Job 42:3

Here we have his full answer, his complete bowing down before Jehovah. He acknowledges first Jehovah's supreme power. He is all-powerful and can do all things. Then he quotes Jehovah's own words (38:2; 40:2). "You have asked me, Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?" It is strange that some interpreters misuse these words, as if the Lord were rebuking Elihu again. No — as we have shown before, He rebukes Job for the wild and reckless charges he had made against the Lord. And now Job acknowledges that Jehovah's rebuke is right.

Quoting Jehovah's own words, he asks himself, Who is he who darkens counsel? — who dares to throw a shadow upon the Almighty! There are mysteries in His ways, as there are in all creation and providence. But no one gains anything by rebelling against these mysteries of God's counsel. He did not even know the simplest truths of nature in their hidden meaning. Yet he had spoken of things beyond the reach of a limited mind, and so he had spoken folly. How different he had been from the devout psalmist: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it" (Ps. 139:6). He had intruded into the things of God, and had dared to speak evil of divine omnipotence and goodness!

He now realises that his earlier words came out of ignorance of God, who "can do everything." This reminds us of Peter's words to the Lord Jesus, "Lord, you know everything" (John 21:17). Peter had to learn the same lesson as Job. He too had trusted himself too much, insisting that he would never deny the Lord Jesus, even if everyone else did. Job fully admits to the Lord that he had spoken without knowing what he was saying — things too wonderful for him. He had tried to handle matters far beyond his understanding, and he found himself humiliated.

He complains no more, he resents no more, he questions no more. He openly owns, as something real in his soul, that Jehovah is able to do all things, and that no purpose is withheld from Him. Evil in men or Satan, and ruin everywhere in this fallen world, had touched Him in no way. His own difficulties and arguments were only the unsubmissive heart of a man who darkened counsel without knowledge, as Jehovah Himself had said at the start. Now it was Job who declared his own ignorance. He did not understand — things too wonderful for him that he did not know. Not a word now about his friends, or their lack of intelligence, honesty and charity, however true that was. He judges himself before God. He takes the words God had used against him — the crushing proof of his presumption — and makes them his own. They become the humble words of a man who felt his need to learn from God, and who wanted that learning worked in him.

Job had opened his mouth "in vain," or "in vanity." His words were many, but they carried no knowledge. The excellence of Job's outward life had betrayed him into an inward spirit of vanity. That vanity was the root of his failure to truly know himself. Job himself confesses this in Job 42:3.