In the concluding part of the poem on the Creator's might, the author of the Book of Job speaks of the strength of the creatures God has made, of...
In the concluding part of the poem on the Creator's might, the author of the Book of Job speaks of the strength of the creatures God has made, of horses and birds of prey. The horse's strength and the eagle's precision reveal the extraordinary vitality of all creation, beside which human abilities are very slight. The main theme of these verses is the Creator's superior strength; the next chapter will return to this with still greater clarity.
Of course, the point is not that God is frightening Job with His strength: why frighten Job still more when he is already crushed by all the calamities that have befallen him? Yet in the context of the book, it is fundamentally and supremely important that no one and nothing surpasses the Creator in strength and might. No one and nothing could have forced Him to answer Job—at least, nothing in the created world. The reason why God addresses the sufferer, so unexpectedly for the reader, lies within God Himself; beside this, the extensive description of creation's grandeur recedes into the background. The Creator's might proves entirely different from the might of petty Eastern rulers familiar to human beings. Those rulers try to exalt themselves by humiliating their subjects and demanding that people address them only while lying face down in the dust. God is free of this rulers' inferiority complex; He speaks with Job because the sufferer's cry is intelligible to Him.
A certain mystery lies hidden here: freely, without compulsion, God answers Job because He understands and cares about what Job is saying. Thus, in the author's view, God is, if one may put it this way, interested in Job himself and in the subject of their conversation. The author does not venture to speculate on why the Almighty's gaze turns towards suffering. Human thought, especially religious and philosophical thought, persistently insists on the impassibility of the Deity, on suffering being utterly foreign to Him by His very nature—as we imagine it. This phenomenon is characteristic of almost all religions, Christian thinkers being no exception; it is quite likely to be explained by psychological causes. A person seeks some realm of paradise where they might hope to leave their suffering behind, and so, from a logical point of view, it matters to them to affirm apathia, impassibility, in the divine realm. Yet the Book of Job, like many other biblical texts, contains the revelation that God is compassionate, that the pain of loss, the torment of unrequited love and the grief of a life being taken away are known to Him: God understands what Job is crying out about.
It is striking that the Lord Jesus quotes this chapter of the Book of Job in His conversation with the disciples about the end of the world on the Mount of Olives. Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that Christ says, ‘Where the corpse is, there the eagles will gather,’ simply because He thinks in biblical language and this quotation comes to mind. For us, this may testify to the divine inspiration of the text written by the author of the Book of Job. But perhaps, in His conversation on the Mount of Olives, Christ recalls the Book of Job not merely in its wording: He is speaking of God's purpose, which human beings are powerless to overcome.
It is highly significant that Job humbly ‘lays his hand upon his mouth’ and declines to answer the Lord's words. Many of us, delighted by the opportunity, would begin feverishly listing our complaints and requests. For Job, however, only one thing matters: his fate has not slipped from the hands of the Almighty.
39 The more fully to convince Job of his ignorance, God here discourses, Of the wild goats and hinds, Job 39:1-4.
Of the wild ass, Job 39:5-8.
Of the unicorn, Job 39:9-12.
Of the peacock and ostrich, Job 39:13-18.
Of the horse, Job 39:19-25.
Of the hawk and eagle, Job 39:26-30.
39:26 Fly - So strongly, constantly, unweariedly, and swiftly.South - At the approach of winter, when wild hawks fly into warmer countries, as being impatient of cold. The birds of the air are proofs of the wonderful providence of God, as well as the beasts of the earth. God instances in two stately ones.
39:27 Mount - Flies directly upward 'till she be out of thy sight; which no other bird can do.