Job 42:3

“Then Job answered the LORD” follows straight on from the speeches the LORD gave out of the whirlwind (Job 38–41), which open with the LORD answering Job from the storm (Job 38:1). The argument behind those speeches began with Job’s lament in Job 3 and ran on through his exchanges with Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu. His friends held the common belief that suffering comes as a direct result of sin, so they pressed him to confess. Job held to his integrity and longed for a hearing with God himself. He wanted to argue his case with God (Job 13:3), he longed to find him and set his cause before him (Job 23:3–7), and he called on God to answer him (Job 13:22).

When the LORD came, he left the reason for Job’s suffering unspoken. He showed Job his wisdom, his power and his rule over all creation, from the heavens to the wildest creatures of the earth, Behemoth and Leviathan among them (Job 40–41). After the first speech Job gave a short answer: “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth” (Job 40:3–5). Here he gives his full one. There is a plain irony in it. The man who asked for an audience with God has been given one, and all he has left to say is a confession.

The verse names both speakers. Job’s name, ʼÎyôwb, comes from a root meaning “hated” or “persecuted”, which fits all he has borne. The one he answers is “the LORD”, Yᵉhôvâh, the personal, covenant name of God, the self-existent and eternal one. The book is set in the land of Uz, outside Israel, and the God who speaks there is the LORD himself, the Creator and ruler of all peoples. The verb ʻânâh, “answered”, means to answer or respond to words or to a situation, and ʼâmar, “said”, is the everyday verb for saying something. Here it brings in the words of verses 2 to 6.

Isaiah answered in the same spirit when he saw the LORD and cried out that he was undone (Isaiah 6:5). Paul asks who a man is to answer back to God (Romans 9:20), and the psalm says that our God is in the heavens and does whatever he pleases (Psalm 115:3).

“I know that thou canst do every thing” is Job’s confession of God’s power, and he makes it now from what he has seen as well as from what he was taught. The verb yâkôl means to be able, whether in strength or by right, and Job sets it beside “every thing”. The prophet praises the same great power and outstretched arm (Jeremiah 32:17), and God says through Isaiah, “My counsel shall stand” (Isaiah 46:10).

The second line joins God’s knowledge to his power. The word for “thought”, mᵉzimmâh, means a plan or purpose. It is usually used of an evil scheme, and sometimes of good, wise forethought. The verb “withholden”, bâtsar, means to clip off, as in gathering grapes, and also to be cut off and out of reach, as a fortified city is, and so to restrain or withhold. Two truths stand together in this line. God’s own purposes are beyond the reach of anything that would cut them off or hold them back. And every human thought and plan, down to the most secret intention of the heart, lies open before him, as David says in Psalm 139:1–4.

So God’s power is a knowing power. His plans are wise as well as sure, and he carries them out in full. That is a comfort, because the one who rules all things knows our circumstances and is able to work all things for his good purposes. It also humbles us, because the depth of his wisdom lies far beyond what we can grasp (Romans 11:33–36).

“Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge?” is a question Job has heard before. The LORD opened his first speech with it: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Job repeats the question and answers it about himself. He is the one who, by his complaints and arguments, had obscured God’s plan and wisdom, and he had done it without knowledge. By applying God’s words to himself, Job shows that he has heard and accepted what the LORD said to him from the whirlwind.

The verb ʻâlam, “hideth”, means to veil from sight or to conceal, and its form here is the one used for a deliberate act. The word daʻath, “knowledge”, means knowledge, including skill and discernment. To speak “without knowledge” is to speak as if one had an understanding one lacks.

“Therefore have I uttered that I understood not” is the confession that follows from it. Job spoke of God’s justice and God’s dealings with him from a narrow, human view, in the pain of his suffering. “Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not” names what he had spoken about. The verb pâlâʼ means to be great, difficult or wonderful, and it describes what is extraordinary and beyond a man’s power to grasp. Job means God’s works, his rule of the world and the purposes of his plan. His earlier answer had stopped at laying his hand on his mouth, and here he gives up his claim to understand God’s ways.

God says the same through Isaiah: his thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9). Paul says that the foolishness of God is wiser than men (1 Corinthians 1:25). Faith rests in God’s rule while much of his working stays beyond our understanding, and a true meeting with the living God strips away our pride in our own wisdom.

