Job 42:1 - Meaning and Application

Job’s words in which he tried to justify himself had come to an end, Job 31:40. After that, he no longer spoke in that way. The words in which he judged and condemned himself began in Job 40:4-5, and he keeps speaking in that same spirit here. His patience had not fully done its work, but his repentance for his impatience had. He is now deeply humbled for his foolish and careless speech, and it was forgiven.

Good people will finally see and admit their faults, though it may take some effort to bring them to that point. After God had said all this about his own greatness and power shown in creation, Job answered the Lord (Job 42:1). He did not answer in argument, since he had promised not to answer that way again (Job 40:5), but in submission. That is how we all should answer God’s calls.

First, Job agrees with the truth of God’s unlimited power, knowledge, and rule, which was the point of God’s speech from the whirlwind, Job 42:2. Sinful feelings and actions come either from false ideas or from ignoring and doubting the truth. For that reason, true repentance begins with admitting the truth (2 Timothy 2:25). Job now says that his mind is convinced of God’s greatness, glory, and perfection, and that must lead him to see his own foolishness in speaking carelessly to God.

He admits that God can do everything. What is too hard for the one who made Behemoth and Leviathan, and rules them both as he chooses? Job knew this before, and he had even spoken well about it before, but now he knows it in a personal way. God has spoken once, and then Job heard it twice, that power belongs to God. So it is sheer madness and arrogance to argue with him. “You can do everything, so you can lift me out of this low state. I have often foolishly given up on that as impossible, but now I believe you are able to do it.”

He also admits that no thought can be hidden from God, meaning two things. First, there is no thought of ours that he cannot know. No complaining, unhappy, or unbelieving thought is ever in our minds without God seeing it. It is useless to resist him, because we cannot hide our plans and schemes from him, and if he uncovers them, he can stop them. Second, there is no thought of his that can be kept from being carried out. Whatever the Lord wants, he does. Job had once said this bitterly, while complaining about it, Job 23:13. Now he says it with peace and joy, because God’s plans will stand. If God’s thoughts about us are thoughts of good, to give us an expected end, he cannot be stopped from bringing his kind purposes to completion, no matter how hard the path may seem.

Second, Job admits that he was guilty of what God charged him with at the start of the speech, Job 42:3. “Lord, your first words were, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’ That was enough. That word convicted me. I admit I am the man who has been so foolish. That word reached my conscience and put my sin clearly before me. It is too plain to deny and too serious to excuse. I have hidden counsel without knowledge. I have ignored God’s wise plans in afflicting me, and so I have argued with God and cared too much about proving myself right. Therefore I spoke of things I did not understand.” That means, “I passed judgment on the ways of providence, even though I was completely ignorant of the reasons for them.”

Here Job admits, first, that he was ignorant of God’s secret purposes, and so are we all. God’s judgments are a great deep, and we cannot measure them, much less find their springs. We see what God does, but we do not know why he does it, what he is aiming at, or where it will end. These things are too wonderful for us. We cannot see them clearly, cannot change them, and have no right to judge them. We do not know these things, and it is far above our ability to pronounce a verdict on them. We quarrel with providence because we do not understand it. We must be content to stay in the dark about it until the mystery of God is finished.

Second, he admits that he was unwise and bold in speaking about what he did not understand, and in calling to account what he was not fit to judge. Anyone who answers a matter before hearing it, it is folly and shame to him. We harm ourselves, as well as the cause we try to decide, when we are not qualified judges.

Third, Job says he will not argue, but will plead with his Judge, as he had said before, Job 9:15. “Hear me, I pray, and I will speak” (Job 42:4). He does not mean speak as a plaintiff or a defendant (Job 13:22), but as a humble petitioner. He is not coming as one who wants to teach God or set terms for him, but as one who wants to learn and is ready to be guided. “Lord, do not ask me any more hard questions, because I cannot answer even one out of a thousand of yours. Let me ask you for instruction, and do not refuse me. Do not reproach me for my foolishness and self-reliance” (James 1:5). Now he is brought to the prayer Elihu had taught him, “Teach me what I do not see.”

Fourth, Job places himself in the posture of a penitent, and that is the right ground to stand on. In true repentance there must be not only conviction of sin, but also sorrow and grief that come from God, sorrow that matches his will, 2 Corinthians 7:9. Job’s sorrow for sin was like that. He looked to God in his repentance, honored him greatly, and made that the basis of it (Job 42:5). “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear many times, from my teachers when I was young, and from my friends more recently. I knew something of your greatness, your power, and your sovereign rule, but I was not brought by what I heard to submit to you as I should have. The truths I knew only gave me something to talk about, and they did not shape my heart. But now you have shown yourself to me directly in your glorious majesty. Now my eyes see you. Now I feel the power of truths I only knew in words before, and so now I repent and take back what I foolishly said.”

It is a great mercy to receive a good upbringing and to know the things of God through his Word and his ministers. Faith comes by hearing, and it is most likely to come when we listen carefully with the ear. When the Spirit of grace enlightens the understanding, our knowledge of divine things goes far beyond what we had before, just as seeing for ourselves is stronger than hearing reports. Through the teaching of men, God reveals his Son to us. Through the teaching of his Spirit, he reveals his Son in us (Galatians 1:16), and so he changes us into the same image (2 Corinthians 3:18). God is pleased at times to show himself most fully to his people through the rebukes of his Word and providence.

“Now that I have been afflicted, now that I have been corrected for my faults, now my eye sees you.” The rod and reproof give wisdom. Blessed is the person whom you discipline and teach. Job now turns his thoughts inward in repentance. He thinks humbly of himself, and that shows his sorrow for his sin (Job 42:6): “Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.”

It matters that we are deeply humbled for the sins we have come to see. We should not settle for a small, surface-level dislike of our wrongdoing. Even good people, who have no gross sins to confess, must still grieve deeply over pride, anger, irritability, discontent, and all their hasty, unwise words. For these, we should be cut to the heart and brought into bitterness. Until the enemy is truly humbled, peace will not be secure.

Outward signs of godly sorrow fit a penitent heart. Job repented in dust and ashes. If these outward signs come without an inward change, they only mock God. But when they come from real sorrow in the soul, the sinner gives glory to God, takes shame to himself, and may even lead others to repentance.

Job’s sufferings had already brought him to the ashes, where he sat down among them (Job 2:8). Now his sins bring him there. True penitents grieve for their sins as deeply as they once grieved for outward troubles. They are bitter as one who mourns for an only son, because they now see more evil in their sins than in their troubles.

Self-loathing is always part of true repentance. “They will loathe themselves for the evils they have committed” (Ezekiel 6:9). We must not only be angry at ourselves for the harm sin has done to our souls. We must also despise ourselves because sin has made us hateful to the pure and holy God, who cannot bear to look on evil. If sin truly disgusts us, then our own sin will disgust us most of all, because what is closest to us often seems most offensive.

The more we see God’s glory and majesty, and the more we see the shamefulness of sin and of ourselves because of sin, the more we will humble ourselves and despise our pride. “Now my eye sees what kind of God I have offended, the brightness of that majesty I have insulted by willful sin, and the tenderness of that mercy I have rejected. Now I see what a just and holy God he is, whose wrath I have brought on myself; therefore I despise myself. ‘Woe is me, for I am undone’” (Isaiah 6:5).

God had challenged Job to look at proud people and bring them low. Job answers, in effect, “I cannot claim to do that. I have enough to do to humble my own proud heart, bring it low, and keep it low.” Let us leave it to God to govern the world, and let it be our care, by the strength of his grace, to govern ourselves and our own hearts well.