Matthew Henry says, ‘If Job was the greatest of the men of the East before, he was more than restored to that place again now. He had gone from the greatest to the least and back to the greatest again. Great changes in our lives can have great sanctifying effects on us.’
‘Let us not think it strange that God would in those days show his love towards the faithful by earthly and transitory prosperity. For the heavenly life was not then so perfectly known as it is nowadays by the gospel. Jesus Christ was not yet manifested … and therefore it was necessary for the faithful to be handled partly like little children. That is why, when the ancients are spoken of in Scripture, it is said that God blessed them in their offspring, in their cattle, in their possessions, and especially in length of life. Why so? It was for them to be helped by those means in waiting until the heavenly life was revealed to us, to whom our Lord Jesus Christ has opened the gate of Paradise by his coming. If God does not now make us to prosper so much in this world, we must not be grieved, for our state is not worse than the state of the ancient fathers; we have a far better recompense which ought to comfort us … The fathers did not know as perfectly as we do that God had prepared them an inheritance in heaven. It is true that they had some taste of it and they had the same faith that we have, but they did not have such a revelation as we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore it was right that God should let them live long, and make them profit in knowledge by long experience in the world … But we have the substance; the shadows and figures are past’ (Calvin in modern English).