Job 42:13 Commentary and Bible Study

Job had loved his deceased children and faithfully carried out the duties of a father towards them. He had taught them to live righteous lives and offered sacrifices for them but they had been taken from him. Their deaths he now accepted without bitterness. They had been taken early in life according to the sovereign providence of God which cannot be quarrelled with, and Job accepted this though he could not explain it until the record of the conversation between the Lord and Satan in the beginning of the book was revealed to him. God always deals with men and women in perfect justice, and the personal stories of these departed children will also reveal the Lord’s justice in the age to come. But now God is pleased to give Job other children and such children as evidently made up for the loss of the former. He again has seven sons and three daughters, but these daughters are noted for their great beauty and their names are given to indicate of how precious they were to Job, how much he loved them and the consolation they provided, and, Matthew Henry suggests, to perpetuate the memory of Job’s recovery through the goodness of God. These names have significance and are a testimony to Job’s new optimism regarding his own life. The first, Jemima, is a feminine form of the word ‘day’ (though some derive it from the Arabic for ‘dove’), suggesting that the night of suffering was now over for Job and had been replaced by daytime. The second, Keziah or Cassia, an aromatic spice scraped (from the Hebrew, ‘to scrape’) from the bark of the shrub by that name; the sweetness of this daughter drove away the painful reminder of the past. The third daughter was called Keren-Happuch, or ‘horn of antimony’, antimony being a black mineral powder used to beautify women as eye-makeup. This is said to mean splendour of colours by some, but intends some female beautifier. Job rejoices in her God given beauty. Their father treated his daughters with special favour though this was probably not according to the usual customs of the time; he treated them as significant in their own right and gave them an equal inheritance among their brothers to seal their names with honour. He knew that, before God, men and women are of equal value and he wished to reflect this in the inheritance which they received from him, including them in some formal will.