Bible Commentaries
Job 17

Verses 1-16

Job 17:11

Happy is the man, no matter what his lot may be otherwise, who sees some tolerable realization of the design he has set before him in his youth or in his earlier manhood. Many there are who, through no fault of theirs, know nothing but mischance and defeat. Either sudden calamity overturns in tumbling ruins all they had painfully toiled to build, and success for ever afterwards is irrecoverable; or, what is most frequent, each day brings its own special hindrance, in the shape of ill-health, failure of power, or poverty, and a fatal net is woven over the limbs preventing all activity.

Mark Rutherford, The Deliverance, p. 142.

The Bed of Darkness

These words said in a moment of profound depression by Job, and untrue for him, are yet terribly true for others.

I. Terribly true will these words be to him who has spent his life without making eternity his aim, whose days are past, and his purposes, all of this world, are broken off. How true also of one whose mind is occupied exclusively by business. We are given the taper of life, by which we are to prepare our future bed, by the light of which we are to make ready for the place of our repose. If we have employed our time otherwise, shall we find rest on that ill-made couch? I trow not, we have made our bed in the darkness.

II. We have here a work to do. God did not send us here to dawdle through life. Every day brings with it responsibilities. We are sent into the world to glorify God and save our own souls. It is work done, and not work to be done, that we shall look to with confidence, and which will deserve commendation of God. Look to what God has set thee to do see how much of it thou hast accomplished. Injuries forgiven, not to be forgiven; restitution made, not to be made; pardon asked, not to be asked; confession made, not to be made; responsibilities executed, not merely undertaken.

S. Baring-Gould, Sermon-Sketches, p. 201.

References. XVII. 14. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 169. XVIII. 12. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1510. XIX. Ibid. No. 2909.