Job 42:11 Commentary and Bible Study

All Job’s family members now came to him and reaffirmed their good will and were ready to comfort him after all he had been through. They too had been sifted by this trial, for the trial was not only a test of Job but of all those who knew about it and listened to the dialogue of Job and his friends. Each one had to decide what to make of the arguments on each side and discern the rights and wrongs of the case. They would either show their support for Job by continuing to defend him, or they would take the side of the majority who disdained him (Job 30:1). Job’s wife had signally failed to support him and had become an instrument of Satan to torment him. If she who was closest to him had abandoned him, it is likely that other members of his family did the same. Job was isolated and this was part of torment that Satan orchestrated against him. Job says, ‘He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me’ (Job 19:13-14). Only now following the Lord’s vindication of his servant did they sheepishly renew their support for him.Job did not bear a grudge but received them into his house and accepted their expressions of regret and their consolation. He had received the forgiveness of the Lord for his own sins and so it was not hard for him, as a man of grace, to extend the same forgiveness to others. he treated their reaffirmed friendship to him as their repentance at abandoning him in his crisis. Like him they were now ready to accept that the Lord had brought this adversity on Job for reasons known only to himself, and though those reasons were probably not at this stage revealed, yet it was clear that his trials had not come because he was wicked or the Lord angry with him, but because they Lord was pleased to test him in this way. His restoration to his former wealth was sufficient to prove in their minds that God was with him, and whatever reason he had been allowed to suffer, that was now over. As a token of the friends’ and relatives’ restored identification with him, each one gave him a substantial gift, a piece of silver and a gold ring. The value is unknown but the word is used of the price which Jacob paid Hamor for a parcel of land. It was more than a token amount, for it was evidently intended to begin the restoration of Job’s wealth. This was their way of saying that it was right that such a man should have it restored again, even at their personal expense.