圣经注释书

约伯在激愤中倾吐心声，打破了沉默；他的朋友们便在此庄重地就他的处境发表判断。他们或许私下彼此交流过，对这事核对过见解、反复讨论过，且一致断定：约伯所受的灾祸必证明他是一个伪善者。但他们并未急于以此重罪指控约伯，直到他借着 discontent 与 impatience 的言辞（他们以为这些言辞甚至影射了神自己）印证了他们先前对他及其为人所抱的成见。如今他们大张旗鼓地攻击他。辩论开始了，旋即趋于激烈。对辩者是约伯的三位朋友，约伯本人为答辩者；以利户首先以中保身份出现，最终由神亲自对这场争辩及其处理方式作出裁决。争辩的焦点在于约伯究竟是否正直——这与前两章中神与撒但之间的争辩是同一个问题。撒但已就此让步，不敢声称约伯咒诅自己的生日就等同于暗地里咒诅他的神；不，他不能否认约伯仍然持守他的纯全；然而约伯的朋友们却执意认为，约伯若真是正直人，就不会遭受如此沉重又如此漫长的苦难，于是催逼他承认自己在信仰的认信上是个伪善者。约伯却说："不，我决不如此行；我得罪了神，但我的心向着他始终正直。"他仍旧持守住他纯全中的安慰。以利法大概是最年长的，或出身最为尊贵，他在本章率先发言，其中：I. 他先请求约伯耐心聆听（伯4:2）。II. 他以客套之辞肯定约伯先前信仰认信的卓越与果效（伯4:3、4）。III. 他指控约伯在认信上假冒为善，并根据他当下的苦难以及在苦难中的行为来支持这一指控（伯4:5、6）。IV. 为使这一推论成立，他主张：人的邪恶正是招致神审判的因由（伯4:7-11）。V. 他以自己曾见的一次异象来印证其论断——在那异象中，他被提醒神无可置疑的纯洁与公义，以及人的卑微、软弱与罪污（伯4:12-21）。这一切的目的，是要降卑约伯的心，使他在苦难中既悔改又忍耐。

Eliphaz answers; and accuses Job of impatience, and of despondence in the time of adversity, Job 4:1-6; asserts that no innocent man ever perished, and that the wicked are afflicted for their sins, Job 4:7-11; relates a vision that he had, Job 4:12-16, and what was said to him on the occasion, Job 4:17-21.

INTRODUCTION TO Job 4

Job's sore afflictions, and his behaviour under them, laid the foundation of a dispute between him and his three friends, which begins in this chapter, and is carried on to the end of the thirty first; when Elihu starts up as a moderator between them, and the controversy is at last decided by God himself. Eliphaz first enters the list with Job, Job 4:1; introduces what he had to say in a preface, with some show of tenderness, friendship, and respect, Job 4:2; observes his former conduct in his prosperity, by instructing many, strengthening weak hands and feeble knees, and supporting stumbling and falling ones, Job 4:3; with what view all this is observed may be easily seen, since he immediately takes notice of his present behaviour, so different from the former, Job 4:5; and insults his profession of faith and hope in God, and fear of him, Job 4:6; and suggests that he was a bad man, and an hypocrite; and which he grounds upon this supposition, that no good man was ever destroyed by the Lord; for the truth of which he appeals to Job himself, Job 4:7; and confirms it by his own experience and observation, Job 4:8; and strengthens it by a vision he had in the night, in which the holiness and justice of God, and the mean and low condition of men, are declared, Job 4:12; and therefore it was wrong in Job to insinuate any injustice in God or in his providence, and a piece of weakness and folly to contend with him.

Ch. 4–31. The debate between Job and his friends on the question of his sufferings and on the meaning of evil in general

This Debate occupies the whole body of the Book. It attaches itself to Job’s passionate cry for death and his impatient allusions to Heaven in ch. 3. The tone of this speech the friends cannot refrain from reprobating—they must speak (ch. Job 4:2); and thus the warfare of words commences. The subject to begin with is Job’s sufferings, but naturally the discussion widens out, so as to embrace the whole question of the meaning and purposes of calamity or evil in general. As the debate on the meaning of suffering occupies so large a portion of the Book, we must assume that one of the main intentions of the Author in writing his poem was to let light in upon this question from various sides and present ancient and current as well as new views regarding it. And as he allows the three friends to be brought to silence by Job, we may be sure that it was his purpose to discredit the theories which they represented and to teach that they could not any longer be maintained. Job in his speeches has no theory, he contributes nothing positive. The part he plays is merely negative and destructive. But in confuting the friends he clears the ground of the old encumbrances, and in their place the Author himself brings forward his new truth regarding the meaning of suffering, which he exhibits in a highly dramatic form in the Prologue. Both Job and his friends debate the question ignorant of the real cause of Job’s calamities, and neither they nor he approach the true solution. The Author allows us who watch the debate to know that Job’s sufferings were a trial of his righteousness. Thus the Prologue serves the same purpose as the prologue in the Greek drama, it introduces the actors, and supplies the spectators with the information needful to understand the action.

