This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Acts 13:44-52; John 10:19-30

Old Testament: Job 38

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

For this week, I am departing from the Daily Office Lectionary’s schedule for the Old Testament readings. Here’s why. I will be taking a break from writing Daily Devotions with the Dean during the weeks of September 14–18 & 21–25. The closing chapters of Job are scheduled for the first of those weeks, as Yahweh “answer[s] Job out of the whirlwind.” I wanted to make sure to read the denouement of Job with you! So, I am jumping to the last five chapters of Job this week.  My apologies for any inconvenience for those of you who are accessing the Daily Office Lectionary online (for example, via Mission St. Clare). 

Job 38–42: Yahweh answers Job out of the whirlwind. I don’t know how many times I’ve said: “I’m going to add that to my list of questions for God when I get to heaven.” If Job’s experience is any indication—and I think it is—the question looks like it’s going to be directed in the opposite direction: “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? … I will question you, and you shall declare to me” (Job 38:3). 

In Chapter 19, we saw Job expressing the extraordinary hope that he will “see” God. But Job ends his final complaint against God in Chapter 31 by returning to his oft-expressed demand that God “hear” him and answer his charges that God has been unfair to him: “O that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!)” — Job 31:35. 

In Chapters 38 through 42, God finally answers Job’s prayers. Several things to note:

First, throughout the dialogues or arguments between Job and his four friends, God had been referred to in less personal terms, as either “God” (Elohim) or “the Almighty” (Shaddai). When God reveals himself to Job, he does so in terms of his personal, covenant-making name, “Yahweh” (usually rendered the Lord in translations). 

Second, when Yahweh finally does speak there are matters that he never addresses. Job has been protesting his unjust treatment at the hand of God—why have such bad things happened to a good person? We the readers have known all along that Yahweh has been proving Job’s faith to heaven’s Accuser. Yahweh never offers Job any explanation. Even so, when Yahweh shows up, Job’s questions cease—his demand to know “Why?” disappears. We learn that what Job has needed all along is not answers, but the Answerer. 

Third, Yahweh never accuses Job of sin. He adjusts Job’s field of vision by taking him on a tour of the mysteries of creation. And Yahweh tells the friends that Job is the only one who has spoken truthfully the whole time. Even though just about every word that the friends have spoken is echoed elsewhere in Scripture, they have been totally wrong about the applicability to Job’s situation, and Job has been in the right: “You have not spoken of me what is right,” Yahweh tells Job’s friends, “as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). 

Job 38. What Psalm 19 (“The heavens are telling the glory of God”) and Romans 1 (“What can be known about God is plain to them … through the things he has made”) say succinctly, Job 38 says more expansively. In this chapter, Yahweh takes Job on something like an excursion through his creation. With one striking, gorgeous, and poetic metaphor after another, Yahweh invites—indeed, challenges—his image-bearer to receive the gift of createdness, and to marvel. 

The world is a vast edifice that has Yahweh as its designer and builder, from foundation-laying to capstone-setting (38:4-6). The stars had sung in praise of Yahweh’s craftsmanship—as Job is now invited to do (38:7). The sea is envisioned as a child at birth, with clouds as its swaddling clothes (38:8-11). Each morning’s dawn is like a housekeeper that opens the house to the newness of the day, shaking sleepers from their slumber (Job 38:12-15). Job hasn’t a clue as to subterranean wonders: the depths of the sea, the gates of death, the secret recesses of light and dark, how old the earth actually is (Job 38:16-21). Snow and hail presuppose a storekeeper. The east wind bespeaks one who summons it. Green vegetation springing up briefly in the desert whisper that there is one who delights in evanescence (38:22-27). The fact that constellations appear every night shouts that there are “ordinances in the heavens” (Job 38:31-33). That rains fall as though from tilted waterskins (not to mention lightnings that strike like called up soldiers), as Jesus will later say, “on the evil and on the good.” Everything testifies that there is a wisdom beyond ours (Job 38:34-38). 

Yahweh invites Job to look around himself—and the tour will continue in chapters 39–41, as we trace them Tuesday through Thursday. But we begin to see that God would stun us with the elegance of his grand design. For the modern reader, the effect of the poetry behind the science is to make our jaws drop … and to make our lists of questions fall from our hands to the ground. 

The prospect that the Book of Job puts before us—and by which he invites us even now to a perspectival shift—is that today’s “Oh, the tragedy!” will one day give way to “Oh the majesty!” 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+