A Book Review: The Trial Of Job, By Silas Durand

Gospel Standard 1872:

The Trial Of Job. By Silas Durand—Philadelphia: Lippincott and Co. 

The book of Job is one of the most remarkable in the Bible. It contains the history of the trials of a man of whom God himself declares that he was a perfect man and upright, fearing God and eschewing evil. It fills the mind with wonderment at the extent of the good man’s calamity, and the mystery of God’s dealings with him. It almost alarms when it leads us to think what a child of God may have to suffer in this life, and yet cheers and consoles us by revealing the end of the Lord in the whole matter,—that he is pitiful, and of the most tender mercy; not afflicting willingly, or grieving unnecessarily the children of men.

We have in this book a display of the sovereignty of God’s dealings with his people. Here is a perfect and upright man, one whom God unites with Noah and Daniel in a sort of preeminence of virtue; and yet God deals with him for a time with apparently the most appalling severity; pulling him to pieces, bringing him to nothing, covering him with contempt, clothing him with sackcloth, and, as it were, casting him forth upon a dung-hill. How contrary to all we might expect! Job might well think, “I shall die in my nest.” The truth is, God deals with men according to two rules of proceeding. The Law or Free Grace. If according to the Law, though he may for a time act in a way of forbearance, yet he will ultimately deal with those under the Law strictly in accordance with their legal deserts. Therein he displays the purity as well as severity of his justice. But if he acts according to Free Grace, it shall be grace, and grace only, from first to last, which shall rule in his dispensations. Even legal conflicts and legal strokes are measured out to the elect according to the covenant of grace, ordered in all things and sure. Hence will proceed the most diversified dealings with his children. A child of God shall walk before him like Job. God shall meet him who thus “rejoiceth and worketh righteousness” with further blessings; in this way encouraging him, and strengthening his heart in the ways of God; or he shall seem to go out completely against him, as in the case of Job; deliver him apparently into the hand of the wicked, and make him a spectacle to men and angels of grief and trouble.

Again, a child of God may, with David, go halting, overwhelmed with temptations, full of infirmity and weakness. He may seem the very reverse of upright Job, and God may deal with the greatest tenderness with him, healing again and again his sicknesses, and showing towards him the most forbearing pity. Or a poor child of God may, overtaken with a fault, grievously fall, and then look for some tremendous strokes of God’s rod; and, instead, Jesus shall look upon him as he did upon Peter, and at once convict and melt the heart into godly sorrow, giving, at the same time with the reproof, a feeling of his unaltered love. Or, if God pleases, he may do the reverse of all this, to make his children tremble at sin and flee from it. He may break the bones of a David, and so put his hand of fatherly displeasure upon the man, that his bones which were not seen shall stick out, and his moisture shall be turned into the drought of summer. Now, mysterious as all these sovereign ways of God are to us, yet infinite Wisdom guides all. God sees the hearts of his people as no one else can see them. He beholds how various iniquities may be tending to a prevalence-now Pharisaic pride, now Antinomian licentiousness—and, according to the case, he will either act in a way of severity or manifested mercy. Then, again, God has not only a work to do in his people, but by them, and, with infinite wisdom, he adapts his dealings with his saints to the ends he has designed to accomplish by them. Thus, he will bear from one of his children what he would not allow from another without much reproof; and this shows the danger of one man taking another’s foibles or failings as a sort of pattern. God is very greatly to be feared at all times in the congregation of his saints, and if he will show marvellous pity in respect of weakness and infirmity in his children, he probably will show very great displeasure against that thought which begets presumption. But, as in the case of Job, what wonderful matchless grace rules in all God’s dealings with his ‘people! Grace really gave Job over to his adversary to be sifted and tried to the uttermost by him. There was something opposed to this grace of God in the heart of Job, some secret leaven of self-righteousness and pride working in his heart, and hindering Job’s advancement to a fuller, sweeter enjoyment of Christ. God’s secret purpose was to give Job far more than he at first possessed, and possibly Job had on his knees been asking for a fuller knowledge of his dear Redeemer, and a richer portion of the divine blessing. Trial was the way by which he was to arrive at this. A crucified Christ cannot be enjoyed in a heart that is not itself prepared for him by suffering. Christ’s Gethsemane is entered into, if we may so speak, through the smaller Gethsemane of the Christian.

