21 With two aphorisms Job acknowledged God’s sovereignty over his entire life, both for good and for ill. His acknowledgment is expressed with the strongest conviction, for he uses God’s personal name Yahweh three times (Janzen). Job’s resignation to the divine will was exemplary. Having entered the world with nothing, he realized he would not take anything with him in death. Just as he came forth from his mother’s womb, so he would return to the earth, the mother of all the living. More importantly he professed that the God who had given him all this wealth had the right to take it away, even before his death. Job assumed no inherent right to his possessions. In sorrow as well as in blessing he praised God’s name.[1]
1:21 / With Job’s reference to coming naked from my mother’s womb the author is laying a comparative groundwork for the later curse on the day of his birth (3:1). Note Job’s patient acceptance here in contrast to his impatient complaint in chapter 3.
The niv consistently translates the Heb. brk, “bless,” as “praise” whenever it is directed by humans to God. It seems the niv translators are theologically uncomfortable with the idea that humans can offer any blessing that will add to the completeness of God. Apparently the ot writers had no such difficulty, since they often talk about their desire and intention to return to God the blessing they have received. There is certainly something significantly different between desiring to “praise” God and wanting to “bless” him. The one wishes to verbalize reasons for which God is praiseworthy, while the other actually desires to give rather than just describe.[2]
21. Job’s exclamation is the noblest expression to be found anywhere of a man’s joyful acceptance of the will of God as his only good. A man may stand before God stripped of everything that life has given him, and still lack nothing. His essential being came into life naked from his mother’s body, and in that second birth into another world which is death, he will pass in similar nakedness. The literal meaning of ‘I shall return there’ need not be pressed. The suggestion of some commentators that it refers to Mother Earth as man’s origin and goal finds no support in Scripture. The thought is as general as Ecclesiastes 5:15 or 1 Timothy 6:7. A man comes from his mother and returns to dust. But šāmmāh, ‘thither’, could be a euphemism for Sheol, ‘that place’, as in Job 3:17, 19.
Job sees only the hand of God in these events. It never occurs to him to curse the desert brigands, to curse the frontier guards, to curse his own stupid servants, now lying dead for their watch-lessness. All secondary causes vanish. It was the Lord who gave; it was the Lord who removed; and in the Lord alone must the explanation of these strange happenings be sought.[3]
Ver. 21. Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.—
Job’s resignation:—
Job was very much troubled, and did not try to hide the outward signs of his sorrow. A man of God is not expected to be a stoic. The grace of God takes away the heart of stone out of his flesh, but it does not turn his heart into a stone. I want you, however, to notice that mourning should always be sanctified with devotion. “Ye people, pour out your hearts before Him: God is a refuge for us.” When you are bowed down beneath a heavy burden of sorrow, then take to worshipping the Lord, and especially to that kind of worshipping which lies in adoring God, and in making a full surrender of yourself to the Divine will, so that you can say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” It will also greatly alleviate our sorrow if we then fall into serious contemplations, and begin to argue a little, and to bring facts to bear upon our mind. “While I was musing,” said David, “the fire burned,” and it comforted and warmed him. Job is an instance of this kind of personal instruction; he has three or four subjects which he brings before his own mind, and these tend to comfort him.
I. The extreme brevity of life. Observe what Job says, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” We appear for a brief moment, and then we vanish away. I often, in my own mind, compare life to a procession. Well now, because life is so short, do you not see where the comfort comes? Job says to himself, “I came, and I shall return; then why should I worry myself about what I have lost? I am going to be here only a little while, then what need have I of all those camels and sheep? If my earthly stores vanish, well, I shall vanish too.” Further, Job seems especially to dwell with comfort upon the thought, “I shall return to the earth, from which all the particles of my body originally came: I shall return thither.” You recollect how the tribe of Gad and the tribe of Reuben went to Moses, and said, “If we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan.” Of course, they did not want to cross the Jordan if they could get all their possessions on the other side. But Job had not anything this side Jordan; he was cleaned right out, so he was willing to go. And, really, the losses that a man has, which make him “desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better,” are real gains. What is the use of all that clogs us here?
