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So Job speaks out of deep affliction; he is puzzled to know why God heaps sorrows on man and makes his life one long trial. How is it that the Almighty should consider a weak mortal sufficiently important to be made the object of so much interest and the subject of such severe correction? Let us attempt an answer to this question.

I. Man is A CREATURE OF CONSEQUENCE, or God would not thus visit him. The Psalmist asks the same question, but from a very different point of view (Psalm 8:3, 4). It is here that we usually look for the signs of human greatness and royalty — in the direction of man's power, action, rule, and achievement. Job is concerned with man's weakness, perplexity, suffering, humiliation, and failure. What is man, that Thou shouldst magnify him with miseries? Job feels the greatness of man in the greatness of his suffering. The conflict and sorrow of human life are indubitable signs of dignity. We often enough look poor, feel poor, but we cannot be poor. There is a singular greatness about us somewhere, or we should not be distinguished by infinite and endless sorrows. Our importance is demonstrated by the length and depth of the shadows that we make. The shouts of conquerors, the sceptres of princes, the triumphs of scientists, the masterpieces of artists, and the scarlet of merchantmen are so many signs of our status; yet the sense of anxiety, the problems which torture the intellect, our wounded affections, the smart of conscience, our painful sense of limitation and disability, the groan of the afflicted, the burden of living, and the terror of dying are not less signs of our fundamental greatness. Is it not, indeed, often the case that we are more affected by the dignity of men when they suffer than when they are strong? that in misfortune we discern a loftiness and sacredness never discovered in them in their prosperity? and if we never felt their majesty in life, do we not awake to it when they die, and uncover at their grave? It is also true that in deep affliction we realise most vividly the greatness of our own nature. Stripped of outward, meretricious greatness, Job begins to feel that he is great; his sorrows show him his consequence before God. The very humility born of trouble is a sign of greatness.

II. MAN IS A CREATURE OF GUILT, or God would not thus visit him.

1. There is no cruelty in God. Nero condemned men to prison and then treated them as condemned malefactors simply to feast his eyes on their agonies, by, and by releasing them. This world is no laboratory of aimless vivisection. "For He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men."

2. There is no injustice in God. "The right of a man before the face of the Most High." Nowhere is the right of a man more sacred than before the face of the Most High.

3. There is no levity in God. Some talk as if this world were a mere spectacle, a great theatre of shadows where God watches the long tragedy with an aesthetic eye. But there is no levity in the Ruler of the universe. All revelation teaches how real human sorrow is to God. What, then, is man, that God visits him with endless correction? Why does He fill his soul with anguish? There is only one answer: man is an offender, his sin is the secret of his misery. In vindicating himself against his friends Job denied that he was guilty of any conscious, specific, secret transgression; but he knew that he was a sinner before God. Immediately after the text he confesses, "I have sinned." It was all there: his suffering brought home the sense of guilt. The broken law makes the shadow of death.

III. Man is A CREATURE OF HOPE, or God would not thus visit him. "What is man, that Thou shouldst magnify him?" Sinful and afflicted as he may be, he is yet a creature of hope, or God would not thus lavish discipline upon him. Terrible as this world may be, it is not hell, nor the region of despair. Hope is written with sunbeams on the forehead of the morning; spring writes the lovely word in the grass with flowers; it is emblazoned in the colours of the rainbow. God visits us, then, that He may awake in us the consciousness of sin, and discipline us out of our sin into health of spirit. Again and again Job says, "Let me alone." And that appeal is often on our lips. "Let me alone," cries one, that I may examine this curious world, and do not disturb me with thoughts of infinity and eternity. "Let me alone," pleads another, so that I may enjoy life, and do not harass me about righteousness, guilt, and judgment. "Let me alone," entreats a third, and cease to interrupt my money making by sickness and misfortune. "Let me alone," cry those whose hearths are threatened; leave my friends, and spare me bitter bereavements. But this is exactly what God will not do. He visits us every morning, and tries us every moment, that He may arouse us to our true state, great need, and awful danger. Having awoke in us the sense of sin, through the discipline of suffering God perfects us. Yes, this — this is the grand end. "Behold, I will melt them, and try them" (Jeremiah 9:7). "The Lord hath proved thee and humbled thee, to do thee good at thy latter end."

(W. L. Watkinson.)

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KJV: What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him?

WEB: What is man, that you should magnify him, that you should set your mind on him,