“For union can be none

Betwixt a heart like melting wax

And hearts as hard as stone.’

It is well, even in our prayers, to count the cost; not to make us desist from praying for the best things, but that we may wisely consider the trials through which we may have to pass in order to possess them.

If the book of Job is wonderful, then, to us for the sovereignty, mysteriousness, yet rich grace of God towards his deal child as displayed therein, we need not feel surprised that persons in Job’s days, with comparatively so little light to guide them, should have been completely bewildered. With all that light which shines upon us from the Cross, were we now placed in the circumstances of Job’s wife or friends, we might hardly show much more soundness of judgment as to such terrible events than they did. How often do we call calamities judgments, and perhaps are as mistaken as Job’s friends were. We say nothing of Job’s wife. We conceive his friends to have been really good and gracious men; but perfectly unfitted to deal with such a case as Job’s; They could not harmonize such tremendous afflictions with their ideas of God’s justice and methods of dealing, if Job were a truly upright man. Hence they improperly, and even cruelly, charged him with committing sins of which he was innocent. They utter many grand and blessed truths concerning God and his dealings with the righteous and the wicked; but for want of fuller light they misapply these principles of the divine actions in the case of Job, and prove miserable comforters to him. Irritated, too, by his irony, and almost appalled by his desperate speeches, they dreadfully taunt him. All this was very sad; but then, if we considered the times in which they lived, we perhaps should rather feel surprised at the wisdom and godliness contained in their speeches than at what we may call the gospel mistakes concerning him. But it is refreshing to have, at length, Elihu come forward and, though younger, display so much wisdom. How discreetly he proceeds, not charging Job improperly, but insinuating, as in chap. 33, that there are often secret purposes in men’s hearts displeasing to God; or self-righteous pride may be there, and the man himself not perceive it. Moreover, God may in various ways speak to a man about these things. In a dream, perhaps, in a vision of the night. Further, the man, through his carnal nature, may not take due heed to these divine dealings and admonitions; then will probably come on, as the evil is so deeply seated, and powerfully prevalent, divine chastisements, until the soul abhors dainty meat, and the man draws nigh to the gates of the grave, and his life to the destroyers. But God all this time preserves the poor child of God, and at length sends a messenger to him, an Interpreter, who unfolds the case, explains the divine dealings, leads the soul to justify God, to look to Jesus as the sinner’s only righteousness. Then comes the sweet change. God is gracious, the ransom is beheld, prayer goes forth, the soul is delivered from the pit, the life sees the light, the flesh is fresher than a child’s, and God returns in blessing; for he will render unto man his righteousness, or deal with him according to that everlasting imputed righteousness he now looks to. In this manner, says Elihu, God frequently deals with man, and thus, no doubt, he really painted Job’s own case, and was in the hand of God such an interpreter. But, after all, the matter is in the hand of God. So at length the Lord speaks out of the whirlwind, Job now is brought into the dust. This near approach of God lays him low; he abhors himself, and repents in dust and ashes. Now he speaks well of God. He says of himself, “I am vile,” and ascribes to God the glory due unto his name. Christ, no doubt, was sweetly seen by the eye of faith. The mystery of Goers dealings with himself in some degree explained, and childlike submission supplied the rest. Then Job must offer sacrifice for his three friends. They submit. His brethren and sisters come about him. His substance is doubled, a fresh family of children granted him, and thus his latter end was greater than his beginning; and this sweet truth was brought out that let God’s dealings with his children be apparently even severe and harsh, the Lord is really pitiful and of tender mercy, and loving the prosperity of his people.

Now, one design of Job’s trial unquestionably was the support and encouragement of God’s people in after days. Job himself seems to have foreseen this effect when he cried, “The righteous” (aided by his sufferings, his endurance, and God’s end) “shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger.” And this design has been indeed answered. How have the tried, tempted, afflicted children of God, age after age, found relief in the book of Job! When they have contemplated his calamities they have been supported under their own; for they have met with a companion, and no longer can say, “I am the man who, pre-eminently or alone, hath seen affliction.” No! They hear Job cry, “I am the brother to dragons and a. companion to owls.” They perceive him feeling after God and unable to find him, and pathetically, exclaiming, “O that I knew where I might find him.” They hear him lamenting over his past days of blessedness in this season of desertion, “O that I were as in the months that are past!” In fact, they ponder upon the depths of his woe, and his sufferings are, as it were, a life to them as producing a renewed hope. Then they see him in the midst of all supported by God, and at last so blessedly brought forth from his afflictions that their hope in God, as it respects themselves, is greatly strengthened. And thus Job has become a minister to after generations, and death worked in him that the life of Jesus might be cherished in his brethren.

