A good Job by Calvin

Although I am not a big Puritan fan, and don't really get on with Jonathan Edwards, I do so love John Calvin. Here is a great quote from him on Job (HT Mark Horne):

Let us have such modesty in us, as not to attempt anything against him: but whensoever it shall please him to chastise us, let every [one] of us thing thus himself: Go to, my God chastises me for such sin, and after such a manner: and it behooves me to make my profit of it. Therefore let us not be deaf when God warns us after that fashion: according to the examples he gives us, to the intent we grow not past grace, and so the thing befall us which is spoken heretofore, namely that we heap up continuously a greater wrath and a more horrible vengeance of God upon us.

(Calvin, Sermons on Job, Sermon 141, 36:15-19, p., 665)

I often think that Job is much less concerned about the 'problem of suffering' and much more about a wider understanding of how we follow God. I think we narrow it's application when we only think about it as that. Like all the bible it is about the greatness of God, the sinfulness and creatureliness of humanity, and the grace of a God who reaches down.

Actually, when I came to read the passage he is commenting on it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) even more brilliant than Calvin's comment, and this is because it is so concerned with these big themes:

“The godless in heart cherish anger;
they do not cry for help when he binds them.
They die in youth,
and their life ends among the cult prostitutes.
He delivers the afflicted by their affliction
and opens their ear by adversity.
He also allured you out of distress
into a broad place where there was no cramping,
and what was set on your table was full of fatness.

“But you are full of the judgment on the wicked;
judgment and justice seize you.
Beware lest wrath entice you into scoffing,
and let not the greatness of the ransom turn you aside.
Will your cry for help avail to keep you from distress,
or all the force of your strength?
Do not long for the night,
when peoples vanish in their place.
Take care; do not turn to iniquity,
for this you have chosen rather than affliction.
Behold, God is exalted in his power;
who is a teacher like him?
Who has prescribed for him his way,
or who can say, ‘You have done wrong’?

“Remember to extol his work,
of which men have sung.
All mankind has looked on it;
man beholds it from afar.