Job's first parable: 2. The portion of a wicked man with God.
I. JOB'S LANGUAGE EXPLAINED. The lot, or earthly inheritance, of the ungodly Job exhibits in three particulars.
1. The wicked man's family. However numerous the children that gather round a sinner's hearth, they will all be overwhelmed in eventual destruction.
2. The wicked man's wealth. This also shall be dissipated.
3. The wicked man's person. Equally with his family and possessions, the wicked man himself is engulfed in an awful doom.
II. JOB'S MEANING CLEARED.
1. The difficulty. The above exposition of the wicked man's portion bears so close a resemblance to the pictures already sketched by the friends, that much perplexity has been occasioned by Job's seeming inconsistency; in at this stage admitting the very dogma he had so powerfully assailed in his previous contendings. If this were true, it would only prove that great men sometimes change their rain, Is and modify their opinions. But the contradiction is more apparent than real.
2. The solution. For a detailed statement of the different schemes proposed with a view to either bridge over or remove this difficulty, the Exposition may be consulted. Here it may suffice to say that either we may understand Job as recapitulating the theory of the friends, which he has just characterized as "foolish notions" (verse 12); or, holding that the sentiments he delivers are his own, we may affirm that in previously painting the prosperous fortunes of the ungodly (e.g. Job 12:6; Job 21:7) he was merely placing exceptional cases against the exclusive theory of the friends, that ungodly men have always evil fortunes, which was all that strict logic required as its refutation, but that here he desires to intimate his acquiescence in the main element of their dogma, viz. that as a rule "the retributive justice of God is manifest in the case of the evil-doer" (Delitzsch).
Learn:
1. That every man's portion from God is twofold, relating to the life that is to come as well as to that which now is.
2. That the higher a wicked man rises in worldly prosperity, the more ignominious will be his final overthrow.
3. That God can effect sudden and surprising translers of property on earth.
4. That sudden death may overtake the person who appears best secured against it.
5. That sudden death is not the same thing to a wicked man that it is to a good one.
6. That the wicked man cannot face the future without a fear.
7. That if a wicked man's death is a cause of joy to the world, the departure of a saint should be a source of lamentation.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON