Verses 1-23
Remember that Job’s friends had accused him of having committed some great sin; which would account for his great sorrows. The good man is naturally very indignant, and he uses the strongest possible language to cast away front himself with horror the charges which they brought against him in the day of his grief.
Job 27:1-4. Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul; all the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my tips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit.
He felt that; it would be wicked for him to confess to what he had never done; it would be deceit for him to acknowledge crimes which he had never committed. Therefore he most solemnly asseverates, by the living God, that he never will permit the falsehood to pass his lips. He had not transgressed against God in the way his friends insinuated, and he would not own that he had.
Job 27:5. God forbid that I should you: till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me.
We are bound to keep to the truth. No man is permitted, with mock humility, to make himself out to be what he is not. Job was right, so far, in standing up, for the integrity of his character, for he was a man of such uprightness that even the devil could not find fault with him. He was such a holy man that God could say to Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one, that feareth God and escheweth evil?” And all that the devil could do was to insinuate that he had a selfish motive for his goodness. “Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that; he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.” Job was upright, yet we are never so right but what there is a mixture of wrong with our right. A man may very easily become self-righteous when he is defending his own character; there may be a 1ack of admissions of faults unperceived; there may be a blindness to faults that ought to have been perceived; and something of that imperfection, doubtless, was in the patriarch.
Job 27:6. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.
There he went too far, for he had not yet seen God as he afterwards saw him. Before man, there was nothing with which he needed to reproach himself; but how he changed his tone when God drew near to him! Then he said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” IF we knew more of God, we should think less of ourselves. If those who consider themselves perfect had any idea of what perfection is, their comeliness would be turned in them to corruption.
Job 27:7-8. Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous. For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his so.
That is a very solemn, searching question; if a man does try to play fast and loose with God, if he be a hypocrite, and if he should gain by his hypocrisy all that he tries to gain, namely, repute among men, “what is his hope when God taketh away his soul?” Then, his hope is turned to horror, for he has to stand before him who cannot be deceived, but who reads him through and through, and casts him away because he has dared to insult his Maker by attempting to deceive omniscience. Oh, may you and I never play the hypocrite’s part! There cannot be a more foolish thing; and there cannot be a more wicked thing.
Job 27:9. Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him?
That is one of the tests of the hypocrite: “Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him?” Will the hypocrite cry to God at all? Will he not give up even his profession of religion when he loses his prosperity? And if he does cry, will God hear the double-tongued man?
Job 27:10. Will he delight himself in the Almighty? Will he always call upon God?
These questions, while they condemn those who are hypocrites, are comforting to many a sincere heart. Dear friend, do you delight yourself in God? Do you really admire him, love him, and seek to glorify him? Then you are no hypocrite, for no hypocrite ever found delight in religion, and especially no hypocrite ever found delight in God himself. “Will he always call upon God?” No, there are certain times when he will cease to pray. Pleasure enchants him, and he will not pray; or perhaps he is so discouraged and despairing that he cannot pray. There are times when the hypocrite gives up praying, but the Christian cannot give it up; it is his vital breath, he must pray. No sorrow is so deep as to take him off it; no joy is so fascinating as to seduce him from prayer; but as for the hypocrite, “Will he always call upon God?” No, you may rest assured that he will not.
Job 27:11. I will teach you by the hand of God:
Or, better, as the margin runs, “I will teach you being in the hand of God.” Being himself chastened, and experiencing the teaching of God, Job says to his friends, “I will teach you.”
Job 27:11-14. That which is with the Almighty will I not conceal. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain? This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty. If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword: and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread.
If God does not visit the hypocrite with punishment in his own person, it will certainly fall upon the next generation.
Job 27:15-18. Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his widows shall not weep. Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; he may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh.
“He buildeth his house as a moth,” which makes its home in the cloth, but the servant’s brush knocks it all out, and destroys the moth’s children, too. “And as a booth that the keeper maketh.” The hypocrite’s house is no better than that little shanty which the keeper of a vineyard puts up with a few boughs or mats, to sit under it from the heat of the sun. God saved us from being such poor builders as this! May we build a house that is founded on the rock!
Job 27:19. The rich man shalt lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not.
He has grown rich by oppression, he has become great in the land by his hypocrisy; but he speedily goes down to the grave. God looks at him, and he is gone.
Job 27:20. Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night.
This is a parallel passage to that word of our Lord, “But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”
Job 27:21. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.
These are your great ones, your proud ones, your strong men that fear nothing, and would insure their own lives to a certainty for the next twenty years; see how they go. Shadows are not more evanescent, a poor moth is not more easily crushed.
Job 27:22. For God shall cast upon him, and not spare: he would fain flee out of his hand.
The man would escape from God if he could. It was Job’s glory, as we read just now, that he was in God’s hand; but the hypocrite would fain flee out of God’s hand, yet that is altogether impossible.
Job 27:23. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.
Such ignominy shall be poured upon the hypocrite at last that all mankind shall endorse the sentence of God which condemns him; and shame and everlasting contempt shall be his portion. The Lord save all of us from such an awful doom, for Christ’s sake! Amen.