Job 24:25

And if [it be] not [so] now,.... If this is not the case of men of such wicked lives as above described, do not prosper in the world, and increase in riches, and do not pass through the world with

He draweth also the mighty with his power: he riseth up, and no man is sure of life. Reply of Job to the opinions of the friends. Experience proves the contrary.

If it be not so now, to wit, as I have discoursed; if God doth not suffer wicked men to live long and prosperously in the world before he punisheth them; and if good men be not sometimes sorely afflicted there, if all things do not fall alike to all men in these matters.

Job 24:25 And if [it be] not [so] now, who will make me a liar, and make my speech nothing worth?Ver. 25. And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar?] Quis ementietur me? Who shall disprove or confute what I have affirmed? viz. That God doth many things, the depth whereof we cannot fathom, and that he let wicked men many times spend their days in pleasure, and end them without pain. This I will abide by, and I would fain see the man, qui ausit et possit, who can and will maintain the contrary.

(25) And if it be not so now.—Job also has his facts, as ready and as incontrovertible as those of his friends, and yet irreconcilable with theirs.

Verse 25. And if it be not so now] Job has proved by examples that the righteous are often oppressed; that the wicked often triumph over the just, that the impious are always wretched even in the midst of their greatest prosperity; and he defies his friends to show one flaw in his argument, or an error in his illustration of it; and that existing facts are farther proofs of what he has advanced. IN the preceding chapters we find Job's friends having continual recourse to this assertion, which it is the grand object of all their discourses to prove, viz., The righteous are so distinguished in the approbation of God, that they live always in prosperity, and die in peace. On the other hand, Job contends that the dispensations of Providence are by no means thus equal in this life; that experience shows that the righteous are often in adversity, and the wicked in power and prosperity. Job's friends had also endeavoured to prove that if a reported good man fell into adversity, it was a proof that his character had been mistaken, that he was an internal sinner and hypocrite; and that God, by these manifest proofs of his disapprobation, unmasked him. Hence they charged Job with hypocrisy and secret sins, because he was now suffering adversity, and that his sins must be of the most heinous nature, because his afflictions were uncommonly great. This Job repels by appeals to numerous facts where there was nothing equivocal in the character; where the bad was demonstrably bad, and yet in prosperity; and the good demonstrably good, and yet in adversity. It is strange that none of these could hit on a middle way: viz., The wicked may be in prosperity, but he is ever miserable in his soul: the righteous may be in adversity, but he is ever happy in his God. In these respects, God's ways are always equal. On Job 24:14, I have referred to the case of unfortunate men who, falling into adversity, madly have recourse to plunder to restore their ruined circumstances. The following anecdote is told of the justly celebrated Dr. Sharp, archbishop of York, the grandfather of that highly benevolent, useful, learned, and eminent man, Granville Sharp, Esq., with whom I had for several years the honour of a personal acquaintance. "Never was any man, as well by the tenderness of his nature as by the impulse of religion, better disposed to succour the distressed, and relieve the necessities of the poor; to which merciful offices he had so strong an inclination that no reasonable solicitations were ever in danger of meeting with a repulse. Nay, he was more prone to seek out proper objects of his bounty, than to reject them when recommended; and so far was his charity from any suspicion of being extorted by importunity, that it appeared rather a delight than uneasiness to him to extend his liberality upon all proper occasions." For the same reason, a singular anecdote of the archbishop, related in the London Chronicle of Aug.

25. Job alas! is only too sure of his facts, and conscious that he has history and experience at his back he victoriously exclaims, Who will make me a liar? Job has gained his victory over his friends, but he has received, or rather inflicted on himself, an almost mortal wound in achieving it. He has shewn that God’s rule of the world is not just, in the sense in which the friends insisted that it was just, and in the sense in which his own moral feeling demanded that it should be just. God is not righteous, in the sense that he punishes wickedness with outward calamity and rewards the righteous with outward good. So far the three friends are defeated, and with their defeat on the general question their inferences from Job’s calamities as to his guilt fall to the ground. To this extent Job has gained a victory. But his victory, if it secures the possibility of his own innocence, leaves to his mind a God whom he believes to be unrighteous. For his view of what could be called “righteousness” in the Ruler of the world coincides entirely with the view of his friends.

And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar? - A challenge to anyone to prove the contrary to what he had said. Job had now attacked their main position, and had appealed to facts in defense of what he held.