Job 38 commentary

JOB 38 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
The Lord Speaks
1 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He
said:
BAR ES, "Then the Lord answered Job - This speech is addressed particularly
to Job, not only because he is the principal personage referred to in the book, but
particularly because he had indulged in language of murmuring and complaint. God
designed to bring him to a proper state of mind before he appeared openly for his
vindication. It is the purpose of God, in his dealings with his people, “to bring them to a
proper state of mind” before he appears as their vindicator and friend, and hence, their
trials are often prolonged, and when he appears, he seems at first to come only to rebuke
them. Job had indulged in very improper feelings, and it was needful that those feelings
should be subdued before God would manifest himself as his friend, and address him in
words of consolation.
Out of the whirlwind - The tempest; the storm - probably that which Elihu had
seen approaching, Job_37:21-24. God is often represented as speaking to people in this
manner. He spake amidst lightnings and tempests on Mount Sinai Exo_19:16-19, and he
is frequently represented as appearing amidst the thunders and lightnings of a tempest,
as a symbol of his majesty; compare Psa_18:9-13; Hab_3:3-6. The word here rendered
“whirlwind” means rather “a storm, a tempest.” The Septuagint renders this verse, “After
Elihu had ceased speaking, the Lord spake to Job from a tempest and clouds.”
CLARKE, "The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind - It is not ‫סופה‬
suphah, as in the preceding chapter, Job_37:9; but ‫סורה‬ searah, which signifies
something turbulent, tumultuous, or violently agitated; and here may signify what we
call a tempest, and was intended to fill Job’s mind with solemnity, and an awful sense of
the majesty of God. The Chaldee has, a whirlwind of grief, making the whole rather
allegorical than real; impressing the scene on Job’s imagination.
GILL, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind,.... As soon as Elihu
had done speaking, who saw the tempest rising, and gave hints of it, Job_37:2; and
hastened to finish his discourse. This was raised to give notice of the Lord being about to

appear, and to display his majesty, and to command reverence and attention. The
Targum calls it the whirlwind of distress, as it might be to Job; and a representation of
the distressed and disturbed state and condition in which he was. The person that spoke
out of it is Jehovah the Son of God, the eternal Word, who very probably appeared in an
human form; there was an object seen, Job_42:5; and spoke with an articulate voice to
Job;
and said; in answer to his frequent wishes and desires that the Lord would appear and
take his cause in hand.
HE RY1-3, "Let us observe here, 1. Who speaks - The Lord, Jehovah, not a created
angel, but the eternal Word himself, the second person in the blessed Trinity, for it is he
by whom the worlds were made, and that was no other than the Son of God. The same
speaks here that afterwards spoke from Mount Sinai. Here he begins with the creation of
the world, there with the redemption of Israel out of Egypt, and from both is inferred the
necessity of our subjection to him. Elihu had said, God speaks to men and they do not
perceive it (Job_33:14); but this they could not but perceive, and yet we have a more
sure word of prophecy, 2Pe_1:19. 2. When he spoke - Then. When they had all had their
saying, and yet had not gained their point, then it was time for God to interpose, whose
judgment is according to truth. When we know not who is in the right, and perhaps are
doubtful whether we ourselves are, this may satisfy us, That God will determine shortly
in the valley of decision, Joe_3:14. Job had silenced his three friends, and yet could not
convince them of his integrity in the main. Elihu had silenced Job, and yet could not
bring him to acknowledge his mismanagement of this dispute. But now God comes, and
does both, convinces Job first of his unadvised speaking and makes him cry, Peccavi - I
have done wrong; and, having humbled him, he puts honour upon him, by convincing
his three friends that they had done him wrong. These two things God will, sooner or
later, do for his people: he will show them their faults, that they may be themselves
ashamed of them, and he will show others their righteousness, and bring it forth as the
light, that they may be ashamed of their unjust censures of them. 3. How he spoke - Out
of the whirlwind, the rolling and involving cloud, which Elihu took notice of, Job_37:1,
Job_37:2, Job_37:9. A whirlwind prefaced Ezekiel's vision (Eze_1:4), and Elijah's, 1Ki_
19:11. God is said to have his way in the whirlwind (Nah_1:3), and, to show that even
the stormy wind fulfils his word, here it was made the vehicle of it. This shows what a
mighty voice God's is, that is was not lost, but perfectly audible, even in the noise of a
whirlwind. Thus God designed to startled Job, and to command his attention.
Sometimes God answers his own people in terrible corrections, as out of the whirlwind,
but always in righteousness. 4. To whom he spoke: He answered Job, directed his
speech to him, to convince him of what was amiss, before he cleared him from the unjust
aspersions cast upon him. It is God only that can effectually convince of sin, and those
shall so be humbled whom he designs to exalt. Those that desire to hear from God, as
Job did, shall certainly hear from him at length. 5. What he said. We may conjecture that
Elihu, or some other of the auditory, wrote down verbatim what was delivered out of the
whirlwind, for we find (Rev_10:4) that, when the thunders uttered their voices, John
was prepared to write. Or, if it was not written then, yet, the penman of the book being
inspired by the Holy Ghost, we are sure that we have here a very true and exact report of
what was said. The Spirit (says Christ) shall bring to your remembrance, as he did here,
what I have said to you. The preface is very searching. (1.) God charges him with
ignorance and presumption in what he had said (Job_38:2): “Who is this that talks at
this rate? Is it Job? What! a man? That weak, foolish, despicable, creature - shall he
pretend to prescribe to me what I must do or to quarrel with me for what I have done? Is

it Job? What! my servant Job, a perfect and an upright man? Can he so far forget
himself, and act unlike himself? Who, where, is he that darkens counsel thus by words
without knowledge? Let him show his face if he dare, and stand to what he has said.”
Note, Darkening the counsels of God's wisdom with our folly is a great affront and
provocation to God. Concerning God's counsels we must own that we are without
knowledge. They are a deep which we cannot fathom; we are quite out of our element,
out of our aim, when we pretend to account for them. Yet we are too apt to talk of them
as if we understood them, with a great deal of niceness and boldness; but, alas! we do
but darken them, instead of explaining them. We confound and perplex ourselves and
one another when we dispute of the order of God's decrees, and the designs, and
reasons, and methods, of his operations of providence and grace. A humble faith and
sincere obedience shall see further and better into the secret of the Lord than all the
philosophy of the schools, and the searches of science, so called. This first word which
God spoke is the more observable because Job, in his repentance, fastens upon it as that
which silenced and humbled him, Job_42:3. This he repeated and echoed as the arrow
that stuck fast in him: “I am the fool that has darkened counsel.” There was some colour
to have turned it upon Elihu, as if God meant him, for he spoke last, and was speaking
when the whirlwind began; but Job applied it to himself, as it becomes us to do when
faithful reproofs are given, and not (as most do) to billet them upon other people. (2.)
He challenges him to give such proofs of his knowledge as would serve to justify his
enquiries into the divine counsels (Job_38:3): “Gird up now thy loins like a stout man;
prepare thyself for the encounter; I will demand of thee, will put some questions to thee,
and answer me if thou canst, before I answer thine.” Those that go about to call God to
an account must expect to be catechised and called to an account themselves, that they
may be made sensible of their ignorance and arrogance. God here puts Job in mind of
what he had said, Job_13:22. Call thou, and I will answer. “Now make thy words good.”
JAMISO , "Jehovah appears unexpectedly in a whirlwind (already gathering Job_
37:1, Job_37:2), the symbol of “judgment” (Psa_50:3, Psa_50:4, etc.), to which Job had
challenged Him. He asks him now to get himself ready for the contest. Can he explain
the phenomena of God’s natural government? How can he, then, hope to understand
the principles of His moral government? God thus confirms Elihu’s sentiment, that
submission to, not reasonings on, God’s ways is man’s part. This and the disciplinary
design of trial to the godly is the great lesson of this book. He does not solve the
difficulty by reference to future retribution: for this was not the immediate question;
glimpses of that truth were already given in the fourteenth and nineteenth chapters, the
full revelation of it being reserved for Gospel times. Yet even now we need to learn the
lesson taught by Elihu and God in Job.
K&D 1-3, "“May the Almighty answer me!” Job has said, Job_31:35; He now really
answers, and indeed out of the storm (Chethib, according to a mode of writing occurring
only here and Job_40:6, ‫,מנהסערה‬ arranged in two words by the Keri), which is generally
the forerunner of His self-manifestation in the world, of that at least by which He reveals
Himself in His absolute awe-inspiring greatness and judicial grandeur. The art. is to be
understood generically, but, with respect to Elihu's speeches, refers to the storm which
has risen up in the meanwhile. It is not to be translated: Who is he who ... , which ought
to be ‫,המחשׁיך‬ but: Who then is darkening; ‫ה‬ֶ‫ז‬ makes the interrogative ‫י‬ ִ‫מ‬ more vivid and

