Job 4:13-17 In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men,… The text was uttered by an individual for whom we cannot perhaps claim that he Spake by the Spirit of God. Eliphaz recounts a vision; he records words which were mysteriously brought to him amid the deep silence of the night. We use the wild and awful circumstances of this vision to give solemnity to the truth which is brought to our notice. "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?" We have the account of an apparition. A purely spiritual being, such as an angel, assumed a visible though indescribable form, and stood before Eliphaz in the stillness of the night. We see nothing in the statements of Scripture or the deductions of reason, from which to decide that there cannot be apparitions; that the invisible state may never communicate with the visible through the instrumentality of phantoms, strange and boding forms that are manifestly not of this earth. There may easily be a weak and fond credulity in regard of ghosts and apparitions; but there may be also a cold and hard scepticism. The Bible, so far from discountenancing the notion of apparitions, may be said to give it the weight of its testimony, and that too, in more than one instance. Of this one thing may we be fully persuaded, that it would not be on any trivial or ordinary occasion that God drew aside the veil, and commissioned spiritual beings to appear upon earth. So terrible is the apparition in the text, that we naturally prepare ourselves for some very momentous communication. But the expectation does not appear to be answered. If there is an elementary truth, it surely is that man cannot be more just than God, nor more pure than his Maker. There is no debate that a pure theism was the creed of Job and his friends. What, then, are we to gather from the visit of the spectre? We wish you to contrast the solemnity and awfulness of the agency employed with the simplicity and common. ness of the message delivered. But is there not often needed some such instrumentality as that of the spectre to persuade even ourselves that mortal man is neither more just nor more pure than his Maker? The vision was probably granted, and certainly used to oppose an infidelity more or less secret, — an infidelity which, fostered by the troubles and discrepancies of human estate, took the Divine attributes as its subject, and either limited or denied them altogether. Is there no such infidelity among ourselves? We are persuaded that, if you will search your own hearts, you will find that you often give it some measure of entertainment. We are persuaded of this in regard both of God's general dealings and of His individual or personal. (Henry Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,WEB: In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, |
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