Job 42:1-6

Job’s Final Withdrawal

Job at last has learned his lesson. The convincing evidences of wisdom, power, and love which God has offered him, have led him to lay aside his pride of intellect and pride of innocence. He feels that he may safely trust, even though he may never fully understand, and with Abraham he may rest convinced that the Judge of all the earth must do right.

The difficulties of Job were the difficulties of the author and of the thoughtful men of his day. ’He had pondered the ethical and religious problem presented by the moral order of the world. With a flaming hatred of wrong and tender pity for the oppressed, he saw the triumph of the wicked and the misery of the just. He was familiar with the current doctrines, and knew how they ignored the most patent facts. A truly religious man, he had found his heart drawn to God by the irrepressible instinct for fellowship with Him, driven from Him by the apparent immorality of His government. He had known what it was to be baffled in his search for God and to feel himself slipping from the fear of the Almighty. An intellectual solution he had not been able to reach. But in humble submission to God’s inscrutable wisdom, and in a profounder sense of fellowship with Him, he had escaped into the region of unclouded trust’ (Prof. A. S. Peake’s ’Job’).

2b. RV ’And that no purpose of thine can be restrained.’

3. Job soliloquises. ’Well might God say to him (Job 38:2): Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?’ i.e. that misreads in his ignorance the real facts of divine providence. The point is that Job now agrees in God’s estimate of himself.

4. Again he repeats God’s words in Job 38:3 and Job 40:7.

5, 6. Job declares that he now understands God’s relations towards man in a far deeper and truer sense than he had hitherto. At once he retracts and repents of all that he had said amiss. The sight of God, i.e. a clearer apprehension of His majesty and righteousness, humbles Job to the dust.

6. Abhor myself] RM ’loathe my words.’