to that of Shakspeare? A miserable sham, a passing shadow. But what is intellectual sovereignty to moral? Scarcely worth the comparison. The more kindness a man shows to his age, the more firmly he enthrones himself in the hearts of men. Kindness wins the true kingdoms and crowns the true kings. This is the sovereignty of Christ. His universal kindness has won for Him a large empire in the world, and will one day make Him the Moral Monarch of humanity. "To Him every knee shall bow." HOMILY No. LIX. JOB'S REPLY TO HIS FRIENDS IN GENERAL. (5.) JOB'S SUFFERINGS. (1.) SOCIAL. "But now they that are younger than I have me in derision," &c.-CHAP. xxx. 1-15. EXEGETICAL REMARKS. In these verses Job brings into striking contrast his present condition with that of former days, as sketched by his own hand in the preceding chapter. In glowing colours he had set forth the bright days of his prosperity, and now, with a saddened heart and in sombre tones, speaks of his present social circum stances. Ver. 1.-" But now they that are younger than I have me in derision." It is not necessary to suppose that by the "younger" the patriarch means the three friends with whom he had been holding this long discussion. He speaks of his juniors about him as holding him in derision, and in no measured terms does he express his contempt for them. "Whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock." As if he had said, "In my prosperous days princes and nobles paid me homage; but now, in the dark hour of my adversity, the miserable outcasts of society treat me with insolencecreatures whose parents in my palmy days offered their dogs to guard my flocks, but their offers I scorned as beneath my notice. Ver. 2.-"Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age (or manly vigour) was perished?" "Of what use was the strength of their hands to me; with them maturer age was lost." He means that the fathers of those juniors who held him in derision were creatures so weak and base that their services he disdained. Ver. 3.-" For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste." Some render this verse, Who for want or famine are shrivelled up, which gnaw the desert: upon the eve of ruin and destruction. A still further description of those who treated him with insolence; he speaks of them hardened with hunger and wretchedness, retiring to the desert, there dwelling in the darkness of desolation. Ver. 4.-"Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat." Like brutes, they Like brutes, they ate herbage and weeds. What vegetable is referred to here is not known, nor does it matter, 66 Ver. 5. They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief.)" This is the reason why they feed in the desert, they have been driven forth from the city, and men cry after them as after a thief. Ver. 6." To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks." Caves furnished a natural dwelling for the poor and the outcasts in ancient times; and vagrants and beggars were Troglodites. Hordes of Troglodites lived in the districts adjoining the Hauran. Ver. 7.-" Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together." "Brayed" like the wild ass. Ver. 8.-" They were children of fools, yea, they were children of base men.' The margin is, “ men of no name; that is, men of no reputation, most base and degraded. They were viler than the earth." They were driven out of the land. They rendered themselves so notorious by their crimes that they were ignominiously chased out of the country. Ver. 9.—And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword." Job having given, with a kind of Oriental extravagance, a description of the wretched condition of those who derided him, proceeds to narrate the sufferings he endured at their hands. He says, I have become their "song," I am the subject of their satiric songs and ribald raillery. Ver. 10.-"They abhor me, they flee far from me." They hate me, they shun me. "And spare not to spit in my face." To spit at all in the presence of another, is in the East considered a mark of disrespect, and much more when in the face, is regarded as a mark of abhorrence. Ver. 11. "Because He hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me." "Because He (God) hath loosed my string,-the string of my bow,-and afflicted me.' "Job had said in the preceding chapter (verse 20), that he thought the bow in his hand would renew its strength, i. e. that his authority would become more and more assured; but now he tells us that, so far from this expectation of his being realized, God has on the contrary loosened the string of his bow, i. e. has taken away his authority from him. Therefore they, those wretched men, have let loose their bridle before me. As long as I retained my authority, they were restrained by fear and awe, like horses and mules which are bridled; but now that they can insult me with impunity, they shake off all restraint, they cast away their bridle. But not only they themselves, their children also are a source of great annoyance to me."-Dr. Bernard. This is scarcely correct, though in harmony with the Septuagint and Jerome. Rather should it be rendered, "For one looses his rope and humbles me, and they cast off the bridle before me, i. e. they allow themselves to beat me with the rope (that serves them for a girdle), and they take unbridled liberties against me."-Dr. Samuel Davidson. Ver. 12.-"Upon my right hand rise the youth." The young brood, some read it, "the rabble presses upon my right hand!" "This rabble, constitutionally as well as morally degraded, when it comes upon Job's domain in its marauding expeditions, makes sport of the sufferer, whose former earnest admonitions, given from sympathizing anxiety for them, seemed to them as insults, for which they revenge themselves." Delitzsch. "They push away my feet." Instead of making room for me in the way, they jostle against me, push against me, on the path. "And they raise up against me the ways of their destruction." "They come upon me like a wide breach, they roll upon me like a desolation. Wemyss. "The figure is taken from an advancing army, that casts up ramparts and other means of attack, designed for the destruction of a besieged city. They were in like manner constantly making advances against Job, and pressing on him in a manner that was designed to destroy him." Ver. 13." They mar my path." Some think there is a reference here again to war, and that the patriarch represents himself as in a line of march; the rabble comes, breaks down the hedges and tears up the way, so that it is impossible to pass along. "They set forward my calamity, they have no helper." "They contribute to my calamity, although they gain no help from it."