Can there be any doubt but that God is intimately concerned with the

sufferings of creation, of man and of the church?  Let the comfort of this

fact penetrate into the fibres of our being!  We do not suffer alone.  God

Himself calls us into fellowship with Himself.  We cannot cut the Gordian

knot of the problem of suffering by magnifying the Almighty Power of God

above all His other attributes.  The fact that He chose to create man in His

own image, reveals that He chose to do something that contained all the

potentialities of suffering up to the climax of the cross of Christ.

It is the purpose in these studies to lead the believer into the holy

place where God dwelleth, not so much in the isolated and unapproachable

majesty of the Lord God Almighty, but in the tender mercy and sympathetic

understanding of 'The Father' to Whom in one spirit we have access.

Theology, listening too intently to the demands of philosophy, has placed God

upon a pedestal, far removed from the passions and sorrows of this world.  If

the word 'sympathy' (Heb. 4:15 'touched with the feeling of our infirmities')

is admitted, it is limited to The Man Christ Jesus.  We hope that the sheer

weight of evidence has broken down the prejudice which most of us possess in

that we have caught a glimpse of God 'grieving' over the sinfulness of man,

being 'vexed' by the folly of His people, 'repenting' over and over again

because of the utter failure of His human instruments.  This aspect of

Inspired Truth we must pursue still further, until prejudice gives place to

joyous acceptance, and we discover a God Who is intimate and near, and not a

God Who is remote and far away.

We desire to draw attention to two passages from the book of Job.  We

are well aware of the possibility of mistaking the personal opinion of Job

expressed under the terrible pressure of afflictions, for oracular utterances

of doctrine, yet on the other hand we must not exclude from the inspired

Scriptures this book of human suffering and experience.  It has been written

for our learning, and in time of trouble the apostle James thought well to

direct his readers to 'the patience of Job', while God Himself in a wondrous

tribute has grouped Job with Noah and Daniel as a man of surpassing integrity

(Ezek. 14:14,20).  With every allowance for the frailty of Job and the

possibility that he erred in judgment, we submit that there are few, if any,

who are today worthy to sit at his feet.  Let us at least weigh his words, as

we would the words of our most respected and valued friend.  In Job chapter

10, he is baffled by the experiences through which he is passing, and the

growing fear that he has misunderstood the nature and character of God.

Barnes whose commentary on Job is considered his best work, says, on the

problem of this chapter:

'Is it good with Thee that Thou shouldest oppress?  The sense is, that

it could not be with God a matter of personal gratification to inflict

pain wantonly.  There must be a reason why He did it ... The state of

his mind appears to have been that he is a sincere friend of God, and

he is unwilling to believe that God can wantonly inflict pain'.

It is to verse 8, however, that we would direct attention: 'Thine hands

have made me'.  At first reading, this admission on the part of Job does not

appear to take us very far.  The margin reads 'took pains about me', and

Gesenius says that the primary idea is that of cutting, both wood and stone,

and hence to cut or carve with a view to the forming of an image.  There is,

however, a great danger in compelling language to conform to its ancestry and

early history.  Words are used today with a meaning far removed from their

etymology, and nonsense could be made of the finest literature if every word

were compelled to speak in the terms of its primitive meaning.  Usage is far