Night Terrors

Job 6; Job 7
The harsh censures and severe insinuations of
Eliphaz seem to have opened Jobs eyes to the fact,
that his own previous language had been too bold
and inconsiderate. It often happens that men do not
feel the complete force and meaning of their own
expressions, until they witness the effect produced
by them upon the minds of others. In his reply, he
therefore pleads in justification the severity of the
afflictions which had extorted those complaints from
him. He manifests a keen sense of the unkindness of
his friends, in being so ready to declare him guilty
because he was miserable, and in coming to him
with harsh reproaches instead of bringing the
consolations he so much needed. He implores them
to trust him with fairness, to examine his case in a
friendly spirit, and not to condemn him merely
because of his miserable condition. From this he
passes, as men so afflicted are apt to do, to
reflections upon the shortness and the miseries of
life; and then he reverts to his own condition,
expostulating with the Almighty upon the greatness
of his afflictions, and their long continuance.

Substantially the same state of feeling is evinced as

in his previous address, but a fresh element of
distress is added in a sharp sense of the worlds
injustice, and in the consciousness of being
misrepresented and misunderstood. This was a new
trouble; the harder to bear, as he could not but
perceive, that the judgment of the world at large
could not be more favorable to him, than that of
friends, who had known him so long and so well.
There is much force and beauty in this second
speech of Job, and many workings of the human
heart are laid open; but although the tone is less
violent than that of the former address, there is
much in it that cannot be commended or approved.
What strikes us forcibly in reading this speech is,
that in the midst of Jobs impatient longing for
death, which is now not less emphatically evinced
than before, the idea of suicide seems never to have
crossed his mind. It is not simply that he repelled the
suggestion, but it seems never to have occurred to
him as a conceivable or possible thing. It may be
doubted whether any instance of such an act had yet
anywhere occurred. There is no allusion to it in all
the complaints of the weariness of life, and the
accounts of misery and trouble, which the Scriptures

contain. Neither is there any trace of the fact in the

Old Testament, if we except the case of Saul, which,
under the circumstances, can hardly be regarded as
an act of suicide: and the only case in the New
Testament is that of Judas, which belongs to the
time in which the suicidal Romans had rendered at
least the idea of self-murder familiar to the Hebrews;
as is also instanced in the intended suicide of the
heathen jailor at Philippi.
The view which Job takes is clearly and very
beautifully expressed in the first verse of the seventh
chapter. Is there not an appointed time to man
upon earth? are not his days also like the days of an
hireling? That is, as the hireling has an appointed
close to his days labor, so has man an appointed
time for the close of his labor and grief. He then
argues further, that as a servant earnestly desireth
the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the
reward of his work, so may he as justifiably sigh for
the close of his lifes long and weary day. But there is
this difference, that the hireling in the midst of all
his toils can look forward with assured confidence to
the precise hour, at which they will close, and when
his wages will be given to him. But Job knows not
the appointed time for his release. Death seems his

only refuge, it is his only hope; and although he

knows that it must come at last, he knows not when.
Meanwhile he says: Months of vanity, and
wearisome nights are appointed to me. In the last
clause, respecting the wearisome nights there is an
apparent transition from the greater to the lesser
sense of the comparison. The nights, which bring
sound and healthful rest to the hireling, are to Job
more wearisome and full of seeming horrors than
even the day. We have had occasion to point out this
as one of the symptoms of his disease. But apart
from this, every one knows that under mental trial
the nights are far more terrible than the days. The
mind no less than the body lies loose and relaxed;
and all the avenues of the soul are open to receive
those impressions of grief, horror, and despair,
against which the guarded mind might be able to
stand up. The sleep, if unscared by dreams, is short
and unrefreshing; and that state, which is neither
sleeping nor waking, although it seems more of
wakefulness than sleep, has all the evil of both, and
none of the good of either. Them is a vague sense of
dread, of weight, and oppression, under some
impending horror. And then, when one fully rouses
with a start from such sleep or slumber, and has not
yet had time to put on the souls armor, it will seem

as if all is against him; as if the uses of life are past,

and that it has nothing more of hope or joy to offer.
It is only when, like another Samson, the man goes
forth and shakes himself, that he finds there is any
strength left in him; that the trials which perplex his
life may still be encountered, and the troubles which
bow him down may still be borne. Hence it is, that
Job and other sacred poets speak so much of the
terrors of the night; and that the Psalmist, especially,
so often dwells upon the blessedness of filling the
mind with thoughts of God and of his lovingkindness when we lie down upon our beds.
As we have said, the idea, that from the weariness of
toil the hireling should leave his work, before the
shades of evening warned him that the time
appointed of the master was come, had not entered
Jobs mind as among possible things; and he says, in
another place, All the days of my appointed time
will I wait till my change come. Indeed the fact, that
there was an appointed time, though he sometimes
complains that it was so long in passing, seems to
have been a great fact to his mind in all his
afflictions. This, indeed is a great fact in the history
of mans life, though he shows but little
consciousness of it. As God has sat limits to the sea

by a perpetual decree, Hitherto shalt thou come and

no farther, so has He set bounds and limits to the
life of man, Thus far and no farther shalt the line of
thy life reach. We live not by a peradventure. All
our care cannot lengthen our stature one cubit, so
can it not add one sand to the hour-glass of our lives.
And as we cannot lengthen, so neither can we really
shorten, our days in respect of this appointed time.
They who die in a time which God forbids, yet die
when God appoints. They may cut their thread of
life, but they cannot cut short the thread of Gods
decree. We live notwe cannot live, at our own will,
but at the will of God; and we are entirely tenants at
his will in these houses of clay, holding the lease of
our lives to what year He pleases.
Our time is fixed, and all our days are
numbered;
How long, how short, we know not: this
we know,
Duty requires we calmly wait the
summons
Nor dare to stir till Heaven shall give
permission,
Like sentries that must keep their
destined stand,

And wait the appointed hour till theyre

relieved.Blair.
But although mans life is at Gods appointment,
man must not live upon that appointment. He must
not say, God has appointed how long I shall live;
then what need I care how I live, or trouble myself
about the preservation of my life? This is to walk
contrary to one part of the Lords appointment,
while we were heedful to the other part. It is heathen
or Moslem submission to inevitable fate; but not
Christian submission to a Divine appointment. God
who appoints the term of mans life, also appoints
the means for its preservation to that term; and the
appointment affords no warrant for any one to cast
himself into needless dangers, or to forego the helps
assigned for the sustentation of existence.
The fact that there is a time as surely appointed to us
as to Hezekiah, although we are not allowed that
knowledge of the fact which he possessed, ought to
teach us patience in quiet waiting upon God. It is not
in man, whatever be his rage, to take one hour of our
appointed life from us, or to add one moment to the
time of our sorrow. If our very hairs are all
numbered, much more are all our days. Let us,

therefore, honor God by having good thoughts of

Him, knowing that whether our times be short or
long; calm or stormy, they are appointed times;
appointed by One who loves us with exceeding love,
although He well remembers that we are but dust.