demonstrative, Ges. §122, 2; the part. ְ‫יך‬ ִ‫שׁ‬ ֲ‫ֽח‬ ַ‫מ‬ (instead of which it might also be ְ‫יך‬ ִ‫שׁ‬ ֲ‫ֽח‬ַ‫)י‬
favours the assumption that Job has uttered such words immediately before, and is
interrupted by Jehovah, without an intervening speaker having come forward. It is
intentionally ‫ה‬ ָ‫צ‬ ֵ‫ע‬ for ‫י‬ ִ‫ת‬ ָ‫צ‬ ֲ‫ע‬ (comp. ‫עם‬ for ‫,עמי‬ Isa_26:11), to describe that which is spoken
of according to its quality: it is nothing less than a decree or plan full of purpose and
connection which Job darkness, i.e., distorts by judging it falsely, or, as we say: places in
a false light, and in fact by meaningless words.
(Note: The correct accentuation is ‫מחשׁיך‬ with Mercha, ‫עצה‬ with Athnach, ‫במלין‬ with
Rebia mugrasch, bly (without Makkeph) with Munach.)
When now Jehovah condescends to negotiate with Job by question and answer, He
does not do exactly what Job wished (Job_13:22), but something different, of which Job
never thought. He surprises him with questions which are intended to bring him
indirectly to the consciousness of the wrong and absurdity of his challenge - questions
among which “there are many which the natural philosophy of the present day can frame
more scientifically, but cannot satisfactorily solve.”
(Note: Alex. v. Humboldt, Kosmos, ii. 48 (1st edition), comp. Tholuck, Vermischte
Schriften, i. 354.)
Instead of ‫ר‬ ֶ‫ב‬ֶ‫ג‬ ְ‫כ‬ (the received reading of Ben-Ascher), Ben-Naphtali's text offered ‫ג‬ ְⅴ (as
Eze_17:10), in order not to allow two so similar, aspirated mutae to come together.
BE SO , "Job 38:1. Then the Lord answered Job — o sooner had Elihu uttered
the words last mentioned, but there was a sensible token of the presence of that
dreadful majesty of God among them, spoken of Job 38:22, and Jehovah began to
debate the matter with Job, as he had desired; out of the whirlwind — Out of a dark
and thick cloud, from which he sent a terrible and tempestuous wind, as the
harbinger of his presence. The LXX. render the clause, δια λαιλαπος και νεφων,
perturbinem et nubes, by a tempest and clouds. It is true, the Chaldee paraphrast,
by the addition of a word, has given a very different exposition of this text, thus:
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind of grief; taking the word ‫,סערה‬
segnarah, rendered whirlwind, not in a literal, but in a metaphorical sense: as if the
meaning were only this: that amidst the tumult of Job’s sorrows, God suggested to
him the following thoughts, to bring him to a sense of his condition. The matter is
viewed in nearly the same light by a late writer in a periodical work, styled The
Classical Journal, who contends that this Hebrew word properly means trouble, and
may be rendered whirlwind only when it is applied to the elements, denoting the
troubled state of the atmosphere; but when it has reference to man, it can have no
such signification. In answer to this it must be observed, that many passages occur
in the Old Testament, in which the word evidently means, and is rightly translated,
whirlwind, or tempest, as that writer himself acknowledges; but probably not one
can be found, at least he has not produced one, in which, as a noun, it means merely
trouble, nor can it with propriety be so translated here, on account of the
preposition ‫,מן‬ min, which properly means a, ab, de, e, ex, from, or out of, and not
because of, as he proposes rendering it: for surely it would be improper to read the
passage, “The Lord answered Job out of his trouble, &c.” Accordingly the

generality of expositors agree to understand it of a sensible and miraculous
interposition of the Deity appearing in a cloud, the symbol of his presence, not to
dispute, but absolutely to decide the controversy. God appeared and spoke to him in
this manner, says Poole, 1st. Because this was his usual method of manifesting
himself in those times, and declaring his will, as we see Exodus 19:13 ; umbers
9:15; 1 Kings 19:11; Ezekiel 1:4; Ezekiel 2 d, To awaken Job and his friends to a
more serious and reverent attention to his words; 3d, To testify his displeasure both
against Job and them; and, lastly, that all of them might be more deeply and
thoroughly humbled, and prepared to receive and retain the instructions which God
was about to give them. “There arose,” says Bishop Patrick, “an unusual cloud,
after the manner of God’s appearing in those days, and a voice came out of it, as
loud as a tempest, which called to Job.” “ othing can be conceived more awful than
this appearance of Jehovah; nothing more sublime than the manner in which this
speech is introduced. Thunders, lightnings, and a whirlwind announce his
approach: all creation trembles at his presence: at the blaze of his all-piercing eye
every disguise falls off; the stateliness of human pride, the vanity of human
knowledge, sink into their original nothing. The man of understanding, the men of
age and experience; he who desired nothing more than to argue the point with God;
he that would maintain his ways to his face; confounded and struck dumb at his
presence, is ready to drop into dissolution, and repents in dust and ashes.” See
Heath.
COFFMA 1-7, "The most perplexing problem in the whole book of Job is in these
two verses. Of whom is God speaking in Job 38:2? The question is not, "To whom
does God speak"? That is clear enough. He spoke to Job. But the question is, "Of
whom does he speak"? Scholars are sharply divided on the question. "Some
commentators have applied Job 38:2 to Job, others to Elihu."[1] It is the conviction
of this writer that the words cannot possibly apply to anyone other than Elihu. The
reasons behind this conviction are:
(1) Applying the words to Job is a contradiction of Job 42:7-8. The advocates of that
interpretation, however, are not bothered by the contradiction, "Because they
assign the entire Epilogue to a different author from the poetic Dialogue, making it
an argument for multiple authorship of Job."[2] Although we have interpreted the
Epilogue and the Prologue as the work of Moses, who was inspired of God, we
cannot believe that his inspired approval of Job's words regarding God would have
been given if God indeed had said in Job 38:2, here, that those words were `without
knowledge.'
(2) The verse is profoundly true as an evaluation of the Elihu speeches, as we have
frequently noted in the preceding notes.
(3) The application of these words to Job leaves the entire six chapters of the Elihu
speeches dangling without any response whatever from any person whomsoever,
thus supporting the affirmation that the six chapters are an interpolation. Our
acceptance of the unity of Job, as regards the whole of it, except the Prologue and

the Epilogue forbids that explanation.
(4) It cannot be denied that God interrupted and terminated Elihu's tirade. God by
that action indicated the same evaluation of Elihu's words that Job 38:2 declares;
and if Job 38:2 were placed in a parenthesis, that fact would be clearly indicated by
the punctuation. The punctuation of the Holy Bible is the work of men, not of God;
and where punctuation can be made to harmonize or explain difficult passages, it
should be utilized for that purpose.
We shall not take the space to line up scholars on both sides of the question. The
alleged problem disappears if we apply the words as God's parenthetical and
derogatory dismissal of everything Elihu said.
The big thing here is that Almighty God appeared to Job in one of the most
remarkable theophanies in the Bible. What did that mean? It meant that God
approved of Job, that Job's integrity was established in the only place where it
mattered, namely, with God Himself. In Job 31:5, Job had pleaded with God to
answer him; and here God did so. That is the colossal fact of these concluding
chapters; and it dramatically establishes the truth that God approved of Job, and
that God loved him. God honored him as few men in the history of the world were
honored; and the undeniable corollary of this is that Job 38:2 was in no sense
whatever addressed to Job, but to Elihu.
May the Almighty answer me (Job 31:35), Job had pleaded; "And now God really
answers, and indeed out of a storm."[3]
God would at this point speak repeatedly to Job, asking many questions about many
different things. The great truth that shines like the sun at perihelion here is not so
much related to the particular things about which God questioned Job as it is to the
incredible and glorious truth that Almighty God Himself was here carrying on a
conversation with a mortal man! How, beyond all imagination, is the character of
such a man elevated and glorified by this most astonishing event, unparalleled by
anything else in the history of mankind, Jesus Christ himself alone standing any
higher in such a relationship than did Job.
"Then Jehovah answered Job" (Job 38:1). God's answer, however, is a surprise. He
did not answer any of Job's questions, except in the implications of this reply. "This
was not because the questions have no answers."[4] He answered Job with a
barrage of counter-questions concerning the mysteries of the entire sidereal
creation; and it is evident that this brought healing, comfort and satisfaction to Job.
God's not giving specific answers to Job's questions suggests that: (1) It is not
possible for man to know all the answers and that, (2) It is enough to know that God
loves him (as evidenced to Job in the very fact of God's speaking to him). (3) Also,
by God's not giving Job a list of his transgressions, there is the dramatic affirmation
that Job's misfortunes did not come as punishment for his wickedness; and yet God
did not reveal to Job the real secret of what had happened, namely, that exchange

between God and Satan in the Prologue. (4) In this, there is another key
discernment, 1e, that it is best for man not to know the reasons why this or that
occurs in his life.
"Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirlwind" (Job 38:1). Job's troubles
started when a great wind killed his children; and now in a whirlwind Job began his
return to happiness and prosperity. This is not the storm that might have been
described by Elihu in the previous chapter; because the final paragraph there,
"Appears to describe the calm as the storm abates."[5] The glorious light mentioned
in that paragraph indicated the cessation of the storm.
The relation between a theophany and violent weather appears often in the Bible, as
for example in Psalms 18:8-16, and in Exodus 19:16.
"Gird up now thy loins like a man" (Job 38:3). The word here rendered 'man' is
translated by Pope as `hero.' "Gird your loins like a hero."[6] Here is the true
picture of God's estimate of Job. In fact, Job is here invited to do the very thing he
had longed to do, that is, to plead his case before God; and there is the implication
that God considers Job worthy to do such a thing. This, God would most certainly
not have done, if he had just finished saying that Job's words without knowledge
were darkening counsel.
All of the questions God asked were not for the purpose of humiliating Job, or
mocking him. In this loving and gentle admonition God was leading Job into the
knowledge that the specific answers he sought were impossible for mortal men to
know. ote also, that God did not criticize Job for his tearful and aggressive search
for such answers. The very questions that God asked constitute a heavenly
endorsement of humanity's ceaseless and diligent pursuit of every possible answer to
the perplexing, nagging questions of all the mysteries that confront mankind in our
earthly sojourn.
In the light of these considerations, we do not think that it is necessary to investigate
all of these questions one by one. In the aggregate the answers to all of them were
impossible for Job to know; and mankind today is no more able to answer all the
questions than was he. Every great mystery that science has solved proves not to be
the ultimate reality. Every door which the intelligence of men has unlocked has
failed to disclose the Great Truth; but, conversely, has opened upon a corridor
reaching into infinity with many doors remaining yet to be unlocked. Indeed, the
Great Truth may not be any fact or formula whatever, but the Great Person, God
Himself. This was the marvelous answer that came to Job. Knowing God and being
loved and known by Him - that is the Great Answer, the Great Truth, the Great Joy,
the Great Salvation, Eternal Life!
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth, ... when the morning
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7). The
mysteries of the sidereal creation are the theme here. ot Job, nor any other man,
was present when such great things were done. As a matter of fact, man himself was

