The Book of Job is a rich mine of teaching and of consolation, yet there are points in which its teaching is clearly inadequate. The hold on a future life is admittedly precarious. The assurance of the nineteenth chapter was a height which the soul of Job was “competent to gain,” but incompetent to hold; and there is little more than a hint of the value of suffering as helping a man to help others, as opening his heart to sympathize with their sorrows, as enabling him to win access to their hearts and so to bear their burdens and even to atone for their sins. The writer falls short in this respect of the author of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: how much shorter does Job's language fall of the words and of the action of Him who in the Upper Chamber, in Gethsemane, and on Calvary made suffering the channel through which the fullest stream of blessing still flows for all mankind. Think of the tone of scorn in which Job is still able to speak of the outcast natives, “whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs of my flock.” “Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they are gathered together. They are children of fools, yea, children of base men; they were scourged out of the land”; it has never occurred to him that, as he too is a leprous outcast, he has been brought near to them and might have learnt sympathy with their misery. Who can judge Job harshly for this? who is competent to judge him at all, unless it be some innocent sufferer who has himself been brought down into utter wretchedness and is looking for the stroke that is to end his life? We may not judge him, but we may look away from him to that noble Sufferer, one no less perfect and upright, one that equally feared God and eschewed evil, one equally despised and rejected of men, one who, unlike Job, was never righted and vindicated on this side of the grave; we may watch Him in His agony, with His three friends equally powerless to help or sympathize; we may hear Him on the cross, feeling for one moment a sense of desertion by God keener than Job could feel, and yet hear Him pleading for friend and foe and trustfully commending His Spirit to the Father-and we shall thus know best how far the Book of Job falls short of the highest teaching about the suffering of the innocent.
1. Following Professor Peake in his book on The Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament, we notice how the problem is dealt with in the later psalms. There are three psalms which deal specifically with the problem- Psa_37:1-40; Psa_49:1-20; Psa_73:1-28.
(1) The first of these is an alphabetical psalm, and we are therefore prepared to find considerable repetition, and no strict development of the thought. The author rebukes complaints against God on account of the prosperity of the wicked, and bids his readers be not envious of them. Rather let them wait patiently on Jehovah, for if they delight in Him, He will give them their heart's desire, and make their righteousness go forth as the light. Vexation at the success of the godless leads only to evil doing. Why indeed should they nourish vexation? The wicked plot the death of the righteous, but Jehovah mocks, for it is their own death that is coming. Soon the judgment is to burst, when they will be rooted out of the land, and will vanish like smoke. Those that are cursed of Him shall be cut off. But the humble who wait on Jehovah shall inherit the land for ever, and have delight in abundance of peace. Better then to have little like the righteous than to have the wealth of the wicked. And even under present conditions, the righteous man and his children do not come to want. Moreover, even before the judgment on the wicked comes, examples are to be seen of the unrighteous flourishing like the cedars of Lebanon but suddenly cut off. Probably there is no reference to the after life in Psa_37:37 and Psa_37:38, though it is uncertain whether the meaning is that there is a posterity or a future to the man of peace, but not to the wicked. The Psalm would have been in place in the Book of Proverbs, it is deservedly a favourite for devotional reading, but it does not advance the solution of the problem.
(2) Psa_49:1-20 is much more striking. The author propounds the question why he should fear in time of calamity, when the wealthy seek to overthrow him. No man can ransom himself from Sheol, or secure for himself an earthly immortality. Wise and fool alike die. The grave is their house for ever and man perishes like the beasts. Death drives the self-confident down to Sheol, as a shepherd drives his flock, while the upright rule over them in the morning. But the Psalmist expresses the confidence that God will ransom him from Sheol and take him. Therefore there is no need for fear when a man grows rich, for at death he must leave his riches behind him. The contrast lies between what the wicked cannot buy from God and what the Psalmist receives from God as an act of grace. Such a contrast would be given if the writer said that, while the wicked died, he lived on upon earth. But that is not the contrast he has in mind. All must die, he as well as the rest. But while the wicked are driven down to the dim underworld, God saves him, when he dies, from this fate, and takes him to live with Himself.
