Job 1 to 2 and 42 · Story · Patience
The Patience of Job
Job 1 to 2 and 42 record the trial and the restoration of Job of Uz, whom James 5:11 holds up to believers for his perseverance.
Job pleaded his case before God from chapter 3 to chapter 31, and at the end the LORD said that Job had spoken about Him accurately and his three friends had not.
Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped, saying: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
- Who
- Job
Summary
The patience the Bible credits to Job is endurance. Job kept hold of God through the loss of all he had, through sickness and the scorn of those around him, and through a long complaint in which he went on addressing God. The book sets the worship of its first chapters beside the protest of the chapters after them and lets both stand. The end of the account shows that the Lord who let Job be tried is full of compassion and mercy (James 5:11).
- Job answered his first losses with worship and his sickness with the acceptance of adversity from God, and the narrator says that in all this he did not sin (Job 1:20 to 22; Job 2:10).
- After a week of silence Job cursed the day of his birth, yet in his complaint he said, "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him" (Job 3:1; Job 13:15).
- When the LORD answered him out of the whirlwind, Job retracted his words and repented in dust and ashes (Job 38:1; Job 42:5 to 6).
- The LORD doubled Job's former possessions and gave him as many children as he had lost (Job 42:10 to 13).
- James 5:11 calls Job's endurance hypomonē, which the Berean Standard Bible renders "perseverance" and the American Standard Version "the patience of Job".
The Man of Uz
The book opens on a man of Uz whom the narrator and then the LORD call blameless and upright.
The Patience of Job is the story of Job of Uz, told from the first two chapters and the last chapter of the book that bears his name. It belongs to the Bible's teaching on patience, which in Scripture is the slowness to anger God shows to sinners and the endurance He asks of His people under wrong, suffering and delay. Job is the Bible's great example of the second, and his story speaks to every reader who has lost what God gave and has not been told the reason.
The question at its centre is what kind of patience Job had. His first words after his losses, the silence of his friends and the complaint that followed bear on that question. So do the LORD's verdict and the restoration, and James 5:11 reads the whole for the church.
There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And this man was blameless and upright, fearing God and shunning evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man of all the people of the East.These verses give Job's character and his wealth before the trial, and the trial takes from him everything they count.
After each round of his children's feasts Job rose early to offer burnt offerings for them, in case they had sinned and cursed God in their hearts (Job 1:5). The LORD Himself called him "My servant Job" and said that there was no one on earth like him (Job 1:8).
Satan answered by asking whether Job feared God for nothing (Job 1:9). The LORD put everything Job had into Satan's hands and forbade him to lay a hand on the man himself (Job 1:12).
The Book in Its Own Order
Satan's two trials, the friends' visit, the speeches and the LORD's answer follow one another in a single line.
The book moves from a day of loss and seven silent days, through the long debate, to the LORD's answer and the 140 years Job lived after.
- Job before the trialNot givenblameless and upright, with seven sons, three daughters and great flocksJob 1:1 to 3
- The LORD and SatanOne daySatan is given leave to strike all that Job hasJob 1:6 to 12
- The first lossesOne daythe oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels, servants and the ten children takenJob 1:13 to 19
- Job worshipsThenhe tears his robe, shaves his head and falls to the groundJob 1:20
- The second trialOn another daythe trial reaches Job's own bodyJob 2:1 to 7
- His wife's wordNot given"Curse God and die!"Job 2:9
- The friends comeWhen they heardEliphaz, Bildad and Zophar come to comfort himJob 2:11
- The silenceSeven days and seven nightsno one speaks a word to himJob 2:13
- The complaint beginsAfter thisJob opens his mouth against his own birthJob 3:1
- The debateNot givenJob and his three friends speak in turn until the words of Job concludeJob 31:40
- ElihuWhen the three stopped answeringElihu son of Barachel speaks, angry that Job justified himself rather than GodJob 32:1 to 2
- The LORD answersThenthe LORD speaks to Job out of the whirlwindJob 38:1
- Job's replyThenhe says that his eyes have now seen GodJob 42:1 to 6
- The verdictAfter the LORD had spokenthe friends are sent to Job with an offeringJob 42:7 to 9
- The restorationAfter Job had prayedhis prosperity restored and his possessions doubledJob 42:10
- Job's last years140 yearshe sees his children to the fourth generation and dies old and full of yearsJob 42:16 to 17
A timeline of sixteen events in the book's own order, each with the verse that records it; where the text gives no time, the cell says so.
