The prayer that shall be hears.
This verse is one of a series that describe the happy results of the penitent return to God referred to in Job 22:23. Thus Eliphaz means that after we have returned in penitence to God our prayer will be heard. His principle is quite in accordance with the teaching of Scripture, though, as usual, his application of it to Job is unjust.
I. PRAYER IS AN ELEMENT OF PROSPERITY. It is not only a condition on which prosperity is given; it is a part of the prosperity itself. Trouble drives us go prayer; but happiness cannot let us dispense with it. It is possible for one go be too miserable, too depressed, too hopeless, go pray. The best praying seems to need an element of joyous confidence. When it springs from this happy condition it enhances the joy of it. It is a very low and selfish notion that leads people to economize their prayers, and reserve them for times of dire necessity. Surely it should be a happy thing for the child go talk with his Father!
II. PRAYER EXPECTS AN ANSWER. We may pray without looking for any reply—pray because we cannot contain ourselves in silence, because the strong feelings of the soul will burst out into utterance. Then there may be a certain relief in the mere opening of the floodgates of emotion. But this is not the chief end of prayer. Further, we may just confide our case to God, consoled by the thought that he hears, even though we do not believe that any help is possible. Thus comfort is sought in the silent sympathy of a friend to whom the burdened soul can pour out its griefs. Still, the chief end of prayer is not reached in this way. It is difficult to carry on a one-sided conversation with an auditor who makes no reply, who does not even give us a sign that he hears or is at all interested in what one says. Prayer would languish and perish if God did not answer it. This he will not now do in an audible voice, nor always by such evident tokens that we can have no doubt that what he has done is in response to the cry of his children. Yet all who are in the habit of praying can bear witness to the fact that God hears prayer, and replies often in the most surprising and unmistakable way.
III. THE PRAYER THAT IS TO BE ANSWERED MUST BE SINCERE. Cain's sacrifice was rejected. The Pharisee's prayer could not reach heaven. We cannot pray to God effectively until we renounce sin and return to him. Then the prayer must be a real, inward, spiritual act. Such prayer is not valued by the correctness of its phraseology; much less is it estimated quantitatively by the time it occupies and the number of its words. The one essential quality is reality. The simple reason why many so-called prayers are not answered is that they are not really prayers at all. They do not come out of a worshipper's heart. Therefore they cannot reach the ears of God, and incline him to respond to them. If all such pretended prayers were left out of account there would be leas scepticism and more glad confidence that God does hear prayer.—W.F.A.