Page:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) vol 3.djvu/41

Rh which they are agreed; as the evil of sin, the vanity of the world, the worth of the soul, the necessity of a holy life, and the like. Though they do not all live up, as they should, to their belief of these truths, yet they are all ready to bear their testimony to them.

Now there are two things which Eliphaz here maintains, and in which he doubts not but all the saints concur with him.

I. That the sin of sinners directly tends to their own ruin; (v. 2.) Wrath kills the foolish man, his own wrath, and therefore he is foolish for indulging it; it is a fire in his bones, in his blood, enough to put him into a fever; envy is the rottenness of the bones, and so slays the silly one that frets himself with it. "So it is with thee;" says Eliphaz; "while thou quarrellest with God, thou doest thyself the greatest mischief; thine anger at thine own troubles, and thine envy at our prosperity, do but add to thy pain and misery: turn to the saints, and thou wilt find they understand themselves better." Job had told his wife she spake as the foolish women, now Eliphaz tells him he acted as the foolish men, the silly ones. Or, it may be meant thus: "If men are ruined and undone, it is always their own folly that ruins and undoes them. They kill themselves by some lust or other; therefore, no doubt, Job, thou hast done some foolish thing, by which thou hast brought thyself into this calamitous condition." Many understand it of God's wrath and jealousy. Job needed not be uneasy at the prosperity of the wicked, for the world's smiles can never shelter them from God's frowns; they are foolish and silly, if they think they will. God's anger will be the death, the eternal death, of those on whom it fastens. What is hell, but God's anger without mixture or period?

II. That their prosperity is short, and their de struction certain, v. 3··5. He seems here to parallel Job's case with that which is commonly the case of wicked people.

1. Job had prospered for a time, seemed confirmed, and was secure in his prosperity; and it is common for foolish wicked men to do so. I have seen them taking root, planted, and, in their own and other's apprehension, fixed, and likely to continue. See Jer. xii. 2. Ps. xxxvii. 35, 36. We see worldly men taking root in the earth; on earthly things they fix the standing of their hopes, and from them they draw the sap of their comforts. The outward estate may be flourishing, but the soul cannot prosper that takes root in the earth.

2. Job's prosperity was now at an end, and so has the prosperity of other wicked people quickly been.

(1.) Eliphaz foresaw their ruin with an eye of faith. They who looked only at present things, blessed their habitation, and thought them happy, blessed it long, and wished themselves in their condition. But Eliphaz cursed it, suddenly cursed it, as soon as he saw them begin to take root, that is, he plainly foresaw and foretold their ruin; not that he prayed for it, (I have not desired the woeful day,) but he prognosticated it. He went into the sanctuary, and there understood their end, and heard their doom read, (Ps. lxxiii. 17, 18.) That the prosperity of fools will destroy them, Prov. i. 32. They who believe the word of God, can see a curse in the house of the wicked, (Prov. iii. 33.) though it be ever so finely and firmly built, and ever so full of all good things; and can foresee that it will, in time, infallibly consume it, with the timber thereof, and the stones thereof, Zech. v. 4.

(2.) He saw, at length, what he had foreseen: he was not disappointed in his expectation concerning him, the event answered it; his family was undone, and his estate ruined. In these particulars, he plainly and very invidiously reflects on Job's calamities. [1.] His children were crushed, v. 4, They thought themselves safe in their eldest brother's house, but were far from safety, for they were crushed in the gate; perhaps the door or gate of the house was highest built, and fell heaviest upon them, and there was none to deliver them from perishing in the ruins. This is commonly understood of the destruction of the families of wicked men, by the execution of justice upon them to oblige them to restore what they have ill-gotten. They leave it to their children; but the descent shall not bar the entry of the rightful owners, who will crush their children, and cast them by due course of law, (and there shall be none to help them,) or perhaps by oppression, Ps. cix. 9, &c. [2.] His estate was plundered, v. 5. Job's was so; the hungry robbers, the Sabeans and Chaldeans, ran away with it, and swallowed it; and this, says he, I have often observed in others. What has been got by spoil and rapine, has been lost the same way. The careful owner hedged it about with thorns, and then thought it safe; but the fence proved insignificant against the greediness of the spoilers, (if hunger will break through stone-walls, much more through thorn-hedges,) and against the divine curse, which will go through the thorns and briers, and burn them together, Isa. xxvii. 4.

6. Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground, 7. Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. 8. I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause; 9. Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number: 10. Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields: 11. To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety. 12. He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. 13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness; and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong. 14. They meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night. 15. But he saveth the poor from the sword, from their mouth, and from the hand of the mighty. 16. So the poor hath hope, and iniquity stoppeth her mouth.

Eliphaz, having touched Job in a very tender part, in mentioning both the loss of his estate and the death of his children, as the just punishment of his sin, that he might hot drive him to despair, here begins to encourage him, and puts him in a way to make himself easy. Now he very much changes his voice, (Gal. iv. 20.) and accosts Job gently, as if he would atone for the hard words he had given him.

I. He reminds him, that no affliction comes by chance, nor is to be attributed to second causes. It doth not come forth of the dust, nor spring out of the ground, as the grass doth, v. 6. It doth not come of course, at certain seasons of the year, as natural productions do, by a chain of second causes. The proportion between prosperity and adversity