The ending of the Book of Job outwardly resembles the happy ending of a frightening fairy tale. But in reality it is not so. Or rather, it is so in the sense that the end truly was happy for Job. But the return of the former happy times described by the author of the book must be considered more of an allegory. It is very reminiscent of the promises Job's friends made to him when they demanded repentance from him and assured him that, if he repented, God would return his former happy days to him.
But it was genuinely hard to describe in any other way the change that took place in Job. After all, he did indeed, as is clear, become a happy man. Because his life was renewed. It became full and complete again. This is what the sacred writer is speaking about. But the form used to describe the new life remained the old one. The reason here is not only that the changes most of all did not, in the first place, touch Job's outward life. The issue is that Job understands in a new way what he had already known before: the path of righteousness.
He had always wanted to walk this path. He defended his righteousness because otherwise his whole life would have become meaningless. And now the true path of righteousness is opened to Job in all its fullness: as a path in God's world before God's face. The point here is not that all Job's problems were solved at once. The point is the world that was opened to him and that became for him a prototype of the Kingdom. Still, in the moment of meeting God, in the ecstasy a person experiences then, he often truly forgets his problems.
Even his physical condition is experienced differently by such a person. It is possible that after meeting God, Job was healed of his physical illnesses. But the main thing was still not this. The main thing was that Job received answers to the questions that troubled him. And he saw that life has meaning. That this meaning is brought into it by God. And that even if a person at times loses it, God can help him find again what was lost. If only he asks Him for this and does not retreat, no matter how much those around him dissuade him and urge him to be "more modest" and "more pious." And then God will answer. And a new life will come. In God's great world. On the threshold of the Kingdom.
