Job’s reply to God indicating repentance
42
Then Job answered the LORD and said, 2 📚“I know that you can do everything, and that no purpose can be withheld from you. 42:2 Job fully understands that God can conceive and carry out any plan He wants. He has learned the lesson from God’s sermon on nature and applied it to his own sufferings and trials.⚜
3 📚You asked, ‘Who is this who darkens counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have spoken things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
42:3 The first part of v 3 was spoken by God in Job 38:2. Job now quotes it and applies it to himself. He confesses what all the speakers should have confessed – indeed what all men who dispute about God and His ways have reason to confess. Men so lightly and presumptuously speak of mysteries far beyond their understanding. If they want God’s blessing they must humble themselves like Job and repent of their foolishness and sinful speaking.⚜
4 📚Listen, I pray you, and I will speak. You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer me.’
5 📚I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you.
42:5 God may or may not have appeared in some form of glory in the storm clouds. In any case Job means something more than an outward view of God’s glory. He speaks of an inner perception, an enlightenment of the eyes of the mind. It was not any argument, not even any presentation of truth alone which brought Job to repentance. It was a new and deeper experience of God Himself. So it is with all men who are brought to full submission to God. In God’s presence truths in the mind become the deep knowledge of spiritual experience.⚜
6 📚Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes”.
42:6 The first part of v 6 has no object in Hebrew – it is simply “I despise”, or “I reject”. Does he mean he despises his former opinions and complaints? Does he mean he abhors everything about himself? Or is he saying he renounces, rejects himself (as in Luke 9:23)? Probably all of that. A man humbly experiencing God’s presence and God’s rebuke can no longer have the same high regard for himself, his opinions, deeds, and spiritual attainments that he had before that. Job repents. Of what? Not of his previous righteous life – his need of repentance did not have to do with that. And God never rebuked him for a thing in it. This was one way God vindicated Job before men.
Job repents of the foolish and sinful things he has said about God’s justice. He repents that he ever allowed his pains and perplexities to cause a word of complaint against God to come from his lips. He repents in dust and ashes – figurative of complete abandonment to repentance. He now sits spiritually in the ash heap in which his body sat (Job 2:8). Job has learned more about himself, more of his weakness and foolishness, through this experience – a very important thing for all of us to learn. He has also learned more of God – and this is the most important kind of learning for any of us. Any event or experience which comes from His hand to bring us this kind of knowledge is worth whatever it costs us, whether it be loss of property, loss of children, loss of reputation, or loss of all things. See John 17:3.⚜
God speaks to Eliphaz
7 📚And this is what happened after the LORD had spoken those words to Job: the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is burning against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken to me what is right, as my servant Job has.
42:7 God now raises Job from the “dust and ashes” and vindicates him before his friends. By “vindicate” it is not meant that God declares Job to be sinless or faultless, but that God stands by His suffering servant and reveals him to be a man of uprightness and integrity, who feared God and shunned evil (Job 1:8). This is the same kind of vindication for which David prayed when he was unjustly slandered and accused – see Ps 26:1; 35:24; 43:1.
Here God calls Job His servant (four times in vs 7,8 – as if He loved to dwell on the idea and emphasize it). He did not call the others His servants. He says He is angry with them. He doesn’t say He is angry with Job. He says Job spoke to Him (or about Him) the right thing. He says they did not.
What is the right thing or things Job spoke? The views of scholars on this depend, in some measure, on how they translate one Hebrew word (elai) in this sentence. Some scholars translate like this: “You have not spoken what is right concerning me as my servant Job has”. This would mean that Job’s theory of how God dealt with mankind in general was more accurate than the theory of his friends.
However, others translate “You have not spoken that which is right to me”. It is possible to translate this Hebrew word either way, but the usual meaning of it and the usual way of translating it in the Old Testament is “to me”. For example, in Isaiah it is translated “to me” a number of times, but never “of me” or “concerning me” (Isa 8:3, 11; 21:11; 36:7; 37:21; 51:1). In the context of this chapter also it seems better to translate it “to me” (twice in this same verse, verse 7, part of that same Hebrew word is translated “to” – “to Job” and “to Eliphaz”. Nowhere else in Job is elai translated “of me”, or “concerning me”).
If we accept the translation “to me” (as the evidence suggests we should do), we will understand that God is commending Job, not for what he said in the debate with his friends, but for what he said directly to God in Job 40:3-5 and Job 42:1-6. In those verses Job admitted his ignorance, and his inability and unworthiness to speak about God or to God, and he repents of the things he had said. His friends did not do so. Probably they did not realize until this moment how mistaken they had been in some of the things they had said, and how much they needed to confess it as Job did. God commended Job’s repentance and confession. After all, why would God commend Job for saying those other things which Job himself saw were wrong? But Job’s confession of wrong speaking was pleasing to God. It is just the sort of confession that many philosophers and theologians (and many ordinary people who argue about God) need to make. Until they admit their ignorance and repent of their false and dogmatic utterances about God they will not know God’s blessing.⚜
8 📚Therefore take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves; and my servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept him. Otherwise I will deal with you as your foolishness deserves; because you have not spoken to me what is right, as my servant Job has”.
42:8 Can we imagine a better way than this to humble Job’s friends and vindicate Job? Job must act as a priestly intercessor and mediator for his friends or God will not accept them. Observe that they have been guilty of “folly” (or “evil” – the Hebrew word means both), but Job is God’s servant. They condemned Job, but now find that they were worthy of condemnation.⚜
The obedience of Eliphaz and his friends
9 📚So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did 📖 as the LORD commanded them; and the LORD accepted Job.
God blesses Job
10 📚And the LORD restored the well-being of 📖 Job, when he prayed for his friends. Also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.
42:10 Another way God chose to vindicate Job was to make him prosperous again. He revealed His love for Job by a method his friends, relatives, and neighbors, and the whole world could understand. In Old Testament days God often blessed His faithful people with material prosperity. In these New Testament days God may not at all reward faithfulness under trial by giving prosperity. Christians are taught to desire and expect their vindication and rewards in the next world, not in this one. And the privilege of suffering loss and pain for Christ is as much a mark of favor as riches could ever be (Matt 6:19-21; Luke 6:20-22; 12:33-34; 18:22; 1 Tim 6:6-9, 18, 19; Heb 10:32-37; 1 Pet 4:12-16). At the second coming of Christ all things will be made right.⚜
11 📚Then all his brothers and all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house. And they consoled him and comforted him about the whole disaster that the LORD had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver 📖 and each one a gold ring.
12 📚So the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his first; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys.
42:12 Verse 10.⚜
13 📚He also had seven sons and three daughters.
14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-happuch. 15 📚In all the land no women could be found as beautiful as the daughters of Job. And their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.
Job’s long life
16 📚After this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his grandsons to four generations. 17 📚So Job died, old and full of days.
42:16-17 When calamity struck, Job had ten grown children. Afterwards he lived 140 years more. His many years of life place him possibly in the general era of Abraham. Abraham lived 175 years (Gen 25:7). After Abraham the ordinary life span of men became less.
Through the outer devastating events and inner agonizing experiences that Job endured there came to him a deeper knowledge both of himself and of God. And this, of course, was of immense spiritual value to him. The direct knowledge of God is the highest and best knowledge possible to man. Should we not think that this is one purpose God had in mind when He permitted all that came to Job? And should we not think, we who trust God as Job did, that every event in our own lives and every difficult and painful experience we go through are for the same great purpose? Surely such things are included in the promise of Rom 8:28.⚜