Commentary on Job 38:1-7 [34-41]

This is the third of four lections from Job, and should be understood in relation to the first two. These remarks on Job 38 build on my comments on the particular theological challenges we encountered in Job 1–2 and Job 23.

Job 38 in context

Job 38 is the first time God interacts with Job—but God has acted upon him before. In my comments on Job 1–2, I discussed the role of the satan in the heavenly court, and how God prompted the satan to do terrible things to Job. Job is then grief-stricken throughout the book, and repeatedly bewails the silence of God (for example, “I cry to you, and you do not answer me,” 30:20).¹ We saw within the previous lection that Job wishes God would speak to him, and that he is devastated by God’s absence—but not because he’s so sure God’s presence would be a good thing.

The interrogation

God finally speaks. The poet introduces this with the verb “answer” (using a form of the common ‘anah): “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind” (38:1). But God’s “answer” is, instead, an interrogation: “I will question you,” God says, “and you will inform me” (38:3, my translation). Some Bibles translate that as “you will answer me,” but it’s a different verb than in 38:1 (a form of hodi‘a, the hiphil of yada‘) and means “inform.” It’s strong wording: I’m asking the questions here! I’ll ask, and you will inform me! Job has been pleading for an answer, but when God finally speaks, he pointedly doesn’t answer and instead turns the tables on Job.

Worse: it’s an interrogation in which God knows that Job doesn’t have any intel. God begins with a rhetorical question, asking who it is using these “words without knowledge” (38:2). He then tells Job to brace himself for what’s coming: “Gird up your loins like a man” (38:3). God is explicit that this is not supposed to be pleasant for Job. In the Hebrew Bible, a man “girds” for battle. God’s warnings to people to gird themselves include, “Gird yourselves and be dismayed” (Isaiah 8:9), because God is sending the Assyrians to conquer Judah; and among God’s first words to Jeremiah, “But you, gird up your loins. Stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them” (Jeremiah 1:17). God tells Job to gird up for what God is unleashing.

The emphasis on Job’s lack of knowledge continues as God begins to question him. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding!” (38:4). It’s not idiomatic in English, but in Hebrew there’s yet another “know” in there: Tell me, if you know understanding! The emphasis is inescapable. God even throws in a caustic “Surely you know!” (38:5). And soon after, “Do tell, if you know all this!” (38:18, my translation) and “Surely you know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great!” (38:21).

The wonder of creation and the paradox of Job

God’s speech (Job 38–41, with one brief break) presents something more complex than just this wildly disconcerting start. Part of what makes the book of Job as a whole so profound is how it gives voice to such difficult questions about divine justice and such clear conviction that God is the God of all things. God’s speech encompasses all of this. First, the alarming side:

God’s opening question, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” establishes the theme and tone for the rest of a lengthy speech. While the subject matter of creation and the created world may leave us in awe, God’s purpose isn’t to inspire but to put Job in his place. Verses 4–7 begin God’s monologue—all framed in terms of Job’s lack of knowledge and power. Where were you when …? Do you know this? Have you done that? Can you do this? The same tone is maintained for much of God’s monologue. Much later in this chapters-long interrogation, God even repeats his line, “I will question you, and you will inform me” (Job 40:7).

Within the first few verses of God’s speech, one reference is disturbing. As God questions Job about who was responsible for creation (“Who determined its measurements?” 38:5) and about details of the architecture of the earth (“On what were its bases sunk?” 38:6), he situates these events as taking place “when the morning stars sang together, and all the divine beings shouted for joy” (38:7).² This sounds lovely … until we recall that this is not the first appearance of the “divine beings” in Job.

The Hebrew phrase, benei elohim, is the same one used twice in Job 1–2 (see my comments on that lection for October 6, 2024). The phrase is very uncommon—these three uses in Job outnumber its uses elsewhere in the Bible. The three should certainly be understood together. Job 38:7 evokes the memory of the divine beings in 1:6 and 2:1, and the entire point in those references to the divine beings is that the satan is among them, and God prods him to turn his attention to Job. God’s reference to the divine beings at the beginning of his response to Job is a callback to where all of Job’s suffering began.

Because the impact of the book of Job involves its raw protest and its refusal to look away from the unsettling side of God, I will include one more entry in the “alarming” column. God’s speech traces all of creation: the foundation of the earth, the sea, the light, the animals. No people, though. This survey of creation—glorious, if caustic—spares no room for the wonder of humankind. After building through the rest of creation, it culminates, instead, with Leviathan. More than a third of God’s speech is devoted to the sea monster.

What’s more, this part of the monologue takes a different poetic form. God’s praise of Leviathan is in the form of a specific kind of descriptive poem (called a wasf) that was often employed to express love. The only other biblical examples are in the Song of Songs. God’s speech in Job, which begins with this lection introducing a litany of barbed questions, ends with a love poem about Leviathan. This was not what Job was hoping for when he begged God to answer him.³

And yet—and yet! Even through the discomfort of acknowledging God’s acerbic non-response to Job, we can see the uplifting side of the speech: the wonder of creation! The decentering of the human experience leaves us with much to contemplate as well.

This wonder doesn’t cancel out the disturbing elements of God’s speech (or of the book overall), but that’s what makes the book of Job so powerful and compelling. The writer does not shy away from portraying God in disturbing ways—in God’s speech, as in God’s actions at the beginning and end of the book—even while contemplating the wonder of creation. The book holds in tension the greatest wonders and the most troubling questions, never tying it up with a neat little bow to be more palatable to the likes of us.

Notes

1. All biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition unless otherwise indicated.
2. I use “divine beings” here rather than the NRSVue’s “heavenly beings.” For the same Hebrew phrase in Job 1:6 and 2:1, the NRSVue uses “divine beings,” and the use of the identical terminology here should be clear.
3. This is based on my longer treatment of the story in Esther J. Hamori, God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023).