Day 30

Today the Lord speaks. Job has been longing and pleading for a response from God and today it comes. But it doesn’t necessarily come in the manner in which Job had hoped. Job wished to question God about his own suffering and the Lord fires a barrage of rhetorical questions at Job.

Imagine being Job and these are the first words you hear:

2 Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words?

3 Brace yourself like a man,

because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them.

The questions that ensue ask whether Job was there at the creation or if he knew where the snow came from or where light dwells.

Then we come to chapter 40:2

2 Shall a faultfinder content with the Almighty?

He who argues with God, let him answer it. (ESV)

Carson summarizes this all well:

“It is vital for the understanding of this book that we do not misunderstand this challenge. God is not withdrawing his initial estimate of Job (1:1, 8). Even under the most horrible barrage from Satan and from the three “miserable comforters,” Job has not weakened his fundamental integrity nor lost his basic loyalty to the Almighty. He has not followed the advice of his suffering wife to curse God and die; he has not followed the advice of his friends and simply assumed he was suffering for sins hitherto unrecognized and therefore turned to repentance. But he has come within a whisker of blaming God for his sufferings; or, better put, he has certainly insisted that he wants his day in court, that he wants to justify himself to God. Implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, Job has accused God of being unjust, or of being so removed that the just and the unjust seem to face the same ends. In his better moments Job steps back from the least restrained parts of his rhetoric, but he certainly feels, to say the least, that God owes him an explanation.

But now God is saying, in effect, that the person who wants to “contend” with God—to argue out some matter—must not begin by assuming that God is wrong or by accusing the Almighty of not getting things right. That has been the thrust of the rhetorical questions (chaps. 38–39): Job has neither the knowledge nor the power to be able to stand in judgment of God.”

Carson, D. A. (1998). For the love of God: a daily companion for discovering the riches of God’s Word. (Vol. 2, p. 96). Crossway Books.

So Job answers:

4 I am nothing—how could I ever find the answers?

I will cover my mouth with my hand.

5 I have said too much already.

I have nothing more to say.

This seems like a great step for Job, but the Lord will continue tomorrow with further challenges. Sometimes it takes learning a lesson multiple times to get it into the recesses of our heart and soul.