Job 39:17-30: a reflection

17because God has deprived her of wisdom, neither has he imparted to her understanding. 18When she lifts up herself on high, she scorns the horse and his rider. 19“Have you given the horse might? Have you clothed his neck with a quivering mane? 20Have you made him to leap as a locust? The glory of his snorting is awesome. 21He paws in the valley, and rejoices in his strength. He goes out to meet the armed men. 22He mocks at fear, and is not dismayed, neither does he turn back from the sword. 23The quiver rattles against him, the flashing spear and the javelin. 24He eats up the ground with fierceness and rage, neither does he stand still at the sound of the trumpet. 25As often as the trumpet sounds he snorts, ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. 26“Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and stretches her wings toward the south? 27Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up, and makes his nest on high? 28On the cliff he dwells and makes his home, on the point of the cliff and the stronghold. 29From there he spies out the prey. His eyes see it afar off. 30His young ones also suck up blood. Where the slain are, there he is.”

God is answering Job out of the whirlwind, and this is a strange kind of answer. Job has asked why he suffers, and God replies by pointing at animals: the ostrich who scorns the horse, the war-horse who mocks at fear and charges the battle, the hawk who soars south, the eagle who nests on the cliff and spies the prey from far off. Not one word of explanation. Just a tour of a wild world.

Notice what God is doing. He is showing Job a creation Job did not make and cannot manage, fierce and free and beyond his control, and yet clearly known and tended by God. It is as if God says: look how much of my world runs by a wisdom you did not give and cannot follow. The eagle at the kill, the horse rejoicing in its strength, these are not tame, and they are not yours to run.

There is an odd comfort in being put in your place like this. If you are worn out from trying to understand and control everything, from needing the whole world to make sense to you before you can rest, God's answer to Job is also for you. You are not the manager of the universe. Someone else is, who delights in things too wild for you to govern, and who has not lost track of a single one. You can let go, and trust the One whose wisdom holds what yours cannot.

Lord, you tend a world too wild and vast for me to manage or understand. Free me from needing to control it all, and let me rest in your wisdom, which holds what mine cannot.