Bible Commentaries

The Divine Attributes

Job 42:2

The meaning is that there is no purpose which the Almighty cannot carry out.

I. Though literally the words seem merely an acknowledgment of power they are also an admission of Job 42:2

The author of the book of Job is entirely unknown; guesses have, to be sure, been made as to his name, but they are unsupported by any evidence worthy of credit. It is tolerably certain that Luther was right in his opinion that the book of Job is a religious drama, in which, somewhat as in Goethe's "Faust," the experiences of a well-known figure in legendary history are made the vehicle for expressing the anxious questionings of men as to the deepest problems with which the mind of man can be engaged, and that the book was marked off as unlike other books, that it was counted worthy of a place in the Sacred Canon of the Old Testament, will not be thought surprising by anyone who is at the pains to think over its wonderful teaching, who observes the reverent and piercing insight with which this inspired poet has justified the ways of God to man.

I. This is the main subject of the book. Job is a man who has met with extraordinary misfortunes. The devil uses them as a means by which he may shake Job's faith in God, his trust in an overruling Providence. But it is in vain. Still greater trials are in store. Well-meaning friends come to visit him. Throughout their long speeches they return again and again to this one principle, that suffering is always and invariably the consequence of sin. Sin is always punished by the Supreme, they say, and such misery as this of yours can spring from nothing else but some violation of God's law or neglect of His will, some proud boastfulness or secret indulgence in wrongdoing. Confident in his innocence Job dares to appeal from the judgment of man to the judgment of the All Righteous One Himself, who will surely deliver him in due time.

II. The next section of the book is taken up with the speeches of Elihu, who through respect for his elders has kept silent until now. The insignificance and the ignorance of man he speaks of; and he adds a thought which none of the older men had put forward, as to the educational value of pain in the formation of character. This mystery of sorrow may be part of the discipline by which man is trained to holiness.

III. Man's finitude and God's infinite wisdom and power are the topic of the concluding chapters, in which Jehovah is represented as answering Job out of the whirlwind and the storm. The littleness of man. The greatness of God. It is. this thought of the unmeasured greatness of the Supreme, this thought of the infinite resourcefulness of the Divine Job 42:2-3

The God who is the antagonist of Prometheus has power, but he has not goodness: the God who is the antagonist of Job is perfect in goodness as in power. And so Prometheus, strong in conscious right and in foreknowledge of the future, remains unshaken by persuasions and threats. At the close of the drama, from out of elemental ruin—earthquake and lightning and tempest—he utters his last defiant words: "Thou seest what unjust things I suffer". Job 42:5-6

God reminds us of His Job 42:7

There is superstition in our prayers, often in our hearing of sermons, bitter contentions, invectives, persecutions, strange conceits, besides diversity of opinions, schisms, factions, etc. But as the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, and his two friends, "his wrath was kindled against them, for they had not spoken of him things that were right"; so we may say justly of these schismatics and heretics, how wise soever in their own conceits, non recte loquuntur de Deo, they speak not, they think not, they write not well of God, and as they ought.

—Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

Job 42:10

At the outset, he prays for his family—a narrow circle; but when he has passed through his mighty lesson, he prays again—for his friends, so called, but no friends. They had come to him as such, but they proved themselves miserable comforters.... Job's feeling is the reflection of God's, whose wrath was kindled against these men; but it was a transient feeling, and passed away as he emerged from his trial. When he had come to see God with his eye, and had humbled himself in dust and ashes, there was no place left in him for wrath and reproach. God be thanked that a time comes to all when hatred dies out!

—T. T. Munger.

"And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before" Prosperity, enjoyment, happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the name by which we designate that state in which life is to our own selves pleasant and delightful, as long as they are sought or prized as things essential, so far have a tendency to disennoble our nature, and are a sign that we are still in servitude to selfishness. Only when they lie outside of us, as ornaments merely to be worn or laid aside as God pleases—only then may such things be possessed with impunity. Job's heart in early times had clung to them more than he knew, but now he was purged clean, and they were restored because he had ceased to need them.

—Froude.

References.—XLII:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No1262. Ibid. vol. vii. No404.

Job 42:13

"This Mother of George Herbert," says Izaak Walton, "was the happy mother of seven sons and three daughters, which she would often say was Job's number and Job's distribution; and as often bless God that they were neither defective in their shapes nor in their reason; and very often reprove them that did not praise God for so great a blessing."

Job 42:15

"Are you still heretic enough to think that only the manifestations of the devil are alluring? Has God then made nothing fair? Can He show nothing attractive? Is all the loveliness, and joy, and ecstasy in Babylon, and all the ugliness and desolation and pain in the kingdom of God?" "Oh no; I never meant that. Don"t we know that Job , after his trial, was blessed by the Lord, and was given, besides seven sons and an enormous amount of cattle, three daughters? "And in all the land," we are told, "were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job." In some creatures, therefore, beauty is clearly meant to be a blessing."

—John Oliver Hobbes, The School for Saints, chap, XXVII.