Ordinary 30B: Job 42:1-6, 10-17
New daughters and sons do not take the place of the lost ones. As a conclusion to the story of Job, this will not do.
The ending of Job simply won’t do. It is not satisfactory. The narrator tries to conceal its shortcomings by inventorying Job’s newfound flocks (14,000 sheep! 6,000 camels!), by distracting us with Job’s three beautiful daughters. Maybe the poetry of 40 chapters has so arrested our imagination that we won’t recall chapter 1 and everything lost there.
But we do remember—how a great wind struck where Job’s “sons and daughter were eating and drinking,” how they died in the collapse of that house. We understand when houses collapse and we build new ones. We rebuild, marry again, have children, and go on with life, but there is no evading the terrible loss. School goes on this fall in Charleston. Life goes on and new things happen, good things, but there is no replacing what is lost. New daughters and sons do not take the place of the lost ones.
As a conclusion to the story of Job, this will not do. Surely the narrator must recognize this.