The LORD had said to Job, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me” (Job 38:3), and he said it again at the start of his second speech (Job 40:7). The verb shâʼal, “demand”, means to ask, inquire, request or require, and it is the same verb the LORD used. In verse 3 Job took up God’s question, and here he takes up God’s challenge in the same way. By repeating these words, Job accepts that the LORD has the right to question him, owns that the answers lie with God, and asks God to go on teaching him.

“Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak” turns Job’s old request around. For many chapters he wanted God to hear his complaints and his case. Now he asks for God’s attention so that he may confess. The verb shâmaʿ, “hear”, means to hear with attention and understanding, often with the thought of obeying, and in its causative form it means to tell. “Declare thou unto me” uses yâdaʿ, to know, in the form that means to cause someone to know, to make known. Job looks to God as the source of all true knowledge and wants God to make his truth known to him.

Job has moved from pleading a case to worship and listening. The book itself says that the fear of the Lord is wisdom (Job 28:28). Proverbs calls us to trust in the LORD with all our heart (Proverbs 3:5–6), and James calls us to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord (James 4:10).

“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear” describes Job’s knowledge of God before the whirlwind. The verb “heard” is shâmaʻ, the same verb as “Hear” in verse 4. Saying “heard” and “hearing of the ear” together stresses that this knowledge came from outside him. It was what he had been taught and told, true as far as it went, a knowledge about God received second hand.

“But now mine eye seeth thee” marks the change. The word ʻayin means an eye, and it is used both for sight and for insight. The verb râʼâh means to see, and also to perceive, to understand and to experience. Job now knows God directly and personally, in his power, wisdom and holiness, because God has spoken to him. This knowledge takes in the whole man, and it humbles him.

“Wherefore” ties this verse to the one before. Because Job has seen God, he abhors himself. The verb mâʼaç means to spurn, reject, despise or loathe. The KJV supplies “myself” to complete the sense. What Job loathes is his own former stance: the boldness of his challenges to God, his self-justification and the pride that led him to contend with the Almighty. This is a holy revulsion, free of morbid self-pity, born of seeing God’s holiness and the distance between the Creator and his creature.

The verb nâcham, “repent”, first means to sigh or breathe strongly, and from that to be sorry, to pity, to console, and of oneself to rue or to take comfort. Here it is a deep sorrow that turns Job to God, a change of heart and purpose that leaves behind his demanding and defending.

“Dust and ashes”, ʻâphâr wāʼēpher, is a phrase of deep humility, grief and penitence. The word ʻâphâr means dust, dry earth or loose soil, and it recalls the frailty and origin of man, who was taken from the dust and returns to it (Genesis 3:19). The word ʼêpher, ashes, is what is left after burning, and it goes with mourning and desolation. Mourners would tear their clothes, put on sackcloth and sit in dust and ashes as an outward sign of grief, humility and a plea for mercy. Daniel prayed in sackcloth and ashes (Daniel 9:3), and the king of Nineveh sat in ashes (Jonah 3:6). The sign was meant to show the heart, as Joel says: “Rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel 2:13). The sacrifice God looks for is a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). In dust and ashes Job takes his place as a creature of dust before his Maker.

Job heard God’s voice from a whirlwind. God has since spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), who is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). John writes, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). Job prayed, “declare thou unto me,” and in the Son God has declared himself fully. Jesus told Philip that whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9), and Paul calls him the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). The longing behind “now mine eye seeth thee” finds its answer in him.

The “things too wonderful” that Job could only dimly perceive are made known in Christ. He is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). All things were created by him and hold together in him (Colossians 1:16–17). In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), and in him all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). The mystery hidden for ages is now revealed through him to his church (Ephesians 3:9–11). He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and the Spirit reveals to us the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10–16).

The power and knowledge Job confessed in verse 2 are seen in Jesus. He knew what was in man (John 2:25), he had authority over his own life to lay it down and take it again (John 10:18), and he is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25). And where Job humbled himself in dust and ashes, Christ, though equal with God, humbled himself to the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God made him to be sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Repentance that turns to him finds forgiveness, a new birth (John 3:3) and newness of life (Romans 6:4).

These six verses show who God is. He can do every thing, and every thought and plan lies open to him. His counsel stands, and his works are too wonderful for us. He also comes near. He answered Job, spoke to him and let him see him, and the man who had only heard of God came to know him for himself.

Job’s answer shows the right response to such a God. He owned that his words had been spoken without knowledge, he gave God the right to question and teach him, and he took his place in dust and ashes. God received that humble confession, and Job’s story goes on to restoration. The same God has now declared himself fully in his Son, and the sight Job was given is offered to all who come to God through Christ.