In Job, chapter forty, verse six, God continues His argument to bring the servant of God to complete submission to His Lordship and ways. He wanted to overcome the resistance remaining in Job and lead him into a full realization of His love. This loving persistence on God’s part reveals His patience, mercy, and genuine care for His suffering people.
Job’s response in verse five results after the Lord spoke from chapters thirty-eight through forty, verse two. That is, in vindicating myself. Job had spoken irreverently and improperly of God, and now he saw it. The servant of God realizes before and will not now answer, as he had expressed the wish to do. Job saw that he had spoken improperly and would not repeat what he said again.
Job had not only offended once, as if thoughtlessly and hastily, but he had repeated it, showing deliberation and aggravating his guilt. When a man is willing to confess that he has done wrong once, he will see that he has been guilty of more than one offense. One sin will draw on the remembrance of another, and the gate once open, a flood of sins will rush to the recollection. It is not popular that a man can so isolate a sin as to repent of that alone or so look at one offense against God as not to feel that he has been guilty of the same crime.
Job felt doubtless that if he should allow himself to speak again or to attempt now to vindicate himself, he would be in danger of committing the same error again. He now saw that God was right, that he had repeatedly indulged in an improper spirit, and that all that became him was a penitent confession in the fewest words possible. After not speaking like before, God now in verse seven, “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.” Job now has the opportunity to make good his pleas before God. If he has anything to say that he wishes to urge, God is ready, nay, anxious, to hear him.