The spiritual pathos of the Book of Job, at once God-seeking and God-contending, becomes clear only in the context of the age in which the book was written: an age of already well-established and thoroughly respectable Jewish religiosity. An age when religious propriety plays, if not the decisive role, then an important one in the life of the Synagogue, when...
The spiritual pathos of the Book of Job, at once God-seeking and God-contending, becomes clear only in the context of the age in which the book was written: an age of already well-established and thoroughly respectable Jewish religiosity. An age when religious propriety plays, if not the decisive role, then an important one in the life of the Synagogue, when ready-made and more or less satisfactory answers exist for every difficult question, while those who for some reason are not satisfied by such answers must seek their own, sometimes at very great cost.
The hero of the Book of Job was himself at first a thoroughly respectable, honored, and devout religious man. From a religious point of view, he was a truly righteous man. Even when an entire wave of troubles and misfortunes crashed over him, he endured them with the fortitude characteristic of a deeply and sincerely religious person. He withstood every trial but one: the trial of the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence. But Job cannot be blamed for this, of course: religion does not give the strength to survive such a trial. When it comes to the trial of absurdity, religion can no longer provide support.
Job understands this, but his friends cannot. It seems to them that he has simply grown weak spiritually, that the trials proved beyond his strength, and they do everything they can to support him and reinforce in him the very religiosity that can no longer help him at all. Job, meanwhile, thinks it is not his religiosity that is limited, but God Himself; that the issue is not Job's own inability to see, but a God Who cares nothing for the world, for humanity, for righteousness, or for good and evil. He furiously accuses Him of what he believes Him guilty of.
At the same time, he asks Him to appear, to answer, and to resolve every perplexity, while deep within his soul still preserving the completely irrational hope that God is not like that, that He will prove to be different after all and will answer. When God truly answers Job, Job understands that he had not known the real God before. He takes back all his reproaches, for God truly proved completely different from what Job had imagined when the world seemed to him a cruel and malicious joke. Of course, all Job's religiosity collapsed after this encounter. But a new life began instead: life with 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.