Job 42

Living Bible

42 Then Job replied to God:

² “I know that you can do anything and that no one can stop you. ³ You ask who it is who has so foolishly denied your providence. It is I. I was talking about things I knew nothing about and did not understand, things far too wonderful for me.

⁴ “You said,^[a] ‘Listen and I will speak! Let me put the questions to you! See if you can answer them!’

⁵ “But now I say,^[b] ‘I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you, ⁶ and I loathe myself and repent in dust and ashes.’”

⁷ After the Lord had finished speaking with Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite:

“I am angry with you and with your two friends, for you have not been right in what you have said about me, as my servant Job was. ⁸ Now take seven young bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves; and my servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer on your behalf, and won’t destroy you as I should because of your sin, your failure to speak rightly concerning my servant Job.”

⁹ So Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite did as the Lord commanded them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer on their behalf. ¹⁰ Then, when Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his wealth and happiness! In fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as before! ¹¹ Then all of his brothers, sisters, and former friends arrived and feasted with him in his home, consoling him for all his sorrow and comforting him because of all the trials the Lord had brought upon him. And each of them brought him a gift of money and a gold ring.

¹² So the Lord blessed Job at the end of his life more than at the beginning. For now he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 teams of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys.

^13-14 God also gave him seven more sons and three more daughters.^[c]

These were the names of his daughters: Jemima, Kezia, Keren.

¹⁵ And in all the land there were no other girls as lovely as the daughters of Job; and their father put them into his will along with their brothers.

¹⁶ Job lived 140 years after that, living to see his grandchildren and great-grandchildren too. ¹⁷ Then at last he died, an old, old man, after living a long, good life.