II. Job seems to comfort himself by noticing the tenure of his earthly possessions. “Naked,” says he, “came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” He feels himself to be very poor, everything is gone, he is stripped; yet he seems to say, “I am not poorer now than I was when I was born.” One said to me, the other day, “All is gone, sir, all is gone, except health and strength.” Yes, but we had not as much as that when we were born. We had no strength, we were too weak to perform the least though most necessary offices for our poor tender frame. Old men sometimes arrive at a second childhood. Do not be afraid, brother, if that is your case; you have gone through one period already that was more infantile than your second one can be, you will not be weaker then than you were at first. Suppose that you and I should be brought to extreme weakness and poverty, we shall neither be weaker nor poorer than we were then. It is wonderful that, after God has been gracious to us for fifty years, we cannot trust Him for the rest of our lives; and as for you who are sixty, seventy, or eighty years of age, what! has He brought you thus far to put you to shame? Did He bear you through that very weakest part of your life, and do you think He will now forsake you? Then Job adds, “However poor I may be, I am not as poor as I shall be, for naked shall I return to mother-earth. If I have but little now, I shall soon have still less.” I want you to notice, also, what I think really was in Job’s mind, that, notwithstanding that he was but dust at the beginning, and would be dust at the end, still there was a Job who existed all the while. “I was naked, but I was; naked shall I return thither, but I shall be there.” Some men never find themselves till they have lost their goods. They, themselves, are hidden away, like Saul, among the stuff; their true manhood is not to be seen, because they are dressed so finely that people seem to respect them, when it is their clothes that are respected. They appear to be somebodies, but they are nobodies, notwithstanding all that they possess.
III. But perhaps the most blessed thing is what Job said concerning the hand of God in all things: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” I am so pleased to think that Job recognised the hand of God everywhere giving. He said, “The Lord gave.” He did not say, “I earned it all.” He did not say, “There are all my hard-earned savings gone.” What a sweet thing it is if you can feel that all you have in this world is God’s gift to you! A slender income will give us much content if we can see that it is God’s gift. Let us not only regard our money and our goods as God’s gifts; but also our wife, our children, our friends. Alas! some of you do not know anything about God. What you have is not counted by you as God’s gift. You miss the very sweetness and joy of life by missing this recognition of the Divine hand in giving us all good things richly to enjoy. But then, Job equally saw God’s hand in taking them away. If he had not been a believer in Jehovah, he would have said, “Oh, those detestable Sabeans! Somebody ought to go and cut to pieces those Chaldeans.” That is often our style, is it not,—finding fault with the secondary agents? Suppose my dear wife should say to the servant, “Where has that picture gone?” and the maid replied, “Oh, the master took it!” Would she find fault? Oh, no! If it had been a servant who took it down, or a stranger who removed it, she might have said something; but not when I took it, for it is mine. And surely we will let God be Master in His own house: where we are only the children, He shall take whatever He pleases of all He has lent us for a while.
IV. Job’s last comfort lay in this truth, that God is worthy to be blessed in all things—“Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Let us never rob God of His praise, however dark the day is. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job means that the Lord is to be blessed both for giving and taking. “The Lord gave,” blessed be His name. “The Lord hath taken away,” blessed be His name. Surely it has not come to this among God’s people, that He must do as we like, or else we will not praise Him. God is, however, specially to be praised by us whenever we are moved by the devil to curse. Satan had said to the Lord concerning Job, “Put forth Thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse Thee to Thy face”; and it seemed as if God had hinted to His servant that this was what the devil was aiming at. “Then,” said Job, “I will bless Him.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The entrance and exit of life:—
1. That every man is born a poor, helpless, naked creature.
2. When death cometh, it shakes us out of all our worldly comforts and possessions.
3. The life of man is nothing else but a coming and a returning.
(1) That a godly man in his straits studieth arguments to acquit and justify God in all His dealings with him.
(2) That the consideration of what we once were, and of what at last we must be, may relieve our spirits in the greatest outward afflictions of this life. (J. Caryl.)
Infancy and after life:—
Job feels himself to be very poor indeed, everything is gone, he is stripped; yet he seems to say, “I am not poorer now than I was when I was born.” I had nothing then, not even a garment to my back but what the love of my mother provided for me. I was helpless then; I could not do anything for myself whatever. One said to me the other day, “All is gone, sir, all is gone save health and strength.” Yes, but he had not so much as that when he was born. David often very sweetly dwells upon his childhood, and still more upon his infancy; and we shall do well to imitate him. Suppose that you and I should be brought to extreme weakness and poverty, we shall never be weaker nor poorer than we were then. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Empty-handed departure from life:—
We have heard of a rustic who, when dying, put a crown-piece into his mouth, because he said he would not be without money in another world; but then he was a clown, and every one knew how foolish was his attempt thus to provide for the future. There have been stories told of persons who have had their gold sewn up in their shrouds, but they took not a penny with them for all their pains. The dust of great Cæsar may help to stop a hole through which the blast blows, and the dust of his slave cannot be put to more ignoble uses. The two ends of our life are nakedness; if the middle of it should not always be scarlet and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, let us not wonder; and if it should seem to be all of a piece, let us not be impatient or complaining. (Ibid.)
