Job 42 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
In the last lesson, “the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1). God did not explain why Job suffered. He only asked him, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4).
In this lesson, Job speaks for the last time. This is the last lesson about Job.
1Then Job answered the LORD:
2“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be restrained.
3You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ therefore I have uttered that which I didn’t understand, things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know.
4You said, ‘Listen, now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me.’
5I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.
6Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
7It was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.
8Now therefore, take to yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept him, that I not deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.”
9So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the LORD commanded them, and the LORD accepted Job.
10The LORD restored Job’s prosperity when he prayed for his friends. The LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.
11Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been of his acquaintance before, came to him and ate bread with him in his house. They comforted him, and consoled him concerning all the evil that the LORD had brought on him. Everyone also gave him a piece of money, and everyone a ring of gold.
12So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female donkeys.
13He had also seven sons and three daughters.
14He called the name of the first, Jemimah; and the name of the second, Keziah; and the name of the third, Keren Happuch.
15In all the land were no women found so beautiful as the daughters of Job. Their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.
16After this Job lived one hundred forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, to four generations.
17So Job died, being old and full of days.
Hearing and seeing. Job’s last words are: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (v. 5). He does not say, ‘Now I understand.’ He says he spoke of “things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know” (v. 3). What he received was not an explanation, but God himself.
Job never knew. In Lesson 1 we said: we know about the scene in heaven; Job does not. Even in this last chapter, the passage never tells Job. All Job knows is what God said to him (Job 38–41), and that God is there in front of him.
Repentance. Job says, “Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (v. 6). The passage records only this. Job bows low before God, but the passage does not say that what he suffered came from something he had done wrong.
What is right. God tells Eliphaz, “My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has” (v. 7). God does not pass judgment on every sentence the three friends spoke, nor does he say that every word of Job’s was right. He says only that in speaking of God, Job spoke what is right, and they did not.
Praying for his friends. God tells the three friends to offer a burnt offering, and says, “my servant Job shall pray for you” (v. 8). Then: “The LORD restored Job’s prosperity when he prayed for his friends” (v. 10). The friends who said he was guilty end up depending on his prayer.
Twice as much, not a formula. “The LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before” (v. 10). The passage counts carefully: fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, twice what he had before (v. 12). But for his children it says only, “He had also seven sons and three daughters” (v. 13) — the same number as before. The passage does not say these ten children took the place of the ten before. Job’s story ends with twice as much, but the passage never promises that every person who suffers will get back twice as much in the end.
Full of days. Job named his three daughters, and “Their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers” (v. 15). He lived one hundred forty more years, and “saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, to four generations” (v. 16). The last sentence is: “So Job died, being old and full of days” (v. 17).
Job did not live in Israel, yet God called him “my servant Job” (v. 7) — and said it several times.
The book of Job leaves later readers an answer, and also a place with no answer: God is real, and can be seen — ‘now my eye sees you.’ Why God lets a righteous man suffer, the book does not say.
Seven lessons: Blameless and Upright · Losing Everything · Seven Days and Seven Nights · Miserable Comforters · Where Is Wisdom? · The Voice from the Whirlwind · Now My Eye Sees You.
From beginning to end, Job never got the explanation he wanted, but he received God himself. You may be waiting for an explanation too. This lesson cannot promise you will get one, or that you will get back twice as much. It only tells you that Job, in a place with no answers, met God.
This week: Think of someone whose words once hurt you while they thought they were helping. Pray for them once this week, briefly. You don’t need to tell anyone.
James mentions Job: “You have heard of the perseverance of Job and have seen the Lord in the outcome, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy” (Jas 5:11).
Paul also quotes Eliphaz’s words from the book of Job: “He has taken the wise in their craftiness” (1 Cor 3:19; Job 5:13).
What James points to is not how great Job was, but “how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy” (Jas 5:11). Readers can set this sentence beside Job’s story and see for themselves.
Scripture: World English Bible.