Bible Commentary - Job 38

In this chapter, God challenges Job to explain how much understanding and authority he possesses over the natural world.

In verse 1, God speaks out of the storm, blurs the line between metaphor and reality.  Elihu had used the thunderstorm as a rhetorical device to describe God’s nature.  We don’t have to believe that God is literally in the storm to derive meaning from Elihu’s speech.  Yet, at least in this particular instance, we discover that God is literally in the storm, and when the storm arrives God begins his response to Job.

This is the final speech in the book.  Job’s three friends have already been silenced (Job 32:1).  Job himself “concluded his remarks” (Job 31:40).  Elihu himself has finished speaking, so only God is left with anything to say.  And what is there for God to say?  As I mentioned in a previous commentary, God’s discourse in substantially similar to what Elihu was saying in chapter 37.  In that chapter, Elihu was repeatedly questioning whether Job has the knowledge or power of God, specifically related to natural phenomena associated with a thunderstorm.

In this chapter, God does the same thing, except broadening his questions to cover all of created history from the beginning of the universe.  God’s very first question, after challenging Job to “instruct” him from Job’s great wisdom and understanding, is “where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (v. 4).  This whole line of questioning is semi-sarcastic, following the sarcastic line taken by both Job and Job’s friends in earlier chapters.  We all know that Job does not have answers to any of these questions. Verse 21 reiterates this sarcastic line by “you know, for you were born” when God was creating the universe.  It should be obvious that Job was not born before God created the universe, and that Job is ignorant of all the things that God asks him.

Why does God ask Job all of these questions?  In what way does this address Job’s criticism that God allows the wicked to prosper?  More importantly, how does this explain Job’s own suffering?  This is a topic I discussed at length in my commentary on chapter 28, so I would encourage my readers to review that chapter if they want to see my longer explanation.  For now, I’ll just say that God is demonstrating his wisdom and understanding of natural phenomena to prove, by extension, that he is also wise and understanding of justice and human affairs, and that Job can and should respectfully trust God’s wisdom and justice in his own life.  That is the meaning of God’s answer, combined with a lyrical description of the wonders of nature and God’s original creation of it.

God’s answer in particular, and the book of Job in general, has always been part philosophy and part poetry.  The poetic aspect is what makes it such a long book considering the relatively few philosophical points that it makes.  I don’t want to say the theology of Job is simple, since the question of suffering (or as C.S. Lewis put it, “the Problem of Pain”) has been such a persistent question across thousands of years.  On the other hand, I do think the theology of Job is relatively easy to describe and categorize, so maybe it really is simple.

In any case, God questions Job about many aspects of nature.  Beginning in verses 4-11, God describes the creation of the world.  God describes creation like the way that a person would build a house.  He talks about laying the foundation (v. 4), taking measurements and stretching out a line (v. 5).  If you were building a house you would use a line to ensure that the walls were at proper 90 degree angles with each other and that the ceiling and floor were level.

Verse 7 describes the “morning stars” and the “sons of God” singing and shouting with joy as they observe God building the physical universe.  “Sons of God” is a conventional phrase that refers to angels.  This is interesting because it implies that God had already created the angels before he created the physical world, and that the angels were observers to the subsequent creation of the world.  It’s also really cool that the angels are so excited about what God is doing.

One could imagine the angels seeing the world for the first time: stars, the oceans, trees and fish and everything else.  The world is filled with wonder for those who, like a newborn child, has never seen it before.  We can only imagine how exciting it must have been for the angels to see the world for the first time, but even more than that to be the first living beings to ever see the world at all.

This passage implies many things about angels but does not otherwise offer any explanations for the dynamics of how angels exist or interact with the world.  Angels must have been outside the world since they existed before the world in order to see it be created.  However, they must also have some way to perceive the world such that they could “shout for joy” upon its creation.  This suggests that angels are not physical beings, but that they can perceive or interact with the physical world in some way.  We also see obviously human-like characteristics in angels, such as their capability and desire to sing and shout.  Angels can express emotions like joy and excitement.

I don’t want to take this too far because we should understand that much of this chapter is poetic and allegorical.  For instance, I don’t believe that God laid a foundation in a literal sense, or stretched out a line in a literal sense.  In a similar way, we may want to interpret the description of angels singing and shouting for joy as a figurative expression.  It’s hard to say for sure.

