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Job 42:7-17

7 After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and 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 his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

10 And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11 Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. 12 The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning, and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. 13 He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15 In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. 16 After this Job lived one hundred and forty years and saw his children and his children’s children, four generations. 17 And Job died, old and full of days.

Job's Delivering Prayer

A woman is at the beach with her young grandson when a huge wave suddenly washes the boy out to sea. Grief-stricken, she falls on her knees, looks up to the sky and implores: "Oh Lord, please return my grandson to me and I promise--I'll devote my life to prayer, I'll come to church every Sunday and I'll never complain about anything again! Suddenly, the clouds part, the sky clears and another wave washes the boy back on the beach, completely unharmed. The grandmother looks at at the sky... then looks at the boy again... then looks up at the sky and cries out: "He had a hat, you know!"

Today we conclude our series on prayer in the Book of Job, and we come to the final chapter, chapter 42, where God restores all the fortunes of Job, gives him back everything God had previously allowed to be taken away...and then some! It's pretty easy to get distracted by that wonderful happy ending and forget that we're talking specifically about prayer, and how Job's prayers are a model for our own--both in good times in our lives and in difficult times. And there is one last prayer right here in chapter 42. I think it's a really important one--especially in understanding the "happy ending" to Job's story.

But before we get to that prayer, and what we can learn from it, let's go back a bit and set the stage.

When we last left Job (back in chapter 14) he was sitting on his pile of ashes, grieving the loss of his children, his livelihood, his health--pretty much everything. Job's three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar) had come to comfort and console him, but Job did not want to be comforted and consoled. He wanted to be angry, and he wanted a face to face confrontation with God.

Job's three friends are appalled at his almost blasphemous attitude, and (no doubt fearing God's wrath against their friend) they try to talk him down from the ledge with all kinds of words about God, and why God does things that we find it hard to understand.

Job eventually grows tired of his well-meaning friends, turns away from them, and (this is where we were last week) begins to address his grievances, his complaint, his request for a hearing, directly to God.

Fast forward several more chapters, and Job gets his wish--God shows up in a whirlwind and speaks directly to Job about the wonders and mysteries of creation. God never quite answers any of Job's questions, and never really explains why bad things sometimes happen to good people... but by the end of God's response, Job comes to the realization that he may have overstepped his boundaries just a little bit! Job repents--although we're not really ever told what he's repenting of, but presumably he and God both know.

And that brings us to today's scripture passage.

Your NRSV pew bibles have a well-intentioned but sometimes bad habit of putting a "chapter sub-heading" or title on some of the passages, and this one, they label as "Job's friends are humiliated." I think that's a horrible misunderstanding of this passage, although it's a pretty common one.

In art, music, and even film versions of this story, Job's three friends are often depicted as evil villains, who accuse Job of bringing all his losses upon himself, or who somehow delight in kicking a friend while he's down.

But I don't know many wicked friends patient enough to sit with you for three days and nights in silence, just for the opportunity to make you feel bad. That doesn't add up to me. Besides, as I've said in many previous sermons--Job's friends never once say anything that is theologically inappropriate. Mostly they are quoting from the books of Psalms and Proverbs. They're saying all the things that good friends (or pastors) are supposed to say!

No, it's only Job himself that (understandably, perhaps) says outrageous things, inappropriate things, the kind of things that if you said in front of a licensed counselor would get you referred to the authorities as a risk for self-harm or harm to others.

So why does God, in verse 7 of today's scripture passage, say to Job's friend Eliphaz, "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." That sounds like a pretty clear-cut indictment of Job's friends, and praise for Job, right?

Well, it is...but probably not for the reason that seems implied in the English translation. In most English translations (including the NRSV) God says that the friends have not spoken "of me" (or about me) what is right, but Job has.

That little tiny word "of" is a preposition. And in most languages (including English), prepositions are notoriously ambiguous. In the original Hebrew language of the text, the preposition in this sentence is the word אֵל (el) which Strong's Hebrew dictionary translates as:

about, above, after, against, along, among, because, before, behind, beside, between, concerning, inside, onto, opposite, over, through, toward, where, wherever, whom, or within.

And just a few words earlier, still in verse 7, this exact same preposition אֵל (el) occurs twice, translated as the directional preposition, "to" -- "After the Lord had spoken these words TO Job, the Lord said TO Eliphaz.

And this is, I think is the best way to translate and understand God's judgment: "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken TO me what is right, as my servant Job has."