relatively a late-arrival upon earth. "The sons of God" are here the angels, because
man was last in the Creation.
COKE, "The Lord speaks to Job out of a whirlwind, and challenges him to answer.
He convinces him of ignorance and weakness, by an enumeration of some of his
mighty works.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 38:1. Then the Lord answered Job, &c.— The Chaldee paraphrast, by the
addition of a word, has given a very bold exposition of this text thus, Then the Lord
answered Job out of the whirlwind of grief; taking the word ‫סערה‬ seaarah rendered
whirlwind, not in a literal, but a metaphorical sense. As if the meaning were only
this: That amidst the tumult of Job's sorrows, God suggested to him the following
thoughts, to bring him to a sense of his condition. But the generality of expositors
agree to understand it of a sensible and miraculous interposition of the Deity,
appearing in a cloud, the symbol of his presence, not to dispute, but absolutely to
decide the controversy. It is, perhaps, of no great moment to inquire into the
manner of the revelation: supposing the appearance and speech to have been
nothing more than a prophetic vision; yet, if we allow that speech to be divine, its
authority will be the same, whichever way we may suppose it to have been
impressed on the mind of Job; whether by an immediate voice from the Deity, or in
a prophetic trance. It is certain, that God, who formed our minds, can enlighten
them to what degree he pleases; and whenever he inspired his prophets or holy men
in an extraordinary way, with an intent of conveying through their hands some
useful truths to mankind, there can be no doubt but that they in some way or other
a certainty of the inspiration, and perhaps as clear a perception of the things
suggested, as if they had been delivered to them by an audible and external voice.
But whatever was the way of communicating, if it be possible to discover the divinity
or inspiration of a writing by its own light, I think we cannot hesitate to pronounce
this speech to be divine. The subject of it is, "God's omnipotence, as displayed in the
works of creation." Many are the pens which have adorned this noble argument;
philosophers, poets, and divines, have laid out all their eloquence upon it; and
seemed raised above themselves whenever they have been led to touch upon this
agreeable topic; but as the Holy Scriptures far surpass all human compositions in
those sublime descriptions which they give us of the majesty of God, and of the
wisdom and magnificence of his works; so, if we may be allowed to make the
comparison, it will be difficult to find any thing in the sacred writings themselves
that comes up to this speech. Who is this that darkeneth counsel, &c.?—It proceeds
all along in this majestic strain; and every step that we advance, there is still
presented to the imagination something new, and something great and wonderful.
The descriptions scattered here and there are pictures drawn in such a lively
manner, and withal so just, that they might instruct a Phidias or a Raphael. But
what is most observable in this speech, as it gives a life and energy to the whole, is,
the distribution of it for the most part into short questions, falling thick upon each
other, and darting conviction, each like a flash of lightning, with a suddenness and

force impossible to be resisted. Peters. See Longinus on the Sublime, sect. 18: de
Interrog.
ELLICOTT, "(1) Then the Lord answered Job.—This chapter brings the grand
climax and catastrophe of the poem. Unless all was to remain hopelessly uncertain
and dark, there could be no solution of the questions so fiercely and obstinately
debated but by the intervention of Him whose government was the matter in
dispute. And so the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, or tempest: that is to
say, the tempest which had been long gathering, and which had been the subject of
Elihu’s remarks. The one argument which is developed in the remaining chapters is
drawn from man’s ignorance. There is so much in nature that man knows not and
cannot understand, that it is absurd for him to suppose that he can judge aright in
matters touching God’s moral government of the world. Though Job is afterwards
(Job 42:8) justified by God, yet the tone of all that God says to him is more or less
mingled with reproach.
PARKER, "Let us admit that the Theophany is poetical; that will not hinder our
deriving from it lessons that are supported by reason and vividly illustrated by
facts. As an incident, the Theopany is before us, come whence it may. It inquires
concerning great realities, which realities are patent to our vision. It does not plunge
into metaphysics only, or rise to things transcendental; it keeps within lines which
are more or less visible, lines which in many cases are actually tangible. Here, then,
it stands as a fact, to be perused and wisely considered.
To such questions there ought to be some answer. They are a hundred thick on the
page. If we cannot answer all we may answer some. God has not spared his
interrogatories. There is no attempt at concealment. He points to the door, and asks
who built it, and how to get into it, and how to bring from beyond it whatever
treasure may be hidden there. It is a sublime challenge in the form of interrogation.
The thing to be noted first of all, Isaiah , that it purports to be the speech of God.
That is a bold suggestion. The man who wrote the first verse fixed the bound of his
own task.
"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said—" ( Job 38:1).
It was a daring line even for an author to write. He proposed his own end, and by
that end he shall be judged. He himself assigned the level of his thought, and we are
at liberty to watch whether he keeps upon the level, or falls to some lower line. A
wonderful thing to have injected God into any book! This is what is done in the
Bible, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Whether he did so
or not, some man said he did. That thought must be traced to its genesis. It is easy
for us now, amid the familiarity of religious education, to talk of God doing this and
that, and accomplishing great purposes, and consummating stupendous miracles.
We were born into an atmosphere in which such suggestions and inquiries are

native and familiar. There was a time when they had to be invented—or revealed.
otice that God is supposed to have taken part in the colloquy. ow Job will be
satisfied. He has been crying out for God; he has been telling his friends again and
again that if he could but see God everything would be rectified almost
instantaneously. Job has been mourning like one forsaken, saying, Oh that I knew
where I might find him! Oh that God would come to me, and prefer his accusation
against me in his own person and language! ow the aspiration is answered: God is
at the front. Let us see what comes of the conflict.
Still we may dwell upon the sweet and sacred thought that God is taking part in
human controversies, inquiries, and studies of every depth and range. He is a friend
at least who suggested that God has something to say to me when all time is night,
when all sensation is pain. If we could be sure that One takes part in human
conversation if only by way of cross-examination, it would be something to know; at
any moment he might change his tone. It is everything to feel that he is in the
conversation. Whatever point he may occupy, whatever line of reply he may adopt,
to have him, who is the beginning and the ending, in the intercourse, is to have at
least a possible opportunity of seeing new light, and feeling a new touch of power,
and being brought into more vivid and sympathetic relations with things profound
and eternal. Why do we edge the Almighty out of life by describing his supposed
intervention as the suggestion of poetry? What is this poetry, supposed to be so
mischievous? Is it any more mischievous than a sky? What crimes has it committed?
What is the indictment against poetry? By "poetry" we are not to understand words
that meet together in sound and rhyme, but the highest reason, the sublimest
philosophy, the very blossom of reason. Men suppose that when they have
designated a saying or a suggestion as poetical, they have put it out of court. It is not
so. A fable may be the highest fact. In a romance you may find the soul of the truest
history; there may not be p solitary literal incident in the whole, and yet the effect
shall be atmospheric, a sense of having been in other centuries and in other lands,
and learned many languages, and entered into masonry with things hither
unfamiliar. Sometimes we must use wings. Poetry may be as the wings of reason.
But how good the poetry is which suggests that God is a listener to human talk, and
may become a party to human conversation, and may at least riddle the darkness of
our confusion by the darts of his own inquiries. Here is a case in point. Does he ask
little questions? Are they frivolous interrogations that he propounds? Is the inquiry
worthy of his name, even though that name be poetical? Is every question here on a
level with the highest thinking? Judge the Theophany as a whole, and then say how
far we are at liberty to excuse ourselves from the applications of its argument on the
trivial ground that it is but poetry.
Who can read all these questions without feeling that man came very late into the
field of creation? o deference is paid to his venerableness. The Lord does not
accost him as a thing of ancient time as compared with the creation of which he is a
part. Everything was here before man came: the earth was founded, the stars shone,
the seas rolled in their infinite channels; the Pleiades were sprinkled on the blue of
heaven, and the band of Orion was a fact before poor Job was born. It would seem
as if everything had been done that could have been done by way of preparation for

him! He brought nothing with him into this creation, not even one little star, or one
tiny flower, or one singing bird: the house was furnished in every chamber for the
reception of this visitor. This is scientific according to the science of the passing
time. Has any one invented a theory that man came first, and furnished his own
house, allotted his own stars, and supplied the face of the earth with what
ornamentation he required? Is there anything here inconsistent with the marvellous
doctrine of evolution? Contrariwise, is not everything here indicative of germ, and
progress, and unfolding, and preparation, as if at any moment the consummation
might be effected and God"s purpose revealed in the entirety of its pomp and
beneficence? Man is here spoken of as having just come into the sphere of things,
and not having yet had time to know where he Isaiah , what is the meaning of the
symbols that glitter from the sky or the suggestions that enrich the earth. A
challenge like this would be quite inconsistent with a recent creation of the universe.
How recent that creation would be at the time at which these inquiries were put!
ow that astronomy has made us familiar with whole rows and regiments of figures,
we speak of six or eight or ten thousand years as but a twinkling of the eye, but
according to old reckoning how young would creation have been, if it had been
created but six thousand years ago when this Theophany was written some three or
four thousand years since as a matter of literary fact! Take off three or four
thousand years from the supposed six, and then all the questions would be
inappropriate and absurd as applied to a creation hardly finished. The speech seems
to be spoken across an eternity. So that we have no fear of evolutionary figures or
astronomical calculations; we have no apprehension arising from theories of
growth, involvement, evolvement progress, consummation; on the contrary, the
whole spirit and genius of the Bible would seem to point to age, mystery,
immeasurableness, unknowableness. Everywhere there is written upon every
creation of God Unfathomable. The Theophany, then, is worthy, in point of literary
conception and grandeur of the opening line—"Then the Lord answered Job out of
the whirlwind."
ot only does man come late into the field of creation, but, viewed individually, how
soon he passes away! "Man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost,
and where is he?" We are of yesterday, and know nothing. The bells that announce
our birth would seem to be interrupted by the toll of the knell that announces our
decease. Thus God has great hold upon the whole race by the hold which he has
upon the individual man. When the individual man enlarges himself into humanity,
and speaks of the whole race, the speech is not without nobleness; but how soon the
speaker is humbled when he is reminded that he will not have time to finish his own
argument—that long before he can reach an appropriate peroration he will be
numbered with the generations that are dead. Thus we have greatness and
smallness, abjectness and majesty, marvellously associated in the person of man.
God seems to have taken no counsel with man about any of his arrangements of a
natural kind. Man was not there to be consulted. Poor man! he was not asked where
the Pleiades should shine; he was not invited to give an opinion upon the length and
breadth of the sea; he was not asked how the rain should be brought forth, and at
what periods it should descend in fertilising baptism upon the thirsty ground. He
finds everything appointed, fixed, settled. Man is like the sea in so far as there seems

