BR 53 .S65 1884 v. 6 Spence, H. D. M. 1836-1917, Thirty thousand thoughts THIRTY THOUSAND THOUGHTS. i',i Hi Hi ^ w « SECTIONS XV L, XVI I. WITH A GENERAL INDEX TO ALL SIX VOLUMES. THIRTY THOUSAND THOUGHTS, BEING EXTRACTS COVERING A COMPREHENSIVE CIRCLE OF RELIGIOUS AND ALLIED TOPICS, GATHERED FROM THE BEST AVAILABLE SOURCES, OF ALL AGES AND ALL SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT: WITH SUGGESTIVE AND SEMINAL HEADINGS, AND HOMILETICAL AND ILLUMINATIVE FRAMEWORK : THE WHOLE ARRANGED UPON A SCIENTIFIC BASIS. WITH CLASSIFIED AND THOUGHT-MULTIPLYING LISTS, COMPARATIVE TABLES, AND ELABORATE INDICES, ALPHABETICAL, TOPICAL, TEXTUAL, AND SCRIPTURAL. EDITED BY THE VERY REV. H. D. M.' SPENCE, D.D.. REV. JOSEPH S. EXELL, M.A., REV. CHARLES NEIL, M.A. ;;« •;• ^i « XVI. OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS (MALE). XVn. KEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS (MALE). INDEX TO THE SIX VOLUMES. NEW YORK : FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, i8 AND 20 AsTOR Place. 1888. SECTION XVI. OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. (MALE.) VOL. VI. SECTION XVI. OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. (MALE.) INTRODUCTION. SYLLABUS. PAGB I. The Study of Scripture Biography 3 11. The Superiority ok Sacred to Profane Biography 4 III. The Crimks and Sins of Scripture Saints 4 SECTION XVI. OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. (MALE.) INTRODUCTION. SCRIPTURE BIOGRAPHY. I. The Study of Scripture Biography. I Its importance. [16702] Biography is a species of history peculiarly interesting and useful ; and in this the Bible excels. The sacred writers describe to the very life — they fear no displeasure — they conceal no imperfection — they spare no censure. And while they discover their impartiality, they equally prove their wisdom and prudence. This appears from the characters they delineate. What are philosophers, politicians, or heroes, to the generality of mankind ? They may excite wonder, but they cannot produce imitation. They may indulge curiosity, but they cannot furnish motives, encouragements, or cautions. But here we are led into private life — we con- template ordinary scenes — we see goodness in our new relations and circumstances — we be- hold blemishes which we are to shun, excel- lences which we are to pursue, advantages which we are to acquire. Thus the Scripture becomes not a glaring comet, but " a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path." — Anon. [16703] It is very interesting and instructive to look at these sacred persons, not merely in their official character, but as men believing what they taught, and exhibiting in their history phases of religious experience and con- tlict bearing upon ourselves ; to unfold their inner spiritual life ; to bring out their conflicts and their trials — their weakness as well as their virtue ; to allow them to pass before us neither as dim abstractions, nor as cold officials — neither as unfallen angels, nor as perfect men — but as brethren of our own, who, along with their amazing gifts, had human infirmities; who, while inspired truth sat in regal splendour on the throne of their minds, had manifold battles going on between good and evil in their hearts. — Anon. 2 Its proper method. // must be cotiducted with the tnind and the soul. [16704] Such narratives must be turned to a moral and religious application, or they will be useless, or at any rate of no greater utility than ordinary every-dayhistoiy. The mere bare facts of history, whether of Jewish history or of English history, have no spiritual effect upon the soul. If I say that Samson was a strong man, the mental effect would be just the same as if I said Hercules was a strong man. If I say that Joshua commanded at the battle of Beth-horon, no other powers are called into play than if I said that Wellington commanded at the battle of Waterloo. If I am told that Solomon reigned forty years, I believe it just as I believe that Elizabeth reigned rather more than forty years. Unless we get something more out of the Bible than these bare facts of history, we get no reli- gious gain whatever. It is simply secular knowledge we are getting. A man may read the Bible, and it may be nothing but a worldly pleasure or study ; and as for a man's thinking that he is very religious when he is reading the Bible, it quite depends upon the spirit and understanding with which he reads it. He may read it, and find that God is teaching him, that his mind is opened, that his soul is stirred, sustained, or rebuked ; or he may read it, and simply know that Goliath was a big man and Zaccheus was a little one. Therefore we must bring our minds to the Bible, for it is not an amulet or a charm, which acts as it were by magic. A verse of the Koran, when pounded up and swallowed, is said by devout Mussulmans to cure certain diseases ! We are not to treat our Bibles in this way ; we must bring our mind to the Bible — nay, more, we must bring our soul, and that is our mind, suffused by the Spirit of God ; and around the hard text the crystals of Divine revelation will form, reflecting the light of heaven, and the " word of the Lord will be precious in these days." — Rev. IV. Page Roberts. 16705 — I67I0] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. INTRODUCTION. [scripture biography. 3 Its largely-resulting effect when rightly pursued. [16705] If we study Old Testament history for reli;,'ious education, and not for secular instruction, what sort of influence will it be likely to have upon us? To a very large extent the influence of warning. It is true there are many tine and noble characters whose lives are presented to us in the Old Testament, but many of them are stained with darkest faults and crimes. If some of the things which were done in those old days by men who stand high amongst the servants of God were done now, we should shrink away from the doers rather than attach ourselves to them, and never dream of taking them for our religious guides. — Ibid. II. The Superiority of Sacreu to Pro- fane Biography. [16706] The Holy Scriptures possess an ac- knowledged superiority over all other writings in all the various kinds of literary compo- sition ; and in no one respect more than in that species of historical composition which is called Biography, or a delineation of the for- tunes, character, and conduct of individuals : and that, whether the historians be themselves the men whom they describe and record ; or whether, from proper sources of information, they record the lives and actions of other men. — Rev. II. Hunger. [16707] A great part of profane history is altogether uninteresting to the bulk of mankind. The events therein recorded are removed to a vast distance, and they have now entirely spent their force. The actors exhibited are either too lofty to admit of our approach, with any interest or satisfaction to ourselves ; or too brutal to be considered without disgust, or too low to be worthy of our regard. The very scenes of action are become inaccessible or unknown ; they are altered, obliterated, or disregarded. Where Alexander conquered, and how Cresar fell, are to us mere nothuigs. But on opening the sacred volume, all these obstructions in the way of knowledge, of truth, of pleasure, and of improve- ment, instantly disappear. Length of duration can oppose no cloud to that intelligence with which " a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years." The human heart is there unfolded to our view by Him "who knows what is in man," and "whose eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." The men, and the events therein repre- sented, are universally and perpetually interest- ing, for they are blended with " the things wiiich accompany salvation," and they aftect our ever- lasting peace. There, the writers, whether they speak of themselves or of other men, are con- tinually under the direction of the Spirit of all truth and wisdom. Those venerable men, though subject to like passions with others, there] speak not of themselves, but from Cod; "for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." — Ibid. III. The Crimes and Sins of Scripture Saints. I They cannot but have been recorded for important ends. [16708] Every one must have been perple.xed, in reading the Scriptures, by the awful crimes of those who are called saints, and spoken of as approved of God. The unbeliever has taken occasion from thence to blaspheme, and the humble Christian has often found difficulty in satisfying the minds of others, and perhaps his own, upon this point. Certainly we must be- lieve that a God of wisdom has not left these defiling stains on Scripture characters to be recorded in His Word, without intending there- by to answer some important end. — Rev. W. Lewis, D.D. ( 1 ) lliej afford a striking proof of the veracity of the Scriptteres. [16709] The greatest saints have their weak- nesses and iinperfections, and they often appear when least expected. Who would have imagined that Abram could yield to criminal distrust, and, to avoid imagined danger, resort to dissimula- tion, or at least equivocation most unworthy of his character? Yet such was the case. A common historian would have drawn a veil over these blemishes, but the sacred writers never either blazon the virtues or palliate the faults of the characters they portray, but simply relate things as they really were. This affords a strong and striking proof of the truth of Scripture. It is written on principles the very opposite to those which have dictated the most admired works of men, and yet, with all its impartiality and sim- plicity, an innate majesty runs through all its delineations, to which their most laboured efforts have never attained. The facts are in themselves exceedingly instructive, as they tend to exemplify human nature as it really is ; to teach us that the most exemplary saints were not perfect, but stood in the same need of Divine mercy as ourselves : to reinind us that the most eminent should distrust themselves, and not imagine that they are beyond the reach of danger, while they are still in the flesh, and surrounded by temptations ; and to encourage us to hope in the mercy of (^od, notwithstanding the unallowed and lamented imperfections of which we often find ourselves the subjects. — Ation. (2) T/uy are consistent witJi, and serve to emphasize^ the fact that man everywhere and under all conditions is a sinner. [167 10] Some men regard the Bible as a kind of picture gallery, in which they expect to find splendid specimens of perfected humanity. Entering, they observe strongly-marked defects in the faithfully-drawn portraits of such men as Abraham, Jacob, David, Peter, John, and many others. " What ! " they ask, " are these men 16710 — 16715] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. 5 INTRODUCTION. fsCKIPTURE BIOGRAPHY. after God's own heart ? Then away with them, and away with your Bible which speaks of them as such. If these defective characters repre- sent Christianity, we do not need it ; it is high time it gave place to something better." How common is this kind of reasoning, how exactly it tells the thouglits of many minds ; and yet a little consideration is amply suflicient to show its fallacy. The Bible could never have been designed to portray the excellency of human character, for the obvious reason that man everywhere and under all conditions is a sinner. " There is none righteous, no, not one." Such is the emphatic testimony of the living God. An excellent sinner— who ever heard of such a being ? The object of the tes- timony of Scripture in regard to the actions and lives of the men whose names I have quoted is to show that, tested by the Divine standard of righteousness, every man at his best estate comes short of the glory of God, and needs to be redeemed from sin and death. These men were not justified before God on the ground of their personal character, but because they as sinners having confessed their iniquity, obtained His forgiveness who " set forth His Son a pro- pitiation for their sins," and for whose sake they were pardoned and in whom they were accepted. — Rev. A. Edersheiffi, D.D. [167 11] We go to extremes in this matter. We begin by thinking that all the men who are commended in the Bible are almost perfect, quite beyond anything which we see in our day. The sentiments of our childhood linger about us, and Noah and Jacob and Samson and David and Solomon are shadowy and grand in the distance ; their great faults are passed over, until we scarcely think of them at all, and they take their places unquestioned in the saintly calendar. And then comes another period, and we fly too often to the opposite extreme. We think only of the drunkenness of Noah, of the deceitfulness of Jacob, of the fierce immoralities of Samson, of the murder and adultery of David, and of the licentiousness of Solomon and his court ; and as we had before half deified them, now we wrathfully degrade them. In both cases we are wrong. They neither desen'e our adora- tion, nor yet our contempt. — Rev. IV. Page Roberts. 2 Palliation of them is not to be attempted. [16712] Some have laboured in their defence, as if our religion depended on their vindication, and, under their pleadings, that which is re- corded as the grossest crime has been made to appear as a very venial transgression. But against such ingenuity common sense will re- volt, and though carried away for a while, as the judgment may be, by an eloquent plea for a criminal at the bar, the verdict will still be one of condemnation. No argument can cover the falsehood of Abraham, nor excuse the murder and adultery of David. The feeling of every heart is, that so far from being excusable, their crimes were rendered more heinous by their professions of religion. Indeed, the more we labour to justify one who is evidently guilty, the more shall we increase indignation against him. Ingenuous confession is the best plea for a gross offender. And this is precisely the course which the Scriptures pursue. They name certain individuals as guilty of great crimes, though servants of the Lord ; they do not say a word in their justification ; they do not even mention those extenuating circum- stances which might be mentioned ; they do not say that Peter was overcome by fear, or Jacob by his mother's persuasions ; but only bring the offender before us with a plain account of his crime, and leave us to form our own judgment. — Rev. W. Lewis, D.D. [167 1 3] We may admit most fully that Abra- ham and Sarah and Isaac were guilty of false- hood ; that Jacob was a supplanter deceiving his blind father by fraud ; that Aaron was so stupid as to make a golden calf for the people to worship, even at the foot of Sinai, when God was giving the law above ; that David, the man after God's own heart, was guilty of such com- plicated crimes, as seem almost incredible. We may allow that James and John showed a most revengeful spirit when they would have called fire from heaven to consume a whole village for want of hospitality ; that Peter de- nied the best of masters with aggravated guilt ; and that it was a sad spectacle when two apostles contended so sharply as to be ever after sepa- rated in preaching the gospel. We may confess that there is scarcely a Scripture character with- out a blot, and need be at no pains to excuse the fact. We should indeed give the same justice to them that we do to others in dwelling upon their faults, but there is nothing in the Bible requiring us to regard sin any differently, whether seen in a prophet, minister, Christian, or infidel. — Idid. 3 Their guilt furnishes no argument against religion. [16714] It has often been used for this end, but without reason. Will it be said that a religion which holds up such transgressors as the saints of the Lord cannot be from a holy God .'' But that religion does not commend their sins ; if it did, we might well reject it. . . . The record of their faults, so far from weighing against the truth of Scripture, is, indeed, one strong evidence in its support. . . . Uninspired biography, and often even that which is called Christian, has none of this candour ; . . . so that many a religious character of modern times appears fairer on the pages of his biographer than the fairest of those whose lives are written by the pen of inspiration. . . . Why is the Bible so different from all other books in this respect .'' Because it is the truth of God, and the God who gave it knew that it had nothing to fear from telling the truth. — Ibid. [167 1 5] If we deal with the most striking case in point, the mixed character of David, I think I67IS— I67I9] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. INTRODUCTION. [scripture biography. we may see how great he was, even in the midst of his faults. We must measure a man by the standard of his own age, by his circumstances, by his education, and by the recognized obh'ga- tions which lay upon him. There are things which most of us know, and even our children know, about the structure of the globe and many other things, which were altogether unknown by such mental giants as Bacon and Newton. Can we therefore say that we and our children are mightier in mind than those intellectual monarchs, because we make fewer mistakes in some thmgs than they made.' Certainly not. And just so is it in the realms of morals and religion. How many men, of all of us, live up to what we admit to be our duty — the claims of (iod, of our Church, and of our fellow-men.'' How many of us are as good as we know we ought to be ? and I would further ask, how many are there who rise above the ordinary requirements of their age in matters of morality and religion.' How many men are there who would not do what nearly everybody does? and how many men are bold enough to be alone, and take up an earnest line in religion and in religious service, when no one else does it, and they would be observed upon .' It must be ad- mitted that the great majority of good sort of people fall much below what they see to be the best, and what public opinion itself admits to be best ; and scarcely one in ten thousand rises above the level of ordinary requirements. — Rev. IV. Page Roberts. 4 Had all the characters of Scripture Bio- graphy been represented as faultless, the Bible would not have been more, but less credible than it is. [167 1 6] The question would have been asked. Why is it that no such perfect characters are formed under the power of the gospel in the present day .' Men would have looked around upon its professors, and seen that they were but imperfect, and they would have said either that religion had lost its power, or that it never had any. lUit now the representations of Scripture and the actual state of things in the Christian world are in perfect harmony. There we see good men sometimes overcoming their sins, and sometimes overcome by them, and if we turn to the Bil)le, we find just such mingled characters drawn in its histories. I-Ivery one must feel that the Scriptures are much more credible, describing believers as but imperfectly sancti- fied, than they would have been had they re- presented them as perfect.— AVz/. IV. Lewis, D.D. 5 In their case all the secret guilt of theirsins is brought to light. [16717] We may pride ourselves in our su- periority o\er them, but suppose tiiat the worst action of our life was held up to view, with all the secret circumstances and corrupt motives that attended it, should we have much to boast of? Would one be found so sinless that he could venture to cast the first stone at them? It would silence the scoffs of many a person who now holds up the sins of Scripture saints to derision could some one of his sins be drawn to light by a God who knew all its secret guilt. —Ibid. 6 God's dealings with these His guilty ser- vants were eminently severe. [167 18] In the ordinary course of things their crimes would have been in a great measure concealed. David might have sinned and the world never known his guilt, had not a special providence revealed it. No one heard the plottings of Rebecca and Jacob against the aged Isaac, and had not God unfolded them by inspiration, they would have passed down to judgment among ten thousand other unknown sins. There were only a few around Peter who heard him curse and swear, and deny his Master. In the ordinary course of things they would have made a few scoffing remarks upon his conduct, his fellow-disciples would have been grieved, but the recollection of his sin would soon have died away. Had not God taken special pains to record it in the Gospels, we should never have heard of Peter's denial, tradition would not have brought it to us, and we should have known him only as the ardent and bold disciple of his Lord. But God would not suffer these offenders so to escape. What would have been forgotten. He has engraved on an enduring monument to their shame. What would have been unknown, He has dragged to light, and the greater part of those very crimes which so awaken cavil might have never come to our view in this world, had not God unfolded them. Does not this look like the confidence of truth ? Common judg- ment would have told any one that such crimes as those set down against good men w-ould awaken cavils, and that it would be better in human prudence to keep them back ; when therefore we see them studiously brought to view, as a perpetual punishment for those offenders, certainly we must feel that this is the boldness of truth. — Ibid. 7 They have encouraged many a believer, overtaken in a fault, to seek forgiveness. [167 1 9] No doubt many have drawn en- couragement from hence to sin, and because such crimes as those of David and Peter have been forgiven, some have been led to presume that they too should find forgiveness, however they might live. From the same plant poison and honey are extracted. But many a time also has the Christian been led by the deceit- fulness of sin into some gross transgression, yet after long indulgence he awakens from his dream of pleasure, and finds the stings of conscience can still reach him. In an agony of remorse he desires forgiveness ; and had he never heard of one that had sinned as vilely, who had been pardoned, he would despair. But he sees that others as wicked have found remission, and he is encouraged to come and seek the same mercy. Ten thousand times has the despair of a real penitent been chased away by the story of I67I9 — 16722] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. 7 INTRODUCTION. [SCRIPTURE BIOGRAPHY. Peter's sin and repentance. Instead of cavil- ling, then, at the scriptural record of the offences of believers, we ought to bless God that they have been left on the pages of His Word, to in- spire with hope the desponding mourner. — Ibid. [16720] Would any one say that a contrite sinner ought not to be forgiven, whatever his guilt may have been .'' Then why object be- cause David was forgiven ? He was not called "the man after God's own heart "during that black year of his apostasy; and had he died in that season, God's own assurance is, that " all his righteousness that he had done should be no more remembered, but in his sin that he sinned he would have died.'' Because, how- ever he lived to repent, he was forgiven ; be- cause he became eminent in holiness he was loved ; and who would wish it had been other- wise, or say that the door of mercy should be shut against any penitent offender .'' No ; we bless God that his sins were forgiven, that Abraham and Noah, Peter and Paul, were for- given, and that they have become examples of the long-suffering of our God, for the encourage- ment of true penitents to the end of time. Those very pages stained with the sad failings of be- lievers may have inspired hope, and saved the souls of many who would otherwise have sunk to everlasting despair. He who would cavil at such things in Scripture might plunge the drowning wretch from the rock on which he was clambering, or persuade the trembling penitent that God had no mercy in store for him. — Id id. 8 They have made believers of succeeding ages more circumspect. [1672 1] Many a one disposed to say, " I never will deny Thee, Lord," has had presumptuous confidence checked by the recollection how vain the boast was in the mouth of an apostle. Probably every Christian can declare that he never reads these melancholy accounts without being made more humble and distrustful of self; and thus they have their use. In a great naval contest of England we are told that one ship ran aground, so as to be entirely out of reach of the enemy, but contributed very much to the victory by serving as a beacon to the other ships bearing down into action. It was not a way of contributing to victory which any brave captain would choose, but it would be a matter of rejoicing even in this way to serve one's country. And so, though we would not choose that holy men of old should have fallen into sins, we rejoice that the great Captain of our salvation is making use of their failures to swell the triumphs of His people, and to bring glory to His own great name. — Idid. 9 They teach that salvation is not of works, but of grace. [16722] What a view of human depravity does it give us to see such eminent servants of God falling into such transgressions ! To find the foul worm in a mass of pollution does not sur- prise us ; but to see it in the fairest flower, to discover it in the most delicate fruit or upon the most perfect form of earthly beauty, shocks and disgusts. We look for sin in the lawless transgressor, but does it not defile the character of a Paul or an Abraham .-' Did this worm of the abyss leave its pollution on the soul that at other times breathed the inspiration of heavenly psalms ? Then surely we must feel that " there is none that doeth good, no, not one." Are we better than David? Have we a greater perfection by nature or grace than Paul ? It would be arrogance to pretend to this. And we see that they were sinners. We feel that they could not have entered heaven by their own good works. Then let us fall with them at the foot of the cross and say, " Not by works of righteousness which we have done" do we hope, O Lord, to be saved, but only of Thine infinite mercy in the Redeemer. Their sins brought them to this conclusion. May their sins, as well as our own, teach us that to this we must come I — Ibid. PART A. PRIMITIVE ERA. (Adam to Abraham, B.C. 4004-1996 : 2008 years.) SYLLABUS. L Ante-Diluvian Period. In the Messianic line. Adam ... Enoch Noah Out of the Messianic line Cain ... Abel Lamech n. PosT-DiLUviAN Period Job 9 17 20 26 29 TO. 34 PART A. PRIMITIVE ERA. ADAM. I. The Circumstances of our First Father's Formation. The peculiarly poetic interest attaching thereto. [16723] First among Scripture characters abundantly entitled to the epithet poetical stands Adam himself. How interesting the circumstances of his formation ! Mark with what dignity God accompanied the making of man. Behold the whole Trinity consulting together ere they proceeded to this last and greatest work of the Demiurgic days. God had only said, " Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let the waters be gathered together, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind ;" but, when man was to be taken out of the clay, the style of Deity rises, if we may so speak, up to itself, and He says, " Let us make man after our own likeness." We may imagine ourselves present at this thrilling moment. A mist is watering the face of the ground, and partially bedimming the sun. Slowly, yet mys- teriously, is the red clay drawn out of the ground, fashioned, and compacted into the shape of man, till the future master of the world is, as to his bodily part, complete, and lies, statue-like and still, upon the dewy ground. But speedily, like a gentle breeze, the breath of the Lord passes over his face, and he becomes a living soul, and his eyes open upon the green, glad earth, and the orb of day shining through a golden mist, and his ears open to the melodies, which seem to salute him as Lord of all, and he starts to his feet, and stretches out his hands to the sun as if to embrace it, and the mists dis- perse, and the beams of noon show him Eden shining in all its beauty — the abode of man, and the garden of God. — G. Gilfillan. [16724] Adam's emotions on awaking to life can no more be conceived than described. The infant is introduced step by step into the sight of the great temple of the creation. But it must have burst in all but an instant upon the view of the man-boy, Adam. His happiness, however, was not complete : he was alone. And he could not be long in the world till he desired a companion. The sun he could not grasp ; the moon, walking in her brightness, he could not detain ; the trees cooled his brow, but yielded no sympathy to his heart His own shadow was but a cold and coy companion. And probably, while full of cravings after society, which mingled with and damped his new-born raptures of joy, he felt creeping over him the soft influences of slumber. He slept. Man was scarcely created till he slept ; and, while asleep, " God took one of his ribs, and made of it woman," not of rude clay, but of the finished portion of a finished man, forming her from a finer material, and clothing her with a more fascinating loveliness. " He brought her to the man," as a companion to his joys — for sorrows as yet he had none — to talk with him in Eden, in the large sweet utterance of a tongue tuned and taught by God Himself, to wander with him by the rivers of Paradise, to be united to him by a tie of tender and indissoluble affection. With joy he welcomed her as the breathing essence — the glorious marrow of his own being — " bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh ; " and surely we may believe that the harps of angels, as well as the glad sounds of nature, celebrated the happy union. — Ibid. n. Wherein the Image of God Con- sisted IN Man. Man resembled his Creator with regard to his spiritual, intellectual, and moral quali- ties, being a noble human reflection of the Deity itself. [16725] In spirituality, and consequently im- materiality, this image of God in man, in the first instance, consists, . . . and the sentiment expressed in Wisdom ii. 23 is an evidence that, in the opinion of the ancient Jews, the image of God in man comprised immortality sAso. "For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity." . . . To these we are to add the intellectual powers, and we have what divines, in perfect accordance with the Scriptures, have called "the natural image of God in His creatures," which is essential and ineffaceable. Man was made capable oi know- ledge, and he was endowed with liberty of will. This natural image of God was the foundation of that moral image by which also man was distinguished. Unless he had been a spiritual, 16725—16731! OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ADAM. knowin.c^, and willing being, he would have been wholly incapable ol moral qualities. — Eticyclo- ptedia {^Edwards). 