Passage

Job 42.5

Book: Job · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

3. Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not, Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak; I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.

5. I had 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. 7. And it was so, that, after Jehovah had spoken these words unto Job, Jehovah said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. (Job 42:3-7, ASV)

WEB

3. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ therefore I have uttered that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know. 4. You said, ‘Listen, now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me.’

5. I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” 7. It was so, that after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:3-7, WEB)

KJV

3. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.

5. 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. 7. And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. (Job 42:3-7, KJV)

YLT

3. 'Who [is] this, hiding counsel without knowledge?' Therefore, I have declared, and understand not, Too wonderful for me, and I know not. 4. 'Hear, I pray thee, and I, I do speak, I ask thee, and cause thou me to know.'

5. By the hearing of the ear I heard Thee, And now mine eye hath seen Thee.

Therefore do I loathe [it], And I have repented on dust and ashes. 7. And it cometh to pass after Jehovah's speaking these words unto Job, that Jehovah saith unto Eliphaz the Temanite, 'Burned hath Mine anger against thee, and against thy two friends, because ye have not spoken concerning Me rightly, like My servant Job. (Job 42:3-7, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Job, in his final reply to the LORD
Audience: the LORD, after the whirlwind speeches
Location: the land of Uz
Time period: the closing scene of the book, after the divine speeches of Job 38 to 41 and before the epilogue

Theological reading

The book's whole argument compressed into one contrast: hearing about, versus seeing. "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You."

What is striking is what the verse does not say. Job does not say he now has the answer. The whirlwind speeches never explain his suffering, never mention the wager in chapters 1 and 2, and never concede that the friends were right about anything. They ask him questions about the sea, the storehouses of snow, the wild donkey, the ostrich, and Behemoth. And Job's response is that this has moved him from report to encounter.

The distinction is precisely the one the codex draws at Phenomenology of Perception between testimony received and the thing itself given. Job had the tradition, correctly, and the tradition was not wrong. What he lacked was presence. The book's resolution is not epistemic in the way the friends assumed the problem was epistemic; it is a change in the mode of relation.

Against a common misuse. The verse is sometimes read as devaluing secondhand knowledge, as though hearing about God were merely inferior religion. That reading is hard to sustain, since the same corpus makes hearing the primary and commanded mode of revelation (Deuteronomy 4:12, Romans 10:17) and since Job's earlier hearing was not false. The contrast is between two goods, not between error and truth, and the New Testament blesses those who have not seen (John 20:29).

Apologetic use. The verse is a strong reply to the framing that religious belief is a substitute for evidence. Job's complaint is heard rather than rebuked, his friends' tidy theodicy is explicitly condemned in verse 7, and the resolution comes through confrontation with what is actually there. A tradition willing to end its book on suffering by refusing to give the explanation, and by preserving the sufferer's protest as the more honest speech, is not a tradition optimized for easy consolation. See Argument from Meaningful Suffering.

Key words

shema (H8088), report, hearing, the noun form: what reaches you at second hand.
ra'ah (H7200), to see, the ordinary verb of visual perception, here in deliberate contrast.
ozen (H0241), ear, the organ named to make the contrast concrete rather than abstract.

Cross-references

Deuteronomy 4:12, hearing as the commanded mode of revelation
John 20:29, the blessing on those who have not seen
Romans 10:17, faith through the hearing channel
1 Corinthians 13:12, the same now-versus-then structure
Isaiah 6:5, another prophet's response to direct encounter
Phenomenology of Perception, the report-versus-presence distinction the verse turns on

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Job Bet Objection

Passages:

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.