to be a boundary which he may not pass—"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no
further," and here shall thy pursuit become prayer, and thy strength assume the
weakness of supplication. Be the author of the Theophany who he may, be he
profound reasoner or winged and ardent poet, he keeps his level well. Let us be just
to him, even if we approach him from an unbelieving or a sceptical point of view.
The palm be his who wins it: honour to whom honour is due. The man who
dreamed this Theophany never falls into a nightmare; his dream keeps on the wing
until it alights at the very gate of heaven.
Judged in relation to all the universe which has been described, how inferior is the
position which man occupies in creation! some of the questions are very mocking
and most humbling: man is asked if he can fly; if he can send out lightnings, and
cause the electricity to come and stand at his side and say, Here am I. He is put
down, snubbed, rebuked. He is pointed to the beasts of the field, and asked what he
can do with them: can he hire the unicorn? "Will the unicorn be willing to serve
thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the
furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his
strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that
he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?"—( Job 39:9-12). What art
thou? Gird up thy loins now like a Prayer of Manasseh , and answer these
questions. "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?... canst thou put an hook
into his nose?... The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the
dart, nor the habergeon. He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood. The
arrow cannot make him flee: sling stones are turned with him into stubble. Darts
are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear. Sharp stones are
under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire. He maketh the deep to
boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment." What art thou? what canst
thou do? where is thy strength? Disclose it. And as for thy Wisdom of Solomon ,
what is the measure thereof? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? canst
thou play with the stars? All these questions drive man back into his appropriate
position. The argument would seem to be, Until you can understand these
comparatively inferior matters, let other subjects alone: if you cannot explain the
ground you tread upon, the probability is that you will not be able to explain the sky
you gaze upon: if you know not yourself, how can you know God? And yet let us not
be discouraged. If man has any superiority it must be in other directions. How
great, then, must those directions be, how sublime in their scope and energy! Is man
altogether overwhelmed by these inquiries? In a certain limited way he is; but does
he not recover his breath, and return and say, After all, I am crowned above all
these things? He does, but we must wait until he has had time to recover his breath
or regain his composure. The questions come upon him like a cataract! they roar
upon him from all points of the compass in great overwhelming voices, so that he is
deafened and stunned and thrown down, and asks for time. Presently we shall see
that man is greater than all the stars put together, and that although he cannot
search the past to exhaustion he will live when the sun himself grows dim and
nature fades away; he will abide in the secret of the Almighty, long as eternal ages
roll. His greatness is not in the past but in the future. Hardly a star in the blue of
heaven but mocks the recentness of his birthday: but he says that he will live when

the stars shall all be extinguished. Greatness does not lie in one direction. Greatness
may hardly lie at all in the past: "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." The
Christian hope is that when Christ appears we shall be like him, that we shall see
him as he is. We are not to be great as antiquarians but great as sons of God.
Here, then, is our opportunity: shall we arise and avail ourselves of it? the mischief
is lest we should be tempted to follow out these inquiries in the Theophany as if our
whole interest lay in the past. Into the past we can go but a little way. Who can tell
the number of God"s works, or find out the Almighty unto perfection? The oldest
man amongst us is less than an infant of days compared even with some gigantic
trees that have been rooted in the earth for a thousand years; they stand whilst man
perishes; yea, they throw a shadow over a man"s grave, and still grow on as if time
meant them to be immortal. Our greatness, let us repeat, does not relate to the past,
or to the past only; our opportunity is tomorrow the great morrow of eternity. So
our song Isaiah , This corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall
put on immortality: death shall be swallowed up in victory; saints shall mock the
tomb. How do we feel now? are we rebuked? are we humbled? The answer must be
Yes, and o: we are very young compared with the creation of God, but all these
things shall be dissolved, the heavens shall pass away with a great noise; the little
eternity of the ages shall be swallowed up and forgotten, and all the eternity of
God"s love and fellowship shall open as in ever-increasing brightness. How is that
glory to be attained? Here the gospel preacher has his distinctive word to deliver.
"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent." The word may be disputed, but there it is; the word may
occasion great mental anxiety, but it abides there—a solemn and noble fact in the
book. Why should it affright us? There is music in that gospel. Hear it again. "This
is life eternal." A peculiar quality of life rather than a mere duration of life:
"eternal" does not only point to unendingness but to quality of life—"This is life
eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
The mystery is a mystery of music; the mystery is a mystery of light: there is no
confusion in the thought, but unsearchable riches, and the embarrassment is that of
wealth not of poverty. So new we have two standards of judgment: the one the great
outside creation, stars and seas, beasts and birds, hidden secrets of nature,
undiscovered laws of the intricate economy of the universe; there we can know but
little: and the other standard of judgment is the Son of God, of whom it is said, he
created all things, was before all things, that in him all things consist, that he is Lord
of all the stars, even of hosts; he shaped every one of them, flashed its light into the
eye of every planet that burns, and rules them all with majesty as sublime as it is
gracious. The Christian gospel says that Hebrews , "being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and
took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and
being found in fashion as a Prayer of Manasseh , he humbled himself, and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," that he might give us eternal life.
O creation! great, monotonous, hard, austere creation! we perish as to the mere
matter of duration before the ages which measure the period of thine existence, but
we mock thee, laugh at thee, despise thee, if thou dost challenge us with a view to the
future: the past is thine, take it, and die in luxuriating upon it; the future is ours,

and being in Christ we cannot die. This is our rational challenge, as well as our
Christian appeal and comfort.
ote
The exact amount of censure due to Job for the excesses into which he had been
betrayed, and to his three opponents for their harshness and want of candour, could
only be awarded by an omniscient Judge. Hence the necessity for the Theophany—
from the midst of the storm Jehovah speaks. In language of incomparable grandeur
He reproves and silences the murmurs of Job. God does not condescend, strictly
speaking, to argue with His creatures. The speculative questions discussed in the
colloquy are unnoticed, but the declaration of God"s absolute power is illustrated
by a marvellously beautiful and comprehensive survey of the glory of creation, and
His all-embracing Providence by reference to the phenomena of the animal
kingdom. He who would argue with the Lord must understand at least the objects
for which instincts so strange and manifold are given to the beings far below man in
gifts and powers. This declaration suffices to bring Job to a right mind: his
confesses his inability to comprehend, and therefore to answer his Maker ( Job 40:3-
4). A second address completes the work. It proves that a charge of injustice against
God involves the consequence that the accuser is more competent than he to rule the
universe. He should then be able to control, to punish, to reduce all creatures to
order—but he cannot even subdue the monsters of the irrational creation. Baffled
by leviathan and behemoth, how can he hold the reins of government, how contend
with him who made and rules them all?—Smith"s Dictionary of the Bible.
PARKER, "How far is it possible to read all the great questions contained in the
Theophany in a sympathetic and gentle tone? May we not be wrong in supposing
that all the questions were put as with the whole pomp and majesty of heaven? Has
not the Lord a still small voice in which he can put heart-searching questions? Is
there not a river of God, the streams whereof shall make glad his city? Is that river
a great, boiling, foaming flood? Perhaps we may have been wrong in carrying the
whirlwind into the questions. "Then the Lord answered Job out of the
whirlwind,"—but it is not said that the Lord answered Job like a whirlwind; even
out of that tabernacle of storm God might speak to the suffering patriarch in an
accommodated voice, in a whisper suited to his weakness. Let it be an exercise in
sacred rhetoric to read the questions of the Theophany sympathetically, to whisper
them, to address them to the heart alone. Unless we get the right tone in reading
God"s Book, we shall mar all its music, and we shall miss all its gospel. The people
wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of the mouth of Jesus Christ;
and the tone was often an explanation of what was spoken; there was something in
the Man"s way of stating what he had to say, which led hearers, otherwise hostile, to
admit—" ever man spake like this man." It seems, indeed, as if the questions
should be spoken with trumpets and thunders and whirlwinds a thousand in
number; and yet by so speaking them we should not reveal the majesty of God; we
might reveal that majesty still more vividly and persuasively by finding a way of
asking the questions which would not overpower the listener or destroy what little

