Job 42:12-17 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels… Is there not something incongruous in the large award of temporal good, and even something unnecessary in the renewed honour among men? To us it seems that a good man will be satisfied with the favour and fellowship of a loving God. Yet, assuming that the conclusion is a part of the history on which the poem was founded, we can justify the blaze of splendour that bursts on Job after sorrow, instruction, and reconciliation. Life only can reward life. That great principle was rudely shadowed forth in the old belief that God protects His servants even to a green old age. Job had lived strongly, alike in mundane and moral region. How is he to find continued life? The author's power could not pass the limits of the natural to promise a reward. Net yet was it possible, even for a great thinker, to affirm that continued fellowship with Eloah, that continued intellectual and spiritual energy that we call eternal life. A vision of it had come to him; he had seen the day of the Lord afar off, but dimly, by moments. To carry a life into it was beyond his power. Sheol made nothing perfect; and beyond Sheol no prophet eye had ever travelled. There was nothing for it then, but to use the history as it stood, adding symbolic touches, and show the restored life in development on earth, more powerful than ever, more esteemed, more richly endowed for good action. Priestly office and power are given to Job. Wider opportunities for service, more cordial esteem and affection, the highest office that man can bear, these are the reward of Job. And with the terms of the symbolism we shall not quarrel who have heard the Lord say, "Well done, thou good servant; because thou wast found faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities." (R. A. Watson.) Parallel Verses KJV: So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. |
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