Reading: Job 38-39, Psalm 145
Then God answered Job out of the whirlwind…
When I was growing up, my parents had a two volume Complete Works of William Shakespeare hardbound set on the bookshelf. While I spent most of my childhood reading paperback science fiction and choose your own adventures, I remember on several occasions pulling down one of the volumes and attempting to read it. I would almost immediately give up in frustration. The words were unfamiliar, the writing complex and difficult for me to follow. I wasn’t ready for Shakespeare. When I got to high school, we were required to read several Shakespeare plays for English class. I know we read Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. I understand them better, but still had some trouble with grasping everything that was going on. Then, late in the school year, I went to see a production of As You Like It. It was a revelation. The words were literally brought to life on stage, and the story made sense for the first time. Two things had happened: I had learned how the words worked, and the they were played out the way they were meant to be. I carried the Complete Works of William Shakespeare around for the rest of high school, and by the time I graduated I had read the whole thing more than once. I also pretty much destroyed the books in the process. Backpacks aren’t the best place for nice hardbound books.
We have reached the final movement in the book of Job, and the final speech. We last saw God bragging about the righteousness of Job in some sort of divine council scene, where Satan challenged this because Job’s life was just too easy. God says okay, do your worst. The next 29 chapters were Job and his three friends wondering, debating, and arguing over the cause of Job’s suffering, which of course as readers we already know. They fail to figure it out, and Job appeals to God for justice. Then Elihu, the young man, steps in an proclaims his own understanding and judgment on the matter (which is every bit as wrong) by saying Job’s suffering is due discipline for his actions, and that God will by no means answer someone like Job, who has failed to learn the proper lesson. But then God answered Job out of the whirlwind.
Job is probably the most difficult book in the Bible to assign a purpose statement. Why does God answer now and not before? And what kind of answer is this, anyway? Why are we even being told this story, and what does it have to do with the story of Israel? When was it written, by whom, and for what? Unlike many of the books we’ve read so far, Job gives us nothing very particular to go on.
The one question we can look at from today’s reading is this: what kind of answer does God give to Job? Job has asked quite a few questions during his dialogues, beginning with Why was I born? back in chapter 3. He also asks how can a man be right before God? and Shall a man die and live again? But perhaps most important is his existential question about good and evil: Seeing how the righteous suffer and the wicked thrive, what is the benefit of being righteous? Though Job clings to his righteousness throughout the book, even he begins to wonder why God asks it, if these are the results. In some ways God’s answer applies to all these questions, but I think most directly to that last one.
Job’s friends all have given their theories, and they all come down to the same thing in the end: your behavior determines outcomes, so being righteous is better than being wicked, because the righteous are blessed and the wicked suffer. Now, later, or in some ultimate sense. Job’s experience says otherwise. From the privileged position of the reader, who have chapters 1 and 2, we also know it is not true: Job is being afflicted because he is righteous. Now God has shown up, how will he answer the question? God spends two chapters talking about stars, weather, animals giving birth and growing up, and giant monstrous beasts called leviathan and behemoth. Clear as day. An obvious answer that needs no more explanation. We’ll all just go home now.
No? It really is one of the more perplexing questions in the Bible. Why are we given the reason for Job’s suffering at the start of the book, but when God finally answers Job he doesn’t get to know it? It always seems just a little unfair to Job that he isn’t told about how God bragged on him to Satan, and how his present trial was really all about how faithful he really was. But then I think about how I would respond to such knowledge. Would it really be any particular comfort to me that I had been doing the right things all along, if sickness, my family dying, financial ruin, and being surrounded by accusatory friends were the result? That is the wild part of this whole story: Job already knew he was righteous. Through all the dialogues, he never doubted it. What he wants to know is why it matters. I think God’s answer is directed at that. And the best answer God can give that Job is capable of understanding is to present to him the vast complexity of the universe, the wonder of life, and the power in nature.
God’s questions to Job can be read in a demeaning way, but I don’t think that is what is going on. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? is certainly putting Job in his place, but not I think unkindly. I think God’s invitation for Job to see the world as God sees it genuine. Were Job capable of understanding the incredible range of activity in the universe, God would not hide it from him. But Job is simply unable to absorb it. Like a child trying to read Shakespeare, it is simply beyond him. God tells Job why by telling Job it is simply too big for him. He doesn’t know enough words, and he can’t see the whole play.