Job 36:14

More serious still is the case of "the hypocrites in heart" (v.13), for "they store up wrath." These are those who pretend to be believers while their hearts are against God. "They do not cry for help when He binds them." When the Lord puts them in a bind, they totally fail the test, for how can a hypocrite honestly cry to the Lord for help? Their own hypocrisy defeats them, and they die in their youth in company with perverted people (v.14). Their foolish choice in life decides their end in death.

The more likely view is the usual one. The word means someone "consecrated" to the corrupt goddess Astarte, or Venus, worshipped in idolatry early and late… The view that the word means a holy woman cannot explain its masculine form, which occurs in Deuteronomy 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24; 2 Kings 23:7; Job 36:14. Can anyone argue that holy men, or seers, are meant in those places? If the masculine form clearly means a class of extreme moral corruption, then the argument for a "holy woman" falls to the ground… Terrible to say, prostitution was almost everywhere a part of what the nations counted as holy!

Here, I take it, the subject is not unbelievers being brought into God's favour. It is the discipline of believers under His good hand… So the discipline of His people is the main subject of this chapter… Of course, not every word of the chapter applies only to His people. In the New Testament, a record of the privileges of those who are His can still hold warning words about those who deceive. It is the same here in the Old.

He speaks of the righteous, as under His eye, in the highest honour, but presently as bound with fetters of humiliating sorrow, which God nevertheless uses for good in showing them their ways of pride, opening their ears to discipline, and turning them back from the evil which they had failed to judge. Obedience is the path of good and joy; heedlessness, of ruin in every way.

He points out the great principles of affliction in this present life. The hypocrite refuses them. He nurses his wrath instead of humbly crying to God for mercy, and his refusal only underlines them. The one who despises God will meet his doom with all the unclean. But God will save the humble sufferer, "in" and indeed "by" his affliction. It "works out" blessing for him.

You have sinned, and the chains and cords made you cry out. And remember, the believer cannot touch sin without great bitterness of soul. God uses that very bitterness to restore the soul of the failing believer… You say, "If I were a child of God, I would surely not have all this trouble and bitterness." But this word shows you something. If you were not a real child of God, but a hypocrite in heart, you would not have all this bitterness. You would go on in sin until you perished for ever.