current of tentation if it were but with a question Can it be as sense saith as Psal 77.7 8 9. And here faith goeth further and propounds the matter to God wherein as sense layeth out its apprehensions of Gods dealing so faith propounds those apprehensions as questions to be resolved and cleared by God From this way of pleading in general Learn 1. Tentations may flie very high under trouble even against God himself For all that is here questioned was suggested to Job So also those apprehensions Psal 77. We are not to think it strange if a storm raise
v. 10 11 12. which now he wishes had never been Ingratitude is an heinous sin in it self and will produce ill humours 3. When any condition how empty and poor soever seems better to men thâ—n what they have and what God hath sweetned with many proofs of his love For he dwells upon his dying from the womb as a sweet condition v. 19. which yet would have deprived him of many proofs of Gods love which he had found in his life God is better and kinder to his people then they many times wish to themselves 4. When men are so devoted to themselves and their own will that they will quarrel all that God doth if it fit not their mind as if all things were to be foâ— them and subservient to their humour For he complains that he was not carried from the womb to his grave only because it would have prevented his great trouble and kept him at great case Selfishness is an ill toot of much distemper 5. When mens passions having distempered them they lay the blame upon Providence As he urgeth this as an argument against Gods dealing that it made him thus discontent with his life Whereas if he had been more sober and borne his trouble and the testimony of his Conscience with more calmness it would have prevented those distempers See Prov. 19.3 Vers 20. Are not my days few cease then and let me alone that I may take comfort a little 21. Before I go whence I shall not return even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death 22. A land of darkness as darkness it self and of the shadow of death without any order and where the light is as darkness In the close which is the second part of the Chapter Job begins to calm a little and in stead of his former expostulating with God and his last great fit of discontent v. 18 19. he tacitly submits to Gods will that he is alive and in what he hath done And seeing death in its own colours he will not rashly hazard upon it but craves this only that he may have some respite and breathing and a little ease in his life For 1. His days were short and he was not like to live long Therefore he would have some speedy help that he might draw his breath a little and have opportunity to shew that he was not the man that his Friends esteemed him or his passion seemed to prove him to be v. 20. 2. Albeit he believed a Resurrection and believed never to go to Hell and knew what it was to die in Christ who is the destroyer of death for he speaks to none of those here nor are his words to be taken in any sense relating to those yet death in it self is ugly being without restitution in this life being a dark and dâ—â—â—ry estate without any order of variety or vicissitude of light and darkness wherein much of this worlds beauty consists but whereas light comes in its turn here it is still darkness there even most dark as darkness it self as it beseems those shadows of death and the grave to be Therefore he would have some change of his condition here before he go to that unchangeable state and some blink of light and comfort before he entered into that dark passage and habitation ver 21 22 with 20. This Doctrine laying aside his mistake of speedy death by this trouble may safely be admitted with little caution as containing only a desire of that which God afterward granted to him though yet it was not necessary he should be peremptory in such a sute It teacheth 1. Saints highest sits of passion will not last but mercy will reclaim them and give them a cool of that Feaver As Job found here 2. As the Feavers and distempers of Saints may come to a very great height So ordinaâ—â—ly that height or excess of them proves the step next to their cool As Job here calms after that â—â—â—â—ly of passion v. 18 19. As God pitieth them in theâ—â—â—xtremities so their very rising to an height and extreâ—â—ty 〈◊〉 â—â—use themselves relent whereaâ— they would have thought less of their passionâ— if they continued moâ—◠〈…〉 3. Humble sober Prayer is a notable 〈…〉 and mean in calming distempered spirits it is as the shower to allay that boisterous wind For Job fâ—lls a praying in stead of quarrelling when he calms See Phil. 4.6 4. As mans life is but uncertain and short so the thoughts of this should make men imploy their time well and to be very needy and pressing after God and proofs of him and where it is thus improved it is an argument of pity and help For so much may be gathered in general from Job's arguing Are not my days few cease then c. though he mistook in his particular case that himself was shortly to die See Psal 39.13 89.47 5. Such as are exercised with much trouble and have their exercises blessed to them will be sober and esteem much of little case to get leave to breath or to comfort and refresh themselves a little with a sight of God or of his grace in them and not their own passions which they ought to abhor For this is his sute when calmed to get comfort a little not only liberty to breath from sore trouble but especially to get his spirit calmed from these passions which he now abhors in himself They who are indeed humble will not despise small things Zech. 4 10. and a victory over their own spirit will be their greatest deliverance 6. The least ease breathing or comfort under trouble cannot be had but of Gods indulgence He must cease and let him alone from vexing of him before he take comfort a little See Joh 34.29 7. It is the duty of men to acquaint themselves with death before-hand and especially in times of trouble they should study it in its true colours For Job in his trouble is so acquainted with it that he can here very pathetically describe it This is Moses study when God is making havock of the Rebels in the Wilderness Psal 90. 8. Death and the Grave in themselves and when Christs victory over them is not studied and men are hurried away to them in a tempest of trouble are very terrible and an ugly sight as bringing an irreparable loss as to any restitution in this life and being so dark and disconsolate an estate that the very common favour of a vicissitude of day and night light and darkness is a mercy when compared with it For so doth Job describe that estate here as it may appear to an afflicted Saint as he was or to one at a distance from God much more may it appear so to men in an unrenewed state or nature And indeed death is in it self a curse and if any find a beauty in it or get a sweeter sight of it it is by the special gift of God And withal it cuts the thread of our life upon which all our
but that a set time will put an end to it Thus also doth the Psalmist rowze up his confidence under tentations Psal 77.8 9 10. which is worthy of imitation 2. He desires not death desperately as it is only a back-door to shun present trouble but he propounds this extraordinary desire in a way of believing and bodeing well of God in the issue This many do forget in their passionate desires when they cast away all confidence 3. It flowed from his desire of Gods favour and to have it cleared toward him for encouragement to all others to walk in the ways of holiness that he declines to go away for ever in a cloud and would be remembered and appear again when wrath is passed that others seeing the end of the Lord might be incouraged as well as himself would be refreshed And here whatever his failings were his general scope is good to desire to enjoy Gods favour above all things Psal 4.6 7. and that others be not stumbled nor discouraged Psal 69.6 4. As he doth not proudly think he is able to stand out this storm So neither doth he flee from God or to Hills and Mountains Rev. 6.15 16 17. to be hid from this apprehended wrath But knowing that God alone can hide a man from his own indignation he fleeth to him for that effect O that thou wouldest hide me c. Which is a practice well beseeming Saints that whatever anger they apprehend in God they still flee to himself for succour Doct. 5. The perplexities and hard shifts to which Gods people are put is an argument of help especially when somewhat of sincerity appears in the midst of them For as Job's particular scope in this wish is that he may be satisfied in this desire so his general scope in propounding the whole matter to God by way of Plea and Argument in this debate and complaint is to plead for pity and moderation toward a man who was thus perplexed And though it be a mans fault and weakness to be thus distempered yet if we take with it and lay it before God as our weakness as Job doth here v. 14. it will plead pity Isai 57.16 17 18. Namely in so far as is for our good though yet he will humble us that we may know our weakness and will not suffer us to want needful exercise In his correcting of his wish v. 14. wherein as hath been said 1. He corrects it in point of judgment as thinking it absurd to expect that a man once dead should return to this life again 2. He corrects it in his practice resolving to wait submissively and patiently till his great and final change by death shall come We may Learn 1. Such is the Lords mercy towards his tossed Children that their hottest fits of distemper will have sweet cools and abatements As here Job retracts and condemns his former wish 2. A special mean to calm distempered spirits is when they do not persist rashly in their passionate apprehensions and humours as Jonah 4.4 9. but do reflect upon and examine their own frame and desires and when finding that they are wrong they make use of their light and judgment to argue and reason themselves out of their distempers however their affections be pestered Thus doth Job reflect and make use of his light to argue against his own wish If a man die shall he live again See Psal 42.5 3. It is not to be approved in our selves that Gods means and comforts will not satifie us unless impossibilities and wonders be shewed for us and to us For Job finding his desire impossible doth reject it with indignation as his Question imports 4. When our imagined issues fail us there is a nearer and surer issue to be found in Patience Submission and Hope All those are comprehended under waiting which Job fixed upon after he hath found his own desire to be absurd I will wait saith he See 1 Cor. 10.13 2 Cor. 12.7 8 9 10. 5. Such as resolve to find an issue of their trouble in patient submission must let patience have its perfect work Jam. 1.4 They must not fix their own time how long they will wait upon God and no longer as 2 King 6.33 but must submit that God be the appointer of the time of their patience and exercise For saith he All the days of my appointed time will I wait 6. As it is at death that Saints get a complete relaxation case of all their troubles so they must resolve if it be Gods will to wait all their life in a continual warfare without a satisfactory issue of their troubles For Job resolves to wait till his change come even all the days of his appointed time or life and that in a warfare as the word tendered appointed time also signifies 7. It may encourage Saints to wait thus long that death unto them is not a destruction but a change as here he calleth it And indeed it is a great change as in many respects common to all men in that it turns an animated body to a rotten carcase that it is a change wherein a man is fixed everlastingly in that state of his person wherein it finds him that it levels the greatest of men with the meanest Job 3.13 14 17 18 19. Ezek. 32.17 32 c. So Particularly to the godly in that then they are delivered from sin misery toil and discomfort Rev. 14.13 and then they will have the better of the wicked who trampled upon them in the world Luke 16.25 which will be made manifest in the Resurrection Psal 49.14 From v. 15. wherein he resumes his former wish and expatiates upon the advantages he expected if it were granted Learn 1. Passions may be strong in exercised Saints that they will not be permitted to continue in their resolutions of submission For here after he had corrected and rejected his own wish v. 14. he falls upon it again We must not mistake such tossings For submission must be a new gift every moment 2. Passions and Tentations are oft times fed and cherished with many pleasing fancies of happiness if we got our will in our desires As here those sweet apprehensions how it would be with him if God would hide him till the storm were over drew him to his wish and to hearken to the tentation again Then saith he thou wouldest call and I would answer c. whereas now it is far otherwise v. 16. Herein he failed in thinking his own way of guiding would be far better than that which God took in fancying those advantages which God had never promised on his terms and in fancying them to come in a way of his own when he might have expected them with more advantage in Death and at the Resurrection This doth warn us never to promise our selves any good out of Gods way and to limit our expectation of comforts and issues to Gods Promises lest our loving fancies breed us much trouble if they be not satisfied
