God was dealing with Job; but he had to learn himself. When I find what I am and cannot tell what God is, I am in misery. When God is plowing up the ground, this is not a crop. Plowing comes before harvest. “In all this Job sinned not.” There was none like Job in all the earth, but he did not know himself: a spirit of self-righteousness had been creeping over him.
Supposing God had stopped there, what would have come of it? Job might have said, “In prosperity I was eyes to the blind; in adversity I was patient,” and the whole case would have been worse. He goes on till his friends come, and then, perhaps from pride or because he could not bear their sympathy, he breaks down. The process was a trying, humbling one. “O if I could meet God,” he says.
Job, having been thus wrought in and exercised and plowed up, passes through all the various considerations as to how he could meet God. Throughout there are certain true sayings, as, “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness,” but are we righteous? Finally Job meets God, and the result: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Now he knows God as he did not before; now he knows himself better and receives the “end of the Lord” – blessing.
J. N. Darby (adapted)