Job 42:6

6. I abhor myself אמאס . As in Job 7:16, (which see,) the object of the verb abhor is not given. Hengstenberg conceives the object of his loathing (“despising,” or “recantation,” thus Zockler and Hitzig) to be his earlier speeches. The Septuagint and Vulgate, with more reason, supply myself, the former of which adds, by way of explanation, ετακην , I am dissolving, (compare Job 19:27,) such is the violence of his emotion.

In dust and ashes “In a sense that is absolutely proper the book forms a περιοδος , a period or circuit.” Vilmar. The trial found Job a spiritual monarch seated upon his throne of ashes resigned, submissive to the will of God. “He sat down among the ashes.” Job 2:8. Now, as the purifying fires have burned their utmost, we find him brought around to his former ground of supremacy. The last recorded words “ashes” that fall from his lips are of the deepest significance the same Hebrew word, epher, being employed as in Job 2:8. The allotment of the divine will he accepts, though it be but dust and ashes. Hengstenberg interprets it: “I, who have sat until now in dust and ashes because of grief on account of my misfortunes, will continue so to do, but from another reason, because of grief on account of my sin.” “Here,” says the quaint Thomas Adams, “we may consider three degrees of mortification the sickness, the death, and the burial of sin. ‘I abhor myself’ there sin is sick and wounded; ‘I repent’ there it is wounded and dead; ‘in dust and ashes’ there it is dead and buried.” Sermon in loc., entitled, “The Sinner’s Mourning Habit.” See also University Sermons of W.H. Mill “Job Penitent.”