Job 42:7

THE EPILOGUE

"And it was so, that, after Jehovah had spoken these words to Job, Jehovah said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath."

What a shock such a declaration from God himself, speaking out of the whirlwind, must have been to Job's three friends. That God completely ignored both Satan and Elihu is significant. That omission of any reference whatever to either Satan or Elihu, indicates the defeat and vanquishing of Satan and the strong implication that Elihu was, of all four instruments of Satan in their attack against Job, the most evil and the most offensive to God. It is extremely important that, when the friends were instructed on how they might be forgiven, Elihu was left out of it altogether.

Note here that only Eliphaz was called by name. This was probably due to the fact that he was the first to speak in each cycle of speeches; and that, from this, it is usually concluded that he was the oldest of the three.

"As my servant Job hath" (Job 42:7). This divine sanction of what Job had said about God should not be understood as an endorsement of everything that Job said. It should be applied to the principle issue in the argument, "Whether or not God always rewarded every man according to his conduct in this life, and that he did so at once, or immediately." The three friends had adopted the false theory that one could indeed measure the righteousness of a person by the degree of his prosperity, which was essentially the proposition espoused by the devil himself, with the variation that the only reason prosperous men served God was that of assuring the continuation of their prosperity. On the basis of that false view, the three friends insisted that Job was a reprobate sinner. This Job vehemently denied, pointing out that the wicked often prospered; and it is primarily of that basic truth that God spoke in this verse.

"My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends" (Job 42:8). God's anger was due to the consent of the three in becoming instruments of Satan in their efforts to force Job to renounce his integrity. If we may judge from the exceedingly large sacrifices that God required of each of them, God must have considered their sin to have been of the very greatest dimensions.