Epilogue — Job’s Prosperity Restored (Job 42:7-17)

            The final section of Job contains a storybook ending in which many of Job’s fortunes are restored. Many, but not all. He receives twice the wealth he had before (Job 42:10), plus a new brood of seven sons and three daughters (Job 42:13). But his first children are gone forever, a bad trade by any reckoning. Thus, even though we read that Job’s latter life is blessed “more than his beginning” (Job 42:12), we know there must still be a bittersweet taste in his mouth. We know, following the resurrection of the Son of God, what Job could not have known, that God’s final redemption comes only when Christ returns to bring his kingdom to fulfillment.