The work whose title is given at the head of this Review is upon these trials of Job; and we will now proceed to give a brief description of the book and its plan.

The grand ruling idea that is worked out is that Job is intended to be a strict type of the church, and that, as in the case of Melchizedec, we have just so much told us about him as shall set him forth as such a type. Our author writes:

“As we contemplate his character and condition, Job will appear as a type of the church.***All that we are told of Melchizedec is but what is necessary to present in our view of him a type of the royal priesthood of Christ. So it is but a small portion of the life of Job as a man that is brought intimately to our view; but in that portion we have as perfect a type of the church entering and extending through her state of legal bondage into gospel liberty as in the history and psalms of David we have of Christ as the Captain of our salvation.”

We consider the remark about Melchizedek judicious; we are not prepared to say the same in respect of this view of Job. We consider him to have been a dear child of God, raised up by him and dealt with in a very peculiar manner to illustrate the sovereign, mysterious, yet gracious ways of God with his people, and to afford us many excellent lessons and much encouragement in the patient endurance of afflictions, and the hope of eventually coming forth triumphantly from them. We think our author’s view of Job, as strictly speaking a type, has led him into a good deal of forced, fanciful, and vicious interpretation. He writes:

“The name of Uz, the land where he dwelt, signified ‘counsel,’ or ‘word;’ and his own name signifies ‘sorrowful, hated, fighting;’ and this may be the spiritual interpretation, that in the counselor word of God he stands before us as a representation of that church which in the world is in the furnace of affliction, full of sorrow, hated by the world, and fighting the good fight of faith against the enemies of the truth.”

Again:

“The number of his sons, seven, may signify the perfection of the number of Zion’s children.”

But what, we are inclined to ask, about his wife? Our author gives us an answer in accordance with his strictly typical view:

“We only know her as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and therefore in her speech representing the rebellious opposition of our carnal nature to the ways of God.”

Now all this seems to us very unsatisfactory. We are afraid that whilst hunting out and following after these allegories, the sweetness and spirituality of God’s words will be completely lost. Besides, we have not only Job’s wife, but the first and second families, the servants, oxen, sheep, camels, and asses. What an extensive field for ingenuity of interpretation! But we fear it would all be what Mr. Hart styles,

“To hunt for tinkling sound.”

From this leading idea of Job being strictly a type of the church there almost necessarily results the making of Job’s three friends into something outside the church, and consequently wicked men. We confess we were both startled and offended at finding them converted into three Arminian preachers; but it was almost necessary upon the author’s plan of the book. Hear our author:

“We shall see that these three friends represent the religion of the world, the understanding of the natural mind concerning God.* * * They had come everone from his own place, as worldly teachers do, and not from the place where Christ prepares his messengers. Eliphaz was the name of one of the sons of Esau. (Gen. 36:11) The name signifies the endeavour of God, and is well adapted to one who teaches that the work of salvation is an endeavour on the part of God…The name of Bildad signifying old friendship, old motion, and that of Zophar signifying rising early, or crown, are also suited to their character as teachers of that religion that holds fast the old friendship of the world, and demands motion or labour from those who are without strength as a ground of acceptance with God, calling upon its votaries to rise early to their work, to be up and doing.”

