Job 42:17 - Dummelow's Commentary on the Bible

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Bible Comments

The Epilogue

7-17. These vv. describe the happy ending to Job's trials and his restoration to prosperity. It is a sequel in full accord with the religious ideas of the Hebrews. With no clear idea of a future state, where compensation will be found for the ills of this world, long life and earthly happiness were regarded as the only evidence of God's favour and approval. The feeling that the happy ending spoils the effect is modern, but incorrect. For it would have made a very bad impression on the reader, if God had been represented as callously leaving Job to suffer, when the occasion for trial had passed away.

7-9. The friends receive the divine condemnation. 'The three friends had really inculpated the providence of God by their professed defence of it. By disingenuously covering up and ignoring its enigmas they had cast more discredit on it than Job, who honestly held them up to the light. Their denial of its apparent inequalities was more untrue and dishonouring to the divine administration as it is in fact conducted than Job's bold affirmation of them' (W. H. Green's 'Argument of the Book of Job unfolded'). At the same time there is a strange contrast between the judgment on Job expressed here and that expressed in the speech out of the storm, which supports the view that the prose portions were borrowed by the writer from an older book.

Related Commentaries of Job 42:7

Job 42:7-17

7 And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.

8 Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for hima will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job.

9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: the LORD also accepted Job.b

10 And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gavec Job twice as much as he had before.

11 Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.

12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.

13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.

14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch.

15 And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.

16 After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations.

17 So Job died, being old and full of days.