“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” — Job 42:5-6
From Demanding to Confession
Job begins with penitence, not a defense: “I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You” (v. 2). He echoes God’s questions back to Him: “You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’” (v. 3a). That was Job, speaking about things too wonderful for him. “Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (v. 3b). Job’s repentance is not for a hidden sin that caused his suffering; it is for speaking beyond what he understood. His change is not from wickedness to righteousness but from prideful confusion to humble trust.
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” (v. 5). Job has moved from secondhand theology to firsthand encounter. Suffering has brought him face-to-face with the living God. And that encounter is enough. “Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (v. 6). Job is not groveling in self-loathing; he’s surrendering to God’s mercy. He’s letting go of his need for answers because he has seen the Answer: God Himself. The answer to suffering, therefore, is not enumerated syllogism, but a Person.
If you’ve ever cried out to God, “Just tell me why,” Job’s journey meets you in that longing and gently redirects it. Job’s shift from demanding answers to kneeling in confession doesn’t mean his questions vanished; it means he saw something greater than answers. Maybe you, too, have wrestled with suffering that defies logic, or with losses no explanation can soften. The invitation of this chapter is not to silence your grief but to anchor it in the Lord’s mercy. Repentance is not what comes after you figure everything out; it’s what happens when you behold the One who holds everything, even your pain.
And when Job says, “Now my eye sees You,” he teaches us that both worship and repentance grow from communion with God, not with total clarity. God doesn’t scold Job. Instead, He reveals Himself. He doesn’t give Job a roadmap to better prayers and faith that will restore him to prosperity; He gives him His presence. You may never get the reason you’re searching for, but you can have something better: the nearness of the Lord, who speaks from the whirlwind, walks through the fire, weeps at the tomb, and speaks to you in the Divine Service. When you see Him there—not just hear of Him—worship rises not from explanation but from the encounter with His Divine Service.
God Vindicates Job and Rebukes the Friends
Finally, God turns to Eliphaz, and also through him to the three friends, perhaps because he was the first to speak on behalf of them. God says, “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has” (v. 7). This is astonishing. Job—who questioned and lamented, and whom God Himself criticized for presuming to understand God’s justice—is affirmed by God. The friends, who defend God’s justice with cold logic, are rebuked.
Why? Because Job was honest. Despite his moments of error, he was a theologian of the cross—he wrestled in faith. The friends, in contrast, reduced God to a system—transactional, predictable, and mechanical. They tried to defend God at the cost of truth and compassion.
Yet even here, mercy triumphs. “Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, go to My servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you. For I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly; because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has” (v. 8). This is absolutely remarkable. The one who suffered now intercedes. Job becomes a priest, mediating between God and those who wounded him. He prays for them, and God accepts his prayer. This is not just forgiveness but reconciliation as well. Job’s restoration begins with restored relationships—with God and his friends.
If you’ve ever been wounded by others’ careless theology—by friends or leaders who’ve tried to fix your pain with easy answers or suggested your suffering must be your fault—know this: God sees. Job’s friends thought they were defending God, but in truth, they misrepresented Him in their theologies of glory and prosperity gospel. God takes that seriously.
Yet rather than cast them off, God sends them to Job—the very one they had wronged—for intercession and forgiveness. This is a picture of how God heals not only individuals but also communities. He doesn’t simply vindicate the afflicted; He reconciles the broken through confession, prayer, and grace.
This moment also foreshadows the gift of private Confession & Absolution in the life of the Church. When the Lord sends the guilty to their pastor, he prays for them, and they are forgiven. In that moment, Jesus stands as the one or forgives their sins, just like God did through Job here for his friends. Like Job, the pastor speaks not his own word, but Christ’s: “I forgive you all your sins,” just as the forgiveness of the three friends was not Job’s but the Lord’s. And the sinner, like the friends, walks away not condemned but accepted. In this gift, God creates not only peace between God and man but also healing among those who were once at odds. The same God who vindicated Job now speaks forgiveness through your pastor, and restores what sin tried to destroy.