the godly from envying of them and make them be content with their own lot 6. It is an evidence of wickedness or at best of a wicked and evil disposition when the common tryals and exercises of mankind become intolerably bitter and are not digested because they are common So the oppressour is wicked in that it vâ—xeth him that the number of years is hid from him although it be so with all mankind 1 Cor. 10.13 7. It is also an evil evidence in men when their end or death is looked on as an Enemy and when they dare not seriously think on it or how much time they have spent and how near they are to death by the course of nature as being never ready nor willing to die Thus both the Interpetations of the last part of the verse agree in one That it evidenceth his wickedness that he is vexed because his days are hidden and determined by God so that he can neither avoid death nor knoweth when it shall surprize him and that he is so vexed with this as it makes him hide all thoughts of death from himself It is true the godly may have their own vexations and fears about death and so it is not simply true that to fear death is the evidence of a wicked man Yet the difference betwixt the godly and wicked in this is very clear For partly the godly's fear is of another nature then that of the wicked is The godly desire to die if they were reconciled to God whereas the wicked seek not Gods favour and so love not death on any terms except despair drive them upon that hopeless remedy or a satiety of time or want of strength to prosecute the delights of it make them weary thereof Partly the fears of the godly are groundless as the wickeds are not but their tentations and fears and apprehensions are real plagues upon them And if godly men in their fits of security or distemper have any other fears of death in any thing like unto the wicked they ought to labour to be rid of them as no evidence of their Piety nor of their good frame for that time 8 It is also an evidence of an evil disposition when it vexeth men and imbitters their lives unto them that they are left in all conditions upon Gods hands and Providence as here it is a vexatiâ—n to the wicked oppressour that his years are hid or determined by God as Chap. 14.5 This doth not at all please the wicked because they cannot trust God nor willingly submit to him whereas it is enough to the godly in greatest troubles that their times are in Gods hand Psal 31.13 and this should be their encouragement in all cases 9 Whatever sweetness men think they reap by wickedness and oppression Yet this is Wormwood in the midst of it and the Worm in the root thereof that it is but temporary and they know not how soon death may put a period to it For this is also implied that it is the wicked oppressours pain and vexation that the number of years is hid that death will put a period to his enjoyments and he knoweth not when it may steal upon him Vers 21. A dreadful sâ—und is in his ears in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him Followeth in this verse another branch of the wicked or oppressours misery and a special cause and part of his vexations pain to wit his perpetual terrour of Conscience every thing putting him in a fright as Cain was and his Conscience suggesting the dreadfulness and terrour of deserved vengeance as if the sound of its approach were daily â—inging in his ears As for that which is subjoyned in the end of the verse it may be understood thus with a reflection upon Job's case That the wicked man is not only surrounded with fears and terrours but God makes his fear prove real and sends unexpected ruine upon him when he is in the height of his prosperity as bâ—fel Job Whereas the godly are oft-times mercifully disappointed and are not made to feel what they fear This Interpretation though it hold out that which oft-times though not universally proves true yet it agrees better with the scope here where he is speaking especially of the wickeds inward vexation to understand it as as a further amplification of that terrour upon the wicked mentioned in the former part of the verse That his terrour is so great that notwithstanding his present prosperity he is still apprehending that destruction will come upon him in the midst of it From this verse according to the former Rules and Cautions Learn 1. The end of a wicked course and particularly of oppression is very terrible even that which is dreadful or the matter of many fears or terrours as the word is in the plural number in the Original and destruction and ruine from the hand of some destroyer So much are we here taught that the Consciences of many of them do sometime suggest this unto them Which should be well considered by themselves and by others also that they stumble not at their prosperity 2. This end of wicked men is not only dreadful when it cometh but the very apprehension thereof by a wakened Conscience is an Hell upon Earth For it is a dreadful sound or voice of terrours in the midst of prosperity and like the sight of an armed and cruel destroyer 3. Whatever be the temper and condition of particular wicked and impenitent men yet they have so little fence and security against this storm of terrour that when their Consciences are not alarmed with it it is an evidence they are dead and deluded For that a dreadful sound it in the ears of any of them it shews that this is the deserving of all and the nature of their condition tends to it and that they are but mad and stupid who continue impenitent in sin and yet are not at this exercise and that so much the more is owing them that they are forborne for the present And accordingly there is a standing sentence in the Law concerning this Levit. 26.36 Deut. 28.65 66 c. 4. Whatever be the exercises which God may send upon godly men for their correction humiliation and tryal and whatever may be their fits of fear through the power of tentation Yet distracting and tormenting fears and terrours are none of their allowance For it is the wickeds lot only to have a dreadful sound in his ears See Matth. 28.4 5. Psal 112.7 5. The prosperity of wicked men who do not repent nor seek to be at peace with God is neither a sufficient security against their fears nor against their actual destruction For so both the Interpretations of the latter part of the verse may agree in one In prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him As he will not always get his heart kept free of the fears of ruine seeing he hath no better fence then his outward prosperity and nothing of the Peace of God
God whereof this was a visible sign that he covered his head which of late had been exalted with dust and ashes and sate down upon the dust and ground See Chap. 1.20 2.13 3. His weeping and that so long and so sore that his face was all soul and clayed where the Original word is doubled to intimate how very foul he was and his eyes were sunk in his head as if he were dead or presently going to expire with tears and weeping Doct. 1. The best way to refute aspersions is by contrary practices As here that calumny of being stout-hearted against God wherewith Eliphaz at least indirectly chargeth him Chap. 15.25 is refuted by his submissive carriage It is good when mens practices do refute calumnies And when calumniators are let loose the Lord thereby calls men to see their walk And whatever the evils be that are unjustly charged upon men the Lord thereby points at the contrary graces or practices either as having been formerly neglected or as singularly excellent to be studied yet more 2. It is to little purpose how much men have to say of their afflictions before God unless they have also somewhat to say of their own good carriage and exercise under them at least of their endevours after these things For Job counts it not enough that he had all the former evidences of his afflicted condition unless he have this also and unless his being afflicted be seeen in his stooping and going to God with it as well as in his strokes Without this mens sense of their many crosses is but a dittay against themselves nor can their complaining thereof plead any thing before God unless it be to inflict yet more upon them till they be set on work to their duty 3. Of all carriage under affliction humiliation and submission â—lowing from faith is the chief and a root of all other good behaviour This was signified by putting on of sackcloth and lying in the dust Here it is to be considered 1. That afflictions are sent to abase men and to put them out of conceit with themselves because ordinarily they esteem too highly of themselves in prosperity See Psal 9.20 Ezek 28.9 2. That affliction is the great Touch-stone of our hearts and we do then prove really either the prevalency of corruption by proud swelling against God or of our grace by stooping to him See Jer. 5.3 with 31.18 3. That till we be abased and lie low before God we proclaim that affliction hath not done its errand but that we need yet more of it 4. That there can no use be had of affliction till it first humble us 5. That the humble man lies so low under the lash of trouble that the storm blows over him and he gets an out-gate by patient bearing of his cross This may make us lament that we are so much humbled and yet become so little humble that we are broken with trouble but not bowed and brayed but not melted and purified This doth evidence that we know neither our selves nor God as we ought and it makes difficulties to slay us which otherwise would prove medicinal And if we were more acquainted with humility in our prosperity it would be more easie in our adversity whereas otherwise it is long ere trouble bring us down Doct. 4. Such as abase themselves before God ought in particular to lay down all their excellencies before him whether Grandeur and Authority or spiritual Priviledges Thus he defiled his horn in the dust and Israel were bid put off their ornaments Exod 33.5 Here Consider 1. These very outward signes of putting on of sackcloath and lying in the dust whereby he witnessed his abasement notwithstanding his dignity doth shew that although these Ceremonial practices be ceased yet men that are humble under trouble should look like it in their deportment Thus Israel put off their ornaments when they sinned Which speak sadly against excess in Apparel and adorning of mens bodies in sad times as looking rather like Jezebel 2 King 9.30 then Saints 2. However God be pleased to exalt us above others either in grace or other dignities Yet we are in our selves nothing before him and ought to esteem so of our selves especially when he humbleth us by afflictions 3. Though we may keep fast our spiritual Priviledges to assure us of Gods favour Yet we must never make use of them to fight against him or to quarrel his Providence and disposing of us at his pleasure but we ought to lay them all at his feet and put our hand upon our mouth Otherwise if our hearts do rise against God because he afflicts us who have been made partakers of his grace we may fall into that tentation Psal 73. and do deprive our selves of the comfortable sight of what God hath wrought in us 4. When God strips us of our outward dignity we must not be imbittered by reflecting upon what we were and how we are now dealt with but must stoop to be lifted up and cast down at his pleasure as Mordecai being honoured by the King is content to return to the Kings gate again Esth 6.11 12. For men have the surest grip of those things when they are cast at Gods feet Doct. 5. When men are truly abased they will be very tender before God For Job in this condition was put to weeping Grief will draw tears from the stoutest and especially from tender Saints who are lying in the dust as Job was unless sometime their trouble be so great that it goeth above tears and other expressions of it And as the Lord approves of no external shews and expressions of sorrow unless a man be a mourner indeed So he approves not of tears which go before humility which may be wrâ—ng out by pride bitterness and discontâ—nt but would have a man first humbling himself in the dust and then weeping as Job did This condemns them who however they mourn or roar as the word is one toward another Yet do not mourn and weep to God Ezek. 24.23 And them also who evidence how little they are afflicted and humbled under the cross by their neglect of Prayer and want of tenderness and sorrow This was not the way of Job here nor of the godly in sad times Jer 9.1 Psal 44.24 25. 