Job has listened with awe and humility and now confesses a fresh understanding of his position before God. Now that Job has had God appear before him and gives him a chance to speak, what does he say? Is it the bold defense of his righteousness and his demand that God show him exactly what he could find against him?
He first acknowledges that God is sovereign and may do with his own as he sees fit, and that none can interrupt or change his purpose. “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (42:2). Divine sovereignty does not eliminate the reality of divine justice and righteousness but makes us recognize that the spheres of goodness and righteousness that he determines to display in a sovereign manner do not always fit our preconceived categories. Paul employs this revealed truth, gained through Job’s great suffering, in his question concerning the objection of man to divine sovereignty, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” (Romans 9:20)
Job now acknowledges that his position was arrogant and he embraces God’s judgment on him. God asked, “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge” (cf. 38:2). Job confesses that he had too narrow a view of God and thought that he knew himself better than God did. “I have uttered what I did not understand” (42:3). God’s righteousness and wisdom exceeded the most extended concepts of Job and Job’s sinfulness penetrated his whole being more profoundly than he had perceived. Later David would be brought to confess, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5 NKJV).
Now, his words with which he desires to come before God to receive an answer are words of wonder at his majesty and deep repentance in light of his new view of himself. There is nothing like a revelation to the soul of the wisdom and beauty of God’s character to quiet our complaints, enhance our worship, and promote soul-humbling repentance (5, 6).
Job’s friends, perhaps with much less arrogant confidence than before, and with little eagerness to make this appearance, are summoned. Informing Eliphaz of his anger kindled against them, God reprimands Job’s friends. He said that they had not spoken what was right as Job had (verses 7 and 8). This is difficult to discern how this is so, for they began with the same premise. Job, however, disagreed with the analysis of his friends, which was a very wooden quid pro quo analysis of each person’s state of being in this life. Job rejected that, but God also challenged the assumptions of Job. Job’s trial did cause him to struggle against the common view that prosperity denotes that one has lived a life pleasing to God. Conversely, tragedy equals punishment for an evil life. He knew that there was more to be learned from these events, and it drove him to embrace the need for a ransom-mediator.
By divine grace the entire event brought Job to a deeper frame of personal repentance and resignation to the wise purpose of God. Here we see a clear example of the comprehensive biblical principle that God rewards his people for the fruit of his own grace in their lives. “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’ … What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 1:30, 31; 4:7).
For their sin, the three friends had to offer sacrifices and ask for Job’s intercession. God had already humbled Job by his overpowering appearance in the whirlwind to bring about his repentance. Matthew Henry points out that now God “takes another course to humble them,” that is, to make them not only offer burnt offerings but to ask Job, whom they had condemned as offensive to God, to intercede for them before God. This is both a matter of humiliation and a matter of redemptive grace. He does not cast them off but makes a path of restoration.
Wrong ideas about God and his children are not amoral but are positively sinful. They were abusive toward Job because of narrow and uncritically received views of God and his ways. They told Job that God was his enemy because of Job’s wickedness, when all along Job was a delight in God’s affections. He did not intend destruction by his dealing with Job but to bring him to deeper knowledge, more pure worship, and a more profound sense of grace.
Making assertions that present false views of God, his purpose, his character, and his ways with men are not harmless. Those who set themselves forth to speak on behalf of God and present themselves as authorities must realize that their opinions and words are susceptible to judgment. James warned, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1)
God restored Job to greater status than before. The text seems to indicate that this restoration came in the context of Job’s intercession for his friends. He conducted himself as a forgiven man. “Bless those who curse you.” He was under a curse greater than any that a mortal can sustain, but by divine provision had found a ransom. He knew he had been forgiven much and did not stand as their judge. As a manifestation to family and friends that his great suffering was not because he was a greater sinner than any around him, he was given twice as many livestock and the same number of sons and daughters as before the divine release to Satan’s devices of testing Job. Doubtless, this is to demonstrate not only to Job but to those around him that his trials were not those of an enemy of God under wrath but of a favorite of God being brought to greater purification and blessing. His daughters were beautiful, and he lived to see four generations of grands and greats. Nevertheless, “Job died,” even though “an old man and full of days” (42:17).
With the further revelation that we have of the shortness of this life and the glories of living in the presence of God, a truth that occurred to Job in the midst of his own trials, we are not to expect the increase of material things as a mark of divine favor. We have the complete revelation of God’s redemptive grace in his Son and the promise of eternal life verified by the resurrection of Christ so that we live under the objective impression of a living hope. Christ and all his appointed apostles died ingloriously in the eyes of the world, but they had a better hope stored up for them in heaven. The evidence of God’s favor toward us is so sufficient in Christ that no other evidence is needed. “He who spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
When James applies one of the lessons we are to take away from Job, he reminds his readers of the patience of Job and the purpose of God in manifesting his compassion and mercy. Job’s patience is demonstrated in his continual insistence that God had everything to do with his present situation of life. He became neither an atheist nor a deist but a more insistent searcher in quest of a true knowledge of God. He continued in this train in spite of the seeming silence of the heavens to his asking, knocking and seeking. Though he had inadequate perceptions concerning the nature of God’s interaction with his creatures, he knew that, in the end, nothing transpired in all of God’s creation apart from God’s purposeful involvement. James used that example in service of an admonition to “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.” (James 5:7-11). We are not promised the gift of grace in the splendor of our temporal situation, but in the imperishable glories of heaven.
Dr. Tom Nettles is widely regarded as one of the foremost Baptist historians in America. He joined the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where he was professor of Church History and chairman of that department. Previously, he taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. He received a B.A. from Mississippi College and an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Southwestern. In addition to writing numerous journal articles and scholarly papers, Dr. Nettles has authored or edited nine books including By His Grace and For His Glory, Baptists and the Bible, and Why I Am a Baptist.
Courses taught: Historical Theology of the Baptists, Historical Theology Overview, Jonathan Edwards & Andrew Fuller.