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.—
The right attitude in time of trouble:—
It is an easy thing to smile when we are pleased, when our enterprises are successful, and our garners are filled with all manner of store. It is a far different thing to maintain a thankful spirit in the day of adversity, to “rest in the day of trouble.” It is no easy thing to contemplate, with an even mind, the reverses of human life. Yet the patriarch Job was able to meet the most afflicting changes with a holy composure, to own the hand and to bless the name of God in the cloudy as in the sunny day. In these words we have a clear statement of the providence of God in the affairs of human life, and an example of the true disposition and experience of a child of God.
1. The troubles of Job had fallen upon him fourfold. Of each of the four great troubles which had befallen him, a natural cause had been reported. If Job could have anticipated the light of modern wisdom, he would, no doubt, have fixed his mind, and allowed it to rest, upon the instruments of his great affliction. In second causes men seek and find the potency of human events; but they “regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands.” The conduct of Job is an instructive contrast to this, and an edifying example of the good and right way. He exclaims, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.” It is no less strange than deplorable, that, in proportion as great discoveries in sciences and arts have wrought effects, there has been an evil and unreasonable heart of unbelief growing and spreading, and emboldening men to limit or deny the power of God to exercise a controlling influence in His own creation and in the affairs of men.
2. We have represented to us the true disposition and conduct of a child of God in the example before us. Job in deepest distress could say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Edward Meade, M.A.)
Right conduct under the smiles and frowns of God:—
I. Men ought to acknowledge God under the smiles and frowns of providence. God is the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things. He rules in the kingdoms of nature, providence, and grace. He controls all the views, purposes, and actions of men. No good nor evil can come to them but under His direction and by virtue of His influence. Since God guides all the wheels of providence and governs all secondary causes, all good and evil are to be traced up to His holy, wise, powerful, righteous, and sovereign hand.
II. Men ought to bless as well as acknowledge God under both the smiles and frowns of His providence. Job acknowledged that God had given and taken away, and then adds what was still more important, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
1. God never takes away any favours from mankind but what He meant to take away when He gave them. As He always has some purpose to answer by every good gift, so when that good gift has answered the purpose for which it was given, He takes it away, and not before. So that He acts from the same benevolent motive in taking away as in bestowing favours.
2. It becomes men to bless God in taking away as well as in giving peculiar favours, because the favours He continues are generally more numerous and more important than those He removes.
3. The afflicted always know that whatever personal evils God brings upon them, He constantly seeks the general good of the universe; and that all the sufferings they endure are calculated and designed to answer that wise and benevolent purpose.
4. The afflicted and bereaved have often reason to bless God, because the evils they are suffering are so much lighter than those that many others have suffered and are suffering. They are apt to think and say there is no sorrow like unto our sorrow.
5. Men should always bless God, because this is the only way to make all His dealings towards them eventually work for their good. There is an infallible connection between their feeling and acting right under Divine corrections, and their receiving spiritual and everlasting benefit from them. Reflections—
1. This subject suggests the propriety of drawing near to God, and conversing with Him under His correcting hand. His providential dealings have a meaning and a voice, which the afflicted ought to hear and understand.
2. See the nature of true submission under the afflicting and bereaving hand of God. It is something very different from stupidity and insensibility under Divine chastenings. This is not submitting to them, but despising them, which is highly displeasing to God. (N. Emmons, D.D.)
Job recognising God’s hand:—
I. The words spoken imply a conviction of the doctrine of a particular providence. Many there are who, although they aver that God will not utterly leave an abandoned world, still deny the existence of a particular providence. Job saw the hand of God in all the afflictive dispensations under which he lay.
II. Although Job praises God for the giving of His mercies, still he recognises His hand in the taking of them away. Tell one who is healthy of the mercy of God in giving him his strength, and this he may readily acknowledge. But on the withdrawment of these mercies, how does he receive it?
III. These words flow from the conviction of one who saw the Divine justice shining in all His acts. The real Christian is widely distinguished from the man of the world. The latter charges God foolishly as acting foolishly, but the former sees plainly that God is just and holy in all He does.
IV. Job recognised the Divine wisdom which super-intended and controlled his sufferings, for a good end. These words, as well as recognising God’s dealings as wisest and best, whether in gain or in bereavement, are an answer to the voice of lying and temptation. Satan had been exceedingly busy, and wished to overwhelm the holy man with despair. He continually threw in gloomy thoughts and doubts of the care, and goodness, and wisdom of God. But Job was not to be moved by such words. (T. Judkin, A.M.)
