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Job_23:8-10
From this point forward, and with the exception of a few truisms advanced by Bildad the Shuhite, but which are wholly inapplicable to the matter in debate, the next nine chapters are wholly devoted to the self-justification into which Job enters against the charges of his friends, interspersed with musings on the ways of Providence, which are always applicable to the questions in dispute. That he goes on thus uninterruptedly, is to be ascribed to the friends declining to answer him any further. Indeed there is an indication that after Job had replied to Bildad in the twenty-sixth chapter, he made a pause as if expecting the reply of Zophar, whose turn it then was to speak; but finding that he made no sign to avail himself of the opportunity, he proceeded. Thus at the commencement of the twenty-seventh chapter, we find the unusual introduction: “Moreover, Job continued his parable, and said.”
In going through these nine chapters, we have selected some points for consideration and remark.
There is a fine and much admired passage in the twenty-third chapter (Job_23:8-10)—“Behold, I go forward, but He is not there: and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: On the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him. But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
Very beautiful as this is, the effect is much heightened when it is recollected that these references are really to the cardinal points of the compass, and should have been so rendered, as is indeed usual in recent versions. Noyes, for instance, gives it thus—
“But behold I go eastward, and He is not there;
And westward, but I cannot perceive Him;
To the north, where He worketh, but I cannot behold Him;
He hideth himself in the south, and I cannot see Him.
But He knoweth the way which is in my heart.
When He has tried me I shall come forth as gold.”
The Hebrews, in common with other Orientals, regarded themselves as facing the east, instead of the north, as we do. Then, of course, the west was behind them, the south on the right hand, and on the left the north. This might seem a more obvious position than ours, as it is natural to turn the face to the rising sun, and we might be at a loss for a good reason for our maps supposing us to face the north, did we not recollect that the north is in regard to the course of the sun a fixed point, whereas the application of the terms “east” and “west” varies with the longitude, so that a country which one people will describe as lying east of them, will by another be described as lying to the west, as, for instance, India, which is east to us, but west to the Americans. But to the ancients these considerations had no weight, as they were unacquainted with the real extent of the world, and scarcely knew that it was spherical. Among the Hebrews, the west, although usually designated as behind, is sometimes called “the sea,” because the Mediterranean lay in that direction.
The expressions applied to the north and to the south are especially worthy of consideration. “On the left hand, where He doth work.” Whence this special designation of the Lord’s working to the north? Does He not equally work in all parts? The phrase, however, does not so much signify his working, as the manifestations of his working, which in the north are here supposed to be more conspicuous than in any other quarter. It is thought by many that Job here, and the sacred writers generally, in naming the north with peculiar emphasis, have in view the Aurora Borealis, by which the north is so often lighted up in the night season, and which, from the contrast afforded by the darkness shrouding the other parts of the heavens, might well suggest that the north was eminently the seat of the Divine power and greatness. Under this view it is asked by Barnes, “May he not have felt that there was some special reason why he might hope to meet with God in that quarter, or to see him manifest himself among the brilliant lights that play along the sky, as if to precede or accompany Him? And when he had looked to the splendor of the rising sun, and the glory of his setting in vain, was it not natural to turn his eye to the next remarkable manifestations, as he supposed, of God, in the glories of the northern lights, and to expect to find Him there?” It is not improbable that the northern lights, shining and playing in that quarter of the heavens, as they often do, with peculiar magnificence, may have led to the belief, which generally prevailed in ancient tunes, that the peculiar abode of the gods was in the north. Unable as they were, and as indeed we still are, satisfactorily to explain this peculiar and magnificent light in the north, it accorded with the poetical and mythological fancy of the ancients, to suppose that these brilliant lights were destined to play around and adorn the habitations of the gods; and hence we recognize among most ancient eastern nations the notion of a high mountain, corresponding to the Olympus of the Greeks, far away in the remote regions of the north, which was the seat or the peculiar residence of God, or of the gods. To this there may possibly be some sort of allusion here, as to a prevalent notion of the time; and in the later Scriptures there is a manifest appropriation of this view to the Babylonian king, who is described as boasting—“I will sit in the mount of assembly, upon the [mountain] sides of the north;” meaning that he aspired to equality with the gods—indeed, to be their master—to be supreme in their high assembly in the north. This arrogant language is very appropriately put into the month of this vain glorious prince, and we must be careful to distinguish the real sentiments of the sacred writers from those they assign to the various personages and characters whom they bring before us. Indeed, it would be a very great error and serious mistake to regard the Holy Spirit as endorsing all the utterances even of Job, which are sometimes quoted—as are indeed those of his friends—as conveying the mind of the Spirit, notwithstanding the care which has been taken to guard us from any such impression.
The sacred writers, however, who designed to teach, not philosophy but religion, usually express themselves in conformity with the notions which prevailed in the ages in which they wrote. Hence those references to the north, of which we have already spoken, as to a most distinguished point in the heavens. It is often mentioned as the seat of the whirlwind, the storm, and especially as the residence of the cherubim. Thus in Ezekiel’s vision of the cherubim, the whole magnificent scene is described as coming from the north: “I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north,” Note: Eze_1:4. etc. And so in Zechariah’s vision, the horses that came out of the mountains are represented as going, or returning, to the north as their place of rest, after having gone through the earth. Note: Zec_6:1-8. These passages, with others of the like purport, show that the northern regions, and especially the mountains in the north, were regarded as the seat of striking and peculiar manifestations of the Divine glory.
But as the north is the quarter of manifestation, so the south is the quarter of concealment. In the north God works, in the south he hides himself. To apprehend this, in the fulness of its meaning, it is necessary to bear in mind that the south was to the ancients an unknown region. The deserts of Arabia indeed stretched away in that direction, and they were partially known, and there was some knowledge that the sea was beyond. But the regions farther to the south, if any land were there, were deemed to be entirely uninhabitable, as well as impassable, on account of the heat. To these hidden and unknown quarters Job says, that he now turned, after he had in vain explored every other quarter of the heavens in search of some manifestations of God. Yet here also his search was vain. God hid or concealed himself in the remote and inaccessible south, so that he could not approach Him.