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This is not a Jewish idea. The dispensation of Moses was a religious state, in which the harder features of the Divine countenance were brought to light, and by which the severer characteristics of the Divine nature were developed before the people, rather than their opposites. The ideas with which the dispensation familiarised their minds were more especially those of justice, judgment, retribution, and punishment. To speak of the softening of the heart, and to ascribe, as Job doth, the process and the operations by which it is softened unto God, must project our thoughts to other days which the "prophets and kings" have "desired to see," but, except by faith, "did not see them." It directs us to "the days of the Son of Man"; it leads us to think of the humanity of God, with all its consequent and concurrent tendernesses towards our own. Hardness of heart or spiritual insensibility is no isolated evil. It hath a numerous progeny. Hardness of heart, let it take what shape it will, is something to be prayed against. There is a moral ossification of the heart, as well as a physical The Pharisees of our Lord's day were thus morally diseased. These hard bones, these intractable sinews of a perverse disposition and a rebellious will, these "horns of the ungodly," must be broken, dissolved, ground to powder. Let it not be supposed that this softness of heart can be any reproach to us, or is in any way derogatory to moral and intellectual manliness. Our nature cannot be too tender so long as it is not weak. The sensibility of woman, joined with the intellect of man, would not render us too sensitive. Piety is softness of heart, tenderness of affection, sensitiveness of conscience to Godward. But how does God make the heart soft? He doth it by the influence of His Holy Spirit. This is so obvious as to need no proof. But the Spirit useth different means, and operateth upon us in a variety of ways, not only through the particular channels which He hath ordained, but in all manner of ways. Some other methods may be mentioned.

1. God maketh the heart soft by the influence upon us of the natural world.

2. By His Holy Word. This is an agency whereby the Spirit of God more peculiarly worketh upon the soul; and the natural objects to which the Word is compared show how softening its influences are. Dew; showers; small rain; snow; honey out of a rock; all which similitudes bespeak its tender, melting, mollifying power.

3. By the discipline of life. Trouble is a mighty mollifier of the heart. Trouble prepareth us for the sympathies of Nature and the consolations of God's Word. Next to the Lord Jesus it is humanity's best friend, and the more as it is no man's flatterer.

(Alfred Bowen Evans.)

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KJV: For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:

WEB: For God has made my heart faint. The Almighty has terrified me.