NOTES for Job 38:4

The question asked by God to Job rings ironically and even a little mocking. The fact that the question is especially rhetoric is not necessary to speak: it is obvious by itself. But why God asks it? Certainly, we could explain all this by the simple desire to show Job his place in the universe, which doesn’t give him the right for global generalizations, even when it concerns the questions of good and evil or even his own fate. But is it only in this the problem? If it is so, hardly Job would have repented: because he repents quite sincerely, to such repentance impossible to force neither by strength, nor by the demonstration of personal greatness. And maybe, it is particularly here that we find the answer to all the questions and the accusations of the righteous who suffers?

Certainly, Job, as every person, doesn’t know everything and is not to him to judge of the justice in the scales of humanity. Yes, and he can understand his own destiny, as we see, only partially. This is particularly what the friends of Job repeated to him not once. But such an answer is good for a successful theologian, and not for a suffering righteous, for whom it is not easier from this type of answers.

However we can understand God's question otherwise too: you were not there, when I created the world; but here is, I speak with you, I address you, and you, who was till then a grain of sand in the universe, became a part of My world and My plan. Is this not more important? And as we can see, for Job the rhetoric question given to him by God really becomes the answer to all questions. Or at least the promise that there is an answer and sooner or later it will be absolutely received.