Job 42 Bible study: Now my eye sees you

"Then Job answered the LORD" (42:1). He had answered once before, briefly: "Behold, I am of small account. What will I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth" (40:4). Now he says, "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be restrained" (42:2) (tap restrained). Twice, as the WEB has it, he begins with what the LORD had said. "You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ therefore I have uttered that which I didn’t understand, things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know" (42:3) (tap hides). The LORD's question in 38:2 was worded a little differently: "Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (38:2). Then, "You said, ‘Listen, now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me.’" (42:4); "I will question you, and you will answer me" are the LORD's words in 40:7. In Hebrew 42:3 and 42:4 have no words for You asked and You said. And then: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (42:5), and "Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (42:6) (tap abhor, repent). These are the last words Job speaks in the book. From 42:7 to the end, only the LORD speaks, and the book tells the rest.

Job 42:10→leads toJames 5:11

"The LORD restored Job’s prosperity when he prayed for his friends. The LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before" (42:10), and "So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning" (42:12). James writes, "Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord" (James 5:7), and "Behold, we call them blessed who endured. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and have seen the Lord in the outcome, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy" (James 5:11). It is the one place the New Testament names Job, and James doesn't say which verses of the book he means. James opens his letter as "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1); 5:11 itself doesn't name Jesus, and these notes don't say whom its the Lord means. James names Job for his perseverance; he doesn't make Job a picture of Jesus, and neither do these notes.

נָחַםnachamsay na-KHAM

For the form used in 42:6, Brown-Driver-Briggs lists among the senses of this verb "be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent", and also "comfort oneself, be comforted"; for the form used everywhere else in Job it gives "comfort, console". Strong's: "to be sorry, i.e. (in a favorable sense) to pity, console or (reflexively) rue". "Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (42:6). In the Hebrew of Job it comes seven times, and everywhere but 42:6 the WEB gives it as comfort or console: the friends came "to comfort him" (2:11); "My bed will comfort me" (7:13); "You are all miserable comforters!" (16:2); "So how can you comfort me with nonsense" (21:34); "as one who comforts the mourners" (29:25); and five verses after 42:6, Job's family "consoled him" (42:11). The abridged lexicon doesn't say which sense it gives to 42:6, and these notes don't choose one.