111. The Innocence and Purity of the Primeval Age. Adam, before the Fall, had no conscious- ness of guilt, and consequently no reason for shame concerning his natural state. [16726] The words of Genesis which imme- diately precede the history of the fall describe to us better than anything else the perfect innocence and purity of primitive man : " And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed." Like truth, which has been represented naked, to give us an idea of the purity of its attractions, our first parents, until sin had poured over them its poison, saw in the majestic beauty of person, with which God had endowed them, no motive for shame. And this is the feature of the Divine image, which we trace most faithfully in the young child, which has not yet had the misfortune to feel the seeds of that corruption which is natural to us, develop themselves within him, and whose purity and innocence sin has not yet withered by its impure breath. What a charm does this ignorance of evil, which keeps aloof shame, the offspring of sin, shed over infancy ! Why should the tender infant, whom you love to press to your heart, be ashamed of its nudity .' It has not yet sinned ! Oh ! who has not re- gretted those days of childhood, the remem- brance of which still sometimes returns to soothe the miseries inseparable from a world which lieth in wickedness ! Who has not shed bitter tears over the loss of that ignorance of ■evil, which allowed us to indulge, without dis- trust and witii happy feelings, in enjoyments in which, at a later period, we find at every step the poison of sin 1 — L. Bonnet. [16727] Man, as he came forth from the hands of his God, possessed an innocence, a purity of heart, which nothing had as yet sullied. Per- haps also the body, with which God had clothed him, partook of the glory and beauty of the Divine image which adorned his soul ; the Father of lights had perhaps invested with a halo of celestial brightness the creature of His love. "He had crowned him," the Scripture tells us, " with glory and honour." The "glori- ous body," with which the elect of God shall be clothed by the power of Him who hath repaired the disorders of the fall and of sin, shall prob- ably be but the restoration of that body which the immortal being, created by (iod, the Sove- reign of the Universe, possessed. He was not naked, he was crownccl with glory and honour. —Ibid. [16728] That Adam's corporeal and intellec- tual elevation was accompanied with entire moral purity appears not only from the capacity shown for free intercourse with God, and the nan's want of harmotty with himself and with his God / Let this fact explain to us disease and death — death, that mystery in- scrutable to human wisdom, that abyss which has yawned beneath the feet of man ever since he was banished from Eden ! — Ibid. XIIL Comparison between Adam, the Federal Head and Representa- tive OF THE Human Race, and Christ, the Covenant Head and Representative of the Church. I The resemblance. (1) Adam typified Christ, as beifig in a peculiar sense the Sott of God. [16752] The Evangelist Luke, in tracing the natural pedigree of our Saviour, ascends step by step from Son to Father, till he comes to the first progenitor of all, " who was," says he, "the Son of God : " that is. His immediate off- spring, deriving his existence without any inter- position from the great Source of being. And what saith the Scripture concerning the Mes- siah .'' " I will declare the decree : the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten thee " (Psa. ii. 7). And when He bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, He saith, "And let all the angels of God worship Him" (Heb. i. 6). As the manner in which Adam was produced was new and unexampled, so the conception and birth of Christ were "a new thing in the earth ;" the former was created of dust from the ground, the latter formed by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of a virgin. — Rev. H. Hunter, D.D. (2) The constitution of Ada/n's nature pre- figured the person of Christ. [16753] The same stamp of Deity was put upon them both. Both were formed in the same glorious likeness, designed as the mirrors to reflect the life and image of the Author of all life. It was a pure pattern by which the Creator first designed His noblest creature; for His own declaration of His design was, " Let us make man in our own image." He who had looked upon unfallen Adam would have beheld the likeness and the form of God ; the erect nobility of the Maker would have been visible in the crowning work of His creative hand. Sinless, and pure in heart, he entered on his Eden life, and in the scope of his soul, as well as in the semblance of his body, he was the reflex of his Creator's mind and form. Even so when we turn to the Antitype, Jesus Christ, do we not discover a similar perfection .'' We find, indeed, with reference to His bodily proportions, but little of the grace and comeliness which marked the human type. Physically, he is not the Adonis which it would appear the first Adam was made. There is no courtly symmetry in His stature, nor smooth elegance in His coun- tenance : for those who saw Him found "no beauty that they should desire Him," and " His face was marred more than any man's." Yet the eyes — those windows of the soul — bespoke a character which was verily of God; upon His brow there shone Divinity ; and in His life the Godhead showed in meekness, and in power, and in love. Holy, harmless, undefiled, He was verily the likeness of the Father, "the express image of His person." And as in Adam, ere he fell, the unblushing cheek, where i6 16753— 16758] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ADAM. shame had been " ashamed to sit," formed the mirror which reflected the likeness of the Father, so was that same likeness printed on the form and feature of the spiritual life of Jesus Christ, in so far that He could claim with righteous honesty His heavenly pedigree, and declare, " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."— AVi^. A. Mtirsell, D.D. (3) The fiaternal relation which A darn dears to all the linmatt race represents to us Jesus the Son of God as the spiritual Father of all them that believe. [16754] The first man, Adam, was made "a living soul," that is, the source of a natural life, to them who had it not before ; the last Adam was made "a quickening spirit," that is, the giver and restorer of a spiritual and Divine life, to those who, having lost it, were " dead in trespasses and sins." As every man, upon coming into the world of nature, the instant he draws the breath of life, bears the image of the first man whom God created, so from Jesus Christ, the progenitor of them who believe, ail who are regenerated or born into the world of grace derive their spiritual existence and bear the image of Him from whom the whole family of heaven and earth is named. — Rev. H. Hunter, D.D. (4) The institution of marriage in Eden syviboiized the sacred espousals of Christ with the Church, His Bride. [16755] Adam's soul was enlarged to a higher and more peaceful apprehension of his bliss ; his eye saw fairer beauty in the bloom of flower and the blush of sky ; his ear heard richer music in the matin of the lark and vesper of the nightingale, and paradise became more like itself than it had ever been before, when the union of husband and of wife was formed. Now this conjugal relationship is one of the most striking types of Christ's union with His Church. He is the Bridegroom, and that Church is "the Bride, the Lamb's wife." Now the sleep of Adam seems to show, by a vivid emblem, the means whereby Christ obtained the Church as His Bride. When the first Adam slept, his side was opened and the woman fashioned from the rib which was re- moved. It behoved the nobler Bridegroom, Christ, to sleep the sleep of death, and in the article of that heavy sleep His side was pierced ; His inmost heart was wounded by the shaft, and the very stab which human hate infixed into that heart, opened a wound of love, whereby the union with the desired Bride was made ; for "Christ loved the Church, and gave Him- self for it." That is a mysterious cleaving with which — for better or for worse — in storm and shine— an honest man protects and loves his wife ; that is a deeper mystery of love which links the Saviour with the saint, and purchases the comely garment which can decorate our dust for the embrace of such a Bridegroom. Yet Adam and Eve were not more intimately and emphatically one flesh, than Christ and the Christian are one spirit. " This is a great mystery ; but I speak concerning Christ and the Q\\\xxch:'—Rev. A. Murscll, D.D. (5) Adam and Christ bear a striking resem- blance in respect of dominion and sovereignty. [16756] When God had created man "He blessed him, and said unto him. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." David also descants upon this thought in Psa. viii. 5-8. 2 The contrast. [16757] Adam was assaulted of the wicked one by a slight temptation, yielded, and fell. Christ was tempted of the devil, by repeated, vigorous, and well-conducted attacks, resisted to the last, and overcame. Adam in Paradise became guilty and miserable and liable to death ; Christ passed through a corrupted world, lived in the midst of a sinful and adul- terous generation, but preserved unspotted innocence ; He " did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." Adam, by one offence, became guilty of the whole law, poured con- tempt upon it, and transmitted his crime, to- gether with the punishment of it, to all mankind ; Christ, by a complete obedience, " magnified the law, and made it honourable," approved Himself unto God, and conveys the merit ot His obedience and sufferings to all them that believe, for their justification and acceptance with God. Adam, aspiring to a condition superior to that in which his Maker placed him, not only failed to obtain what he aimed at, but also lost that which he had ; desiring to be as God, to know good and evil, he acquired the fatal knowledge of evil, but lost the knowledge of good which he already possessed ; and, sinkmg himself, drags down a devoted world with him : whereas Christ, for the voluntary abasement of Himself, is exalted to " the right hand of the Majesty on high," " for the suffering of death, is crowned with glory and honour," and, " lifted up on the cross, draws all men unto Him."— AVz/. H. Hunter, D.D. XIV. HOMILETICAL APPLICATIONS. I The history of Adam furnishes a lesson respecting the duty of gratitude, adora- tion, and service. [16758J Let us endeavour to improve our- selves by learning habitually to acknowledge, to adore, and to serve the great Author and Pre- server of our being, who has lavished so much goodness upon us ; who adorned our nature with His own glorious image, who pitied us in our low and lost estate, and has laid help for us on one who is mighty to save : and who, by the exceeding great and precious promises of the gospel, is aiming at making us partakers of a Divine nature, and delivering us from that bondage of corruption into which we are sunk by reason of sin. — Ibid. 16759—16765] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ENOCH. 17 2 It censures the spirit and practice alike of selfish misanthropy and of morbid asceticism. [16759] Let me take occasion from that in- stitution which God designed for the completion of human happiness, in a state of innocence, and for the mutual assistance and comfort of the sexes in their fallen condition, to censure and condemn that spirit and practice of celibacy which is one of the cryins? vices of our own age and country, and which is equally inimical to religion, to good morals, to public spirit, and to human comfort. He who says, or lives as if he thought that it is " good for man to be alone," gives the He to his Maker ; sins against the constitution of his nature ; dishonours his parents ; defrauds another of one of the justest rights of humanity, and in a case, too, where it is impossible so much as to complain ; and ex- poses himself to commit offences against society, which are not to be mentioned. In truth, celi- bacy is a vile compound of avarice and selfish- ness, which would fain pass upon the world for prudence and self-denial ; and the state of our own country at present, in this respect, looks as if a single state, as in Roman Catholic countries, were established by law, but that the laity, not the clergy, were bound by it. But, alas ! I am only furnishing matter for a little conversation. There must be more virtue, religion, and good sense among the young men of the age before this crying evil be remedied. — Ibid. 3 It inculcates the necessity of contentment and steadfastness. [16760] Let us learn, from the sad example of the first transgression, to rest contented with that state and condition which Providence has assigned to us in life ; let us learn to use only lawful means for bettering it ; to make the known will of God the only rule of our conduct ; never to reason and tamper with temptation ; but to repel or flee from it at once ; and let us shun those as our worst enemies, who, on any occasion or pretence, would attempt to make us think lightly of the law of God. — Ibid. 4 It teaches the advisability of searching self-examination, that in condemning we be not ourselves condemned, and should force the question upon each individual conscience, "Who art thou that judgest another.' " [16761] In depicting the depravity of the first Adam, let us bear in mind that we are depicting our own. We are the posterity of the first sinner, and his sin is our heavy heritage. Let us not, therefore, gloatingly lecture our first father, as though we were above his yielding and superior to his sin, but remember that when we probe his wound we probe our own ; that the ulcer of his leprosy inheres in us, and chokes us like a pestilence. We are the heirs to all the miseries his fall produced. — Rev. A. Miirsell. D.D. [16762] Not only have we inherited the guilt VOL. VI. 3 of Adam, but we have disproved our right to blame him by showing that we are as guilty as he, and should have done the same thing in the same circumstances. We have imitated his sin. He proudly clambered after that which lay beyond his reach. Elated with the joy which grace had given him ; drunk with the nectar love had distilled for him, he grew wan- ton for the knowledge wisdom had denied ; he tried to run the blockade of God's decrees ; he sought to break loose from the Divine spell, and broke the embargo of Jehovah's word. And which of us has not proudly climbed, and disgracefully fallen, on the ladder of a like ambition ? — Ibid. ENOCH. \. The Peculi.\r Points Observable in HIS History. 1 The extreme brevity of the Biblical re- cord. Those lives which deserve most to be had in reniembra7tce are most easily recorded, and consist of fewest articles. [16763] The history of an Enoch is comprised in three words, while the exploits of an Alex- ander, a Csesar, or any other of the scourges and destroyers of mankind swell to many volumes. But what comparison is there be- tween the bubble reputation bestowed by his- torians, poets, or orators, on the worthless and the wicked, and the solid, sterhng praise con- ferred on the wise and good, by the spirit of God, by whom actions are weighed ? — Rev. H. Hunter, D.D. 2 The comparative shortness of his stay upon earth. [16764] He was here three hundred and sixty-five years, a period which, although com- prehending a space equal to ten of our genera- tions, was not so much as half of the age of many of his contemporaries. He left the world in the zenith of his manhood. One might have thought that if his contemporaries, who had sunk into depths of wickedness, lived to nine hundred years, that he who was serving his generation by the will of God would have con- tinued as long, if not longer. Nothing in the procedure of Heaven is more inscrutable to us than the removal of the best men from society in the fulness of their energy and the midst of their usefulness. — A?ion. 3 The manifest singularity of the life he lived. [16765] It would seem that his contempora- ries, with the exception of Koah, had descended to the lowest stage of moral corruption. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con- i8 16765— 16773] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE RRA. [ENOCH. tinually." The imagination of every man was evil ; the imagination of every man's thought was evil ; the imagination of every man's thought was evil continually. Such were his contemporaries. But he "walked with (iod." He held principles practically repudiated by all ; pursued a course in direct opposition to the whole current of social sentiment, feeling, and practice. — Idul. II. The Lessons of his Life. I The life of Enoch is a grand example to all ages of the possibility of being in the world, yet not of it. (i) " He walked with God." a. There was a perpetual consciousness of the Divine presence. [16766] Noah walked with God. The word is strong and peculiar, denoting the repetition and energy of the act. He walked and walked ; yea, walked with fervent and untiring energy. Through centuries he lived on, walking with (iod, as Enoch had done before him ; nay, during part of the time, with Enoch at his side ; for only of these two is the expression used. It is as if God had come down to earth and walked through it, with Enoch on one side, and Noah on the other. Of Abraham it is said, " Walk before me, and be thou perfect ;" but it would almost seem as if this walk of Enoch and Noah were something nearer and more blessed than this. — //. Bonar. b. There was constant and cordial fellowship with God. [16767] " How can two walk together except they be agreed ? " The question coming down from most ancient times shows how such lan- guage as is used of Enoch was then understood. Enoch was at one with God, in profound and intense sympathy of heart. He loved God, and God him. They were in every sense friends to each other. Enoch labouring in his sphere to promote the interests and work of God on earth, and God on His part ever wakeful over the in- terests of His friend. What a friendship was this ! Very few at that time may have had the least hint of its existence. Probably most of Enoch's neighbours thought him an unsocial recluse who had no friends. Oh ! they did not know his heart. They did not see those out- goings of trust, affection, and prayer, which were the very life of his soul. They could not see how he lived on God. — Christiati Treasury. c. Theie was manifest spiritual progress. [16768] He walks — every step bearing him onward into higher truths and richer experiences. A more truthful and elevating description of godliness know I not than this. What is true religion .^ It is not a mere belief in dogmas, observance of ceremonies, and membership with cluirches. It is the spirit walking with God, holding fellowship with Him who is the Creator of the universe and the fountain of love. — Anon. [16769] The example of a man like Enoch is like the mystic pillar of the Hebrews, whose movements indicate the will of Heaven and guide men to a better land. (2) " He had this testimony, that he pleased God:' [16770] How this testimony came to him we are not told. It is not necessary to suppose that it came in any miraculous way, that he heard God's approving voice sounding in the atmo- sphere, or that an accredited messenger came from heaven to tell him that the Almighty was pleased with his conduct. He had, as we all have, a conscience, and that conscience, God's own minister, gave the testimony. How blessed such consciousness ! He who feels that God is pleased with him may well be magnanimous in trial, brave in danger, calm and sunny through all the storms of life, and exultant in the prospect of dissolution. — Anon. 2 The history of Enoch also teaches that it is not the religion of God which withdraws or excludes men from society, and infers disrespect to the secular destinations of Providence, or the relative obligations and connections of life. [1677 1] Enoch, however illusti'ious and dis- tinguished in his latter end, as well as by the superior sanctity of his life, came into the world in the usual manner, and fulfilled the duties of the ordinary relations of human life, while he continued in it. One great branch of holy walk- ing with God is useful walking among men. Having, to the proper period, lived in the obedi- ence and subjection of a son, he in due tim.e becomes the master of a family and a father ; for Methuselah was born to him in the sixty- fifth year of his age, a period earlier than that at which any of the patriarchs, according to the record, became a parent, except his grandfather MahalaleeL— 7?^z/. H. Hunter. D.D. III. Import of his Prophetic Utter- ances AS Recorded by St. Jude. 1 The remarkable significance of the subject matter of this prophecy. [16772] It is strange that, though the first of the prophets, he yet prophesied of the last event in the history of the world — the coming of the Lord. It is as if no event betwixt were majestic enough for him to touch — as if this coming of Christ from heaven best suited the tongue of him who, even on earth, was breathing the air of the upper paradise, and was, in a little while, to be caught up among the visions of God. — Giljillan. 2 The three great features of the Second Coming of Christ, foretold by Enoch. (i) The advent of the Judge. "The Lord cometh." [16773] It is a solemn truth, that the Great Judge is always coming to the sinner, " Be ye 16773— 16777] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ENOCH. 19 ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." But there is a grand final coining still awaiting this old earth. Whether Jude referred to this or not, it is clearly and frequently held out in the Book of God. John saw it in vision. " I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, whose face the earth and the heaven fled away ; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books were opened : and another book was opened, which is the book of life : and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them : and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the lake of fire." The scene overawes us with silence. Our poor descriptive words would be impertinence, if not impiety. — Anon. (2) The (^atherinf^ of the saints. "With ten thousands of His saints." [16774] This is a definite number for an indefinite multitude. He will not come alone. The Great Sun will draw the planets after Him. When the Lord appeared to the Jews in the wilderness. He came " from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them ; He shined forth from Mount Paran, and He came with ten thousands of saints." And Christ Himself tells us " He will come with all His holy angels." —Ibid. (3) The conviction of sinners. " To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." [16775] The wickedness of men consists in "deeds" and "speeches." On the day of judgment every sinner will be convinced, Enoch teaches, of every ungodly deed and every ungodly speech. This moral convic- tion is the most terrible feature of that final day. It is not the manifestation of the Judge outside the sinner, grand and awful as that will be, that will be the most distressing. It is His coming i7ito the soul, carrying His court into the conscience, that will be the terror of that terrible event. Conviction will be carried into every sinner's inmost nature ; the wrong of every ungodly deed and speech will be poignantly felt. This conviction implies two things. (i) A wonderful action of the human memory. For a sinner to be convinced of all the wrong things he has done, those wrong things must be recalled. Memory must open their graves and bring the ghastly mon- sters up to life. The circumstances of that period will be such as to act so mightily on the laws of association, that the whole of a man's past history shall give up its dead. This con- viction implies (2) A consciousness of free- dom through the whole of the past life. If the sinner felt that he had not been free in his conduct, that he was necessitated to act as he did by the internal tendencies of his organiza- tion, or the external circumstances which sur- rounded him, he would not experience the conviction. It is the consciousness of his freedom now that will give the scorpion sting to the memory of forgotten crimes. — Ibid. ■ IV. Enoch and Elijah contrasted with Christ. [16776] Enoch, Elijah, and Christ, in certain views, can be compared only with each other ; but in all things He must have the pre- eminence. They prophesied through the power and virtue of the spirit given unto them ; He is the giver of that spirit to them and to all the prophets. As mere men, they must have had their infirmities, and the infirmities of one of them are upon record ; but He knew in- firmity only by a fellow feeling with the miserable, and He is the atonement for their sins. By the power and mercy of God they were taken up into heaven ; by His own power He ascended on high ; they as servants, He as the eternal Son of God. In them we have a repeated instance of bodies glorified without suffering death ; He " was dead, and is alive again," and carried to heaven a body which had been laid in the tomb. In them we have an object of admiration and astonishment ; in Him a pattern for imitation, a Saviour in whom we trust, a ground of hope whereon to rest. Faith exempted them from death ; and faith shall at length redeem all the followers of the Lamb from the power of the grave. Enoch and Elijah ascended as solitary individuals, Christ as the first-fruits of them that sleep ; and, '• lifted up," is drawing an elect world unto Him. They were admitted to regions unknown, and among society untried ; He only returned to the place from whence he came. — Rev. H. Hunter, D.D. V. The Translations of Enoch, Elijah, AND Christ viewed as Belonging Severally to Three Great Epochs IN the Church's History. [16777] In each of the three great periods of the Church was exhibited an instance of a man taken up into heaven, body and spirit, as a support and encouragement to the hope of believers, of attaining the same felicity. Enoch, before the law was given ; Elijah, under the legal economy ; and Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men, under the evangelical dispensation. — Ibid. 20 16778—16783] OLD TESTAMENT SCRrPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [noah. NO A II. I. TlIF, UXPARALLELEU WICKEDNESS OF THE Antediluvian World. Never did there exist such a combination of deeply imbedded, various, and vigorous iniquity. [16778] Different ages of the world have been distinguished for different degrees of wickedness. . . . But of no age of the world's history do we read of such aggravated wicked- ness as that which pervaded the earth im- mediately before the Deluge. We have no record of it except in the Book of Genesis, and in some incidental allusions to it in a few other parts of the sacred volume. . . . The language by which it is described is plain and simple ; it has none of the figures of rhetoric ; but it is exceedingly emphatic and strong. The wicked- ness of man was great — it was unmingled wickedness, uninterrupted wickedness. It was a community conspicuous in crime, and that stopped not short of every sort of crime ; a community where there was no religion, and therefore no morality; a community where there was no moral restraint, and therefore where wickedness was rank and exuberant. — C. Sprino;, LL.D. [16779] Charles Simeon onGen.vi. 5, remarks that the dispositions of the hearts of the Ante- diluvians were — i. Evil without exception — every imagination was evil. 2. Without mix- ture—(?/;/}' evil. 3. Without intermission — continually. [16780] It is a revealed fact concerning this generation of men that there was but one indi- vidual who did not partake of this intense de- generacy. This earth had been in existence almost sixteen hundred years, and contained millions of inhabitants ; yet of all this multitude, one man only was found who was righteous before God. Pious men there had been ; but the last generation of the worshippers of God had died out ; their names and example, if re- membered at all, were remembered only to reproach their descendants. This perfectly uni- versal degeneracy of this dark age is a fact not to be lost siglit of in its subsequent and melan- choly history. Sodom was corrupt ; yet, if there had ])een "ten righteous" found in her, she would have escaped her terrible overthrow. Yet the "cities of the plain" formed but a small portion of the entire earth, and Lot himself but a small fraction of its pious men. The city of Paris, during the French Revolution, was almost as destitute of pious men as of Bibles ; yet were there godly men and women within its walls not a few ; while in other lands they could be num- bered by millions. At no period since the creation of the world to the present hour, except that of which we arc speaking, has it ever been known that there was but one righteous man. G. Spring, LL.D. II. The Grand Contrast presented in THE Character of Noah to this Universal Corruption. " Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. . . . Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations " (Gen. vi. 8, 9). [1678 1] Public opinion and example control the world, both for good and for evil. Interest, pride, and social bonds allure men to moral vir- tue ; none dispute their power to harden them in sin. There is little apparent evil in wickedness, and no reproach where wickedness is fashion- able and universal. Noah was a righteous man in opposition to the strong and overwhelming current of the whole antediluvian world. His incipient purposes of godliness were protected by no sacred alliances and influences ; he had no retreat from the snares and scoffs of the un- godly, even in the more retired circles of do- mestic love. He stood alone, the only example of piety in the earth. " Thee have I found righteous before me in this gene?-afion." He was God's witness, chosen, called, faithful. He was a consistent witness, wondered at for his boldness amid powerful and inveterate foes, for his perseverance in the midst of hardships and perils, and for his all-conquering faith and zeal amid stupid carelessness, sottish ignorance, and degrading profligacy. — Idid. [16782] It was a noble example of Christian heroism when the youthful Stephen, assailed by the flower of five Jewish synagogues and an ex- asperated mob, stood firm, at every hazard, for God and righteousness, and remained undis- mayed amid the terrors of martyrdom. It was a noble spirit in Luther, when Rome gnashed upon him with her teeth, and, like Hercules, he boldly attacked this Nemean lion in his lair. It was a splendid testimony when Patrick Hamilton, a youth of royal lineage, renounced his hereditary honours for the sake of rekindling in Scotland the smouldering beacon of God's truth, though he himself was the first victim to the flames. But it was a still nobler spectacle to see that venerable patriarch standing for cen- turies, unpatronized and unprotected where "all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth." These wondrous men, and others like them, were bright stars in the moral firmament ; but they were not, like him, the only light amid the per- vading darkness. It was a proof of piety that was never, before or since, put to so severe a test. All men and all visible things were against him ; yet had he hope against hope, and tranquil enduranceamid "great swelling words of vanity." —Ibid. [16783] Solitary piety— what is it? where is it ? We learn what it was, when we think of Noah ; we know where it was, when we think of that giant race of wicked men. Beautiful was it, inexpressibly beautiful ; a single flower blooming in the scathed forest, and breathing its fragrance amid desert sands ; a single temple rescued from the ravages of time, where the Shekinah dwelt ; a solitary heart filled with his 16783—16788] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. 