Fragments on Job

Contents

Reading pages: 59–79 · 81–103

1. 59The devil could touch only what God's hedge left open, and he struck Job's children at a drinking party, not at reading or prayer.
2. 61Job's wife spoke the devil's counsel, but Job, like a good pilot, stayed steady in prosperity and disaster alike.
3. 63Job's trials came all at once and without the usual consolations, and his three friends came only after a long delay.
4. 65The friends' delay had practical causes and a providential purpose, and their seven days with Job are ordinary speech, not a claim that they never ate or slept.
5. 67Job suffered both in body and in his fear that God's name was slandered through him, yet he never blasphemed, and when he opened his mouth he spoke mysteries.
6. 69Job, after the trophy of his patience, still felt the weight of his friends' hard words, as Paul endured reviling.
7. 71Job rebukes his friends for trampling on him, and the ungodly man of Job 20 is read as the heretic whose very prayer is sin.
8. 73The ungodly man of Job 20 is the teacher of false doctrine, whose gathered wealth he must vomit up and who never sees the true flock fed.
9. 75The unkindled fire of Job 20 is an invisible inward punishment like fever, and the Overseer of Job 20:29 is God, whose image good bishops strive to bear.
10. 77The prosperity of the wicked in Job 21 is read as the flourishing of heretical congregations, which only imitate the flock of Christ.
11. 79Heretics mock the law and the prophets and sing their own teachers' psalms, while the speeches of Job's friends were recorded because they are useful except where they accuse Job.
12. 81God lets us argue our case with him, and Eliphaz's false charges against Job describe real sins of creditors who strip the poor.
13. 83Eliphaz's charges become lessons on mercy to widows and orphans, on the sleep of sin, and on God's providence over all.
14. 85The righteous walk the everlasting path, and their souls' houses are filled with the virtues; Eliphaz rightly urges confession, though wrongly against Job.
15. 87Eliphaz's promises are just when spoken to sinners, though not to Job, and Job's oath in chapter 27 shows him unbroken after the devil's last attack through his friends.
16. 89Job swears by the God who afflicted him that he will not abandon his innocence or agree with his friends.
17. 91Wisdom is hidden from every man, and Job's ways flowing with butter are the virtues by which he nourished others.
18. 93Job's deeds of mercy and his silence are praised, and Elihu's words picture the soul that conceives and brings forth the word.
19. 95The sinner must turn to Christ the high priest, who alone heals what is incurable; this age is night, and sin makes a person like the beasts.
20. 97God's invitation to Job to answer him is the prize of his endurance, and nothing we suffer happens without God's judgment.
21. 99God explains that Job's sufferings revealed his hidden righteousness, and gives him power over the devil and the opposing powers.
22. 101The dragon of Job 41 is the devil, who wears the mask of virtue over each vice, yet with God's help each believer can overcome him.
23. 103The fire from the dragon's mouth is the teaching of those who slander the Creator, but Christ's weakness has conquered the dragon's power.