Job 40-42 - Job Repents in Dust and Ashes

Job Places His Hand over His Mouth

Job 40:1-2 LSB - [1] Then Yahweh answered Job and said, [2] "Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it."

Job 40:3-4 LSB - [3] Then Job answered Yahweh and said, [4] "Behold, I am insignificant; what can I respond to You? I place my hand over my mouth.

We must all be caused to see our “lightness” next to God. “Surely, if any man had a right to say I am not vile, it was Job; for, according to the testimony of God himself, he was ‘a perfect and an upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil.’ Yet we find even this eminent saint when by his nearness to God he had received light enough to discover his own condition, exclaiming, ‘Behold I am vile.’” (Spurgeon)

“Job said, ‘Behold, I am vile.’ That word ‘behold’ implies that he was astonished. The discovery was unexpected. There are special times with the Lord’s people, when they learn by experience that they are vile.” (Spurgeon)

Yahweh Will Ask Job

Job 40:8 LSB - [8] "Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?

Behold the Behemoth

Job 40:15 LSB - [15] "Behold now, Behemoth, which I made along with you; It eats grass like an ox.

Job 40:19 LSB - [19] "It is the first of the ways of God; Let its Maker bring near its sword.

Can You Draw Out Leviathan?

Job 41:1 LSB - [1] "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook? Or press down its tongue with a cord?

Job 41:10-11 LSB - [10] "No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse it; Who then is he that can stand before Me? [11] "Who has given to Me that I should repay [him]? [Whatever] is under the whole heaven is Mine.

Job 41:28-29 LSB - [28] "The arrow cannot make it flee; Slingstones are turned into stubble for it. [29] "Clubs are regarded as stubble; It laughs at the rattling of the javelin.

Job Repents in Dust and Ashes

Job 42:3 LSB - [3] 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too marvelous for me, which I did not know.

“Job felt that what he had spoken concerning the Lord was in the main true; and the Lord himself said to Job’s three friends, ‘Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath’; but under a sense of the divine presence Job felt that even when he had spoken aright, he had spoken beyond his own proper knowledge, uttering speech whose depths of meaning he could not himself fathom.” (Spurgeon)

Job 42:4-6 LSB - [4] 'Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You make me know.' [5] "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; [6] Therefore I reject [myself], And I repent in dust and ashes."

What did Job have to repent of? In his sermon, Job Among the Ashes, Charles Spurgeon suggested several things:

• Job repented of the terrible curse he had pronounced upon the day of his birth.
• Job repented of his desire to die.
• Job repented of his complaints against and challenges to God.
• Job repented of his despair.
• Job repented that his statements had been a “darkening of wisdom by words without knowledge”; that he spoke beyond his knowledge and ability to know.

Yahweh’s Anger Towards Job’s Friends

Job 42:7 LSB - [7] Now it happened after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, that Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My anger burns against you and against your two friends because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.

Yahweh Restores Job’s Fortunes

Job 42:17 LSB - [17] Then Job died, an old man and full of days.

“We are not all like Job, but we all have Job’s God. Though we have neither risen to Job’s wealth, nor will, probably, ever sink to Job’s poverty, yet there is the same God above us if we be high, and the same God with his everlasting arms beneath us if we be brought low; and what the Lord did for Job he will do for us, not precisely in the same form, but in the same spirit, and with like design.” (Spurgeon)