Job
11
By the time we reach chapter 40 God has taken Job on a rapid tour of the universe, firing a multitude of questions to which Job has no answers. A carnival of the animals has been highlighted and Job realises he’s no match for God.
Then the Lord asked Job if he was going to correct the Almighty. God wants His accuser to give an answer. Job realises he’s such a lightweight in this situation. It dawns on him there’s no contest. God is supreme. Job says, “I am unworthy – how can I reply to You? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but have no answer – twice, but I will say no more” (verses 4-5).
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm again. In essence, God invites Job to take over the universe and have a go at being God. There’s a rich irony here as God says, “Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like His? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendour, and clothe yourself in honour and majesty. Unleash the fury of your wrath, look at every proud man and bring him low, look at every proud man and humble him, crush the wicked where they stand.” (verses 9-12)
It’s almost as if God is teasing Job until it registers with him how proud he has been to suppose that he could out argue God and accuse Him of any wrong doing. God mentions two of His creations – both of which scare Job – the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Could Job rule over them, let alone the entire cosmos?
In verse 15 God says, “Look at the behemoth – (that’s generally understood to be the hippopotamus) – which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly!” (verse16). The hippo with its huge body size weighs up to three tons, has comically short legs, yet can outrun a man. It has protruding eyes and nostrils and yet it is the object of God’s care and “ranks first among the works of God” (verse 19). How would you cope, Job? Apparently a hippo can run faster than a man!
In the presence of God, Job has nothing to say. He had a million questions to ask God, but when he met Him, they all fled his mind. It really doesn’t matter anymore. Is this the same man who declared he was a righteous man and therefore there must be something wrong with God to let this happen to him?
There are universal lessons to learn here. Until we are silenced before God, He cannot do for us what needs to be done. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We must stop arguing with God and defending ourselves.
Job may have been silenced, but he’s not yet submitted and that’s why God asked (chapter 40 verse 8), “Would you discredit My injustice? Would you condemn Me to justify yourself?” If Job can’t subdue behemoth (Hebrew for ‘a super beast’), could he master leviathan? Many commentators say this is the crocodile which weighs a ton and lives up to the age of forty. Job could hardly make a pet of him! Others suggest a half mythical creature like a fire breathing dragon. The root of the Hebrew word ‘leviathan’ means ‘to twist or to writhe’. God says, “If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! (chapter 41 verse 8). Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?” (verse 14).
When God says in verse 11, “Everything under heaven belongs to Me”, some think leviathan represents Satan and God is saying that this evil being who has sought to destroy you is under My control. Job was asked “Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook?” (chapter 41 verse 1) and it is obvious he can’t. If he can’t capture and subdue wild animals in God’s creation, what hope has he of unravelling the mystery of life and the problem of evil? He’s gone fishing with a pin hoping to contain the Pacific Ocean in a thimble! Job is beginning to get it. God’s plan is profound, His creation magnificent, His ability to reign over all is awe-inspiring.
One of the great lessons to learn from this wonderful book is that God doesn’t reveal His grand design, but He does reveal Himself. In effect He tells Job ‘Until you know a little more about the physical universe, don’t tell me my job, namely how to run a moral universe.’ All Job’s ‘why’ questions are not answered. Surely they are out of the reach of man’s finite mind. No matter how we rationalize, God will sometimes seem unfair from our point of view. The perspective of an individual trapped in time and denied the big picture is always going to be eccentric. It’s our limited range of vision that, like Job’s, distorts reality. Philip Yancey writes, “The only thing that changed by chapter 42 was that God had given Job a glimpse of the big picture.”
Job knows that in life, things happen. You can be doing everything right when, suddenly, everything goes wrong with no rhyme or reason. It’s well expressed in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 12, “Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: as fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”
Why human evil and its consequences are allowed such green lights by a holy God is another of life’s bewildering paradoxes. There’s a great book by Oswald Chambers on Job entitled “Baffled to Fight Better” and, taking the long view, ‘treasures of darkness’ were revealed to Job through his sufferings. Like Job, we may not get it, but that’s the way it is!