(3) Psa_73:1-28 strikes a still deeper note. It opens with a confession of God's goodness to the pure in heart, which springs from the experience that the Psalmist is going to describe. For this conviction had not been reached without a hard struggle, in which his faith had all but failed him. His own life had been lived in purity, yet he had suffered without respite. And in glaring contrast to his own lot was the prosperity of the wicked. They were free from pangs, lived in perfect health, and were untroubled by the miseries that oppress the rest of mankind. As he considered their fortunate lot, he felt that his own efforts for purity had been misspent, for he had been exposed to the constant buffeting of fate. As he thought, so also he spoke, and, Israelite though he was, he became faithless to his people. Yet though he uttered this traitorous conclusion, the problem still vexed his mind. And as he pondered it, he was initiated into God's sacred mysteries and saw the dark destiny prepared for the godless. The veil that hides the future which awaits men after death was lifted for him. There in the other world he saw how God dashed them down to ruin in a moment, how they were dragged into the depths appalled with nameless terrors. How foolish then to be perplexed at their prosperity, so grievous to him in the dream of his ignorance, so contemptible now that he has awakened to a true knowledge of the future! Death must come, but not death itself can separate him from the love of God. He will be taken to that glory in which God dwells. What, then, has heaven or earth to offer him, since God is the sole possession in which he takes delight? His powers may fail him, his body waste away, but for evermore it is God who is his strength and portion.
A great volume might be filled with anecdotes associated with the early and most celebrated of Luther's hymns, “Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A safe stronghold our God is still”). We read of it over and over again in the vicissitudes of his own life, which were as many and great as those of the Hebrew king who wrote and composed the psalm of which it is a paraphrase. Often in dark and troublesome times he would say to Melanchthon or other friends, “Let us sing the forty-sixth psalm”; and then the troubled hearts were stayed, and the weary feet stood firm on the Divine Rock. Luther and his companions chanted the words of the hymn as they entered Worms, to meet the hosts of the prince of this world. Many a time in Luther's life, both in private sorrows and in public troubles, the words of this song and prayer of faith brought comfort and strength. And it was bequeathed to after-times as one of the grandest and most powerful weapons in conflict. It was this hymn which the brave and pious Gustavus Adolphus, the King of Sweden, and the hero of the Thirty Years' War, sang on the morning of the battle of Lützen. After he had drawn up his army on that morning, the whole of the troops with the king at their head sang, “Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,” to the accompaniment of trumpets. They were nerved thereby for the unequal conflict, as they could have been by no other means, and they fought heroically for God and the truth. This hymn of Luther has been more than “the Marseillaise of the Reformation,” as some one has called it, preserving to this hour its powerful energy and Divine expression, and may some day again startle us with its sonorous and iron-girt words in similar contests.1 [Note: James Macaulay, Luther Anecdotes, 85.]
2. Not all Jews could take refuge from the miseries of the present in glowing pictures of a glorious future. Where faith has lost its spring, the earnest soul that is keenly sensitive to the miseries of mankind drifts easily towards pessimism. Such was the case of him to whom we owe the Book of Ecclesiastes. In the main he has a definite view of life. This is that all is vanity. As he looks back on his own career and sums up its impression, this is the verdict he deliberately passes on it. Life is meaningless and a mockery, since man's powers crave a sphere of action, and their exercise achieves no abiding result. There is no remedy for the ills of life, but there is some mitigation. “A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.” “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labour.” This is the gift of God to be taken and used, without anxious fear whether it is right or wrong. “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God hath already accepted thy works.” The author does not recommend a debased sensualism; he speaks with bitterness of “the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands.” It is rather a moderate enjoyment of the good things of life, its simple pleasures, food and drink, and wedded life. The extremes alike of indulgence and of restraint should be avoided: “Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?”