6. The Lord may suffer his humbled people even sink to death to their own sense in sorrow before they seem to be respected For his face is soul with weeping and on his eye-lids is the shadow of death and yet he is not only not delivered but gets not so much as any evidence of pity and sympathy either from God or his Friends Saints are sometime under a tentation and mistake in this and may have much sorrow when yet they need no real deliverance but only open eyes to discern their good condition But even when their afflictions and causes of sorrow are real the Lord may thus exercise them as he did Job 1. That all may be warned
premitted these Generals we may from this verse in particular safely gather those sound Instructions 1. Man is but a frail putrified creature and will appear to be so if God begin to deal with him For so are we here taught Mans life hangs but upon a thread of breath going in and out at his nostrils And albeit man draw his breath easily in ordinary yet when God contends with him by affliction and pain his breath will be so corrupt as he cannot draw it without difficulty Yea God can make it favour of his inward putrefaction and proclaim what a rotten piece this beautiful structure of Man is and that he carrieth his death about with him and can soon be made loathsome company to his dearest friends This 1. Teacheth man to be out of conceit with himself his constitution and life Isai 2.22 2. It teacheth him that whatever God please to do for his tryal he should beware by his conceit or bitterness to provoke God to contend and give him a proof what he is See Psal 9 22. 39.11 Isai 45.9 3. It teacheth him that when God doth contend he should be thereby well instructed in the lesson of Humility and knowledg of his own frailty which is the thing his dispensations inculcate Doct. 2. Affliction and debility of body should cause men think on death and the grave and make ready for them For from this that his breath is corrupt he concludes that his days are extinct and the graves for him as it is in the Original that is he is ready or near to be buried and thinks upon it as the only issue of his trouble It is true Job mistook here and his excess cannot be justified as was said before Yet those are found Truths in this case 1. Mortality is a study wherein men ought to be more frequent as being born to die and dying daily 2. Though other tryals may surprize men yet they should beware of being surprized with death and the grave seeing they are known to be unavoidable and the time of their coming is uncertain 3. Though men ought not peremptorily to determine what will be the particular event of every affliction that befals them yet every affliction and debility either when they are under it or got out of it should be looked upon as Godâ— giving them the Alarm and putting them in mind to consider how they will look upon death For however they escape at one time yet that is a Summons which will be renewed 4. At every such Alarm it is the duty of all and will be the endevour of sincere Saints to meet and welcome Death and the Grave and to be as ready for those as they are for them as here Job was Doct. 3. Whatever be the external splendour of men yet it will all be extinguished at death like a bright Candle ending in a snuffe For so the metaphor here doth import My days are extinct Mans life is in a daily decay like a Candle burning to a snuffe And when death comes the vigour and comely complexion of the body doth all evanish His Members Organs Arteries Sinews c. are then swallowed up in silence and obscurity like a Watch when the string is broken and Man savours of putrefaction and becomes dust which is his original And not only so but all his pomp and glory ceaseth Psal 49.17 18. and his thoughts perish Psal 146.4 This doth exceedingly condemn these who content and please themselves in their well adorned bodies their feathers of honour and rides of amibitious thoughts but do not study to have somewhat which will be proof against death Doct. 4. It doth point out yet further the vanity of man that all his Patrimony when dead is a Grave though some get not so much Graves for me saith he This is his Earth Psal 146.4 whom many times the Earth it self cannot satisfie and contain This we should look upon as a sensible demonstration of the vanity of men who hunt after things which they must certainly leave at last although as it fares not with many these things should not forsake them all their lives and who seek to bear so much bulk and are so troublesome upon earth when yet a little Earth will contain them and render them tame enough at last Doct. 5. He names Graves in the plural number not only because dead men have as it were Grave above Grave their Winding-sheet Coffin if they were in use then and the Grave it self But further 1. As Jephthah is said to have been buried in the Cities of Gilead as it is in the Original â— Judg. 12.7 because he was buried in some one or other of them So this may import some one Grave or other And Job speaks so as not caring which or where it were so it proved a Grave For albeit some be ambitious to make themselves famous by their very Monuments and decency in burials and burial-places according to mens quality ought not to be condemned Yet that is not a thing to be much regarded If men get a Grave to hide their bodies from violence and take them out of sight it is little matter what a grave it be for state or magnificence The stately Monuments of many do only serve to continue the memory of their naughtiness who did not live holily nor have left savoury Monuments of their Piety and Charity as Doreas did Acts 9.39 And on the other hand the dust of the godly is respected by God and their memory smells well in the nostrils of Saints though they got but course burial and it may be only the ashes of a fire or the belly of a wild Beast 2. It may point out that his afflictions and pressures were so great and many that every place presented him with Death and a Grave Thus was Paul in deaths often 2 Cor. 11.23 For albeit there be but one way of entering into this world yet there are many ways of dying and going out of it So that men should look upon their life as daily surrounded with Deaths and Graves Doct. 6. The godly under their sad exercises may be much mistaken about the issue of their tryals For albeit all those things formerly marked be good Exercises and sound Truths and this will be the issue of mans life at last Yet for present Job notwithstanding all his weakness was supported and preserved till he got a more sweet issue then he expected Hence 1. When we have looked on our conditions at the worst and we are not to deceive our selves by undervaluing of them we ought yet as is said before to leave a latitude to what God can bring out of them 2. We ought to believe that God not only can but usually doth disappoint the fears and expectations of his own Children under trouble and makes them recal their hasty conclusions Psal 31.22 So that their thoughts are not the Rule whereby he walks 3. We are to believe that it is possible and usual for God
day 2. An afflicted spirit is so restless that it will deprive the wearied body of rest so that such would esteem sleep a mercy For saith he They change the night into day or keep me as busie and throng as if it were day-light and not the time appointed for mans rest 3. However men in trouble and vexed in mind are ready to wish a change of what is present as expecting some ease thereby Yet no chage of their outward condition will change their exercise till their minds be cured For albeit persons that are troubled by night may long for the day Deut. 28.67 yet neither night nor day brought any ease to Job But as his vexations changed the night into day so they made the light short or near to wit to go down For so the word near signifieth that which is of short continuance Chap. 20.5 in the Original 4. Godly men may have some taste of the wickeds vexing lots for their exercise and tryal of faith and that they may be made sensible by experience how great the misery is from which they are delivered For Job here hath some taste of that restlesness which is threatned against the wicked Deut. 28.67 5. The condition of Saints may be very dark in trouble and that is it which makes it so sad and vexing to them that it deprives them of rest For it is because of darkness that he is thus anxious and restless The meaning whereof is not only that the darkness of the night and his toil in it took away all the comfort of the light of the day and made it short Though it be likely that however neither night nor day afforded him ease yet comparatively the night was more troublesome then the day which makes him complain that it was short in comparison of darkness as the words also may bear But also that his dark and involved condition did vex him both by night and day This tells what a mercy it is to see through a thick cloud of trouble and how necessary the Word is for that end 6. Saints may be assaulted with continual restlesness even till they be made to despair of life who yet may come thorow and get a good issue For so was it with Job here who by reason of these vexations laid his account to die and yet was preserved Vers 13. If I wait the grave is mine house I have made my bed in the darkness 14. I have said to corruption Thou art my father to the worm Thou art my mother and my sister In the second place Job having given an account how low and hopeless his condition was in it self doth now declare how hopeless also he was of it and what he was expecting to follow upon it Namely That should he wait never so much as they desired for restitution in this life yet he was sure to go to his grave ere it came where he should have a dark bed and rottenness and worms in place of all his dearest Friends Relations and Acquaintances Here Job seems to point at somewhat spoken by Eliphaz of the wicked man or hypocrite Chap. 15.22 as nothing doubting of his own integrity though he were like them in not expecting any restitution in this life And albeit he did mistake in his certain expectation of death and the grave For though it followed probably on his afflicted and vexed condition v. 11 12. that he might die yet he ought not certainly to have concluded that he would die seeing God might interpose as he did Yet the General Doctrine teacheth 1. When mens actual enjoyments are gone their hopes are left to uphold them As here is supposed that when for present he is low his next work is to see if he may hope and wait for any better lot to come 1 Cor. 15.19 2. Hopes exercise is patient waiting for the performance of what we hope for For here he that hopes is said to wait The word may signifie both waiting being the fruit of hope 1 Thes 1.3 Rom. 8.25 And here we are to take heed of refusing to tarry Gods leisure who hath times and seasons in his own hand and knoweth what is best for us We ought also to beware of being angry at our afflictions or at God for afflicting us and of distrusting his power to perform what we have warrant to expect and in the mean time to make our waiting useful to us For all these distempers will interrupt our patient waiting 3. Death will at last cut off all our temporal hopes by cutting the thread of our life upon which they all hang For so he argues that his approaching death proved all waiting for temporal restitution to be vain 4. It is a very sad exercise when men are filled with hopes and expectations and then are disappointed For so he imports it would be to him if he waited for restitution and then the grave came in stead of it See Jer. 14 19. This should teach men to be sober mortified and well grounded in their expectations lest otherwise they add to their own miseries 5. Death brings a man to a low condition outwardly For then he gets the grave for his house his bed and then a bed only or a place wherein his body lieth sufficeth him is in darkness and corruption or rottenness and worms are in place of all his Friends and Relations of Father Mother or Sister This may teach men how little cause they have to glory in their worldly pomp and splendour whereof this will be the result at last See Psal 49.11 12 13 14. 