If I
hadn’t already read the end of the story I would have thought that this epic
struggle would have culminated this way:
- God flies in on a chariot accompanied with a squadron of angels
- God puts His arm around Job to comfort and console him
- God explains in lengthy detail the heavenly contest that transpired in chapters 1 and 2 between God and Satan
- God gives Job a medal for passing the test with flying colors
- The angels do the “wave” and give Job a standing ovation
- God heals Job and then gives him a bear hug
- God allows Satan to chase Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar across the Chaldean plain
- God answers Rabbi Kushner’s question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
- And as an added bonus He goes on a long walk with Job and also explains why good things happen to bad people
But guess what? That isn’t
how the story ends. And at the first
read it seems that the Comforter-in-Chief has miserably failed “Compassion 101.”
God doesn’t
show up at Uz in His whirlwind limo and say, “Wow Job! You’ve really been
mistreated!” In drill sergeant fashion
He just says, “On your feet! And put
your pants on…I’ve got a bunch of questions to ask you.” He doesn’t even acknowledge Job’s awful
suffering.
On
“Working Preacher.Org” Professor Kathryn Schifferdecker remarks, “Like George
Bailey in ‘It's a Wonderful Life,’ Job responds to his troubles by wishing
he had never been born (Job 3). But Job doesn't get a visit from the portly,
comforting Clarence the angel. Instead, at the end of the book, the One who
appears to Job is none other than the Creator of the cosmos, the LORD God
Almighty! And God doesn't come to comfort Job. Instead, God lays into Job,
lecturing him from the center of a cyclone…”
It
was a “great wind” (a cyclone?) that destroyed Job’s family in chapter
one. It is now at last “out of a
whirlwind” that God manifests His presence to His broken and suffering servant. (The
Hebrew word for "whirlwind" in 38:1 usually appears in the context of
upheaval and distress and signifies “turbulence.” That certainly fits the context of the story
of Job.)
Remember Jobs
anguished cry in chapter 29? "Oh
that I were as in months gone by, as in the days when God watched over me; when
His lamp shone over my head, {and} by His light I walked through darkness; as I
was in the prime of my days, when the friendship of God {was} over my tent; when
the Almighty was yet with me, {and} my children were around me.”
Although the pain
from the loss of his children (and the loss of his employees) must still tear
at his heart, the spiritual dereliction and the destitution are over. Yet in
these final few chapters there is not one single answer to any of the questions
that have haunted and perplexed Job. To
the great question of “Why?” there is only silence. And yet when God is finished speaking with
Job, he is totally satisfied, contented, and revitalized.
Francis I
Andersen writes, “That God speaks at all is enough for Job. All he needed to know is that everything is
still all right between himself and God….to that extent it does not matter much
what they talk about. Any topic will do
for a satisfying conversation between friends.
It is each other they are enjoying.”
“…to that extent it
does not matter much what they talk about…”
I like that. Job is simply
thrilled that God has broken the silence. That aching cry of his heart has finally been
answered. Not in the way that he
expected for God shows up in unusual ways and speaks unexpected things to us.
In
previous chapters Job had wanted either a formal indictment, a list of the
charges against him, or a declaration of his innocence, an acquittal) from God. He got neither.
God
doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions (perhaps we feel like we have a “right”
to an answer for the problems that are plaguing our lives. But perhaps we don’t). Nor does He charge him
with any wrongdoing (to the chagrin of the three). He simply says, “Who is this that darkens
counsel by words without knowledge” (or “Who is this that distorts and obscures
My carefully thought out plan for your life by words without knowledge?”) We could paraphrase it by saying, “You don’t
know what you are talking about Job! You
are making assumptions about your life’s trial without seeing the big picture.”
Let me repeat verse
3 again, “Now gird up your loins like a
man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
Did you catch the
little phrase “…like a man”? The word
for “man” used here is the Hebrew “geber.”
FIA writes, “As distinct from the more general Hebrew words for ‘man’
this word specifically refers to a male
at the height of his powers. As such it depicts humanity at its most competent
and capable level.” And Hartley gives us this insight, “This choice of
words means that neither his affliction nor his inflamed rhetoric has
diminished his intrinsic worth as a human being.”
In other words, the
Creator is saying to this extremely sick, extremely weak and extremely
discouraged man, “You are still a warrior prince in My eyes
Job; your disease and trial have not diminished that one bit; now stand up like
that warrior I know you to be and prepare for battle!”
I think something
happened to Job at that moment. Even
though from our viewpoint God’s words appear almost harsh, something happened
in the heart of Job. This man, so
wracked by disease and trial, so spent from battling through the thick veil of
blackness, reached deep within himself and, for the first time in weeks, sat
up! Tears of hope began to course down his
cheeks.
38:4 “Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding…”
What follows in the
next four chapters is a rather remarkable synopsis of a trip with God to the
planetarium and the zoo. In the New
American Standard Version I count sixty-two question marks in these chapters.
Those 62 question marks punctuate some 70 plus questions that are put to Job in
rapid fire succession.
And the topics of
those questions range from goats to eagles, from horses to ostriches, from the
footings of the earth to the boundaries of the ocean, from ice to frost to dew
to rain to snow, from the great land monster called “Behemoth” to the great sea
monster called “Leviathan.”
God
questions Job on two themes – the structure of the world and the maintenance of
the world. Hartley writes, “God raises
Job's sight from his own troubles to the marvelous order that undergirds the
world.”
“Where
were you…?” Job was in a state of
nothingness, a mere non-entity; he wasn’t even an onlooker. God hurls question
after question at him and he could not answer the least of them! (Even modern day man with his great engineering
skills cannot come to agreement as to how the pyramids were built.)
Professor Schifferdecker writes, “Is this an adequate
response to Job's suffering? It is not, in a conventional sense, very
comforting. God would probably fail a present-day pastoral care class.
Nonetheless, these speeches of God at the end of the book of Job accomplish
something profound. They move Job out of his endless cycle of grief into life
again. They enable him to live freely in a world full of heartbreaking
suffering and heart-stopping beauty…”
*******************************
A God named
Clarence or a God named Yahweh? Most of
us want to have our prayers answered and we want our circumstances
changed. We want our ash heap existence
fixed!
But we generally
want sort of a portly, good-natured, non-combative and somewhat defective god
named Clarence to do more of a general “rearranging of the ash” instead of a
full-blown tornadic wind upheaval of my entire life! (Even ash heaps can get to be comfortable
places.) And we sure don’t want to have to “stand up and put our pants on.” That
means I need to stop complaining and that I can’t blame everything under the
sun for my problems and that I’ve got some responsibility in this mess.
We think it would
be cool for El-Shaddai to show up at our doorstep in a divine whirlwind…but are
we ready to have everything we hold dear (our world view, our theology, and our
“stuff”) turned upside down?
We want God to
answer prayers, but do we want God?
God may not visit
your ash heap in a manner that you think He will; He may not visit your ash
heap at a time that you think He should.
And when He does show up, He may not speak to you the words you think
you need to hear.
He may just say,
“Stand up! Put your pants on! I want to talk to you for awhile…..”