The life of the true:—
I. The life of the true has the ordinary vicissitudes. Job had received children, cattle, and property from the Lord, and all had been now “taken away.” In the life of all men there is a constant receiving and losing. Health, pleasure, friendship, fame, property, these come and go. How much that we all once had has been taken away from us. The freshness of childhood, the buoyancy of youth, the circles of early friendships. These vicissitudes of life—
1. Remind us that this world is not our rest.
2. Urge us to rest on the Unchangeable.
II. The life of the true has an ennobling creed. Job felt that God was in all the receivings and losings of his life. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.” Some trace their vicissitudes to chance, and some to necessity, but Job to God. He recognised God in all the events of his life. This creed is—
1. Reasonable. If there be a God, He must be concerned in everything—the small as well as the great.
2. Scriptural. The Bible is full of it. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His notice.
3. Dignifying. It brings God in conscious proximity to man in his everyday life.
III. The life of the true has a magnanimous religiousness. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” The language is that of pious exultation. This spirit is something more than submission to the Divine will under suffering—even something more than an acquiescence in the Divine will in suffering. It is exultation in the manifestation of the Divine will in all the events of life. It amounts to the experience of Paul, who said, “We glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, patience, experience,” &c. (Homilist.)
God’s dealing with Job:—
Let us consider God’s seemingly hard dealing with Job, notwithstanding He had once dealt so bountifully with him, that is, “The Lord hath taken away.” It is hard, no doubt, for a man to be born in poverty; and be obliged to struggle on in poverty and want all his life long; but still I should imagine it must be much easier for a man who had been born poor to be able to live in poverty, than for a man who had been born and reared up in plenty and luxury; for a man never misses what he never possessed. We have a striking instance of this in the history of the unjust steward. When that unfaithful man was about to be turned out of office, we find him absorbed for a time in private meditation and pondering over the terrible change that awaited him; and at last he was forced to give vent to his feelings in these words, “I cannot dig, and to beg I am ashamed.” A man of gentle birth, or a man who has been used to enjoy life, when he is suddenly reduced to poverty and want through some unforeseen and unavoidable misfortune, has not been used to the hardships that a poor man has been accustomed to bear, and therefore his want of experience makes the change so much the more intolerable for him. And I have no doubt but that it was the terrible change which came so suddenly upon him that made the young prodigal son in the Gospel, “who had wasted his substance with riotous living” in the far country, and “who would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat,” to cry out with a heavy heart and tearful eye, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” Job was cognisant of the fact that the Almighty had delivered him into the hands of Satan to do what he would with him, provided he only spared his life; and therefore, instead of saying, “The Lord gave,” and Satan hath taken away, Job saith here, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.” True it is that it was the Sabeans that had seized upon the oxen and the asses, and had taken them away, and had slain all the servants with the edge of the sword. It was true that it was a fire from heaven that had burned up and consumed all the sheep and the servants. It was true that the Chaldeans had fallen upon the camels, and carried them away, and had slain all the servants with the edge of the sword. It was only too true that a great wind from the wilderness smote the four corners of the house in which all his sons and daughters were feasting together, and buried them all beneath its ruins. But Job uttered not a word of complaint against any of these, for well he knew that all these were only instruments in the hands of Satan with the express permission of God, and that by these Satan was to prove his uprightness: hence Job still persists in saying, “The Lord hath taken away.” It was the same God that had dealt so bountifully with Job at first, that had now again stripped him of all that he had; and when the Almighty gave them unto Job at first, He made no conditions with him; He never promised him that he should have to keep his riches or property for any definite period, much less that he should have them absolutely and for ever. Oh, no! and hence it was only just that God should do with His own things as seemed good unto Himself, and to all this just and righteous dealing of God’s Job agrees; and he confesses that in the text when he says, “The Lord hath taken away.” (H. Harris Davies, M.A.)
The Lord hath taken away:—
These words were not lightly uttered. They were said by one who, with mantle rent and head shaven, had fallen on the ground and worshipped. After all, it is not the praise of jubilant moments that is the truest, but that which is murmured low in the thick darkness, mixed with tears. It is all very fine to sing with the linnets in the sunshine, but to sing against the weather is finer. Everything around us looks mournful in the fall of the leaf—all is fading and vanishing, and the odour of death is in the damp air. Yet nature in her bright tints seems to say, “Isn’t it beautiful?” This decay is a happening fit and seasonable. And every fading and vanishing face is a bright advent. It is well, though it look ill to us; and it is always opportune, however bad it seems to us who remain. Believing in God and immortality as we do, it is the quite best thing for them. God in His wise government brings punctually the change of air which the soul requires. But what of us who are left?
I. Our true possession in those who are taken away remains untouched. The portion of the heart, that is the true possession—not what we see and hear. This affection is ours still. Death does but refine and sublime it. The dead are not gone from us, they are given to us as we never had them before. The ancient violin-makers wrote of their work, making the wood speak, “Being dead, I sing more than when I was alive.” May it not be that the idealising touch of death reveals that which we had missed before? We can see now the beauty that was not able to shine out in them before. It is the real man we see now. Let us be bold and loving enough to imagine good when only evil is apparent.
