A Loose End or Two in Job 42

With the story of Job brought to a conclusion in chapter 42, there might be a loose end or two that is still hanging. In the first place, one might wonder at the starkly statement tucked within v11, i.e. Job’s family and friends comforted him “for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (ESV). Secondly, one might wonder how a fresh set of children is adequate restoration. Are humans like livestock that can be replaced? Finally, one might have a general dissatisfaction with how seemingly neat and tidy the whole tragic story ends. “That’s not reality,” one might think, “because things only end happily ever after in fairy tales.” With these seemingly loose ends, and probably others, it is worthwhile to spend some time reflecting on the end of Job’s story more deeply.

To begin with, how can we address the matter that Job’s first set of children don’t seem to get closure while Job himself receives blessing and honor and life in this world? Two thoughts are worth mentioning. First, we have to remember that when God gave Satan the delegated authority to test Job’s integrity, God specifically required Satan to guard Job’s life (Job 2:6). That requirement set the boundary such that if Job died before the resolution of this dispute between God and Satan, it would only be so because Job cursed God in some way, shape, or form. That this is the case is reinforced by the words of Job’s wife in 2:9 and confirmed by the fact that Job’s restoration happens prior to clinical death in chapter 42. If he had not been vindicated in this life, then the accuser would have been right. The point, then, is that such conditions were not set forth in the case of Job’s children.

What, then, do we say about them? Were they just collateral damage without the same value as Job? Of course not. Only when we think that this life is the life do we fall into such false thinking. But when we confess that we are caught up in something far greater than this world and this life, we have a better perspective. Thus, Jesus gives a stark warning, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5 ESV), and the apostle Paul confesses, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21 ESV).

More broadly, D. A. Carson comments on the general dissatisfaction with the happy ending of Job 42 by acknowledging that our cultural moment has an impact on how we read this book. He writes, “We must be aware of our own biases. One of the reasons why many people are dissatisfied with this ending is because in the contemporary literary world ambiguity in moral questions is universally revered, while moral certainty was almost as universally despised. The modern mood enjoys novels and plays where the rights and wrongs get confused, where every decision is a mixture of right and wrong, truth and error, where heroes and antiheroes reverse their roles.” He continues,

Why this infatuation with ambiguity? It is regarded as more mature. Clear cut answers are written off as immature. The pluralism of our age delights in moral ambiguity—but only as long as it costs nothing. Devotion to contemporary moral ambiguity is extraordinarily self-centered. It demands freedom from God so that it can do whatever it wants. But when the suffering starts, the same self-centered focus on my world and my interests, rather ironically, wants God to provide answers of sparkling clarity.[1]

But the thread that ties up all the possible loose ends in Job 42 is Job’s example of deep and genuine humility. He repents in dust and ashes for darkening words without knowledge, he intercedes on behalf of his friends who are under the threat of God’s wrath for their words, and he accepts the fact that God’s sovereignty means that every question need not be answered. None of that changes the loss that Job experienced, including the loss of his children,[2] but it resolves the ironic tension between infatuation with ambiguity and the cry for sparkling clarity. Job could live out the rest of his 140 years and die an old man, full of days, because his life was marked by the humility to recognize that whatever might have seemed like a loose end would be tied up by God. May we all attain to that humility, to the praise of our sovereign Lord.

[1] D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, 2nd ed. (Baker Academic, 2006), 154.

[2] Carson, How Long, O Lord?, 155.