The Author allows three persons to confront Job and maintain against him the traditional beliefs. It is possible that the number as well as the names of Job’s friends may belong to the tradition upon which the Author worked. If not, he may mean to indicate by the number three the widespread currency and general acceptance of the views they advocate. The friends have each a well-marked individuality, and represent distinct aspects of religious conviction among mankind. Eliphaz, who on each occasion opens the debate, is the most dignified, the calmest and most considerate, and perhaps the oldest of Job’s friends. He is a man almost of Prophetic rank, who speaks with the composure and authority and clear eye of a seer, as one to whom revelations by vision have been granted from Heaven (Job 4:12 seq.). Bildad, a man of less consideration, is a representative of the class of the Wise (Jeremiah 18:18; Proverbs 1:6); an observer of life, one who generalizes on the ways of God to man, whose mind is stored with the priceless moral precedents of past ages, and who reposes upon the conclusions of thoughtful men of all times (ch. 8). While Zophar is the private religious man of strong personal conviction, who doubtless lives by the truth he believes, and cannot imagine how any one should question it; who gets irritated and indulges in unworthy imputations against any one who disputes the truth of his principles. All three were sincere men, though their sincerity had never perhaps been put to the proof as Job’s had been.

The three friends come to the contemplation of Job’s sufferings, and to the discussion of the meaning of them, with a principle which they all agree in holding. Like all Shemitic thinkers they have no idea of what we call second causes. In their view God is in immediate relation to the world and the lives of men, and does all directly that happens. Evil and Good come immediately from His hand; and being a righteous ruler every event of His providence must be either a reward of good or a retribution on evil. It is invariably well with the righteous and ill with the wicked, or perhaps more strictly, it is invariably well with righteousness and ill with wickedness. For even the righteous may do evil, for what man is he that sinneth not? and his evil will bring down punishment upon it. But God is far from being an impersonal moral balance, weighing out happiness and adversity according to the deserts of men, with no interest in their fate. On the contrary, His eyes are on the righteous, and though He chastens them for their sin, His chastisement is not in order that they may perish (Job 4:7), it is correction, meant to wean them from their evil and turn them again in humility and repentance unto righteousness. Therefore “happy is the man whom God correcteth” (ch. Job 5:17); such correction is an arrest laid upon him in his way of evil. Calamity therefore is not in itself decisive of the character of a man, though it is decisive of the fact that he has sinned. The issue of calamity only can shew what a man really is. If he is a righteous man, he accepts it as the warning of God and turns from his evil, and his future life is filled with blessings from God, and he shall enjoy length of days and all prosperity (Job 4:19-21). If he is evil he murmurs and rejects the divine correction, and brings wrath upon himself and perishes (Job 4:2). These principles explain the course pursued by the three friends towards Job. However strange it might seem to them they had no help but to conclude that Job, though a righteous man as they had always thought him, and continued to think him, had been guilty of acts of sin very displeasing unto God. And the temper he displayed under his afflictions alarmed them: it was the very temper of the ungodly (Job 4:2). Hence one after another they earnestly warn and exhort him to turn in humility and repentance unto God; and they draw bright pictures of the happy future which he shall yet enjoy.

As for Job he agreed with his three friends in believing that all events occurred through the immediate agency of God; good and evil came directly from His hand. Further he agreed with them that evil or suffering was inflicted by God on those whom He held guilty of having sinned. But Job’s consciousness of his own innocence forbad his drawing the conclusion with his friends that he had been guilty of great and specific offences. He knew he had not. He was driven therefore to the conclusion that, though he was not guilty, God had resolved to hold him guilty (Job 9:29 and often), and treat him as if he were so. Hence he is led to charge God with injustice. This feeling shines dimly through his words in ch. 3, and his friends detected it, but under their provocations and insinuations of his guilt he boldly avows his conviction of God’s injustice, and throws it out with a passionate fury appalling to a reverent mind. This however is but one side of the conflict going on in his mind. There are other currents of feeling that run side by side with this one. The action of the drama is nothing else than the progress of feeling in Job’s mind under his sufferings and the views regarding them presented by his friends. This progress, however, will be better understood when the chapters are read.

