Bildad had said, 'God will not cast away a perfect man' (viii. 20). But Job's experience is, 'He destroys the perfect and the wicked' (ix. 22). Thus Job has many fellow-sufferers, and one good effect of his trial is that it has opened his eyes to the religious bearings of facts which he had long known but not before now seriously pondered.
At last a milder spirit comes upon the sufferer. He has been in the habit of communion with God, and cannot bear to be condemned without knowing the cause (x. 2). How, he enquires, can God have the heart to torture that which has cost Him so much thought (comp. Isa. lxv. 8, 9)? A man is not a common potter's vessel, but framed with elaborate skill.
Thy hands fashioned and prepared me;
afterwards dost thou turn[1] and destroy me?
Remember now that as clay thou didst prepare me,
and dost thou turn me into dust again?
Life and favour dost thou grant me,
and thine oversight guarded my spirit (x. 8, 9, 12).
God appeared to be kind then; but, since God sees the end from the beginning, it is too clear that He must have done all this simply in order to mature a perfect human sacrifice to His own cruel self-will. Job's milder spirit has evidently fled. He repeats his wish that he had never lived (x. 18, 19), and only craves a few brighter moments before he departs to the land of darkness (x. 20-22).
It was not likely that Zophar would be more capable of rightly advising Job than his elders. Having had no experience to soften him, he pours out a flood of crude dogmatic commonplaces, and in the complaints wrung from a troubled spirit can see nothing but 'a multitude of words' (xi. 2). Yet he only just misses making an important contribution to the settlement of the problem. He has caught a glimpse of a supernatural wisdom, to which the secrets of all hearts are open:—
But oh that God [Eloah] would speak,
and open his lips against thee.
- ↑ Following Sept., with Merx and Bickell.