21 [noah. love, where "every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart vi^as only evil continually." — Ibid. III. The General Righteousness of Noah before God. His piety was of no doubtful kind, but was distinguished for its genuineness and sincerity. [16784] In speaking of the character of Noah, we are left in darkness so far as it regards his early history. We read nothing of his conver- sio7t; nor, indeed, of the conversion of any of the saints of the patriarchal period. He was the great adornment of the most degenerate age ; yet human example and influences accom- plished little in the attainment of that spirit, and in the cultivation of those virtues for which he was distinguished. How early he became a pious man we are not informed, although it is quite obvious that it was long before the ante- diluvian world had attained its excess of wicked- ness. It was under the most unfavourable auspices, and probably in early life, that strong religious impressions were made upon his mind that proved permanent, and that evinced his in- debtedness to renewing and sanctifying grace. It is recorded of him that he was righteous before God. He who draws aside the curtains of the heart, and "weigheth the actions of men," bears witness to his religious integrity. There was no more doubt of it than there was of the impiety of those whose " wickedness was great on the earth," and whose character was distin- guished by their enmity to God, and their scan- dalous vices. — Ibid. [16785] Not a few are righteous before men who before God are not righteous. They are righteous in their own eyes ; righteous by profession and in all the form of godliness ; but there their righteousness stops. Their piety consists, on the one hand, in the variations of animal excitement, and, on the other, in the monotony of a prescribed ritual. With some it is emotion without thought ; with others it is a mere religious mechanism without emotion. . . , Right conduct is the fruit of right prin- ciples and affections. The external rectitude which God requires and approves, flows from a rectitude that is internal ; a godly heart and a godly life constitute a godly man. The external is nothing except as it is the expression of the internal ; while the internal is nothing if it have not sufficient impulse to produce the external. " Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and its fruit cor- rupt ; the tree is known by its fruit." It is a beautiful character where the internal and the external are thus combined, and present a true and visible conformity to the law of God. Such was the character of Noah. He was righteous, not in form merely ; not in his own eyes ; not merely in the eyes of men ; he was " righteous before God." — Ibid. IV. His Habitual and Intimate Inter- course WITH HIS Maker. "Noah walked with God" (Gen. vi. g). [16786] Wickedness hates God, and shuns His presence. Such was the wickedness of the antediluvian world ; it was practical atheism. Piety loves God, and seeks His presence and love ; such was the piety of Noah. Centuries after he was gathered to his fathers his bio- grapher was divinely directed to write his epitaph in those few and emphatic words, " And Noah walked with God." To render the contrast be- tween himself and the world around him the more striking and impressive, his piety was of the sweetest kind; it was the steady and delight- ful habit of his soul. He was acquainted with God, familiar with God. He realized the Divine presence. God was his companion, his friend, his guide, his refuge, his portion. There was no being in the universe with whom he had so much to do as with God ; none whom he thought of so much ; on whom he so constantly felt his dependence ; with whom he had such unembar- rassed intercourse ; to whom he looked with such expectations, and on whom he so implicitly relied ; from whom he received all that relieved the burden and gladdened the sadness of his pilgrimage ; and whose favour and love were his " shelter and shade," his " glory and the lifter up of his head." — Ibid. [16787] His piety must have been pre-eminent to have existed at all. In that world of wicked- ness he must have lived near to heaven, or near to hell. He did live near to heaven ; and this was his security. There was wondrous conde- scension in God in His personal interviews with this holy man. He who held that shoreless deluge in the hollow of His hand, laid aside His glorious. His awful majesty, and held intercourse with a worm. Noah was admitted to " the secret of His tabernacle." Worm as he was, he was God's consecrated servant and much-loved child. " He walked with God ; " and they were paths of righteousness ; pleasant and peaceful paths, where truth flourishes and exceeding great and precious promises grow ; joyous paths, where are smiles, and blessings, and ful- ness of joy ; bright paths, cheered Vv'ith heavenly light and love, overhung with unearthly glories, and ever opening new vistas of increased beauty and loveliness. — Ibid. V. His Marvellous Faith under Most Singular Circumstances, and the Mighty Infuence it Exercised upon his Life. I Noah's implicit faith in God formed the most prominent feature of his character. [16788] The building of the ark commenced when Noah was four hundred and eighty years old ; that is, before any of his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, had been born — in fact, just twenty years before the birth of Shem. Thus 3—16797] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA, [XOAH. the great faith of Noah appeared not only in building an ark in the midst of a scoffing and unbelieving generation, and that against all human probability of its ever being needed, and one hundred and twenty years before it was actually required, but in providing room for " his sons " and his " sons' wives," while as yet he himself was childless ! Indeed, the more we try to realize the circumstances, the more grand appears the unshaken confidence of the patriarch. — Edersheini. [16789] It is faith in the unseen that makes men strong "to labour and to wait." "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." The heroic achievements emblazoned in Noah's history are all attributable to this faith. Let me believe in those things " not seen as yet," which God has revealed, and I shall be magnanimous in suffering, invincible in duty, brave in danger, discharging evermore my mis- sion heroically, regardless alike of the smiles or frowns of men. — Anon. 2 Noah's sublime faith influenced his life in various ways. {l) It inipelled him to the most trying work. a. Trying to his patience. [16790] "Being moved with fear," which Ebrard renders, " w//// ivise foresight,''' he set himself to the construction of an ark according to the directions which the Almighty had given him. And his work was truly trying. There is a tendency in most men to get tired of the same work ; change of labour we feel to be rest. But here is a man who labours on day after day, month after month, year after year, for one hundred and twenty years. — Ibid. b. Trying to his social nature. [16791] All men in labour desire the sympathy and co-operation of their fellow-men. To work alone, single-handedly, without sympathy, is never pleasant. But Noah had to detach him- self from the men of his age, and not only sacrifice their sympathy, but incur their scorn and opposition. He exposed himself to their bitter insults, their withering lampoons, and malignant contempt. — Jbid. [16792] Scoffing unbelief and cutting irony did not move him. Such was the loneliness amid which he lived, that it seems to us a visionary and unearthly existence. There was no kindred spirit on earth to cheer him ; his consolation and his courage were all from worlds unseen. Wonderful man ! Not naval or military hero, amid tlie stormy scenes of battle, ever gave proof of greater heroism than the ardent and steady mind of this man of God. — G. Si^rino- LL.D. ^ "' c. Trying to his reason. [16793] His own experience, and that of his ancestors, assured him of the stability of nature. Year after year, up to the last of the one hun- dred and twenty, as nature proceeded in her wonted course, moving on in the majesty of un- broken order, she would seem to him at times to denounce him as one of the most deluded of visionaries. The sceptics of his age would no doubt avail themselves of the indisputable regularity of nature, and point him out to society as one of the most brainless of fanatics. — A?ton. [16794] Coming events were told to him, not at first told to others — events which, to the eye of sense, were the most improbable in the world, which indeed seemed impossible. It did not seem likely that God would destroy the earth He had so recently made ; nor were there any outward and visible indications of this overwhelming calamity. ... It was a fearful, unheard-of thing which God had threatened, and the world around him did not believe it. But it drew his attention more and more, till it became the absorbing theme, and his faith anticipated it with an as- surance which the reality itself could not make more sure. — G. Spring, LL.D. (2) // impelled him to the most serviceable work. [16795] The ark he made proved the " saving of his house " as well as the saving of the germs of a new world. Had he not done his work would not the human race have become extinct ? A truly serviceable work was this work of Noah. He became the second father of mankind ; and, under God, we owe him our existence and our earthly all. What made him such a benefactor ? Faith in " the things not seen as yet " which God revealed. In making that ark he worked out God's idea: " Accordmg to all that God commanded him, so did he." And in thus working out God's idea he saved the world. Thus it ever is. No man can truly help his race unless he believes in God's Word, and works his faith out on the little and, it may be, very humble and dusty platform of his earthly life. Wouldst thou be a true benefactor 1 Then, like Noah, take into thy being ideas from God about " things not seen as yet ;" let these fill and fire thee, work thy faculties, and shape thy character. IVlan's mission is to get ideas from heaven into him, and plant them as living seeds in the earth. — Anon. [16796] Believing, simply believing, is the basis of vital faith ; but if this be all, it comes to nothing. It avails and suffices no more than if Noah had contented himself with drawing a plan, or shaping a model of the prescribed ark, and perhaps marking the trees that would serve for the timber. To each belief, relative to im- portant concerns, there is some appropriate affection or passion ; and the belief must bring that into exercise. Noah's belief excited his " fear." And, in concerns involving practice, there is an action appropriate to each belief and corresponding emotion, he "prepared an ark." — Rev. J. Foster, D.D. (3) // i7npelled him to self-rectifying work. [16797] "Hebecame heirof therig'hteousness which IS by faith." The meaning is, he became a possessor of righteousness. His faith in the 16797 — 16803] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE RKA. [noah. 23 "things not seen as yet," which inckided the intervention of Christ, made him right with God, ri,<,^ht in the very spirit of his Hfe. Men are ever "justified" — made right by faith. — Anon. (4) // impelled him to sin-condemning work. [16798] " He condemned the world " by prac- tically trusting the Divine word, obeying the Divine command, working out in every-day life the ideas of God. He condemned the unbelief, corruption, and impieties of the wicked millions about him that revelled in these crimes. Thus he was, as Peter calls him, a " preacher of righteousness." He preached righteousness not merely with the lip, but with the whole life. Every stroke of the hammer that echoed in the valley was a homily against sin. He was a light "shining in a dark place." "This is the condemnation, that light has come into the world." The excellence of one individual ex- poses the faults of another, as I have sometimes seen a light beaming out from one region of the sky giving a blacker and more threatening aspect to a dark thunder-cloud hanging in the opposite heavens. — Ibid. [16799] Noah was not contented to keep him- self from sin. He was a preacher as well as an example of righteousness. By how much the more fixed and undoubting his own faith was, by how much the more certainly he knew that God loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity, by so much the more did his heart sink within him, when he looked on his right hand and on his left, and saw all his brethren walking in the ways of death. He did his best to turn them from their sin and danger ; he set them a good example, gave them good advice, and prayed, we maybe sure, to Almighty God that He would yet show forth His mercy in renewing a right spirit within them. Behold here a true mirror of the duty of every good man toward his bad neighbours. — Rev. J. Keble. VI. The Strength of his Prompt and Unquestioning Obedience. [16800] He might have reasoned as ancient and modern infidels have reasoned on the sub- ject of the deluge ; but instead of doing this, or employing his time in refuting the cavils of unbelief, no sooner did God command him to build the ark than he set himself in earnest to obey His will. He justified and vindicated the reality and strength of his faith by his obedience. It was an arduous enterprise ; but God had commanded it ; He had indeed originated and minutely dictated the plan of it. Noah was but the under-builder, the humble workman, and felt that he had nothing to do but implicitly obey the Divine directions. He needed no other prompting, no other rule of conduct. Nothing was omitted or overlooked, and nothing was de- layed. " Thus did Noah : according to all that God covunanded him^ so did he." His religion was a practical religion, and his obedience the crown of his piety. Mighty interests were de- pendent on this watchful and diligent observance ; it would have cost him shame, agony, and death if he had not been true to his trust, and if he had been governed by any other rule of action than God's will. — G. Springy LL.D. VII. His Unshaken Firmness of Soul [16S01] Behold the venerable sage, at the admonition of heaven, undertaking his great work. The foundation is laid ; the fabric ad- vances ; and every stroke of the axe or hammer summons a thoughtless and a guilty world to repentance ; but " they will not hear, they will not lay it to heart." I see the good man maligned, derided, insulted. In their gaiety of heart, they scornfully style the ark NoaJCs folly. The work is finished, but they continue to sing, dance, and play ; and many, it is probable, have an active hand in the construction of that machine to which they scorn to resort for shelter from the impending danger. Noah is not to be diverted from his purpose. Neither the immensity of the undertaking, nor the length of time which it required, nor the opposition which he meets with from an unbelieving generation, discourage him in the prosecution of a design, planned by infinite wisdom, and recommended by Divine mercy. — Rev. H. Hunter., D.D. [16802] We may suppose Noah's ungodly neighbours gazing and scoffing at his persevering labour, pointing to the cloudless sky and the solid earth, and asking, "Where are the indica- tions of approaching calamity ? Whence shall come this flood of water you speak oil From the heavens above, or from the earth beneath ?"' Without hazarding a reply to their captious and cavilling questions, the holy man proceeded with his work. — E. Copley. VIII. The Way in which God Ex- pressed His Approbation of Human Worth in the Case of Noah. I Generally considered. [16803] Noah's character was honoured oj God. Such a character is praiseworthy. It is God's image reflected upon the soul of His creature and child. "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness." He could not do otherwise than approve of such a character. The mediatorial interposition of the Son of God was known before the time of Noah, and justice and mercy had already harmonized their claims in the promised seed of the woman who was to bruise the serpent's head. Noah had availed himself of this great sacrifice, and his person was ac- cepted of the Most High. His high-born cha- racter was not veiled from the all-seeing eye ; nor were its glories obscured by any law of justice, or any acts of all-controlling sovereignty. Men scoffed at it, but God smiled. Humble as this godly man was, and disdaining, as he did, everything in the form of meritorious righteous- ness, he had not only an approving conscience, but an approving God. — G. Sprifig, LL.D. 24 i63o4 — 16810] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [noah. 2 Specially considered. (i) God lionourt'd Noah in the fact that He preserved hi/n/roin the universal overthrow. [16804] "God shut him in!" His faithful love shut him in. He was housed from the tempest. The billows might surge, and the earth reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man ; but there was that within the aik which Almighty Love protected as the apple of His eye. The church was safe. All was turbulence with- out ; within all was perfect and sweet repose. There was no solicitude, and there were no bewildered thoughts ; never was man more composed, and never were hopes in brighter bloom. There were no lights in the heaven to shine upon the mingling elements. Nothing could be seen upon that dark and solitary waste but the single light glimmering from the window of the ark as it tloated upon the universal flood. There this honoured man of God dwelt for three hundred and seventy days, fearing no evil. There he rose morning after morning ; there he slept, lulled by the murmurs and awakened by the rushing of the troubled deep, realizing the promise, " Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will 1 deliver him : I will set him on high, because he hath known My name." — Ibid. (2) God 7iot only extended His preserving care toiuard Noah himself, but also preserved others for his sake. [16805] Even when Godyfrj/ gave the com- mand to Noah to build the ark, He did not leave him in suspense and agitation in relation to those he loved ; the threatening to destroy the earth was scarcely uttered, when God said to him, " But with thee will I establish My cove- nant.''' His children were not infants; they had reached maturity ; and though they were not then righteous before God, there were blessings in prospect for them, because it is the method of His grace thus to sanctify and reward the natural affections, and because He would not wither the heart of the parent by blasting the hopes of his children. And when the hour of trial came, and the ark was finished, it was made the depository of the righteous and his seed. This was the reward of the patriarchs faithfulness ; but for their father's piety they would have perished in the flood ; for his sake they were safe from the desolations where the dove could not find a green leaf, nor a rest for the soles of her feet. — Ibid. IX. The Spirit of Thankfulness and Gra'iitudf. Evinced by Noah upon Quitting the Ark. f 1 6806] After somewhat more than a year's residence in this divinely appointed sanctuary, the rescued family came forth in safety and in health — the proprietors of the world— the pro- genitors of a new race. Their first act was to build an altar, and offer thereon a sacrifice of adoration and gratitude for their preservation, as well as an expression of their faith in the great atoning Saviour promised, through whom this mercy had been extended. — E. Copley. [16807] No sooner is Noah come outof the ark, but he builds an altar : not an house for himself, but an altar to the Lord. Our faith will ever teach us to prefer God to ourselves : delayed thankful- ness is not worthy of acceptation. Of those few creatures that are left, God must have some ; they areall His: yet His goodness will have man know that it was he,for whosesake they were preserved. It was a privilege to those very brute creatures, that they were saved from the waters, to be offered up in fire unto God. What a favour is it to men to be reserved from common destruc- tions, to be sacrificed to their Maker and Redeemer ! — Bp. Hall. [16808] " And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." We know of no extravagant delight with which he contemplated the new world before him, rising in beauty from the waters, and offer- ing himself a kingdom of boundless magnificence. We know of no exulting that he had escaped the malice of his enemies, henceforth to be the father of a countless race. But like the Chris- tian, for Christian he was by anticipation, the first act was to build an altar to the Lord ; and upon that he laid, according to the custom of his fathers, the sacrifice of every clean beast, and every clean fowl, and offered burnt- offerings upon the altar. — Rev. G. Croly, LL.D. X. The One Degrading Sin Recorded OF this Patriarch, and the Warning IT Conveys. "... Noah . . . planted a vineyard : and he drank of the wine and was drunken " (Gen. ix. 20, 21). [16809] When Noah— with his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth — left the ark to be- come an husbandman, he planted a vineyard, as Jewish legend has it, from a slip of the vine that had strayed out of Paradise. But it may boldly be asserted that, except the forbidden fruit itself, none has brought more sin, ruin, and desolation upon our earth. Whether Noah was unac- cjuainted with the intoxicating property of the vine, or neglected proper moderation, the sad spectacle is presented of the aged patriarch, so lately rescued from the flood, not only falling a victim to drunkenness, but exposing himself in that state to the impious and vile conduct of his son Ham. — Edershcini. [16810] Who would look to have found right- eous Noah, the father of the new world, lying drunken in his tent ! Who could think tha^t wine should overthrow him that was preserved from the waters ! that he, who could not be tainted with the sinful e.xamples of the former i68io— i68i6] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [noah. 25 world, should begin the example of a new sin of his own ! What are we men if we be but our- selves ! While God upholds us, no temptation can move us : when He leaves us, no temptation is too weak to overthrow us. What living man had ever so noble proofs of the mercy, of the justice of God : mercy upon himself, justice upon others ? What man had so gracious approba- tion from his Maker? Behold, he of whom in an unclean world, God said, Thee only have I found righteous, proves now unclean when the world was purged. The preacher of righteous- ness unto the former age, the king, priest, and prophet of the world renewed, is the first that renews the sins of that world which he had reproved, and which he saw condemned for sin. God's best children have no lence for sins of infirmity.— i?^. Hall. [16811] Which of the saints have not once done that whereof they are ashamed ? God, that lets us fall, knows how to make as good use of thesins of His holy ones as of their obedi- ence. If we had not such patterns, who could choose but despair at the sight of his sins .'' Yet we find Noah drunken but once. One act can no more make a good heart unrighteous, than a trade of sin can stand with regeneration. But when I look to the effect of this sin, I cannot but blush and wonder. Lo ! this sin is worse than sin ; other sins move shame, but hide it ; this displays it to the world. — Ibid. XI. Noah Considered as a Type of Christ. 1 As regards his name. [168 1 2] Noah signifies comfort or rest, and of him it was prophetically said, " This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands," &c. (Gen. v. 29). Now Jesus is em- phatically the " consolation of Israel," and the rest of a heavy laden and guilty world. He imparts spiritual rest to the weary soul. The believer rests on Him as the only foundation of hope ; and He has provided, and it is His pre- rogative to admit to, that heavenly rest which remains for the people of God. — Rev. J. Burns, D.D. 2 As regards his holy life. [16813] " Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation, and Noah walked with God" (Gen. vi. 9). What a testimony does God give in this verse of the excellency of Noah — ''just, perfect, and walking with God." Yet how much more fully were these features observable in Jesus. He was the "Just One." His nature was immaculate — without spot, or sinful in- firmity. He lived in closest fellowship with God, and ever walked before Him in all well-pleasing. His whole life reflected the purity of the Father, and, in all things and every moment, God ap- proved, and loved, and delighted in Him. — Ibid. 3 As regards his public ministrations. [16814] Noah was a "preacher of righteous- ness." No doubt it was by the truth which Noah delivered that the Spirit strove with the wicked and infatuated antediluvian world. We have every reason to believe that, in discharging this office, he was faithful, self-denying, earnest, and persevering. How fully did this office point out the ministrations of the Son of God ! Jesus was appointed to preach the gospel of righteous- ness to the poor. To this He devotedly attended, and faithfully did He persevere in publishing the righteous doctrines and precepts of His heavenly kingdom. His preaching was eminently spiritual, yet clear, plain, and often clothed in the lan- guage of figure and parable, so that the common people heard Him gladly. It is remarkable, too, that, as preachers, both prophesied of the just vengeance of God. Noah with respect to the old world, Jesus with respect to Jerusalem and Judcea. — Ibid. 4 As regards his deliverance of his family. [16815] God directed him to prepare an ark for the saving of himself and house ; and he obeyed God, built the ark, and thus saved him- self and family from the destructive flood. Jesus expressly came to save His people from their sins, and thus to deliver them fjom the wrath to come. The ark, in this sense, seems strikingly to represent the Church of Christ. 1. Thus, as in the ark the family of Noah were together, and separated from an ungodly world, so believers are redeemed out of the world, and are united together under their one head, Jesus Christ. 2. As the ark was of Divine construc- tion, so the church is the workmanship of Christ, fashioned in all things after His own infinite wisdom and skill. 3. As the ark was the instru- ment of safety, so we are brought into the church, out of the condemnation under which the whole world lieth. 4. As those in the ark escaped the vengeance of God, and became the inhabitants of the new world ; so all believers, united together in the church of Christ, are heirs of God and of the kingdom of eternal life. — Ibid. 5 As regards his priesthood of the world. [16816] Noah evidently acted as priest, and his ofterings were clearly typical of that which Christ has presented for the guilt of the world. (See Gen. viii. 20, 21.) The sacrifice which Noah presented consisted of clean beasts, and also of every clean fowl, a sacrifice which was peculiarly acceptable to God, and through which He ex- pressed His gracious regards to the future genera- tions of mankind. Jesus offered the perfect sacrifice of Himself for all the nations and families of the earth, a sacrifice which made atonement for the transgressions of man, and through which God has expressed His favour and mercy to all who sincerely repent and be- lieve the gospel of His Son. — Ibid. 26 i68i7— 16823] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [gain. CAIiV. I. The Two Sacrifices (Gen. iv. 3, 4). The intellectual pride and deistic self-suf- ficiency characterizing the offering of Cain. Human reason der-rcacliing Divine revela- tion. [16817] As it was evidently a feeling of wounded pride which at last precipitated in Cain the commission of the fatal act, we can scarcely doubt that the growth, however it may have come about, of a proud rebellious spirit of opposition to the will of heaven in the matter of religious worship, was the form which the evil in him more especially assumed, and the direct cause of the direful consequences that followed. — Rev. D. Macdonald. [168 1 8] Cain, disregarding the gracious assur- ances that had been vouchsafed, or at least disdaining to adopt the prescribed mode of manifesting his belief, possibly as not appearing to his reason to possess any efficacy or natural fitness, thought he had sufficiently acquitted himself of his duty in acknowledging the general superintendence of God, and expressing his gi-atitude to the Supreme iJenefactor, by pre- senting some of those good things which he thereby confessed to have been derived from His bounty. In short, Cain, the first-born of the Fall, exhibits the first prints of his parents' dis- obedience, in the arrogance and self sufficiency of reason rejecting the aids of revelation, be- cause they fell not within its apprehension of right. He takes the first place in the annals of Deism, and displays, in his proud rejection of the ordinance of sacrifice, the same spirit which, in later days, has actuated his enlightened followers in rejecting the sacrifice of Christ. — Bp. Magee. [See Art. " Reason and Faith," Vol. I., Sec. I., pp. 254-263.] II. The Jealous Wrath and Malignant Envy of the Rejected Offerer. •« Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell " (Gen. iv. 5). [16819] Abel's sacrifice is accepted : what was this to Cain ? Cain's is rejected : how could Abel remedy this .? O envy ! the corrosive of all ill minds, and the root of all desperate actions. The same cause that moved Satan to tempt the first man to destroy himself and his posterity, the same moves the second man to destroy the third. It should have been Cains joy to see his brother accepted : it should have been his sorrow to see that himself had deserved a re- jection ; his brother's example should have excited and directed him. Could Abel have stayed God's fire frnm descending? or should he (if he could) reject God's acceptation, and displease his Maker to content a brother ? Was Cain ever the farther from a blessing, because his brother obtained mercy ? How proud and foolish is malice, which grows thus mad for no other cause but because God or Abel is not less good ! It hath been an old and happy danger to be holy ; indifterent actions must be careful to avoid offence ; but I care not what devil or what Cain be angry that I do good, or receive good. —Bp. Hall. [16S20] Cain brought the first-fruits of the ground, and his offering was rejected ; while at the same time the victim from his brother's flock, offered in humble faith, evidently met the Divine acceptance and regard. This so enraged Cain, that his countenance assumed a sullen and a gloomy aspect, too correct an index of his un- humbled, self-righteous, and malignant spirit. — E. Copley . III. The Condescending Remonstrance from on High. " Why art thou wroth, and why is thy coun- tenance fallen 1 " &c. (Gen. iv. 6, 7). [16821] Sin is personified ; he crouches like a wild beast at the door of his heart. Jehovah is remonstrating with angry, jealous Cain. "Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen .'"' Then Cain is warned that while he is giving way to his jealous thoughts, sin is waiting outside the door of his heart, ready to spring in, when once passion has assumed its sovereignty. He has not long to wait : the warning is now to be proved too necessary. The evil eye has set its mark. — Be-v. H. Ciist Numt. IV. The Deliberate Murder. Premeditated revenge sated in ruthless cruelty. [16S22] By God's expostulation Cain was silenced, but not humbled. His envy and hatred against his unoffending brother became more and more inflamed, and his dark soul meditated deeds of revenge. Surely evil passions must long have been fostered in his bosom ; for vice never reaches such a frightful maturity at once. Shortly afterwards, as Cain talked with his brother Abel in the field, probably in a familiar manner, as though all unpleasant impressions had worn off from his mmd, he rose up and slew him ! — the first-born of human race be- came a murderer 1 the murderer of his innocent, his only brother ! — and wherclore ? because his own works were evil, and his brother's were righteous. When a person has made such pro- gress in wickedness, as to hate another for the sake of his goodness, there is no calculating to what consummation of guilt and horror he may rise. — E. Copley. V. The Accusing Inquiry. "Where is Abel thy brother.?" (Gen. iv. g.) [16S23] No sooner doth Abel's blood speak unto God, than God speaks to Cain. There is no wicked man to whom God speaks not, if not 16823— I683I] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [CAIN. 27 to his ear, yet to his heart. What speech was this ? Not an accusation, but an inquiry ; yet such an inquiry as would infer an accusation, (iod loves to have a sinner accuse himself; and therefore hath He set His deputy in the breast of man ; neither doth God love this more than nature abhors it.