-Dr. Bernard. Ver. 14.-" They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters: in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me.” "They come upon me as through a wide breach. That is, in great numbers, inasmuch as, in the case of a besieged city, from which the metaphor is taken, the wider the breach in its walls, the more soldiers can rush in at the same time. They roll themselves instead of a tempest. When there is a wide breach in a house, the inmates have reason to be afraid of a tempest bursting in and carrying everything away; but instead of a tempest the poet says these mischievous and malicious men rushed violently in."-Bernard. Ver. 15.-" Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul (my dignity) as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud." "Terrors are turned against me, are levelled against, brought to bear upon me. Every one of them (the terrors) pursueth my soul like the wind, with the violence of a raging wind. So that my safety passeth away as a cloud. Just as a raging wind makes the clouds to scud before it, so do these terrors chase away my safety."-Bernard. HOMILETICS.-The subject of this chapter is again Job's sufferings, and the sufferings are described as social, corporeal, and mental. In these verses he gives a graphic and exciting sketch of his social sufferings, the sufferings that came upon him through the insolence of the base people around. Man's happiness as a social being is greatly dependent upon the kind feeling and respect which are shown to him by his contemporaries and neighbours. There are few conditions more miserable for a man of sensitive heart than that of being placed in a neighbourhood populated only by the mean, the base, and the insolent: a neighbourhood in which, through whatever street he walked, whatever house he passed, he would meet with none but those who were morally disgusting, and who would treat him with insolence. and derision. This was now the condition of Job. Of them he says: "Now am I their song, yea, I am their byword. They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face." The social insolence from which he suffers and of which he complains was marked by the following circumstances 66 I. It came from the MOST CONTEMPTIBLE CHARACTERS. He regarded them as despicable in their ancestry. "Whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock." They were base born. He knew their fathers, and they were to him as dogs, morally disgusting and base, utterly impotent to render him any help, so degraded that he would disdain any offer of their service. "Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age was perished?" So abject that they had no home, they were solitary; so vile and wicked that they were driven from the habitations of men. They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief)." They lived on herbs in the wilderness, and their only shelter was in the caves of the earth. They were fools, base men, viler than the earth. Such were the fathers of the mean creatures who now insulted him on all hands. Nor were they themselves less despicable than their fathers. Wretched Troglodites, uncivilized rabbles, whose talk was like the braying of the ass. Among the bushes they brayed." These were the creatures amongst whom the patriarch now lived, and whose insolence he had to endure. They had no faculty to discern or appreciate his moral worth, and were so utterly destitute of any power to compassionate distress that they treated him with a heartless cruelty and revolting insolence. Men may say that a man of his high character ought not to have allowed himself to have been pained with the conduct of such wretches, that he ought to have looked down upon them with a stoical indifference and moral contempt, that he should have treated all their derisive speeches as the idle wind. But who has ever done so? Even Christ Himself felt the reproaches of sinners, and was not indifferent to their revilings and their sneers. "He endured their con tradictions." As to their insolence 66 "Now II. It was manifested in PERSONAL ANNOYANCES. am I their song," he says, "I am their byword." They compose satiric ballads and scream them out in his ear. Like Jeremiah, he felt that he was a "derision to all his people, and their song all the day." They shunned him, they abhorred him, they fled from him, rushed away from him as from a leper, they spat in his face-the most abhorrent insult one could offer to another. They push away my feet," they jostle against me, and by coarse violence thrust me from my pathway. They raise up against me the ways of their destruction. They mar my path, they set forward my calamity." In mobs they rushed upon him as if a breach was made in the wall, or as if a rushing flood flowed in upon him. He had not merely to endure their jibes, satiric songs, and derisive words, but acts of violence as well. What a wretched social state for a man to live in! As to their insolence, further— III. It was shown to him on account of his PROVIDENTIAL REVERSES. Why did they treat him thus? Because he had become contemptible in character; because he had become morally base and degraded? No, if so they might have been excused, for a bad character merits contempt. But the reason was, his circumstances were changed, great prosperity had given way to overwhelming adversity. "Because He (that is, God) hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me." The meaning is, that "the worthless rabble that now treated him with so much contempt, had relaxed all restraint, and they who had hitherto been under some curb now rushed upon him in the most unbridled manner. They had cast off all restraint arising from respect to his rank, standing, moral worth, and the dread of his power, and now treated him with every kind of indignity.' |