6. Albeit death in it self be an Enemy and albeit godly men may have tentations to fear death Heb. 2.15 and in some cases they may desire to live for a time till their condition be cleared Psal 27.13 39.13 Yet they are allowed not to fear death but to be familiar with it when it cometh and their happiness is so sure that they may undervalue and reject all the comforts of time and triumph over the wrack of all their worldly hopes As here Job gives over all expectations of what they suggested to him and hath familiar thoughts of death 7. It is the duty of Saints before death come and when they are alarmed with it to become familiar with it before hand As here Job turns his back upon his hopes and resolutely looks upon death and what it would bring him to I have made my bed saith he I have said to corruption c. as a man that is resolved before hand 8 It commends the power of grace that Saints are made so familiar with death and yet it hath nothing beautiful or desirable in it self For it is darkness worms and corruption and yet it is lovely to him even in those its worst colours Vers 15. And where is now my hope as for my hope who shall see it 16. They shall go down to the bars of the pit when our rest together is in the dust In the last place from what
shall now devour him 2. However a wicked man may get some Serjeants shifted yet the Executioner will come at last whom he will not get declined For destruction will come at last which shall pay all home And this is enough let them escape never so often considering how dreadful it will be and how soon it may take hold of them Luke 12.19 20. 3. Death is a great Conquerour and Triumpher over men in their Bodies Dignities and outward Estate For It shall devour the strength or bars of his skin Yea it triumphs over Princes notwithstanding all their grandeur See Job 3.13 14 15 18 19. Psal 49.14 17. 146.3 4. Ezek. 32.23 26 27 c. This tells that men have need and ought to provide somewhat that will be Deaths-proof 4. A violent death is an addition to the sadness and terrour of death Therefore is that called the first born of death Though the godly may fall in common calamities and go to Heaven in a fiery Chariot and wicked men may die peaceably yet this is the desert of the wicked and is executed upon some of them nor have any of them any security against it and it is a mercy in it self to die a quiet and ordinary death 5. God hath reserved singular judgments for wicked men and their plagues are really such however they appear outwardly For their death come what way it will is still the first born of death considering all the consequences thereof whereas the godly are bound to judge that they are dealt with in a different manner though they fall under the same outward dispensation 6. God will at last make it evident that he is too hard for the stoutest of men and that all their strength must succumb and fall before his power For the first born of death shall devour his strength Vers 14. His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle and it shall bring him to the King of terrours In this verse the resemblance is further prosecuted and Job's renouncing of all confidence and hope in his family as making for death Chap. 17.13 14 15. is pointed at as resembling this wicked Malefactour his being desperate of all hopes in his wealth friends and family and his being brought to death which is the Prince and King of Terrours both in it self and in what it appears to be and really proves to the wicked man Here there are also several mistakes As 1. That Job was to die and be cut off at this time 2. That his renouncing of all his temporal enjoyments is looked on as an act of despair whereas it flowed only from his cleanly self-denial a practice which the world doth not understand 3. That Job did fear death or looked on it as the King of terrours who was rather too eager to be at it 4. Or suppose Saints do sometime fear death yet it is a mistake to think that therefore they are wicked For they may be afraid as considering they have a soul to save while the wicked may mock at death and step laughing into Hell And godly men may get proofs of their own weakness when God is to give them most notable proofs of his grace and love But passing those mistakes there are general sound Truths here also as it relates to the wicked And 1. Wicked men may have their own confidences whereby they uphold their hearts when many other things fail them For so is here supposed that there is his confidence This is a great snare to make them stubborn in an ill way Isa 57.10 though when those are removed it will not reclaim them Jer. 2.25 2. It is the wickeds plague that their confidences are but low base and perishing Such as his family wealth or friends all which are comprehended under the name of his Tabernacle See Psal 146.3 4 5. 3. All the carnal confidences of a wicked man will at last come to utter ruine His props will all fail him and his hopes will end in despair and he must quit them For his confidence shall even be rooted out of his tabernacle His confidences will at last prove too weak to bottom his hopes and Gods jealousie is provoked to crush them 4. If not before yet certainly at death all carnal confidences shall come to ruine For then his confidence shall be rooted out when he cometh to the King of Terrours 5. Death of all outward strokes is the chief terrour to men as being the punishment threatened and inflicted for sin and as cutting off all their outward enjoyments at one stroke Therefore is it called the King of Terrours or the chief of Terrours which are visible on Earth So that men had need to prepare for it and to close with Christ in whom they may triumph over it 1 Cor. 15.54 55. 6. Beside what death is in it self and as it is the common lot of all men it is especially dreadful and the King of Terrours to the wicked For it is in reference to them it is so designed here The godly may die in some trouble and fear though that be not their allowance but slow from their weakness But as for the wicked though some of them may die peaceably as others of them die full of horrour Yet to all of them it is terrible if they considered whither they are going Death in its most terrible colours may look sweetly upon the godly and the mildest aspect of it may be dreadful to the wicked 7. The more carnal confidence men have the more terrible will death be when it cometh and all their hopes are cut off For it is his confidence rooted out that brings him to the King of terrours Not so much because the ruine of his hopes hastens his death as because it makes death terrible that he hath fed upon so many vain hopes Vers 15. It shall dwell in his tabernacle because it is none of his brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation In the last Branch of this Similitude the destruction of Job's family is reflected upon as resembling the consequents of a Malefactours death or the confiscation of his Estate and ruine of his House He seems to allude here to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone and declares that destruction or terrible desolation for the relative It must be referred to what hath been spoken before of the wicked himself v. 11 12 14. as befalling his house also according as it is capable thereof shall dwell in his house and eat up his substance which he had so unjustly acquired and was indeed none of his by right And that his habitation shall be consumed as Sodom was by brimstone or brimstone shall be scattered upon it as a sign of perpetual desolation which the strawing of a place with Salt doth also signifie Judg. 9.45 Here there is an unjust reflection upon Job's purchase of his wealth and upon the stroke of God by fire upon some of his goods Chap. 1.16 as if that evidenced his wealth
they ought to be armed and prepared for if it please God to call them to it And Partly that they should observe and acknowledge Gods mercy if they be spared in any of these 6. This should teach us that prosperity is a plague and snare to a wicked man and the greater his prosperity is the snare is the greater For all this is given him not in mercy but in judgment It is a blessedness unto the godly that God by afflicting them takes pains on them and it is a plague on the wicked that they are not restrained from the desire of their hearts And as the godly are oft-times tryed by the want of tryal and exercise so are the wicked most severely plagued when they want a visible stroke and plague And as prosperity discovereth their naughtiness who seemed to be somewhat before 2 Chron. 25.1 2. with v. 14. 2 Chron. 26.3 4 5 c. with v. 16. and as it tryeth and discovereth the weakness even of the truly godly 2 Chron. 32.24 25 31. So it will much more bring out the naughtiness of the wicked Their prosperity secures them as they think of Gods favour prevents all challenges of Conscience or affords them mirth to bear out under and against them hides from them the sight of their need of God or of Prayer to him and hardens them most of any thing Rom. 2.4 5. so that men have need to look how they improve prosperity 7. If in all this height of prosperity the wicked be but miserable how much more must they be miserable who are in adversity and yet neither have nor seek after Piety 8. This may also serve to point out how inexcusable wicked men are and how much they have to make account for who abuse so much mercy Rom. 2.4 5. And who slight God without any provocation on his part Thirdly The great mirth of their numerous Children v. 11 12. May teach 1. All that the wicked get of their prosperity is but a little watery mirth and evanishing pleasure which others want Their Children and little ones do but dance in flocks and rejoyce in making use of their musical Instruments This in so far as it is lawful men might attain had they contentment in a meaner condition Yea oft-times meaner persons have more solid mirth and satisfaction than they who coâ—â— most to acquire much of the world So that they do but follow a shadow who seek prosperity for that end seeing they seek the thing which is not lost if they would but be sober to obtain discern it Much more might men find in God all that which they seek after in a prosperous condition yea and infinitely more Psal 4.6 7. 