NOTES for Job 42:10-17
10 And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. |
11 Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. |
12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. |
13 He had also seven sons and three daughters. |
14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-happuch. |
15 And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren. |
16 After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations. |
17 So Job died, being old and full of days. |
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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.
Readings for 4 March 2025
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