Main news for 21 February 2025

King James Version (en)

Job, Chapter 39, verses 9-10

⁹Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?

¹⁰Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

NOTES

Continuing to speak to Job, God shows him how God's providence works in...

Continuing to speak to Job, God shows him how God's providence works in nature. He points Job to the fact that the meaning God has placed in His creation is far from always clear to those whom He has created. Strength and understanding are different things. The wild ox is strong, but it will not plow for you (vv. 9-12). Its strength is useless to a person, and the wild ox itself does not even know about it, but God knows why He needs the wild ox with its strength. The ostrich does not care for its offspring, but God cares for them, having not given the ostrich the understanding needed for such care (vv. 13-18). Much in the world happens without human participation, just as the wild animals bear their young without it (vv. 1-4). There is much in the world that was not made for human beings and is not intended for them (vv. 5-8).

At first glance, all this may appear to have no relation to the questions Job asks God. But with careful reading, it turns out that the connection is still there. Indeed, the essence of all the questions Job asks God comes down to a search for the meaning of what happens in the world. For him, that meaning is inseparably bound to the human world; if something has no significance for human beings, then from Job's point of view it cannot have meaning at all. But God lets Job see that for God there is nothing in the world that is without at least some meaning. Of course, a person can see this meaning only when God Himself reveals it to him. Moreover, there are things in the world that, not being intended for human beings, will remain meaningless to them until the end of time. But for God nothing in the world is meaningless, and therefore a person still has hope even when there seems to be nothing to hope for because absurdity, wickedness, and injustice are triumphing all around. Of course, Job's friends had more than once said the same thing to him, or at least something very similar.

But it is one thing to hear something like this from people who may be relying only on someone else's words, and quite another to see and experience everything oneself, receiving revelation from God, who speaks with the questioner face to face. The answer received from God gave hope: the world is not absurd; blind chance and faceless force do not triumph in it. It is moved by God's providence and therefore full of meaning, although that meaning is not always easy to see at once. This means that the righteous person also has hope that his righteousness will not vanish without a trace, that it is not an accident in a world where evil triumphs, but a part of the providence that moves this world.

Thus, easily and quickly, the illusion so characteristic of fallen man, a kind of distorted anthropocentrism, is destroyed. We have all, of course, read in the Bible that...

Thus, easily and quickly, the illusion so characteristic of fallen man, a kind of distorted anthropocentrism, is destroyed. We have all, of course, read in the Bible that God gave the world into the hands of the man He created. But fallen man understood his power over the world in a very peculiar way. He decided that the world exists not so much around him, as around its spiritual center, as for him in the most utilitarian sense of the word. After the fall, man really did cease to be the spiritual axis of the universe that he was meant to be from the beginning. For one can be a spiritual axis only as long as one remains the image of God.

And when one largely ceases to be that image, one begins to perceive the world exactly as we most often perceive it today: purely utilitarianly. Even when we simply "love nature," we usually do this utilitarianly too, meaning that, among other things, nature can also become a source of aesthetic pleasure for us, and for that we "love" it. Deep down we usually deny nature the right simply to be, to be not for us but in itself. The assumption is that if something in nature exists in that way, then this is our unfinished business: we simply have not yet gotten around to such "useless" nature.

By its nature the world does not depend on man at all. It exists quite well in itself, for the most part. In essence, only a tiny part of the universe has been given into man's power. But what then are we to do with the fact that God gives the world into man's administration? The answer is simple enough: the world exists according to God's plan and intention for it, and it is given to man precisely for administration. For administration in accordance with that same plan and within the context of that same intention. Man's power over the world is, in essence, a divine-human reality.

Refusing to acknowledge God's sovereignty over his own life, man loses power over the world as well. And this concerns not only nature, but man himself. In particular, it concerns his relation to other people. Judgment over man does not belong to man. Just as judgment over nature and the disposal of the forces hidden in it do not belong to man.

Displaying an astonishing knowledge of living nature, the author of the Book of Job celebrates its beauty as a manifestation of the Creator's greatness and...

Displaying an astonishing knowledge of living nature, the author of the Book of Job celebrates its beauty as a manifestation of the Creator's greatness and unsurpassed strength. The breadth of the hymn, which makes up chapters 38 and 39 and continues through the next two chapters, is necessary for the author to convey the scale of creation, the immensity of God's great and glorious works.

All living creatures, in their diversity, beauty and differences from one another, are in God's hands. He governs their lives, just as He governs the movements of the heavenly bodies. ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will,’ says the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 10:29). In his own way, the author of the Book of Job likewise affirms that the whole created world is subject to God. This matters because God is speaking of all this to Job, the very Job who complained of being forgotten by Him. The author may not say, as Christ does, that a human being is worth far more in God's eyes than small birds—strictly speaking, only the Lord Himself has the right to say this. Nevertheless, it is clear that a human being, if not better, is at least no worse than those creatures whose fate is always in the Almighty's hands. Thus the Lord indirectly answers Job's grief. It is important to set this aspect of God's answer beside the words spoken by God Himself through Second Isaiah about a century and a half before the Book of Job was written: ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even if she should forget, I will not forget you’ (Isa. 49:15).

Moreover, the immensity of creation as described by the author of the Book of Job reveals the scale of the Creator's purpose. He finds wondrous and inexplicable details in nature, all of which testify that God in His wisdom rules the whole world and assigns every creature its place and purpose. Once again, the implication is that all this can be applied to the human being too, and therefore to Job. ‘Why did You bring me out of the womb?’ Job asked bitterly at the beginning of the book. In essence, this was a lament in the form of a rhetorical question; Job expressed the same thing when he said it would have been better not to have been born. This is not merely a poetic expression: similar reflections can also be found in Ecclesiastes. Such pessimism was probably characteristic of the post-exilic age. Yet in His answer to Job, the Lord says that every creature has a purpose and a unique place, human beings included. Here we encounter an example of interpretation within the Bible itself, since the author reflects on and interprets the Revelation that entered the Mosaic tradition in the form of the account of the creation of the world and humanity. The Lord may not say here why He created Job, but in the context of the book, as in real life, what matters decisively is the very fact that such a purpose exists and is known to God. Here, intentionally or not, the author points to a radical difference between human beings and living nature. God's purpose for other creatures can be defined and formulated; the adequacy of that formulation is not fundamentally important in this case. God's purpose for a human being always exists, but is always determined by the relationship between that person and God, and therefore cannot be formulated once and for all.

${currentDateString}


	After registering, you can subscribe to any Bible reading plan. Personalized settings and other services for registered users are planned, so we recommend registering now. Registration is free.