Bildad asks if it can be right for Job to complain as he does. Such conduct is an arraignment of the Divine justice. Human judges have been known to twist justice to suit their own purposes; this conduct was and is only too common in the East. But is it to be thought that God would act in this way? Surely the Judge of all the earth must do right (Genesis 18:25).

I. GOD'S JUSTICE IS GOOD AND DESIRABLE. It is the mistake of narrow, one-sided views to confine the idea of God's justice to his relations with sin and punishment, and to regard it solely as that which provokes his wrath. This mistake leads people t,, have a horror of the very notion of God's justice. They would be profoundly thankful if it could be blotted out of the list of his attributes. They regard it as solely inimical to them. Their supreme desire is to escape from its clutches. It is to them a most dreadful thing. How contrary is all this to the scriptural idea of the justice of God! In the Bible God's justice is welcomed with delight in contrast to the terrible injustice of man. It is God's righteousness, God's fairness, God's equal dealing. This must be good and desirable.

II. THE JUSTICE OF GOD IS NOT ALWAYS APPARENT. Sometimes he seems to show himself in the same light as the unjust judges of imperfect human society. We cannot see the equity of his dealings. He even seems to be perverting judgment. Good men suffer, and evil men prosper. This is the common complaint of the Old Testament saints in their trouble (e.g. Psalm 73:3). But how is it possible if God is just? There is not only an apparent negligence that lets wrong be done among men unchecked. God himself appears to pervert justice in his own providential dealings, sending calamities to the innocent, and heaping favours on the guilty. This obvious fact was forced on the notice of men, and it raised most perplexing doubts at a time when temporal good was assumed to be the right reward of moral good.

III. WE HAVE GOOD REASON TO TRUST THE JUSTICE OF GOD.

1. He is almighty. He has not the inducement to act unjustly that tempts the weak. Deceit and injustice are the refuges of feebleness. Cowards are unjust. Strength can afford to be magnanimous.

2. He is perfectly wise. He will not blunder into injustice, as the most immaculate human judge may do.

3. He is absolutely good. Our revelations of God's character should assure us that his justice must be without a flaw, even though all appearances are against it. The faith that will not bear a strain is worthless. If we cannot trust God when he seems to be acting hardly and unfairly, it is little that we trust him when we can see that all is going well. The goodness of God is our security; we must judge of events by what we know of God in Christ, not of God by what we appear to discover in events.

4. Justice is not always what we should expect. The principle must be simple and intelligible. We must believe that justice in God must be what we know as justice - only infinitely exalted. But the application of this justice may be beyond our conceptions. It may be just for God to do what looks to us now as unfair. Here we must trust and wait for the end. - W.F.A.

These two words may be taken as expressing one and the same thing. If we distinguish them, judgment may serve to express God's righteous procedure in punishing the wicked; and justice His procedure in vindicating the righteous when they are oppressed. Job is unjustly charged, and accordingly he vindicates himself.

1. Job's maintaining of his own righteousness is not a quarrelling of God's righteousness, who afflicted him. Job held both to be true, though he could not reconcile God's dealing with the testimony of his own conscience, that did evidence his weakness, but not charge God With unrighteousness.

2. As for his complaints of God's dealings, he was indeed more culpable therein than he would at first see and acknowledge; yet therein he intended no direct accusation against God's righteousness. Learn —(1) The justice of God is so uncontrovertedly clear in all His proceeding, whether He act immediately, or mediately by instruments, that the conscience of the greatest complainer, when put to it seriously, must subscribe to it; and all are bound to the defence of it, as witnesses for God.(2) Such as know God, in His perfect and holy nature and attributes, will see clear cause to justify God in His proceeding; and particularly they who look upon His omniscient power and all-sufficiency, will see that He can neither be moved to injustice by hope of any reward, nor hindered to be just by the fear of the greatness of any, or any other by-respect.(3) Though God be unquestionably just, yet His dispensations may, sometimes, be such toward His people as they cannot easily reconcile His justice in His dealing, with the testimony of their own consciences, concerning their own integrity.(4) The study of God's sovereignty will solve many difficulties in the sad lots and sufferings of saints.

(George Hutcheson.)