NOTES for Job 40:6-41:10

God is not merely showing him His power. Above all, He addresses Job just as Job wanted: in a human way. What Job feared most was what his friends had told him at least twice: that God is distant from humanity, that He is nothing but power. Judging by his speech, Elihu saw God in much the same way. For Job, however, such a God is a true nightmare. Now he sees the real, living God. And he understands that God is by no means merely power. God shows Job sheer power through the example of the animals He has created: the hippopotamus and, apparently, the whale (called “Leviathan” in the book).

And so that Job may have no doubts left, God Himself leads him to these animals. He vividly shows Job the difference between mere power, indifferent to a human being, and Himself, who, as Job can see for himself, is by no means indifferent to him. Thus Job receives the answer to his main question: can God speak to a person in a human way? But the answer turns out not to be a simple one. God can indeed speak to a person in a human way, but that does not make the difference between God and humanity any smaller. The gulf between them does not disappear; God simply builds a bridge across it. And so all of Job's claims prove unfounded. His friends were right: a human being has no rights before God. But this does not mean that a relationship is impossible.

It simply has to move beyond the confines of religion, where the question of rights and duties, including those in one's relationship with God, is fundamental. Outside those confines, a relationship is very much possible. There is, however, one condition: complete and unconditional acceptance of God's will as the absolute spiritual and moral imperative of one's own life. This is something that a religious person confined within his own religiosity finds almost impossible to do: those who possess religiosity always see it as something valuable in itself, something that even God ought to appreciate for its worth.

God clearly shows Job that only one thing matters to Him: the relationship that binds Him to a human being. And the human heart that makes such a relationship possible. He does not need our religion, or even our morality; He needs us ourselves. Our life. Not in order to take it away from us, but to make it as full as we are capable of receiving. For that to happen, however, all human confines, including religious ones, must be removed. Now, meeting God face to face, Job has finally understood this.

As He brings His word to Job to a close, God points him to Leviathan (vv. 1-34). This indication is not accidental, because the image of Leviathan, whatever its origin, by the time the Book of Job was written had already become a symbol of the power opposed to God, although, of course, Leviathan was just as much God's creature as the rest of the world. And God, of course, does not accidentally set Job before Leviathan just as He had previously set him before Behemoth (Job 40:15-24). If Behemoth was a symbol of nature, completely indifferent to man, then Leviathan was a symbol of the dark powers that oppose man. God is, as it were, saying to Job: you wanted to lean on your own righteousness and demand something from Me; but I am not the one opposing you, I am on your side. Here is your real enemy; see whether you can withstand him. Will your righteousness help you (vv. 1-9)? This turn in the theme was not accidental: Job had in fact demanded the immediate triumph of justice, accusing God of permitting the forces of evil to act, of looking indifferently at the suffering of the righteous and the triumph of the wicked. Job, as it were, set his own righteousness against this indifference.

And now God showed him visibly what human righteousness is worth in the face of the world's evil if it remains without the help and support of the One who Himself is the source of all righteousness. But there was also a second, deeper meaning in this vision. God tells Job directly that only He Himself can deal with Leviathan, who embodies the forces of evil (v. 11). And the one who cannot deal with Leviathan has no right to challenge Him (v. 10). A person stands before the choice between God and Leviathan, and if he is not on God's side, then willingly or unwillingly he supports those who oppose God. A righteous person cannot become an opponent of God; the very nature and origin of righteousness do not allow it. Of course, God's triumph over Leviathan does not come immediately. God's struggle with those who oppose Him will end only at the end of time; Leviathan's recompense, as is clear, still lies ahead (v. 10). And then each one will receive his reward. Such a prospect would appear no better than the one Job's friends spoke of, pointing out to him that the time for rewarding the righteous and punishing the sinner would still come.

But there they spoke of a human perspective, while here the perspective is that of God's providence. And the issue is not only scale. The issue is also that time passes away, while God's eternity does not. And therefore in God's eternity every life finds its place, even one that by the standards of this world appeared to have failed completely. The reward of the righteous person in God's eternity is not that he receives from God some kind of compensation for the sufferings he has endured, but that his entire life is renewed, including the part of it that had seemed irretrievably lost. God does not evade Job's questions; He simply lets him understand that the answer to the questions he has asked can be found only in the Kingdom. And Job believes God, who speaks with him face to face.

