Expositor's Bible: The Book of JobWatson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Book of Job
Watson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Bible. Job -- Commentaries
Eloah is known through the tempest as well as in the dewdrop and the
tender blossom. What is capable of strength must be made strong. That
is the Divine law throughout all life, for the cedar on Lebanon, the
ox in the yoke, the lion of the Libyan desert. Chiefly the moral
nature of man must find its strength. The glory of God is to have sons
who can endure. The easy piety of a happy race, living among flowers
and offering incense for adoration, cannot satisfy Him of the
eternal will, the eternal power. Men must learn to trust, to endure,
to hold themselves undismayed when the fury of tempest scours their
world and heaps the driven snow above their dwellings and death comes
cold and stark. Struggle man shall, struggle on through strange and
dreadful trials till he learn to live in the thought of Divine Will
and Love, co-ordinate in one Lord true to Himself, worthy to be
trusted through all cloud and clash. Ever is He pursuing an end
conformable to the nature of the beings He has created, and, with man
an end conformable to his nature, the possibilities of endless moral
development, the widening movements of increasing life. Let man know
this and submit, know this and rejoice. A dream-life shall be
impossible to man, use his day as he will.
Is this Divine utterance from the storm required by the progress of the
drama? Some have doubted whether its tenor is consistent with the
previous line of thought; yet the whole movement sets distinctly towards
it, could terminate in no other way. The prologue, affirming God's
satisfaction with His servant, left us assured that if Job remained pure
and kept his faith his name would not be blotted from the book of life.
He has kept his integrity; no falsehood or baseness can be charged
against him. But is he still with God in sincere and humble faith? We
have heard him accuse the Most High of cruel enmity. At the close he
lies under the suspicion of impious daring and revolt, and it appears
that he may have fallen from grace. The author has created this
uncertainty knowing well that the verdict of God Himself is needed to
make clear the spiritual position and fate of His servant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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