Job 42:4

Here we have his full answer, his complete prostration before Jehovah. He acknowledges first Jehovah's supreme power. He is omnipotent and can do all things. Then he quotes Jehovah's own words (38:2; 40:2). You asked me, "Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?" … And now Job acknowledges that Jehovah's rebuke is right. It is all true, he says, I uttered things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, beyond my grasp. Hear me now, Jehovah, I will speak. Once more he quotes Jehovah's word. You have said (40:2), "I ask of you, answer Me." Here then is MY answer, he replies.

Job is still applying Jehovah's words to himself. He asks, "Who is this?" and says, "Hear, and I will speak." It is as though he would bow low to these questions by repeating them, and so give his answer to his divine Questioner. And what an answer it is! It is the only answer human pride can give to God: "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear." Job had received right instruction in a general way, but he had only learned about God. "But now my eye sees You."

Look back at the beginning of Job 23. There Job had spoken with self-confidence about his wish to meet God. He felt sure he could set out his case before Him, fill his mouth with arguments, and know the words in which God would answer him. Now the moment came for that wish to come true. Jehovah tells him to brace himself like a man and to be ready to answer the voice of God. The questioning would now come from God.

He winds up what he thought would be his final speech with a challenge to the Almighty Himself. "Behold, my desire is that the Almighty would answer me," he cries. "I would declare to Him the number of my steps. AS A PRINCE I WOULD GO NEAR TO HIM." … The Almighty took up his challenge. He had heard all his proud words and now He answers him and demands that Job open his mouth again. "Gird up your loins like a man; for I will question you, and you answer Me" (chap. 38:3).

You can ask any question in two ways. You can ask in humility, with a sincere desire to learn. Or you can ask in presumptuous rebellion against the answer, whatever it may be. In the first case the questioner truly takes the place of a learner, and that is the right thing for him to do. In the second case he assumes there is no satisfactory answer, or that the answer is certainly being kept from him.

God laid Job low on every point. He overwhelmed him in every way with a sense of his own ignorance and presumption. Job had talked about the far more wonderful ways of a God who deals with a man's heart, a man's soul, a man's circumstances now. The Lord does not put that last part into words. It was God showing His majesty, power, wisdom and goodness in outward things. If that were true of God, how much more in spiritual things?

These moments in the presence of God had produced a result which all the talk of the three friends, and even of Elihu, had not achieved. This man stood out among men, and even God Himself had given him a testimonial. Yet he had discovered his own utter sinfulness in the deepest springs of his being. A discovery we all in our turn have to make!