Job 29:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Job describes in very powerful terms the reverence that his peers, both young and old, held for him. This statement has such impact because of the enormous contrast with his present experience as he will go on to describe in chapter 30. Everybody knew him and he had renown from all. Job went out to the gate of the city where, customarily, matters of justice were settled, and where those who were appointed judges and those chosen to rule the people made public decisions, and there took his appointed seat in the open square. It was a more deferential society than our own, but nevertheless the respect shown towards him was extraordinary. This was the measure of the honour earned by his excellent character and which restrained the natural rebellion that lives in the heart of the young and which led even the aged to esteem one younger than them. It takes much for youth to be voluntarily respectful, but such was the gravity and aura that surrounded Job, that the young were instinctively silent before him and even hid from such a great man, not wishing to draw attention to themselves. The elderly forfeited the respect due to age that Job owed them, recognising that the natural order was reversed because of his exceptional dignity. Up and up it goes so that we wonder who this man was. He seems to have been higher than all, for the princes of the people also found it necessary to honour him as greater than themselves and the nobles were in awe of him; both of them were obliged to be silent in his presence. More than this there was a sort of self-imposed awkwardness that they had in his presence so that their tongues stuck to the roofs of their mouths. This is the sort of response shown towards a headmaster by his pupils, and it goes beyond this. Who was Job that he was considered as high above princes and nobles as a master is above his pupils? The first chapter of the book tell us that ‘this man was the greatest of all the men of the east’ (Job 1:3).Is it possible that Job says all of this only to explain the enormity of the change in his circumstances? Is he looking at this change in an entirely objective manner? Is it not also because he is overly concerned about the loss of his former status? It is difficult for a man who is treated with such reverence to prevent it going to his head. If Job had been able to handle such praise from men without sin, then it was not wrong for him to relate the honour he formerly received, but there seems to be too much relish for those earlier days to understand what he says this way. To him it is unreasonable that he should have lost so much without cause and this was certainly a fault, for he failed to acknowledge that God cannot be err in his providences.