How changed Job was after God had spoken to him! Nearly all that Job had said in twenty chapters, he now confessed was obscuring counsel without knowledge, tittering what he did not understand. And how few words—less than a hundred—are needed to tell that the old self-confidence was now gone.
The speaking Job had now become the listening Job, and now his eyes (his spiritual eyes, or understanding, no doubt) saw the One he had so misjudged, and he detested, or loathed himself, and repented in dust and ashes.
We may say that, Job had long before heard about God, but now, prepared by Elihu's godly counsel; he had heard God, —God had spoken to him, and shown him how very wrong he was in resting in his own righteousness, and blaming God for his troubles.
It is the same today with everyone who prayerfully reads the Bible, receiving it as it is in truth, the Word of God; for God no longer speaks to men in dreams and visions, but through the written Word, whether it be received through the eye-gate, as reading; or the ear-gate, as hearing it from the lips of one of God's servants.
God would not and did not, leave Job until he had learned the lesson he had needed to be taught. This book shows us God's faithfulness, and His knowledge of His own people; shows us Satan at work, carrying out, quite unintentionally however, God's purposes; it shows us, too, that even the best of men, as we may judge Job's three friends to have been, may sadly err, and add to the sufferings of those who are passing through trial by misjudging them, and not understanding God's ways with them. The book shows further that the child of God needs training, because there is easily much of "self" about one, to be distrusted and rejected.
The wrong with Job was that he was quite a little contented with what he saw of the work of God in himself; when in his thoughts, humbled and chastened, he saw God, and blessing followed when once the depths of his own heart were revealed to him.
And Job's three friends must hear from God, too. Eliphaz and the two others had not spoken rightly of God; if Job had erred, they had done so, grievously, and to Job they must go with a burnt offering to God for themselves, and he, Job, would pray for them. After Job had prayed for those who had spoken so wrongfully about him and to him, his trials ceased. (Is this not a lesson in humility, too)?
He had twice as much of property as before, and the same number of children as he had lost.
But Job's wife,—was she only an onlooker, or did she learn the lesson of trusting God and looking away from self at its best, that her husband had learned? We cannot say, but as we close this most interesting book, may we ask ourselves if we have learned aught from it.