Starting in verse 12, the chapter goes through many other aspects of creation with no obvious pattern of progression.  God asks about the dawn, light and darkness, the deep places of the ocean and the darkness of the abyss, the storehouses of snow and hail, “bringing rain on a land without people”, the organization and management of the various stellar constellations.

What is the common theme here?  This is a diverse list that jumps from one topic to another almost with every verse.  To an extent, I think it focuses on aspects of natural creation.  This is in keeping with verses 4-11, which discussed the marvel of the creation of the universe itself.  Now God is going through different aspects of the created universe, challenging Job to express his own knowledge or mastery of the universe.

The clearest way to tie this chapter together is that God is asking Job about the obscure, untraveled and unknown places of creation.  The focus is on “do you know about” this thing or that thing, and these questions find meaning because God is asking Job about aspects of creation that no human being would ever see.  This doesn’t hold with everything that God says, but I think it works for the majority of this passage.  In verse 16 God asks about “the springs of the sea” and “the recesses of the deep”.  I.e. the bottommost pits of the ocean, where water comes from.  Obviously this is not a place that any human being has ever visited.  Same thing as the “dwelling of light”, the “storehouses of snow” and so on.  These are places where weather comes from.

In verses 26-27, God asks about the rains that fall on desolate lands, where nobody lives.  To me what this means is that God cares for the desolate lands and provides for the wildlife that dwells there, even though no human being would ever see it.  To me, that is one of the truly marvelous things about God; to make a totally random example, there are colonies of ants living out in the Amazon rainforest in South America, that no living human will ever see.  And yet even those ants are fed by God, are seen and understood by God, and God knows where each and every ant will be born, live and die.  God feeds them and gives them life, and when they die their spirits return to God.  These things are insignificant and unknown to us, and yet God knows everything, cares about everything and sustains everything.

In verses 31-33, God asks about the constellations in the sky.  This is largely equivalent to “the recesses of the deep”, except in the opposite direction.  Instead of being the hidden and untraveled places in the deep seas, God now asks about the hidden and untraveled places in the heavens.

Other passages in this chapter don’t really fit the theme I am laying out, and for those passages I don’t have any additional insight or commentary to offer.  This chapter mostly speaks for itself, and to the extent that it doesn’t, I believe it fits within the framework I have offered in my commentary.

Finally, in verses 39-41 God starts asking Job about the animals, how they hunt and what they eat.  By this, God is claiming that he satisfies with food every living thing.  To an extent, this is a continuation of the theme from verses 26-27.  In that passage God was providing for living plants and animals in the wilderness by sending them rain.  Here in verses 39-41 it becomes more direct with God now providing food and nourishment to specific animals and birds.  Even the birds are “crying out to God” (v. 41) when they beg for food.  While their parents may be the immediate source of nutrition, ultimately they turn to God for their needs.

I mentioned in the previous chapter that Elihu’s use of a thunderstorm to symbolically represent the presence and nature of God blurs the distinction between God and nature.  In this chapter, it seems to me like God is also blurring the distinction between himself and nature.  When the birds cry out for food, they cry out to God, who provides for them through the natural world.  God knows everything about the natural world and it only moves when and how he desires.

I can imagine several different ways people look at this association between God and nature.  Some people may view it as a naturalistic origin to spiritual belief (i.e. that belief in God emerged naturally out of an attempt to explain or control nature - see my commentary on Job 28 for more detail).  My perspective is that it is a natural consequence of God’s creative role in making the universe.  Natural creation is a reflection of God’s nature because God is the one who made it.  Furthermore, all of the “natural laws” were created by God and are empowered and enforced by his spirit.  God’s spirit and will underlies the entire natural universe.  As a metaphor, we can imagine the natural universe being like a glove that God wears when he interacts with living beings (whether animal or human).  God is the being “behind” the universe, but we only perceive the natural systems like weather and gravity and stuff like that.

From that perspective, it follows that there may not be a clear distinction between God and nature judging our interactions with God.  This is all highly simplified of course, and I’m ignoring some of God’s other roles like e.g. the enforcer of divine justice, which does not easily fit into the narrative of creation and God’s creative role.  Some may criticize me for oversimplifying, to which my only reply is that I would encourage my readers to continue reading and studying this book and to pursue an even deeper understanding of the nature of God.

In the next chapter, God continues discussing wild animals as a way to show his superior wisdom and power over the created universe.