Job 40:1-5: in context

After chapters of Job demanding an answer from God, God has finally spoken out of the whirlwind, not explaining Job's suffering but overwhelming him with questions about the vastness of creation. Now God pauses and puts it to Job directly: will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who argues with God answer. And Job, who had so much to say, gives his first response: behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will say no more.

This is the beginning of Job's turning, and it is worth noticing what it is and is not. God has still not told Job why he suffered; that question is never directly answered in the whole book. What changes is not that Job gets his explanation but that he meets God. Having demanded a hearing for so long, when God finally speaks Job discovers he has nothing to say; he lays his hand over his mouth, the gesture of someone who has run out of words in the presence of something far larger than himself. This is not God bullying Job into silence; it is a man, in the actual presence of God, realizing the smallness of his own vantage point. Job does not get answers, he gets God, and it turns out that is what he needed more than the answers. The encounter itself does what no explanation could. Sometimes the deepest resolution to our suffering is not the reason we were demanding but the presence we did not know we were really seeking.

When I demand explanations from God for my pain, am I open to the possibility that what I most need is not the answer but him, before whom I might finally lay my hand on my mouth?