Opening: This is our last week in Job. Take time to discuss what the main themes have been so far, including what the primary call of this book has been concerning suffering.

1. The final section of Job is often labelled an “epilogue.”

• What is an epilogue?
• What examples of epilogues can you think of from books or movies?
• Why would it be significant to call this section an epilogue?

2. If this final section is an epilogue, the conclusion of the narrative has already happened before this ending.

Last week we discussed 42:6, where Job finds “comfort” in coming to see and behold God’s presence, majesty, power, and goodness. That — not what follows — is where the story resolves.

• Why is it important for us to see that the main point of this book has been to point us to God in the midst of our suffering?
• Why do we need to keep that in mind as we come to look at the gifts God gives Job in 42:10–17?
• How does this show us that the gifts are not the answer to our suffering?

3. Read Job 42:7–9.

• What is surprising about this section?
• What does it reveal about God that he is angry at the friends and yet tells them how to find forgiveness?
• What does it reveal about God that he uses Job — the man they have hurt — as the means by which they find forgiveness?

4. Read Job 42:10–17.

1. Compare what Job receives here with what he had in chapter 1. What has been doubled? What has not? Why do you think the children are the one thing not doubled — and how does that show us this is not meant to be read as “fixing” Job’s suffering?
2. What is the only thing that could truly make right the suffering Job has been through?
3. If Job is still waiting for his suffering to be made right beyond his death, what does God giving him these things now show us about God?
4. Job comes to see that God doesn’t merely make things right — he is radically gracious. How does that change Job? How does the naming of his daughters and the giving of an inheritance to them show that Job has been changed by God?
5. What would it mean for us to fix our eyes on God in the midst of our suffering?
6. Read Ephesians 2:6–10. What is our God like? Why has he saved us through Jesus now? How should that change us? How does the hope of what God will pour out enable us to keep living in the midst of pain and suffering?