2. Whatever lawfulness their be in mirth and cheerfulness yet it is a mark of the wicked to hunt after it as the issue of all their care when they aim no higher than to have occasion to bid their souls take case and mirth Luke 12.19 and their prosperity doth not teach them sobriety and when they have no other care of their Children which is the particular in the Text but to breed them in vanity Idleness and revellings as the care of Childrens Education is indeed a searching tryal of mens honesty 3. It is also an evidence of a wicked disposition when men like brute Beasts are taken up only with sensitive and sensual joys of Mirth Dancing c. And do know or at least prize no other joy in comparison of those And though some unrenewed men may by the Principles of sound Reason be set above these toys yet where such an Inclination prevails it is a sure evidence of an empty and carnal disposition 4. The issue of all their prosperity v. 13. may teach 1. The godly must nor stumble at the long continuance of the wickeds prosperity and that they not only taste of it for a time but do even live wax old and spend their days in wealth or in good that is in a cheerful prosperous condition wherein they acquiesce as their good and chief happiness All this tract of prosperity is not sufficient to prove that they are in Gods favour and it is all little enough since they will get no more And the godly must be tryed by the continuance of this tentation which will discover how solid and fixed their resolutions are 2. Death and the grave will put an end to all the wickeds prosperity For after all this they go down to the grave And since they have nothing to secure them against death and what followeth upon it Psal 49.6 7 8 9. they cannot be happy enjoy what they will in the world And it concerns all who would assure themselves of true happiness to see what they have to oppose against the fear of death 3. As the state of wicked men ought not to be judged happy because of their prosperous life so neither is their peaceable death any evidence thereof For in a moment and peaceably they go down to the grave and have no bands in their death Psal 73.4 Men may be so much obdured through the abuse of much prosperity as they do not apprehend Gods anger against them nor see any hazard upon the back of death And we ought to judge of men rather by their lives than by the outward and visible way of their death and should consider that the more speedily and easily they pass away they are but posting the faster to their eternal misery and that one moment puts an end to all their joy for ever Vers 14. Therefore they say unto God Depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways In the Second Branch of this Narration in this and the following verse Job proves that they who thus prosper are wicked men and of the grossest sort of them For whereas his Friends might object that any who thus prospered were the more polished and refined sort of wicked men He averts they were even the worst and most Atheistical of them as appeared by their carriage in prosperity For they reject God and all Religion or Knowledge of him and his ways v. 14. and confirm themselves in this wretched resolution by some unsound Reasons and Principles v. 15. In this verse he declares how they evidence their wicked disposition in their prosperity by rejecting God and all his offers as desiring no knowledge of of his ways and service which they do not mind to observe or follow Whence Learn 1. Whatever some wicked men may seem to be in other conditions Yet their prosperity will draw out and make them discover what they really are For Job by this proves their wickedness that because they prosper Therefore they say unto God Depart from us 2. It is an undeniable evidence of a wicked disposition when prosperity and Gods favourable dispensations become plagues to men and turn them insolent For so it is with these wicked men Therefore because they have affluence of all things they say unto God Depart from us
pleasure in his house after him c. The meaning whereof is not that he needs not care how it fare with his family after him as many do too anxiously seeing himself is cut off in his own person nor yet that though he expects that his prosperity shall be continued in his family yet it cannot comfort him seeing himself is cut off For his Children being to be destroyed in his own time v. 19. he cannot expect the prosperity of his family when he is gone But the meaning is That though sometime he pleased himself with the expectation of the continuance of his house and family yet he shall be deprived of all that comfort when he and his posterity are cut off violently and before the time for then all his expectations shall be frustrated Whence Learn 1. It is a part of the wickeds folly that they feed themselves with vain hopes and imaginary comforts and pleasures in them as the wicked man here seeks to find pleasure in his house after him or in the apprehension of the continuance of his family See Luke 12.19 Which may put us to try what vain thoughts we may be feeding upon 2. One of wicked mens vain dreams is their hope of perpetuating their house and glory Psal 49.11 And that they feed before-hand upon an apprehension of the eternity thereof For he takes pleasure in his house after him what he presently enjoys will not serve his turn unless he antedate imagined contentments and pleasures to come 3. Such vain hopes of a long tract of prosperity to themselves and their posterity after them are oft-times blasted to the wicked before their own eyes And as God mercifully oft-times disappoints the fears of the godly so he walks contrary to the wickeds hopes For it cometh sometime to this in the wickeds own time What pleasure hath he in his house after him 4. If no less will bear down the wickeds vain hopes God can do it by a speedy cutting off of themselves and all the prosperity of their family and condition For this takes away his pleasure when the number of his months is cut off in the midst Albeit mans months and time be determined Chap. 14.5 yet the number thereof is said to be cut off in the midst when they die violently before the time they might have continued by the ordinary course of nature and before the ordinary term of mans life be expired Psal 90.10 and sooner than they are ready for death or expect it Psal 55.23 and before they be well setled in their prosperity 5. Mans life is so short and uncertain that they are most wise who reckon it by shortest periods As here it is reckoned by months and elsewhere by days Psal 90.12 6. It speaks great wrath and imbitters the wickeds sad lot that they expected the contrary and fed upon vain dreams which are disappointed For this speaks the wrath of the Almighty v. â—0 and renders his condition sad that when he was taking pleasure in his house after him the number of his months is cut off Vers 22. Shall any teach God knowledge seeing he judgeth those that are high From this to v. 27. Job speaks of Gods various dispensations toward wicked men conjunctly that he may silence the carpings of mans wit in these matters This Narration consists of three Branches In the first whereof in this verse he gives an account of his scope in this Discourse which is to demonstrate that none should presume to teach or set bounds to God in these things as his Friends by their doctrine tyed up God to one way of proceeding with wicked men Whereas God being the Supreme Judge of the highest he ought not to be controuled by any but may deal variously with the sons of men at his pleasure Whence Learn 1. In Gods guiding of the world and particularly in his dispensations towards wicked men much of his Knowledge and Wisdom do shine and they come not to pass at random or adventure For so is here imported that there is knowledge in these affairs or God makes his Wisdom manifest in them See Psal 92.5 6 7. 2. Most part of men do not see this Wisdom of God but because they cannot comprehend they do carp at it or would carve out a way of Providence of their own which they think most fit For here it is imported that some men would prescribe a way of their own as his Friends did in the debate betwixt him and them 3. To carp at what God doth or prescribe what God should do in his Providential dispensations is in effect to presume to teach God as if we were wiser than he For so is here imported that they by their Principles and by their censuring of his Doctrine wherein he gave a true account of the dispensations of Providence did presume to teach God knowledge 4. The sinfulness of this course of prescribing unto God is such as should make it to be entertained with indignation by all who fear God and be looked on as abasing God and dishonourable to him who guides all things better than man can prescribe For so much doth this question import Shall any teach God knowledge 5. God is nor only Infinite in Power above the highest but in authority also being a Judge who can call them to an account when he pleaseth For he judgeth those that are high whether faln Angels Jude v. 6. or great men Eccl. 5.8 See Rev. 6.15 16. 6. The absolute Soveraignty of God manifested in his judging even of the highest may discover the folly of mens presuming to teach him wisdom seeing herein shines his Soveraignty not to be carped at his Wisdom sutable to his Authority and his purposes far beyond our reach Therefore is this brought in here as a reason of the challenge Shall any teach God knowledge seeing he judgeth these who are high Vers 23. One dieth in his full strength being wholly at ease and quiet 24. His breasts are full of milk and his bones are moistened in the marrow 25. And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul and never eateth with pleasure In the Second Branch of this Narration in these verses he gives an account of the various dispensations of God toward wicked men 1. For prosperity That some die in full strength of body having inward and outward case and without any disquiet till their death v. 23. which is further amplified v. 24. That they are in great vigour and their bones full of marrow like breasts full of milk or rather that they have affluence of all things instanced in the abundance of milk wherewith their breasts namely of their Cattel or their Milk-pails as the word also signifieth are filled and that because of this affluence they are in great vigour every one of their bones for the verb is singular being moistned with marrow or as the words will also read the marrow of their bones being watered and refreshed by reason of their plenty of food
and their encouragement in their prosperous condition This last may also import their power and strength to maintain their prosperous condition And so these two verses will contain four Branches of the prosperity of the wicked their vigour and strength of body their peace and quietness v. 23. their plenty or affluence of all things and their power to maintain all this v. 24. any of which if they be wanting will render their prosperous condition defective 2. For Adversity That some of them die in great disquiet and bitterness having had their very meat imbittered to them all their days v. 25. Whence Learn 1. God exerciseth great variety in his dealings with the Children of Men that he may prove he is debtor to none that none may know love or hatred by outward things and that the wit of man may not think to comprehend his way For so are we taught here by these various Instances 2. It is profitable for men to be acquainted with this that God exerciseth such variety in his dispensations especially in their prosperity that so they may not stumble at it in their adversity For Job sheweth he had been acquainted with all this before-hand and therefore did not stumble at his own lot as his Friends did 3. Bodily strength is no fence against death which observeth not the Laws of Nature but the appointment of God For here some die in their full strength or in the strength of their perfection 4. To live plentifully at case and in strength and power till death come is no infallible mark of Gods favour For here the wicked have that being wholly at ease and quiet and their breasts full of milk c. all which will but make the separation by death sadder to them 5. Bitterness of mind is the saddest of troubles as here it is instanced as the sad lot of some of the wicked that they have bitterness of soul 6. Bitterness of soul will make all mens necessary comforts and refreshments of body bitter to them For a man in such a frame even never eateth with pleasure 7. Bitterness of soul justly followeth some wicked men not at some fits only but even to their graves