NOTES for Job 38:1-21
Perhaps, when one reads the Book of Job for the first time, the turn in the story in chapter 38 comes as a surprise and astonishes the reader. Yet it makes no less an impression when one reads it again and again, waiting for this moment and wanting to skim past the lengthy speeches of Elihu and Job's friends to reach chapter 38 more quickly. At last it has happened: God has answered Job.
Let us recall that Elihu has just been arguing that God is incomprehensible and distant, and that dialogue with Him is impossible and life-threatening. The friends were indignant with Job for asking God to answer him, to say anything at all to him. Job, however, stubbornly believed and begged God to be not only his Judge, but also his Deliverer. No, this is impossible, the friends said; demanding that God speak with you is blasphemy. God is right and almighty, and a person must not demand explanations from Him. But God did answer, and by doing so put all those who slandered Him to shame.
God answered Job, and that means the sufferer's cry matters to Him. God had not abandoned Job, nor had He watched his torment from the sidelines. God wants Job, and every human being, and the Almighty stoops to speak with him.
Even God's stern words to Job sound like victorious trumpets proclaiming the triumph of faith. ‘Who is this who darkens providence with words without sense?’ God's voice sounds from the storm. The Lord reproaches Job for his doubt, because Job's faith did not differ radically enough from his friends' theology. Like a Father, He instructs Job, and the hymn to creation's beauty and greatness no longer rings false here as it did in the preceding chapters.
The author places a hymn to the Creator's greatness on the Lord's lips, just as he has repeatedly placed it on the lips of Job's friends. They said: God is great, so do not try to speak with Him or understand Him. Here the Lord speaks of a greatness greater still: He is so great that there is room in His heart for love and compassion. Moreover, in the book's final part, the scale of the Almighty's creative powers becomes the measure of the greatness of His love and His compassion.
This is the chief meaning of the Lord's words. Yet each verse of chapter 38 and those that follow also astonishes by its own beauty. These words are beautiful as the details of a magnificent picture are beautiful. The touch of gentle irony with which the Lord addresses Job is remarkable and very important for the reader: how sharply it contrasts with the friends' gloomy reasoning! ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ the Lord asks Job. ‘Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place?’ No, of course not: the answer to these rhetorical questions is obvious. Where was Job when God laid the earth's foundations? In God's purpose, in His heart: that is where Job was. Job cannot explain everything the Lord asks him about, and it is doubtful that this is really required of him. He is part of the creation for which the Creator cares. He has not been left by the Creator to the mercy of fate; he has not fallen outside the Lord's purposes. That is why God's answer is filled with extraordinary joy for Job and for the reader. The author fills his hymn with what he himself calls ‘the morning stars rejoicing together’: the light of a pure and beautiful world in which God hears the human being and answers.