NOTES for Job 42:1

Having seen and heard everything said and shown to him by God, Job repents of what he had said to God before meeting Him (vv. 1-6). And this second repentance was not like the first (Job 40:3-5). The first repentance was caused by the realization that Job had been wrong before God, that he had been mistaken in thinking that God had no concern for an individual human being in general or for him, Job, personally. Now Job's repentance is deeper; he himself says that he repents "in dust and ashes" (v. 6), an expression used when a person wanted to say that he deeply regretted everything he had done before. Such repentance evidently had to mean also a renunciation of what Job had previously considered righteousness, of the demands he had made on God while wanting to contend with Him in court (vv. 3-4). Job himself explains his renunciation simply. He says to God: before, I had only heard of You, but now I see You (v. 5).

It would appear that exactly what Job had waited for so long and desired so intensely had happened; now, at last, he can say everything to God. But evidently during the meeting something happened that completely changed both Job himself and his view of his own righteousness. As is clear, only now did he truly become a real righteous man, and he himself understood this; his former righteousness now appeared to him like a child's toy that he had seriously displayed to God, demanding in exchange some special rights and some special position in a world where a war is going on between God and the forces of darkness. Job's former righteousness had not yet gone beyond religious limits; it was human righteousness, unquestionably valuable to God, but it did not give a person the possibility of living a full spiritual life. Now Job understood what God's righteousness is, which can be obtained only by giving oneself completely over to God's will and ceasing to rely on any merits of one's own, even those connected with achievements in religious life. But complete surrender to God's will was, of course, utterly impossible without that face-to-face meeting with God which Job so desired, although he expected from this meeting something entirely different from what happened. He wanted to contend with God in court, but having seen everything God could reveal to a human being, he abandoned his intention and surrendered to God, admitting defeat. Yet this was a defeat not so much before God's power as before His love and wisdom. That is why God entrusts Job's friends to his prayers (vv. 7-9): Job has already traveled the path on which they have not yet even set foot. Of course, religiosity has its own significance and meaning; it has its own relative truth. God tells Job that his friends have not spoken of Him "as rightly as Job" (v. 7). But there is something greater in relations with God than religion: revelation and the Kingdom, experienced by Job during his meeting with God as an unquestionable reality.

God's answer to Job is extraordinarily precise; Job's final words show that this was exactly what he needed. He acknowledges the truth of all the Lord's words and exclaims that he himself did not understand what he was saying. Moreover, Job declares that his desire to penetrate the mystery of God's purpose was folly, prompted, as it now seems to him, by a lack of trust. Job's astonishing humility before mystery is an important lesson the author offers the reader. Against the background of Job's friends and Elihu, who claim—especially Elihu—to understand everything, Job's renunciation of his attempts to comprehend the Incomprehensible is highly significant. For it is Job who is granted a conversation with God; it is to him that the Lord speaks.

God's encounter with Job is so direct that Job says he has seen God with his own eyes. The entire preceding text of the book bears witness that such a direct encounter comes through a person's utmost trust and utmost openness before God. It turns out that everything in Job's speeches that seemed to his friends to be doubt and mistrust was not so: Job addressed his bold words not to just anyone, but to God Himself. He asked the One who had become his Accuser and Judge to be his Advocate too—and he was not disappointed.

Strictly speaking, Job received no answer to his questions, but he gained something far greater: God turned His gaze towards him. That is why Job ‘retracts and repents in dust and ashes’, relinquishing his questions. This often happens in a genuine encounter between a person and God: it is not so much that the person receives answers to their questions; rather, the questions themselves fall away.

The ending lays bare one of the book's main themes, which has never been stated explicitly within it. Job's entire drama and his entire discussion with his friends speak of God's closeness to the suffering person and of the fact that the Lord's hand ‘is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear’ (Isa. 59:1). For the reader, within the overall context of Revelation, what matters is that God does not so much explain suffering and death—which He did not create (Wis. 1:13)—as turn the questioner's gaze forward, towards salvation. It is hardly possible to explain the irrational at all; still less likely is it that the human mind could understand a possible answer. Far more important is that, instead of an answer explaining the matter, God offers a person a way out of suffering and death, like the exodus from slavery in Egypt.