— Bp. Hall. Vi. The Daring Retort, "I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. iv. 9.) [16S24] Cain professed ignorance ; but he could not deceive that eye which is a flame of fire, and which had witnessed the whole trans- action : beside, a voice was heard proclaiming his guilt — a voice from the ground — the voice of his brother's blood, calling for Divine ven- geance— Blood has a voice to pierce the skies ; Revenge, the blood of Abel cries — and the plea was not disallowed. — E. Copley, [16825] Cain answers stubbornly : the very name of Abel wounds him no less than his hand had wounded Abel : consciences that are with- out remorse are not without horror : wickedness makes men desperate. The murderer is angry with God, as of late, for accepting his brother's oblation ; so now, for listening to his blood. — Bp. Hall. Vn. The Retributive Curse (Gen. iv 10-12). Its aspect as regards the mental suffering in- fiicted. " Cain went out from the p7-esence of the Lord." [16826] He that cares not for the act of his sin shall care for the smart of his punishment. The damned are weary of their torments, but in vain. How great a madness is it to complain too late ! He that would not keep his brother, is cast out from the protection of God ; he that feared not to kill his brother, fears now that whosoever meets him will kill him. The troubled conscience projecteth fearful things, and sin makes even cruel men cowardly. God saw it was too much favour for him to die ; He there- fore wills that which Cain wills. Cain would live ; it is yielded him, but for a curse. How often doth God hear sinners in anger ! He shall live, banished from God, carrying his hell in his bosom, and the brand of God's vengeance in his forehead. God rejects him, the earth repines at him, men abhor him ; himself now wishes that death which he feared, and no man dare pleasure him with a murder. How bitter is the end of sin, yea. without end ! Still Cain finds that he killed himself more than his brother. We should never sin if our foresight were but as good as our sense ; the issue of sin would appear a thousand times more horrible than the act is pleasant. — Ibid. [16S27] The pride of Cain, still unsubdued, writhed under the stroke ; and he exclaimed, " My punishment is greater than I can bear." What led him to speak thus appears to have been not so much the physical as the social evils of his position — the alienation alike from God and man into which he was now thrown, and the savage horrors of the state of isolation and outlawry to which he was consigned. — Rev. D. Macdo7iald. [16828] Not an expression of regret escapes from Cain ; the sense of injury inflicted, or likely to be inflicted upon himself, is all that he is concerned about ; and he seems utterly unconscious of any moral necessity for his ap- pointment to such a lot, as the consequence of the unbrotherly and inhuman spirit he had dis- played. There was just one indication of a sottened mood in what he said — in his feeling it to be an intolerable burden to be treated as an exile from human society, and exposed to the calamities of an outlaw from heaven. And as a token of mercy still mingling with judgment, the Lord was graciously pleased to set bounds to the evil by assuring him of protection to his life. —Ibid. [16829] The story of Cain is the story of all ages. Sin, suffering ; the one following the other by a law fixed and imperative like that by which pain agonizes a burning hand. A living poet speaks of — " The coils Of those twin serpetits — Sin and Suftering." So far as the narrative informs us, the suffering of the first murderer was mental suffering. Disease did not blast him ; chains did not bind him ; the mysterious mark on his forehead was not a burning brand. He went his way like other men. He had sons and daughters : he built the first city known in history. Tradition says that he founded many cities, and became the head of a great empire. Yet Cain " went out from the presence of the Lord." He lived a life of conscious curse. The serpents coiled within. Cursed in thought, cursed in feeling, cursed in fears, cursed in blasted hopes, cursed in one long despair : such was life to the first man who bore the fruit of the first matured and ripened sin. And such will be the life of the last man who shall go out from the presence of the Lord, bearing the burden of a finished crime unrepented of and unforgiven. — Rev. A.Phelps, D.D. VHL Reasons why Cain's Preserved. Life was [16S30] Why is God so anxious to preserve Cain from death, and to give him the assurance of this security .'' Some reasons are obvious, besides those which run us up directly to the sovereignty of God. — Horatio Bonar. [ 1 6831] God's desire is to manifest the riches of His grace, and the extent of His forbearance, 28 16831— 16840] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [CAIN. and that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but wishes by His long-suffering to lead him to repentance. — Ibid. [16832] Death would not have answered God's end at all. It was needful that Cain should be preserved alive as an awful monument of sin, a warning against the shedding of man's blood. We find that this proved ineffectual ; fur in after ages we read that the earth was filled with vio- lence, which compelled God to interfere with the deluge ; and we find also that, after the deluge, God enacted the definite statute for the repres- sion of murder, putting into man's hands the very power before that He had kept wholly in His own. — Ibid. [16833] Cain was spared too, because of this partial repentance, God accepted Ahab's repent- ance (i Kings xxi. 29), poor and hollow as it was; so does He Cain's ; for He is gracious and merciful, looking for the first and faintest signs of a sinner's turning to Himself, willing to meet at once without upbraiding, and putting the best possible construction on all he says and does. To what length is not the grace of our God able to go ! Sin abounds, but grace superabounds. Howdesirousisjehovahnot to curse, but to bless ; not to smite, but to heal ; not to destroy, but to save. — Ibid. IX, The Causes of Cain's Despair. [16834] Cain enumerates the causes of his despair. These are three — the three articles of the sentence pronounced ; and when he sums up with a conclusion of his own : " It shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay m&:'—Ibid. 1 Behold Thou hast cast me out this day from (or upon) the face of the ground. [16835] He sees it to be Jehovah's own doing; He who drove Adam out of Paradise, now drives Cain out of Eden. Adam's sin brought expul- sion from the inner circle, Cain's from the outer. He is to cast out from the land where he had been born, where was his home ; from the ground which he had tilled. He was now doubly banished ; compelled to go forth into an un- known region, without a guide, or a promise, or a hope. — Ibid. 2 From Thy face I shall be hid. [16836] God's face means, doubtless, the She- kinah or manifested glory of Jehovah at the gate of p:dcn, where Adam and Eve, and their children, had worshipped ; where God was seen by them, where He met them and spake to them as from His mercy-seat. From this place of Jehovah's presence Cain was to go out, and this depresses him. Not that he really cared for the favour of God, as one in whose favour was life ; but still, he could not afford to lose it, especially when others were left behind to enjoy it. And all his religious feelings, such as they were, were associated with that spot. — Ibid. 3 "I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth." [16S37] Unchained from his primeval home, he was now to drift to and fro, he knew not whither. He was to be a leaf driven to and fro, a man without a settlement, and without a home. Poor desolate sinner ! And all this is thine own doing ! Thy sin has found thee out. Thine own iniquities have taken thee, and thou art holden with the cords of thy sins (Prov. v. 22). Cain now sums up all by drawing his own sad inference. He is liable to be slain by the first who meets him. There was nothing of this in the sentence ; but a guilty conscience sug- gested it. He sees himself a marked man. Death surrounds him. What else can a mur- derer's conscience forbode ? — Ibid. X. "The Way of Cain." [16838] The way of Cain — what is it? (Jude ir.) The apostle speaks of it as something terrible, and something which will be specially exhibited in the last days. " Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain." That way began in unbelief, in the rejection of God's ways of ''salvation through the shedding of the blood." It ended in utter worldliness and infidelity ; in the unrestrained indulgence of the lust of the flesh, the eye, and the pride of life. It was a way very much marked by the Apostle Paul's characteristics of the perilous times of the last days (2 Tim. iii. i). — Ibid. [16839] I" it we find selfishness, envy, hatred, murder, hypocrisy, lying, pride, independence, rebelliousness, ambition, all coupled or covered over with the " form of godliness." Rejection of the woman's seed, and of God's way of accept- ance through that seed— this is the main feature, that which influences all the rest. No Christ for him ! No bruised heel for him I No shedding of blood for the remission of sins ! No righteousness of a substitute in which he may stand before God ! " The way of Cain " ! It still exists. It has not been ploughed up so as to become imperceptible. It is still visible, and it is coming more and more into admira- tion as man's conscience gets blunted, and as his proud self-sufficiency exhibits itself. No sacrifice, no substitute, no imputed righteous- ness, no blood-shedding, no " religion of the shambles " for us ! And is such a way the way of holiness? Will such a religion lead men to love and gentleness and brotherly kindness? Will such a faith make a happy kingdom and a blessed earth, introducing the reign of peace and gladness ? So say its exulting votaries, emancipated, as they suppose, from the tram- mels of old creeds, and from the brutalizing influence of altars besmeared with blood. So says the philosophic theology of the day. So says the poetry of the 'Age.— Ibid. [16840] Look at Cain. That was his way. He rejected the expiatory blood, turning away from "religion of the shambles" to the mild 16840— 168441 OLD TESTA3IENr SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ABEL. 29 gentleness of a worship in which no life was talcen, and no blond was spilt, and no suffering inflicted. Did this mild and genial religion of his lead to a loving, gentle life } No. He who had so many scruples about shedding the blood of an innocent lamb, has none about taking the life of a holy and unoffending brother. He who is too pure and refined in his ideas of religion to profane his altar by turning it into "shambles," is all the while busied in preparing " shambles " of his own, where, for the gratification of malice, hatred, envy, and revenge, and every hellish passion, he may. with his own hand, butcher a brother for being more righteous than he. — Ji>id. ABEL, I. Significance of the Name Bestowed UPON THE Second Child of Man. [16841] Abel (signifying emptiness, vanity) was the second son of Adam and Eve. Wiiy such a name should have been conferred upon him we are not told. Possibly something in his personal appearance might have suggested the derogatory appellation ; or, what is fully more probable, this name, by which he is known to history, was occasioned by his unhappy fate, and expressed the feelings of vexation and disappointment which that affecting tragedy awakened in the bosoms of his parents. The rather may this explanation be entertained, as the name in Abel's case is not, as it was in Cain's, connected with the birth. It is not said, Eve brought forth a son and called him Abel ; but after recording the birth of Cain, and the reason of his being so designated, the sacred narrative simply relates of Eve, " And she again bare his brother Abel " (Gen. iv. 2). It was quite natural that the vanity which was so im- pressively stamped upon his earthly history should have been converted into his personal designation. — Rev. P. Cosse, D.U. [16842] The word Abel denotes vanity, or a breath of air. Was this name given him through the unreasonable prejudice and unjust preference of a partial mother ? Or was it an unintentional prediction of the brevity of his life, and of the lamentable manner of his death .'' But the materials of which life is composed are not so much its days and months and years, as works of piety, and mercy, and justice, or their opposites. — Rev. H. Hunler, D.D. II. The Differing Characteristics of the Two Brothers Observable in their REL.A.TIVE CALLINGS. I Abel chose the pilgrim life, Cain that of settled possession and enjoyment of earth. [16843] The promise which God freely gave to man was that of a deliverer, who would bruise the bead of the serpent, and destroy his works. Now, it was possible either to embrace this pro- mise by faith, and in that case to cling to it and set his heart thereon, or else to refuse this hope and turn away from it. Here, then, at the very opening of the history of the kingdom, we have the two different ways which, as the world and the kingdom of God, have ever since divided men. If we further ask ourselves what those would do who rejected the hope of faith, how they would show it in their outward conduct, we answer, that they would naturally choose the world as it then was ; and, satisfied therewith, try to establish themselves in the earth, claim it as their own, enjoy its pleasures and lusts, and cultivate its arts. On the other hand, one who embraced the promises would consider himself a pilgrim and a stranger in this earth, and both in heart and outward conduct show that he be- lieved in, and waited for, the fulfilment of the promise. We need scarcely say that the one describes the history of Cain and of his race ; the other that of Abel, and afterwards of Seth and of his descendants. For around these two — Cain and Seth — as their representatives, all the children of Adam would group themselves according to their spiritual tendencies. Viewed in this light the indications of Scripture, how- ever brief, are quite clear. When we read that " Cain was a tiller of the ground," and " Abel was a keeper of sheep," we can understand that the choice of their occupations depended not on accidental circumstances, but quite accorded with their views and character. The nearer their history lay to the terrible event which had led to the loss of Paradise, and to the first giving of the promise, the more significant would this their choice of life appear. Quite in accordance with this, we afterwards find Cain not only build- ing a city, but calling it after the name of his own son, to indicate settled proprietorship and enjoyment of the world as it was. — Eders/ieim. [16844] Behold this pair of brothers growing in wisdom and in stature, gladdening their parents' hearts. They arrive at the age of reason, of vigour, of activity ; they feel the law of God and nature upon them. Though the heirs of empire, they must labour for their subsistence : " Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." The earth will no longer spontaneously yield her increase. The clods must be turned up, and the seed must be cast into the furrow, through the care, foresight, and industry of man, else in vain will the heavens shed their influence ; and in vain will the bless- ing of the Most High be expected. That cattle may furnish either the fleece for clothing, or milk for food, they must be protected from inclement seasons and ravenous beasts ; they must be con- ducted to proper pasture, and provided with water from the brook. And this is the humble origin of the first employments which occupied our elder brethren in a state of nature. And here it is observable that the different disposi- tions of the brothers may be traced in the occu- pations which they followed. Pious and con- templative, Abel tends his flock : his profession 3° 16844— 16850I OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ABEL. affords more retirement and more leisure for meditation ; and the very nature of his charge forms him to vigilance, to providence, and to sympathy. His prosperity and success seem to flow immediately, and only, from the hands of God. Cain, more worldly and selfish, betakes himself to husbandry — a work of greater indus- try and art, the necessary implements of which suppose the prior invention of sundry branches of manufacture ; and in whose operations, and their effects, art blending with nature, would claim at least her full proportion of merit and importance.— 7?t'7/. H. Hunter, D.D. [16845] Abel appears to have early discovered a mild, contemplative, and pious disposition. This discovered itself in the choice of his worldly pursuits. '' He was a keeper of sheep." Not that goodness is necessarily connected with, or excluded from any lawful occupation ; but it is well to choose those most favourable to devout contemplation, and to the cultivation and exercise of the best dispositions. The keeping of sheep has always been regarded one of the most innocent and delightful employ- ments ; and no small honour was put upon agriculture and husbandry, that, when the first parents of the human race had but two sons, one of them became a tiller of the ground, and the other a keeper of sheep. — E. Copley, III. The Faith Displayed in Adel's Sacrifice, and its Import. His sacrifice was a visible embodiment of the doctrinal principles which his faith respected. [16846] It is impossible to allow the sacrifice of Abel in this instance to have been an act of faith, without supposing that it had respect to a previous revelation which agreed with all the parts of that sacrificial action by which he ex- pressed his faith in it. Had Abel's sacrifice been eucharistic merely, it would have expressed gratitude but not faith : or if faith in the general sense of confidence in God that he would re- ceive an act of grateful worship and reward the worshippers, it did not more express faith than the offering of Cain, who surely believed these two points, or he would not have brought an offering of any kind. The offering of Abel was not an eucharistic sacrifice, it was an expiatory one ; and in fact it is only in a sacrifice of this kind that it is possible to see that faith ex- hibited which Abel had and Cain had not. — Kncyclopccdia {Edwards) . [16847] If we refer to the subsequent sacri- fices of expiation appointed by Divine authority, and their explanation m the New Testament, it will be obvious to what doctrines and prin- ciples of an antecedent revelation the faith of Abel had respect, and which his sacrifice, the exhibition of his faith, proclaimed : confession of the fact of being a sinner, acknowledgment that the demerit and penalty of sin is death, submission to an appointed mode of expiation, animal sacrifice offered vicarioicsly, but, in itself, a mere type of a better sacrifice, " the seed of the woman," appointed to be offered at some future period, and the efficacy of this appointed method of expiation to obtain forgiveness, and to admit the guilty into the Divine favour. — Ibid. [16848] In the tenth chapter of Romans we are informed that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God ; and in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews we are presented with a considerable list of Old Testament worthies, such as Abel and Noah and Abraham, whose faith is there held up for example and for imi- tation. Now, it is worthy of remark, that in reference to the several individuals alluded to in that chapter, their faith is uniformly illus- trated by their trust in the Divine promise, and by their obedience to the Divine command. If, then, the faith of Noah and of Abraham was commended, on account of their having acted according to the Divine command, and trusted in the Divine promise, how is it possible but to conclude that the faith of Abel also, which is commended in the same chapter as well as theirs, was exemplified in precisely the same way, and approved of, too, upon the very same principle ; and since it is said that "he obtained witness that he was righteous" by virtue of his having offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, what can we infer from this, but that his offering, like the conduct of Noah and Abraham, was approved of, because it was presented in a believing spirit of obediefice to a Divine com- mand ? And what other conclusion can we come to than that God at that time had already prescribed the sacrifice of animals in religious worship ; that in compliance with His revealed will upon the subject, Abel presented to Him the firstlings and the choice of his flock ; and that, as the living creatures which he sacrificed were accepted as a proof of his faith, so, on the other hand, Cain's vegetable offering was re- jected, just because it was an evidence alike of his unbelief, his presumption, and his impiety.? — Dr. y. Br 02071. [16849] Abel looked with faith's keen eye to the world beyond the clouds. Perhaps he little thought of the great necessity of a Saviour for mankind, when, as yet, the world was in its infancy ; although he may have heard his mother talk of the curse and its cause. Of this we are quite certain, that Jehovah discerned in Abel's heart much love, much zeal, and faith. — Rev. H. Ctist Niinn, [16850] " By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." Cain came before God as a righteous man ; Abel as a sinner. Cain brought an offering of acknow- ledgment ; Abel a propitiatory sacrifice. Cain's gift bespeaks a grateful heart ; Abel's a contrite spirit. Cain eyes the goodness of God ; Abel acknowledges His mercy and long-suffering. Cain says, "Lord, I thank Thee for all Thy 16850— 16856] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [ABEL. 31 benefits towards me ; " Abel confesses, " Lord, I am unworthy the least of Thy favours." Cain rejoices in the world as a goodly portion ; Abel, by faitb, discerns and expects a better inheri- tance. Cain approaches, trusting in an imper- fect righteousness of his own, and departs un- justified ; Abel draws nigh, depending on the perfect righteousness of a Mediator, and goes away righteous in the sight of God. — Rev. H. Hunter, D.D. IV. The Example and Lessons of his Martyrdom. Abel presents the first example of enduring persecution for righteousness' sake. [1685 1] It was a fact pregnant with awful meaning for the future, that the first righteous man in Adam's family should also have become the first martyr to righteousness ; yet it was not without hope, since heaven distinctly identified itself with his testimony, and espoused the cause of injured rectitude and worth. In such a case the ascendency of evil could not be more than temporary. — Rev. P. Gosse, D.D. [16852] How early did martyrdom come into the world ! The first man that died, died for religion : who dare measure God's love by out- ward events, when he sees wicked Cain stand- ing over bleeding Abel, whose sacrifice was first accepted, and now himself is sacrificed .'' Death was denounced to man as a curse ; yet, behold ! it first lights upon a saint : how soon was it altered by the mercy of that just hand which inflicted it ! If death had been evil, and life good, Cain had been slain, and Abel had sur- vived. Now that it begins with him that God loves, "O death, where is thy sting?" — Bp. Hall. [16853] The spirit returns to God to see His unclouded face, formerly seen through the medium of natural objects, and of religious ser- vices ; to understand and to enjoy the great mystery of the atonement, hitherto known only in a figure. Happy Abel ! thus early delivered from the sins and sorrows of a vain world. And thus death, at whatever season, in whatever form, and from whatever quarter it comes, is always unspeakably great gain to a good man. — Rev. H. Hunter, D.D. V. Abel Considered as a Type of Christ. [16854] Was Abel a type of Christ, as well as a believer in Him? The Scripture indeed saith it not expressly ; but surely, without straining, we may discern some striking marks of resem- blance. What saith Moses ? " Abel was a keeper of sheep." What saith Christ? "I am the good shepherd : the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." What did Abel? " He through faith brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof, an offering unto the Lord." What did Christ? "Through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God." Were Abel's days cut short by the hand of violence? So "Messiah, the Prince, was cut off, but not for Himself." Was Abel hated of, and slain by his brother? Christ "was despised and rejected" of His own, and died by the treachery of a familiar friend in whom He trusted, and by the cruelty of those who were His brethren according to the flesh. Did the blood of Abel cry to God from the ground for vengeance on the head of him who shed it? Ah ! with what oppressive weight has the blood of Jesus fallen, and how heavily does it still lie on the heads of them, and of their children, who with wicked hands crucified and slew Him ! Could the blood of Abel atone for his sin ? No : but the blood of Christ cleanseth him, and every believer, from all sin. Yet Abel died as a right- eous man, Christ as a sinner. Abel, a guilty creature, was justified and accepted through an imputed righteousness ; Christ, who was " holy, harmless, undefiled, and separated from sin- ners," was condemned and suffered because "the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all." — Ibid. VI. Traditional Views. [16855] Ancient writers abound in observa- tions on the mystical character of Abel ; and he is spoken of as the representative of the pastoral tribes, while Cain is regarded as the author of the nomadic life and character. St. Chrysostoni calls him the Lamb of Christ, since he sufl'ered the most grievous injuries solely on account of his innocency ; and he directs particular atten- tion to tlie mode in which Scripture speaks of his ofterings, consisting of the best of his flock, "and of the fat thereof," while it seems to inti- mate that Cain presented the fruit which might be most easily procured. St. Augustine, speaking of regeneration, alludes to Abel as represent- ing the new or spiritual man in contradistinction to the natural or corrupt man, and says, " Cain founded a city on earth ; but Abel, as a stranger and pilgrim, looked forward to the city of the saints which is in heaven." Abel, he says in another place, was the first-fruits of the Church, and was sacrificed in testimony of the future Mediator. And in Psa. cxviii. (Serm. xxx.), he says, " This city (that is, " the city of God ") has its beginning from Abel, as the wicked city from Cain. Irenasus says that God, in the case of Abel, subjected the just to the unjust, that the righteousness of the former might be manifested by what he suffered. — Encyelopadia {McClin- tock and Stro/io). [16856] Heretics existed in ancient times who represented Cain and Abel as embodying two spiritual powers, of which the mightier was that of Cain, and to which they accordingly ren- dered Divine homage. In the early Church Abel was considered the first of the martyrs, and many persons were accustomed to pronounce his name with a particular reverence. An ob- 32 16856— i686i] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [lamech. scure sect arose under the title of Abelites, the professed object of which was to inculcate cer- tain fanatical notions respecting marriage ; l>ut it was speedily lost amidst a host of more popu- lar parties. — Ibid. VII. HOMILETICAL REMARKS. I Abel's character presents both an object of esteem and a pattern for imitation. [16S57] Faith in God and in a Saviour to come, and the righteousness which is of God by faith, are the leading and striking features of this portrait ; and by these, " being dead, he yet speaketh," or if you choose to adopt the marginal reading, "is yet spoken of" It is a desirable thing to enjoy a good name while we live, and to be remembered with kindness after we are dead. But reputation is the gift of others ; it is often gained without merit, and lost without a crime. Whereas true goodness is a real, unalienable possession ; it. cleaves to us in death ; it accompanies us into the world of spirits ; it instructs the world while we live ; it speaks from the grave; it shines in the pre- sence of God in heaven. Here it is lawful and honourable to aspire. Permit others to get before you in wealth or in fame ; grudge not to your neighbour the superiority in wit, or strength, or beauty : but yield to none in piety, in purity, in faith, in charity ; aim at the highest honours of the Christian name ; be humble, and be ever> thing. Salvation has, from the beginning, flowed in one and the same channel. There was not one gospel to the antediluvian, and another to the postdiluvian world ; one method of redemption to the Jews, and another to the Gentiles ; but " Jesus Christ, the same yester- day, and to-day, and for ever." — Rev. H. HtC7iier, D.D. [16858] "He being dead, yet speaketh." Thus writes the sacred penman, and true indeed it is. Abel speaks to you and me. He seems to say : " Don't fear the world, never hesitate to do your duty, worship your Father, exhort your brother. Never weary in well-doing : act the part of a true Christian. Let not trouble daunt you._ Let not fear thwart you ; only trust in Christ: never lack confidence in His glorious promises, His almighty and never-failing word. For He, most blessed, spake of me in His earthly temple at Jerusalem, when leaving it for the last time, as 'righteous Abel.' He knew, centuries back, my trusting faith, my daily struggles to become a child of His, and He urged the world then, in the days of His humanity, to follow in the steps of the 'right- eous.' Yet now does He speak, by the voice of His ministers, of the 'righteous' Abel. He asks you to follow me."— AVz/. H. Cust Ntotn. [16859] "When He cometh shall He find faith on the earth.?" The very particle used expects the answer: No. Cyril makes longer answer "No : the love of many will wax cold in the latter days, and many will depart from the faith." "The faith" of God's Church is even now shaken : nay, in some cases it seems almost riven with the tempest. We see how it was in the earliest days. There was a father easily led into temptation, and most clearly weak concerning the faith. The mother had proved herself to be the pliant instrument of an artful schemer. The first-born was a mixture of malice and worldliness. The "faithful" Abel was soon despatched; for of him "the world most truly was not worthy." And is this but a picture of the world's end? Is this to be the proportion of the "just made perfect ".'' Let us strive one and all to prove ourselves as true " sons of heaven." Let us endeavour to throw off the world's vain costume. Let us hasten to equip ourselves with the robes of Christ's right- eousness. Let us imitate, as best we may, the "faithful" Abel.— /^/^/. 2 No life which has been fully consecrated to God is ever really shortened by death. [16860] He dies in full maturity who has lived to God and eternity, at whatever period, and in whatever manner he may be cut off. That life is short, though extended to a thou- sand years, which is disfigured with vice, which is devoted to the pursuits of time merely, and at the close of which the unhappy man is found unreconciled to God, — Rev. H. Hunter^ D.D. LAMECH. I. Aspects of his Character. I As the first violator of God's primeval law of marriage. [16861] That law most strictly enjoined one wife, and doubtless had been observed till Lamech's time. He sets it at defiance. That law was the very foundation of society. It was the foundation of family peace, of true religion, of social order, of right government in the state. Take away this foundation, or place two instead of one, and the whole fabric shakes, the nation crumbles to pieces. It is not merely the family hearth that is destroyed, but the throne of the King is undermined. Bonds the most sacred and needful Lamech breaks. The most ancient and venerable law of earth he tramples on. Lust has got the mastery in him. He is the true type of those " filthy dreamers " who " de- file the flesh " (Jude 8) ; of those who in the last days are to " walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, having eyes full of adultery " (2 Peter ii.). And as Lamech's sin threw open the flood-gates of lasciviousness, so may the sins of those who in our day are walking in his steps be throwing open these same flood-gates, and ripening the world for the judgment of the great day. i6862— 16868] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [lamech. 33 2 As a murderer. [16862] Lust had led to adultery, and adultery had led to violence and murder. We are not told the name of him whom he slew. It matters not. He is a murderer — true follower of Cain — true ofTspring of the serpent, of him who was "a murderer from the beginning" (John viii. 44). Abhor Lamech's spirit as we would that of Satan. The anger, passion, revenge — of all that would lead, however remotely, to blood- shedding. In Cain, it was envy ; in Lamech, lust. Flee both. 3 As a boaster of his evil deeds. [16863] He does the deed of blood, and he is not ashamed of it ; nay, he glories in it — nay, glories in it to his own wives. There is no confession of sin here, no repentance, not even Cain's partial humbling. This iniquity lifts up its head, and waxes bold in countenance, de- fying God and vaunting before men as if the deed had been one of honour and not of shame. Boasters are to rise up in the last days (2 Tim. iii. 2), specially boasters of evil, like Lamech. Men are to "boast themselves in mischief" (Psa. Iii. 7). The wicked is to "boast of his heart's desire" (Psa. x, 3). 4 As one taking refuge in the crimes of others. [16864] He makes Cain not a warning, but an example. He perverts God's purpose in sparing Cain, and takes courage in evil from Cain's example. He "goes in the way of Cain " (Jude 11), and makes no account of God's awful monuments of indignation against sin. He sins because Cain sinned ! He thinks he has a right to sin, because Cain sinned ! Oh, des- perate perversity of man's heart ! What will it not make an excuse for sinning? And yet it always tries to find an excuse or an example, and ashamed to sin unless for some reason, or with some example before it ! 5 As one perverting God's forbearance, [16865] He trifles with sin, because God showed mercy to another. He tramples on righteousness, because it is tempered with grace. He sets vengeance at nought, because God is long-suffering. Instead of saying, " God is so loving that I dare not sin," he says, " God is so loving that I will go on in sin without limit." Divine compassion has no effect in softening his obstinacy ; but " after his hard- ness and impenitent heart, he treasures up to himself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God " (Rom. ii. 5). Thus men still turn God's grace into lasciviousness, and make Christ the minis- ter of sin ! 6 As a scoffer. [16866] He believes in no judgment, and makes light of sin's recompense. His words are evidently the words of a scoffer, and of one VOL. VI. who believed in no wrath of God against the workers of iniquity. He speaks like the scoffers of the last days, " Where is the promise of His coming 1 for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation" (2 Peter iii. 1-3). Is not this the mocking that we hear on every side .'' No day of judgment, no righteous vengeance against sin, no condemnation of the transgressor. God has borne long with the world, He will bear longer with it still. He may do something to dry up the running sore of its miseries ; but as for its guilt, He will make no account of that, for "God is love." But what then becomes of law, or of righteousness, or of the difference between good and evil 1 And what becomes of God's past proclamation of law, His manifestations of righteousness. His declarations of abhorrence of all sin 1 Was Adam's ejection from Paradise the mere attempt to cure a disease, and not the condemnation of his guilt ? Was the deluge the mere drying up of the world's running sore of wretchedness, that it might start healthy and vigorous on a new course, instead of being the expression of God's estimate of human guilt, and His determination to prevent men from imagining that He was indifferent to the evil of sin, and, as the God of love, that He could only treat it as a sad misfortune, but not as an in- finite and unalterable crime against love and majesty, and truth and government and holi- ness? II. Comparison of the Characters of Cain and Lamech. [16867] The brief story told of Lamech the polygamist is one of lust, bloodshed, and defiant hardihood. He is the first to violate God's primeval law of marriage ; and the violation of this leads to other sins. In Cain we have seen the man of violence. In Lamech we see the man of hcst. From those two fountain-heads of evil, what wickedness has flowed out upon the earth ! III. The Predicted Reproduction of THE Characters of Cain and Lamech in the Latter Day. [16868] As in the last days we find men re- turning to the way of Cain, so do we find them returning to the way of Lamech — walking after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and de- spising government, presumptuous, self-willed (2 Pet. ii. 10). All the old world's sins re- peated and intensified in the last generation, just before the arrival of Him of whom Enoch prophesied (Jude 14). — H. Bonar. 