strength he had.
God does not hesitate to charge upon the patriarch and all whom he represented
something like absolute ignorance:—"Who shut up the sea with doors, when it
brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?... Hast thou entered into the
treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail?" What hast thou
done? What hast thou seen? We have only seen outsides—what are called
phenomena or appearances, aspects and phases of things; but what is below? "Hast
thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" "Hast thou entered into the springs of
the sea?" Thou hast sailed across the sea, but hast thou ever walked through its
depths? Hast thou not rather been carried as by some mighty nurse from continent
to continent, rather than been a spectator of the springs of the infinite flood? "Hast
thou walked in the search of the depth?" The word "search" is full of meaning; it
signifies a kind of quest which will not be satisfied with anything but the origin, the
actual fountain and spring and beginning of things: it is not enough to see the water,
we must know where the water comes from; we must search into the depth. It is not
enough to see the hail that falls, we want to see the house out of which it comes, the
infinite snow-house in which God has laid up his treasures of cold. May we not see
the treasures of the hail? We are ever kept outside. God has always something more
that we have not seen. "Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of
waters may cover thee?" Thus we are reminded of our ignorance. Yet we are wise,
limitedly wise; we are quite great as grubbers after phenomena; we come home
every night laden with more phenomena. By some mysterious process the word
"phenomena" seems to satisfy our appetite because it fills our mouth. But what are
these phenomena? Have we found out everything yet? Let the most learned men
answer, and they will say, We have found out nothing as it really is; we have just
learned enough to correct the mistakes of yesterday, and enough to humble us in
view of tomorrow; we are waiting for another revelation or discovery or acquisition;
we have spent one century in obliterating the misrecorded phenomena of another.
This is admitted by the men themselves. They demand justice at the hands of the
Christian teacher, and they are the first to admit that they know nothing in its
reality, in its interior condition, quality, and meaning. We are not now forcing an
interpretation upon their words, but almost literally quoting them. What is it that
you are now playing with? hand it to me: what is the name of it? A flute. Very good:
I have heard it, now I want to examine it! Open it for me! Why don"t you open it?
What are you playing upon? It seems to be a grand, many-voiced instrument,—
what is the name of it? You answer me, It is an organ. Good: I like it; it touches me
at a thousand points, and makes me feel as if I had a thousand lives: now open it;
show me the music: I have heard it, I want to see it. You decline; in declining you
are wise. Who destroys the instrument through which the music comes? Who would
cut a little bird"s throat to find out the secret of its trill? Hast thou seen the
treasures—searched the depths—gone into the interior of things? Or art thou laden
like a diligent gleaner with sheaves of phenomena, which thou art going to store in
thy memory today for the purpose of casting them out tomorrow? What can we then
know about God, if we can know so little about his sea, and the treasure-house of his
hail, and the sanctuary of his thunder? It is the same with religious emotion and
religious conviction. Take your emotion to pieces. You decline to take your flute to

pieces; you smile at the suggestion that you should open every part of the organ and
show me the singing angels that are closeted in the good prison: how then can I take
this religious emotion to pieces? These deep religious convictions resist analysis;
when we approach them analytically, they treat us as murderers. Men who exclaim
against vivisection, and often justly, surely ought to be proportionately indignant
with the men who would take souls, so to say, fibre from fibre, and perform upon
them all the tricks and cruelties of analysis. Yet the universe is beautiful and
profitable exceedingly. Even what we can see of it often fills our eyes with tears.
Who has not been melted to tears by the beauty of nature, by the appealing
sunshine, by the flower-gemmed fields and hills, by the purling streams and singing
birds, and all the tender economy of summer? Men have sometimes been graciously
forced to pray because things were so comely, beautiful, tender, suggestive; they
could not be wild-voiced in the presence of such charms; even the rudest felt a new
tone come into his voice as he spake about the mystic loveliness. Behind all things
there is a secret,—call it by what name you please: some have called it secret; others
have called it persistent force; others have described it by various qualifications of
energy; others again have said, It is a spirit that is behind things; others have
whispered, It is a father. But that there is something behind appearances is a
general belief amongst intelligent men. When one of the greatest of our teachers
compares what is known to a piano of so many octaves, he only numbers the octaves
which he can touch: who can tell what octaves infinite lie beyond his fingers? Who
will say that any one man"s fingers can touch the extremes of things? Were he to
say Song of Solomon , we should mock him as he extended his arms to show us what
a little span he has. Throughout the Theophany, then, God is not afraid to charge
men with absolute ignorance of interior realities which may be spiritual energies.
ot only is man ignorant, he is powerless "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of
Pleiades?" ( Job 38:31). Hark how he speaks of Pleiades as if the white sapphires
were but a handful, and a child could use them! "Or loose the bands of Orion?"
Answer me! "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide
Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the
dominion thereof in the the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that
abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go,
and say unto thee, Here we are?" ( Job 38:32-35). These questions admit of some
answer. Surely we should be able to give some reply to interrogatories of this kind.
Then how man"s power is mocked—"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or
abide by thy crib?" Try him; reason with him; show thyself friendly to him: come,
thou art learned in the tricks of persuasion and all the conjuring of rhetorical
argument, try thy skill upon the unicorn—"canst thou bind the unicorn with his
band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?" Make some use of
him; make a domestic of him; make a slave of the unicorn: or trust him; put
confidence in him; be magnanimous to the unicorn: "Wilt thou trust him, because
his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?" Surely there is a
mocking laugh running through all these particular inquiries,—not a laugh of bitter
mockery, but of that taunt which has a gracious meaning, and by which alone God
can sometimes call us to a realization of our strength which is in very deed our
weakness. Then when all the questions are answered so far, God says, "Canst thou

draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest
down?" Thou art very able and yet very feeble: come, let us see what thou canst do.
Thou canst beat a dog,—conciliate a unicorn; thou canst slay an ox, and stand over
him like a butcher-conqueror,—call the eagle back from heaven"s gate; demand
that he come; thou art a Prayer of Manasseh , thunder at him: what is the result?
Thou hast numerous trophies and proofs of thine ability,—now put a thorn through
the nostrils of leviathan, thrust a spear through the scales of the crocodile. Thou
canst do something: thou canst not do everything. Do not understand, therefore,
that weakness is power, or that power is all power; draw boundaries, lines, limits,
and within these assert thy manhood and begin thy religion. Truly we are very
powerless. Yet in some respects we are influential in a degree which warms our
vanity. In the summer of1886 there were shocks of earthquake in Charleston and in
various other American cities. Why did the people not speak to the earthquake, and
bid it be quiet? Surely they might have done that. Many of them were rich planters;
many of them were gifted in the power of cursing and swearing and defying God.
Look at them! Another shock, and the greatest buildings in the city are rent and
dashed to the dust. Hear these men—drunkards, swearers, blasphemers, worldly
men—begging black niggers on the open highway to pray! What a humiliation was
theirs! Why did they not bind the earthquake, throw a bridle upon the neck of the
infinite beast, put a bit in his mouth, and make him lie down and be still? See, they
reel to and fro like drunken men! How powerless we are! And in these hours of
powerlessness we know what a man"s faith is worth. It is in such crises that we
know what your intellectual speculations and fine metaphysical flourishings come
to; it is then that we put our finger upon the pack of her mysteries, and say, Why
don"t you open this pack, and be quiet and comfortable whilst the heart is being
shaken at its very centre? ot a metaphysician but would part with all the mysteries
he ever knew if he could only be saved from the wolf that is two feet behind him. We
are not sure that any metaphysician ever lived who would not be quite willing to go
back to school again as an ignorant boy—if the earthquake would only give over!
Oh it rocks the town, it tears the mountains, it troubles the sea—oh would it but be
quiet! We would give money, fame, learning, and begin the world afresh: but we
cannot live in this misery. When you see men boasting, and blaspheming and
scorning the Church, and pouring contempt upon all the ordinances of religion, all
you need desire by way of testing the reality of such ebullition and madness would
be to see them under the influence of an earthquake: they would beg a dog to pray
for them if they thought that the dog had any influence with Heaven. Are we to be
led by these men and to take the cue of our life from them, and to say, How strong
they are, how lofty in stature, how broad in chest, and how they breathe with all the
vigour of superabounding life: they shall be our leaders, and not your praying men
in the Church? Can the blind lead the blind? they shall both fall into the ditch. You
cannot tell what a man is by any one particular hour of his experience; you must see
him in every degree of the circle before you can fully estimate the quality which
marks him as a man.
It is something to know that we are ignorant and that we are powerless. Much is
gained by knowing the limits of our ability, and the limits of our knowledge. Let a
man keep within the boundary of his strength, and he will be powerful for good: let

him stretch himself one little inch beyond God"s appointment, and he will be not
only impotent but contemptible. Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here
shall thy proud waves and strong ambition be stayed. "The Lord reigneth." We are
but men; our breath is in our nostrils. We cannot see through one little sheet of
paper; the tiniest leaf that grows in the field if put upon our eye would shut out the
sun. Better let us be quiet, simple, watchful, humble, patient, receiving the divine
revelation as the divine Giver may see fit to disclose it.
The great argument, then, is this: as there is so much in nature which thou hast not
understood, there may be also much in human life and discipline thou hast not fully
comprehended. It is the argument of analogy. It is the great argument of the
philosophical bishop. There is no escape from it; certainly none within the limits of
the Theophany. If we do not know the interior of a piece of wood, how can we know
the interior of a thought? If we cannot pluck a flower, and keep it, how could we
pluck the secret of God, and retain it as our own? Again and again we have seen
that to pluck a flower is to kill it. However tenderly you may treat it, however you
may feed it with water, protect it from all adverse influences, you have plucked the
flower, and you have killed it Thou shalt not trespass in the divine province. We
may walk through the garden of God, but may not pluck the flowers that grow in
that holy paradise. Things are not made valuable to us simply by holding them in
the hand. The sun would be no sun if we could inclose him within our own
habitation: he stands away at an inaccessible distance; he can come down to us, but
we cannot go up to him. O thou great hospitable sun, terrible yet genial, distant yet
quite near, thou art a bright symbol of the God who made thee. As there are
mysteries in nature, so there are mysteries in life. What is your thought? Where did
it come from? How did your ideas originate? What is that thing you call your soul?
Show it; describe it; trace its length; name its relations; what is it? Psychology has
its holy of holies as well as theology. Do not imagine that all the mysteries cluster
around the name of God. We must, then, accept the mysteries of life: they are many
in number; they are very pressing and urgent, and often embarrassing and difficult;
but they belong to the great system of God"s government. Why should the good man
have trouble? Why should the atheist have a golden harvest? Why should the
blasphemer prosper and the suppliant be driven away as if by a pursuing and
judicial wind from heaven? "My feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh
slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in
trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride
compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment." Ah me!
my soul, wait thou patiently upon God. The mysteries of nature have their
counterpart in the mysteries of life. But remember, in the second place, that as all in
nature is under divine control, so is all in human life. There is a wise God over all,
blessed for ever more. He comes down to us as a father, compassionate, tender,
watchful, regarding every one of us as an only child, numbering the hairs of our
head; he besets us behind and before; he is on the right hand and on the left, and he
lays his hand upon us. We know it, for we have proved it in a thousand instances:
our whole life is an argument in proof of the existence, government, and goodness of
God. "Oh rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him." The day is very cloudy and