“Eliphaz,” as our author remarks, “takes the lead.” A sort of Gashmu (Neh. 6:6) to the triad of Arminian preachers who had come from their place to comfort Job. If all this is correct, we a little wonder at Job’s choice of such fleshly companions; just as we might wonder at his choice of a wife, and a good many other things, if the strictly typical view is a proper one. The friends of Job being these Arminian fleshly professors, all their sayings are, of course, in consistency with this opinion, pronounced to be like their authors, so much Arminian rubbish. And the Lord’s own words are brought in to confirm this view: “For ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right as my servant Job hath;” as if all Job had spoken had been right, and all his friends had uttered had been wrong. Now, we humbly submit that the Lord’s words have reference more to Job’s final sayings than to any former ones. God himself says of Job, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” And Job discreetly puts his hand upon his mouth, and says he had spoken both ignorantly and rashly. We conceive, then, that the divine approval is given to these final speeches of Job, so full of self-abasement and giving glory to the Lord. Such fully truthful speeches as these had not up to that time proceeded from the lips of his friends. To our apprehension they had spoken many wise and godly things; but not being as fully instructed as Job at length was, there had been a degree of mistake pervading their utterances, especially in their application of things to Job. The quotation of their words in the later scriptures appears to sanction much that they spoke, and we cannot agree with our author in classing Job’s three friends with wicked men, and mere Arminians. There was no doubt much Arminianism and pharisaic pride likewise in both them and their friend Job, or they would hardly have spoken as, at times, they did, or he describe himself as in 30:1, &c.

And here, by the way, we cannot help a little testifying against that almost scornful way in which we poor creatures write or speak against Arminians. We hope necessity and divine teaching have made us most thorough Calvinists. Free grace is our very life; but what an opposition to God’s way of saving freely by his grace to his glory have we found, and alas! still find in our hearts! Grace has made us to differ from the most besotted approver of man’s free will and power, and it seems, therefore, only right to be a little pitiful, and far more prayerful, concerning those who cannot yet see as we do. Besides, we are fully persuaded that there are Calvinistic as well as Arminian Pharisees; but he that truly fears God shall come forth from them all. Even if Job’s friends were the Arminians our author makes them, we should not very much admire his tone in writing about them.

But to resume our sketch. After Job’s three friends have uttered their Arminian platitudes, and Job has answered them, Elihu appears on the scene, and, according to the typical scheme, Elihu represents the gospel ministry. Hear our author:

“The meaning of his name, Elihu, is, ‘He is my God himself;’ that of his father’s name, Barachel, “who bows before God;’ and Ram, of whose kindred he was, signifies elevated, sublime. As the names used in Scripture have a signification appropriate to the characters of those who bear them, we may take from the meaning of these names an evidence that Elihu was a true servant of God.”

Mr. Newton, writing to a friend, confesses himself not to have been one of those eagle-eyed divines who could perceive sublime mysteries hidden under every historic account given in Scripture; for instance, the law and the gospel in Rebekah’s nurse being buried under an oak. (Gen. 35:8.) Perhaps our author has seen more in the name and genealogy of Elihu than some of us could have spied out; but however this may be the case, we fully accede to the point that Elihu was a very good messenger from God to Job, and also that in working out the ideas about Elihu we have a very good description of a gospel ministry. For instance:

“He shows personal humility in waiting for the others to speak, and fearing to speak hitherto because of his youth.”

A very good rule, we believe, to be observed by both preachers and writers. So again:

“We may also notice here a reason for the fact that Elihu is not made mention of. The importance is attached not to himself, but to the word which he preaches.”

We sincerely congratulate our transatlantic brethren if their ministers are as little self-prominent as Elihu. At length the Lord comes in; and we unhesitatingly approve our author’s reflections when he arrives at this point:

“Although all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is to be very reverently handled as his word, yet I cannot but feel a more profound awe and reverence in approaching this place, and more hesitation and fear in attempting to consider the words of this wonderful answer.”

We ourselves feel the same special awe in approaching to certain portions of God’s word. It is like drawing near to the holy of holies, and just in the same way we feel a peculiar trembling in our approaches to certain subjects, and have wondered at the readiness displayed by some in handling the profoundest or sublimest matters.

We could wish that our author had not felt himself under a necessity to give some allegorical interpretation of almost everything, as we consider it greatly detracts from the value of much that is truthful and well written, and gives an unnatural and fanciful tone to his work. For instance. He writes on 39:1:

“The wild goats of the rock and the hinds cannot be watched over by man as the flocks of the field are; yet all their ways are marked out by the Lord, and their wants supplied.”

This is very right, and would probably be the exact idea conveyed to Job’s mind. But our author goes on:

“The goat is in one or two places used to represent those who shall not inherit life. (Matt. 25:53.) The hind is frequently used to represent in some sense the people of God.”

