Job 42:3

3. Who is he… without knowledge He repeats God’s reproof, (Job 38:2,) as if he would say, I am the man the man of folly, arrogance, and sin, who measured himself with the Most High, and blasphemously arraigned his ways and dispensations. Or else, such is his confusion when overwhelmed with shame and contrition, that he fails in the expression of coherent thought. He repeats with variation, (to wit, the change of מחשׁיךְ , darkeneth, into מעלים , hideth, and the omission of bemillin, “with words,”) and perhaps automatically, the first words the voice of God uttered after the storm. The reader may be reminded of the confusion of Elihu at the commencement of his first address. See Job 32:6 and p. 198. Schultens calls this reply of Job “graceful and weighty,” ( venusta ac gravis,) and regards it as an acknowledgment which honours God by the use of his own language in such a manner as to turn the divine reproof into a confession on Job’s part of ignorance, and even intentional perverseness, which seems to be implied in מעלים , a word which he (Schultens) regards as more reverential. For a similar repetition, implying condemnation, see Numbers 16:3; Numbers 16:7, in which Moses repeats the words of the sons of Levi, “too much upon you.”