Lecture 2 — Is Job blameworthy?

^10:14^ If I have sinned and you have spared me for a moment, why did you not allow me to be cleansed from my iniquity?

^10:15^ If I am unjust, woe is me! And if I am just, I will not lift up my head, drowned in unhappiness and despair.

^10:16^ Because of my pride, you will capture me like a lioness and again you will torment me wondrously.

^10:17^ You set up witnesses against me, you redouble your anger against me, and punishments battle against me.

182. If I have sinned and you have spared me. Job sought the cause of his punishment in what he said before, based on the supposition that he was innocent. Here he proceeds to inquire whether he is punished because he is a sinner. To show first that he is not punished for sin, he uses the following argument. If he had committed sin, he must have sinned most in the time of his prosperity. But if sin is the only reason why some suffer adversities in the present, given the presence of the cause, the effect must follow. Therefore, immediately after someone sins, adversity must follow. However, it is clear that Job preserved the same manner of living in the times of his prosperity. If he sinned living in this way, then he had sinned for a long time before he suffered adversity. So, since adversity did not immediately follow after sin, it must be that God spared him for that time, because he did not bring any adversity on him. To say that God again imputes as fault a sin which God had tolerated seems unfitting. Therefore, it does not seem that he is punished now for a sin which he committed before. He speaks to this theme when he says, if I had sinned, in the time of my prosperity, and you have spared me for a moment, by not immediately causing adversity for me, why did you not allow me to be cleansed from my iniquity? This is as if he said, “Why did you think I was pure in pardoning my sins at first in order to punish me later, as though I were not pure?”

183. He also adds another argument as a consequence, which is this: if sin is the whole cause for the adversities of the present life, it would follow that the just would not suffer adversities in this world like sinners do. However, it is common experience that adversities are universally suffered by both the just and by sinners. This is just what he says, if I am unjust, woe is me! because I suffer adversities; and if I am just, either I was that way earlier, or only now became so, I will not lift up my head, and pretend to be free from sorrow because of it. I speak as one existing drowned in affliction from sorrow, and despair, from need and confusion. By drowning he refers to the abundance of his affliction and misery, and he seems to say this against the words of Eliphaz and Baldath who had said that if he were converted he would be freed from adversity (Job 5:18, 8:5). Against this he says that even if he were justified, he would still not be free from misery, although he has been sufficiently punished for his past sins, if there were any. He shows this using the term of misery and affliction.

184. Because Eliphaz imputed the fact that he said he was innocent to pride, he then says, because of my pride, you will capture me like a lioness. For Eliphaz had already referred to Job, saying, the roaring of the lion and the voice of the lioness and the teeth of the lion’s whelps are broken (Job 4:10). Therefore he says, because of my pride, you will capture me like a lioness, as if he should say, “You make me to be reckoned by those who hear my words like a lioness because of pride.” The fact that he was considered evil for that reason was, for him, a further punishment beyond the first one. So he continues, and again you will torment me wondrously, for you first afflicted me by taking away things and wounding my body, and now you have returned again and torment me through my friends. This is cause for wonder because I ought to receive consolation from my friends. Or he says this because a man is most tormented when he is derided by his friends. He shows the type of torment this is, continuing, you set up witnesses against me. For Eliphaz and his companions made a pretense of defending the justice of God, and in this they wanted to stand like witnesses to speak on behalf of God and attack Job to convict him of sin, or so it seemed to him. Therefore, you multiply your anger against me, that is, the effect of your anger when you punish me in so many different ways, and your punishments battle against me, when they assault me with authority and without contradiction. For soldiers normally capture with royal authority and without contradiction anyone who is thought to be a criminal.