We can hardly think these far-reaching reflections entered into Job’s mind, or would into that of some poor tried man in reading the Lord’s sublime answer to Job.

At the end of the book our author makes the Lord order Job to sacrifice for his three friends as ungodly men, still keeping to the idea that they were only Arminian wicked professors, and therefore, of course, the sacrifice was only to arrest temporal calamities. Now we fairly confess we dislike our author’s strictly typical scheme and its almost necessary consequences. It is, perhaps, like an act of temerity to express disapproval of things in a work ushered in with the author’s declaration: “I trust I have evidence that the Lord has directed me by his Spirit to write upon this subject.” But still we should never give our opinion upon any writing if we were deterred by such remarks. Most authors who acknowledge, in divine things, their dependence upon the Holy Spirit, probably consider that they have a divine leading in what they write. Indeed, our author bids us, not, we suppose, as bowing down to the dicta of infallibility, but as really trying the spirits, to examine and judge, as “wise men:” “Judge what I say.” We consider, then, that over allegorization is the great flaw in this book, leading, as we believe, to many outrageous statements such as those concerning Eliphaz’s vision. (Job 4) But our author shall speak for himself:

“Eliphaz is evidently intent upon causing Job to confess his hypocrisy, discard his own former doctrine, and becomes convert to him. So, as is usual in such efforts” (we were not aware of this),” he tells of a scaring vision. He would give supernatural weight to what he is going to say, by attributing his knowledge of it to the mysterious teachings of a spirit.”

Then our author, having for his text the words uttered in this vision, “Behold, he puts no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly,” writes:

“Here we learn clearly that this was a lying spirit; for this is not the truth. We have the assurance of God that these men did not speak of him the thing that is right; and the Scriptures show us the error of this assertion of Eliphaz. God does put trust in his servants, qualified by his Spirit to do his will. ‘Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth!” (Is. 42:1)

Now all this appears to us very objectionable. We believe Eliphaz uttered a very grand truth in these words, and if he had stuck to his text as things were intimated to him in his vision, and sought to correct the self-righteousness working in Job, as Elihu afterwards did, instead of heaping upon him unjust groundless reproaches, he might have been the Elihu of the book; but his own degree of acquaintance with divine things did not allow of this.

There is in this work, when these objectionable things are passed by, as we conceive, evidence of much thought and study, with a judicious explanation of many of the dark sayings; also a considerable acquaintanceship with the child of God’s pathway of sorrow and affliction. We consider that there is too much ingenuity of interpretation displayed at times, and too much, as we have before said, of the forced and fanciful. Take, for instance, the remarks upon Job 1:6:

“We need not try to imagine a particular number of people gathering to a particular locality literally with Satan in a bodily presence among them. Considering Job as representing the church, these, in the spiritual significance of the subject, would represent the individual members. Though each is a component part of the church, yet that church is presented as a perfect body to the contemplation of each. If we have known how Satan is present with his temptations when we seek the Lord, we have an intimation of what is presented here.”

Now, if our readers fail to extract any definite meaning out of these words, we shall not think it any great proof of incapacity. Indeed, we can only venture to guess at the meaning, and suppose the author’s view to be that when an individual child of God goes to God in prayer, he looks upon himself as a sort of aggregate, and therefore in him the sons of God come to present themselves before the Lord. And so in his individual temptations Satan comes with them, and to quote our author, “he is manifest to us only by doubts and evil thoughts;****he is manifest to the Lord, can be addressed by him, and can do but what he permits.” We must say we highly prefer the view which, if we mistake not, Caryl and other good men have taken, that God, to aid our weak capacities, describes here heavenly things by a figure taken from the courts of earthly monarchs, before whom, from time to time, their subjects appear. We do not conceive that Jehovah actually talked thus to Satan; but this idea of an earthly monarch’s, court day, or an eastern divan, is sustained throughout.

But we must conclude. We think, as we have before observed, that there are many good remarks and much proper reflection in the book, but cannot help conceiving that the tried, tempted, simple-minded reader will soon lay it down, and probably go with a double relish to that book which records the trials of Job with the sweet and simple, yet sublime pen of inspiration.