Job 9:1

JOB’S SECOND REPLY. Chaps. 9, 10.

1. Job answered He admits that man cannot answer for his sins before God. The mighty Monarch over nature and man, unseen and irresistibly accomplishes his implacable will, overpowering even “the helpers of Rahab.” Blinded and staggering, Job can neither see nor grasp aught but an absolute God, with whom power overtops every other attribute. He dares not appear before such a Being, since his own arm would be impotent, and all attempts at self-justification would be perverted into his own condemnation. Thoughts of the triumphant wicked, and the sufferings of the righteous, sweep him away into defiant, if not blasphemous, charges against God and yet there is not altogether a defection of the soul, for in the midst of his despair he recounts in the spirit of faith the mercies and love of the Lord in his creative and preserving care. Job 10:8-12. His despair is intensified by the thought that no daysman between God and man had yet appeared competent to meet the emergencies of evil. Chapter 10. Having nothing more to hope for in life, he boldly calls in question the eternal and all powerful One, who, having the wicked in safe custody, needs not to make such speedy and painful inquisition for human iniquity. Sinking in the quicksands of doubt, he finds some solace in the thought that the divine Artificer cannot destroy the work of his own hand. In faith and strength of heart Job has advanced but little beyond the despair of his first great lamentation. Chap. 3. This is evinced by his condensed repetition, in Job 9:18-19, of a part of the lamentation, (Job 9:11-16.) “Do we not see in these two chapters (9, 10) how the human heart is indeed tossed hither and thither between the proudest presumption and the most pusillanimous despair?” Andrea.