For some die in the bitterness of their soul Only unto all this it would be added That however this be the just lot of the wicked yet the godly may have some tasts of this soul-bitterness as Job's own experience to name no other doth teach Chap. 3.20 24. And therefore 1. We should beware of pride and murmuring which do imbitter us we should beware of feeding or entertaining our bitter humours or of provoking God by our doating upon time to imbitter it unto us 2. We should observe that there are degrees of imbittering our condition As no Saints can say they have all bitterness and no pleasure at all so none have their condition wholly pleasant but some have less pleasure than they have pain and some have little pleasure and much sorrow Therefore we should beware of complaining or to make our lives altogether bitter because we have not all the satisfaction we desire Vers 26. They shall lie down alike in the dust and the wormes shall cover them In the last branch of this Narration in this verse he gives an account of the issue of the wickeds life and their equality in death notwithstanding the various lots they found in their lives Whence Learn 1. Whatever be mens lot within time sweet or sowr yet they must die and leave it as here we are taught 2. Death will bring all men to the dust and to be trampled upon by the worms For they ly down in the dust and the worms shall cover them See Psal 49.14 3. Death it self will not make a visible difference among men by what is visibly in it but leaves them equal and alike till the resurrection For they and others also as well as wicked men lie down alike c. Even those who had an harder lot than others in their lives are but equal with those who lived at ease in the grave Vers 27. Behold I know your thoughts and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me 28. For ye say Where is the house of the prince and where are the dwelling places of the wicked Followeth to v. 34. the third part of the Chapter Wherein Job applieth his general doctrine to the present debate in hand and to refute their thoughts concerning him and his case It may be reduced to three Heads The first whereof in these verses is the stating of the Controversie or a proposition of their thoughts concerning him and his family and the thing which they dâ—ave at in their discourses and which he is to refute He propounds in general v. 27. that he knew their designs and thoughts in all their discourses and their unjust devices to conclude him wicked And v. 28. he layeth out-their thoughs more particularly That in all these generals which they had spoken of the ruine of wicked great Ones their houses and families of which see Chap. 15.34 18.21 20.28.29 he was the Butt they aimed at and that by reason of the ruine of his family who was a prince Chap. 29.25 and the overturning of the house where his children were met Chap. 1.18 19. they would have it concluded that he was a wicked man So that they might as well have named him and his children in their discourses as hold in general as they did This may serve to clear that we have stated the controversie aright betwixt Job and his Friends from the beginning and that the debate runs upon this whether greatest temporal afflictions such as befel Job and his Children do prove men to be wicked So that unless we carry this along as the great Controversie debated betwixt them in contradictory terms we cannot but mistake in expounding this Book Withal Job's way here sheweth That in all debates it is needful the controversie be rightly and clearly stated As he states the case distinctly here when he is to make use of his former doctrine to refute them Where this method is not followed men will easily be bemisted with confusion and errour may be adorned with specious pretences and truth loadned with reproches and odious consequences The only remedy whereof as also in clearing of inward soul exercises and tentations when clouded with confusions is to draw questions to a clear and true state that we may be able to judge of the merits of the cause and not by a mistake draw wrong conclusions from a weak or false ground In particular Obs 1. If we consider that general Doctrine in it self v. 28. which they intend to apply unto him it teacheth That God in his holy Providence may sometime give a strange and sad account of wicked mens lots It may be said of them Where is the house of the Prince c Here if we abstract this from their erroneous principle that this is the lot of all the wicked and
this Verse not so consonant to the Original That in drought and heat and Snow waters in all seasons they robb they sin till the grave which would intimate their assiduousness and pertinacy in sinning Job gives an account how these wicked men continue in the World till they be ripe by age and then dye easily Which he illustrates from a similitude where the Original as in other places implyeth the note of similitude though it be not expressed That as Snow in some places is not taken away till Summer and heat come and then the drought and heat easily turn Snow into waters and then quickly and insensibly consumes them So they dye in a great age and Death takes them to their grave in an ordinary way quickly and easily without any matter of horrour or any languishing infirmity So that here by the Grave which consumes those sinners we are to understand Death which draws to the grave and which easily and quickly pulleth sinners away Though it may point further at their being insensibly consumed in the grave of which more v. 20 as an amplification of the former Doct. 1. Wicked men may dye and goe to their graves without any remarkable token of Gods displeasure against them For so is here supposed as a thing without controversie that though as the other reading hath it they sin incessantly and in all seasons till their graves yet they live long and are not soon cut off And there is no odde thing befalls them in their life till they come to death and the grave See Psal 73.5 And albeit this dispensation of God breed tryal and exercise to godly men Psal 73.3 13 14. Yet it would be considered for breaking of that snare 1. That this indulgence is a great snare upon wicked men to embolden them to sin Psal 73.5 6 7 8 9. 2. It causeth death surprize them while they have not been trained nor made acquainted with it by former tryals Psal 73.19 20. 3. It depriveth them also of proofs of love which afflicted Saints receive for sweetening of their bitter cup Psal 73.26 Doct. 2. Even the death of the wicked may be gentle and in a common way yea and in a way short of what befalls others For when death and the grave come they make an insensible and quick dispatch as drought and heat consume the Snow waters See Psal 73.4 This the Lord doth that men may mind a judgement after death that they may not judge of mens state by the way of their death or think they are approved of God who quickly and easily sleep away and are snatched away from pain and torment and that by this experience they may learn to read wrath even in the want of rods or in an easie way of dying and living which doth not stirr up men to look how they are before God Thus even want of reproof is a judgement Ezek. 3.26 Hos 4.14 3. How easie and sweet soever the wickeds way of dying he yet that we be not ensnared thereby the Text affords several antidotes As 1. Let God deal with the wicked as he will yet they must at last dye and leave all their enjoyments and be content to get a grave for all Now under whatever mask death come unto them or whatever they think of it yet they are triumphed over by it Psal 49.14 and there is matter of terrour in it to them Psal 73.19 See Luk. 12.19 20 21. 2. Whatever be the way of their death yet it is certain they have sinned and as the other reading hath it they have continued to sin even till the grave and it is marked they have done so even here where Gods indulgence is asserted To intimate not only that there will be an after account taken of them for their sins Psal 50.21 whatever indulgence they find in life or death For sin will never be forgotten if it be not pardoned But further to assure us that there is present wrath in their lot be what it will Is 64.5 and a woe upon them Lam. 5.16 3. There is a snatching or violence as the word imports in their death as the heat and drought quickly pluck away the Snow waters Which beside the quick dispatch that is made in their death without any lingring pain and their natural antipathy against death which is common to them with all men and therefore they must be plucked violently away may import that they are never ripe nor ready for death in their resolutions or if it be otherwise it slows only from delusion or a surfet of sin and pleasures not from any assurance of the favour of God And however they judge or look upon death yet the most easie death snatcheth them away as Executioners and Serjeants hurry a Malefactour to the Scaffold And in their resolutions for death they are but like drunken and madd-men who regard not the danger till they be sober Hence it is that their Soul is required of them at death Luk. 12.20 But they do never voluntarily resign it whatever their carriage seem to be Verse 20. The womb shall forget him the worm shall feed sweetly on him he shall be no more remembred and wickedness shall be broken at a tree This easie and ordinary way of the wickeds death is further amplified and enlarged in several branches 1. That the Mother whose womb bare this wicked man and which gets the name here from affection and tenderness shall forget him not so much because he is not worthy to be remembred who had been so wicked in his life as because death takes him away so calmly without any violence or disaster which might leave an impression of horrour and resentment 2. That he shall feed the worms as others do and get an easie and sweet bed in the grave See Chap. 17.14 and 21.33 3. Though he be so grossely wicked as he may be called wickedness in the abstract yet he shall leave no more memorial of any singular or remarkable thing in his death than there is of the cutting down or mouldering away of an old rotten tree Doct. 1. Memorials within time of Estates Children affection of Friends c. are but written on the sand and little to be regarded seeing men may be forgotten by their dearest friends For the womb shall forget him and he shall be no more remembred And if he be forgotten as to the way of his death other memorials of him may also perish See Psal 37.35 36. and 49.11 12. A name with God is much surer Is 56.5 2. As some get no cure of their evils but by forgetting of them The godly may be driven upon this shift Job 9.17 either when they are overcharged and not able to overtake all their sorrows or when they are unsober and refuse the consolations of God they must drive this poor trade And it is the wickeds frequent practice after they have possibly repined a while because they know not how to make up their grievances in God So
