Job 1:1-3 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God… Now let us judge this life from a point of view which the writer may have taken, which at any rate it becomes us to take, with our knowledge of what gives manhood its true dignity and perfectness. Obedience to God, self-control and self-culture, the observance of religious forms, brotherliness and compassion, uprightness and purity of life, these are Job's excellences. But all circumstances are favourable, his wealth makes beneficence easy, and moves him to gratitude. His natural disposition is towards piety and generosity; it is pure joy to him to honour God and help his fellow men. The life is beautiful. But imagine it as the unclouded experience of years in a world where so many are tried with suffering and bereavement, foiled in their strenuous toil, and disappointed in their dearest hopes, and is it not evident that Job's would tend to become a kind of dream life, not deep and strong, but on the surface, a broad stream, clear, glittering, with the reflection of moon and stars, or of the blue heaven, but shallow, gathering no force, scarcely moving towards the ocean? No dreaming is there when the soul is met with sore rebuffs, and made aware of the profound abyss that lies beneath, when the limbs fail on the steep hills of difficult duty. But a long succession of prosperous years, immunity from disappointment, loss, and sorrow, lulls the spirit to repose. Earnestness of heart is not called for, and the will, however good, is not braced to endurance. Whether by subtle intention or by an instinctive sense of fitness, the writer has painted Job as one who with all his virtue and perfectness spent his life as in a dream, and needed to be awakened. He is a Pygmalion's statue of flawless marble, the face divinely calm, and not without a trace of self-conscious remoteness from the suffering multitudes, needing the hot blast of misfortune to bring it to life. Or, let us say he is a new type of humanity in Paradise, an Adam enjoying a Garden of Eden fenced in from every storm, as yet undiscovered by the enemy. We are to see the problem of the primitive story of Genesis revived and wrought out afresh, not on the old lines, but in a way that makes it real to the race of suffering men. The dream life of Job in his time of prosperity corresponds closely with that ignorance of good and evil which the first pair had in the garden eastward ill Eden while as yet the forbidden tree bore its fruit untouched, undesired, in the midst of the greenery and flowers. (Robert A. Watson, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. |
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