But truth, to be prized and really known, must first be learned in the soul's guilt and need, not by the flickering lamp of the scholar. It was so assuredly that Job was uttering this striking anticipation of what every believer learns through the Holy Spirit, but in his own deep wants as laid bare humblingly before God. Vindication in this life Job did not expect; but grace was yet to give, as it gives us too, more than faith looks for. For faith is in us, though of God, and has its measure; grace is in Him, free, unmixed, and unlimited.

In chapter xvii., which of course carries on the same line as the close of chapter xvi., Job speaks of what he could not but expect naturally under such a pressure of overwhelming blows and piercing stabs. His spirit was broken, the light of his days gone out, the graves before him. There is obscurity in the next clause, mainly from the opening words, which, taken as "if not," imply that, unless he were mistaken, he was subject to the strangest illusions, and these so pertinaciously present, that his eye could dwell on nothing else. But others understand the sense to be a form of asseveration. "Truly mockery is with me [that is, speaking of the effort to make him, a dying man, confess what he knew was unfounded, and only existing in their evil surmisings], and on their quarrelling, or pertinacity, mine eye dwelleth." Job therefore entreats of God to engage and be surety for him with Himself: who else would strike hands with him? His friends had proved themselves morally incompetent, and He who had closed their heart to understanding would not exalt them. If one betrays his friends to be spoiled, the eyes of his children shall pine away. But however ho

F

himself might now be a bye-word, and openly an object of insult, his eye dim through grief and his whole frame a shadow, upright men should yet be amazed at this, and the guiltless roused against the ungodly, but the righteous should hold fast on their way, and the man of clean hands increase in strength.

Finally, Job bids them come on again, though satisfied of their total lack of spiritual understanding. He had made up his mind for death, as well as the utter dissolution of his every cherished plan. His friends might hold out fresh and bright anticipations on his repentance, putting night for day, and light near out of very darkness; whereas, if he was to hope, the grave was his house, and his bed spread in darkness, corruption and the worm his nearest of kin. Where, then, was his hope? Yea, his hope, who sees it? He sees none other than descending to the grave, where they should rest together on the dust. How blessedly in contrast with such gloomy words of a saint is the strong encouragement we possess, having fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us, which we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and entering into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, Jesus, made an high priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedec !

CHAPTER XVIII.

BILDAD'S SECOND DISCOURSE.

BILDAD, who is ever brief, retorts on the copious and impassioned answers of Job, not only as contemptuous towards his friends, but as altogether vain in the effort to justify himself, while evidently an object of divine. displeasure and judgment for concealed evil. Did he alone constitute an exception to the invariably righteous government of God? If not, why such a volume of words, and why such vehement invectives? Divine judgment, however, would take its way none the less surely and awfully for universal warning.

And Bildad the Shuhite answered and said,
How long will ye make a hunt for* words?
Consider, and afterwards we will speak.
Why are we accounted as cattle,
Stopped up [that is, stupid] in your eyes?
He teareth his soul in his anger:

Shall the earth be forsaken for thee,

And shall a rock be removed out of its place?
Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out,
And the flame of his fire shall not shine.
The light in his tabernacle shall be dark,
And his lamp shall be put out with him.
The steps of his strength shall be straitened,
And his own counsel shall cast him down.

Or, an end to.

For by his feet is he driven into a net,
And he walketh over the meshes;

The trap seizeth on his heel;
The snare prevaileth over him;
His cord [is] hidden in the earth,
And his trap upon the pathway.
Terrors shall terrify him around,
And scare him at his footsteps.
His calamity [is] hungry,

And destruction [is] ready at his side.

The first-born of death devoureth the parts of his

skin

Devoureth his parts.

His confidence shall be torn out of his tent,
And shall march him off to the king of terrors;
There shall dwell in his tent what [is] not his;
On his dwelling shall sulphur be scattered.
Beneath, his roots shall be dried up,

And above, his branch shall be cut off.
His memorial shall perish from the earth,

And he shall have no name on the plain.
They shall drive him from light into darkness,
And shall chase him from the world.

No shoot nor sprout shall he have among his
people,

And no escaped one in his dwellings.

At his day they of the west will be astonished,
And they of the east take fright.

* The Peschito, followed by not a few moderns, has here calamity, and certainly this sense seems easier. The Vulgate, Authorized Version, and many critics, prefer "strength."

Surely so the dwellings of the wicked,

And this the place of [him that] knoweth not God. Thus keenly does Bildad cleave to his severe impression of Job's state before God, formed by the (to him) irresistible evidence of divine judgments, which had swept away all his prosperity, his family, his health, and left him a prey to agonizing sorrows and conflicts in his soul. How could any reasonable man question more than he that God had a controversy with Job, who was suffering only as he deserved, as surely as God is just? He therefore felt no small vexation at the continuance of a controversy when the case was really and unanswerably plain. It was only Job's contemptuous self-assurance that could evade for a moment the force of their reasoning. Let Job be as violently restive as he may, he will find out in the end that, as they are not to be counted cattle for stupidity, so the moral government of God is as immovable as the course of the earth, or the stubborn rock. What a man sows he reaps if evil, ruin; if good, blessing. But of the latter Bildad has not a word to say. Did he know what grace works through faith? Faith can not only remove the rock, but cast a mountain into the sea.

Of this Bildad knew little or nothing. He only thinks of the deep wickedness, whatever the fair outside, which had drawn down on Job such unparalleled misery from God. So, in forcible figures, he sets out the extinction of all light in the ungodly, when the flame of his fire should shine no more, and the lamp over him should go out. No effects should extricate, but rather involve him more; and not rashness, but his own counsel, plunge him in utter ruin. No craft