Sunday Spurgeon

“Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” (Job 38:31)

MOST of you know that singularly beautiful cluster of stars called the Pleiades—very small, but intensely bright. These are most conspicuous about the time of spring, and therefore, in poetry the vernal influences which quicken the earth and clothe it with the green grass and the many-colored flowers are connected with the Pleiades. By the sweet influences of the Pleiades we understand, then, in plain language, those benign influences which produce the spring and the summer. These, it is said, no man can restrain.

Orion, a very conspicuous constellation with its glittering belt, is best seen towards the close of autumn, just before the coming in of the winter. It is a southern and wintry sign and therefore, poetically, the winter is traced to the bands of Orion, and we are told in the text, literally, that no man is able to loosen the bonds of frost, or check the incoming of the cold. In other words, the whole verse asserts that none can stop the revolutions of the seasons! When God ordains the spring the shining months come laughing on. And when, again, He calls for winter, snow and ice must rule the dreary hour.

The farmer is entirely dependent upon the God of Heaven. He may plow with industry and cast in the good seed with hope, but unless the sweet influences of Heaven shall be given he can reap no harvest. If the drought is long and severe, he cannot cause the clouds to drench the thirsty furrows, or, if the rain descends in torrents, drowning the pastures, he cannot seal up the bottles of Heaven. He is absolutely dependent upon God, who governs all things according to His will. And we who know so little of agricultural operations—being so far removed from the country which God has made and living in the town which man has made—we, also, are as much dependent as any—for even the king is nourished by the fruit of the field! And follow what merchandise we will; ultimately it is still from the fields that our nourishment must come.

All of us, then, and not us alone, but all the beasts and birds, and all the creatures are entirely and absolutely dependent upon God, and unless He helps them, they cannot help themselves. This is the simple teaching of the verse, but it was doubtless used to teach Job that as he could not alter the ordinances of Heaven, so neither could he change the purposes of God in the events of Providence.