Restoration, Not Replacement
“And the LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before” (v. 10). The timing is important. Job’s healing begins when he lets go of bitterness. Restoration follows reconciliation. Yet what Job receives is not merely compensation; it’s an act of divine grace. He’s given twice as much as he had before—not as reward or replacement, but as testimony and restoration. God is not obligated to repay; He chooses to restore.
Job’s family is restored: “Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversity that the LORD had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and each a ring of gold” (v. 11). Notice that restoration and forgiveness don’t solve all Job’s problems. He still needs to be comforted in his grief. His family had been absent in his grief, but now they return to his joy. This, too, is grace—not just wealth restored, but community mended. And the children born to him—seven sons and three daughters once more—are not replacements for those he lost but signs of hope after lament. The naming of his daughters—Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-Happuch—speaks beauty, fragrance, and radiance (respectively) into a world once filled with ashes (vv. 13-14).
If you’ve suffered deep loss—of a loved one or livelihood—you know restoration is not about getting back what was taken. It’s about discovering God’s mercy still has more to give, even if the shape of that mercy looks different than before. Job’s new blessings did not erase his grief, nor were his new children replacements for the ones who died. The scars no doubt remained, but God does not allow loss to be a dam that blocks the flow of His grace. So, too, in your life, the Lord may not reverse every loss, but He can fill what was emptied—not with a copy of the past, but with a future touched by mercy.
This is especially important to remember when we feel that what we’ve lost is beyond redemption. The God who gave Job seven sons and three daughters again is the same God who, in Christ, promises the resurrection of our souls and bodies that have been broken by sin and sorrow—not the same old bodies infected with cancer and sin, and not a replaced body, but our bodies restored and glorified (Romans 8:17; 1 John 3:2).
Restoration in this life may be partial, surprising, or slow, but in the life to come it will be full. God is not in the business of replacing people or glossing over grief; He is the God who makes all things new without forgetting what has been. And because of the resurrection of Christ, even what death takes from you is not lost forever but kept safe in Christ.
The Peace of One Who Has Seen God
“After this, Job lived one hundred and forty years and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days” (vv. 16-17). Job’s story ends with what we pray for in the 7th petition of the Lord’s Prayer (“But deliver us from evil”), that “when our last hour comes, [God may] give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in Heaven” (SC III, The Seventh Petition). Job’s life ends not in bitterness or brokenness, but in peace. Peaceful not because his wounds never happened, but because grace has filled what suffering emptied. He does not return to who he was before; he becomes more than he was.
The final image of Job is not of one who triumphed by his strength but of one who trusted through tears and agony. Job’s faith did not remove the storm; it led him through it. And in the end, it was not Job who was defeated by suffering, but the devil—the Accuser—who was ultimately defeated by the Passion (suffering) of Christ. And through His Passion, our suffering is conquered by the God who meets us in the dust and lifts us to glory in our Baptism that unites us to His resurrection that we shall experience like His (Romans 6:4-5).
The conclusion to this book on suffering is not the resolution of all human suffering but the restoration of a man who suffered greatly. Job’s story ends where all true stories of faith end: in absolution and worship. Not because our pain doesn’t matter, but because the presence of God matters more. Job probably never learned the full reason for his suffering, but he learned to rest in the God who knows all reasons, and indeed, who gives us “[our] reason and all [our] senses, and still takes care of them” (SC II, The First Article).
For all who suffer, Job’s journey is a call to a bold, indefatigable trust in God. When answers are absent and wounds are deep, remember you don’t need to see the plan. You only need to see the Person, Jesus Christ, who is the greater Job. In Him, we have One who suffered innocently, prayed for His accusers, and rose with healing in His hands. Because of Him, your story—even the darkest parts—can end in absolution and worship, too.
The Lutheran Column 