Context No. 3412 of 4322 · Job
Context · Reflection
Job 40:6-24: in context
6Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: 7“Now brace yourself like a man. I will question you, and you will answer me. 8Will you even annul my judgment? Will you condemn me, that you may be justified? 9Or do you have an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like him? 10“Now deck yourself with excellency and dignity. Array yourself with honor and majesty. 11Pour out the fury of your anger. Look at everyone who is proud, and bring him low. 12Look at everyone who is proud, and humble him. Crush the wicked in their place. 13Hide them in the dust together. Bind their faces in the hidden place. 14Then I will also admit to you that your own right hand can save you. 15“See now behemoth, which I made as well as you. He eats grass as an ox. 16Look now, his strength is in his thighs. His force is in the muscles of his belly. 17He moves his tail like a cedar. The sinews of his thighs are knit together. 18His bones are like tubes of bronze. His limbs are like bars of iron. 19He is the chief of the ways of God. He who made him gives him his sword. 20Surely the mountains produce food for him, where all the animals of the field play. 21He lies under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed, and the marsh. 22The lotuses cover him with their shade. The willows of the brook surround him. 23Behold, if a river overflows, he doesn’t tremble. He is confident, though the Jordan swells even to his mouth. 24Shall any take him when he is on the watch, or pierce through his nose with a snare?
God answers Job's demands for a reckoning not with explanations but with questions that put Job in his place: will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, or can you thunder with a voice like his? And then he points Job to Behemoth, a great creature of overwhelming strength that no human can capture or tame.
God reminds Job that even this beast is only one of his works, made by the same hand that made Job himself. The point is not to crush Job but to right-size him. Job had begun to speak as if he could run the universe more justly than God, so God gently shows him that he cannot so much as master one of God's creatures, let alone govern the world. Wisdom begins here, with grasping how small we are before the Maker of all, and learning to trust the justice of the One whose power and understanding reach so far beyond our own. To see God rightly is to stop demanding that he answer to us, and to rest in the One we cannot fathom.
When I am tempted to think I could govern my life or the world more wisely than God, do I remember how small I am before the Maker of all, and trust his wisdom over mine?