The Book Comes to an End (Job 42:7-17)

And so we leave the book of Job with observations and questions, rather than neat conclusions. Job proves faithful to God in prosperity and in adversity. This surely is a model for us. But the odious judgments made by his friends caution us against making too-certain application of any model to our own lives.

God proves faithful to Job. This is our ultimate hope and comfort. But we cannot predict how his faithfulness will be manifest in our lives until his promises are fulfilled in the new heaven and new earth. It would be folly to judge others, or even ourselves, based on the fractional evidence available to us, the paltry wisdom we are able to grasp and the minuscule perspectives we hold. To the hardest questions about the circumstances of our lives, the wisest answer may often be, “I don’t know.”

Epilogue — Job’s Prosperity Restored (Job 42:7-17), Theology of Work Project, Copyright © 2014 Theology of Work Project, Inc. Also find this article in Theology of Work Bible Commentary, Volume 2: Joshua through Song of Songs. For additional resources, please see The Theology of Work Project Series.