Reading: Job 40-42, Psalm 146

It’s been a long trip, but we’ve reached the end of Job, a long and frustrating book. The closing chapters of Job will not necessarily change that, but it does reveal the author’s purpose in writing it. We get the second half of God’s answer to Job, which involves two massive, terrifying beasts. Then Job gives us the purpose of the book in his repentance statement. Finally, God passes judgment on Job and his three friends, declaring who was in the right and who was in the wrong. After many words in defense of God, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are told they did not speak well of God, but Job, whose words challenged assumptions about what God is like, is called righteous.

First, we have the two great beasts. God gives Job the chance to speak, but Job will not, realizing he has nothing to say. Then he launches into the descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan. Much time and energy has gone into trying to figure out exactly what animals these are, which I think misses the point. The point is they are beyond Job’s comprehension, but are wholly part of God’s creation. God isn’t trying to tell Job about the physical qualities of a rhinoceros or some dinosaur. He is doing the same thing he did in yesterday’s reading by talking about the stars, the constellations, and the weather. The universe is vast, complex, and interconnected. The world Job inhabits is bigger than he is, more complex than he can understand, and goes on with or without him. God asks Job if he is capable even of getting his head around this world, much less making good choices of what to do with it.

Job is wise enough know he is not. His response to God reflects his expanded understanding of his own limitations. While Job has all along maintained that he had no standing with which to challenge God for his suffering, now he admits to something more: even as the workings of the world are revealed to him, he is unable to comprehend it. Job sees the great lesson of the declaration of dependence: It is not about you. Job wanted to understand why he suffered. He wanted to understand why wicked men suffered less, or not at all. Rather than directly answer, God shows him the universe and asks if he can comprehend it. Job understands that he cannot.

After Job’s admission of limitation, God turns to the three men who were so certain they understood God and how he behaves. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar all believed they had an accurate picture of how the world worked, and it boiled down to the wicked suffer, while the righteous prosper. God is not amused by their assumptions. He tells them he is quite angry at them, and they will need to make atonement for their words, and that they will need Job to do it for them. Job, who they accused of sin, would function as their priest and intercessor. To their credit, they listen to God and do what he instructs. Then we get a postscript about how God restores Job’s fortunes and makes him greater than he was before. There is a fascinating line, almost a throwaway, about how Job gave an inheritance to both his sons and his daughters. This might just be a sign of his great wealth, but it also flies in the face of ancient near eastern tradition, in which daughters were a means to gain wealth, not recipients of it. Job has become an outside the box kind of guy.

The great lesson of the book of Job is about the correct human and divine positions in the world. Job is the most righteous character throughout the book, but even he misses just how large and complex the world he inhabits is. His great wealth was not because of his righteousness, his suffering was not because of his sin, and his restoration was not because of his righteousness or his suffering. This was the mistake of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. The divine council scene that opens the book demonstrates that there are things going on behind the scenes that humans have no knowledge of, and the consequences those things are simply beyond us. God owes us no answers, and even were he to give them, they would not make sense to us. This lead to the mistake of Elihu. He believed this, so he assumes God will give no answers at all beyond our experiences. But then God shows up. Job accepts that the world is beyond him, but believes that his experiences, whether he understands them or not, are important to God. This is speaking well of God.