Job 42:10

10. The Lord turned the captivity שׁב את שׁבית . An instance of paronomasia an elegance, as the reader has seen, common in this book. (Note on Job 3:25.) The word rendered “captivity” is kindred with the preceding word, and literally signifies a turning, (thus Ewald, Dillmann, and Zockler,) so that the expression before us indicates a complete reversal of things: God overturns the misery of Job into joy, and replaces night with day. Compare Psalms 14:7; Psalms 126:1; Psalms 126:4. The long continuance of Job’s sufferings might well be called a captivity, if we accept the speculation of Chrysostom, Isidorus. Suidas, and others, that they lasted seven years, or adopt even the one year which Petavius assigns as their limit; but upon this subject the word of God is silent. Compare, however, Job 5:19, with Job 7:3 on the latter of which see note.

When he prayed In the very act of his praying for ethers (prep. ב , in, before the verb) his own salvation came. The spectacle partakes of the morally sublime. The man of God, on whom still rests a burden of sorrow and disease unmeasured by human words, bends himself before his God, not in prayer for himself, but for those who had done him ill. As suddenly as in after times to Naaman, descends the grace of the Almighty: the night of tribulation turns and passes away; the loathsome ulcers vanish, while (even as Elihu had wonderfully prophesied) “his flesh becomes fresher than a child’s,” (Job 33:25,) and the work of deliverance for soul and body is complete. Compare Job 11:15-17. The Talmud thence derives the proverb, “He who prays for his fellow men always finds acceptance for himself first of all.”