22 Be pleased to take teaching from his mouth, and let his words be stored up in your heart.
I have never gone against the orders of his lips; the words of his mouth have been stored up in my heart.
And now give ear, O Israel, to the laws and the decisions which I am teaching you, and do them; so that life may be yours, and you may go in and take for yourselves the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Make no addition to the orders which I give you, and take nothing from them, but keep the orders of the Lord your God which I give you.
Keep these words, which I say to you this day, deep in your hearts; Teaching them to your children with all care, talking of them when you are at rest in your house or walking by the way, when you go to sleep and when you get up. Let them be fixed as a sign on your hand, and marked on your brow; Have them lettered on the pillars of your houses and over the doors of your towns.
I have kept your sayings secretly in my heart, so that I might do no sin against you.
And he gave me teaching, saying to me, Keep my words in your heart; keep my rules so that you may have life:
But to me your word is a joy, making my heart glad; for I am named by your name, O Lord God of armies.
My son, if you will take my words to your heart, storing up my laws in your mind; So that your ear gives attention to wisdom, and your heart is turned to knowledge; Truly, if you are crying out for good sense, and your request is for knowledge; If you are looking for her as for silver, and searching for her as for stored-up wealth; Then the fear of the Lord will be clear to you, and knowledge of God will be yours. For the Lord gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and reason: He has salvation stored up for the upright, he is a breastplate to those in whom there is no evil; He keeps watch on the ways which are right, and takes care of those who have the fear of him. Then you will have knowledge of righteousness and right acting, and upright behaviour, even of every good way.
And he said to them, For this reason every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house, who gives out from his store things new and old.
But Mary kept all these words in her heart, and gave much thought to them.
And last of all, the prayer which we make to you from our heart and in the name of the Lord Jesus, is this: that as we made clear to you what sort of behaviour is pleasing to God, as in fact you are doing now, so you will go on in these ways, but more and more. Because you have in mind the orders we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 22
Commentary on Job 22 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 22
Eliphaz here leads on a third attack upon poor Job, in which Bildad followed him, but Zophar drew back, and quitted the field. It was one of the unhappinesses of Job, as it is of many an honest man, to be misunderstood by his friends. He had spoken of the prosperity of wicked men in this world as a mystery of Providence, but they took it for a reflection upon Providence, as countenancing their wickedness; and they reproached him accordingly. In this chapter,
Job 22:1-4
Eliphaz here insinuates that, because Job complained so much of his afflictions, he thought God was unjust in afflicting him; but it was a strained innuendo. Job was far from thinking so. What Eliphaz says here is therefore unjustly applied to Job, but in itself it is very true and good,
Job 22:5-14
Eliphaz and his companions had condemned Job, in general, as a wicked man and a hypocrite; but none of them had descended to particulars, nor drawn up any articles of impeachment against him, until Eliphaz did so here, where he positively and expressly charges him with many high crimes and misdemeanours, which, if he had really been guilty of them, might well have justified them in their harsh censures of him. "Come,' says Eliphaz, "we have been too long beating about the bush, too tender of Job and afraid of grieving him, which has but confirmed him in his self-justification. It is high time to deal plainly with him. We have condemned him by parables, but that does not answer the end; he is not prevailed with to condemn himself. We must therefore plainly tell him, Thou art the man, the tyrant, the oppressor, the atheist, we have been speaking of all this while. Is not thy wickedness great? Certainly it is, or else thy troubles would not be so great. I appeal to thyself, and thy own conscience; are not thy iniquities infinite, both in number and heinousness?' Strictly taken, nothing is infinite but God; but he means this, that his sins were more than could be counted and more heinous than could be conceived. Sin, being committed against Infinite Majesty, has in it a kind of infinite malignity. But when Eliphaz charges Job thus highly, and ventures to descend to particulars too, laying to his charge that which he knew not, we may take occasion hence,
Let us see the particular articles of this charge.
Job 22:15-20
Eliphaz, having endeavoured to convict Job, by setting his sins (as he thought) in order before him, here endeavours to awaken him to a sight and sense of his misery and danger by reason of sin; and this he does by comparing his case with that of the sinners of the old world; as if he had said, "Thy condition is bad now, but, unless thou repent, it will be worse, as theirs was-theirs who were overflown with a flood, as the old world (v. 16), and theirs the remnant of whom the fire consumed' (v. 20), namely, the Sodomites, who, in comparison of the old world, were but a remnant. And these two instances of the wrath of God against sin and sinners are more than once put together, for warning to a careless world, as by our Saviour (Lu. 17:26, etc.) and the apostle, 2 Pt. 2:5, 6. Eliphaz would have Job to mark the old way which wicked men have trodden (v. 15) and see what came of it, what the end of their way was. Note, There is an old way which wicked men have trodden. Religion had but newly entered when sin immediately followed it. But though it is an old way, a broad way, a tracked way, it is a dangerous way and it leads to destruction; and it is good for us to mark it, that we may not dare to walk in it. Eliphaz here puts Job in mind of it, perhaps in opposition to what he had said of the prosperity of the wicked; as if he had said, "Thou canst find out here and there a single instance, it may be, of a wicked man ending his days in peace; but what is that to those two great instances of the final perdition of ungodly men-the drowning of the whole world and the burning of Sodom?' destructions by wholesale, in which he thinks Job may, as in a glass, see his own face. Observe,
Job 22:21-30
Methinks I can almost forgive Eliphaz his hard censures of Job, which we had in the beginning of the chapter, though they were very unjust and unkind, for this good counsel and encouragement which he gives him in these verses with which he closes his discourse, and than which nothing could be better said, nor more to the purpose. Though he thought him a bad man, yet he saw reason to have hopes concerning him, that, for all this, he would be both pious and prosperous. But it is strange that out of the same mouth, and almost in the same breath, both sweet waters and bitter should proceed. Good men, though they may perhaps be put into a heat, yet sometimes will talk themselves into a better temper, and, it may be, sooner than another could talk them into it. Eliphaz had laid before Job the miserable condition of a wicked man, that he might frighten him into repentance. Here, on the other hand, he shows him the happiness which those may be sure of that do repent, that he might allure and encourage him to it. Ministers must try both ways in dealing with people, must speak to them from Mount Sinai by the terrors of the law, and from Mount Sion by the comforts of the gospel, must set before them both life and death, good and evil, the blessing and the curse. Now here observe,