the night is full of weary hours; the chariot-wheels of time and the soul"s trouble
roll heavily; morning after morning comes like one disappointment upon another. It
requires a God-wrought faith, a very miracle of trust, to wait and not complain.
Is Prayer of Manasseh , then, but a part of an economy; not an individual but part
of a process; one amongst ten thousand other things? Is a man at liberty to say—I
have renounced my individuality; I fall into the great stream and current of what is
called history; I have declined individual responsibility, and identified myself with
the sum-total of things? How foolish would be this talk! Let us test that for one
moment. Does Society recognise the impersonal creed? We must bring these creeds
to practical tests. Suppose Society should say to all its members: Individual
responsibility is gone; we are part and parcel of a stupendous economy, and we
must just take our lot with the general movement: it is in vain that man after man
should stand up and claim individual franchise or honour or influence or
responsibility. Society never said Song of Solomon , and yet retained its security for
any length of time. Does man himself recognise it in reference to his daily wants?
Does he say: I am part of a general system of things, and therefore I do not trouble
about what I should eat and what I should drink and wherewithal I should be
clothed: all these are petty questions, minor and frivolous inquiries and concerns?
Does man ever say so? But when he mounts his philosophic steed, then he becomes
"part of a general economy," a shadowy gentleman, an impalpable nothing, a most
proud humility. The doctrine will not bear practical tests. Man is always asserting
his rights. Take part of his property from him, and you will destroy his creed.
Occupy the seat for which he has paid, and tell him when he comes to claim it that
he is part of a great system of things, belongs to a mysterious and impalpable
economy, and say, "Why so hot, my little sir? Why not amalgamate yourself with
the universe?" If these creeds will not bear testing in the marketplace and at the
railway station, and in all the wear and tear, in all the attrition and controversy, of
life, they are vanity, an empty wind. The Christian doctrine is—Every one of us
shall give account of himself to God: we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of
Christ. We cannot abandon our individuality socially, why should we abandon it
religiously? We could not live by giving ourselves away into airy nothingness, then
how can we live the better and nobler life by obliterating our personality and
sinking like a snowflake on a river?
Here let us rest. God has spoken. His questions have been a multitude; they may
have been thundered, they may have been whispered; now and then they may have
risen into pomp and majesty and augustness, and yet now and then they may have
come down into whisper and breathing and gentle speech. God"s ministry is
manifold. There is no monotony in the speech of God. He reveals himself to us as we
are able to bear it. We cannot go to himself directly; we can go to his Son Jesus
Christ, whom he hath made Lord of all things. We hail thee, Son of Prayer of
Manasseh , Son of God, and we do our own convictions injustice unless we hail thee
as God the Song of Solomon , and crown thee Lord of all.
PARKER, "The Theophany, As a Whole

Job 38-41
We have been waiting for the answer of God to the tremble of Job and to the tumult
occasioned by his friends. We became weary of the fray of words, for they seemed to
have no legitimate stopping-place, and to bring with them no sufficient and
satisfactory answer. At length God has appeared, and we have already said that the
appearance of God upon the scene is itself the great answer. To have come into the
action at all is to have revealed a condescension and a complacency amounting to an
expression of profound and tender solicitude in regard to all that distressed and
overwhelmed the life of the patriarch. If God had not spoken, his presence would
have been an answer. To be assured that God draws nigh at any moment to troubled
human life, is to be also sure that he will see the right vindicated: he will not break
the bruised reed; he will not quench the smoking flax; nor will he allow others to
break and to quench what he has lovingly taken within his fatherly care. But, as a
matter of fact, God has used words, and therefore we are entitled to read them, and
to estimate their value, and to consider their whole influence upon the marvellous
situation which occasioned them. This is not the answer that we expected. If we had
been challenged to provide an answer, our imagination would have taken a very
different line from that which God adopted in his reply to Job and his comforters.
But who are we that we should have imagined any answer at all? Better that we
should have sat down in silence, saying, This is a trouble which puts away from its
sacred dignity all words ever devised or used by man. Let man keep his words for
mean occasions; let him not attempt to use them when God"s hand it laid heavily
upon one of his creatures: then silence is the true eloquence, mute grief is the wisest
sympathy.
The answer overwhelms our expectations. It is greater than we had supposed it
would be. We were not aware that such a sweep of thought would have been taken
by the great Speaker and the divine Healer. Our way would have been more direct,
in some respects more dramatic: we would have seen the black enemy lifted in mid-
air, and blasted by the lightning he had defied; we might have imagined him slain
upon the altar of the universe, and cast down into outer and eternal darkness, and
Job clothed with fine linen in sight of earth and heaven, and crowned conqueror,
and having in his hand a palm worthy of his patience. Thus our little expectations
are always turned upside down; thus our little wisdom is proved by its littleness to
be but a variety of ignorance: so does God make all occasions great, and show how
wise a thing it would be on our part to refer all matters to his judgment, and not to
take them within the limits of our own twilight and confused counsels. At the last it
will be even so; the winding-up will be so contrary to our expectations: the first shall
be last, and the last shall be first; and men shall come from the east and the west,
from the north and the south, and many who had attempted to force their way into
the kingdom will be ordered back into the darkness which is native to their
corruption. Let us learn from this continual rebuking of expectation that things all
lie within God"s power and Wisdom of Solomon , and that he will dispose them
graciously and permanently, and vindicate his disposal by appeals to our own
judgment and experience, in a larger world, where there is light enough to touch the

problems of the past at every point.
In the next place, this is a terrible use to make of nature. Who could have thought
that nature would be so used—forced, so to say, into religious uses of the largest
kind? The very stones cry out in hymns of praise to God; the whole heaven comes to
vindicate the excellence of his wisdom and the completeness of his power. What can
man do when ature takes up the exposition of divine purpose and decree? Who
can answer the whirlwind? Who can hold his breath in face of a tempest that leaps
down from the clouds and makes the mountains shake by its tremendous energy?
Who could look up when the stars put on all their light and blind the mortal vision
of man? We are made afraid when we come into a realisation of this particular use
of nature. We did not know that God had so many ministers who could speak tor
him. We had been dreaming about the heavens, and wondering about the infinite
arch, and talking about the beauty of the things that lay round about us; we had
called the earth a garden of God, and thought of nature as a comforting mother and
nurse: yet now when the occasion needs it all nature stands up like an army ten
thousand times ten thousand strong, and takes up the cause of God and pleads it
with infinite eloquence. If we have to be rebuked by nature in this way, who can
stand for one moment? If a may may not utter a complaint lest the lightning blind
him, who then dare, confess that he has a sorrow that gnaws his heart? If our
disobedience is to be reproved by the rhythmic movement of the obedient stars, then
who would care or dare to live? All things obey the Creator but man: "the heavens
declare the glory of God"; night unto night uttereth speech; there is no disobedience
in all the uproar of the seas; when nature is shaken she is not rebellious: but man—
strange, poor, weird, ghostly man—can scarcely open his mouth without blasphemy,
or look without insulting the heavens he gazes at, or think without planning some
treason against the eternal throne. So God uses this great machine; so God hurls at
us the stars that shine so placidly, and make the night so fair. Yet we must take care
how we use nature: she is a dainty instrument; she resents some of the approaches
we make when we intend to use her for illicit or base or unworthy purposes. We
must beware how we press nature into our service. We must not appropriate nature
to exclusive uses or to hint at the divisions and separations of men. ature should be
used otherwise. Better allow the great Creator to say how nature may be employed
in illustrating religious thought, religious relations, and religious action.
But this is not the only use which is made of nature even by the Creator. At first we
are affrighted, as we nearly always are in the Old Testament, but when the Creator
speaks of nature in the ew Testament he adopts quite a different tone. There is
One of whom it is said, He made all things: he is before all things: by him all things
consist: without him was not anything made that was made. It will be instructive to
hear him speak of the uses of nature. Does he answer his hearers "out of the
whirlwind?" Does he thunder upon them from the sanctuary of eternity? Hear him,
and wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of his mouth—Consider the
lilies of the field how they grow: if God so care for or clothe the grass of the field,
will he not much more care for and clothe you, O ye of little faith? Yet it would be
unfair to the Old Testament if we did not point out that even there the gentler uses
of nature are shown by the very Creator himself. When Jacob was cast down, when