II. The true-hearted and beloved are still with us as regards their influence. In this respect we have lost nothing, but perhaps gained something. Sometimes the pity is that one cannot escape from the influence of one’s ancestors, and get clear of the black drop in the blood which we inherit. But a brave, upright, holy life is more quickening in its effect when that life is over. The thought of such has had a restoring, wholesome, moulding influence. And let us not doubt for a moment that those who are taken away still live. They, not their influence only. I never doubt that. Extinction at death is altogether too poor and low as the solution of the mystery of humanity. To me it is an impossibility to believe that of the soul developed in long evolution; to think that is the end of the greatest work the great Creator ever made. To believe what some call nature, what I call God, should be so foolish and so wasteful as to throw away the only great thing, evolved at such tremendous cost—to extinguish the conscious soul, that subtle and wonderful essence which took the Creator ages to distil, is an impossibility to me. Death means life. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (S. A. Tipple.)
Job’s gracious words:—
Although he was bereaved of every comfort, although his heart was pierced with many sorrows, although his patience was tried by the extremity of pain, and his ear stunned with the words of a foolish woman, Job still retained his integrity, and continued to look up with cheerful resignation to the hand that chastened him. The calamities which befell Job are a standing lesson, confirmed by the experience and observation of mankind in all ages, that this world furnishes no armour which is proof against the arrows of adversity; and that the more diversified are the comforts which any person enjoys, he is exposed to the greater variety of suffering in the days of darkness which may overtake him.
I. The words of Job discover a recollection of the goodness of God. Instead of searching for other causes of the distinguished prosperity which he had enjoyed, he says, with the simplicity and humility of a grateful spirit, “The Lord gave.” There is no portion under the sun precisely similar to that which was given to Job. But all we have we have received from the hand of God. If you accustom yourselves to remember the years of the right hand of the Most High, no change of situation will obliterate from your minds the good which you have received; and to be deprived will seem but another phase of the same Divine goodness.
II. The words of Job imply an acknowledgment that the Lord does not deal unjustly with the children of men when He takes away what He gave. The security and joy of possession may have produced a mistaken opinion of the good things of this world. But you do not find in Scripture any promise of their being continued to you. They are in their nature temporary. When they are bestowed in the largest measures, they cease not to be precarious. You cannot demand from the justice of your Creator that He should never take away from you anything that He gave. If He takes away you should, with Job, be disposed to bless His name.
III. The words of Job imply a conviction that the evil which the children of men receive is intended for their benefit. He represents it as proceeding from the same independent and unchangeable Being from whom they receive good. God rejoices over His creatures to do them good; but it is needful that He should sometimes afflict. In the sober solitude of affliction He corrects that giddiness with which continued prosperity often inspires frivolous minds, and His chastisements bring back to Himself those hearts which His indulgence had estranged. By touching something dear to those who are at ease in their possessions, He rebukes their former indifference about the distresses of others, and melts them into a fellow-feeling of all the infirmities of the children of sorrow. Although the salutary effects are often counteracted by the foolishness of man, yet it has been understood in all ages that adversity is, by the appointment of nature, the season of recollection, and the school of virtue.
IV. The words of Job imply a belief that the benefit which the children of God derive from affliction is imparted to their souls with tenderness and grace. Attend then to the consolations of religion. The consolations are founded on the principle that all the sorrows of life are appointed by God. The same hand which, at one time, fills your houses with good things, at another time measures out the waters of affliction which you drink. Attend to the hopes which religion provides for the afflicted. But these hopes belong only to His dutiful children. If you honour the God of your fathers, if you enjoy with moderation what He gives, and serve Him with gladness of heart in the multitude of His goodness, He will revive you when you walk in the midst of trouble. The best preparation for adversity, then, is the sentiment of religion, habitually cherished by acts of devotion. (G. Hill, D.D.)
The mourner’s song:—
Atheism in sorrow is a night without a star.
1. Man cannot have any property apart from God.
2. Death is the assertion of God’s proprietorship.
3. Submission to Divine arrangements is the highest test of obedience.
4. Submission is most honourable to man, and most acceptable to God, when it rises into thankfulness. In sorrow the soul finds its surest refuge in fundamental principles.
1. There is a God.
2. That God is careful of me.
3. By impoverishing me of other possessions, He is seeking to enrich me with Himself.
4. He will ultimately take me as well as my family and property.
5. If I can bless His name in the very sanctuary of affliction and death, what rapture shall I feel in the heaven of unclouded and undying love! He who submits most lovingly and reverently on earth shall sing most sweetly in heaven.
