Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Matthew Henry on Job 13:15

I've made a goal of reading through the whole Old Testament this summer and to distinguish between Law and Gospel as marginal notes. Re-reading Job has been fascinating, there's so much depth to what he says, and the Authorized Version (KJV) that I read is so poetic it's been great. So many of the arguments and questions of Job remain for theologians both clerical and lay. Some passages have confused me, but I've found help in an unlikely source (for me). Matthew Henry was a dissenting minister in Restoration England, I've actually been to many of the places he lived without knowing it. For anyone who knows my sympathies in English History, he would be an unlikely source for me to turn to, but I've found his commentaries incredibly helpful. On Job 13:15 "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him..." Henry wrote beautifully: "Job resolved to cleave to the testimony his own conscience gave of his uprightness. He depended upon God for justification and salvation, the two great things we hope for through Christ. Temporal salvation he little expected, but of his eternal salvation he was very confident; that God would not only be his Saviour to make him happy, but his salvation, in the sight and enjoyment of whom he should be happy. He knew himself not to be a hypocrite, and concluded that he should not be rejected. We should be well pleased with God as a Friend, even when he seems against us as an enemy. We must believe that all shall work for good to us, even when all seems to make against us. We must cleave to God, yea, though we cannot for the present find comfort in him. In a dying hour, we must derive from him living comforts; and this is to trust in him, though he slay us." Perhaps I'll have to be kinder to the Puritans in the future.