Let me per-requisite this post with: If you haven't read Job lately, and everything you know about him you learned in Sunday school; you will freak out about what I'm going to say. It might be helpful to go back and read through Job quickly to get the big picture. Job and his friends had to "repent in dust and ashes" for what they believed about God. This is a clue that everything they had to say about Him wasn't golden. Job persevered through his questions, depression, and frustration until his saw God for himself. There's more on this if you read chapter 3 of "Lessons from Dinosaurs and Dragons." You can find a link to it in my blog post entitled "In the Land of Uz."
Now on to the good stuff! There is a reason God uses questions instead of statements. It is one of the best ways to get us to change our minds. Humans are stubborn; when we think we're right, it is difficult to change our minds. He is getting us to challenge our own long held beliefs about Him. He's getting us to think, to come to the truth. He is "instructing with questioning." It is a tactic He uses throughout the Bible. We can avoid some of our combativeness by not entering into a yes/no war, but instead opening our minds to think about why we believe what we believe. Is it based on fact, or "what we've always known since the time of our fathers"?
In His answer to Job, you will hear many questions that sound something like this: "How do you know this is the way it works? Were you there? Have you done it like that before?" He isn't necessarily making a statement like "This is how it works." In fact, most of his questions directly address a statement Job or his friends used to "prove" God zaps and blesses based on behavior.
Job and his friends held the common theology of their era that God is "The Almighty" El Shaddi. He is the giver of life and the destroyer of it. Life is a series of "you reap what you sow." God's relationship to us is simply based on our behavior. If you do good, God loves you. If you do bad, God hates you. (El Shaddi is a true name of God; we will see later how the name El Shaddi fits in the picture of a loving and merciful God.)
For example, in chapter 12 Job says:
“But ask the
animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell
you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea
inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and
the breath of all mankind.” [NIV]
Job says we can ask the animals and birds to teach us about how God deals with His creation. Chapter 26 of Job has many more things Job thinks are proof of the way God deals with His creation listed: water, sea, sky, clouds, the horizon, pillars of the heavens, and even the moon. God begins his answer directly addressing these phenomena. God questions if Job and his friends have interpreted God's motives correctly.
Does Job really know how and why things
work? Does he have the wisdom of
God? Let’s look at what types of questions God started out
asking:
Were you there at
creation? Job’s internal answer would have to be, no.
Do you know why the
sea behaves like it does? The answer?
No.
Do you know how the
sun rises each morning? Answer: No.
Do you know how the
earth’s crust got its shape? No.
So, do you know how
I handle the wicked? I thought I did till you put it like that.
Do you know the
secrets of death and the dark places? No.
“If you know
everything there is to know on earth let’s hear it.”
Can you tell me
where light and dark come from since you’re so wise and aged?
No.
Job quickly remembered that being the wisest, greatest
man in all the East didn’t mean that he knew all there was to know. While he and his friends thought they had it
all worked out, they really knew so little of how things actually work.
The
next little bit is interesting. Before we read it, let’s look back to 37: 9-13. Elihu says,
“The tempest comes out from its
chamber, the cold from the driving winds. The
breath of God produces ice, and the broad
waters become frozen. He loads
the
clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them. At his direction
they swirl around over the
face of the whole earth to do whatever he
commands them. He brings the clouds to punish people, or to
water his earth
and show his love.” [NIV]
This is a great description of the immense storms Job would have experienced during the ice age following the Great Flood. This is
how Job and his friends believed God dealt with the earth. Bad=spanking.
Good=love and blessing. The same
basic thing is said throughout Job. God
asks how they know this is true.
Have you been to
the place where I store all this pent up judgment you’ve been describing?
Job’s answer would again have to be no. In fact, there’s no such thing as a storehouse
for snow or hail—Job could never have seen it.
The implication is that since Job doesn’t know how everything else works
he may not understand how judgment works either. In fact, he’s very wrong.
Who cuts a
channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a
land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass? [NIV]
What
an astounding question? It must have
felt like an explosion in his brain! Contrast
what God said with what Elihu said.
Elihu claims that God waters the earth to zap or to bless, to punish or
to show love. If God does what He does simply
for reward and punishment, then why does He bless a land where there isn’t a
soul to incur reward or punishment? Why does he "satisfy" and nourish a land where no one lives? Here we
can see the contrast between the human assumption at the time and what
God was trying to show them.
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