Job 40:6 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 40:6

Comments

Instead of a prolonged speech, as when he answered the comforters, Job falls silent after making this very brief response. Evidently he has begun to see the folly of his extended speeches and doesn’t wish to repeat this. We might think that he now fully understood all his error and would never repeat it, that he was at last facing hup to his error and the lesson was ended, but God does not stop at this point. The Lord has more to say to him, and therefore he is going to be further chastened and rebuked. The tone which the Lord uses shows that Job’s error is still very much in mind and it is clear that the Lord knows that Job has not yet fully understood in spite of his self-condemnation and humble posture. Job has fallen silent, but God is not going to let it go as easily as that. God has to rub it in, as it were. Sometimes we hold out and repentance becomes the easiest way out. He makes us face up to our sins. So often we need very firm treatment from God and from each other. The Lord summons Job to prepare for further action. It is the language of confrontation as when two warriors face each other in hand-to-hand combat. Job had dared to challenge the Lord’s righteousness in governing the affairs of his life. He must continue to be reminded of this, though he has backed down, because his heart needs to be further sifted. Let him then prepare himself for the encounter with his God and let the outcome be seen; God will question him and Job must answer. Of course the result is not in any doubt and for there is no possibility that he will prevail against the Lord, but his overconfidence in thinking that he could do so must be exposed. The outcome of the admonition is that Job will be questioned about what he knows and his ignorance will become apparent to him and to those with him. God conducts our sanctification with all the seriousness of a surgeon conducting a long and complicated surgical operation. The lives of his people run like golden threads passing through quagmires of dirt.

Application

We do not know ourselves as well as the Lord knows us and we dare not say anything about our hearts that contradicts what he says about us. The heart is deceitful above all things and no one can know it but the Lord, so that it is always safer for us to resign our case into his hands and to let him be the judge of when we have learnt our lesson. When a man considers himself to be humbled, further humbling may still be required before he can be said to be truly emptied of pride. Matthew Henry says, ‘Those who are truly convinced of sin, and penitent for it, yet have need to be more thoroughly convinced and to be made more deeply penitent.’ Since God’s work of sanctification in our hearts must involve our own recognition of our weakness and wrong attitudes, then God does not bypass our faculties. We must be involved, and the job cannot be done without out cooperation. It was therefore important for Job to accept that he needed to hear more from the Lord even though he seemed to have already accepted correction. Matthew Henry also, most helpfully, says, ‘When our hearts begin to melt and relent within us, let those considerations be dwelt upon and pursued which will make a thorough effectual thaw of it’. We should welcome the good effect of correction on our hearts and not resist it, and if we know ourselves well we should not say, ‘That is enough’, but instead say, ‘Surely I need more of this good medicine.’

‘Some might think it strange that God should still speak with Job, and mock at his presumptuousness, seeing he was utterly caste down in himself. But by this we see that when we are humbled, there is still some remnant of pride hidden in us, which only is only visible to God, and he must purge us from it … Although men are brought to God, and desire to align themselves with God’s will … God sees there is still some secret disease remaining which he needs to amend’ (Calvin – in modern English).

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Job 40:6 Commentary and Bible Study