6. Out of this filial submission comes a doubling of the very possessions which were taken away. (Joseph Parker, D.D.)
God the subtractor:—
It sounds a Christian commonplace when we sing that all blessings flow from God. Existence itself, with its range of faculty and wealth of delight, becomes ours by the daily will of God, to be recalled and revoked at His good pleasure. For these unnumbered bounties and benefits we find it easy to bless the Lord who gives. But can we, as we lose them, one after another, also bless the Lord who takes away? How hardly we learn to trust in God the subtractor! Consider, for instance, how spring-time belongs to us all to begin with—and bounding health and sunny spirits and the zest of being alive. In life’s April we are happy as with a singing of birds in the heart. But the season draws on when He who gave these boons of youth will take some of them, perchance most of them away. And so, too, we have hope granted us to begin with, and generous ambitions, and gallant dreams of what we will be and what we can do. These also are the gifts of God. It is an instinct with the young to gird themselves for the peaks and prizes of life, albeit we see only a few in each generation walking with tranquil breath about those high tablelands, for which we all secretly feel that we were born. And this is not because, as in a competition, some must be first. Real eminence is a region, not a pinnacle, and those who dwell there beckon us up to the ample spaces by their side. Yet the forlorn sense of limitation creeps over most men in middle age. You have measured your own powers by that time, and found the end of your tether. The God who kindled those brave hopes and plans is the God who quenches them one by one. Can we accept our limitation, and gain peace even in what seems defeat and failure, as we say quietly, The will of the Lord be done? Then again, how strangely God often gives a man his great opportunity. Once perhaps in a lifetime the door opens, and he may enter in and obtain his heart’s desire and win his fame and success. But it is not for always. The man himself may have no blame to bear. Yet the door shuts again as strangely as it opened, and God has taken the opportunity away. For the rest of his days that man will never go any farther. But when the roses fade out of your own garden, can you say as you stand among their dead petals, Blessed be the name of the Lord? Or think again of friendship, that golden gift of God, which is granted to most of us but for a season. How sadly our dearest friends divide and scatter, or more sadly we outlast their affection. For the bitterest losses and withdrawals of life there is no final or sufficient solution. We can but accept them in blind faith which falls back on the Inscrutable Will. The Lord hath taken away is “the last word that can be said. Nothing can go beyond it, and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake under our feet.” The Lord Himself is left. And in the hour of our utmost desolation it is He who whispers, “I am thy Youth, and thy Health, and thy Opportunity, and thy Success, and thy Consolation. I am thy Friend and thy Shield, and thy exceeding great Reward. All thy fresh springs are in Me.” The like truth applies to the highest spiritual visitations and benedictions. The breath of the Holy Ghost is not ours either to command or to retain. There come times when the whole inward nature lies parched and barren, when impulse flags and sickens, and desire grows languid, and the fountain of love seems shrunken and low. The holiest and most mysterious gifts of God—the touch of His awful presence, the solemn rapture of His communion, the clasp and embrace of His love—they are not with us always. When we say, The Lord gave, sometimes we must say also, The Lord hath taken away. Too many Christians fret and perplex and blame themselves when they sink below the high-water mark of some former experience of the Divine bounty. Yet from the nature of the case that must needs be. No pilgrim to Jerusalem may linger on the shining Mount of Transfiguration. It may be that our Lord’s warning against treasures on earth applies to the hoarding up even of spiritual experiences and emotions. The apostle’s word that we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out, may prove true at last concerning those inward possessions which even the saints have prided themselves on, and clung to and trusted in. God will bring our very faith to the bare simplicity of childhood, so that we may repose not in our creed, not in our fidelity, but in Himself alone. And thus it comes to pass with the Christian who has suffered the loss of all things, that he gathers grace to bless God even out of that very nakedness to which God has reduced his spirit. Yet the ultimate truth stands sure, that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. He cannot tantalise His children with a mere loan of blessings which they must so soon lament. What He grants once He never reclaims absolutely and for ever. When we confess that we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, we affirm more than bare immortality. We mean that the life to come shall realise and make perfect all that this life has come short of, and failed at, and left undone. Heaven for a Christian is the home prepared for his lost causes and unfinished labours and impossible loyalties. Christ Himself has taken charge of all our dead hopes, our ruined plans, our buried joys, our vanished years, our broken dreams. He has laid them away safe in His holy sepulchre. So the resurrection of the dead shall include the blossoming again of every fair thing that has faded and withered out of our hearts. The world to come shall renew all the fulness and glow and passion of existence which this world half bestowed and then extinguished. The time-worn disciple can feel at last detached and disengaged from everything save the Father’s perfect will. God has taken away so much from him that he has now so many hostages in Paradise. One after another his treasures have been lifted into heavenly places, until his heart is only waiting for the call to follow and regain them there. (T. H. Darlow, M.A.)
God giving and taking:—
All heaven must have kept holiday when this calm, intelligent, and believing utterance was made. Over against Cicero, with his culture, philosophy, and eloquence, when mourning as those who have no hope in the decease of a beloved daughter, may we gladly set the Chaldean patriarch who, in the deprivation of health, wealth, and children; in the swerving counsel of an uncongenial wife; in the oil of vitriol which self-righteous friends poured into his gaping wounds, could still honour God and possess his soul in patience. Successive inundations, which would have swept others into hell, only raised this grand old hero on their mountain billows to higher altitudes of faith, self-conquest, and endurance.