his way was supposed to be passed over, when all hope had died out of him, and
every glint of light had vanished from his sky, God said to him, "Lift up your eyes
on high, and behold who hath created these things,"—the same God, the same
nature; a weakened and discouraged Prayer of Manasseh , yet nature in this case
used to restore and comfort the soul that was overwhelmed. Thus God must use his
armoury as he pleases. He can plead against us with great strength, he can
overwhelm us, he can take away our breath by a whirlwind, he can blind us by
excess of light; or he can so show the galaxy of heaven, and the whole panorama of
the visible universe, as to heal us and comfort us, and lead us to say, He who keeps
these lights in their places will not quench the smoking flax. Where is there a healer
so gentle and compassionate, loving and sympathetic, as nature? Sometimes she
seems to say to brokenhearted Prayer of Manasseh , I was made for you; you never
knew it until this hour: now I will heal you, and lead you to the altar, where you
thought the fire had died out—the altar which you thought God had abandoned.
This appeal to nature is the higher and truer way of teaching. It brings a man out of
himself. That is the first great conquest to be achieved. All brooding must be broken
up; everything of the nature of melancholy or fixing the mind upon one point, or
dwelling upon one series of events, must be invaded and dissipated. God would take
a man for a mountain walk, and speak with him as they climbed the hill together,
and watch him as the fresh wind blew upon his weary life, and revived him as with
physical gospels; the Lord would take a man far out into the mid-sea, and there
would watch the effect of healing influences which he himself has originated, and
which he never fails to control: the man would be interested in new sights; he would
feel himself in point of contact with great sweet nature; without knowing it, old age
would be shed from his face, and he would ask youthful questions, and propose
plans involving expenditure of hope and energy and confidence and faith of every
degree and quality; and he who went out an old, bent-down, helpless Prayer of
Manasseh , would come back clothed with youth, having undergone a process
almost of resurrection, being brought up from the dead, and set in new and radiant
relation to all duty, responsibility, and labour. Here is the benefit of the Church. So
long as men hide themselves in solitude they do not receive the advantage and
helpfulness of social and Christian sympathy. The very effort of coming to the
church helps a man sometimes to throw off his imprisonment and narrowness of
view. There is something in the human touch, in the human face divine, in the
commingling of voices, in the public reading of the divine word, which nerves and
cheers all who take part in the sacred exercise. Solitude soon becomes irreligious;
monasticism tends to the decay of all faculties that were meant to be social,
sympathetic, reciprocal: "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together": come
into the larger humanity, behold the larger creation, and thus receive healing and
comfort and benediction from enlargement of relation and sympathy. ever allow
yourself to prey upon yourself. That act of self-consumption means everything that
is involved in the words despair and ruin. Force yourselves into public relations; so
to say, compel yourselves to own your kith and kindred, to take part in family life
and in that larger family life called the intercourse of the Church—in public
worship, in public service—and also know that God has made all nature to minister
unto your soul"s health, establish a large intercourse with mountain and river and
sea, with forest and flower-bed, and singing birds, and all things great and lovely:

some day you will need them, and they will be God"s ministers to you.
This answer is a sublime rebuke to the pride which Job had once asserted during
the colloquies. In chapter Job 13:22, Job said, in quite a round strong voice,
indicative of energy and independence and self-complacency, "Then call thou, and I
will answer: or let me speak, and answer thou me." That tone needed to be taken
out of his voice. Oftentimes the musical teacher says to the pupil, Your voice must be
altogether broken up, and you must start again in the formation of a voice; you
think now your voice is good and strong and useful, but you are mistaken; the first
thing I have to do with you is to take your voice away, then begin at the beginning
and cultivate it into an appropriate expression. Job"s voice was out of order when
he said, "Call thou, and I will answer,"—or, if it please thee, I will adopt another
policy—"let me speak, and answer thou me." Behold how complacent is Job! how
willing to adopt any form of arbitration! how anxious to throw the responsibility
upon another! He feels himself to be right, and therefore the other side may make its
own arrangements and its own terms, and whatever they are he will boldly accept
them! Every man must be answered in his own tone: "With what measure ye mete,
it shall be measured to you again." If your challenge is so bold and proud, God must
meet you on the ground which you yourself have chosen. "Then the Lord answered
Job out of the whirlwind, and said—" then comes the cataract of interrogation, the
tempest of inquiry, in which Job seems to say, O spare me! for behold I am vile:
what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth: once have I spoken,
but I will not answer; yea, twice, but I will proceed no further: O thou God of the
whirlwind, give me rest; let me have time to draw my breath! But, poor Job , thou
didst say to God, "Call thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer thou
me:" where is now thy boast, thy pride, thy vain talking? Thus does God humble us
in a thousand ways. We pull down our barns and build greater, and behold in the
morning they are without roof and without foundation and none can say where the
solid structure stood. We say, "Let us build a tower which shall reach even unto
heaven"; and we build it very high, and in the morning when we come to finish it,
lo, there is not one stone left upon another. There is a humbling ministry in creation.
ature is full of rebuke, and criticism, and judgment; or she is full of comfort and
suggestion, and religiou rapsable and most tender benediction.
How apt we are to suppose that we could answer God if we only had the
opportunity! Could we but see him; could we but have an interview with him; could
we but speak to him face to face, how we should vindicate ourselves! There was a
man who once sought to see God, and he turned and saw him, and fell down as one
dead. Sudden revelation would blind us. Let us not tempt God too much to show
himself. We know not what we ask. What is the great answer to our trial? The
universe. What is the great commentary upon God? Providence. What is the least
profitable occupation? Controversy. Thus much have we been taught by our
reading in the Book of Job. Where Job had a spiritual revelation—a voice
answering out of the whirlwind—we have had personal example. We do not hear
God or see God in any direct way, but we see Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of
Prayer of Manasseh , who also knows all the secrets of nature, for he was before all
things, and by him all things consist: the universe is his garment; behold, he is

within the palpitating, the living soul. O mighty One! when thou dost come to us in
our controversies and reasonings, plead not against us with thy great power, but
begin at Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalm , and in all the Scriptures expound
unto us the things concerning thyself; and we shall know who the speaker is by the
warmth that glows in our thankful hearts.
GUZIK, "A. God speaks to Job.
1. (Job 38:1) The Lord speaks to Job from the whirlwind.
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:
a. Then the Lord: Over the previous 35 chapters (since Job 2:1-13), God has been
directly absent from the account. We read nothing of God’s direct role in
comforting, speaking to, or sustaining Job in the midst of his crisis. Over that time,
Job has ached repeatedly for a word from God.
i. Elihu saw the coming storm and spoke about God’s presence in such powerful
phenomenon (Job 36:22 to Job 37:24). Yet now we hear God Himself speak to Job.
ii. God will indeed settle this dispute, but He will do it His way. Job wanted God to
settle it by proving him right and explaining the reason for all his afflictions; Job’s
friends wanted God to prove them right and for Job to recognize his error. God will
not satisfy either one of these expectations. Significantly, God did not obviously
answer Job’s questions.
iii. “At least, on first inspection, they do not seem to have anything to do with the
central issue of why Job has suffered so severely when he has done everything
humanly possible to maintain a good relationship with God. The Lord apparently
says nothing about this.” (Andersen)
b. The Lord answered Job: Significantly, God did not immediately or directly
answer Job’s friends; not the older friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar) and not the
young friend (Elihu). God answered Job.
i. Perhaps this was because Job was the one wrongly accused and though he was
wrong, he was more right than any of his friends.
ii. Perhaps this was because Job was the only one of the group to actively cry out to
God and pray through the ordeal. Only Job talked to God; now the LORD will only
speak to Job.
c. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: Elihu saw an approaching storm
and described it as an example of the power of God (Job 36:26 to Job 37:24). When
he described the clearing of the storm, he probably spoke before the storm actually
had cleared; now in this same storm God speaks to Job.

i. “Doubtless, it refers to the storm which Elihu seems to see approaching (Job
37:15-24). The article refers to something known or already intimated to the
reader.” (Bullinger)
ii. Repeatedly in the whirlwind is associated with the divine presence. It speaks to us
of the powerful, unmanageable nature of God; that He is like a tornado that cannot
be controlled or opposed.
God brought Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1-11)
God’s presence is in the whirlwind (Psalms 77:18; ahum 1:3)
God’s coming is like a whirlwind (Isaiah 66:15; Jeremiah 4:13; Jeremiah 23:19)
God appeared to Ezekiel in a whirlwind (Ezekiel 1:4)
iii. “Job’s troubles began when a great wind killed his children (Job 1:19). The Lord
was in that storm, and now He speaks from the tempest.” (Andersen)
PULPIT, "The discourse, by which the Almighty answers Job and rebukes his
"friends," occupies four chapters (ch. 38-41.). It is broken into two parts by the
interposition of a-short confession on Job's part (Job 40:3-5). Job 38:1-41 and Job
39:1-30 are closely connected, and form a single appeal—a sort of argumentum ad
verecundiam—to Job's profound ignorance of God's natural government, which
incapacitates him from passing judgment upon what is far more incomprehensible
and mysterious, God's moral government. The points adduced, in which Job is
challenged to claim that be has knowledge, or confess that he is ignorant, are:
The tone of the appeal is sustained at a high pitch, and the entire passage is one of
extraordinary force and eloquence.
Job 38:1
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. It is remarked, with reason, that
the special mention of Job as the person answered "implies that another speaker
had intervened" (Wordsworth); while the attachment of the article to the word
"whirlwind" implies some previous mention of that phenomenon, which is only to
be found in the discourse of Elihu (Job 37:9). Both points have an important
bearing on the genuineness of the disputed section, ch. 32-37. And said. The
question whether there was an objective utterance of human words out of the
whirlwind, or only a subjective impression of the thoughts recorded on the minds of
those present, is unimportant. In any case, there was a revelation direct from God,
which furnished an authoritative solution of the questions debated to all who had
been engaged in the debate.