It is evident that the alienation of Job’s mind from God was increased and his feelings embittered by the insinuations and the misdirected advice of his friends. We should be deviating, however, from the line of the Author’s conception if we were to regard the provocations of the friends as a third or separate temptation. Job’s trial was merely his afflictions, narrated in the prologue. This trial continued. The friends only set it in a particular light. Before they arrived, or at least before they spoke, Job’s mind had already drifted away from the attitude of reverent submission which he took up when his afflictions newly befell him. The friends add to his perplexity, but they are little else than voices that give body to the thoughts that must have risen and struggled in his own mind. It is to be noticed that the Satan no more appears. With the infliction of Job’s calamities his part is ended. The supernatural agencies of the Prologue are no more called into requisition. It is plain indeed that the scenes in the Prologue are nothing but a splendidly dramatic form adopted by the Author for putting before us his new truth that calamities may befall the righteous not for any evil they have done but in order to try their righteousness and through the trial to perfect it.

The great debate is divided into three circles of speeches: (1) ch. 4–14; (2) ch. 15–21; (3) ch. 22–31. Each of these three circles contains six speeches, one by each of the three friends in succession, with a reply from Job. In the last round, however, the third speaker, Zophar, fails to come forward. This is a confession of defeat; and Job, resuming the thread of his reply to Bildad, carries it through a series of chapters, in which, with a profound pathos, he contrasts his former greatness with his present misery, protests his innocence before Heaven, and adjures God to reveal to him the cause of his afflictions.

CHAPTER 4

Ch. 4–14. The first circle of speeches

Ch. 4, 5. The speech of Eliphaz

Eliphaz attaches his speech to Job’s despairing cry in ch. 3. The tone of Job’s words and his state of mind seem to him strange and very far from right. And though he would gladly be silent and spare one in Job’s condition, yet he is constrained to speak (Job 4:2). Proceeding to speak, Eliphaz gives expression to three thoughts, each of which bears on the tone and temper displayed by Job in his cry of despair (ch. 3).

伯4:1-21。

以利法第一次发言

1. 以利法（Eliphaz）——约伯三位指控者中最为温和的一位。约伯灾祸之重大、他对神的怨言，以及“灾祸即是有罪之明证”这见解，使三人对约伯的正直起了怀疑。

提幔人以利法回答说 - 见 Job 2:11 的注释。

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered - For seven days this person and his two friends had observed a profound silence, being awed and confounded at the sight of Job's unprecedented affliction. Having now sufficiently contemplated his afflicted state, and heard his bitter complaint, forgetting that he came as a comforter, and not as a reprover, he loses the feeling of the friend in the haughtiness of the censor, endeavoring to strip him of his only consolation, - the testimony of his conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, he had his conversation among men, - by insinuating that if his ways had been upright, he would not have been abandoned to such distress and affliction; and if his heart possessed that righteousness of which he boasted, he would not have been so suddenly cast down by adversity.

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said. When Job was done cursing his day, and had finished his doleful ditty on that subject, then Eliphaz took the opportunity of speaking, not being able to bear any longer with Job and his behaviour under his afflictions; Eliphaz was one of Job's three friends that came to visit him, Job 2:11; very probably he might be the senior man, or a man of the greatest authority and power; a most respectable person, had in great esteem and reverence among men, and by these his friends, and therefore takes upon him to speak first; or it may be it was agreed among themselves that he should begin the dispute with Job; and we find, that in the close of this controversy the Lord speaks to him by name, and to him only, Job 42:7; he "answered"; not that Job directed his discourse to him, but he took occasion, from Job's afflictions and his passionate expressions, to say what he did; and he "said" not anything by way of condolence or consolation, not pitying Job's case, nor comforting him in his afflicted circumstances, as they required both; but reproaching him as a wicked and hypocritical man, not acting like himself formerly, or according to his profession and principles, but just the reverse: this was a new trial to Job, and some think the sorest of all; it was as a sword in his bones, which was very cutting to him; as oil cast into a fiery furnace in which he now was, which increased the force and fury of it; and as to vinegar an opened and bleeding wound, which makes it smart the more.