Job 42

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Job answers Yahweh

¹ Then Job answered Yahweh and said: ² I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ³ "Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?" Therefore I have declared what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ⁴ "Hear now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to Me."

⁵ I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You; ⁶ therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.

Yahweh rebukes the three friends

⁷ And after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has. ⁸ Now therefore take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves; and My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer, so that I do not deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has." ⁹ So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as Yahweh had told them; and Yahweh accepted Job's prayer.

Yahweh restores Job

¹⁰ And Yahweh restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends; and Yahweh gave Job twice as much as he had before. ¹¹ Then all his brothers and all his sisters and all who had known him before came to him and ate bread with him in his house; and they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that Yahweh had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and each a ring of gold. ¹² And Yahweh blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female donkeys. ¹³ He also had seven sons and three daughters. ¹⁴ And he called the name of the first Jemimah, and the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-happuch. ¹⁵ And in all the land no women were found so beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. ¹⁶ After this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, four generations. ¹⁷ And Job died, old and full of days.

Notes

• 42:4 In verses 3 and 4 Job takes up Yahweh's own words from the storm (38:2-3; 40:7) and answers them; the TRB marks them as quotations, as many Bibles do. Others read verse 4 as Job's own plea to Yahweh, "Hear, and let me speak; I will ask You, and You make it known to me," turning around his earlier demand (13:22). Either way, Job now confesses that he spoke of things beyond his knowledge.
• 42:6 Job had known of Elohim by what he had heard; now he has met Him, and though he is given no explanation of his suffering, he is answered. "I retract" is em'as, "I reject" or "I despise," with no object stated: many render "I despise myself" or "I abhor myself," others "I retract (my words)" or "I reject (my complaint)." "I repent" is nichamti, which can mean to change one's mind or be sorry, and also to be comforted (the same verb, in another form, is used for comforting in verse 11); some read "I am comforted concerning dust and ashes," that is, concerning his lowly, mortal state. "Dust and ashes" recalls Abraham before Adonai (Genesis 18:27) and Job among the ashes (2:8; 30:19). The TRB reads "I retract" and keeps the traditional "I repent"; in any reading Job withdraws what he said in ignorance, and Yahweh does not say that he suffered for his sins (verses 7-8).
• 42:8 "What is right" is nekhonah, what is firm, true and well-founded. Job had spoken with anguish and had been rebuked from the storm (38:2; 40:8), yet he had held to the truth that he was not suffering for his sins, and he had spoken to Elohim directly, as many readers note; the friends defended Elohim with what was not true (13:7-10; see the note at 4:1). Four times in two verses Yahweh calls him "My servant Job," as in the prologue (1:8; 2:3). "I will accept his prayer" is literally "I will lift up his face," the idiom Job used when he warned the friends against showing partiality (13:8, 10); now the man they condemned is the one who prays for them, as he once offered burnt offerings for his children (1:5). "Folly" (nevalah) is from the same root as the "foolish" speech Job rejected in 2:10.
• 42:10 "Restored the fortunes" is shav shevut, "turned the turning," a phrase used elsewhere of bringing captives home (Deuteronomy 30:3) and more widely of restoring what was lost (Psalm 126:4); Job had not been a captive, so here it means his whole state was restored. The text ties the restoration to the moment "when he prayed for his friends," not to any confession of the hidden sin they had assumed (see the note at 8:20). His flocks and herds are exactly doubled (verse 12; compare 1:3), and his children are again seven sons and three daughters (verse 13; 1:2). James points to how the Lord dealt with Job in the end as proof that He is full of compassion and mercy (James 5:11).
• 42:15 The daughters are named and the sons are not. Their names are usually understood as pictures of beauty: Jemimah, probably "dove"; Keziah, "cassia," a fragrant spice (Psalm 45:8); Keren-happuch, "horn of eye paint," a container for the dark powder women used to paint their eyes (compare 2 Kings 9:30). That they received an inheritance among their brothers was remarkable, for the Torah gave daughters their father's inheritance when there was no son (Numbers 27:8); here they share it with seven brothers.

Job 41 · Psalm 1

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