Job's Prayer for His Friends a Moral Victory
Job 42:10
And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.


Notice that this flagellation by the three friends was premeditated. They did not merely happen in, and come suddenly upon trouble for which they could not offer a compound. The Bible says, "They had made an appointment together." The interview was prearranged. The meanness of the attack of these religious critics was augmented by the fact that they had the sufferer in their power. When we are well, and we do not like what one is saying, we can get up and go away. But Job was too ill to get up and go away. First he endured the seven days and seven nights of silence, and then he endured their arraignment of his motives and character, and after their cruel campaign was ended, by a sublime effort of soul, which I this day uphold for imitation, he triumphed in prayer for his tantalisers. In all history there is nothing equal to it, except the memorable imploration by Christ for His enemies. No wonder that after that prayer of Job was once uttered, a thrill of recovery shot through every nerve and vein of his tortured body, and every passion of his great soul; and God answered it by adding nearly a century and a half to his lifetime, and whitened the hills With flocks of sheep, and filled the air with the lowing of cattle, and wakened the silent nursery of his home with the swift feet and the laughing voices of childhood — seven sons and three daughters celebrated for their beauty, the daughters to refine the sons, the sons to defend the daughters. There is nothing that pays so well as prayer, and the more difficult the prayer to make, the greater the reward for making it.

(T. De Witt Talmage.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.

WEB: Yahweh turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends. Yahweh gave Job twice as much as he had before.




Intercessory Prayer
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