It is not imperfect Christianity that we find in Ecclesiastes, but rather the negation of all that makes the gospel dear. Yet, if we are content to look at the question from a historical point of view, we shall see good reason to rejoice that it was included in the Canon. The edifying additions which turned it into a more pious work helped to check the mischief it might otherwise have done to those with a mechanical and unhistorical conception of revelation. But, for a sounder view, these additions are not needful to justify its presence in Scripture. For we see in the Old Testament a preparation for Christ. Such a preparation was not simply along the line of anticipation and approach. Rightly to appraise Christianity we required an object lesson which should convince us how much the world needed it. The moral bankruptcy of Greece and Rome presents us with an impressive example of what we are seeking. But Judaism, was it not competent to carry through the world's reformation? We cannot forget the close approximations to Christianity which, at its best, the religion of Israel achieved. But we do well to ponder also the darker side. Its legalism, its tedious casuistry, its danger of self-righteousness, its narrow exclusiveness, its bitter vindictiveness, all these must be taken into account; while we must never forget how needful it is for us to cleanse our own religion from these faults by strenuous fidelity to the spirit and temper of the gospel. And Ecclesiastes is here peculiarly instructive. It puts the logic of a non-Christian position with tremendous force, to all who feel keenly the misery of the world. More vividly than anything else in the Old Testament, it shows us how imperious was the necessity for the revelation of God in Christ.1 [Note: A. S. Peake, The Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament, 134.]
3. Come then to Christ and Christianity. The Christian preacher has to confess that to consider the world in its length and breadth, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, “having no hope and without God in the world”-all this is a vision to bewilder and appal, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution. In a study of Robert Browning, Sir Henry Jones remarks that “there is nothing more admirable in his attitude, or more inspiring in his teaching, than the manly frankness with which he endeavours to confront the manifold miseries of human life, and to constrain them to yield, as their ultimate meaning and reality, some spark of good.” If Faith is to secure and retain the allegiance of the modern mind, it must somehow come to terms with the enigma of suffering, and be able, if not to explain it, at least to render it tolerable. No problem is more worthy of mental toil. Grant that human reason can never wholly solve it, that clouds and darkness must ever be round about it, yet even to state it correctly is no small help, while to discuss it, to offer tentative and partial solutions of it, may place the intelligence in a position of superiority to it.
Now Christianity does not profess to solve completely the mystery of pain. But it offers much that throws light upon it. It holds as firmly as Job's three friends held that sin is invariably followed by suffering. “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” But suffering is no longer to be viewed as simply penal: it issues from no principle of retaliation or vindictiveness as an equivalent in evil to be borne for evil done. Rather is it to be regarded in all cases as corrective, at least in intent. It is not only, as in the doctrine of Eliphaz, when it falls on men whose general character is good that it is remedial in its purpose; the same purpose is there when it falls on the most abandoned. It is designed to make the sinner stop and realize the wickedness of the course he has been pursuing, in the hope that such realization will lead to penitence, and penitence in turn to restoration. And it may likewise play the part of warning to keep men back from sin, and so prevent the contagion of evil from spreading. The sight of the inevitable consequence of wrong-doing does much to rob temptation of its power.
But the great difference between the sufferings of Job and the sufferings of good men to-day, between the shadows beforehand of that One Sufferer and the shadows and reflections afterwards, is this: Those who can look upon the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ with instructed eyes can see the meaning of the long history of human woe as it could not be seen before. They can understand the meaning of redemption, and the way in which it has pleased God to accomplish it for man. They see not only the suffering that sin brings upon the evil-doer, but the suffering that it inevitably brings upon others, and the suffering by which alone the victory over it is to be gained. They can see in Christ God Himself doing battle with this great foe, His hatred of the sin, His compassion for the sinner, and the Captain of man's salvation made perfect, as such, through sufferings. They can hear the taunt levelled at the Crucified One, “He saved others, himself he cannot save,” and know it true in a sense that was not intended by the speakers; for because He would save others, therefore Himself He could not, and would not, seek to save. That work of redemption has been wrought out once for all. Yet in a measure it holds that all who would be Christ's must learn this Divine secret of His, and “fill up on their part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake, which is the church.” It is for the Job of to-day to suffer gladly, as the Job of primitive times was unable to do. Every sufferer for righteousness' sake may, in the Master's words, “rejoice and be exceeding glad”; may, in the words of His faithful follower who at one time rebelled so fiercely at the notion of the Suffering Righteous One, “rejoice inasmuch as he is partaker of Christ's sufferings.” He upon whom rests the “Spirit of glory and of God” cannot be crushed under any load of pain.
