Job42chapter 42

Job 42:1-3

Then Job answered the Lord, and said opens the reply the whirlwind speeches were driving toward, and the words that follow answer God's own charge at 38:2, who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge, turned into Job's own confession: who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not. Henry notes that Job takes God's rebuke and makes it his own indictment rather than defending his earlier words. I know that thou canst do every thing states in six words the thesis the two whirlwind speeches spent building, and Barnes reads the confession as answering Job's demand to audit his suffering rather than the suffering itself.

Job 42:4-6

Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak echoes Job's own demand at 13:22, call thou, and I will answer, now granted in reverse as he answers the summons put to him. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee draws the line the whole book has walked toward, secondhand report exchanged for sight. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes joins the confession to a phrase Scripture gives to only two men, Abraham before the three visitors at Genesis 18:27 and Job himself already at 30:19, and Delitzsch reads the same posture closing the book that Abraham's plea opened. Gill notes that the ashes Job sat in at 2:8 become, at the last, the ashes he repents in.

Job 42:7-8

And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job turns from Job's answer to God's ruling on the whole debate, and the ruling names names: my wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends, Eliphaz the Temanite standing for Bildad and Zophar as well. For ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath sets true words in a friend's mouth, 5:13 among them, the one Job verse the New Testament quotes, against a false case, which is the charge the speech-attribution rule reads directly off this verse. The title my servant Job, given four times across the book at 1:8 and 2:3 before the trial and now twice here, closes untouched by everything the friends said against him, and Henry notes that the offering God requires of them is accepted only through the very man they came to correct.

Job 42:9

So Eliphaz the Temanite: So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went names each friend obeying the command the wager never let Job overhear, seven bullocks and seven rams offered while Job stands to pray for them. And did according as the Lord commanded them shows three men who had spoken wrongly of God kept as friends still, God restoring the relationship through Job's intercession rather than through any repentance the text records from them. The Lord also accepted Job closes the verse on the very word that opened the book's contest, whether God accepts a man for nothing, and here Gill notes God accepts him for another's sake as well as his own.

Job 42:10

And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends borrows the exile-restoration formula the law already carries at Deuteronomy 30:3 and the Psalms carry again at 126:1 and 126:4, used here of one man's fortunes rather than a nation's. When he prayed for his friends ties the turning to the very act the ruling of verse 8 commanded, so the restoration follows intercession rather than preceding it. Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before opens the doubling the rest of the chapter counts out in cattle, and Delitzsch reads the figure against the law of restitution a thief owed his victim, Job repaid as though the loss itself had been a debt.

Job 42:11

Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before answers the estrangement catalogue of 19:13-19 name for name, the brethren and the acquaintance who had made themselves strange now returning to his table. Every man also gave him a piece of money is the qesitah, a word the King James renders nowhere else in the Old Testament but Genesis 33:19, and Delitzsch and Gill both read the gift as capital toward the flocks the next verse counts. They bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him credits the suffering to God rather than to the accuser the reader alone has seen, which Gill notes keeps the frame's own vocabulary of 2:10 consistent to the end.

Job 42:12-13

So the Lord blessed: So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning states the doubling in the patriarchal currency the book has kept throughout, fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she asses, each figure twice the count chapter 1 gave. He had also seven sons and three daughters restores the family's number exactly rather than doubling it, and Henry and Wesley both read the children as multiplied rather than lost, the first seven and three still alive to God though dead to Job, a second seven and three given besides. The wealth counted in livestock rather than coin keeps the setting the book opened in, a patriarch's household measured the way Abraham's and Jacob's were.

Job 42:14-15

And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-happuch names three daughters where the sons of the chapter go unnamed, the only daughters given names anywhere in the book. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job pairs beauty with the next clause's substance, their father gave them inheritance among their brethren, a phrase the King James uses nowhere else in the Old Testament but Deuteronomy 18:2, of the Levites' own portion within Israel. Gill reads the inheritance as the note worth keeping, daughters granted a portion alongside seven brothers in an age when a daughter's portion was not assumed, and Clarke adds that the naming itself, unusual in a genealogy this brief, marks them as Job's own particular delight.

Job 42:16-17

After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations gives the patriarchal lifespan the book has kept throughout, a span counted the way Genesis counts Abraham's and Jacob's years. So Job died, being old and full of days closes the book with the formula Scripture gives Abraham at Genesis 25:8, a death named as fullness rather than loss. James 5:11 reads the whole span in one sentence from outside the book, ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, endurance and outcome held together, which Davidson reads as the New Testament's own verdict on the thirty-nine chapters of complaint that came before it.