Job 29:4 Commentary and Bible Study

In those days Job lived with the assurance that God was favourable towards him, and he was therefore not afraid of the future for the future was in God’s hands. He lived with a sense of well-being, and it did not seem to be a hard thing for a believer to please God for the Lord is naturally pleased with his children. Job felt safe in the kindness of God and it never occurred to him to think of God as arbitrary or cruel for he received nothing from God to suggest this. He was sure that he was right to think of God in this way so that it was a matter of profound confusion to him to experience such different treatment from the Lord. Why did he now have to struggle with such a different view of God? Why should his Creator want him to think of him as cruel and vindictive, and yet Job’s prolonged trials seemed to lead to no other conclusion. The word ’secret’ indicate familiar converse, intimate or confidential counsel together. God was close to him and he found it easy to trust the Lord. Though he had reverence towards God it was as if he came to one he knew well and whom he could trust to never harm him. Why had everything now changed, and how could this be the same God who was now dealing with him with such harshness and cruelty – a God who seemed a stranger? It disturbs us greatly when someone we thought we knew well changes so much?We find it easier to read the Lord’s love to us in those acts that we can see. Job took it as a sign that he was loved when he enjoyed the presence and happiness of having his children around him. Those days had now come to an end and they had no power by their recollection of them to restore his joy. He could only feel the loss of them because they had been suddenly and violently taken away. It is hard not to interpret such severe providences as signs of God’s anger with us and disapproval of us, yet Job would have been wrong to do so. He had been a good father, training up his children in right ways, caring about them and interceding for them with the Lord. As he thought back on the past, he could not see what he had done wrong that they should be so cruelly taken away. Why was God, who had loved him and blessed him, become his enemy? Where could he find consolation for the loss of his children? Job’s remembrance for the Lord’s smile was one reason why he longed for the past but it was not the only reason. He also had fond memories of the honour which he received then and the status he had in society. None of the friends could dispute what he was about to say in the verses that follow, for they had all seen with their own eyes the reverence with which he had been treated by small and great alike. The problem was not that these things were untrue but that Job set too much store by them. There seems to be an element of self-pity in his recollections, for in drawing attention to the greatness of the change in his circumstances, he pleads for pity that he has lost so much. His steps were bathed with butter or cream – an extravagant figure of speech. It would have been gross impropriety (Gill) to have ordered his servants to do this literally, and Job would not have conducted himself in such a boastful way. The figure refers to the way in which other people honoured him and by extension honoured the very ground on which he stood. Not only this but God prospered his way so that whatever he turned his hand to was successful so that it seemed as if the barren ground was made to yield great rivers of oil for him.