| Job 42:8
| Take unto you, therefore, seven oxen, and seven rams, and go to my servant, Job, and offer for yourselves a holocaust: and my servant, Job, shall pray for you: his face I will accept, that folly be not imputed to you: for you have not spoken right things before me, as my servant Job hath.
| Offer. Septuagint, "Thou shalt make an oblation, karpoma, for you." (Haydock) --- Yet holocausts seem to have been the only species of sacrifice before Moses. The number seven, has always been in a manner sacred; (Calmet) being doubled, it shews the greatness of the offence. (St. Gregory) (Worthington) --- Job was to present these victims to God, (Calmet) as the priest and mediator, (Du Hamel) of whom God approved. He officiated for his family, (Calmet) and was the most honourable person there. (Haydock) --- It seems Job was not present when God gave this injunction; perhaps some time after their debates. (Calmet) --- Pray. Behold the efficacy of the prayers of the saints, even while upon earth. How much greater will it be, when their charity is greater and unfailing! (Haydock) --- The many sacrifices would not have sufficed, if Job had not joined his prayer, as St. Chrysostom (or 5 con. Judoeos) observes. His mediation did not derogate from God's mercy, under the law of nature; not does that of other men injure Christ's, under the law of grace, 2 Corinthians 1:11. We have here also a proof that both sacrifice and the devotion of the offerer, have their distinct effects; opus operatum, and opus operantis, as the schoolmen speak. Thus Job was honourably acquitted, while his friends were justly rebuked. Eliu needed no express condemnation; as what God says to one, must be applied to another in the same circumstances, Job 33:14. Protestants are therefore inexcusable, who preach a doctrine not only condemned in their fellows, Luther, etc., but long before in ancient heretics: as the justification by faith alone was in the apostles' time, the rejection of ceremonies in baptism, of confirmation and penance, in the Novatians, etc. See St. Cyprian 4:ep. 2. (Worthington) --- Face. Septuagint, "For I would not accept his face, and if it were not on his account, I had surely destroyed you. For you have not said to me any thing good (Roman Septuagint, true,) against (or concerning, kata,) my servant Job." They acted both against charity and truth. (Haydock) --- Before. Protestants, "of me the thing which is right." The words underlined were not so in the earlier edition by Barker, printer to James I, (1613) where some of the margin translations are also omitted, ver. 14, etc. The matter is of no farther consequence, than to shew that alterations have taken place since the days of James I, whose Bible is supposed to be the standard of the English Church. The marginal version is also frequently neglected altogether, (the year of our Lord 1706) though the authors seem to have looked upon it as equally probable with that in the text. (Pref.) (Haydock)
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