The final part of the Lord's words to Job contains a vivid description of a dragon whose heat makes the depths of the sea boil. A common interpretation, however, holds that this is a crocodile: this animal, worshipped by the Egyptians, seemed to the Jews the mightiest of creatures. Most probably, the Egyptian deification of the crocodile was an important aspect for the author. Verse 17 in the Synodal numbering, verse 25 in the King James Version, reads in the Russian Synodal translation, ‘When it [the crocodile] rises, the mighty are afraid’; with greater justification, it should read, ‘Even the gods fear its appearance.’ Thus the power of the Creator, which created the crocodile and prevails over it, extends to the pagan gods too, who are all the more as nothing before the right hand of the Almighty.

The most significant verses in chapter 41 are verses 2 and 3 in the Synodal numbering, verses 10 and 11 in the King James Version, in which the Lord proclaims that He is subject to nothing and no one in the world. Despite certain differences between translations, some of which refer part of these verses to the power of the crocodile rather than to that of the Lord, the concluding thought is entirely unambiguous. ‘Everything under heaven is Mine,’ says the Lord. Once again, it is important to note that this is an answer to Job's lament, to his grief at having been cast away from God's hand. Everything, including Job's fate, belongs to God. Nothing can resist the Creator's power that governs the world; therefore, even though everything that happened did happen in Job's life, his fate nevertheless remains in God's hands.

The Lord does not give Job a substantive answer; indeed, He does not even say that such an answer exists. One might think He could at least have said that Job was suffering because he had become a participant in God's struggle with Satan, who had slandered both God and Job. In essence, Job's role would have seemed quite honourable… But God says none of this. For the author of the Book of Job, inventing answers of this kind and putting them into the Lord's mouth would have meant trying to explain a mystery rationally, and the author is too wise for that. Thus the essence of the Lord's answer lies in the answer itself, in the fact that Job has not been forgotten by Him.

Whom does the Lord mean when he speaks of Leviathan? It is not easy to answer this question unequivocally, for Leviathan often appears as a symbol of the forces rebelling against the Creator, and perhaps it is no accident that he is called here the “king over all the proud.” But even if this is not so, and if Leviathan is to be understood, as other interpreters believe, as some living creature—apparently a crocodile—then even on this reading Leviathan appears before us as a creature that visibly reveals the Creator’s might. Its description is vivid and expressive; we sense how a power beyond human control is subdued by God.

At first glance it may seem that God is merely demonstrating His power to Job. And in demonstrating it, He says: can you do that? No? Then do not meddle in what is not your business. In fact, however, everything is not so simple. Job is already, in essence, ready to humble himself for real, to acknowledge God's complete authority over him and His absolute sovereignty in the world. This is no longer religiosity; it is real acceptance of the authority over oneself of the real God who enters a person's life.

The true path of righteousness begins with such complete and unconditional surrender of oneself to God. And Job is finally ready to take the first step on this path. He refuses to answer not because he has become afraid of God in the way a person may be afraid of someone infinitely stronger than himself. He has simply understood that a person has nothing to say to God. Of course, communion between a person and God is entirely possible. But not the kind Job was seeking and wanted.

He wanted to meet God in order to inform Him of his righteousness. To tell Him that he, Job, had not received from Him, from the God on whom he had so hoped, the expected reward. He wanted to remind God of the rules of the game. But it turned out that God does not need to be reminded of anything. Not because God knows the rules by which people play. And not even because God Himself establishes those rules. It is because God does not play human games at all. He solves His own tasks, and they are far larger than anything people can tell Him about.

God is ready to commune with a person, but about what is real, not about games invented by people. Even if they are religious games and God is the chief figure in them. Righteousness won in such a game remains toy righteousness. And Job seems already to be beginning to understand this. But the question of evil in the world is by no means a toy question. It is completely real. And very real. So what then? What is to be done with it? Is there an answer? God appears not to give an answer. But only appears so. Yes, the picture of a grazing Behemoth seems, at first glance, to have nothing to do with the matter.

But Behemoth is only the occasion. A starting point for awareness. And this awareness is connected with the understanding that there is no force in the world that is not subject to God. He truly is King. Sovereign. The absolute Monarch of the universe. And its supreme Judge. He knows what to do with the wicked and with all the evil of the world in general. And if a person can know anything about this, it is no more than he knows about the strength of Behemoth. A person has no more chance of solving the problem of evil in the world than of moving that very Behemoth from the place where it lies. The image is impressive and entirely clear.