The friends come, The silence, The complaint begins, The debate, Elihu, The LORD answers, Job's reply, The verdict and 2 more
What Job Said First
The first two chapters record two trials and two answers, and the narrator gives a verdict on each answer.
The news came by four messengers, each arriving while the one before him was still speaking. The Sabeans took the oxen and the donkeys, the fire of God burned up the sheep and the Chaldeans raided the camels. A mighty wind then struck the house where Job's sons and daughters were eating, and they died (Job 1:13 to 19).
In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.The verse judges the worship and the words of Job 1:20 to 21, in which Job charged God with no wrongdoing.
On another day Satan struck Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head (Job 2:7). Job sat among the ashes and scraped himself with a piece of broken pottery, and his wife asked whether he still retained his integrity (Job 2:8 to 9).
“You speak as a foolish woman speaks,” he told her. “Should we accept from God only good and not adversity?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.Job's answer to his wife takes adversity from the same hand that gave him good, and the narrator's second verdict covers what he said.
Three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, came to sympathize with him and comfort him (Job 2:11). They could barely recognize him from far off, and they wept aloud and tore their robes (Job 2:12).
Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, but no one spoke a word to him because they saw how intense his suffering was.The friends sat with Job and said nothing, and the next words in the book are Job's own.
The Complaint and the Hope
The man who charged God with no wrong in the first chapters protests his suffering at length in the speeches, and in the same speeches he goes on hoping in God.
After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And this is what he said: “May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, ‘A boy is conceived.’These verses open the speeches, and they turn Job's grief against his own birth.
In Job 7:11 he said, "I will complain in the bitterness of my soul."
In the same speeches Job held on to God.
Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. I will still defend my ways to His face.Job joins his hope in God to his defence before Him in one verse.
The verb behind "I will hope" in this verse is yachal. It occurs forty-one times in the Hebrew Bible, and the lexicon gives it the senses to wait, to be patient and to hope (Strong's H3176).
The speeches end with the line "Thus conclude the words of Job" (Job 31:40). The book keeps both halves of Job, the acceptance of the first two chapters and the protest of the speeches, and it removes neither.
The Sight, the Verdict and the Prayer
When the LORD had spoken, Job answered Him, and the LORD then judged between Job and his friends.
Job's first reply to the LORD was to stop speaking, saying, "I place my hand over my mouth" (Job 40:4). His second reply was a confession.
My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I retract my words, and I repent in dust and ashes.”Job sets what he had heard of God beside what he now sees, and the sight brings him to take back his words.
The LORD's wrath was kindled against Eliphaz and his two friends. He sent them to Job with seven bulls and seven rams for a burnt offering, and He said that Job would pray for them and that He would accept Job's prayer (Job 42:7 to 8).
After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD restored his prosperity and doubled his former possessions.The order of the verse puts Job's prayer for the men who had accused him before the LORD's gifts to him.
His brothers and sisters and his old acquaintances came to eat with him and comfort him, and each gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring (Job 42:11). The LORD blessed his latter days more than his first, and every flock counted in Job 1:3 stands doubled in Job 42:12.
Seven sons and three daughters were born to him, and the text names the daughters Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-happuch (Job 42:13 to 14). Their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers (Job 42:15).
Augustine on the double returnAugustine of Hippo, Letter 140
Augustine read James's words on Job as a warning against hoping for earthly goods as the reward of patience, the way Job's goods were returned to him double. He directed the hope of the patient to eternal goods instead.
What the Book Leaves Unsaid
The book is silent on the time of Job, on what he was told of the trial and on the rest of his wife's story.
The book names the land of Uz and calls Job the greatest man of all the people of the East (Job 1:1 and 3). It gives no date for any of its events.
Nothing in the book records that Job was told of the words between the LORD and Satan that came before his losses.
Job's wife speaks once (Job 2:9). After that she appears only in Job's own words, where he says that his breath is repulsive to her (Job 19:17), and the book does not say whether she bore the children of Job 42:13.
