Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible · Job Chapter 13

CHAP. XIII.

Job reproves his friends for their prejudice: he professes his confidence in God, and entreats to know of him why he hides his face from him, and holds him for an enemy.

Before Christ 1645.

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Job 13:4. Physicians of no value— Empty boasters: men who put on airs of great consequence, though in reality they were nothing. See Heath.

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Job 13:8. Will ye contend for God— The Hebrew for contend is a judicial term, and oftentimes used for putting a sentence in execution. Of this there is a particular instance in the case of Gideon, who was demanded by the men of his city to be put to death for casting down the altar of Baal, Judges 6:31.; where, though our translators render it plead, the sense necessarily requires it to be rendered execute vengeance; for the question was, not about pleading, but instantaneously putting to death. If he be a God, let him execute vengeance for himself. Job here convicts his friends of wickedness; of taking upon them to defend God in an improper manner, as if he needed their rash censures to vindicate the ways of his providence. This was such a fault as they had but too much reason to fear might, one time or other, draw down his severe chastisements on their own heads. He will surely reprove you, Job 13:10 if you secretly accept persons: i.e. if you judge thus rashly and unjustly even for him, or in vindication of his ways. See Peters.

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Job 13:9. Is it good, &c.— Is it right for you to pay false adulation to him? Houbigant; who observes, that the word adulate, in this clause, properly corresponds with mock in the next.

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Job 13:14. Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, &c.?— That is, "You ask me, why I should consider my case as thus desperate? (for that is the meaning of these phrases.) Why should you be thus slow to believe that God will deliver you out of your troubles? This looks as if you were conscious of some wickedness rendering you unworthy of such a deliverance." Job answers to this charge immediately: "It is not the want of a due hope or trust in God, occasioned by any wickedness whereof I am conscious, that makes me thus despair of my condition; for, though he slay me, (Job 13:15.) yet will I trust in him; but still I will maintain mine own ways, my own integrity before him; Job 13:16. He also shall be my salvation; for an hypocrite,—a sycophant, or false accuser, as the Hebrew word ףּחנ chanep, sometimes signifies,—shall not come before him, to charge me with crimes of which I am not guilty, in the future judgment." If we understand the word rendered hypocrite in its ordinary signification, it will afford a good sense: as thus, He also shall be my salvation, for I am no hypocrite. Here Job gives a very poetical turn to his speech; supposes himself as already dead, and standing before the tribunal of God; and bids his friends, as in that awful presence, say what they had to charge him with; Job 13:17-18. As if he had said, "I address myself to my trial, and plead not guilty; Job 13:19. Who is he that will litigate the matter with me? for now I will be silent, and expire." This is the Hebrew, rendered as literally as possible; and the meaning, I think, is clear; namely, "Who is he that will bring a charge against me? for you are now to consider me as dead, and standing before the tribunal of God." The translators, who certainly mistook the meaning of the words, have added an if, and so spoiled the whole turn of the sentence, thus: For now if I hold my peace, I shall give up the ghost: but there is no if in the Hebrew. It is literally as rendered above. Here, then, we must suppose Job to break off his speech for a moment, to see whether his friends would venture to accuse him of any thing when summoned before the Supreme Judge, in this solemn and affecting manner: and as they had no particular crime to charge him with, nothing but a groundless suspicion against him, we may conclude, that they must needs remain as silent upon this occasion as Job, and as if they had expired with him: upon which this holy man seems to recollect himself, and, as fearing that he might have been too bold in his appeal, addresses himself in the following verses to the Judge himself; beseeching him, in the most submissive manner, before he enters into judgment with him, to grant him two things: to withdraw his afflicting hand from him, and to veil the terrors of his majesty, that it might not strike him with too great a dread; and then to question him, and he would answer; or permit him to speak, and vouchsafe to inform him what his guilt was, and what were the reasons of these severe afflictions. See the 20th and following verses. This beautiful passage evidently shews, as well as several others in his speeches, that Job looked forward to a day of judgment, when he hoped to have his innocence cleared. See Peters, p. 165, 166.

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Job 13:15. Though he slay me, &c.— It is impossible to understand this of a temporal deliverance; for how should a man hope for this, though he were slain? This passage, according to another reading, is, "Lo, he will kill; I will not hope; nevertheless, I will argue mine own ways, or plead mine own cause before him. He also shall be my salvation, &c." It is plain that Job here despairs of life, and yet hopes for salvation; which, therefore, must necessarily be understood of a future absolution and reward in the day of judgment. Peters.

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Job 13:22. Then call thou— The word call is here a judicial term, and imports the declaring the accusation. This, in our law, is termed arraigning the criminal. The whole verse is of the same kind. Heath.

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Job 13:24. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, &c.?— This expression, among some others, has been charged upon Job by a learned writer as very improper and unbecoming. Now, though we might admit that there is something faulty in the expostulation, yet it is very much alleviated by those expressions of humility and self-abasement which immediately precede and follow it. Read the 23rd and 25th verses. Scarcely ever were the feelings of the human heart, burdened with such a load of grief, expressed in a more natural or less blameable way; and I could almost recal the concession that I have made, of any thing at all wrong in it: for, if it be a rule of equity to put upon words and things the best construction that they will bear, Job seems, in the first part, to wish that God would discover to him the particular sins, if any, for which he thus afflicted him, and he was ready to deplore them, and to correct his errors for the future: in the second, the exceptionable part, he seems nevertheless to account it the greatest of his calamities, that God should hide his face from him, and deal with him as an enemy; on whose friendship and favour he had always set the highest value; had endeavoured to preserve it by the integrity of his life, and was resolved never to depart from that integrity. In the last part he confesses his own meanness, or rather nothingness, in comparison of God; and that in a manner so ingenuous and simple, as to shew that his complaints, however passionate and moving, had but a small mixture (for I must not venture to say none) of pride or stubbornness at the bottom of it. Peters.

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Job 13:26. Thou writest bitter things against me— The author of the Divine Legation, zealous to support his allegorical scheme, is always desirous, for that end, to point out inconsistencies in this book. "The great point Job insists upon (says he) throughout the whole book is, his innocence; and yet, to our surprize, we hear him thus expostulating with God: Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. This can be accounted for no otherwise than by understanding it of the Jewish people:"—but why so? May not the best man that ever lived find something to condemn in the levities and sins of his youth, or when he was a boy or child? for the Hebrew word נעורי neuraii, sometimes denotes a state of childhood. See Schultens and Grey. We may certainly allow him to have had respect to some actual sins of his youth, without any detriment to his argument, drawn from that present uprightness of heart and life which he now pleads; and had long practised; for, by the way, it is not his innocence, strictly speaking, which Job insists on, but his integrity. Peters.

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