Job's repentance often appears forced to readers. God revealed Himself, His power, and in the face of such an obvious demonstration, Job had nowhere to go, as they say. Meanwhile, the matter is clearly not only the manifestation of power...
Job's repentance often appears forced to readers. God revealed Himself, His power, and in the face of such an obvious demonstration, Job had nowhere to go, as they say. Meanwhile, the matter is clearly not only the manifestation of power. God really did speak with Job in human terms, as Job had wanted. Another matter is that the conversation turned out to be unexpected for him. God did not try to dissuade Job from his righteousness, did not present to him the sins for which He might reproach him. And He did not answer the question about the sufferings of innocent people, of the righteous.
He simply appeared before Job. He showed him what power that ignores the human being is like, using as examples the animals He created. And He let Job understand that He is God, who knows what He is doing and who remembers the human being. Of course, God gives Job no details and still less any guarantees. Except one: He remembers the human being and knows what to do with the evil in which the world lies. And even if to a person living in this world everything appears hopeless and without light, God has His own plan, which includes, among other things, the deliverance of the world from evil. Of course, if these words had been spoken to Job by his friends, he would not have believed them.
After all, they had said something similar to him. But what mattered was precisely the meeting, the meeting with God face to face, which Job so wanted and awaited. This meeting, among other things, opened to Job spiritual perspectives he had not known or seen before. It turned out that all his former life, and even his righteousness, had been only a human matter; it did not go beyond the limits of that traditional religiosity of which Job himself was a completely sincere and convinced bearer.
God opened another perspective to Job and showed him another life, a life where there is no religion, but there is the living God. And where righteousness is not a careful, almost bookkeeping-accurate reckoning of merits and sins, but the experience of meeting this living and completely real God. And therefore also a meeting with a new and equally real life, the life of God's great world, which one day will be revealed in all the fullness of the Kingdom of God. Job can now bear witness to this new reality opened to him. He can commune with God from it and through it. And therefore God entrusts him with prayer for his friends, who as yet know nothing of this, or almost nothing. That is why they speak, bear witness about God, not as rightly as Job, who has become a living witness of the living God.
42 Job throughly humbles himself before God, Job 42:1-6.
God reproves his friends, for whom Job intercedes, and God accepts them, Job 42:7-9.
God blesses and restores Job to his prosperity, Job 42:10-15.
His age and death, Job 42:16-17.
42:5 Seeth thee - The knowledge which I had of thy nature, perfections and counsels, was hitherto grounded chiefly, upon the instructions of men; but now it is clear and certain, as being immediately inspired into my mind by this thy glorious apparition and revelation, and by the operation of thy holy spirit; which makes these things as evident to me, as if I saw them with my bodily eyes. When the mind is enlightened by the spirit of God, our knowledge of Divine things as far exceeds what we had before, as knowledge by ocular demonstration, exceeds, that by common fame.