When it is said
Anyone may say it after losing a job, a home or their health.
When illness wore down the body, the Russian priest St John of Kronstadt told the sick to say these words instead of grumbling against God.
Near the end of the Divine Liturgy the choir sings the same blessing three times, in the words of Psalm 113:2: “Blessed be the Name of the Lord henceforth and forever.”
Where it comes from
Author known
The day everything was taken
Job was a good man in the land of Uz, with 10 children and great flocks. Satan claimed that Job feared God only because God had blessed him. God let Satan take all that Job had but not touch Job himself. In one day raiders and fire took his flocks, and a wind brought a house down on his children. Job tore his robe, shaved his head, fell to the ground and worshipped.
Job 1:1-3; Job 1:9-20
Job grieved too
Blessing God did not stop Job from grieving. In the chapters that follow he curses the day he was born and asks why he did not die at birth. At the end God told Job’s friends that they had not spoken rightly about Him, “as My servant Job has.”
Job 3:1-3; Job 3:11; Job 42:7
How his story ended
The LORD restored Job’s fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. Job had seven sons and three daughters again, and he lived to see four generations of his family. James points to the end of Job’s story to show that “the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
Job 42:10-16; James 5:11
What the words mean
A line in the Greek Bible
The Greek Old Testament adds a line after “the LORD has taken away.” In Lancelot Brenton’s English translation of 1844 it reads, “as it seemed good to the Lord, so has it come to pass.”
The Scripture in it
… saying: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.