Scripture Daily

Context No. 332 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 38:1-16: in context

1Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, 2“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3Brace yourself like a man, for I will question you, then you answer me! 4“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. 5Who determined its measures, if you know? Or who stretched the line on it? 6What were its foundations fastened on? Or who laid its cornerstone, 7when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8“Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke out of the womb, 9when I made clouds its garment, and wrapped it in thick darkness, 10marked out for it my bound, set bars and doors, 11and said, ‘You may come here, but no further. Your proud waves shall be stopped here’? 12“Have you commanded the morning in your days, and caused the dawn to know its place, 13that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and shake the wicked out of it? 14It is changed as clay under the seal, and presented as a garment. 15From the wicked, their light is withheld. The high arm is broken. 16“Have you entered into the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in the recesses of the deep?

For thirty-seven chapters Job has been demanding an explanation. He has lost his children, his health, and his wealth, and he wants God to come down and account for it, to give him a reason. In this passage God finally speaks, out of a whirlwind, and the striking thing is what he does not do. He does not explain. He never tells Job why any of it happened.

Instead God answers Job's questions with an avalanche of his own. Where were you, he asks, when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who set its measurements and stretched the line across it? Who shut the sea behind doors when it burst out, and said to it, this far and no farther, here your proud waves stop? Have you ever commanded the morning to rise, or walked in the deep springs of the sea? On and on it goes, a tour of a creation so vast and so finely governed that Job cannot answer a single question about it. And woven into it is a strange beauty: when the foundations were laid, God says, the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. The world began in a joy Job never saw. God's reply is not a set of reasons; it is himself, the sheer magnitude of his wisdom and his care over things beyond Job's understanding.

And somehow that is what settles Job, more than an explanation would have. He wanted answers and got a presence, a fresh and overwhelming sense of who God actually is. If God governs the sea and the dawn with that much wisdom, then Job's own unexplained suffering, though still unexplained, is not outside it. When I am demanding reasons from God for something that has hurt me, is it possible that what would actually settle me is not the explanation I am asking for, but a fresh sight of who he is?

Sources