A hedge might be called the evidence of God’s sovereign care. But what if the hedge is breached?
A hedge is a living wall. It may be decorative, but still it walls some things out and other things in. Sometimes a hedge is grown from a thorny plant, like a privet, to more effectively impede trespass. Both Satan and Job are interested in the subject. In chapter 1, Satan poses this question: “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side?” (Job 1:9-10). Job has a God-grown hedge around his life and family, says the adversary, and it limits the adverse effects of living in a fallen world. Rip it up by the roots and see how much Job reveres You then. The hedge remains, but Satan is given access to that life within it, effecting a scorched-earth policy against the man of God. When all the wreckage has been cleared, the funerals attended, the losses calculated, and then further damage is done, this time to Job’s body, we find him sitting on an ash heap, seemingly fully exposed to the ravages of a world gone haywire. But is he? Listen: “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in?” (3:23). Hedged out or hedged in? It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it. Paul considered himself not a prisoner of Caesar but of Christ (Phm 1:1, 9). Madame Guyon, incarcerated in the Bastille for her faith, wrote, “A little bird am I, Shut in from fields of air, But all the day I sit and sing To Him who placed me there, Well pleased a prisoner to be, Because, My God, it pleaseth Thee.” Only those influences are allowed to pass through your hedge that, in the end, will be for your good. Sometimes it may protect you and sometimes restrict you, but the hedge declares you to be God’s own possession, guarded and gardened by Him.