Are the Righteous Rewarded?

The God who has done these things to Job has spoken out of a whirlwind. That whirlwind becomes a kind of metaphor for the God that we meet in the Book of Job. No simple answers are given. God’s final gifts to Job are not complete restoration—how could Job’s lost children be restored? Yet the final gifts of God are a kind of vindication for Job. Evidently, the great God is not threatened by Job’s rants and raves, his complaints and angry accusations. Job says, at the end, that he “repents,” which doesn’t really mean that Job regrets all that he said in the midst of his pain. Rather, it indicates that now Job has come to a new understanding of the awesome God of the whirlwind. He may not have the answers he wanted, but now Job has the very presence of God.