The Heart that is Hidden from Understanding
W.F. Adeney Job 17:4 For you have hid their heart from understanding: therefore shall you not exalt them. Job is persuaded that God will not desert him. He even takes the very delusions of his tormentors as the pledge from God for which he has been praying; for these delusions seem to come from God, and to show that he has hidden the heart of the three friends from understanding. If it be so, they will not be exalted by God to trample on the sufferer in his misery. I. UNDERSTANDING DEPENDS ON THE CONDITION OF THE HEART If the heart is wrong the judgment will be at fault. We do not judge simply as we see with our eyes. The mental and spiritual condition within largely determines the shape and character of our convictions. Observe some of the states of the heart that hide it from understanding. 1. Obtuseness. The heart may be simply dull and blind to truth. if the light shines with meridian splendour, the man who has cataracts in his eyes will stumble into the ditch as surely as if he were walking in midnight darkness. Some men have no eyes of sympathy with which to see their neighbours; they cannot understand them. Some have no spiritual perceptions of God; and they cannot understand him. 2. Prejudice. We see with the mind as well as with the eyes. Our perception is an amalgam of sight and thought. If the thought is warped, the perception will be crooked. A prejudiced heart excludes truth from the understanding. 3. Passion. Strong feeling blinds the judgment by its own fiery fury. The enraged heart, the sin-loving heart, the ill-regulated heart, are all void of understanding. We need a new and clean heart that we may receive God's truth. II. THE HEART FROM WHICH UNDERSTANDING IS HIDDEN CANNOT ENJOY THE FAVOUR OF GOD. His favour does not depend on intellectual conditions. Purely mental perplexity is no barrier against the soul in its enjoyment of the Divine love, for God does not wait for perfect orthodoxy before he will help and bless his children. But we have now to do with quite another kind of error. The error which cuts off from God's favour is moral; it springs from a perversion of heart. For this we are to blame, and therefore the loss it entails is justly deserved. The loss of God's favour is seen throughout, both in the origin and in the results of the error. 1. In its origin. The startling thought of Job is that it is God who has hidden the heart from understanding. The blindness is judicial, a result of God's action. This nay look like attributing moral evil to God. If Job in his terrible darkness meant anything of the kind, of course we know that he must have been in error. (1) But without going so far as this, we may see that God would withdraw his aiding Spirit from the perverse heart. The result would be to hide that heart from understanding,. (2) The laws of human life and thought which connect perversity of heart with lack of understanding proceed from God. (3) It is not well that truth should be understood by the perverse heart. Christ bade his disciples not cast their pearls before swine. The ideas for which we are not morally fit would be misapplied and degraded if we could receive them. 2. In its results. All error is dangerous, and moral error is fatal. God pities the bewildered doubter; he is angry with the perverse and wilful thinker, who goes wrong in thought because his heart is wrong. Such a man cannot prosper under the favour of God. - W.F.A. Parallel Verses KJV: For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them. WEB: For you have hidden their heart from understanding, Therefore you shall not exalt them.