Preaching Easier than Practising
Job 4:3-5
Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands.…


Behold, thou hast instructed many, etc. To do each day's duty with Christian diligence, and to bear each day's crosses with Christian patience; thou hast done it well. But how comes it now to pass that thy present doings shame thy former sayings? and that, as it was noted of Demosthenes the orator, thou art better at praising of virtue than at practising of it? What a shame was it that Hilary should complain that the people's ears were holier than the preachers' hearts, and that Erasmus, by a true lest, should be told that there was more goodness in his book of the Christian soldier than in his bosom! Eliphaz from this ground would here argue that Job was little better than a hypocrite; a censure over-rigid, it being the easiest thing in the world, as a philosopher observed, to give good counsel, and the hardest thing to take it. Dr. Preston, upon his death bed, confessed, that now it came to his own turn, he found it somewhat to do to practise that which he had oft pressed upon others.

(J. Trapp.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.

WEB: Behold, you have instructed many, you have strengthened the weak hands.




Job's Usefulness in the Past
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