Job 42:10

THE LORD turned the captivity of Job.” So, then, our longest sorrows have a close, and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our misery. Our winters shall not frown for ever; summer shall soon smile. The tide shall not eternally ebb out; the floods retrace their march. The night shall not hang its darkness for ever over our souls; the sun shall yet arise with healing beneath his wings,—“The Lord turned again the captivity of Job.” Our sorrows shall have an end when God has gotten his end in them.

SINCE God is immutable, He acts always upon the same principles and, therefore, His course of action in the olden times to a man of a certain sort will be a guide as to what others may expect who are of like character. God does not act by caprice, nor by fits and starts. He has His usual modes and ways. The Psalmist David uses the expression, "Then will I teach transgressors Your ways," as if God had well-known ways, habits and modes of action. And so He has, or He would not be the unchangeable Jehovah.

Thus the future vindication of man, body and soul, against Satan (Job 1:9-12), at the resurrection (Job 19:25-27), has its earnest and adumbration in the temporal vindication of Job at last by Jehovah in person. twice--so to the afflicted literal and spiritual Jerusalem (Isa 40:2;

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

THE LORD turned the captivity of Job.” So, then, our longest sorrows have a close, and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our misery. Our winters shall not frown for ever; summer shall soon smile. The tide shall not eternally ebb out; the floods retrace their march. The night shall not hang its darkness for ever over our souls; the sun shall yet arise with healing beneath his wings,—“The Lord turned again the captivity of Job.” Our sorrows shall have an end when God has gotten his end in them. The ends in the case of Job were these, that Satan might be defeated, foiled with his own weapons, blasted in his hopes when he had everything his own way. God, at Satan’s challenge, had stretched forth his hand and touched Job in his bone and in his flesh, and yet the tempter could not prevail against him, but received his rebuff in those conquering words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” When Satan is defeated, then shall the battle cease. The Lord aimed also at the trial of Job’s faith. Many weights were hung upon this palm tree, but it still grew uprightly. The fire had been fierce enough, the gold was undiminished, and only the dross was consumed. Another purpose the Lord had was his own glory. And God was glorified abundantly. Job had glorified God on his dunghill; now let him magnify his Lord again upon his royal seat in the gate. God had gotten unto himself eternal renown through that grace by which he supported his poor afflicted servant under the heaviest troubles which ever fell to the lot of man. God had another end, and that also was served. Job had been sanctified by his afflictions. His spirit had been mellowed. That small degree of tartness towards others, which may have been in Job’s temper had been at last removed, and any self-justification which once had lurked within, was fairly driven out.

SINCE God is immutable, He acts always upon the same principles and, therefore, His course of action in the olden times to a man of a certain sort will be a guide as to what others may expect who are of like character. God does not act by caprice, nor by fits and starts. He has His usual modes and ways. The Psalmist David uses the expression, "Then will I teach transgressors Your ways," as if God had well-known ways, habits and modes of action. And so He has, or He would not be the unchangeable Jehovah. In that song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, which is recorded in the 15th chapter of Revelation, we read, "Just and true are Your ways, You King of saints." The Lord has ways as high above our ways as the heavens are above the earth—and these are not fickle and arbitrary. These ways, although very different if we view them superficially, are really always the same when you view them with understanding. The ways of the Lord are right, though transgressors fall therein by not discerning them. But the righteous understand the ways of the Lord, for to them He makes them known and they perceive that grand general principles govern all the actions of God. If it were not so, the case of such a man as Job would be of no service to us. It could not be said that the things which happened before happened unto us for an example, because if God did not act on fixed principles we could never tell how He would act in any fresh case—and that which happened to one man would be no rule whatever—and no encouragement whatever to another. We are not all like Job, but we all have Job's God. Though we have neither risen to Job's wealth, nor will, probably, ever sink to Job's poverty, yet there is the same God above us if we are brought high and the same God with His everlasting arms beneath us if we are brought low.

And the Load turned the captivity of Job - Restored him to his former prosperity. The language is taken from restoration to country and home after having been a captive in a foreign land. This language is often applied in the Scriptures to the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and some writers have made use of it as an argument to show that Job lived “after” that event. But this conclusion is unwarranted. The language is so general that it might be taken from the return from “any” captivity, and is such as would naturally be employed in the early periods of the world to denote restoration from calamity. It was common in the earliest ages to convey captives in war to the land of the conqueror, and thus make a land desolate by the removal of its inhabitants; and it would be natural to use the language expressive of their return to denote a restoration from “any” great calamity to former privileges and comforts. Such is undoubtedly its meaning as applied to the case of Job. He was restored from his series of protracted trials to a state of prosperity. When he prayed for his friends - Or after he had prayed for his friends. It is not implied of necessity that his praying for them had any particular effect in restoring his prosperity. Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before - Margin, “added all that” had been to “Job unto the double.” The margin is a literal translation, but the meaning is the same. It is not to be understood that this occurred at once - for many of these blessings were bestowed gradually. Nor are we to understand it in every respect literally - for he had the same number of sons and daughters as before; but it is a general declaration, and was true in all essential respects.