34 16869—16875] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [job. JOB, I. Introductory. I Historic truth, era, and authorship of the Book of Job. [16869] On the historic character of the Book of Job, various opinions have been entertained. .Some, such as Spanheim, have held that the whole poem, both poetry and prose, is strictly historical, the events detailed occurred precisely as they are described, the speeches attributed to the different speakers were delivered pre- cisely as they now appear. That this is pos- sible, perhaps not many will deny ; that it is credible, few indeed will admit. The book bears the impress of a single intellect upon it ; and skilful as the Oriental extemporisers are, we shall hardly attribute the sublimest poetry the world possesses to the efforts of a few Idu- mean improvisatori. — Rev. A . Davidson. [16870] Several Jewish doctors, and among modern critics Hengstenberg, deny the Book of Job to have any historic basis. It is purely allegorical, all its elements and characters being due to the imagination of its author. It would thus stand on a parallel with the parables of our Lord. . . . But such elaborate allegories, so unlike the Divine simplicity of the Master's parables, seem not only something foreign to the character of Scripture, but something quite beyond the reach of the Semitic genius. And the allusions to Job by Ezekiel and James (Ezek. xiv. 14 ; James v. 11) as a historic per- sonage equally with other well-known historic personages, such as Noah and Daniel, seem to imply that the reality of the circumstances of his history was never questioned by the national mind. — /did. . [16871] The opinion held by all moderate critics now is no doubt correct, that there is both a historic and an ideal element in the Book of Job, and that both elements are fused to- gether as well in the prose as in the poetic portions. The history is not all fact, much of it is poetry ; the poetry is not all allegory, much of it is fact. — Ibid. [16872] As to the authorship of the book nothing is known with certainty. Some have attributed it to Job himself; some to Elihu ; others to some unknown Arabic author, under the impression that the book has been translated into Hebrew. But no competent Hebrew scholar can doubt that the poem is an original Hebrew work. Others, following the Jewish tradition, have attributed the book to Moses, while some have discovered in the philosophic cast of the poem the hand of Solomon. Both the authorship and the era must ever remain involved in doubt. There is no reason to suppose the book very ancient, except that its scene is laid in patriarchal times. And there is no reason to consider it very modern, except the occurrence of many dark pictures of misery, which it is supposed must have been drawn from the dissolving scenes of the Jewish commonwealth. . . . We cannot greatly err if we place the composition of the Book of Job at a period not long after the death of David. — Jbid. 2 Its general character. [16873] This book is one of the grandest portions of inspired Scripture, and a heaven- replenished storehouse of comfort and instruc- tion. It is the patriarchal Bible, a precious monument of primitive theology, and is to the Old Testament what the Epistle to the Romans is to the New. Job's history was well known to early Christians as an example of patience (James v. 11), and understood by them typically and allegorically of Christ. From the second century the book has been read in the churches in Passion Week. It stands unique and in- dependent among the books of the Bible. In its prose parts it is so simple and easy that a child may understand it ; in its poetic portion, the deepest and obscurest book in the Old Testament. It contains milk for babes and strong meat for those of full age. It is studded with passages of grandeur and beauty, tender- ness and pathos, sublimity and terror, and acknowledged to surpass in sublimity and majesty every other book in the world. In recent times it has been studied as a master- piece of poetry, and is the fountain from which some of the greatest poets have drawn their inspirations. To suffering believers it is the sound of Faithful's voice to Christian in ' the Valley of the Shadow of Death. — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. [16874] The Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to the Mosaic dispensation. It re- presents the mind of a good man not en- lightened by an actual revelation, but seeking about for one. In no other book is the desire and necessity for a Mediator so intensely ex- pressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the Hebrews, is most vividly impressed on the book, in opposition to pantheism. — S. T. Colefidi^c. 3 Its special design and purposed lessons. [16875] There is a peculiar interest attach- ing to the Book of Job, even among Divine poems, because it alone, of all the books of the Bible, grapples vv^ith those mysteries of God's providential government which have more or less perplexed every intelligent in- habitant of the universe. It gives the answer to life's great enigma. It teaches that life is not, as most young people seem to regard it, a fete or carnival ; much less, as some old people seem to think it, a temporary lodging in the dungeon of the castle of Giant Despair — that it is something between the two — a struggle, a strife, a mortal conflict between good and evil ; that it is not thcrclore to be entered upon with unthinking levity, much less with unhoping i687S— 16883] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [job. 35 gloom — but bravely, strongly, manfully, ex- pecting the calmness, the inevitable shocks of the combat, and looking up hopefully, and always, to Him in whose strength we are more than conquerors. The object of the book is precisely that which Milton announced in the " Paradise Lost : " " That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence And justify the ways of God to men." — Rev. F. Greevcs. 4 Its inculcated truths. [16876] (i) The creation of the world by one Supreme Being. This is the first great principle of natural religion ; it is laid down throughout the whole book as an incontestable truth, but is particularly illustrated in the speech of Jehovah Himself (Job xxxviii., xli.). (2) The government of the world by the providence of God (i. 21, ii. 10, V. 8-27, ix. 4-13). (3) The corruption of man by nature (xiv. 4, xv. 14-16, xxv. 4). (4) The necessity of an atonement, prefigured in sacri- fices, to turn away the Divine anger, and to render the Almighty favourable ; also, the in- tercession and mediation of a righteous person on behalf of the guilty (i. 5, ix. 33, xxxiii.23, 24, xlii. 8, 9). (5) The certainty of a future resur- rection and retribution (xiv. 7-15, xix. 25-27, xxvii. 8, xxxi. 13, 14). — E. Copley. 5 Its remarkable references and implications confirmatory of other Scriptures. [16877] I. To the former destruction of the world by water, and its final dissolution by fire, xxii. 15-20 ; compare with Gen. vi., vii., and Jude 14, 15. 2. To the existence and agency of angels, both good and evil, i. 6-12, ii. 1-6, iv. 18, 19, v. I ; compare with Psa. civ. 4, ciii. 20, xxxiv. 7, xci. II ; Heb. i. 14; Zech. iii. I, 2 ; I Pet. v. 8, 9. — Ibid. II. The Personality of Job. 1 His actual existence. [16878] Kennicott, in a table of descent given by him, represents Job to have been contempo- rary with Amram, the father-in-law of Moses ; Eliphaz the Temanite, who was the fourth from Abraham, being contemporary with both. Cal- met asserts that he was Jobab the son of Zerah, who reigned in Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 33) ; and both the Septuagint and Syriac Version represent Job as fifth descendant from Abraham, by the line of Esau. — J. Ellice. [16879] Job 's ^ historic, not a fictitious cha- racter, and is mentioned with Noah and Daniel (Ezek. xiv. 14). He lived in the time of the patriarchs, and died about 200 years old. There is no apparent allusion in the book to the exodus or the giving of the law. Worship, manners, and customs were those of patriarchal times. His existence is a proof God never left Himself without a witness. — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. [16880] It is highly probable that Job lived about the same period as Abraham. There is no allusion to be found in the book which bears his name to any of those remarkable events which distinguished the exodus of Israel ; and we may therefore conclude that his era was not coeval with that of Moses, but preceded it. BuV there are plain allusions in that book to the .Sabian worship, to the adoration of the heavenly bodies ; and this makes it highly probable that Job lived about Abraham's time, and among those whose religion corresponded with that of his compatriots.— /?^7/. T. Guthrie, D.D. 2 His residence. [16881] Uz, east or south-east of Palestine, was adjacent to the Edomites, who appear at one time to have occupied it (Lam. iv. 21). Probably in Arabia Deserta, between Palestine and the Euphrates. Uz was also the name of a son of Aram the son of Shem (Gen. x. 23) ; of the firstborn of Nahor, Abraham's brother (Gen. xxii. 21) ; and of the grandson of Seir the Horite (Gen. xxxvi. 28). The country was named from one of these. Job's country, like Abraham's, at that time was tending to idolatry (chap. xxxi. 26-28). Grace is found flourishing in the most unfavourable situations. Job, like Abraham and Daniel, is found " faithful among the faithless." To be godly among the ungodly is a high excellence and honour. Compare the cases of Obadiah in Ahab's court and the saints in Cassar's palace (i Kings xviii. 12 ; Phil. iv. 22). — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. 3 His name. [16882] The derivation of the word "Job" is still undetermined. Some, deriving it from an Arabic root, contend that it means " the penitent one"- — a conjecture confirmed, if not suggested, by the fact that, in the Coran, Job is designated, " he that turns or repents/' But, with more reason, commentators assume it to be derived from a Hebrew verb which signifies to fight against, to persecute : in which case the word being here (chap. i. ver. i) used in its passive sense, it would mean " the persecuted one," the man who has known afflictions ; in short, " the man of sorrows," of the antique world. All we certainly know of it is, that the name was borne by a son of Issachar (Gen. xlvi. 13), and by the hero of this great poem. — • .S". Cox. III. His Worldly Prosperity. [16883] It pleased God to bless Job with eminent prosperity. His wealth was abundant, his station in life exalted, his influence exten- sive ; and he used them all as not abusing, but as the steward of God, and the guardian of his fellow-creatures. The abundance by which he was surrounded, the family connections with which he was blessed, the respect and gratitude with which he was honoured, the security of his possessions, the success of his enterprises — all crowned by the enjoyment of a good conscience, 36 16883— 16891] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. and the favour of God — left him, as it were, nothing to desire. — E. Copley. [16884] All the stores of earthly happiness were poured at his feet. He was a king and father to his countrj'men. The hills were co- vered with his countless flocks, and the valleys were white with his waving harvests. Gold and silver were his in abundance ; and he was the greatest of all the men of the East. His do- mestic felicity was perfect. His wife and children were about him. His mind and his body were in the prime of manly vigour and dignity. — Rev. F. Creeves. IV. His Upright Character. " That man was perfect." Qualities iviplied in this description. a. Completeness. [16885] Job was complete in all the parts of his moral character (James i. 4). He was like a human body with no member or organ wanting or imperfect. A man's morality and religion should be characterized by symmetry and thoroughness. Attention is not to be given to one class of duties to the neglect of another. Job was conscientious in the discharge of all the duties of life (Psa. cxix. 6). He kept, like Paul, a conscience void of offence both towards God and man (Acts xxiv. 16). Believers should be sanctified wholly, throughout body, soul, and spirit (l Thess. v. 23). They are actually sanc- tified in every part, though every part is not wholly sanctified. Job was a perfect man, in the New Testament sense, an advanced, mature, and fully instructed Christian (Phil. iii. 15 ; I Cor. ii. 6; Eph. iv. 13; James iii. 2). — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. Ik Sincerity. [16S86] Job's perfection was rather that of purpose than performance. He aimed con- stantly at perfection. He was not sinless but sincere, without guile (John i. 47), without hypocrisy towards God or double-dealing to- wards man. vSincerity is the foundation of a gracious character. It gives religion all its worth and beauty. Godly sincerity is gospel per- fection. Sincere and sound-hcartcd believers in God's sight are " perfect." — ibid. c. Blamelessness. [168S7] This was the character of Zechariah and Elisabeth (Luke i. 6). No fault was found in Daniel, even by his enemies (Dan. vi. 4). Moral integrity is Bible perfection. Paul lived in all good conscience (Acts xxiii. i). Job was blameless though not sinless. — Ibid. V. His First Trial, and his Steadfast- ness THEREIN Manifested. I Its cause and occasion. [ 1 6888] The cause of Job's trial was his cha- racter ; the occasion of it was Satan. If a dispute arises between the masters of two men, as to the relative physical strength of their servants, the only way to end the dispute is to test each man by ordering him to Uft a certain load. God declared of His servant Job, that there was none like him in all the earth. Satan disputed this. Said God, " Put him to the test ;" and all have declared for 3,000 years that God was right. — W. Harris. 2 Its incidents. (i) The challenge of Jehovah. " Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth ?" [16889] What high commendation is here ex- pressed, and how pronounced the audacity of Satan to call in question the sincerity of a character thus grandly attested by God Him- self ! Observe the terms in which Jehovah speaks of this object of the devil's malice. ( 1 ) " My servant : "—one who obeys My word, and walks in all My ways— the willing slave of his Master — the loyal subject of his King. (2) " Job :" — I call My oivn sheep by name. (3) "A perfect afid an upright man, 07ie that feareth God r'^ — one that will not do that thing which I abhor — one that will not sin in My sight — one that writes upon his heart, "holiness to the Lord." (4) '''And eschezveth evil:'' — one that not only denies sin, but assails it— not only loathes it from within, but openly defies it from without. ~A. M. A. W. (2) The coioiter-challenge of Satan. " Doth Job fear God for nought ? . . . touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." [16890] Satan professes to have no confidence in human virtue ; he believes that every man has his price ; he suggests that Job serves God from motives of self-interest, and that if the wages, so to speak, of his service are withdrawn he will renounce his allegiance. " Hast Thou not made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side ? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land ; but put forth Thy hand and touch all that he hath, and he will curse Thee." Such is the problem pro- posed. The solution is sought by inflicting upon one in whom Satanic malice can detect no evil calamities whicli were believed to be due, and due only, to a life of wickedness. Job, the up- right servant of God, is subjected to a series of the most severe trials, which Satan maintains will destroy his belief, and prove him to be at heart a hypocrite. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16S91] Satan, the adversary, the accuser of the brethren, hating the holiness and envying the happiness of Job, stood before the Lord, and endeavoured to impugn his motives. "Doth Job fear God for nought .? Is he not mercenary and self-interested ? Does he not find it answer his purpose, and promote his worldly interests .^ Has not God set a hedge of defence round about 16891—16898] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. 37 [job. him, and his house, and all that he has ? Surely, then, Job may be religious without any good principle. But let him be stripped of his worldly enjoyments, and he will no longer retain his integrity ; he will curse God to His face." Not to gratify this false and malignant accuser, but to confound and defeat him, Jehovah permitted the trial of His servant's integrity ; and Satan went forth with a license to touch him in every enjoyment, restricted only as to laying his hand on his person. — E. Copley. (3) The work of malice. [16892] The first trial deals with the outward circumstances of the patriarch's life. Four messengers of woe successively arrive, and an- nounce to him the loss of all his substance, the destruction of his flocks, the slaughter of his servants, the sudden death of his children — calamities without parallel in the history of human sorrow, for no book of Job had yet been written ; calamities which, as befalling a righteous man, were, with the lights men then possessed, incapable of explanation. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. (4) The triumph of faith. a. Job's submissive grief. [16893] He is aroused from his wonted calm- ness, and his nature is now stirred to its depths. Deeply moved, but not prostrated by his calami- ties, he " rent his mantle " in token of sorrow and humiliation. . . . Job was neither too in- sensible to feel grief, nor too proud to acknow- ledge it. Not to feel is either to be more or less than a man. . . . Grace teaches us not to be without sorrow, but to 7itoderate it, and to con- nect with it penitence and submission, faith and hope. Job fell " down upon the ground " in (i) grief, (2) humiliation, (3) adoration ; . . . while Satan expected to see him standing on his feet and cursing the author of his troubles. — Rev. T. Robins 071, D.D. [16S94] How does Job bear the shock ? Does his faith in God and in goodness stand firm, or does he, as Satan had predicted, renounce God to His face 1 Nothing can be more beautiful than the behaviour of the patriarch. There are indeed all the signs of deep sorrow, but there is at the same time a perfect resignation, an un- questioning submission, to the Divine will. Under the overwhelming pressure of his grief he betakes himself to God. " He fell down upon the ground, and worshipped." Review- ing his losses, he acknowledges that all is of God ; what has been freely given may be with- drawn at will ; and God had only exercised His sovereign rights in stripping him of all. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16895] Job bowed submissively to God's will and dispensations. Instead of cursing Him, he adores His justice, goodness, and holiness. Afflictions draw a godly man nearer to God, instead of driving him away. It is a sign of a gracious state to be worshipping when God is chastisine, and that trouble cannot but be blest which brings us to our knees. . . . Job opens his mouth, but not as Satan expected. " Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither : the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. [16896] The joyful parent is bereft of his off- spring, and his children are buried in death. The man of affluence is stripped of his abundance, and he who was clothed in scarlet embraces the dunghill. But in the midst of all these vicissi- tudes, what was the conduct of Job ? What the spirit and temper he displayed ? What the language which he uttered .'' Listen to him, and, while you admire, imitate his conduct — " When I am tried, I shall come forth like gold. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." This was the perfection of patience. — R. Bond. b. Job's victory over sin and Satan in its positive aspect. [16897] fob blesses God instead of cursing; Him. " Blessed be the name of the Lord." The word is chosen with reference to Satan's charge. The same word is used, but in its opposite and proper sense, and Satan is thus entirely defeated. Every word of Job gives the lie to his slander. . . . There is no ground even in the worst times to murmur against God, mucli ground to bless Him, and our greatest trials and losses are often our richest mercies. True Christian piety is the purest heroism, and widely different from stoical insensibility and pride. Believers weep, but bless God through their tears. Job's blessing God must have sent an echo through the heaven of heavens. Un- precedented trials, heightened by the contrast of unprecedented prosperity, meet not merely with submission, but with blessing on the Author of both. To bless God in prosperity is only natural ; to bless Him in adversity and trouble is music that fills heaven and earth with glad- ness. Job's calamities appeared to argue that God against him. Mighty is the faith that blesses God while smiting our comforts to the ground. The grace enjoined on New Testament believers is exemplified in this Old Testament saint (i Thess. v. 18). To bless God in our comforts is the way to have them increased ; to bless Him in our afflictions the way to have them removed \^Augustine\. A thankful and pious spirit the true philosopher's stone — turns all things into gold. Faith gilds our crossed and sees a silver lining in the darkest cloud. — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. c. Job's victory over sin and Satan in its negative aspect. [16S98] /« all these trials Job kept from sinninc^. " Sinned not," as Satan desired and declared he would. Glorious triumph of grace to keep from sinning in such circum- stances. Sinned not, either by impatience or passion. Grace is given to keep us from sin, not absolutely, but relatively and comparatively. There is sin. more or less, in all a believer's 38 16898 — 16904] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. actions, though all his actions are not sinful. " Nor charged God foolishly." (i) Imputed no folly, injustice, or impropriety to God. (2) Ven- ted no foolish and impious murmurs against Him. Ascribed nothing to God unworthy of His justice, goodness, and wisdom. Entertained no dishonourable thought, uttered no murmur- ing word against Him. Impiety is the greatest folly. To murmur against God's dealings is as foolish as it is wicked. To misconstrue God's character and conduct is the great sin to be guarded against under heavy trials. — Ibid. [16S99] It is impossible too much to admire this beautiful model. Might it not be admirable if one had thus sustained a ruinous loss if he could thus cheerfully resign luxuries or com- forts to which he had been all his life accustomed.-' But these are the words of one who has lost all. Would it not have been a wonderful proof of resignation in a parent thus meekly to have re- signed to his Maker ^/i;^ beloved child 1 But he who so speaks had in one moment been bereft of all. "Joseph was not, and Simeon was not," and Benjamin also was taken away ! With every circumstance that could stagger faith, quench love, and destroy hope ; under every aggrava- tion of malice ; in face of a destruction so de- tailed in its parts, so detailed in its effects, calcu- lated and executed with such a power and piecision as almost to suggest the idea of a providence of overruling evil — "in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." — Rev. F. Creeves. VI. His Second Trial, Evidencing HIS Continued Piety towards God. 1 The trial permitted. [16900] " All that he has is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thy hand," said God, in His first permission to Satan. But when Job had proved himself equal to this test, a higher trial was permitted. "Behold he is in thine hand ; but save his life." God's children are sometimes treated like a lad who is being trained for a seaman's life. When he is taking his first lessons in climbing out upon the bowsprit or jib-boom a large net is placed beneath him. This gives him courage to venture out ; but after a few days a greater proof of his fearlessness is demanded, he must go out now without the net. — W. Harris. [16901] Thus far Satan had failed in his con- tention. But he refuses to acknowledge his defeat, and, when opportunity offers, renews the accusation. The trial, he argues, had not been sufficiently severe, it had reached but the out- skirts of the man's life ; but let it touch the centre of his being, let it affect his very self, and tlie result will be different. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life." Let a man's own person be exempt from suffer- ing, and he will bear all else with composure ; he will give up "skin" or life of others, yea, "all that he hath," if only his own remain intact ; man is essentially selfish ; he cares little for others if his own life be safe. Let another, a personal test be applied, " Put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." Permission is granted. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. 2 The trial inflicted. Its terrible physical siifferifig. [16902] Job's disease was the worst kind of leprosy, . . . prevalent both in Arabia and Egypt, making the sulferer loathsome to himself and his nearest relations (chap. xix. 13, 19). It appeared to mark him out as an object of the Divine displeasure, as Miriam, Gehazi, and King Uzziah. In an advanced stage, fingers, toes, and hands gradually fall off (chap. xxx. 1 7, 30). It was attended with great attenuation and debility of body (xvi. 8, xix; 20, xxx. 18), restless nights, and terrifying dreams (xxx. 17, vii. 13, 14), anxiety of mind, and loathing of life (vii. 15), foul breath, and difficult respiration (vii. 4, xiii. 15, xxx. 17), the skin itchy, of great tenseness, full of cracks and rents, and covered with hard or festering ulcers, and black scales (ii. 8, xix. 20, xxx. 18, vii. 5, xxx. 30), the feet and legs swollen to an enormous extent ; hence the disease was also called Elephantiasis. Thii mouth was swollen, and the countenance dis- torted, giving the patient a lion-like appearance; hence another name to the disease, Leoitiasis. Contagious through the mere breath, often here- ditary, it was as a rule incurable. In any case it was one of the most protracted as well as dreadful diseases. — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. [16903] "From the crown," &c. So in Deut. xxviii. 35. The body was one continued sore. Job escaped with the skin of his teeth — sores everywhere else (xix. 20). The tongue was left free for an obvious reason. Satan's mercies are cruel. Rare spectacle for angels ; the holiest man on earth the most afiflicted. Astounding sight for men ; the richest and greatest man in the land made at once the most loathsome and miserable. — Ibid. 3 The trial intensified. In the imnatural desertion and blasphemous despair of his wife. [16904] "All my inward friends abhorred me ; and they whom I loved are turned against me." To form the climax of this cruel desertion : " My breath is strange to my own wife ; though I entreated for the children's sake of my own body." Not content with denying him sympathy and solace, this woman even took part with the adversary, and persuaded him to abjure his re- ligion, and deny his God ; insinuating that religion was a thing of nought, since it availed not to preserve him from these calamities. In this deep extremity, the reply of Job was most magnanimous, and served only to evince the firmness of those religious principles which Satan had belied, and his own ungodly wife had 16904—16911] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE EKA. [job. 39 derided : " Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh : what ! shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil ? "— £. Cophy. [16905] His wife, broken down, it may be, by the loss of her children, gives way at the sight of her husband's misery, and urges upon him the very counsel which Satan would have given, "Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die." But to no purpose. Job recognizes the affliction as coming from God. He cannot understand it, he cannot explain it ; but he will not rebel against it. — Kev. Sir E. Bayley. [16906] Far above all others in duty and affec- tion was his wife ; to her he turned confidently for consolation, and lo ! she bids him curse ! " Curse God, and die." The words might indeed be translated, " Bless God, and die," but even that miserable consolation from the wife of his bosom we do not believe the unhappy sufferer received. . . . She basely deserted woman's holy ministry of love and comfort ; nay, we fear she forsook him, and her God also ! — Rev. F. Greeves. [16907] The mildest reading that we could adopt, without destroying the full force of the controversy between Job and his wife, would be " Ignore God, and die." But the rendering in the English version is perhaps to be preferred to any other. Clearly she had come to look upon the Almighty as unworthy of her husband's confidence, and quiet submission to such a Being as unreasonable, and she desired, therefore, that the patriarch should throw off all allegiance, express his resentment in maledictions of a fear- ful character, and send forth his soul in a des- perate and blasphemous curse against his Maker. Nothing was left for him on earth ; let him, therefore, banish trust, hope, and love together, hurl his petty vengeance against the tyrant by whose will he had to suffer, and cursing, die. The language of this woman is that of utter despair, and she endeavours to bring her husband into the same unhappy frame of mind as that in which she finds herself She does not deny God, but hates Him. All trust and confidence has fled — if she ever had any — and she has taken one desperate plunge, into what Shakespeare calls — " The swallowing gulf Of dark oblivion and deep despair." — G. Sezion, LL.D. 4 The tempter foiled. " In all this did 7wt Job sin with his lips." [16908] A second victory has thus been gained over Satan. He has dealt his last direct blow against God's servant, and an answer has been found to his question, "Doth Job fear God for nought ? " It has been proved that Job's religion has some deeper foundation than seif-interest ; that he serves God, not from mercenary motives, but because he acknowledges God's right to his allegiance. Amidst the wreck of his fortunes his integrity survives, and, bereft of all earthly good, his faith in God and in goodness stands firm. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16909] Job here is greater than his miseries, more than a conqueror. One of heaven's as well as earth's heroes, " in all this," his in- creased calamities as well as his wife's taunts and temptations. Job is now seen lying under a quaternion of troubles — adversity, bereave- ment, disease, and reproach. "He sinned not with his lips." The thing Satan desired, endea- voured after, and waited for. The temptation to murmur ws.?, pfcsent, but was resisted a/id re- pressed. Job is still by grace a conqueror over corrupt nature. — Rev. T. Robitison, D.D. VII. Satan's Third and Indirect At- tack. Through the accusations of Job s three friends. [169 10] When a general fails in direct attack, he often has recourse to an indirect one ; when he cannot yi^rt^ an enemy's position, he will en- deavour to turn it ; and an army which has bravely stood its ground against repeated attacks in front, will often be seized with panic, when the enemy's troops appear iipon its flank or rear. Still more fatal is the result when its own allies turn suddenly against it, and become the attack- ing column ; as did the Saxon troops, when in 181 3 they turned against Napoleon at Leipsic, or the Bavarians, when immediately afterwards they barred the French retreat to the Rhine. Satan had failed in direct attack ; the most overwhelming afflictions had proved insufficient to shake the constancy of Job ; but the battle was not yet won. It is the peculiarity of Job's last trial that it came to him from an altogether unexpected quarter. It was indirect, not a direct, attack — an assault not in front, but in flank ; an assault not from his 'avowed enemies, but from those who professed — and professed truly — to be his friends. Just as Balaam, when unable to inflict injury upon Israel by the utterance of a direct curse, sought by guile and evil counsel to lure them into sin ; so Satan, finding it impos- sible by direct means to shake the faith of God's servant, approached him under the guise of friendship, and sought thus to gain the advan- tage over him. