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The Steps You Take—In Awesome Wonder
Job 38:1-11
38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels [Hebrew = sons of God] shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
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If the meaning of the book of Job is framed as suffering and divine justice, then God’s speeches do not provide an answer. The Lord nowhere explains generally why the innocent suffer or specifically why Job suffers. Rather, the Lord challenges Job to stand up and answer some compelling questions about Job’s human status as opposed to God’s divine power and glory. The Lord’s questions are not rhetorical—the Lord demands an answer of Job.
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But if the meaning of the book is framed as relationship with God, which is precisely the way the prologue lays it out (1:8; 2:3), then God’s speeches certainly provide an answer. We should ask, however, why God’s speeches do not describe Job in the affirming words of the prologue. To the contrary, Job is the object of the Lord’s challenge (38:4).
- But Jobs two responses to God’s speeches (40:3-5; 42:1-6) hint at the answer.
- First (40:3-5), Job confesses his unworthiness and inability to answer God’s challenge—he is human, not divine.
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Second (42:1-6), Job confesses that he has spoken out of insufficient knowledge of God, and his former experience (dialogue) compared with his later experience (God’s speaking is the difference between “hearing” and “seeing” (42:5), thus suggesting the progress he has made in his relationship with God. His repentance, therefore, is not repentance of sins as demanded by his friends, but repentance of insufficient knowledge of God. That is precisely the challenge the Lord poses to Job in 38:2: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?).
- Yet while humanness manifests itself in the diatribes of the dialogue, Job never curses God, as Satan claimed he would (1:11; 2:5) and as his wife advised him to do (2:9). Again he has passed the test of faith as administered by Satan. In God’s speeches, however, Job is exposed to the overwhelming power and glory of the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and Job’s demand for answers and his caricature of God come under the scrutiny of the Lord who also makes demands (38:3).
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Since God presented his servant Job to Satan’s scrutiny and pleasure, why should he object when his servant Job, in the dialogue, presented him to the readers’ scrutiny and pleasure? In a sense, Job turned the tables on God, yet God affirms Job again in the epilogue, giving balance to the book. So the book is about Job’s relationship with God. It is the book about God and humanity.
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38:1-40:2—God’s First Speech. By a series of questions and challenges, prefaced by a challenge of Job’s knowledge (38:2), the Lord draws a series of tightening circles around Job:
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(1) “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (38:4), followed by a series of collateral questions (38:5-11) that challenge Job’s knowledge of the created world.
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(2) “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place…?” (38:12), followed by questions that challenge Job’s personal involvement with the created order (38:13-36);
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(3) “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions after they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket?” (38:39-40), followed by collateral questions and challenges that test Job’s ability to manage and control the animal kingdom (38:41-39:30).
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38:1—I am the LORD. God’s speeches use the covenant name of Israel’s God, yhwh (Yahweh, rendered “the LORD”), as do the prologue (e.g., 1:6) and the epilogue (e.g., 42:7). In comparison, references to the deity in the dialogue employ the generic names ‘ēlōhīm, ēl, and ēlōah (also šadday = Almighty). This is no literary accident but part of the theological design. The author would not use the covenant name of the deity in a context of words that puts the deity in a negative light. Thus, the generic names are more appropriate to the dialogue.
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Spoke. Can also be translated “answered” because this is what Job challenged the Lord to do throughout the dialogue: to answer him.
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Out of the storm. This is the “theophany” that Job had hoped for, even though technically a “theophany” is the appearance of God, not merely the voice of God.
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38:2—Obscure my plans. Job concealed (“darkened”) God’s divine plan for the world. This is the essence of God’s indictment of Job (see also Job 42:3a). Job simply does not understand the divine plan behind the universe.
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38:3—You shall answer me. The Lord turns the tables on Job and challenges him to answer.
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38:4—Where were you…? The implication is that Job dd not exist when God created the world, so how could he understand it? God uses the metaphor of building a house to describe the work of creation. He poetically describes his creative activity very differently from that described in Genesis 1—2.
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The earth’s foundations. Laying the foundations or the capstone of a building was an occasion for joyful celebration. This is not a rhetorical question; and answer is expected, but Job is unable to answer (40:5).
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38:7—Shouted for joy. A poetic description of God’s joy in creating the world.
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38:8—The sea…when it bust forth from the womb. The language of birth describes the creation of the seas (cf. Genesis 1:9-10).
Questions
- What questions will you ask God as you engage in an honest conversation with your Maker?
- In what ways does the description of Yahweh’s handiwork help you to reflect on God’s care for creation and your own care for it?
- What words would you use to describe the beauty and majesty of creation based upon the descriptions given in Job 38?
- In what ways do these images of God influence you in terms of your part in the preservation of creation?