Finally, what Christianity whispered in the ears of men-that the gain of each is the gain of all and the loss of each is the loss of all, and that this applies not only to families and nations but to all mankind-that lesson is now beginning to be proclaimed on the house-tops; for the increasing communication and intercourse of men with each other is gradually causing them to realize, slowly and almost in spite of themselves, that if one member suffers all the others must suffer with him. At least we can say that good men are realizing more than ever they did before the solidarity of mankind, the duty of aiding and protecting the poor and the weak, and of endeavouring to lift those who are ignorant and vicious above the darkness amid which, as Christ has told us, they know not what they do.
The Book of Job bears a relationship to In Memoriam which has not been, so far as I know, duly credited. In making a comparison of the two productions, we gain a point of view from which I conceive the Book of Job can be seen in its development. Not that the English poet had in thought the great Hebrew when he gave us his analysis of sorrow as well as its evolution; but because affliction as experienced by different souls will take much the same form and in its development will follow in any age much the same course, we have this interesting parallel.
Tennyson's poem was born, as all know, of a crushing sorrow. Arthur Hallam's death was the occasion of its being written, but the moving cause was to ease the poet's heart:
For the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
and so to wrap himself in words, “as in coarsest cloth against the cold,” he sets about to write. Whether men who write “under inspiration” know at the time the full import of their attempts, and the use the world will make of them, is doubtful. It is no reflection upon the author of the Book of Job, or upon Paul the Apostle, to say the books written by both were afterwards used by the world in ways far beyond what their authors dreamed. We can well understand how an ancient Hebrew writer, convinced that he has found the true secret of affliction, pours out his utterances in “measured language,” using different characters to typify different phases of one and the same error, while the hero, Job, moving in a much higher realm, resists them, though he is unable to find the whole truth till God appears, when all is made plain. We can understand how the author's heart was eased in writing this book, and how with confidence he committed it to the world-feeling that it contained the truth, yet not realizing that he had written something which many capable of judging declare is the noblest of all things ever written.
In the development of thought both in the Book of Job and in In Memoriam we meet at the first conventional comforters. Tennyson says friends came to him to say “loss is common,” that “other friends remain”-and with such well-worn phrases showed how far they were from appreciating his grief, and how inadequate were their attempts to comfort him. Their words rather embittered than consoled, and certain parts of the English's poet's work sound much like Job's challenge of the Almighty as to why such suffering as his was ever permitted.
Both poems have a decided turning point, and it is where the consciousness comes to each man that human help is vain, and that the problem must be worked out by the sufferer alone, relying upon God to aid him. Even further than this we can push our parallel. We see in In Memoriam an intimation of a better mind when the poet says:
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
With this intimation of coming light, we follow the development of thought till the writer becomes prophetic, suggesting Browning in his glad and bright outlook:
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.
We feel sure that after this sentiment Tennyson will come into the full light, which he does. He finally comes to find his loved Arthur “on the rolling air” and “in the rising sun”; he feels him “in star and flower,” as a power diffused, yet as a personality loved not less but more. Then as the light of morning breaks into the flood of day, God's great purpose is seen, and firm belief in immortality swallows up the poet's grief. The close of the poem is one glad song of faith and praise.
In the Book of Job, long ere we find the patriarch boldly asserting his faith that God will appear to vindicate him, we see intimations of “turn” in thought. We see the last cable cut that binds him to human aid. We see him at first drifting till, strengthening himself to meet the cruel waves, he surmounts all successfully, and a prophecy of triumph makes us sure he will triumph, which he finally does. While Arthur Hallam's death brought, by regular development, the pure but not over-serious English poet to earnest thought and finally to firm faith in immortality, so the afflictions of Job (call him the patriarch or the author of the book) brought him by the same hard but sure way to a faith in God and God's control of all things, till he could say with St. Paul in the after years: “All things work together for good to them that love God.”1 [Note: J. O. Knott, in The Methodist Review, July 1910.]
