Job 1:21

Job SORROW THAT WORSHIPSJob 1:21 . This book of Job wrestles with the problem of the meaning of the mystery of sorrow. Whether history or a parable, its worth is the same, as tortured hearts have felt for countless centuries, and will feel to the end. Perhaps no picture that was ever painted is grander and more touching than that of the man of Uz, in the antique wealth and happiness of his brighter days, rich, joyful, with his children round him, living in men’s honour, and walking upright before God. Then come the dramatic completeness and suddenness of his great trials. One day strips him of all, and stripped of all he rises to a loftier dignity, for there is a majesty as well as an isolation in his sorrow. How many spirits tossed by afflictions have found peace in these words! How many quivering lips have tried to utter their grave, calm accents! To how many of us are they hallowed by memories of times when they stood between us and despair! They seem to me to say everything that can be said about our trials and losses, to set forth the whole truth of the facts, and to present the whole series of feelings with which good men may and should be exercised. I. The vindication of sorrow. He ‘rent his clothes’-the signs and tokens of inward desolation and loss. It is worth our while to stay for one moment with the thought that we are meant to feel grief. God sends sorrows in order that they may pain. Sorrow has its manifold uses in our lives and on our hearts. It is natural.

That is enough. God set the fountain of tears in our souls. We are bidden not to ‘despise the chastening of the Lord.’ It is they who are ‘exercised’ thereby to whom the chastisement is blessed. It is sanctioned by Christ. He wept. He bade the women of Jerusalem weep for themselves and for their children. Religion does not destroy the natural emotions-sorrow as little as any other. It guides, controls, curbs, comforts, and brings blessings out of it. So do not aim at an impossible stoicism, but permit nature to have its way, and look at the picture of this manly sorrow of Job’s-calm, silent, unless when stung by the undeserved reproaches of these three ‘orthodox liars for God,’ and going to God and worshipping. II. The recognition of loss and sorrow as the law of life. ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb.’ We need not dwell on the figure ‘mother,’ suggesting the grave as the kindly mother’s bosom that gathers us all in, and the thought that perhaps gleams forth that death, too, is a kind of birth. But the truth picturesquely set forth is just the old and simple one-that all possessions are transient. The naked self gets clothed and lapped round with possessions, but they are all outside of it, apart from its individuality. It has been without them. It will be without them. Death at the end will rob us of them all. The inevitable law of loss is fixed and certain.

(21) Thither. —If taken literally, can only refer to the womb, which in that case must here mean the earth, with a probable allusion to Genesis 3:19 . (Comp. Job 17:14 .) Blessed be the name of the Lord.—The very word used in a contrary sense (Job 1:11). Thus was Satan foiled for the first time.

Job 1:21 . Naked came I out of my mother’s womb — I brought none of those things which I have now lost with me when I came out of my mother’s womb into the world, but I received them from the hand and favour of that God who hath now required his own again; and naked shall I return — I shall be as rich when I die as I was when I was born; and therefore have reason to be contented with my condition, which also is the common lot of all men. We go naked out of the world into the womb or lap of our common mother the earth, as the weary child lays its head on its mother’s bosom. Death strips us of all our possessions and enjoyments; clothing can neither warm nor adorn a dead body: a consideration which silenced Job under all his losses. The sanctified soul, however, goes out of the world clothed, ( 2 Corinthians 5:3 ,) and when it appears in the presence of God is not found naked. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away — He hath taken away nothing but his own; nothing but what he so gave to me as to reserve the supreme dominion and disposal of it in his own hand. So that I have no cause to murmur against him or complain. Nor have I reason to fret and rage against the Chaldeans and Sabeans, the fire or the wind, which were only God’s instruments to execute his wise and holy counsel: for, what is it to me by what hand or means he that gives resumes what he gave? Blessed be the name of the Lord — That is, blessed be the Lord, his name being put for himself.

The sense is, I have no cause to quarrel with God, but much cause to bless and praise him that he did give me such blessings, and suffered me to enjoy them more and longer than I deserved, and that he hath vouchsafed to afflict me, which I greatly needed for my soul’s good; and which I take as a token of his love and faithfulness to me, and therefore ministering more matter of comfort than grief to me; and that he hath left me the comfort of my wife, and yet is pleased to continue to me the health of my body, and a composed mind, and a heart to submit to his good pleasure; and that he hath reserved and prepared a felicity for me, which no Chaldeans or Sabeans, no men or devils, can take away from me; of which see Job 19:25 .

21 . naked shall I return thither ] The general sense is plain, though the precise idea is obscure. The words “my mother’s womb” must be used literally, and return thither somewhat inexactly, to describe a condition similar to that which preceded entrance upon life and light. Or, as growth in the womb is described, Psalm 139:15 , as “being curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,” the womb and the bosom of the earth, “the mother of all,” may be compared together. “We brought nothing into the world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,” 1 Timothy 6:7 . All that man has is a gift of God which He may recall. Job blesses God alike who gave and who recalled. the name of the Lord ] The Author here lets the Israelitish name Jehovah fall from the lips of his hero, contrary to his usual habit of putting the names God, Almighty, which were not distinctively Hebrew, into the mouths of the speakers. Perhaps the phrase was a general one which alteration would have spoiled; or more likely, the writer was so much in sympathy with the sentiment put into Job’s mouth that it escaped him for the moment that it was not himself or his nation but one foreign to Israel that was uttering it.

And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return {b} thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; {c} blessed be the name of the LORD. (b) That is, into the belly of the earth, which is the mother of all. (c) By this he confesses that God is just and good, although his hand is sore on him.

Verse 21. - And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither . There is some difficulty in the word "thither," since no man returns to his mother's womb ( John 3:4 ), at death or otherwise. The expression must not be pressed. It arises out of the analogy, constantly felt and acknowledged, between "mother" earth and a man's actual mother (setup. Psalm 129:15). The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away . Job is here represented as knowing God by his name "Jehovah," though elsewhere the "great Name" appears once only in the words of Job ( Job 12:9 ), and never in the words of his friends. The natural conclusion is that the name was known in the land of Uz at the time, but was very rarely used - scarcely, except in moments of excitement. Blessed be the Name of the Lord ; literally, may the Name of Jehovah be blessed! The ermphatic word is kept for the last. According to Satan, Job was to have" cursed God to his face" (ver. 11). The event is that he openly and resolutely blesses God. That the same word is used in its two opposite senses rather accentuates the antithesis. Job 1:21

21. Naked—(1Ti 6:7). "Mother's womb" is poetically the earth, the universal mother (Ec 5:15; 12:7; Ps 139:15). Job herein realizes God's assertion (Job 1:8) against Satan's (Job 1:11). Instead of cursing, he blesses the name of Jehovah (Hebrew). The name of Jehovah, is Jehovah Himself, as manifested to us in His attributes (Isa 9:6).