I. The nature of Christian resignation.
1. Implies belief in a wise and loving Providence.
2. Contentment with our allotments.
3. Calm yielding to the will of God. No retaliation, no resistance, and no flight, like Adam or Jonah, is attempted.
4. Deep sense of our mercies God leaves more than He takes. Lot’s property lost, yet family spared; himself saved. If Isaac must die, yet Ishmael lives. If Joseph is devoured, Benjamin and the other sons survive.
5. A strong confidence in God. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
II. The manner in which it is shown.
1. It is sincere (31).
2. It is cheerful (2:10).
3. It is immediate (1:20).
4. It is constant (42:7, 8).
III. Proofs of its reasonableness.
1. Perfections of God require it (Isa. 40:26–31).
2. The Word of God demands it (Jas. 5:11).
3. The honour of religion closely related to it (1 Pet. 2:20).
4. The example of Christ sanctions it (Heb. 12:3).
5. Our present and future felicity depends on it (1 Pet. 5:10). (Homiletic Review.)
Submission to bereaving providences:—
The affliction and the patience of Job are set before us as an example, and there is scarcely any case that can occur but something in his complicated trials will be found to correspond to it. His afflictions were sent, not so much in consequence of any particular sin, as for the trial of his faith. However painful any affliction may be, while we are exercised by it, yet when it is over we often perceive that all was wise and good; at least, we see it so in others. In Job’s trials, in particular, God was glorified, Satan confounded, and the sufferer comes forth as gold. That which supported him under all was the power of religion, the value of which is never more known than in the day of adversity. This is the armour of God, which enables us to stand in the evil day; and having done all, to stand.
I. The spirit of submission under bereaving providences exemplified in the conduct of Job. There are several particulars in this case which serve to show the greatness and severity of Job’s affliction, and the aboundings of the grace of God towards him, which enabled him to endure it all with so much meekness and submission.
1. The degree of his afflictions. The objects taken away were more than were left, and seemed to leave him nothing to comfort him.
2. His trouble came upon him suddenly and unexpectedly, and completely reversed his former circumstances. It was all in one day, and that a day of feasting too, when everything appeared promising around him. Prosperity and adversity are like two opposite climates: men can live in almost any temperature, if but inured to it; but sudden reverses are insupportable. Hence it is we feel most for those who have seen better days when they fall into poverty and want.
3. Though Job was eminently pious, it is doubtful whether his children were so in any degree, and this would render the bereavement far more severe.
4. His submission also appears in a holy moderation which attended his griefs. A man of no religion would have been distracted, or have sunk in sullen despair. A heathen would have cursed his gods, and perhaps have committed suicide, being filled with rage and disappointment.
5. Amidst all his sorrow and distress he preserves a holy resolution to think well of God, and even blesses His holy name.
II. The principles on which Job’s submission was evidently founded. There is the patience of despair, and a submission to fate; but Job’s was of a very different description.
1. He considers all that befell him as God’s doing, and this calms and quiets his spirit.
2. He recollects that all he had was from the hand of God; that it was merely a gift, or rather lent for a time, to be employed for His glory.
3. He feels thankful that they were once given him to enjoy, though now they are taken from him. We may see reason to bless God that ever we had property or children or friends to enjoy, and that we possessed any of them so long as we did; though now, by the will of providence, we are deprived of them all.
4. Even when bereaved of every earthly comfort, he considers God as worthy of his gratitude and adoration. Job could bless the hand that took away, as well as the hand that gave; and this must have been a special act of faith. Reflections—
(1) How wise and how heedful to choose the better part, which shall never be taken from us.
(2) Afllictions, if not sanctified, will only tend to aggravate our guilt.
(3) The example of Job teaches us that a spirit of despondency and discontent in a time of trial is utterly inconsistent with true religion. (J. Haman.)
(4) While we admire the patience of Job, we cannot but abhor the unfeeling conduct of his friends. (J. Haman.)
True resignation:—
This sentence is one of the pillars of Christian ethics, and represents one of the highest attainments taught by God’s revelation. If Job had said nothing else, this verse is sufficient to stamp him as one of the greatest of moral philosophers.
I. The facts here stated.
1. “The Lord gave.” Everything came from Him. He gave us life at first. He gives us every breath we draw, every meal we eat, every friend we value, every relative we love.
2. “The Lord taketh away.” It is practical infidelity to look upon our losses in any other light than we regard our gifts. He gives and He takes away the gift. And He has the right to do so.
II. The sentiment implied. It is this inward sentiment that makes the aphorism so precious and valued. The under-current which gives life to the dead body is resignation to the Divine will. This is what Job manifested, and it is the proper course for us.
