---
title: 'Joseph Caryl on Afflictions'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-09-06
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-joseph-caryl-on-afflictions
---

# Joseph Caryl on Afflictions

“Afflictions come from God. When God gives, it is an act of bounty, and when he takes, it is an act of justice, for he is sovereign Lord in both. Every evil of affliction or of trouble is said to be the Lord’s doing, because it cannot be done without the Lord. Wicked men in all their plots and all their successes are either the rod of God to chasten his people for their sins, or else they are God’s furnace to try his people’s graces and purge them from their sins. Hence we should in all our afflictions look beyond the creature. In all the evils we either feel or fear, let our hearts be carried up unto God. — Job i. 20.” — **Joseph Caryl** in [**Joel Edson Rockwell**](/authors/joel-edson-rockwell), *Seed Thoughts, or, Selections from Caryl’s Exposition of Job* (1869), p. 27