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Job 40:1-42:17

Now Mine Eye Seeth Thee

Lyrics · Job

Now Mine Eye Seeth Thee

Job 40:1-42:17

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About this song

This song belongs to the Job collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.

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Job
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Job
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[Verse 1] The LORD asks whether the one contending with the Almighty will instruct him. God speaks again from the whirlwind and commands Job to prepare for questioning. Job is challenged to display a divine arm, thunderous voice, majesty. Its strength rests in loins, belly, cedar-like tail, sinews, brass bones. [Pre-Chorus] The speeches rose, each certain of its claim, But certainty alone could not explain. [Chorus] Now Mine Eye Seeth Thee, let the question open wide, Human answers fail when pride becomes the guide. Wisdom cannot be purchased, mined, or seized, It comes from God, before whom striving ceased. [Verse 2] Merchants cannot divide it, hooks cannot fill its skin. No one can stand before God, who owes nothing because everything under heaven is his. Leviathan's limbs, face, teeth, and tightly joined scales resist approach. Strength dwells in its neck, its heart is hard as stone. [Bridge] No earthly equal is made without fear, and Leviathan is king over the children of pride. Job confesses that God can do everything and that he spoke of wonders beyond his knowledge. Having heard before but now seeing, Job abhors himself and repents in dust and ashes. God rebukes the friends, accepts Job's prayer, restores him double, renews family and substance. [Final Chorus] Now Mine Eye Seeth Thee, let the question open wide, Human answers fail when pride becomes the guide. Wisdom cannot be purchased, mined, or seized, It comes from God, before whom human pride must cease. [Outro] The question stayed when every speech was through. Wisdom began where human certainty withdrew.

Named in this songJob

About the passage

Job 40: Job’s hand goes to his mouth

Job's first response to the Lord is brief because the scale of the conversation has changed. He lays his hand on his mouth and declines to continue the argument as before, yet the Lord speaks again rather than ending the encounter there. The second challenge brings justice into direct focus: will Job disannul divine judgment in order to maintain his own righteousness, and can he actually wield the universal power needed to bring every proud and wicked person low? The question does not validate the friends' accusations against Job. It exposes a different excess in Job's indictment of divine government. Behemoth then appears as a fellow creature, "made with thee," possessing enormous bodily strength and a settled place among food, shade, reeds, and water. Its scale exceeds Job's without making it a rival to the Creator who made them both.

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Job 41: Leviathan does not become a household pet

Leviathan carries the challenge of creaturely power further by making ordinary human methods look almost absurd. Hooks, cords, bargaining, service, play, trade, spears, swords, arrows, and slingstones all fail to reduce the creature to a manageable object. The description gives lavish attention to tightly joined scales, terrible teeth, flashing eyes, smoke, flame, strength, and a heart hard as millstone. Whether the imagery is read around a powerful aquatic animal or in the language of a traditional sea monster, the chapter does not supply a simple modern field identification. Its argument turns instead on the difference between human fear and divine ownership. If people cannot casually confront what God has made, they cannot treat its Maker as a debtor whom they have first supplied. "Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine" stands at the center, keeping even leviathan inside the world of the Creator whose power the creature displays.

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Job 42: The servant is heard, and the friends need his prayer

Job's final response names the limit exposed by the whirlwind speeches: he had spoken about matters too wonderful for his understanding. The change is not a discovery that the friends were right about secret crimes. It is a recognition that his defence had reached beyond the knowledge from which he could judge the whole government of God. Hearing has become encounter, and the KJV records Job's response in the language of abhorrence and repentance in dust and ashes. Then the Lord turns to Eliphaz and overturns the social and theological posture of the debate. The three friends are rebuked for not speaking rightly of God as Job has, and the man they condemned becomes the servant whose prayer is accepted for them. Restoration follows with renewed fellowship, doubled livestock, seven sons, three named daughters who receive inheritance among their brothers, and a long life reaching four generations. The ending restores generously without erasing the earlier dead or converting suffering into a formula.

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