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DAY 12 – JOB PART II

A new character then joins the conversation, a younger man named Elihu. He has kept quiet in deference to his elders, but he now challenges Job when he sees that the three friends have no answer for his questions. Elihu suggests, over the course of four poetic speeches (to which Job doesn’t reply), that God may sometimes cause the righteous to suffer in order to warn them when they’re tempted to do wrong. This is a slightly milder version of the three friends’ argument, and it amplifies the overall discussion, but it still doesn’t address Job’s actual situation. However, Job will soon get the hearing he desires. In his final speech Elihu describes God’s greatness by what seems to be an analogy to a gathering storm. But it turns out that the storm is real, and it’s bringing God to speak with Job in person. 

As God addresses Job, he doesn’t explain that by remaining loyal, despite his sufferings and questions, Job has been demonstrating that genuine good is possible. If God gave him this explanation, it would ruin the whole demonstration. Instead, God challenges Job’s presumption that he, a finite human, can understand how the universe should be run and that he can complain knowledgeably when this isn’t done to his liking. By appealing to his own work in creating, sustaining, and caring for the world, God presents his own infinite power and wisdom. In a second speech, God then demonstrates the limits of human power by comparing people to two great beasts, “Behemoth” and “Leviathan.” 

Job responds to these speeches by withdrawing his demand to state his case before God. He humbly acknowledges the limits of his own understanding. God then rebukes the three friends, who are guilty of far worse presumption than Job, since they’ve described God’s ways so confidently, rigidly, and simplistically. As the book closes, God blesses Job with twice as much as he had before. These blessings, it’s now recognized, aren’t a direct reward for good behavior, but rather an expression of the generosity and care of the same God who (as he describes himself) “cuts a channel for the torrents of rain . . . to satisfy a desolate wasteland” and who “provides food for the raven when its young cry out.” 

The book of Job speaks to a universal question, and so it contains few specific references that indicate precisely when and where it was written. It’s clear that the book’s intention is to dispute the position of the three friends, but this position had steady representation over many centuries in ancient Israel, so this observation doesn’t help us date the book very accurately. In the end, however, a precise date may not be necessary or even desirable. Overconfident reductions of God’s moral government to easy formulas can be found in every age.

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar live on among us, and within us. And so to them, and to us, God still asks out of the whirlwind, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” 

PRAYER: I know that You can do all things, Lord. No purpose of yours can be thwarted.