Job 42:8

8. A burnt offering This differs from the burnt offering required by the Mosaic ritual. That it should be the same in kind and number with that offered by Balaam, a Gentile prophet, (Numbers 23:1-2,) and that there should be the twofold recognition of the sacred and complete number seven, points to an ante-Mosaical, if not patriarchal, period for the life of Job. The profound solemnity thus given to the sacrifice about to be offered, and the mortifying announcement that “the friends” should find forgiveness through the intercession and priesthood of the leprous Job, must have made them painfully alive to the folly of their conduct. According to Grotius, in loc., the Hebrews think that the holocaust was the only form of sacrifice prevailing to the time of Moses. See Job 1:5.

My servant Job shall pray for you The intercessory prayer which Job is directed to offer also suggests a pre-Mosaical economy as that under which he lived. Genesis 20:7; Genesis 20:17. The Mosaic law prescribes grandly significant rites and ceremonies, but without specific directions for prayer. See, however, Leviticus 16:21; Deuteronomy 26:10-13.

For him will I accept Literally, only his face will I lift up; that is, regard favourably. The expression takes its rise from the favour granted by an Oriental prince to a suppliant, who is graciously bidden to rise from his prostration, and thus lift up his face. Compare Job 13:8; Job 32:21; Genesis 19:21. This profound principle of the divine economy the power of the good to intercede for the sinful had been already portrayed by Eliphaz with great beauty, (Job 22:29-30,) and in patriarchal times was announced by God himself to the Egyptian king, Abimelech. Genesis 20:7. Compare Genesis 18:32; Genesis 26:24; Exodus 32:7-14; Deuteronomy 9:7-29. In a world where the life of each is made to depend upon the kind offices and interposition of another, as is the case throughout the infantile period of human existence, the patriarchal usage of intercession by one being for another is one which fully comports with the demands of our reason. The whole scheme of society is subsequently so arranged as to make the services of others indispensable to each a principle so universally true that no one attains to the higher bliss of life without the co-operation of others. His own richest temporal blessings God, for the most part, bestows through the medium of others; and by making human beings the channels for the outflow of divine beneficence, so arranges that they themselves shall be benefited and ennobled. All beneficence, human or divine, then, fails to fulfil its mission unless it brings with it manifold blessings even as rays of light, whose end may be to give life and sustenance to the unpretending plant, scatter blessings along their entire path. The culminating hour of prayer, when Job gains the highest victory over himself by praying for the three friends, and more especially for the genteel and venerable leader Eliphaz, who most deeply maligned him, becomes the culmination of his distress and the turning point of his “captivity.” See Job 42:10.

Lest I deal with you after your folly Literally, that I may not do with your folly, which Hitzig supposes to be spoken after the manner of men, and to refer to possible precipitate action on the part of God. The views of Delitzsch and Dillmann, which Hitzig calls “wooden,” are to be preferred. They take folly by synecdoche for “the punishment of folly,” in like manner as השׂאת or עין , sin, is used for the penalty of sin the former of whom reads, in accordance with our Authorized Version, that I recompense not unto you your folly.