Scripture Daily

Context No. 1350 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 42:12-17: in context

12So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female donkeys. 13He had also seven sons and three daughters. 14He called the name of the first, Jemimah; and the name of the second, Keziah; and the name of the third, Keren Happuch. 15In all the land were no women found so beautiful as the daughters of Job. Their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. 16After this Job lived one hundred forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, to four generations. 17So Job died, being old and full of days.

The book of Job ends in restoration. The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning, giving him twice the livestock he had lost, fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand donkeys. He had seven sons again and three daughters, and the daughters, named Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-happuch, were given a share of the inheritance among their brothers. Job lived a hundred and forty years more, saw four generations of his descendants, and died an old man, full of days.

The book that has wrestled so honestly with undeserved suffering ends by insisting that suffering is not God's last word over a faithful life: the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. After the ash heap, the loss, the long anguish and the unanswered questions, the story closes not in ruin but in blessing, with Job restored and living out his days full and content. And yet the restoration is worth reading honestly, without sentimentality. Job is given new children, but the seven sons and three daughters he lost are not thereby cancelled or forgotten; new children do not replace the ones a parent has buried, and the text does not pretend they do. The blessing at the end does not undo the grief of the middle; it comes after it, alongside the memory of it. What the ending affirms is not that Job's suffering did not matter, but that it was not the end of his story, that God's final word over him was blessing and not loss. There is real hope in that for those in the middle of their own suffering, who cannot yet see any latter end. It does not promise that every loss will be restored in this life as Job's was; but it testifies that for those who hold to God through the darkness, suffering is not the last chapter, that the God who let Job be tested also blessed his latter days, and that the story of a faithful life, however hard its middle, ends in his hands.

In the middle of my own suffering, where I cannot yet see any latter end, can I hold to the hope this ending testifies, that for those who cling to God through the darkness, suffering is not the last word, and the story ends in his hands?

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