Job's friends spent a lot of time talking OF God, or about God, but Job spent a lot of time talking TO God--or praying. This is the first lesson from Job's final prayer: So many Christians (and non-Christians) have strong opinions about who God is or isn't, what God expects of us (or doesn't), what the Bible says (or doesn't) and they aren't afraid to proclaim those opinions as certifiable fact.

But what God really cares about most is not what what we're saying ABOUT him--but what we are saying TO him. In other words, it's about the relationship, not the theology.

Ok, so Job is in the right and his friends are in the wrong...right? Well, not entirely. Or at least, I don't think that's exactly why God does what he does next. In verse 8, God tells Job's friend Eliphaz, "Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and 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 his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly."

Remember a few sermons ago, when I told you that burnt offerings were the Old Testament equivalent of what we call prayer? After the destruction of the Temple, instead of offering burnt sacrifices, the Hebrew people began to offer words--spoken, sung, or thought--as their new offering, their new form of prayer to God.

But in Job's time, when God says "my servant Job shall pray for you" that still means "offer up a burnt offering." So basically, God tells the friends to make an offering, and he tells Job to make an offering, so they're all doing the same thing. Actually, there's one slight difference: The friends are making an offering (or a prayer) to God for themselves, while Job is making an offering (or a prayer) to God for his friends. Why does this matter?

God's issue with the friends was that they were talking about him, not to him. So their task, their assignment from God, is simply the thing they were avoiding: Pray TO me. About you. Like Job did. Tell me what's going on in YOUR lives; let's start a conversation.

But Job, in turning TO God, had also turned away from his three closest friends. Actually it's worse than that--he had some pretty choice words for them in his anger and grief. They came to help him, and in turn he insulted them. While that may be understandable given his situation, it's still not acceptable in the long run. So God's task, God's assignment for Job, is the thing HE was avoiding: God says, effectively, "Reconcile yourself with your friends, Job." And of course, the best way to do that is to pray for them.

That's the second lesson we can learn from Job's final prayer: If you're looking for a good place to start in your prayer life, or if you really want to take it to the next level, then confront the thing you are trying really hard to avoid. Bring that to the Lord in prayer. The thing you don't want to talk about. The person you don't want to pray for. The situation you'd rather not have God involved in.

The last thing we can learn from Job's final prayer is about reconciliation: Job's friends, at the end, are reconciled to God. Job is reconciled to his friends. And when that reconciliation is complete--possibly even BECAUSE that reconciliation is complete--we read in verse 10 that: "The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.

In order for God to reconcile Job to his THINGS--his health, his prosperity--God first wants Job and his friends to be reconciled in their relationships...with God and with each other.

If you're wondering why God hasn't done something you've asked him to; if you're wondering why God isn't working in your life and in your circumstances, despite all your fervent prayers, you might consider giving this one a shot. While there are many complex and mysterious reasons why God does or doesn't do the things we think he ought to, I'm convinced this is one of them: You want God to bless you, but you still want to hang on to that intense dislike you have for someone who rubbed you the wrong way, who said or did something to offend you, or who hurt you in some way.

You want God to bless you, while you reserve the right to secretly curse others. But God doesn't work that way.

God wants you to be reconciled to your fellow human beings, even the ones you think don't deserve it (because really, neither do you or I). God wants you to pray for them, for their blessing, for their well-being, for their happiness and prosperity--as much and as often as you want God to bestow those things upon you.

One final note and I'll close. People who read the Job story often have difficulty with the fact that God takes away Job's children (nevermind the livestock and the servants) and then at the end of the story just gives him new ones. As if that would work for any parent--your children died, but here are some replacement children for you. Now you can be happy again.

When it comes to this dilemma, I really like the interpretation of a medieval commentator and monk named Ælfric of Eynsham: He noticed that God doubles all of the sheep, donkeys, cows, etc. but the number of children is identical to the beginning of the story: three daughters and seven sons. Ælfric believed that was intentional, and that the children were not at all replacements--they were in fact resurrections from the dead, just like Lazarus or the daughter of Jairus in the New Testament, or the widow's son raised by the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament.

Of course, if (like I do) you view the Book of Job as an Old Testament Parable, a story crafted in the hands of a skilled poet to teach us about prayer and faith and grief and providence...then perhaps the particulars don't matter quite as much. But even in that case, the message is still the same: Job is reconciled with his children (his most important relationships) only after he is first reconciled through prayer to his God, and to his neighbors.