as evidences of his glorious dominion See Psal 104.24 25 26 and 107.23 24 c. 6. Gods providence reacheth even to the depths of the Sea as here we are also taught There providence can find out a Rebel Amos 9.13 There the bodies of Saints will find a resting place till he call for them Rev. 20.13 And there Jonah will find a Whale to preserve him Jon. 1.17 7. Gods providence is to be seen and adored not only in living but in lifeless creatures even in even in every pile of grass and in those dead things which are formed from under the waters We need no wonders to demonstrate the glory of God which is obvious in every even in the meanest thing And he is so glorious in riches that as it were he casts away Pearls and other precious things into the depth of the Sea and waters and buries Minerals in the bowels of the Earth Whereby also he tells us that our hearts should not lust so much after these things which his providence hath set out of our way Verse 6. Hell is naked before him and destruction hath no covering The second evidence and effect of Gods Dominion is his omniscience and that he knoweth and consequently ordereth what is most obscure and remote from the knowledge of men So that hell and the place of destruction whether we understand it of the grave and horrid station of the dead and under that comprehend all things that are in the deepest bowels of the Earth and hid under gross obscurity and darkness or of the place of the damned is no less naked before him than if it wanted a skin or covering For so the latter part of the Verse is an explication of the former Doct. 1. Hell and destruction are but one thing For here the one is explained by the other See Prov. 15.11 If we understand this of the grave death and the grave do not only destroy and cut off all our temporal enjoyments as to us but do destroy our persons and dissolve our bodies into dust And therefore nature looks upon it as a destruction and no wonder Saints sometime look so upon it also So that we have no cause to do at upon our bodies which will be brought to this issue at last and if men place their happiness in their temporal enjoyments and life the day will come wherein they will have done with all of that See Psal 49.16 17. Is 10.3 and 14.9 10 11. But the godly may rejoyce in God who out of that eater brings forth meat unto them and doth warrant them to take a more comfortable look of death If we understand it of the place of the damned that is a place of everlasting destruction 2 Thâ—ss 1.9 without any redemption or hope of recovery as there is in other sad conditions and then misery will triumph over these who have long insulted over it So that nothing should be looked upon as a ruine where this is away Mic. 7.8 1 Cor. 11.32 2. God is omniscient and seeth the most secret and hidden thing were it even in Hell or the bowels of the Earth For hell is naked before him that is before God and destruction hath no covering See Psal 139.8 c. Heb. 12.13 Hence 1. If these things be naked before God much more are men and their hearts known to him See Prov. 15.11 So that though men dig deep to hide their counsels from the Lord and seek many coverings of secrecy denial extenuations and pretences yet all these will serve in no stead before him but will only render their courses more odious to him who hates dissimulation and who is provoked to give men a sad proof of his omniscience when they would attempt to deceive him Jer. 2.35 See Is 29.15 and 30.1 Job 31.33 2. If God know all things so well we are bound to trust his verdict concerning us in his word and not our own deceitful hearts Jer. 17.9 10. 3. His eye upon us is still to be remembred and that as was said to â—â—hazi by Elisha 2 King 5.26 his heart goeth with us wherever we go See Psal 44.20 21. and 139.7.8 c. Job 31 4. and 34.21 22. So that if our own hearts condemn us much more may he condemn us who is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things 1 Joh. 3.20 4. When at any time the word of God fines us out we should not look upon it as falling forth by chance but as directed to us by his all seeing eye and providence For therefore is the Word quick and powerful to discern the thoughts and iâ—tents of the heart because all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do Heb. 4.12 with 13. See 1 Cor. 14 24 25. 5. This also may comfort the godly under afflictions Psal 31.7 and 142.3 when they are slâ—ndered by men Job 16 19. and secretly plotted against Psal 94 7 8 c. 2 King 6 11 12 31 32. Is 29.15 16. Verse 7. He stretcheth out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing The third evidence and effect of Gods powerful dominion and providence is his fixing of Heaven and Earth As for the first part of the Verse He stretcheth out the North over the empty place it may indeed be understood thus that he spreads that part of the Heavens which is near the North Pole over the empty or uninhabited place of the Earth as that part of the Earth under the Pole is uninhabited But it is clearer to understand the whole Verse thus That the Lord stretcheth out the whole Heaven which here he denominates from the north or Northern Hemisphere thereof under whâ—ch himself lived like a curious vault above that void and empty space which is betwixt the Earth and it and he hangeth the globe of the Earth and Water upon nothing causing it hang as a ball in the air And for further clearing of the words consider 1. He calls that interjacent space betwixt the Heaven and the Earth the empty place because though there be no vacuity in Nature yet the Air which fills that space to common sense seems to be nothing and sure it is an empty place of any thing which might support that fabrick of the Heavens 2. Though the Earth be elsewhere said to have foundations upon which it is setled Psal 104 5. yet that is to be understood of the deepest placeâ— of the Earth near the center thereof which are as foundations to these parts of it which are above them not that the whole Earth hath any foundations Or it may be thus understood that the Earth is no less fixed than if it were setled upon the firmest foundations And whereas it is said Psal 24.2 That the Earth is founded upon the seas and established upon the floods the word rendred upon may in that place be more fitly rendered above to point out the great power of God who hath made the dry Earth stand
speak to Jobs case and complaint whom he acknowledgeth to be a godly man to give an account of the instructions which God gives to godly men by his Word which was then revealed in these extraordinary wayes We are not to conceive that this is all and the only instruction which Gods Word affords to such that they should repent and be humble For his Word is sent also to comfort godâ—y men But the meaning is Partly that whatever else Gods Word speak to godly men this lesson of daily humiliation and renewing of repentance is still to be taken alongst with it Yea the more God speak of comfort and things refreshful they should learn this lesson the faster as we find Saints have done in their familiar addresses to God Gen. 18.27 and in Gods special manifestations to them Is 6.5 Job 42.5 6. Partly and especially when good men are in Jobs temper complaining that God should afflict them who are righteous then this lesson is most proper for them to silence and put them from their clamours 3. I see no cause to apprehend that Elihu in propounding this instruction to Job doth intend to charge Job with any particular evil work such as Abimelech Gen. 20. and Lâ—ban Gen. 31. were upon when God restrained them by a dream or vision But his scope is more generally to point out that this holds true of all the godly and so of Job that they have daily works or out-breakings from which they need to be withdrawn and if Job had minded this he would not have swelled so high as he did in his complaints and resentments about his condition From this Vese Learn 1. Even the best of men within time have corruptions their crooked byasses works and projects which are not good For so is here supposed even of godly men to whose condition Elihu is speaking Godly men should mind this much and study their filthiness notwithstanding their privileges which will let them see that they are Adam still as he is here called or have somewhat of old Adam in them They should also remember that this is their own work as hath been explained They can neither charge it upon God Jam. 1.13 nor doth Satan though a busie tempter deserve all the blame that oft-times is cast upon him but the true rise of mans miscarriage is from his own lust Jam. 1.14 2. Not only have Saints Original corruption to look to but out-breakings and works also which should be grievous to them when their weakness comes out and above ground For here a godly man hath even a work which is not good which though it may be extended to signifie mans inward projects and machinations also yet most properly it signifieth those visible fruits which flow from that inward root of corruption 3. It is the will of God that his people do daily renew their repentance for their infirmities and miscarriages and that they goe daily to the opened Fountain to be cleansed from them For Man should be withdrawn from this work and should remove it from him and turn from it by repentance Where this is neglected and we do not call our selves daily to an account it may tend to great confusion in a day of distress and may even bring our reconciled estate into question 4. It is the great scope of the Word whereby God speaks to his people to draw them to this daily renewing of their repentance For God instructs by dreams and visions to withdraw man from his work The Doctrine of God approves of no sin even in Saints but teacheth them so much the more to aggravate them as they are committed by them And as the saddest messages tend not to drive us away from God but rather to invite us to him So most comfortable messages should quicken and promove our repentance Therefore we should try our profitâ—ng by the Word by our frequency in the exercise of repentance and when messages are any way odd and singular as here it was extraordinarily revealed they should speak the louder to invite to this exercise 5. Repentance for failings should be joyned with reformation and abandoning of those evils for which men are grieved For this dispensation tends to withdraw man from or cause him remove his work It is sad when this reformation follows not upon convictions and yet it may be so with Saints either because their convictions are not deep and solid enough or because they do not put them in Christs hand who only can gâ—ve a good account of them 6. Among other evils incident to the people of God Pride is a special evil as here is instanced This is an evil which in others feeds upon empty shadows such as their birth riches honours bodily perfections successes natural or acquired endowments c. But in Gods people it is ready to feed upon their best things their gracer privileges singular mercies and deliverances See Jer. 7.3 4. 2 Chron. 32.24 25. 2 Cor. 12.7 1 Cor. 4.7 7. Whosoever are not daily calling themselves to an account for their failings and renewing their re-repentance daily but possibly are murmuring and complaining because of their sad lots they are not free of pride how much soever they are crushed For so much may be gathered from the connexion and scope that till men be withdrawn from their work Pride will not be hid from them and that Jobs complaints evidenced that he was not free of this evil and that he neglected the better work of repenting daily which would have kept him humble And this is a certain truth that no afflictions will humble a man however they crush him unless he be exercised with the conscience and sense of sin 8. God is a great enemy to pride and his Word hath sufficiently declared how ill he is pleased with it For the scope of this instruction is to hide pride from man See Psal 138.6 Dan. 4.37 Jam. 4.6 Prov. 6.16 17. It is a sin which in it self is a folly 2 Cor. 12.11 a sin for which there is no cause seeing we do but our duty in our highest attainments yea not so much as our duty Luk. 17.10 and an evil which declares men to be nothing in reality Gal. 6.3 It robs God of his glory Rom. 11.36 and crosseth his great design of abasing all flesh before him 1 Cor. 1.29 30. And therefore must be hatâ—ful to him 9. Albeit proud men bulk much in their own eyes and great men are much subject to this evil of pride Yet no greatness real or imaginary doth warrant men to entertain it For even Geber as it is in the Original the mighty or great man ought to have pride hid from him If even greatest of men consider that they are vanity at their best estate Psal 39.5 that they will not long continue what thâ—y are but death will level them with others Psal 49.10 11 12. that the more they have received they have the stricter account to make Luk. 12.48 and that pride doth blast