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16911] The third and last trial of Job was brought about by the harsh suspicions, the cruel reproaches, and the unjust charges of his friends. Their contention was, that under the righteous government of God there is always in this life an exact agreement between sin and punish- ment, and that the calamities of Job could only be accounted for on the assumption of great criminality on his part. A parallel has been drawn between the sufferings of Job and those of our blessed Lord. Both were righteous, witnesses for truth and holiness ; both were assaulted by Satan ; both were upheld by God ; both in the end triumphed over their accusers. 40 16911 — 16916] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. But there is another point of as^reement between them : they were attacked by their enemies, they were betrayed by their friends ; and of both, therefore, might it be said, in the words of the Psahnist, " Mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me" (Psa. xli. 9). In this, I conceive, lay the peculiar bitterness of Job's last trial. Deprived of all earthly good, he might have hoped for sympathy from his friends ; but this even was denied him. Not only did his friends fail him, they became in turn his ac- cusers, and strove to shake his faith in his own integrity, by again and again affirming that they had lost all faith in it themselves. — Ibid. VIII. The Peculiar Poignancy of Job's Mental Sufferings and Con- flicts. 1 The moral pain to his conscious integrity in the apparent desertion of him by God. [16912] During the discussion with his friends, there is exhibited to us the conflict in Job's mind ; how it sometimes veered in the direction of infidelity, but ever again recovered itself and came back to steadfastness and trust. What raises such tides of agony in Job's soul is not that he has been stripped barer than the tree in winter; not that his friends misunderstood him; not even that his life and hopes were extin- guished ; it is that God has forsaken him ; that he is cast out from His presence : and that he is so, all these calamities are proofs too surely conclusive. — Rev. A. Davidson. [16913] If I am to lie down in misery that rnakes me cry for death ; if I am to go in unre- lieved misery downward to the land of darkness, it is for no act of injustice that soils my hands. "My prayer," he cries, "is pure." — Dean Bradley. 2 His torturing doubts and perplexities concerning the awful mysteries of eternal Providence. [16914] The rebukes of his unwise friends had given birth to something not from without, but from within, that made the head reel, reel beneath his weary frame. Their hard and ready dogmatism had forced upon him a ques- tion for which his soul travailed in vain for an answer. This mighty, this Almighty Being, on whose greatness, and whose justice, and whose omniscience they discourse so fully, was He, after all, a righteous Being ? Was the Ruler of the world a just Ruler.? Did the Judge of all mankind judge rightly.? Powerful He is, no doubt ; Nature, he feels, tells His power. " In His hand," he says himself, "is the life of every living being, the health of all mankind." His- tory, such as he knows it, tells His power. Nations, he says, rise and fall, and kings ex- change the royal girdle for the cord that en- circles the loins of the captive horde, but what if all this power is wielded by one who looks with indifference on right and wrong; who smiles alike on the good cause and the bad ; who leaves the world to be misgoverned, pain and pleasure to fly through creation at random, or worse still, to be distributed in the interests of wrong-doing ? And all the wise saws of his friends intensify the agony of this doubt. They tell him that from of old, from the day when man was first placed upon the earth, the triumphing of the wicked hath been short ; that God had been invariably and at all hours the good man's friend ; that he himself is pay- ing the penalty due to his hypocrisy and ill- living, and he knows that this is false, and dark thoughts stir within him, and bitter doubts — doubts that have tried many a heart that has never tasted of his exceptional and tragic cup of misery — cloud his brain, and shake the faith that Satan's malice had vainly assailed. " Mark me," he says, in the twenty-first chapter, "and be astonished, and lay your hands upon your mouth." The thought that stirs within that pious patriarch he hardly dares to utter. " Even when I remember," he says, " I am afraid, and a trembling takes hold of my flesh." Yet speak he must. He looks out with changed eyes on the spectacle of life. — Ibid. [16915] It is deeply interesting to observe, not merely that the difficulties concerning Pro- vidence felt by Job refer to the very subjects which painfully perplex the modern mind, but also that the friends of Job exhibit the instinc- tive tendency which is observed in modern times to denounce his doubt as sin, not less than to attribute his trials to evil as their direct cause. — Archdeacon Farrar. [16916] Beneath the dress of the patriarch of the Old Testament, honoured in all the churches, the friend of God, we see the form of the ques- tioner of the most fundamental of all religious, of all moral truth. " Wherefore," he says, "do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power ? Their seed is established " — their "families," as we should say, are founded under their eyes ; all goes well with them, their wealth increases, and all prospers ; they send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance to the timbrel and the harp. We see beneath the Eastern irfiagery the prosperous family in all ages founded on violence or wrong- doing. " They spend their days," he adds, " in wealth, and in a moment, in due time, they go down impoverished to their graves. Where is the God that rules the world in righteousness .?" and he tries to find satisfaction for his doubts in retribution falling one day on their posterity. But no, he comes back uncomforted to the same question, the inequalities, the injustices of life. One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet ; another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never toucheth bread with pleasure ; they lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them. It is the opening scene of Dives and Lazarus, without its sequels — the rich man died, the beggar died also ; and we need not go through Job's preliminary tortures 16916 — I692I] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. 41 [job. to feel the problem that vexed him. An hour's walk may stir the same question. — Deajt Bradley. [16917] How much darker and more cruel the world must have seemed, when thus re- garded, to one who lived in the religious atmo- sphere which Job breathed ! Not one word his friends whispered to him of a world beyond the grave. Amidst all the voices that surrounded him, there is none of One who tasted the shame and desolation of death, and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet was infinitely dear to God His Father, and lives at God's right hand. —Ibid. [1691S] "What is man that Thou shouldest magnify him ? and that Thou shouldest set thine heart upon him ? and that Thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?" That question must have been asked by Job in the profoundest earnestness. Deprived in one day of all the hopes of life, and believing as he did that every loss came, not by chance, but from the hand of God, the sudden shocks of sorrow had been bringing him face to face with the mysteries of God, and making him feel their power as he had never felt it before. And the question expresses one of the first of those great mysteries which the stern reality of trouble had forced on his thoughts. It was no curious inquiry on his part ; it was not a ques- tion which he could be content to leave un- answered ; it was one which the agony of his life had compelled him to meet. He had reached that desire for death which sometimes rises from the strong pressure of deep and sorrowful thought. Every earthly hope had been wrecked, all the charm of life had faded, his very friends had proved unkind in the hours when he most needed their sympathy. And, still more, he had no peace in his own soul, for by day dark doubts respecting God perplexed him, and at night those doubts haunted him in dreams. It was not strange that he should choose death rather than life, and pray for the time when he should enter that region where the " wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." And then arose the mysterious question. Why did God prolong his life ? To live amid the desolation of his great sorrow, and strug- gling with awful doubts, was a constant trial, and why did God thus " try him every moment" by keeping him alive ? — Re^K E. Hull. [16919] We must remember, too, that Job had remained for days and nights in silence under the open sky. We know that this book abounds in references to God's action in the natural world, and hence I cannot but imagine that, as Job remained looking at nature in his sorrow, the mighty march of the stars in the far-off wilderness of space, and the solemn glory of the day as it rose and faded, and the voices of the winds as they came and went through the land, would all make him feci the majesty of God and the insignificance of man. There was the great world, so still, and calm, and wonderful, so joyous and so strong, and yet the God who was behind all its forces was "try- ing him every moment." He rolled the splen- dours of the morning up the sky ; He had " woven the bands of Orion," and bound the Pleiades by His law ; and yet He was sending the feeble child of earth sorrow upon sorrow ; and preserving his life only to add the bitter- ness of memory to his past misery ! Can you not imagine when a man had come thus to long for death, and yet day after day had watched in silent sorrow the mighty movements of nature — until he felt himself nothing in the midst of the awful universe — that from his perplexed soul the question would rise with overwhelming force ? — Ibid. [16920] This Book of Job is the most ancient statement we have of the perplexities and mis- eries of life, so graphic, so true to nature, that it proclaims at once that what we are reading is drawn not from romance, but life. It has been said, that religious experience is but the fic- titious creation of a polished age, when fanciful feelings are called into existence by hearts bent back in rellex and morbid action on themselves. We have an answer to that in this book. Re- ligion is no morbid fancy. In the rough, rude ages when Job lived, when men did not dwell on their feelings, as in later centuries, the heart- work of religion was manifestly the same earnest, passionate thing that it is now. The heart's misgivings were the same beneath the tent of an Arabian Emir which they are beneath the roof of a modern Christian. Blow after blow fell on the Oriental chieftain : one day he was a father — a prince — the lord of many vas- sals and many flocks, and buoyant in one of the best of blessings, health ; the next, he was a childless, blighted, ruined man. And then it was that there came from Job's lips those yearnings for the quiet of the grave, which are so touching, so real ; and, considering that some of the strongest of the elect of God have yielded to them for a moment, we might almost say so pardonable : " I should have been at rest — where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together : they hear not the voice of the oppressor. Wherefore is light given unto him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter of soul." — Rev. F. Robertso7i. 3 His yearning struggles after Divine truth. [1692 1] He has to face the spectres of his mind. His foes are, indeed, those of his own household, his wife, his friends, the teaching of his age, the traditions of the past, his own sor- rows, his own experience, his own tumultuous thoughts. And what is left him 1 What severs him from the mere cynical denier of God's pro- vidence, or God's goodness, or from Him who smiles at all distinctions between right and wrong? What is it that gives him his place in the roll of God's servants ? Much is left him 42 I692I — 16924] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. slill, much that, in all times, it is well to remem- ber, is dear to God. There is the eager, the passionate, desire for truth — "Give me light, and let me die." And there is the firm persist- ence in calling on his God to reveal the truth to him. Through all the darkness that sur- rounds him, he is on the search for God. His soul, in the Psalmist's words, is "athirst for the living God " — for God and for His truth. " Be- hold, I go forward," he says, "but He is not there ; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him ; on the left hand, but I cannot behold Him ; He hideth Himself on the right hand that I cannot see Him." And so, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him : that I might come, even to His throne !" He tries to com- fort himself by drawing pictures, even as his friends had done, magnificent pictures, of the greatness of Him at whose reproof the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished ; and he lays his finger for a moment on the immortal truth that all " these are but parts of His ways ; " that we hear but a small portion ; that we see, in modern language, but the " skirts of creation," and he speaks of truth and wisdom as sorely hard to find, as hidden from the sight, as veins of metal that can only be reached by the dark miner's path, a hidden track like that beneath the earth which the " vultures," as he says, " have not seen, lions' whelps have not touched it, nor fierce lions passed by it." Yet for all that, a human wisdom, as consisting in the fear of God and in the avoidance of evil. And he cannot believe that to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, can alienate a man from God ; and just before his last words died away, he breaks forth into one last piteous appeal, obscured though it be in the rendering of his imagery, that the God who seemed his adversary would reveal to him His will, would only hear him and answer him. — Dean Bradley. IX. The Object and Design of his Repeated Trials. I Direct. To mndicaie the exisloue of genuitie re- ligio7t. [16922] Satan directs an attack against the honour of God ; and he knows perfectly that the most deadly blow he can aim at it is to deny that God can be served with disinterested- ness, and sincerely loved by any being what- ever. The trial of Job is precisely destined to demonstrate the contrary. This is the key of the enigma. This solution is clearly given in the prologue, and no other need be sought for. The rest of the book can neither add any- thing to, nor take away anything from, its clearness, and can only serve one use — to dispel false ideas, dangerous misunderstand- ings, rash judgments upon the Divine govern- ment which may be formed in the minds of men, when they are witnesses of facts of this nature, without having penetrated into their ' mystery. The author of the Book of Job does not pretend in any way to deny the portion of truth contained in the thesis of Job's friends. Assuredly there is a close connection between sin and suffering, and the latter is very often the wages of the former. Much less does he think of rejecting the explanation advanced by Elihu in the first part of his discourse — namely, that suffering is a salutary trial, even for the righteous — a trial which serves to purify him from his secret faults, known to God alone, and, above all, to preserve him from pride. But he establishes that there are cases to which these two solutions do not apply. . . . There are cases where God inflicts suffering upon man, not be- cause of sins committed which demand expia- tion, nor even with the view of ameliorating his moral disposition, and preventing faults which he might commit, but in view of Himself, of God and His own honour. It is then given to man to sustain a noble part in the universe — that of vindicating the outraged honour of his Creator, and of showing forth His glory, even into spheres higher than that of humanity. — Godet. 2 Indirect. To more completely establish the work of Cod in his soul. [16923] The indirect result of Job's trial was to bring to light the latent evil of his nature : in charging him with open transgressions, which did not exist, his friends called into action the secret sin, which did exist : in attacking faults which were not found in him, they laid bare those which were found, and thus prepared the way for the growth of that self-abasement and humiliation with which the book closes. — Rev. Sir E. Bay ley. X. The Value and Blessedness of his Afflictions. I As a test. [16924] The controversy between the Al- mighty and the great apostate angel was nar- rowed to a single point— did genuine faith and love exist upon the earth ? If found anywhere, they would be found in the person of Job. Upon this question issue is joined, and the trial takes place. We know the result. But let us well remember wherein lay the strength of Job's position. Satan was right in his contention, that fallen man does not fear God for nought. Self is the spring of action with the unregene- rate ; self is the centre around which the life of the natural man turns. Let the temptation, therefore, be sufficiently strong, and man will consult his own interest rather than the will of God. Wherein, then, did the error of Satan consist? It consisted in his applying this rule to Job. He did not take into account the in- fluence of Divine grace ; he either did not understand this principle, or he refused to be- lieve in it. — Ibid. 16925—16929] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. 43 [job. 2 As a discipline. [16925] " We count them happy which en- dure," and the endurance of Job is held up by the Apostle Jaines as the great lesson of the patriarch's life. But trial is essential to en- durance ; it is "tribulation" that "woiketh patience" (Rom. v. 3) ; and they only who have passed through the discipline of sorrow have learned its blessedness as a channel of grace. Job sorrowed, we might almost say, without hope, for he lived in the twilight of the world's infancy, a stranger to the full-orbed revelation which we possess. No Divine Teacher had yet appeared to " comfort all that mourn ; " no suffering Saviour had humbled Himself even to the death of the cross ; no Christ had burst the bonds of death, and " brought life and immor- tality to light through the gospel." — Jbid. XI. His Grand Realization of the Second Advent. " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth " (Job xix. 25). [16926] Job knew that God was the vindicator of wrongs — that he said. But why did he go on repeating in every possible form the same thing : — " I shall see God — see Him for myself — mine eyes shall behold Him — yes, mine and not another's"? It would seem as if he were doing what a man does when he repeats over and over to himself a thing which he cannot picture out in its reality. It was true : but it was strange, and shadowy, and unfamiliar. It is no matter of uncertainty to any one of us whether he himself shall die. He knows it. Every time the funeral bell tolls, the thought in some shape suggests itself — I am a mortal, dying man. That is knowing it. Which of us has realized it? Who can shut his eyes, and bring it before him as a reality, that the day will come when the hearse will stand at the door for him, and that all this bright world will be going on without him ; and that the very flesh which now walks about so complacently, will have the coffin-lid shut down upon it, and be left to darkness, and loneliness, and siJence, and the worm ? Or take a case still more closely suggested — out of the grave we must rise again — long after all that is young, and strong, and beautiful before me, shall have mouldered into forgetfulness. Earth shall hear her Master's voice breaking the long silence of the centuries, and our dust shall hear it, and stand up among the myriads that are moving on to judgment. Each man in his own proper identity, his very self, must see God, and be seen by Him — looking out on the strange new scene, and doomed to be an actor in it for all eternity. We all ktiow that — on which of our hearts is it stamped, not as a doctrine to be proved by texts, but as one of those things which must be hereafter, and in sight of which we are to live now .'' — Rev. F. Robertson. XII. His Vindication of his Integritv against the False Charges of his Accusers. Both as a private individual and a magistrate. [16927] Job's reputation was not without just grounds — the fruit not of his riches and powers but of his benevolent and upright character. He asserted, and justly asserted, his bene- volence and compassion, honesty, uprightness, freedom from covetousness, chastity, justice, and humanity to his servants or slaves, kindness to the poor, freedom from idolatry (both in its spiritual and external form, both secret and open, in heart and in life), as also from vin- dictiveness in reference to enemies. He like- wise declared his humanity as a householder, faithfulness and justice as a magistrate, and boldness in opposing the wicked and oppressive, while he maintained himself clear as regarded secret and concealed transgressions, and un- conscious of injustice in all business transac- tions with his fellow men. — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. {adapted). XIII. Points of Character Noticeable During his Various Sorrows and Controversial Trials. I Inherent or normal excellencies and graces. (i) Secret tenderness. [16928] How wonderfully does the character and history of Job lay bare, with matchless power, the depths of strength and tenderness that lie hidden in the human heart ! He is introduced to us at first with nothing remarkable about him — rich and prosperous, just to his neighbours, benevolent to the poor, loving to his children, faithful to his God. But in all this there is nothing remarkable ; it was the case of hundreds in his day, it is the case of thousands in our own, and had all this continued he would have gone down to a nameless grave, and a few generations after his very memory would have been erased. Suddenly sorrow comes and touches him. In a moment he is transfigured. No new power is imparted to him, but those already in him are brought into activity. Im- mediately he rises into a hero ; his grandeur becomes colossal ; he projects the shadow of his trial and the light of his triumph over forty centuries. He acquires a name that will endure as long as earth endures. And so true is all this to the most secret principles of our nature that even now, after a hundred generations have successively trodden on his dust and laid down to sleep beside him, our own hearts, and the hearts of all who read the story, beat in perfect sympathy with the stricken, but most human, heart of the Patriarch of Uz ! — Rev. F. Greeves. [16929] Look at Job's tenderness ! We see this more in his silence than in all his speech. One of the tenderest and most touching things in all literature is this most eloquent and 44 16929- 16934] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [job. pathetic silence of Job about his children. Ten of them are gone, and through the whole of his complaints he never mentions them. "What," you say, " do you call that tenderness not to spoak of his children ? One would have expected him to name them first of all." Glad we are to hear you say so (though it is a great mistake), because it shows this is a kind of sorrow you have never known. . . . It is the shallow stream that murmurs ; deep waters are silent : when real sorrow comes it falls upon the heart as heavy as an avalanche, and as cold ; no tears then, no complainings ; the heart smitten and withered like that of Job is as the stricken deer, whose only remaining wish is to penetrate the depths of the tangled forest, hide the pang from every human eye, and die in peace. — Ibid. [16930] In the silence of Job, no less than in all his utterances, we see the tenderness of the man's heart. And this tenderness is a part of heroism. Stoicism is not heroism. A great heart is always a tender one. And such was the heart of Job \ — lbid. (2) Tenacious stren_s;th. [16931] Look at this man's strength. . . . His friends try to shake him out of confidence in his own integrity. Everything is on their side — the temptations of the devil, the suggestions of his own fears, his wish to be rid of their tor- menting insinuations. Why does he not yield a little ? Why not say, " It may be so ! Perhaps you are right " 1 Thai would satisfy them ; he might reckon at once on their sympathy and prayers. How many of us would have yielded all rather than be troubled to argue with'them ! Not so Job. No "reed shaken with the wind" is he, but a tree — a strong, grand tree— scathed by the lightnings, it is true, and quivering, like the aspen, to the uttermost leaf of the furthest spray, but still as deeply rooted as ever, and as determined in his resistance to all human, all spiritual attacks. — Ibid. [16932] Job tells his comforters openly that he recognizes in them the malice of Satan, by whom he is " wounded in the house of his friends ; " that he knows his infernal adversary is let loose upon him, and that all they say is but further proof of it. And still, amidst the din of controversy, in which he contends alone, as he believes, against earth and hell-amid the onslaught of pain, doubt, and frenzy, fell enemies urged on by the devil himself— under the canopy of a darkened heaven, and a sky that is as brass to his complainings— forsaken, confused, and wounded ; still he stands at bay — like the standard bearer of a defeated host, beset alone by his enemies, mangled by their thrusts and blows, " Sore toiled, his riven arms to havoc hewn" — but unalale as ever to yield — and, amid the closing darkness, still upholding above the pol- luting breath of that hostile array the white ensign of his innocence upon which, dying, he will fall— that he may be buried still grasping it on the lonely field. — Ibid. (3) Patiettt endurance. Consideration of St. James's reference to the " patience " of Job (James vi. 11, 13). [16933] Job ... is held forth to our notice by the apostle as a man remarkable for his patience, insomuch that the patience of Job has passed into a common proverb. What, then, are we to understand by this patience "i If we take the word in its ordinary sense, it implies great meekness and resignation, while suft'ering under the chastisement of God's uplifted hand. That certainly was the spirit which he exhibited at the time when his great and aggravated trial was first announced to him. Neither the loss of his property nor the sudden destruction of all his family could unsettle his principles or drive him from his steadfastness. It would appear, however, that the spirit of patience and of un- murmuring resignation was not of long continu- ance. Nor was it the ruling and predominating habit of his life. When leisure was given him for reflection, and he began to reason on the mystery and severity of the Divine dealings, it is scarce possible to resist the conviction, that he spake very rashly and unadvisedly with his lips. On almost every occasion when he spoke at all there were the symptoms of fretfulness and irritation almost bordering on rebellion, and therefore we cannot help thinking that it was not in the ordinary sense of the term that he is here held forth as an example of suffering patience. But there is another meaning ot which the word is susceptible. It does not always imply great resignation. It is sometimes used to indicate great endurance and long-con- tinued waiting for some ultimate result — some appointed end. And I presume that is the sense in which it is used in this passage.- — Rev. J. Wallace. [16934] The apostle is exhorting men to be patient in waiting for the coming of the Lord. And this lesson he well enforces, first, by the case of the husbandman, and second, by the example of the prophets. By the case of the husbandman, " Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receives the early and latter rain." But it does not follow that the husbandman is always remarkable for his patience ; that on his part there is no fretful- ness. no irritation, no complaining. On the contrary, the complaints of the husbandman are often as bitter and as openly expressed as were Job's in the time of his trouble and distress. ]5i!t there is one thing which the most impatient husbandman never abandons altogether, and that is the hope of a harvest. He may often fear that it may be a scanty one, and his fears after all may not be realized. But he continues waiting and working and using the means under the deep conviction that the seed will bring forth fruit, and that the days of the harvest will come. . . . And so I believe it was with Job. I 16934— 16940] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. 45 do not think that he was pre-eminently patient in the ordinary sense of the term. On the con- trary, there was much in the language which lie used, and in the spirit which he displayed, and in the attitude he assumed, which it were well for us not to imitate, but carefully to avoid. But as it is with the husbandman in tilling the earth, and as it was with the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord, there was on his part great patience in waiting for the appointed end. He may have spoken rashly with his lips. From such a charge we make no attempt to clear him. And that eventually was the conviction of his own heart. He himself did not hesitate to acknowledge his guilt. And this was his con- fession. " I uttered what I understood not, things too wonderful for me which I knew not." But though he spoke strongly, and argued keenly, and suffered greatly, he never let go his confidence, but kept waiting on. — Ibid. [16935] What do we discover in the personal experience of Job ? Not quiet and unmurmur- ing resignation which the heaviest strokes of God's hand can neither ruffle nor disturb. That may be a high and rare attainment, but even Job did not come to it all at once, or until he was emptied of all self-righteous thoughts, and through the stern siftings of God's providence brought into the depths of the lowest distress. When the golden ore is cast into the heated furnace, and the scorching fire is laying fast hold of it on every side, it is not wonderful that it cannot be altogether motionless, perfectly still. It is not wonderful if there be something like tumult and rebellion when it is quivering in the hot crucible, and its inward parts are vomiting out the dust and ashes with which hitherto it has been alloyed. No man who knows anything of what human nature is need wonder at the outcries of Job when subjected to the stern processes of so fierce an ordeal. The wonder is, not that there was commotion when the fire of the furnace was doing its work ; the wonder is that he ever came out of it uncon- sumed. But he did come out of it. Aye, he came out of it, leaving the dross of his corrup- tion behind him, purified and refined for the Master's use. — Ibid. [16936] There may be a higher patience even than that of full submissiveness, a holding out a corner of the fortress against desperate odds, the resistance or the charge of a handful that may determine the issue of a campaign. "He that endureth to the end," said a greater than the Apostle James, " the same shall be saved." If ye have faith as a grain of mustard, ye shall remove mountains ; remove and raise and ele- vate what is more precious than the mountain — the human soxxl.— Dean Bradley. (4) Trust in God. [16937] Everything is against his trust in God. He has been stricken, terribly stricken, when he had no consciousness that he deserved it. And He who permitted this — instead of appearing to explain the mystery — has hidden Himself from His servant. All around in the darkness does the patriarch grope after Him, but it is in vain. . . . The next blow may cleave him to the ground ; but he fears it not. He sits upon a dunghill indeed ; but, with him upon it, that dunghill is a throne. He looks calmly to the threatening cloud. His bald, bare head is ready. Let it come. It will make no difference in his confidence — " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him : but I will maintain mine own ways before Him." — Rev.F. Greeves. [16938] Job exemplifies in real life just what the poet Campbell has put into the lips of an imaginary character, whom he calls " the last man." He supposes the one survivor of the human race, following the sun, in the hour of his last setting, with words like these : — "Go, Sun, while mercy holds me up On Nature's av/ful waste To drink this last and bitter cup Of wrath that man shall taste. Go, tell the night that hides thy face Thou heardst the last of Adam's race On earth's sepulchral clod The darkening universe defy, To quench his immortality. Or shake his trust in God ! " Such a declaration, under such circumstances, would be heroic ; but not one whit more so than the conduct of Job. For him the universe luas darkened. Not a gleam of light remained. But his trust in God was as strong as ever. Was he not a hero ? Did imagination ever picture a character so tender, yet so strong? — Ibid. [16939] It is clear that the trial of Job was a severe one ; the patriarch breaks out into lan- guage of passionate remonstrance ; he even charges God with wrong, and the issue of the contest is at times in doubt. Still in the centre of his being. Job remains true to his allegiance. " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him "_ ; and whilst shrinking from the cup which he is called upon to drink, he could yet say, " Not my will, but Thine be done." A final answer is thus given to the charge of Satan, " Doth Job fear God for nought ? "—i?