Where now is that oft repeated declaration of Satan, that piety, at best, is only a selfish looking forward to rewards in the future? The piety of Job survives this terrible ordeal. The blinding intellectual fog of deism could not lose his point of compass.
Creeds may be good as sign-boards directing the traveler, but they go but a little ways in determining the action of the truly pious. As he approaches the flood he beholds the “numbering of man’s days on the earth.” And, as the reality bursts upon his vision, he experiences a perfect revolution of intuition. All is special Providence now.
10. The flood is passed in chapter eight, and “man’s days become as a shadow.” The law of God’s natural Providence, in cause and effect, is by Job and his friends completely ignored. His own condition will look him in the face with terrible effect, asking an explanation. To such an ordeal, with Bildad framing an enthusiastic argument upon the evidences of special Providence in the affliction, was Job brought. He can logically prove Job to be one of the worst of men. “Doth God pervert judgment?” To Job he saith, “If thou wast pure and upright, surely now he would awake for thee.” Job with his intuitions cannot see why the argument is not sound. “I know it is so of a truth.” To work thus upon the nerves of a sick man, who has been shut off from comprehensive views of God’s general Providence in law, is well calculated to break him down in impatience toward God. But Job replies, “If I say I am perfect it shall also prove me perverse. Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul; neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that he should lay his hand upon us both.” Zophar replied, “Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth.” Job replied, “I could speak as you do if I were in your stead.” “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Job claims an honest integrity of purpose, though denying perfection in attainment.
10. For this noble stand he is rewarded on the spot with a prophetic view of what forms the first chapter in the “Little Book” of star-dates. Tracing time back by the precession of the equinoxes to where the sun crossed its spring equinox in Orion’s belt, he saw the commencement of man. Tracing the same line forward to the end of our race, where indeed time ends, he saw that it rested in Ash or the Great Bear (margin) incorrectly translated Arcturus; new version, Great Bear.
Looking to the same kind of date of his own time, he saw the sun crossing the Pleiades. Looking at the full inauguration of Christ’s Kingdom on earth, represented by the termination of Job’s own sufferings, he saw the time measured in the Summer Solstitial colure going from under the Altar. “Thou madest Ash, Orion and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.” Here commences the “Little Book,” alluded to so often in prophecy, with four of the most important dates of history, but sealed upon the back part until the opening of the same by the “Lion of the Tribe of Judah” to his servant John. Here, perhaps all unconscious of their bearings on future history, he is picturing in the heavens, and dating by means of the precession of the equinoxes, the long periods, revolutions, changes and triumphs his sufferings were to take him, followed by the long prosperity of the Church of Christ in the latter day.
11. Representing the reign of universal idolatry, and consequent ignorance of the masses, and preceding the anxious inquiries concerning immortality by Confucius, Socrates and Plato, Zophar is prepared to fill in his part of the drama.
The question of the resurrection is discussed in the light of nature, in Chap. 14. He is compelled to leave it as an open question, only wishing that it might be true. “Oh that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me.” He nears the time of the general expectation of Messiah’s appearance on earth.
He closes to allow Zophar, the representative of those Scribes and Pharisees in their tradition, to speak again. This is found in the fifteenth chapter.
12. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth, inclusive, Job personifies Christ. Hence these chapters are Messianic. “They have gaped upon me with their mouth, they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully. My days are extinct, the graves are ready for me. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. Are there not mockers with me? For thou hast hid their heart from understanding.” Many of these sentences are quoted into the twenty-second psalm, recognized by all commentators to be Messianic. This Special Providence, as a rule to depend upon, watched Christ on the cross; it triumphed over the fact that God did not deliver him.
Here it is in prophecy: “The snare is laid for him in the ground. It shall devour the strength of his skin, even the firstborn of death, it shall devour his strength. His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle. His remembrance shall perish from the earth. He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. He shall neither have son or nephew among his people.” Isaiah, quoting the sentiment, asks, “Who shall declare his generation, for his life was taken from the earth?”