sweet unto them when they are restored for so much is intimated unto Job by this Instance 2. That which befals the wicked is amplified v. 15. That their light shall be withholden not only by their being put to flee into corners but by their being deprived of all light of comfort in their evil way and of the light of Life when Magistrates shall punish them and break their lofty and insolent power as is added in the end of the v. Whence Learn 1. It is much and seriously to be studied how little allowance the wicked have to share in these comforts which are allowed on others therefore is this again repeated how prejudicial the common mercy of light proves to the wicked 2. All the light of comfort or life that wicked men have is in hazard for they lie under the lash of having their light withholden 3. The mercies of wicked men are nothing the surer that they have probabilities that they shall continue for their light shall be withholden and intercepted 4. Men that are proud and insolent in the exercise of their power may expect to be crushed for the high arm shall be broken 5. It is useful to the godly to study the Lot of the wicked that they may be humbled and excited to walk tenderly therefore is this inculcated so much upon Job that he may beware of the wickeds pranks which make the light sad and dreadful to them and might humble him now when God appeared Verse 16. Hast thou entred into the Springs of the Sea or hast thou walked in the search of the depth 17. Have the gates of death been opened unto thee or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death 18. Hast thou perceived the breadth of the Earth Declare if thou knowest it all As in the former Verses God had informed Job how little command or skill he had of the light so here he proceeds to speak of the opposite darkness which may allude somewhat to Gods dark dispensation toward him and sheweth that he was as little acquainted with the places of darkness such as the springs or weeping sources which drop continually of the See into which he had never entered and the depth in the search whereof he had never travelled v. 16. Also the gates of death or the inferiour parts of the earth where the dead are kept and where none can come living and the approach whereunto casts the shadow of death upon men or would affright them with deadly horrour Hither Job had never come v. 17. Yea there are things which are lightsom and visible in themselves and yet are dark to him as never seen by him such as the breadth of the earth or the circumference thereof which is spoken of according as it is represented to our sense not round but broad which however Geometers guess at it yet they cannot tell it exactly nor give a reason why it is not broader or narrower far less could Job or any man else travel over it all himself that he might know it all or all its dimensions by ocular inspection or know what is in doing through the wide world but he would find many a Remora in that journey v. 18. By this Instance is pointed out 1. That as light so darkness also is ordered by God and known to him for these Questions propounded to Job do intimate that God knew all those things and if Job were ignorant of them it did not beseem him to compete with God as he did See Psal 139.11 12. 2. Man is ignorant and soon put to a non-plus in many things many things are shut up in darkness from him as the springs and depth of the Sea and the Gates of death and of the shadow of death and many things are visible which yet he cannot reach as the breadth of the earth all of it For so much do these Questions import So that man should be sensible of his Ignorance and not presume to measure all by his skill nor mistake albeit many things be in the dark to him 3. Not only doth God order and know the places of darkness but even in darkness and what is unaccessible his Glory doth shine no less than in what is visible For so much doth this Instance import the scope whereof as of all the rest is to convince Job of the Glory and Majesty of God From which in reference to the scope and to Job's present case we may further gather 1. Gods glory shines in his works no less in what is hid than in what is visible to us 2. Hence in dark cases we must not think all is wrong because we cannot comprehend them and what is in them for he brings deep things out of darkness 3. We should in stead of quarrelling rather see cause to adore him who employs deep and unsearchable wisdom about us so that it is as easie to dive into the depth of the Sea c. as to comprehend it 4. As we rest satisfied albeit there be many things in Gods works which we cannot reach so ought we also to submit in our own case when it is dark 5. Yea as the more unsearchable the depth the gates of death c. be the more they speak of him so the further our condition be taken out of our own fight we ought to expect the more of him in it Verse 19. Where is the way where light dwelleth and as for darkness where is the place thereof 20. That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof 21. Knowest thou it because thou wast then born or because the number of thy days is great In these Verses the places of light and darkness are spoken to conjunctly whereof whatever conjectural knowledge men may have yet they have not so perfect knowledge as either to direct them to their places and prescribe them their home and bounds if they should wander abroad or to be able by travel to go to that place v. 19 20. This he amplifieth v 21. That those things were ordered before Job was born so that he might as well fancy that he was born before he had a being as think to have the command of them And as he could not have skill of those things by being at the first ordering thereof so neither by long experience since for the experience of never so many years could not supply that defect of knowledge Hereby is pointed out 1. That we have abundance of the works of God at our door wherein we may see much of him even every day and night and every vicissitude of light and darkness 2. If men have not the command nor can direct the least of Gods ordinary works How much less should they dare to prescribe to God who ordereth them all 3. The works of God though never so obvious do require our serious and second thoughts to take them up aright therefore are those things here spoken of again 4. It
Name of the second imports one so sweet as Aromatick Cassâ—a and the Name of the third implieth that she was one so fair as if an Horn or large measure of Paintry or Varnish had been powred upon her to make her appear beautiful 2. Their Estate and Portions and that they were made joint heirs with their brethren of their Fathers Lands and Estate v. 15. Which doth not import that they were never married but that their Father was careful to settle them near himself and his Sons that so they might have a Society among themselves for Gods Service because of the many Idolaters that were about them who might be ready to infect and corrupt them Doct. 1. Children in themselves are a â—lessing as continuing us in them to serve God even when we are gone for here they are ranked among Jobs Blessings See Psal 127.3 128.3 So that it is a sin to murmure at this mercy or not to improve Children aâ— a Blessing 2. It is in special a Blessing to them who have Wealth to have Children who may succeed to them in their Estates for this mercy of Children is subjoined to Jobs wealth v. 12. to intimate that his wealth would not have been so sweet if he had wanted Children to enjoy it after him So that it is the fault of men of great Estates and Power if they breed not their Children well who are to succeed to their Estates and Dignities whereby they not only wrong their own Families but their Countrey also wherein their posterity may have power And they are also culpable who having great Estates do not marry that so themselves may have a care of educating their Heirs if God give them any but do suffer those who shall succeed them to be bred by they cannot tell whom 3. Even the multitude of Children is a blessing as here it heightens Jobs mercy that he had so many And albeit Job was a rich man and had enough to give them yet they are indefinitely a blessing to poor or rich Psal 127.5 not to be murmured at though not to be doated upon either 4. Every sex of Children sons or daughters is a mercy as here is distinctly marked though we ordinarily doat upon those we want whether sons or daughters 5. Though Favour be deceitful and Beauty vain Prov. 31.30 and God may compense want of Beauty with excellent qualities nor must men cast off their Children because of deformities yet beauty is in it self a mercy not to be abused with a polluted life or wiâ—h pride because of it for therefore is the singular beauty of Jobs Daughters marked 6. It is a great blessing both to Parents and Children when Children are dutiful and obedient for so were Jobs Daughters as appears from his care to provide for them and his delight to have them near himself and this is marked as one of his mercies 7. It is a great blessing and an evidence that Children are dutiful when they live in love one with another as here the sons and daughters delight to live near together See Chap. 1.4 8. It should be a special part of Parents care and an evidence of their love to their Children to study to prevent their infection in the matter of Religion and so to settle them that they be not cast upon tentations so much did Job evidence by setling his Daughters among their Brethren Verse 16. After this lived Job an hundred and forty years and saw his sons and his sons sons even four generations The fourth Particular in this account is his long life after his restitution even for the space of 140 years so that he saw four generations come of him before he died If we apply that General v. 10. to this also and make this sum double to what he lived before his trial we may conclude that he was 70 years old which is the half of 140 when his trial began and lived in all 210 years beside the time of his trial Which if there were not somewhat singular in it might help to prove to the antiquity of this History and that Job lived before these days wherein mens lives began to be shortned as Moses sheweth Psal 90.10 But this supposition of the doubling of his years not being so certain we may only here Learn 1. Albeit our life on earth be but a warfare yet long life is a mercy in it self and to godly men a reward of piety and a benefit to the Church with whom they are continued for therefore is Jobs long life marked as one of his mercies See Psal 34.12 13. It is true godly men have some loss by their long life being so much the longer kept from heaven yet death being in it self a fruit of sin the deferring thereof is in it self a mercy And a long life may be full of rich advantages to godly men while they see Gods goodness in the land of the living before they go hence Psal 27.13 while they have opportunity to honour God and do him much service Phil. 1.23 24 25. while they get many proofs of Gods love Gen. 48.15 1 Kings 1.29 while they have opportunity to sow largely for a rich harvest 2 Cor. 9.6 and get leisure to ripen for death which is their difficult step and great trial All which doth not import that we should doat upon long life but it serves to condemn the Godly who are weary of their life and all those who make little good use of a long life but do thereby render themselves obnoxious to a sudden stroke Psal 68.21 2. It is yet a further proof of kindness when God sweetens our long life with mercies particularly of posterity as here Job saw his sons and his sons sons even four generations 3. Our long life is then especially sweet when we see the Church well and are doing good therein in our stations as Job here had opportunity to train up and see a Church of his posterity See Psal 128.5 6. Verse 17. So Job died being old and full of days The last particular in this account is his happy death when he is full of days Whence learn 1. Did men live never so long and in great prosperity yet they must at last die as here Job did See Psal 49.6 7 8 9. Heb. 9.27 2. It is a mercy in it self when men are ripe to be taken away for it is ranked among Jobs mercies that he died being old It is true young persons do doat upon time expecting an happiness in it but when men come to what Job attained of years or any thing proportionable to it they will count it their mercy to get their Pass to be gone if they be godly 3. Were men never so old when they die yet to be full of days and satisfied with the time they have lived is a mercy and gift of it self for it is here marked as a distinct mercy that he was not only old but full of days when he died And this is a mercy