Job 42:7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

After the Lord had spoken these words unto Job Jehovah, having confounded all the false reasonings of Job, and sufficiently humbled his pride, now proceeds to the condemnation of the principle upon which his three friends had proceeded in all their speeches, which principle he declares not to be right. The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite God addresses him, because he was the eldest of the three, had spoken first, and by his example had led the rest into the same mistake which he himself had committed; My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends Elihu is not hre reproved, because he had dealt more mercifully with Job than these three had done, and had not condemned his person, but only rebuked his sinful expressions; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right Because they had laid it down as a certain maxim, that all (without exception) who were afflicted with such grievous calamities as Job was, must needs be under the wrath of God, as being guilty of some notorious crime; and that all who passed through life in prosperity must needs be accounted as righteous in the sight of God: whereas God wills that we should know he does not judge of men according to their condition in this life, but according to their spirit and conduct; and should always be assured that he is averse to the wicked, however prosperous they may be, and always approves of and regards the righteous, whatever afflictions they may suffer; because the divine wisdom and goodness often see most wise reasons, which we cannot comprehend, why the righteous should struggle with adversities even all their life long, and the wicked have every outward and temporal good through the whole course of their lives. As my servant Job hath What Job said may be reduced to three principal heads: 1st, He maintained that he was innocent, that is, that he was guilty of no flagrant crime, which should be the cause of his being afflicted more grievously than others; and this was nothing more than the truth. 2d, He maintained that though God often inflicted exemplary punishment on the wicked, and remarkably prospered the righteous; yet sometimes he suffered the righteous to be in affliction and trouble, and the wicked to flourish; which cannot be denied to be often the case. 3d, We find Job, notwithstanding his great afflictions, still holding fast and professing his confidence in the divine goodness. These, then, being the assertions which Job had made, and these not being repugnant to, but according with, the ways of divine providence, God approved of them rather than of what his friends had advanced, who were in an error as to their notions of God's counsels and dispensations. However, we are not to conclude from this expression that God approved of all that Job had said; for, without doubt, being too sensibly affected with the severity of his afflictions, particularly when the false and uncharitable surmises of his friends were added to them, he sometimes had spoken less reverently of God than he ought to have done, and for this the Lord had severely reproved him.