Chapter 42

1 Then Job answered the Lord: 2 “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted;⁠ 3 you asked, ‘Who is this who darkens counsel without knowledge?’ But I have declared without understanding things too wonderful for me to know.⁠ 4 You said, ‘Pay attention, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me.’ 5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes!”⁠ 7 After the Lord had spoken these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My anger is stirred up against you and your two friends because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job will intercede for you, and I will respect him, so that I do not deal with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9 So they went, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, and did just as the Lord had told them; and the Lord had respect for Job.⁠ 10 So the Lord restored what Job had lost after he prayed for his friends, and the Lord doubled all that had belonged to Job.⁠ 11 So they came to him, all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they dined with him in his house. They comforted him and consoled him for all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. 12 So the Lord blessed the second part of Job’s life more than the first. He had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land could women be found who were as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance alongside their brothers. 16 After this Job lived 140 years;⁠ he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so Job died, old and full of days.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 11:6 and Job 42:2

Hebrew Bible

Summary

Job 42 echoes Genesis 11 and the depiction of human ambition at the tower of Babel, using it to describe divine power. The connection suggests that the author of Job intentionally reworked Genesis language to emphasize its own narrative and theology.

Passages

Genesis 11:6

Hebrew Bible

4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city.

750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Job 42:2

Hebrew Bible

1 Then Job answered the Lord: 2 “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted; 3 you asked, ‘Who is this who darkens counsel without knowledge?’ But I have declared without understanding things too wonderful for me to know. 4 You said, ‘Pay attention, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me.’

500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Job

References

"... The book of Job is vague concerning its precise setting, but as Hurvitz has shown, the book contains archaized language to make it appear contemporary to the patriarchs. The LXX and other traditions connected Job to Jobab, king of Edom (Genesis 36:33–34), in the era prior to the Israelite monarchy (Job 42:17 LXX). While the etymology of Job is unlikely to be from Jobab, as Job introduces a new consonant, aleph, the juxtaposition of other similar names to the Edomite kings with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar indicates that the author(s) of the book of Job intended to connect Job and Jobab. Greenstein, among others, has shown how the Joban author(s) created the names of the characters from the list of Edomite kings in Genesis 36. The name of Eliphaz is from Esau’s son (Genesis 36:10), Bildad is an alteration of Bedad, the father of Hadad (Genesis 36:35), and Zophar is an alteration of Zepho, a son of Eliphaz (Genesis 36:11). This play on the texts of Genesis demonstrates an awareness of a developed Genesis; thus indicating the book of Job postdates most of Genesis. Other notable literary connections to Genesis exist. Michael Fishbane argued that Job 42:2 contains an indirect quotation from Genesis 11:6, and certain grammatical features make it nearly impossible to read it as Genesis quoting Job. Job lives an extraordinarily long life (Job 42:16), paralleled only by the Genesis patriarchs. The author(s) of the book of Job gave it a patriarchal setting; thus connections with Genesis exist. There is not space to cover the scholarly debate concerning the dating of Genesis, but Genesis 36, the section of the book with the most connections to Job, is aware of the Israelite monarchy (Genesis 36:31) ..."

James Kipp Swinney, “Intertextual Discourse and the Problem of God: The Intersection of the Speeches of Job and Deuteronomy” (MA diss., Abilene Christian University, 2016), 8–9.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Job42 chapters

Compare Genesis 11:6 and Job 42:2

Summary

Passages

Genesis 11:6

Job 42:2

References

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