1. It is a natural course. What He does is done in wisdom. Hence acquiescence is the proper and natural feeling to be displayed.
2. It is a wise course. To murmur and complain at trials is a source of still greater misery and unhappiness. Resignation, like the honey in the lion’s carcase, will bring us comfort in our sorrow. It promotes the highest Christian graces. It tranquillises the disturbed passions and calms the troubled soul. The highest form of resignation is that brought before us in the text—a feeling which will not only submit, but will bless the gracious hand that deals the blow, knowing that the blow is only dealt in love. (Homilist.)
Submission with praise to God on the death of hopeful children:—
I. Show what we are to understand by blessing God’s name at such times.
1. It does not exclude a becoming grief at the loss of near and dear relatives.
2. It supposes that we are far from thinking, and much further from speaking, hardly of God.
3. We are not to bless God for such strokes, in themselves considered. They may be called evils, as sin is the occasion or procuring cause of them.
4. We should bless God at such times, because we may be assured, if we are true believers, that He designs to do us good thereby, though we at present, perhaps, cannot see how.
II. Demonstrate the truth of the proposition. Or make it appear that it is our duty to bless God, not only when He gives, but also when He takes away. Most, I fear, are not so thankful as they ought to be for the favours which they daily receive from God. All are too apt to “forget His benefits.” It is God who both gives and takes away. And He is infinite in all perfections. Therefore He must know what is fittest to be done. God only takes what He freely gave, or rather lent us. He never told us we should always enjoy our relations, or that He would not call for them. If our deceased relations were truly religious, or made partakers of saving grace, God hath taken them out of a sinful, troublesome world, and at the time which He thought best. And though God hath taken them from us, He hath taken them to Himself.
III. The application.
1. Nothing is by chance.
2. How unbecoming to murmur against God.
3. How miserable must they be who do not eye the providence of God in their affections.
4. What an excellent thing is grace.
5. Let us be weaned from earthly friends.
6. This may reconcile us to the death of godly relations. (Joseph Pitts.)
Praise for resignation:—
Dr. Pierson says, concerning a German pastor, Benjamin Schmolke, that a fire raged over his parish and laid in ruins his church and the homes of his people. Then God’s angel of death took wife and children, and only graves were left, then disease smote him, and laid him prostrate, then blindness took the light of his eyes away; and under all this avalanche of ills Schmolke dictated the sweet hymn beginning with the verse—
“My Jesus, as Thou wilt!
Oh, may Thy will be mine;
Into Thy hand of love
My all I would resign.”
Music from the heart:—
“Blessed be the name of the Lord.” God is a wonderful organist, who knows just what heart-chord to strike (says a famous preacher). In the Black Forest of Germany a baron built a castle with two lofty towers. From one tower to the other he stretched several wires, which in calm weather were motionless and silent. When the wind began to blow the wires began to play like an Æolian harp in the window. As the wind rose into a fierce gale, the old baron sat in his castle and heard his mighty hurricane-harp playing grandly over the battlements. So, while the weather is calm and the skies clear, a great many of the emotions of a Christian’s heart are silent. As soon as the wind of adversity smites the chords the heart begins to play, and when God sends a hurricane of terrible trial you will hear strains of submission and faith, and even of sublime confidence and holy exultation, which we never could have heard in the calm hours of prosperity.
In everything give thanks:—
There are bitter mercies and sweet mercies; some mercies God gives in wine, some in wormwood. Now, we must praise God for the bitter mercies as well as the sweet: thus Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Too many are prone to think nothing is a mercy that is not sweet in the going down, and leaves not a pleasant farewell on their palate, but this is the childishness of our spirits, which, as grace grows more manly and the Christian more judicious, will wear off. Who that understands himself will value a book by the gilt on the cover? Truly, none of our temporals (whether crosses or enjoyments) considered in themselves, are either a curse or a mercy. They are only as the covering to the book; it is what is writ in them that must decide whether they be a mercy or not. Is it an affliction that lies on thee? If thou canst find it comes from love, and ends in grace and holiness, it is a mercy, though it be bitter to thy taste. Is it an enjoyment? If love doth not send it and grace end it, it is a curse though sweet to thy sense. There are sweet poisons as well as bitter cordials. (W. Gurnall.)[4]
[1] Hartley, J. E. (1988). The Book of Job (p. 78). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
[2] Wilson, G. H. (2012). Job (W. W. Gasque, R. L. Hubbard Jr., & R. K. Johnston, Eds.; p. 28). Baker Books.
[3] Andersen, F. I. (1976). Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 14, pp. 92–93). InterVarsity Press.
[4] Exell, J. S. (n.d.). The Biblical Illustrator: Job (pp. 40–49). Fleming H. Revell Company.
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