Job 42
v.1
Then Job replied to the LORD:
v.2
“I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.
v.3
[You asked,] ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
v.4
[“You said,] ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.‘
v.5
My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.
v.6
Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
v.7
After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.
When Yahweh had said all this to Job, he turned to Eliphaz of Teman. ‘I burn with anger against you and your two friends’ he said ‘for not speaking truthfully about me as my servant Job has done.
Notice carefully what God says in Job 42:7—not that Job spoke truth but that he spoke truthfully, and not that the three friends did not speak truth but that they did not speak truthfully, as Job did. What is the difference between speaking truth and speaking truthfully?
It is the difference between a noun and an adverb, between truth in the content of what is spoken and truth in the act of speaking itself. Whether or not you speak the truth is an objective question, whereas whether or not you speak truthfully is a subjective question, a personal question. Job did not always speak the truth, but he always spoke truthfully. His words were not always in the truth, but he was. He had the quality of truth, emeth, fidelity, in his being and his acting. He had what Kierkegaard called (somewhat misleadingly) “truth as subjectivity” (in Concluding Unscientific Postscript).
What does this mean specifically? Job sticks to God, retains intimacy, passion, and care, while the three friends are satisfied with correctness of words, “dead orthodoxy”. Job’s words do not accurately reflect God, as the three friends’ words do, but Job himself is in a true relationship to God, as the three friends are not: a relationship of heart and soul, life-or-death passion. No one can be truly related to God without life-or-death passion. To be related to God in a way that is only finite, partial, held back, or calculating is not truly to be related to God. God is everything or nothing. Job thinks God has let him down, so that in a sense God has become nothing to him. That is a mistake, but Job at least knows it must be all or nothing. God is infinite love, and the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Job’s love for God is infected with indifference. Job stays married to God and throws dishes at him; the three friends have a polite nonmarriage, with separate bedrooms and separate vacations. The family that fights together stays together.
“I wish I knew why I was hurt so much.” - The Man Who Was Thursday
v.8
So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”
v.9
So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.
v.10
After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before.
v.11
All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.
v.12
The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys.
v.13
And he also had seven sons and three daughters.
v.14
The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch.
v.15
Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
v.16
After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation.
v.17
And so he died, old and full of years.