Job 28:1

Now in the next chapter (Job 28) we have a very remarkable addition — one of the most striking in the book of Job. It seems very abrupt. He now turns away from man altogether in his bad ways, and from defending those who really looked to God. He looks at the general state of mankind. Not any particularly evil class or righteous class.

Job speaks on. He now contrasts the doom of the ungodly rich, described in the chapter before, with the true riches, which can never be lost... The opening part of the chapter describes the toil and care with which men search for the "delved gold"... This chapter would prove that Job could not be the hypocrite his friends would make him out to be.

"Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they find it." Men do not find gold in veins as they find silver. Gold comes in quite a different way — often as dust, and sometimes as nuggets. But silver runs in large and rich veins. "Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone." That is exactly where men find copper. Where we read "brass" it is very often "copper" — chiefly so in the Bible.

He speaks first of the treasures of the earth, the riches which man seeks after, but which do not last, and are so often man's undoing. Job shows that he had a good knowledge of mining operations. He knows of veins of silver and how gold is refined... Then he describes how the miner with his mining lamp makes an end to the darkness when he digs into the mountains and then he sinks a shaft... All this man does, risking life and comfort, to get gold and the treasures of the earth.

It is wealth, gold, jewels, glory, that man seeks after, and for which he is ready to barter his very life and soul... Of course, this does not mean that these precious things are sinful in themselves. Nor does it deny that we need their proper use. But the restless craving for them shows the poverty of man's heart, seeking what can never satisfy.

There is a mine for silver, the "current money with the merchant." How much labour goes into that shining white metal! In the East people use it widely as money. Sadly, of what it pictures — the redemption-price for the soul of man (Ex. 30:11-16; Ex. 38:25-28) — men know little and care less... Men also refine gold in the fire and make it into beautiful ornaments and the king's crown. They will travel to the ends of the earth for it. Most treat the true gold — the righteousness of God in Christ — as worthless.

"He binds the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hidden he brings forth to light. But where shall wisdom be found?" No, there is no wisdom in all that. There is self in all that. There is what will make a man rich. There is what will bring money and perhaps standing. But where shall wisdom be found?

Men may discover much. Since Job's day they have discovered vastly more. But wisdom still escapes them. Suppose Job could have seen what men do and discover in our atomic age. He would say the same, only a hundred times more strongly.