EBC, "THE RECO CILIATIO
Job 38:1 - Job 42:6
THE main argument of the address ascribed to the Almighty is contained in
chapters 38 and 39 and in the opening verses of chapter 42. Job makes submission
and owns his fault in doubting the faithfulness of Divine providence. The
intervening passage containing descriptions of the great animals of the ile is
scarcely in the same high strain of poetic art or on the same high level of cogent
reasoning. It seems rather of a hyperbolical kind, suggesting failure from the clear
aim and inspiration of the previous portion.
The voice proceeding from the storm cloud, in which the Almighty veils Himself and
yet makes His presence and majesty felt, begins with a question of reproach and a
demand that the intellect of Job shall be roused to its full vigour in order to
apprehend the ensuing argument. The closing words of Job had shown
misconception of his position before God. He spoke of presenting a claim to Eloah
and setting forth his integrity so that his plea would be unanswerable.
Circumstances had brought upon him a stain from which he had a right to be
cleared, and, implying this, he challenged the Divine government of the world as
wanting in due exhibition of righteousness. This being so, Job’s rescue from doubt
must begin with a conviction of error. Therefore the Almighty says:-
"Who is this darkening counsel
By words without knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man;
For I will demand of thee and answer thou Me."
The aim of the author throughout the speech from the storm is to provide a way of
reconciliation between man in affliction and perplexity and the providence of God
that bewilders and threatens to crush him. To effect this something more than a
demonstration of the infinite power and wisdom of God is needed. Zophar affirming
the glory of the Almighty to be higher than heaven, deeper than Sheol, longer than
the earth, broader than the sea, basing on this a claim that God is unchangeably
just, supplies no principle of reconciliation. In like manner Bildad, requiring the
abasement of man as sinful and despicable in presence of the Most High with whom
are dominion and fear, shows no way of hope and life. But the series of questions
now addressed to Job forms an argument in a higher strain, as cogent as could be
reared on the basis of that manifestation of God which the natural world supplies.
The man is called to recognise not illimitable power only, the eternal supremacy of
the Unseen King, but also other qualities of the Divine rule. Doubt of providence is
rebuked by a wide induction from the phenomena of the heavens and of life upon

the earth, everywhere disclosing law and care cooperant to an end.
First Job is asked to think of the creation of the world or visible universe. It is a
building firmly set on deep-laid foundations. As if by line and measure it was
brought into symmetrical form according to the archetypal plan; and when the
cornerstone was laid as of a new palace in the great dominion of God there was joy
in heaven. The angels of the morning broke into song, the sons of the Elohim, high
in the ethereal dwellings among the fountains of light and life, shouted for joy. In
poetic vision the writer beholds that work of God and those rejoicing companies:
but to himself, as to Job, the question comes-What knows man of the marvellous
creative effort which he sees in imagination? It is beyond human range. The plan
and the method are equally incomprehensible. Of this let Job be assured-that the
work was not done in vain. ot for the creation of a world the history of which was
to pass into confusion would the morning stars have sung together. He who beheld
all that He had made and declared it very good would not suffer triumphant evil to
confound the promise and purpose of His toil.
ext there is the great ocean flood, once confined as in the womb of primeval chaos,
which came forth in living power, a giant from its birth. What can Job tell, what can
any man tell of that wonderful evolution, when, swathed in rolling clouds and thick
darkness, with vast energy the flood of waters rushed tumultuously to its appointed
place? There is a law of use and power for the ocean, a limit also beyond which it
cannot pass. Does man know how that is?-must he not acknowledge the wise will
and benignant care of Him who holds in check the stormy devastating sea?
And who has control of the light? The morning dawns not by the will of man. It
takes hold of the margin of the earth over which the wicked have been ranging, and
as one shakes out the dust from a sheet, it shakes them forth visible and ashamed.
Under it the earth is changed, every object made clear and sharp as figures on clay
stamped with a seal. The forests, fields, and rivers are seen like the embroidered or
woven designs of a garment. What is this light? Who sends it on the mission of
moral discipline? Is not the great God who commands the dayspring to be trusted
even in the darkness? Beneath the surface of earth is the grave and the dwelling
place of the nether gloom. Does Job know. does any man know, what lies beyond the
gates of death? Can any tell where the darkness has its central seat? One there is
whose is the night as well as the morning. The mysteries of futurity, the arcana of
nature lie open to the Eternal alone.
Atmospheric phenomena, already often described, reveal variously the unsearchable
wisdom and thoughtful rule of the Most High. The force that resides in the hail, the
rains that fall on the wilderness where no man is, satisfying the waste and desolate
ground and causing the tender grass to spring up, these imply a breadth of gracious
purpose that extends beyond the range of human life. Whose is the fatherhood of the
rain, the ice, the hoar frost of heaven? Man is subject to the changes these represent;
he cannot control them. And far higher are the gleaming constellations that are set
in the forehead of night. Have the hands of man gathered the Pleiades and strung
them like burning gems on a chain of fire? Can the power of man unloose Orion and

let the stars of that magnificent constellation wander through the sky? The
Mazzaroth or Zodiacal signs that mark the watches of the advancing year, the Bear
and the stars of her train-who leads them forth? The laws of heaven, too, those
ordinances regulating the changes of temperature and the seasons, does man
appoint them? Is it he who brings the time when thunderstorms break up the
drought and open the bottles of heaven, or the time of heat when the dust gathers
into a mass, and the clods cleave fast together? Without this alternation of drought
and moisture recurring by law from year to year the labour of man would be in
vain. Is not He who governs the changing seasons to be trusted by the race that
profits most of His care?
At Job 38:39 attention is turned from inanimate nature to the living creatures for
which God provides. With marvellous poetic skill they are painted in their need and
strength, in the urgency of their instincts, timid or tameless or cruel. The Creator is
seen rejoicing in them as His handiwork, and man is held bound to exult in their life
and see in the provision made for its fulfilment a guarantee of all that his own bodily
nature and spiritual being may require. otable especially to us is the close relation
between this portion and certain sayings of our Lord in which the same argument
brings the same conclusion.
"Two passages of God’s speaking," says Mr. Ruskin, "one in the Old and one in the
ew Testament, possess, it seems to me, a different character from any of the rest,
having been uttered, the one to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a man
whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other as the first statement to all
men of the principles of Christianity by Christ Himself-I mean the 38th to 41st
chapters of the Book of Job and the Sermon on the Mount. ow the first of these
passages is from beginning to end nothing else than a direction of the mind which
was to be perfected, to humble observance of the works of God in nature. And the
other consists only in the inculcation of three things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking
for eternal life; 3rd, trusting God through watchfulness of His dealings with His
creation."
The last point is that which brings into closest parallelism the doctrine of Christ and
that of the author of Job, and the resemblance is not accidental, but of such a nature
as to show that both saw the underlying truth in the same way and from the same
point of spiritual and human interest.
"Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lioness?
Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
When they couch in their dens
And abide in the covert to lie in wait?
Who provideth for the raven his food,

When his young ones cry unto God
And wander for lack of meat?"
Thus man is called to recognise the care of God for creatures strong and weak, and
to assure himself that his life will not be forgotten. And in His Sermon on the Mount
our Lord says, "Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they
reap nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of
much more value than they?" The parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke
approaches still more closely the language in Job-"Consider the ravens that they
sow not neither reap."
The wild goats or goats of the rock and their young that soon become independent
of the mothers’ care; the wild asses that make their dwelling place in the salt land
and scorn the tumult of the city; the wild ox that cannot be tamed to go in the
furrow or bring home the sheaves in harvest; the ostrich that "leaveth her eggs on
the earth and warmeth them in the dust"; the horse in his might, his neck clothed
with the quivering mane, mocking at fear, smelling the battle afar off; the hawk that
soars into the blue sky: the eagle that makes her nest on the rock, -all these,
graphically described, speak to Job of the innumerable forms of life, simple, daring,
strong, and savage, that are sustained by the power of the Creator. To think of them
is to learn that, as one among the dependants of God, man has his part in the system
of things. his assurance that the needs God has ordained will be met. The passage is
poetically among the finest in Hebrew literature, and it is more. In its place, with the
limit the writer has set for himself, it is most apt as a basis of reconciliation and a
new starting point in thought for all like Job who doubt the Divine faithfulness.
Why should man, because he can think of the providence of God, be alone
suspicious of the justice and wisdom on which all creatures rely? Is not his power of
thought given to him that he may pass beyond the animals and praise the Divine
Provider on their behalf and his own?
Man needs more than the raven, the lion, the mountain goat, and the eagle. He has
higher instincts and cravings. Daily food for the body will not suffice him, nor the
liberty of the wilderness. He would not be satisfied if, like the hawk and eagle, he
could soar above the hills. His desires for righteousness, for truth, for fulness of that
spiritual life by which he is allied to God Himself, are his distinction. So, then, He
who has created the soul will bring it to perfectness. Where or how its longings shall
be fulfilled may not be for man to know. But he can trust God. That is his privilege
when knowledge fails. Let him lay aside all vain thoughts and ignorant doubts. Let
him say: God is inconceivably great, unsearchably wise, infinitely just and true; I
am in His hands, and all is well.
The reasoning is from the less to the greater, and is therefore in this case conclusive.
The lower animals exercise their instincts and find what is suited to their needs. And
shall it not be so with man? Shall he, able to discern the signs of an all-embracing
plan, not confess and trust the sublime justice it reveals? The slightness of human
power is certainly contrasted with the omnipotence of God, and the ignorance of

man with the omniscience of God; but always the Divine faithfulness, glowing
behind, shines through the veil of nature, and it is this Job is called to recognise. Has
he almost doubted everything, because from his own life outward to the verge of
human existence wrong and falsehood seemed to reign? But how, then, could the
countless creatures depend upon God for the satisfaction of their desires and the
fulfilment of their varied life? Order in nature means order in the scheme of the
world as it affects humanity. And order in the providence which controls human
affairs must have for its first principle fairness, justice, so that every deed shall have
due reward.
Such is the Divine law perceived by our inspired author "through the things that
are made." The view of nature is still different from the scientific, but there is
certainly an approach to that reading of the universe praised by M. Renan as
peculiarly Hellenic, which "saw the Divine in what is harmonious and evident." ot
here at least does the taunt apply that, from the point of view of the Hebrew,
"ignorance is a cult and curiosity a wicked attempt to explain," that "even in the
presence of a mystery which assails and ruins him, man attributes in a special
manner the character of grandeur to that which is inexplicable," that "all
phenomena whose cause is hidden, all beings whose end cannot be perceived, are to
man a humiliation and a motive for glorifying God." The philosophy of the final
portion of Job is of that kind which presses beyond secondary causes and finds the
real ground of creaturely existence. Intellectual apprehension of the innumerable
and far-reaching threads of Divine purpose and the secrets of the Divine will is not
attempted. But the moral nature of man is brought into touch with the glorious
righteousness of God. Thus the reconciliation is revealed for which the whole poem
has made preparation. Job has passed through the furnace of trial and the deep
waters of doubt, and at last the way is opened for him into a wealthy place. Till the
Son of God Himself come to clear the mystery of suffering no larger reconciliation is
possible. Accepting the inevitable boundaries of knowledge, the mind may at length
have peace.
And Job finds the way of reconciliation:
"I know that Thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of Thine can be restrained.
Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?
Then have I uttered what I understood not,
Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not."
"‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me.

Job 38 commentary

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Job 38 commentary