The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the stout lion’s whelps are scattered abroad.
The old lion dying for want of prey and the strong young lions scattered abroad belongs to the opening of the friends' argument, spoken by Eliphaz. The image of the aged predator starved for lack of spoil and of vigorous whelps driven apart is the figure he employs.
It stands in that portion of Job that sets forth overruling providence and the great problems of sin and suffering. There God is disciplining Job and leading him through the fire of affliction. In that setting Eliphaz and the friends press it to insist that affliction is always proof of sin and of divine displeasure, charging that Job's sufferings show him to be a sinner. On that ground denial of sin is wrong, and the only right course is confession of sin that God may pardon.
That counsel is good and generally true as a general principle. Yet as applied to Job's affliction it is misapplied, used to condemn where God had not condemned. In this it shows how men misjudge their fellows. With the verses that follow it also sets forth death as sleep and silence, and the grave as a place of silence and secrecy, of sleep and rest, of darkness and corruption and worms, where the dead go down together to rest in the dust. The perishing lion and the scattered whelps illustrate the loss and dispersal that belong to death.
The old lion dying for want of prey and the strong young lions scattered abroad belongs to the opening of the friends' argument, spoken by Eliphaz. The image of the aged predator starved for lack of spoil and of vigorous whelps driven apart is the figure he employs.
It stands in that portion of Job that sets forth overruling providence and the great problems of sin and suffering. There God is disciplining Job and leading him through the fire of affliction. In that setting Eliphaz and the friends press it to insist that affliction is always proof of sin and of divine displeasure, charging that Job's sufferings show him to be a sinner. On that ground denial of sin is wrong, and the only right course is confession of sin that God may pardon.
That counsel is good and generally true as a general principle. Yet as applied to Job's affliction it is misapplied, used to condemn where God had not condemned. In this it shows how men misjudge their fellows. With the verses that follow it also sets forth death as sleep and silence, and the grave as a place of silence and secrecy, of sleep and rest, of darkness and corruption and worms, where the dead go down together to rest in the dust. The perishing lion and the scattered whelps illustrate the loss and dispersal that belong to death.