The Perseverance James Names
James 5:10 to 11 sets Job beside the prophets as an example for believers who suffer, and it rests the lesson on the Lord's compassion.
See how blessed we consider those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen the outcome from the Lord. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.James counts those who have persevered blessed and names Job among them, so the book of Job is read here as an example for the church.
The lexicon defines hypomonē as cheerful or hopeful endurance and constancy (Strong's G5281). The word occurs thirty-two times in the New Testament, three of them in James (James 1:3, 1:4 and 5:11).
Polysplanchnos, the word for the Lord's compassionJames 5:11; Strong's G4184
James's word for the Lord in the same verse is polysplanchnos, which Strong's defines as extremely compassionate and counts once in the New Testament.
Job as a real personEzekiel 14:14 and 20; Adam Clarke
Ezekiel names Job among three men whose righteousness could deliver only themselves (Ezekiel 14:14 and 20). Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), argued from James 5:11 that Job was a real person, since a fictitious person would not have been held up as an example of patience.
Teachers on Job's Patience
Cyprian in the third century, Gregory the Great around the year 600 and Charles Spurgeon in the nineteenth century taught patience from Job.
CyprianOn the Advantage of Patience 18, third century
The bishop of Carthage set Job among the examples of his treatise, in the translation of R. E. Wallis (1886). He wrote, "Thus Job was searched out and proved, and was raised up to the very highest pinnacle of praise by the virtue of patience."
Gregory the GreatMorals on the Book of Job, Book 3, about 600
Gregory drew from Job's answer to his wife a rule for every mind under trial (on Job 2:10). He wrote that "it is meet that the holy mind restrain by spiritual correction whatever of a carnal nature within it utters rebellious muttering."
Charles SpurgeonSermon No. 2457, Job's Resignation, published 1896
Preaching on Job 1:20, Spurgeon defended Job's open mourning: "The Grace of God takes away the heart of stone out of his flesh, but it does not turn his heart into a stone."
What Kind of Patience Job Had
Teachers have read Job's patience in three ways, according to how they weigh his speeches against his first words.
Patience shown in the first two chaptersAdam Clarke; Tertullian
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), placed Job's patience in his first answer, writing on Job 1:22 that "in this, and in this alone, he was a pattern of patience and resignation".
Tertullian, in his treatise Of Patience, wrote that "at every bitter message, that man uttered nothing out of his mouth but thanks to God" (chapter 14, translated by S. Thelwall, 1885). His account draws on the first two chapters, and the complaint of chapters 3 to 31 lies outside it.
Impatience made good by repentanceMatthew Henry; John Wesley
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), took Job's retraction in Job 42:6 as repentance for the impatience of the chapters before it. He said that Job was "thoroughly humbled for his folly and unadvised speaking, and it was forgiven him". In the same note he wrote, "Though his patience had not its perfect work, his repentance for his impatience had."
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), read the LORD's verdict on Job as a comparison, writing that "Job was not so much to be blamed as they".
Endurance through the complaint, approved by GodGregory the Great
Gregory the Great, in Book 35 of his Morals on the Book of Job, took the LORD's words to Eliphaz as a judgment in Job's favour. He wrote that the LORD's sentence shows blessed Job victorious, though Job had been believed to have sinned against God by his words. On this reading the patience James names belongs to the whole Job, who complained and still held to God.
After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken about Me accurately, as My servant Job has.The LORD's words to Eliphaz are the ground of this reading, for they set Job's speech about God above his friends' speech.
The Outcome From the Lord
The book ends with Job old and full of years, and his endurance is held up to every believer under trial.
In Job 23 Job says that he cannot find God when he goes east or west and cannot see Him to the north or the south (Job 23:8 to 9).
Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold.Job spoke this hope in the middle of his complaint, and the end of the book shows God bringing him through the testing he names.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, American Standard Version.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG lexicons, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)
- Augustine of Hippo, Letter 140.
- Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job.
- Tertullian, Of Patience, translated by S. Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (1885)
- Cyprian, On the Advantage of Patience, translated by R. E. Wallis, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886)
- C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 2457, Job's Resignation (1896), the CCEL edition.
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