^v. SirE. Bayley. 2 Spiritual errors. (i) Limited self-kjioTvledge. [16940] Wherein lay Job's error? His error lay in the too daring assertion of his innocence, and in his giving way to a spirit of impatience and angry pride. With Job, as with his friends, there was an absence of'^any deep sense of sin. Had he known himself as God knew him, he would have denied, indeed, the charge of open transgression, but he would have been less vehement in his protestations ; he would have been ready to acknowledge that, although he knew nothing against himself, " yet he was not thereby justified" (i Cor. iv. 4). In self-know- ledge Job was deficient ; there was nothing, therefore, in him to check the indignation which 46 16940 — 16946] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [job. he felt against his accusers ; and, stung by their reproaches, he assumed an attitude of defiance, of which he afterwards sincerely repented. — Mil [16941] Job is apparently still too confident in his own righteousness. Though upright in his external dealings, and blameless in the eyes of men, yet, weighed " in the balances of righteous- ness," even Job is found wanting (Rom. iii. 9, 10, 19, 23). Much self-knowledge is yet to be gained by him. Job has yet to take the place of the publican, " God be merciful to me a sin- ner" (chap. xl. 4; xlii. 5, 6). — Rev. T. Robin- son^ D.D. (2) Irreverent presianption. [16942] "God is greater than man" in wis- dom, power, and justice. Greater than man as his Maker, Ruler, and Judge. The natural in- ference from this is, man, even the greatest and best, is not to strive with God. " Why dost thou strive against Him? " — quarrelling with and dis- puting against His procedure (Isa. xlv. 9). God's greatness above man is sufficient to exclude all murrnurs and complaints, as — (i) God is not to be required to give an account of His procedure to any 0/ His creatures. " For (or because) He giveth not account of any of His matters" (or dealings). This is the reason why Job should have refrained from the sentiments he had uttered in regard to God, and why neither he nor any one ought to "strive against Him." God is a sovereign who acts according to His own will, though never but in infinite wisdom, rectitude, and holiness. It is monstrous pre- sumption to think that the Creator is to be called to His creature's bar to answer for what He does (Psa. cxv. 3 ; Dan. iv. 35). God is far too great to stoop to defend His procedure against the cavils of rebellious worms. This is the scope of Jehovah's own answer to Job afterwards. (2) God is not to be contpreJicnded by His short- sighted creatures. It is folly and presumption for man to think he is able to comprehend God's dealings, except as He is pleased to reveal and explain them. Hence the weakness and wicked- ness of censuring them. — Ibid. [16943] As if upon a full -proportioned dome, On swelling columns heaved, the pride of art ! A critic fly, whose feeble ray scarce spreads An inch around, with blind presumption bold Should dare to tax the structure of the whole. — Anon. (3) Omitted access to God by prayer in the spirit of Jiiiniility. [16944] Job was not remarkable for his devo- tions. In almost every chapter we have long and elaborate arguments, the deep reasoning of a subtle and intellectual spirit, seeking to vindicate his own cause and almost asserting his own innocence both in the sight of God and man. And these trains of thought are interspersed ■with the language of murmuring and rebellion. But in looking over the whole book we cannot fix upon a single instance which represents him as lying prostrate before the throne of the Divine Majesty, and pouring out his soul in supplication and prayer. There may be distant approaches to this, but there is nothing so explicit or so clearly revealed as to warrant us to say of him, " Behold he prayeth." — Rev. J. Wallace. [16945] On one occasion there was a noble confession of faith, perhaps the noblest which the Bible contains. . . . And this confession was preceded by the expression of an earnest desire, " Oh that my words were now written ! oh that they were printed in a book ! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever ! " But that was not the language of prayer. It was a desire merely for his own vindication. And it was not presented unto God. It was addressed merely to his fellow- men : " Have pity upon me, iiave pity upon me, oh ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me." At another time he gave utter- ance to these words : " Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together." Oh that I might have my request, and that God would grant me the thing that I long for, even that it would please God to destroy me." But that can scarcely be regarded as the language of prayer. For he was asking what he was not warranted to expect — a thing which, not being promised, could not be agreeable to the Divine will. On another occasion, when he was almost goaded to madness by the stern reproaches of false- hearted friends, he gave demonstration of the most heroic fortitude, for he declared, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." But even then there was no trace either of humbleness of mind or of earnest supplication ; for it is added, " I will maintain uiy own ways before Him. Behold now I have ordered my cause, I know that I shall be justified." On another occasion still he uses these remarkable words. He does not say, I have called upon Thee, and Thou didst answer me ; but, " If I had called and He had answered me, yet would I not believe that He had hearkened unto my voice. For He breaketh me with a tempest, and mul- tiplieth my wounds without cause. He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness." " Let Him take His rod away from me, and let not His fear terrify me ; then would I speak and not fear Him j but it is not so with me.'' — Ibid. [16946] We are very far from concluding that Job never prayed at all. But prayer was not the element in which he lived, and moved, and breathed. And when he did pray, it was not in the spirit in which a favourable answer could be expected to his petitions, nor an outlet ob- tained from the sore trouble to which it seemed meet unto God to subject him. There were deep processes of reasoning and elaborate arguments on the mysteries of God's provi- dence, but there was nothing through the whole course of his experience to warrant the conclu- 16946—16954] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE KRA. 47 [job. sion that he was acting upon the principle, " Is any among you afflicted, let him pray." And that, perhaps, was the reason why his afflictions were so long continued, and that during their continuance there was so little to calm his fret- fulness and to minister to his comfort. — Ibid. 3 Circumstantial defects. (i) Pronounced despondency and veJietnent con!f)lai?tt. [16947] Though we may by no means justify the murmurings of Job, nor yet the doubting despondency which he occasionally manifests, we cannot wonder at their existence, but rather stand amazed before the massive fortitude which formed the chief characteristic of his conduct. Nevertheless, he did murmur against God, he did miscalculate Divine providence. Let us take warning and remember that he who com- plains of his lot in life, questions the love and wisdom of his Maker, and he who dares to de- spair—even though passing through the fiercest fire of affliction — indirectly blasphemes. — A. M. A. W. (2) Passionate resentment. [16948] One there was who "in the house of His friends " submitted to every conceivable insult and indignity, misconstruction and abuse — One who could have shattered with a word His unjust accusers, and have gloriously " main- tained His ways" and asserted His " integrity.'"' He, nevertheless, "held His peace," and, with- out any sign of intemperate anger, patiently "endured the contradiction of sinners." Job passionately flings back the taunts of his "miser- able comforters," and though fully justified in clearing the honour of his name from false im- putations, displays not the Christ-like spirit in his justification. " For what glory is it, if when ye be buffetted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently .'' but if v/hen you do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God " (i Peter ii. 20). — Ibid. (3) Contemptuous sarcasm. [16949] Job is, perhaps, more sarcastic and ironical than any other Scripture character, but we can scarcely read his magnificent utterances without perceiving to what a marked extent severe contempt is mingled with the caustic re- proaches of his sarcasms. It is noticeable, also, that this weapon is used from purely personal considerations. Elijah's ironical admonition to the worshippers of Baal, " Cry aloud, for he is a god " ; and Paul to the Corinthians, " Ye are rich ; ye have reigned as kings without us," were not uttered on their own behalf, or for purposes of self-vindication, but in the interests of religion. Job's use of this means is princi- pally in defending his own character against unjust charges of ignorance, &c. Witness his contemptuous reply to Zophar, " No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you. But I have understanding as well as you, .... yea ! who knoweth not such things as these?" (Job xii. 2, 3.) — Ibid. XIV. The Person.\lities and Ch.\rac- TERISTICS OF JOB'S FRIENDS ANA- LYZED AND Discriminated. 1 Collectively. [16950] The characters introduced, though not numerous, are nicely discriminated and well supported. It has been justly observed, that the milder and more modest temper of Eliphaz is well contrasted with the froward and un- restrained violence of Bildad (compare iv. 2-4 with viii.) ; and the terseness and brevity of Zophar (xi.) with the pent-up and overflowing fulness of Elihu (xxxii.). — E. Copley. [1695 1 ] Eliptiaz represents the true patriar- chal chieftain, grave and dignified, and erring only from an exclusive adherence to tenets hitherto unquestioned, and influenced in the first place by genuine regard for Job and sym- pathy with his affliction. Bildad, without much originality or independence of character, reposes partly on the wise saws of antiquity, partly on the authority of his older friend. Zophar difl'ers from both ; he seems to be a young man ; his language is violent, and at times even coarse and offensive (see especially his second speech, chap. XX.). He represents the prejudiced and narrow-minded bigots of his age. — E7icyclo- peedia {McClintock and Strong). [16952] The great want in Job's friends is a genuine sympathy. After the first oriental out- burst of grief at their friend's calamity, all was cold, heartless, and even cruel. Selfishness is the common sin of our fallen nature — " The proud, the cold, untroubled heart of stone, That never mused on sorrow but its own." In Job's friends this coldness is aggravated, if not generated, by false religious views and mis- interpretations of Divine Providence. True religion softens the heart, and inclines it to kind- ness and compassion. A false religion is gener- ally the parent of cruelty. — Rev. T. Robinson^ D.D. 2 Individually. (i) Elipha::. [16953] " Eliphaz" was an o!d Edomite name. A district was also so called (Gen. xxxvi. 11, 15). It denotes " My God is strength." This indi- cates his parent's piety. " Temanite." From the stock he sprung from, or the place (Teman) where he lived. Temanites were celebrated for their wisdom (Jer. xlix. 7 ; Obad. 8, 9). — Ibid. [16954] The aim of Eliphaz is Job's repent- ance and consequent restoration to Di\ine favour. His motive was good, but was founded on a mistaken and uncharitable view of Job's character and the cause of his suflerings. Eliphaz may be viewed as an example to preachers in that he (i) Is sincere, (2) Is earnest, (3) Is cour- teous, (4) Employs variety of arguments and illustrations, (5) Adduces authorities, (6) Appeals to Divine revelation. Fails — (i) In sympathy 48 16954—16961] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. and warmth of feeling, (2) In comprehensiveness of view, (3) In adaptation of his authorities to the case in hand, (4) In charitable judgment, (s) In appreciation of the case of his hearer. — Ibid. (2) Bildad. [16955] The name signifies " Old Friend- ship." Bildad the Shuhite was one of Job's friends, probably descended from Shuah, the son of Abraham by Keturah. From want of just views of the dealings of Providence in correcting the righteous for the trial and improvement of their character, Bildad, like the other friends of Job, was led to very rash and hasty conclusions concerning his character. He addressed him as a deliberately wicked man, whose hypo- crisy was manifested by the afflictions with which he was exercised ; but Bildad was after- wards convinced of his mistake, and glad to solicit the intercessions of the man he had so disparaged. It becomes us to be very candid and charitable in judging of others, and especi- ally to avoid anything like unkind reflections on the afflicted (Job ii. 1 1, viii., xviii., xxv., xlii. 7, 8 ; Gen. xxv. 2). — E. Copley. (3) Zophar. [16956] It is better to be silent in the presence of the afflicted than (like Zophar) to dispute and censure. Consolation is due to sufferers from their friends. A brother is born for adversity. Professed comforters may become real tormen- tors.— Rev. T. Robi}tso7i, D.D. [16957] The exhortation of Zophar as ad- dressed to Job in chap, xi., especially with re- ference to ver. 12, was {\) Inapplicable. Job was neither a fool nor, except perhaps in his trouble, especially when worried by his friends, a wild ass's colt. (2) Uncharitable, because inappro- priate. "Charity thinketh no evil; hopeth all things." (3) Rude. It is no part of wisdom in a preacher or monitor to apply harsh terms and ill names, even indirectly. " Be courteous." Hearers are neither to be flattered on the one hand nor libelled on the other. (4) Unfeelijig. No consideration is made of Job's intense suf- ferings and accumulated trials. Zophar pours vinegar instead of oil on Job's wounded spirit. Sympathy in a preacher is necessary to success. Want of sympathy argues want of sense. — Ibid. (4) Elihu. [16958] The name signifies "Pie is my God Himself." Elihu, a native of Buz, was one of Job's friends, who came to condole with him in his distress. The other three friends of Job took a very mistaken view of his calamities, and bit- terly reproached their unhappy friend, as though he must be conscious of some heinous and con- cealed wickedness, which had provoked the immediate judgments of God against him. Elihu, being a much younger man than the rest, patiently listened till all had done speaking, then modestly begged to be heard. In summing up the argument, he discovered far more wisdom and proper feeling than the others, whom he severely reprehended for their rash and cruel insinuations against Job ; at the same time, censuring Job for some rash and pertinacious expressions he had uttered. He then asserted the sovereignty of God, proved that He often afflicts men for the best of purposes, and that, in every instance, it is both our duty and our wisdom to exercise submission, and to wait the Lord's time for diliverance from our trials. He concluded his speech with a grand description of the omnipotence of the Creator. — E. Copley. [16959] Elihu is a fine example for young per- sons of superior abilities, who too often find great difficulty in restraining the expression ot their opinions, when the presence of their su- periors, and the modesty becoming their years, would urge upon them to be silent, or at least to hear attentively, and wait patiently a suitable opportunity to propose their difficulties, or to venture their suggestions. Nothing is more disgusting than a pert, flippant youth, imperti- nently obtruding his crude opinions, positive assertions, and rude contradictions. On the other hand, nothing is more lovely than a meek, intelligent youth, listening with respectful deference to the sentiments of his seniors, and, with equal modesty and fidelity, suggesting and pointing out the incorrectness of any sentiment advanced ; then, when the force of his reasoning is admitted, quietly retreating again to the shade, without proclaiming his victory or seeking ap- plause. It is observable, that when Jehovah Himself appeared in awful majesty, and wound up this remarkable controversy, though Plis anger was kindled against Job's other three friends, and they were pardoned only at the in- tercession of him they had injured and misre- presented, no censure whatever is expressed of Elihu's interference or arguments : hence we are left to conclude, that they were according to truth and righteousness (Job xxxii.-xxxvii.). — Ibid. [16960] The place of Elihu is that of an um- pire stepping forward of his own accord, under the promptings of zeal and conscious knowledge, to decide the controversy between Job and his three friends on the one hand, and between Job and the Almighty on the other. His speeches contribute to the solution, as showing reasons why Job might be afflicted as he was, without being what his friends suspected him to be — a secretly bad man, and also as pointing out wherein he erred — namely, in his too strongly justifying himself, and almost censuring the Almighty. His speeches are preparatory to the appearance and address of Jehovah, who follows up what Elihu had begun. Elihu in relation to the Almighty was like John the Baptist in rela- tion to Christ. — Rev. T. Robinson, D.D. XV. The Combination of Truth and Error Observable in their Ut- terances. [ 1 6961] In the lengthened controversy which was carried on between Job and his friends, 16961— 16965] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [job. 49 there was certainly an element of truth on either side. The tlnee friends were right in affirming that there is a close connection between sin and suffering. Our present life is passed under the moral government of God, and he must be blind who cannot trace in it the judicial dealing of God with men. Nay, it is only when we see in the course of history a continuous judgment of the world, that our faith in 2i final jiidg})icnt c^w be rational and strong. The future life is not the beginning, but the completion of our exist- ence. There is no break in the continuity of our being. If sin does not even here work ruin, then there exists no hell ; if salvation and hap- piness do not even here wait upon righteousness, then there exists no heaven. Scripture knows nothing of a God who only rises to power when this life is ended. Its God is from beginning to end a living God ; and both in His retributive judgments and in His bestowing of present bless- ing He is ever enforcing His own great principle, that " whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." There was truth, therefore, in the con- tention of the friends : their error consisted in applying this principle, without any qualification, to Job. Sin in their view was an outward act ; they knew little of its inner nature ; they treated it rather as a crime, and could only account for the calamities of Job by assuming the existence of undiscovered wickedness. It never occurred to them that suffering might be inflicted as a test of virtue ; or that, apart from any actual transgression, it might be sent in order to lay bare the hidden defects of a godly life. — Rev. Sir E. Bay ley. [16962] Many of the remarks of Job's friends, although made upon mistaken conceptions re- specting him, nevertheless form excellent apho- risms on general principles. At the same time, care should be taken not to confound the senti- ments of erring, imperfect, and perhaps unholy, persons, with the divinely inspired principles, injunctions, and promises of the word of God. This error is not unfrequently fallen into, by taking detached sentiments and passages, with- out due regard to their connection.— jE". Copley. XVI. Jehovah's Answer to the Patri- arch's Doubts. I Its apparent insufficiency as regards the solving of Job's difficulties, and the lesson thereby conveyed. This disappointing fact should teach its that the path of logic is not the path to faith. [16963] When we read that "Jehovah answered Job out of the tempest," we forthwith ask, "And what did He say ?" expecting to hear some con- clusive argument that will pour the light of eternal wisdom on the difficulties and perplexi- ties of human life : we overlook the immense pathos and force of the fact, that Jehovah spake to Job at all. And yet, so soon as we think of it, it is easy to believe that, if Job had not un- derstood a single word Jehovah uttered, the VOL. VI. mere fact that Jehovah spoke to him would excite a rush of emotion before which all memory of his doubts and miseries would be carried away as with a flood. This, indeed, was that which Job had craved throughout. In how many forms does he cry, " O that God would meet me ! O that He would speak to me ! O that He would fix a day, however dis- tant, in which to visit me and hear my plea ! O that He would even come to question and judge me ! " The pain at the very heart of his pain was not that he had to sulfer, but that in his sufferings God had forgotten and abandoned him. He could bear that God should "take'' the children He had given. He could bear to receive " evil " at the hand from which he had received so much good. He could even bear that his "friends" should forsake him in his calamity, that they should sit in judgment on him and condemn him for crimes which he knew he had not committed. What he could not bear was that God should abandon him, abandon as well as afflict him, that when he cried for pity or redress Heaven should not respond. — 6". Cox., D.D. [16964] If, now, through the tempest and the darkness, there should sound a voice from heaven ; if, however it came, the conviction should come to Job that the God he could not find had found him, and was speaking to him, would it matter very much what God said ? Would it not be enough that it was God who was speaking, that the Divine Friend had come back to him, that He had never forgotten him, nor forsaken him ; that He was in the tempest which had swept over him ; that He had lis- tened to him, even when He did not answer him, and had loved him even when He afflicted him? It was this — oh, it was this — which dropped like balm into the torn and wounded heart of the sufferer: it was the resurrection of faith and hope and love in the rekindled sense of the Divine Presence and favour that raised him to a life in which doubt and fear had no place, a joy on which even repentance was no stain. iSlot what God said, but that God spoke to him and had come to him — it was this which cast him in the dust, which quickened in him that humility which is man's true exaltation. — Ibid. [16965] There have been numbers of books written that have professed to give the history of an inquisitive human spirit sounding its dim and perilous way across dark seas of doubt to the clear rest and haven of faith. . . . Written, as such books commonly are, by wise and good men, men of the most genuine sincerity and earnestness ; written, too, for the express pur- pose of leading the sceptical inquirer from doubt to faith, there is no one of them which does not disappoint us just as the Book of Job disappoints us. They may command our admiration ; they may touch our hearts ; but they do not satisfy our reason nor answer our doubts : they fail just at the one only point at which we are concerned for their success. What should the fact teach 5° 16965—16970] OLD TESTAMENT SCI^fPTC/RE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. (job. US? It should lead us to ask whether it may not be impossible to solve, in human words, and to the human intellect, the mystery of God's dealings with men, whether, if possible, it would not be undesirable. Logic can do much, but not all. It may convince the reason, but it cannot bend the will or cleanse the heart. Prove to me, if proof be possible, that God is good in permitting pain and sorrow and loss to come upon me ; but if I do not feel^ or want to feel, that He is good, and do not love Him for His goodness, mere proof will not do much for me. " Wiih the heart man believeth unto righteous- ness ;" and logic does not address itself to the heart. It is doubtful, even, whether the human intellect, at least while it is prisoned in the flesh, could so comprehend the infinite providence of God as to prove its equity and kindness, or even understand the proof, if proof were to be had ; but it is very certain that, were such a proof within our reach, we might still distrust His goodness, and even hate it when it thwarted and pained us. — Ibid. 2 Its suggested argument. (i) That ivliile the mysteries of life pain atid perplex^ they may have a nobler motive and happier end than we conceive. [16966] It is only an argument of hints and suggestions, it does not touch the profounder questions which Job had raised, nor would it be difficult to pick holes in it, if we took it simply as an argument addressed to the inquisi- tive and sceptical intellect. It does not go very deep. It is addressed to the heart rather than to the brain, to faith rather than to doubt. It would not convince a sceptic, however reasonable and sincere he might be. Nothing would, or can, convince him save the sense of a Divine Presence and Love, and that no argument can give. — Ibid. [16967] Let us mark what the Divine answer was, viewed simply as an argument. Viewed thus, it met that painful sense of mystery which oppressed Job as he sat solitary and alone among his friends, and all the more alone because they were with him. One element in his pain was that he could not tell what God was aiming at, that the Divine Providence was all dark to him, that he could see no reason why a good man should be vexed with loss and misery and a bad man live out all his days in mirth and affluence. And this is a pain we have all felt, of which we should all be gladly rid. The injustice, the in- equalities, the pains and degradations which enter into the human lot perplex and afflict us ; we can see no good reason for them: we cannot approve and vindicate them. Does Jehovah, then, when He answers Job out of the tempest, answer the questions which this spectacle of human misery suggests ? Does He assign a good reason, a sufficient motive, for the ine- qualities of the human lot ? He does nothing of the kind. He does not lift an iota of that painful mystery. The argument of the poem is Butler's argument — the argument from ana- logy. To the perplexed patriarch, who sits brooding painfully over the dark problems of life, Jehovah points out that equally insoluble mysteries are over his head and under his feet ; that he lives and moves and has his being amid them ; that look where he will he cannot escape them ; and that as he finds them everywhere else he should expect to find them in human m&.—Ibid. [16968] Briefly put, taking only the argument which underlies its sublime poetry, the Divine answer runs thus : " You fret and despair over the one mystery which has been brought home to you by the pangs of sorrow and loss, . . . yet you live content amid a thousand other problems you cannot solve, and turn them to account. Should you not look, then, to find mysteries in the creature whom I have set over all other works of my hand— in man, and in his lot ? Will it not be wise of you to use your life rather than to brood over it ; to turn your lot, with all its changes, to good account, rather than to fret over the problems it suggests ? " — Ibid. (2) That all tJmigs work together in Provi- dence for maji's good. [16969] In His sublime description of the heavens and the earth and all that in them is, Jehovah may have meant to suggest to Job : " Consider these mysteries and parables of Nature, and what they reveal of the end and purpose of Him by whom they were created. You cannot adequately interpret any one of them, but you see that they all work together for good. You cannot tell how the world was made, how the firm earth and flowing seas were formed; but the earth yields you her fruits, and the sea carries your ships and brings you the wealth of distant lands. You cannot command the wind, or the clouds that bring rain ; but you can see that the winds carry health and the rains fertility wherever they go. You cannot explain the migration of the birds that travel all the year, but you can see that God feeds and fosters them by the instinct which drives them from shore to shore. The world around you is full of mysteries which you cannot solve ; but, so far as you can judge, is not their end a bene- ficent end ? And if the world within you also has mysteries which you cannot fathom, cannot you trust that, somehow, here or hereafter, these too will reach a final goal of good ? The mys- tery of life, the mystery of pain — may not these be as beneficent as you admit the marvels and mysteries of Nature to be.** "• — Ibid. XVII. Job's Deep Humility and Peni- tence, AND HIS Justification by God. " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job xlii. 5, 6). [16970] Hitherto Job had lived in the outer 16970— 16977] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE KRA. [JOB. 51 court, the traditions of former days had been handed down to him, he had taken religion upon trust ; but now his inward eye is opened, he sees God as he had never seen Him before. Bathed in this flood of hght, a new revelation dawns upon him ; it is as a sinner that he stands before God : " Wherefore I abhor myself, and ••epent in dust and ashes " (xhi, 6). — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16971] In Job's repentance all the marks of evangelical repentance are found — submission and abasement (ver. 2) ; confession of sin (ver. 3) ; humble and believing prayer (ver. 4) ; the revelation of God to the soul (ver. 5) ; and then the blessed result — self-knowledge, self-abhor- rence, true, deep, lasting repentance : " Where- fore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes " (ver. 6). — Ibid. [16972] Job, though he expressed so much courage and patience, yet (bewraying some in- firmities after he was baited long by so many fresh dogs, men, and devils) he must cry pec- cavi, and abhor himself in dust and ashes before God will take him into His arms (Job xlii. 6) ; and the same way God takes with all His children. — Anon. [16973] Job's vindication is complete, as is also his humiliation. From the beginning he has been God's true and righteous servant ; but now with a deeper acquaintance with his own heart, and a deeper knowledge of God, he walks more surely because more humbly ; and, in the chastened holiness of his life, supplies a con- clusive answer to the scoffing question of Satan, " Doth Job fear God for nought?" — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16974] It is not the first time in the history of the world that the majority of religious pro- fessors have been wrong. The solitary thinker, the philosopher, the heretic, the forlorn monk, the rejected of his day, has been sometimes, even in spite of many errors, in the right. That little group in that unknown land of Uz, who tried to silence the one among them who was in his wild cries and low wails the herald and the apostle of a truth that was one day to be embodied in the symbol of Christ's religion — they warn us against thinking that truth is always to be found on the side of numbers, that the God of truth marches always with the largest battalions. How startling to those who heard them, how instructive to us who read them, are the words which we shall find when ne.