NOTES for Job 29:1-25

The continuation of Job's speech in chapter 29 explains to the reader what Job meant when he spoke of wisdom as the fear of the Lord and turning away from evil. Job rejects his friends' accusations that he had shown no mercy while amassing his wealth.

When Job prospered, he enjoyed respect and comfort; elders and rulers honoured him as a righteous man. The mercy of the Almighty rested upon Job's tent, as the Russian Synodal translation puts it. His words might be understood to mean that God showered Job with wealth and secured his earthly prosperity. But we should turn to the ancient translations: they speak of deeper things. The Slavonic text, which here is close to the Septuagint, says: ‘when God visited my house.’ The Septuagint itself uses the verb episcopeo, ‘to look upon, to visit,’ from which the modern term ‘bishop’ derives: God saw Job's house and visited it. The Vulgate is even more explicit: when God was secretly in Job's tent. A. S. Desnitsky's modern translation offers the rendering ‘when friendship with God overshadowed my tent.’

This concerns nothing less than the mystery of the Almighty's presence in a person's life. The Bible calls this presence the glory of the Lord; its radiance dazzles the prophets' eyes. This mysterious presence is possible only on the condition of righteousness and dedication to God. In days of sin, God's Glory leaves people, as it did at the destruction of Jerusalem, and a person's house is left empty, as the Lord himself will put it.

Job's life was a place of the Presence because it was filled with active love for people. Job rescued the suffering and helped the weak, defended the defenceless and judged justly. People, Job says, needed his mercy and valued it. That is why the Almighty was present in Job's tent, as in Moses' Tabernacle. Could Job then have been reproached for injustice or convicted of sin? And if God was with him, how could what happened to Job have happened?