Job 42

Job 42:5-6:
5 I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you with my own eyes.
6 I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”

Michael E Witmer Files

Every discovery begins with doubt, and the largest doubts lead to the biggest breakthroughs. Job dared to charge God with injustice, "Why have you made me your target?" "Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy?" (Jon 7:20; 13:24). When God finally gave Job his day in court, Job realized that he was the one on trial, and he pled no contest. "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know," he said. "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:2,6).
-Michael E Wittmer; Despite Doubt; 2013

Charles Swindoll Files

Job’s plight of undeserved suffering compels us to ask the age-old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” The answer given to Job may or may not satisfy the reader. God allows pain for good reason, but He may never reveal those reasons.
Job did not reject God, but Job did challenge and accuse Him. The Almighty quieted Job decisively when He finally thundered His own perspective on the situation. God did not answer Job’s question of “Why?”—He instead overwhelmed Job and his friends with the truth of His majesty and sovereignty. Job came away with a deeper sense of God’s power and splendor, trusting Him more:
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5–6) --Chuck Swindoll; 2009

Bruce Ashford Files

The overall result of God’s monologue is to reveal that Job has obscured God’s counsel with insufficient knowledge. He spoke too quickly and firmly in light of his own inability to comprehend God’s being and ways. Job’s suffering and his subsequent encounter with God caused him to grow in his understanding of God and of himself.
Although God didn’t give Job an answer as to why he suffered, he did give Job a fuller understanding of God, himself, and the world around him. In return, Job became willing to accept that he would never understand why God allowed him to suffer but that he believed that God can work in and through his suffering to accomplish his mysterious purposes.
In conclusion, Job recognizes his finitude and fallenness: “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes (42:6).” The Hebrew word for “repent” could also be translated as “loathe.” It seems the point of Job’s concluding declaration is he has come to recognize his smallness and the limits of his own wisdom. And he has come to embrace God’s greatness and the mysterious nature of God’s wisdom and ways. So, when we feel like yelling at God, as Job felt, we are well-served to pair our yelling with the remembrance that God’s wisdom is higher than our wisdom, his ways higher than ours. -Bruce Ashford; 4.18.22

William Henry Green Files

It was with Job, God himself testified that there was none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man. that feared God, and shunned evil. And yet there was a leaven of corruption in his imperfectly sanctified nature, of which he was not aware, until by the terrible thrusts of Satan it was exposed. Underneath his really sincere piety there was a blemish of self-righteousness, which made him bitter under the reproaches of his friends, and which, in the awful darkness of his trials, led him to the point of justifying himself rather than God. Brought at last to himself and dismayed at the thought of what he had allowed himself to utter, he says, "I abhor myself, and repent in the dust and ashes." (Job 42:6). The design of God in this severe but salutary discipline was accomplished. Job had been led to know himself better than he did before, and he was humbled by this knowledge. The evil which before lurked within him unsuspected was detected and renounced.
--William Henry Green; The Book of Job Unfolded; 1874

Eric Ortland Files

What is so moving about this verse is that nothing in Job’s life has changed externally. His restoration only begins in 42:7. At this point, he is still sitting on the ash heap, sick and covered with sores; still alienated from his wife; still smarting under the accusations of his friends; still casting side-long glances at the graves of his ten children. And yet he expresses utter comfort over it all. “Now my eye sees you” (v. 5)—Job is simply taken up in God and God alone, and without any of his miserable circumstances improving in the least, he is comforted down to his bones. God does not love you less than he loves Job. In his generosity, he restores Job to vitality and blessing in his earthly life after his ordeal (v. 10-17). But more deeply, he enfolds him in his own presence. Many saints who have lived after Job have found a comfort as profound as Job’s, even in the midst of terrible suffering.
- Eric Ortland; Oak Hills College; Comfort on the Ash Heap; 3.4.22

Job 42:7-8:
After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.
8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”

At the end of the Book of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite was seeking God’s forgiveness and was directed by God to seek Job’s prayers as intercession. “Go to my servant Job, and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves, and let my servant Job pray for you. To him I will show favor and not punish your folly for you have not spoken rightly concerning me, as has my servant Job” (Job 42:8). We, too, can become “prayer warriors” for our family and friends: people who can be counted on to pray for their needs immediately and consistently.
In the story of Job, we see that intercessory prayer is not only effective, but it can benefit the one who does the praying. Job, who prayed for others despite his personal trials, grew in humility and selflessness and was ultimately rewarded when the Lord restored his fortunes (Job 42:10). When we ask God to have mercy on someone else, we too can develop greater mercy and humility.
--Barb Szyszkiewicz; Simply Catholic; Prayer as Intercession

Job 42:10:
“And the Lord turned the captivity of Job. when he prayed for his friends.” —

Charles Spurgeon

“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. Now God’s gracious designs are answered, he removes the rod from his servant’s back, and takes the melted silver from the midst of the glowing coals. God doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men for nought, and he shows this by the fact that he never afflicts them longer than there is a need for it, and never suffers them to be one moment longer in the furnace than is absolutely requisite to serve the purposes of his wisdom and of his love. “The Lord turned again the captivity of Job.” Beloved brother in Christ, thou hast had a long captivity in affliction. God hath sold thee into the hand of thine adversaries, and thou hast wept by the waters of Babylon, hanging thy harp upon the willows. Des pair not! He that turned the captivity of Job can turn thine as the streams in the south. He shall make again thy vineyard to blossom, and thy field to yield her fruit. Thou shalt again come forth with those that make merry, and once more shall the song of gladness be on thy lip. Let not Despair rivet his cruel fetters about thy soul. Hope yet, for there is hope. Trust thou still, for there is ground of confidence. He shall bring thee up again rejoicing from the land of thy captivity, and thou shalt say of him, “He hath turned my mourning into dancing.”
The circumstance which attended Job’s restoration is that to which I invite your particular attention. “The Lord turned again the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends.” Intercessory prayer was the omen of his returning greatness. It was the bow in the cloud, the dove bearing the olive branch, the voice of the turtle announcing the coming summer. When his soul began to expand itself in holy and loving prayer for his erring brethren, then the heart of God showed itself to him by returning to him his prosperity without, and cheering his soul within. Brethren, it is not fetching a laborious compass, when from such a text as this I address you upon the subject of prayer for others. Let us learn to-day to imitate the example of Job, and pray for our friends, and peradventure if we have been in trouble, our captivity shall be turned.
--Charles Haddon Spurgeon August 11, 1861