\t we meet : " Ye who have been so earnest, so rigid in justifying My ways, and asserting My righteousness ; ye have not spoken the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath." — Deaft Bradley. XVIII. The Divine Reward of Suf- fering Patience. [16975] It was an honour put on Job, and likewise a testimony of his meek and loving spirit, that he prayed for his friends. Nor can we have stronger proof that our prayers and in- tercessions for others, especially for our of- fending brethren, are acceptable to God, than what is here related. For i/ien " the Lord turned the captivity of Job," when his resent- ment against his accusers was extinguished, and he put up to heaven charitable petitions for them. The poor sufferer was restored to health, abundance, and prosperity. He received twice as much property as he had before possessed, so that his latter end was better than his begin- ning. The Lord gave him favour amongst an extensive acquaintance, a very large property, a numerous issue, and an honourable old age. Thus the Lord casteth down, and raiseth up ; and, " Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men ! " It is delightful to trace the dealings of God towards His people, and their faith in Him, which are the same in all ages. The very truths that supported Job under his sorrows remain to the present day, firm as the pillars of heaven, an unshaken basis of confidence for the people of God. — E. Copley. XIX. HOMILETICAL HiNTS. I Special lessons. (i) The revelation 0/ man to himself is an essential condition of religious progress. [16976] A man may be a good man, a thoroughly religious man, and yet may know but little of his own true nature. It was so with Job. It was well that Job should be what he was, an ypright. God-fearing man ; but it was not well that he should remain zuhere he was ; and if we read the Book of Job as a true story of the Divine training of a soul, we see in it how wonderfully God overruled the malice of Satan and the false judgments of men to the advancement of the religious life of His servant. Job began as a " perfect man " ; he was so by common repute ; he was so in a true sense, as a sincere, whole-hearted servant of God ; he was so, perhaps, in his own estimation. His religion was genuine, but it was too superficial ; his faith was true, but he had not dug deep to the firm rock beneath. Thus when trial came it shook him to the very centre of his being ; but it taught him much that he did not know before ; it taught him that unsuspected evil lay concealed within ; it taught him that there was a " law of sin in his members," from which he needed deliverance. — Rev. Sir E. Bayley. [16977] It is an essential condition of religious progress that we know in what such progress consists, and that we know well the true point of departure. A deep conviction of sin lies at the foundation of all real spiritual growth ; our first great lesson is the lesson of humility ; self- knowledge teaches us what we are ; and, thus instructed, we know what we ought to become- —Ibid. 52 16978— 16983] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [JOB. (2) The revelation of Cod to juan is the crown: ng^ Ij/cssedncss of the religious life. [16978] Job could not anticipate the revela- tion of the gospel, " This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent ; " he could not antedate the Saviour's words, " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, be- cause Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes;" but he could bring to his Father in heaven the teachableness of a little child, and he could approach Him in the spirit of believing prayer. He did this, and God revealed Him- self to him, as he was able to bear it. — Ibid. [16979] We must not expect to find in Job the advanced knowledge of a later age ; we may have to give up the famous passage, " I know that my Redeemer liveth," as a prophecy of the incarnation of the Son of God, and of the resur- rection from the dead. But Job evidently knew God as the bountiful Giver, the wise Adminis- trator, the righteous Judge ; and, although he felt himself unable to interpret the Divine action, his faith assured him that all was well or- dered, and that God would assuredly avenge His own elect. All this Job had known for years ; and if he now knew it as he had not known it before, it was not so much that God had taught him new truth, as that He had given him in- creased powers of vision with which to appre- hend the old. I know not that we need hope for more than this. It is not new truths that we want, but rather new power to grasp the old ones. The revelation of God in Christ is made to all, and what we require is that God should " shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." — Ibid. (3) The discipline of trial is both needful and salutary in the Divine ediccation. [16980] You know how the Christian Scrip- tures abound with sayings about the necessity of disappointments, the uses of adversity, and the glory of suffering.. How full they are of exhortations to be patient, to endure, to be steadfast — all implying our need of discipline. How sublimely, too, they teach us the true secret of endurance, in the life of Him "who, though a Son, learned obedience in the things that He suffered.'' In this light we can under- stand why God makes life a trial. Our charac- ters must be tested. There are evil tendencies in us which remain concealed and unknown, until we are tried — tendencies to a low, gro- velling selfishness, which almost rejoices in another's pain — capacities for the darkest sins, which may burst into action in moments of passion. We fancy we hold the reins of our natures. We think we are strong, and rejoice in our fancied strength. And then God sends us trials, disappointments, bitter lessons of sor- row, and under their startling light we discover our weakness and evil. V/e grow earth-bound, become wrapped in life's transient interests ; God sends us suffering, and in the long, lonely watchings of pain, we catch glimpses of eternal realities. — Rev. E. Hull. [16981] Job was no more than a man ; a man of like passions with us ; a man as weak and full of infirmity as we ; a man who, before he was tried, had no more of the hero apparent about him than ourselves ; who, when tried, had no other support than is promised to us, and promised to us in a higher degree than to him. All the strength and tenderness that fonned the original character of Job are slum- bering in the calm depths of your own un- troubled heart. Whether circumstances will ever occur to you that will exhibit these sublime qualities, we cannot tell. But heroism consists not in showing these qualities, but in having them ; not in seeming great, but in being so. Act well your part. Do each day's duties well. Bear each day's trials patiently. Encounter each day's conflicts bravely. And, above all, live in prayer and faith, and love toward God ; that will strengthen the weakest character, and give depth to the shallowest ; and then, without ever rising above, or sinking beneath, your present station, you may be " a hero in life's strife." But changes may come. Joy may pass away ; for her hand is ever on her lips, bidding adieu ! Friends may be taken ; for God hath sold the forest unto death, and His axe even now is at the root of the trees. What is sweet may become bitter ; what is bright may become dark ; life may be a weariness, and, like Job, you may " long for death, and dig for it as for hid treasure." But, even then, trust in God such as his will support you. " Oh, fear not, in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long — Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer, and be strong ! " — Rev. F. Greevcs. [16982] "Troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; perplexed, but not in despair ; per- secuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed ; " ours may be a life of tribulation, passed in the deepest depths of personal afflic- tion ; but the end is sure. We fight upon the winning side. Sorrow sliall soon give place to joy, darkness to light, and the cry of distress be exchanged for the shout of victory. — Rev. Sir E. Bay ley. (4) Afjliction should bring us nearer to the nicrcy-seat in prayer aiul supplication. [16983] " Is any among you afflicted? let him pray." Don't argue about your afflictions ; for in that case it is likely to fasten and perpetuate the impression on your hearts that God is deal- ing hardly with you, and driving you beyond the reach of all consolation and all hope. Don't rise up like Jonah, nor atteiYipt to fix your undivided attention on the blasted gourd lying all withered around you. For in that case you may be ready to exclaim, as he did, " I do well to be angry." Take your heaviest trials to 16983 — 16989] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. PRIMITIVE ERA. [job. 53 the mercy-seat. Spread them out before God. Deal with Him, not as with a task-master, but a loving Father. Ask Him to solve your doubts, to cast light upon your darkness, to aid you amid your helplessness, and to reveal to you why it is that He has been afflicting you, what defective grace He is seeking to supply, what wayward tendency He is seeking to correct, what besetting sin He is seeking to subdue. Remember that there is a need-be for every affliction that He sends ; and neither speak unadvisedly with your lips, nor charge God foolishly. It may be a bitter medicine that He pours into your cup ; but He does not do it recklessly, nor without some good reason, or with the design of harming you. — Rev. E. Hull. 2 Important inferences. [16984] Innocence and piety are no defence against Satanic influence, personal afflictions, and the misconceptions and reproaches of both enemies and friends. To do well and suffer re- proach is characteristic of the Christian. — E. Copley. [16985] Outward prosperity or adversity af- fords no criterion of character, nor of the Divine approbation or displeasure. Job was equally the servant, the friend, the child of God, when he sat bemoaning himself on the dunghill, de- spised and persecuted, as when he was exalted in prosperity, and surrounded by affectionate relatives and obsequious attendants. — Ibid. [16986] Integrity of heart and purity of con- science form the best basis upon which the afflicted mind can rest in adversity. Under all the complicated trials of human life, all the unkindness of friends, and all the reproach of enemies, what delightful support and consola- tion are derived from the consciousness, " My witness is in heaven, and my record is on high ! " (Job xvi. 19.) " He knoweth the way that I take ; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold " (Jobxxiii. 10). — Ibid. [16987] We have no right to arraign the sove- reignty of the Divine Being. When the wicked prosper, and unaccountable calamities attend the righteous, we are too apt to reply against our Maker, and say, "What doest thou? Is this equitable and right?" But humble sub- mission ever becomes creatures like ourselves, so blind, so ignorant, so guilty. Jehovah has reasons for His conduct, though we cannot per- ceive them. He orders all things according to the counsel of His own will. Nothing is left to the decision of chance ; nor anything decreed but what equally consists with rectitude, wis- dom, and love. If we trust in God with an un- shaken coutklence, like that of Job, when he said, " Though He slay m^ yet will I trust in Him," in the furnace of adversity we shall not only be preserved from destruction, but shall emerge with a brighter lustre and with a higher degree of purity. — Ibid. [16988] In the conferences of Job and his friends we see the ill effects of bitter religious contention ; these four pious men, it has been well observed, argued together till, becoming angry, they censured and condemned each other, and uttered many irreverent things about the Divine character and government ; and, having lost their temper, would have lost their labour, and been more than ever at variance, if another method had not been taken to decide the controversy. — Ibid. [16989] However upright and excellent the character and actions before men, and though, under certain circumstances, persons may justly and properly plead their innocence and recti- tude ; yet, before God, the best have nothing, are nothing, but meanness, vileness, and guilt. Self-abasement is ever attendant on a percep- tion of the Divine glory, and is the percursor of advancement, and of the signal favours of heaven (Job xlii.). — Ibid. 54 PART B. JEWISH ERA. DIVISION I. EARLY PERIOD. (Abraham to Moses, B.C. 1996-1571 ; 425 years.) SYLLABUS. PAGE The Patriarchs, Abraham ... ... ... ... ... 55 Isaac ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 64 Jacob 72 Joseph 83 The Twelve Tribes. Twelve Tribes, Blessings of the 96 The Patriarch Family Ci?-cle, not in the Messianic lifie. Lot 105 Ishmael no Esau ... ... ... ... ... ... ... in Eliezer ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 114 Persons outside the Patriarchs' Family. Melchizedek ... ... ... ... ... ... 115 Abimelech 119 55 PART B. JEWISH ERA ABRAHAM. I. The Special Eminence and Renown OF THIS Patriarch. 1 No other character in history, sacred or profane, has left such a broad mark on the world. [16990] When one looks closely into the course of revelation in Holy Scripture the name of Abraham appears to tower over the centuries. In point of fact it meets none to excel or rival it till the Divine name of Jesus Christ Himself is reached. The words of Jesus, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it," implied this much, whatever more they might import, that the call and covenant of Abraham formed the first step in a long series, of which the last was the advent of Messiah. Across the intervening ages, during which the promises made to Abraham were slowly ripen- ing, the chosen father and his far greater seed * look at one another. What lay between them was mainly covered by the temporary episode of the Mosaic Law. That interval of the law is explained by St. Paul to have been an interpo- lation. It could neither annul nor invalidate the covenant made with Abraham. — Rev. O. Dykes, D.D. 2 Abraham opens the second great chapter of the Bible. [16991] There are four great chapters of the Bible. The first, Adamic, having to do with men in homes. The second, Abrahamic, having to do with men in tribes, nascent nations. The third, Mosaic, having to do with men in nations, in all the exigencies and experiences of national life. The fourth, Christian, having to do with men as members of a universal community, subjects of a universal kingdom, through which the human opens out into a wider world. Here then is order — a grand and beautiful order, which has an evidence of its own which no special criticism of parts will find it easy to destroy. Abraham opens the second chapter, the tribal, and is perhaps the grandest figure in the Old Testament history. By an act of sublime obedience and trust he made himself the father of the spiritual servants of the Most High God in all ages of the world. Moses was, no doubt, a larger and abler man ; one of the greatest of the rulers of mankind But there was a depth of loyal obedience and trust in Abraham which make him spiritually the head even of Moses. Without Abraham the mission of Moses had been impossible; and it was on Abraham's faith that Moses really rested his own. It was the God of Abraham whom Moses knew and served, and because he was the God of Abraham (Exod. iii. i-io). Moses went on full and rich traditions. Abraham had but dim and feeble traditions to go upon. He had to establish, by making his will a living sacrifice to God, that vital relation between God and His people on which Moses built up his legislation, and God claimed and won their trust. Abraham was the great leader. Even Moses was but a disciple. — Baldwin Brown. 3 With him continuous history may be said to begin. [16992] When one looks back to the dim be- ginning of history, the very first figure which stands forth in full outline is that of "Abram the Hebrew." It is true that in those chapters of our oldest record — the Book of Genesis — which refer to a still earlier period, two events at least are related with some minuteness — the fall and the flood. But these are only single events. Before Abram, no individual life has been preserved with any completeness. No man in all these misty millenniums, before or after the deluge, stands before us in such his- torical fulness of portraiture that we can be said to know him as the great men of later story are known. Adam is little more than a name for a common progenitor, who fell. Noah is the just man who escaped the flood. Names still more shadowy, liice Cain or Abel, Enoch or Nimrod, are scarcely anything else than names. A far larger space in Scripture has been devoted to the single life of Abram than to all previous generations put together. His personal character, the details of his domestic affairs, his migrations, revelations, and trials, are all known with unusual minuteness. In the long series not only of Biblical biographies, but of the world's great lives, his is really the first. With him may almost be said to com- mence the revelation of Divine grace to man- kind.—A'^z/. O. Dykes, D.D. 56 16993— 16998] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. JEWISH ERA. [ABRAHAM. II. His Parentage and Early History. [16993] Descending from Shem, Abraham stands tenth among " the fathers " after the flood. He was a son — apparently the third and youngest — of Terah, the others being Haran and Nahor. The family, or perhaps more correctly the tribe or clan of Terah, resided in Chalda^a, which is the southern part of Baby- lonia. " Ur of the Chaldees," as recently again discovered, was one of the oldest, if not the most ancient, among the cities of Chaldasa. It lies about six miles away from the river Eu- phrates, and, curious to relate, is at present somewhere near one hundred and twenty-five miles from the Persian Gulf, though it is sup- posed that at one time it was actually washed by its waters, the difference being accounted for by the rapid deposit of what becomes soil, or of alluvium, as it is called. Thus Abram must in his youth have stood by the seashore, and seen the sand innumerable, to which his posterity in after ages was likened. Another figure, under which his posterity is described, must have been equally familiar to his mind. It is well known that the brilliancy of a starlit sky in the East, and especially where Abram dwelt, far exceeds anything which we witness in our latitudes. Possibly this may have first led in those regions to the worship of the heavenly bodies. And Abram must have been the more attracted to their contemplation, as the city in which he dwelt was " wholly given" to that idolatry ; for the real site of Ur has been ascertained from the circumstance that the bricks still found there bear the very name of Hiir on them. Now this word points to Htirki, the ancient moon- god, and Ur of the Chaldees was the great " Moon-city," the very centre of the Chaldean moon-worship ! The most remarkable ruins of that city are those of the old moon-temple of Ur, which from the name on the bricks are computed to date from the year 2000 before Christ. Thus bricks that are thirty-eight cen- turies old have now been brought forward to bear witness to the old city of Abraham, and to the tremendous change that must have passed over him when, in faith upon the Divine Word, he obeyed its command.— /^t'T/. A. Edersheuiu D.D. ' III. The General Spirituality, Up- rightness, AND Dignity of his Life. I In its religious aspects. [16994] Such daily, intimate, and loving com- munion did this grand saint maintain with heaven, that God calls him His "friend ;" and honouring his faith with a higher than any earthly tHle, the Church has crowned him " Father of the Faithful." He lived on terms of fellowship with God such as had not been seen since the days of Eden. Voices addressed him from the skies ; angels paid visits to his tent ; and visions of celestial glory hallowed his lowly couch and mingled with his nightly dreams. He was a man of prayer, and therefore he was a man of power. Setting us an example that we should follow his steps — thus, to revert to language borrowed from the stateliest of Lebanon's cedar, thus was he "fair in his great- ness and in the length of his branches, for his root was by the great waters." — Rev. T. Gtithrie, D.D. [16995] Each important transaction of life was entered on by Abraham in a pious spirit, and hallowed by religious exercises. His tent was a moving temple. His household was a pilgrim church. Wherever he rested, whether by the venerable oak of Mamre, or on the olive slopes of Hebron, or on the lofty, forest-crowned ridge of Bethel, an altar rose ; and his prayers went up with its smoke to heaven. — Anon. [16996] Abraham was in one sense a model man of the world ; a keen and able chieftain : rich, prosperous ; with flocks, herds, and re- tainers ; mixing with lofty courtesy with the men of the world around him, and able to make the weight of his arm felt when he was called to strike. And yet he was not of the world. That is, he had always a higher end in view. His prosperity came by the way ; his supreme con- cern, with which nothing came in comparison, was to do the will of God, and walk in His way. He cared deeply for nothing else. God was in all his thoughts, the world was not. Wherever he had a tent and an altar, he was well. What came to him by the active use of faculty he accepted thankfully ; but his life was to com- mune with, to serve, to walk with, God, his everlasting Friend.— Ba/t/win Brown. 2 In its domestic aspects. (i) Conjitgal. [16997] Like other patriarchs he was a poly- gamist ; nor was there at that period of the world any revealed law either against polygamy or against marriage within the nearer degrees of consanguinity. Sarah, the wife of his youth, was distinguished for her personal beauty, and well deserved to be the mother of one of the most distinguished races. And who does not see that his attachment to her was strong and ardent, and that nothing quenched the flame ? In youth, in middle age, in advanced life she was never separated from him ; w^herever he wandered, and whatever his trials, he had her affection, her respect, and even reverence ; while his love for her was exalted by his piety. — Rev. G. Spring, D.D. [16998] That beautiful scene between Abra- ham and the sons of Heth, when, on the death of Sarah, he was in treaty with them for the field of Ephron, the Hittite, for a burying place for her and her family, presents one of the finest pictures recorded in history. An old man, a stranger in a strange land ; yet he could not forget what was due to himself and to the memory of her he loved. Though he well knew that God had destined his posterity to be the 16998— 17003] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. JKWISH ERA. [ABRAHAM. 57 sovereigns of that land, he had not as yet a spot upon it large enough for a sepulchre. The sin- gular address and dignity which marked his conduct, when, in the day of his mourning, " he stood up before his dead, and bowed him- self to the people of the land," honouring, yet declining their courtesy, was in every view characteristic of this noble man. It is not every incident that would have thus brought out his character, and showed the dignity of his grief. Nor is it every good man that would have de- meaned himself thus. It is Abraha/n through- out. The striking feature throughout the whole is the delicacy and wisdom of a great mind, bowed under the weight of sorrow. The marks are strong of an accomplished and venerable man. Those who are most accjuainted with the workings of a mind like his will best perceive its beauty. Next to the scene where he offers up the child of promise, it is perhaps the finest moral lesson of the patriarchal age, neither overacting, nor, at an hour when much was likelv to be forgotten, leaving anything undone. —Ibid. (2) Paternal. [16999] Excellence of character appears in Abraham's conduct toward his children and slaves. His family was large ; he was the great Prince of the Oriental country. In addition to his children, he had three hundred slaves born in his house, beside others that were bought with his money. There is no more important duty than the religious education and govern- ment of such a household, nor is there any more difficult, especially if it be, as Abraham's im- mediate family \\a.s, a. family of sons. Yet we may be allowed to say, that no parent, and no master, ever performed this duty more faithfully than Abraham. God himself declares, " For / know Abraham, that he will command his children, and his household after him, that they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment." That large household were all dedicated to God, stamped with the seal of His covenant, and carefully instructed in the truths and duties of piety. Nor was his care in consulting the temporal prosperity of his children less remarkable. For the children of Hagar and Keturah he made bountiful pro- vision during his lifetime, and sent them away into the East country ; while, in relation to Isaac, his great solicitude was to see him com- mence the world as a godly young man, and in such alliances as were befitting the child of promise. Fearful lest he should be ensnared by some of the wealthy and accomplished daughters of Chaldasa, or by some princely daughter of the idolatrous Canaanites, he does not rest until he sees him the affianced husband of the daughter of his brother Nahor, still in Mesopotamia, and the companion of his pilgri- mage when they left Chaldiea. It is not easy to find, either in sacred or profane history, a more instructive and beautiful example of a Christian father than in the character of Abraham. — Ibid. 3 In its social aspects. [17000] Good men there are who are great only in great actions and splendid scenes and enterprises. Abraham's character was formed upon a different model. He knew how to ad- just the apparently conllicting claims of heaven and earth, without doing injustice to either. He felt his obligation to his fellow-creatures, and was, indeed, the greater saint for being so accomplished and dignified a man. It was not the coarseness of savage life to which he was accustomed, but to a state of society whose re- fined intercourse often brought out the gene- rosity and delicacy of his character. — Ibid. [17001] With the single exception of his want of ingenuousness toward the king of Egypt and Gerah, we do not find in Abraham an instance either of faulty or ne.i^ligent deportment. There was nothing ill-judged or ill-timed, nothing offensive, nothing out of place, and nothing that might have been better done. There was no arrogance or ostentation ; no unbecoming elation of mind, and no air of haughtiness ; no embarrassment, and no expression of gratified or mortified pride. In his conduct towards others he was the pattern of propriety and de- corum, and to an extent which minds of less generous and delicate texture do not always appreciate.— /i!^/^. IV. The Three Instances in Abraham's History which most Prominently Display the Grandeur of his Faith in its Successive Gradations. I His faith was manifested in a great degree by the promptitude with which he obeyed the Divine call to emigrate. " The Lord had said tinto Abraham, Get thee out of the coutitry . . . tiiito a lattd that I will shew thee. . . . So Abraliam departed" (Gen. xii. i, 4). [17002] This is one of the sublimest acts of faith recorded in the spiritual history of man- kind. " He went out, not knowing whither he went." Our acts of faith rest on the recorded experience of 4000 years. Age by age the evi- dence has accumulated. For a soul in these days to distrust the God whose leading of humanity is here recorded, is as though the eye should distrust the sun. But Abraham began to make the experience for us. What had he to rest upon but pure faith — the clear sense that a Divine voice was speaking, and that there was one thing to be done, at all hazards, at all costs— to obey. The greatest fact in the past which his soul could rest upon was an awful one — the deluge. He would have to stand by and see a fiery deluge burst upon and overwhelm his world. But he had one thing to guide him, one only— the Divine hand ; and by faith " he obeyed, and went out, not knowing whither he went." — Ibid. [17003] When Abram turned his face to the dreaded desert, which stretched, wide and in- 58 17003 — 17008] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. JEWISH ERA. [ABRAHAM. hospitable, between him and the nearest seats of men, he gave his first evidence of that trust in the unseen Eternal One, leading to unques- tioning, heroic obedience, which must even then have formed the basis of his character, and of which his later life was to furnish so many illustrious examples. It was thus one of the great moments of history when that primitive caravan of shepherds set out from Haran. A single man and his childless wife set out together upon a strange quest. They sought a land, they knew not where ; they sought a seed, they knew not how ; they sought a blessing, they knew not what. One only of their kindred, an orphan nephew, clave to their fortunes. With them they carried all they had — household gear piled on the camels' backs, and household bondsmen tending the droves of cattle. Who does not feel that the grandeur of that moment centres in the loyalty of one h 11 man soul to one ivord of Cod f— Rev. O. Dykes, D.D. [17004] With his religious principles and emotions, and beheving as he believed, he could not act otherwise than as he acted. The world was an idolatrous and disobedient world. God's object in calling him out from it was to raise up a different and an obedient community, "a peculiar people above all people." It could have been for no useful purpose to Himself that God had thus made these revelations, unless He designed to mould his character and control his conduct. They were not lessons in moral science which his Great Teacher was reading to him ; they were not merely abstract and theological truths ; they were commands and promises, words to be verified by facts, and directions to be complied with. They were self-denying precepts, and such as brought his own heart and will and conduct to the test. They were to " get out of his country and kin- dred," and go he knew not where ; they were to subject himself to an outward and bloody rite, the import of which he could not under- stand ; they were to cast out of his house those whom he was bound to love and care for. Yet Abraham did not hesitate to obey. — Rev. G. Spring, D.D. [17005] The command was quite definite in its terms : " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee ; " leaving it, however, as yet undecided which was to be the place of his final settlement. This uncertainty must have been an additional and, in the cir- cumstances, a very serious difficulty in the way of Abram's obedience. But the word of pro- mise reassured him. It should be distinctly marked, that on this, as on every other occa- sion in Abram's life, his faith determined his obedience. — Rev. A. Edersheim. [17006] He is called to leave his country and his kindred — called to go he knew not where ; called to be he knew not what. Nor does he hesitate. He instantly responds ; repairs to Canaan ; and lives and dies in the con- fident belief that it shall belong to him and his. Yet he found no place there to rest the sole of his foot — his weary foot — but was tossed about during a long lifetime here and there, like a seaweed which is floated hither and thither on the wandering billows, cast on the shore by this tide and swept away by that. Of Abraham and his whole life in the land of Canaan, of every journey he undertook, every march he made, and every footprint he left on its soil or on its sands, it might be literally as well as figuratively said, it was true of him in respect of this world as well as of the next, as it never was of any other man, " He walked by faith and not by sight." — Rev. T. Guthrie, D.D. 2 His faith was manifested in a still greater degree by his acceptance of the truth concerning the seed of promise. [17007] The son of promise had to be the gift of superhuman grace. Not only free-born and a lawful heir, he must be also a child of faith, and a child of miracle. Now, when Abram entered Canaan he was seventy-five years of age, and his wife was sixty-five. As we reckon human age, neither was any longer young ; yet they retained vitality enough, ac- cording to the slower decay of that long-lived period, to cherish a hope of offspring. Such a hope must have expired as the slow years went past. Five-and-twenty years had now elapsed since then. During the last thirteen of these, Sarai had so far surrendered her expectation of becoming a mother, that she had been con- tent to see her husband settle his affections and his hopes on the son of the Egyptian. By this time, a child of their marriage was become, according to the usual laws of life, a physical impossibility. Nothing short of His power, who plants in human bodies their vital force at the beginning, could re-create youthful vigour in the exhausted frames of this pair. It is when all this is remembered that the strength of Abraham's faith appears so extraordinary. — Rev. O. Dykes, D.D. [17008] It is easier for men to believe in the unlikely when they have a strong reason for desiring it. Abraham was told to expect, not the unlikely, but the unnatural, and that when he had not only ceased to desire it, but had long settled his desires elsewhere. To let Ishmael go in order to look for another, when it seemed flat against nature and reason that any other should be born, was the severest strain to which even this athlete of the religious life, this hero of faith, had yet been subjected. In that plaintive, clinging cry of fatherhood, "Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!" one hears with what a painful rending of heart the man tore himself loose from the knotted loves and anticipations of a dozen years, to school himself into the expectation of a gift, new, strange, and unheard of— the gift of a miraculous child.— /^/^. T7009— I70I4] OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. JEWISH ERA. [ABRAHAM. 59 3 His faith reached its culminating point of unequalled trust in the virtual sacrifice of Isaac. Abrahii>.