Job and Solomon

Job and Solomon

It is useful to compare Job with Solomon. Job was the most righteous man under the sun in his time. He was one of the three most righteous men who lived throughout the centuries from the time of Adam until the prophet Ezekiel. See Ezekiel, Chapter 14.

Solomon pleased God. He was given the option of choosing what he wanted. Because he was so God-fearing and upright that he “chose to pray only for wisdom”—in order to be able always to judge righteously—everything else was added to him. With this wisdom that he had been given, he searched out everything under the sun, among other things also women. In spite of this, women became his downfall. His wives bowed his heart even to idolatry. This can almost incomprehensible

By way of comparison, it is especially edifying to consider Job. He is one of a kind! It must have been especially good to greet Job in the land of the living!

First he was deprived of all his children and all his possessions. Then he was stricken with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. After that, his wife served him the bitterest pill (Ch. 2:9), and finally his especially good friends came, who after a while reproached him as best they could, with all of them agreeing that there had to be ungodliness in his life because he had met with such misfortune.

However, I think that what this man could say in his defense could melt any hard heart; it could cause rocks to speak and the dead to rise. People usually focus on the fact that Job could not understand God’s treatment of him. Truth be told, that is not so much to focus on. Who, in his place and his time, would have understood it? Moreover, it is powerfully edifying to dwell on his defense and his trustworthy replies that are so rich in content. Examine them!

Let us just consider one single side of Job’s shining life, the side of his life that caused Solomon’s fall, and which has been the cause of many a fall down through the ages; the same thing that destroyed mankind in the days of Noah and which, even in these days and during the time of Christ’s return is destroying mankind: —namely, man’s relationship to woman.

Let us now hear the edifying words that Job—after he was thoroughly tested—had to say: “I have made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I look upon a young woman?” “If my heart has been enticed by a woman . . . then . . . .” Job 31:1, 9-12.

How firmly and beautifully this blessed man stood precisely where Solomon, who had received so much from God, fell. As richly as Solomon was blessed, so poor and wretched was his end because he was not faithful. But it is written of Job: “Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning . . . .” Job 42:12.

May this be said about all of us. Amen.