Job 38:1-7, 34-41 Commentary

Image:

To begin as a kind of summary of where Job has been, we might turn to that sage philosopher in black, Johnny Cash. In his song, I Won’t Back Down, Cash sings:

I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down.

You can stand me up at the gates of hell

But I won’t back down.

Gonna stand my ground.

Won’t be turned around

And I’ll keep this world from dragging me down.

And I won’t back down.

Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out.

I will stand my ground and I won’t back down.

One thing we are not going to do in the midst of suffering is let the world drag us down into polite platitudes about our pain. As Christian people, we do not make light of suffering, injustice or death. If we did, we’d be just like Job’s less-than-useful friends. We are a people who don’t back down from calling suffering by its right name. At the same time, we believe in the fundamental goodness and provision of God. So, as the people of God, we are called to stand in a tenuous spot. There ain’t no easy way out, but this fragile position is the right place to be. It is the place where God shows up, which is what happens in this week’s lectionary text.

Commentary:

For 36 chapters, Job has been asking for his day in court, his opportunity to be heard. His demand that God take him seriously.  At last, in chapter 38, Job hears from God but the following four chapters might be subhead something like, “Be Careful What You Wish For.”

The lectionary does us a great service in ending its reading last week in darkness: “I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.” Because now, in chapter 38, God opens the conversation with “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (NKJV) As with creation itself, God enters the chaos and darkness to bring order and light.

Robert Alter comments on this, “The unusual phrase ‘darkens counsel’ is not merely an indication of speaking ignorantly (as the parallel in the second verse spells out) but a rejoinder to the spate of images of darkness blotting out light”. Responding to Job’s darkness, God offers a pointed contrast by way of “the opening section of the Voice from the Whirlwind” that “introduces images of light and then traces a dynamic interplay between light and darkness.”

God has entered the chat and God engages Job in debate. God has heard Job’s rhetorical punches and now over the next four chapters, God pushes back:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?

Can you bring the constellations in their seasons

            or lead out the Bear with its cubs?

Do you know the laws of the heavens?

Can you send the lightning bolts on their way?

Do they report to you, ‘Here we here’

Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom?”

It may seem a harsh and sarcastic rebuke. Job was surely put in his place by these words but, after 30+ chapters of silence, these words come as a relief. Job’s fundamental question is finally and graciously answered. “Yes, Job, I hear you. I heard your first cry. I heard the voice that spoke creation into being. And, in fact, it was my voice. So, yes, Job, I can hear you now.”

After a long season of waiting, of silence, of doubt amidst everyone else’s certainty, Job refused to back down. This results in a beautiful and daring narrative, as Robert Alter suggest: “the Job poet takes a risk that only a supreme artist confident in his genius could do.  He had already created for Job the most extraordinary powerful poetry to express Job’s intolerable anguish and his anger against God. Now, when God finally speaks, the poet fashions for Him still greater poetry, which thus becomes a poetic manifestation of God’s transcendent power.”

In the story of Job’s encounter with God, we hear something reminiscent of so many who have struggled with God throughout the history of God’s people.  Perhaps we might find a parallel between Job and the Apostle Thomas. Surrounded by those who insist, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas wouldn’t take someone else’s word for it. Like Job and Jacob, the Psalmists and Christ, Thomas wrestles with God. Throwing down a challenge, Thomas insists: “unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

We like to call this man “Doubting Thomas.” But, if we are honest, we recognize ourselves in his prayer. We recognize the faith and doubt that do not cancel each other out. The faith and doubt that live together in the human heart. Thomas dared God to show up. And God took him up on that dare. In that locked upper room, “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be unto you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” ’God, in Christ, graciously enabled Thomas to profess: “My Lord and my God!”

Like Job and like Thomas, we too stand in a long line of God-wrestlers, lamenters, doubters and scrappers. The dialogue, audacious though it may be, continues in the church today.

And, to us, God replies: Yes, I can hear you now. I hear you because I am this world’s Creator and, like Job, you are my creation. I hear you because you are my people, the descendants of Jacob, called Israel – those who struggle with God. I hear you when you come to me, like the Psalmists, with all the emotions of your burdened hearts. And, I hear your fears and doubts so very like those of my Apostle Thomas.

We stand in a long line of God-wrestlers. Shoulder to shoulder with Job and with Thomas, we are invited to approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may find all of the mercy and grace we could possibly require as we continue to wrestle with God in our times of need.