Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 5.2
What you will learn
- Summarize what God says to Job from the whirlwind and what God does not say.
- Describe the main interpretations of the divine speeches.
- Explain Job’s response and the difficulty in translating Job 42:6.
- Evaluate the epilogue, including God’s verdict on the friends and Job’s restoration.
The big idea
After chapters of demanding an answer, Job gets one, but not the kind he asked for. God speaks from the whirlwind, and asks him a long series of questions about the making and keeping of the world. He does not explain Job’s suffering, and he does not accuse Job of sin. Job answers with humility and a changed vision. The epilogue then declares that the friends have not spoken rightly of God and that Job has, and restores Job’s fortunes. Readers differ on what the speeches mean, and on whether the ending helps or troubles the book’s message.
Key terms
- Theophany
- A visible or audible appearance of God, as in the whirlwind in Job 38:1 or the burning bush in Exodus 3.
- Whirlwind
- The storm out of which God speaks. The Hebrew word can also be rendered tempest or storm wind.
- Behemoth and Leviathan
- Two great creatures described in Job 40 and 41. Interpreters take them as natural animals, as symbols of chaos, or as both.
- Rhetorical question
- A question asked for effect, not for information. Most of God’s questions to Job are of this kind.
- Chaos
- In ancient thought, the unformed and threatening forces of sea and darkness that creation holds in check.
- Restoration
- The return of Job’s health, wealth and a new family in the epilogue.
- Vindication
- The public declaration that a person was in the right.
Background
Throughout the dialogue Job has wished to confront God and put his case. In chapters 29 to 31 he makes a final speech, listing his good deeds and calling for God to answer. Chapter 38 begins: “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1). The long awaited answer is there.
It is not what the reader expects. God does not reveal the scene in heaven, and he does not say that Job’s suffering was a test. He does not explain, defend or apologize. Whether the speeches are an answer to Job’s question, a refusal of it, or a change of the question is the main topic of this lesson.
This lesson continues from the previous one. As before, the book is poetry and the best readers hold their conclusions with some modesty.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The questions
God begins: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” and says, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me” (Job 38:2-3). He then asks, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4). The questions range over the sea, the dawn, the snow, the stars, the mountain goat and the wild ox, the horse and the hawk. The tone is sometimes ironic, and the picture of creation is bold, wild and not centered on human beings.
Many details matter. God cares for places where no person lives: rain “on the earth, where no man is” (Job 38:26). He delights in creatures that humans cannot tame. The world is large, strange and beautiful, and not arranged only for human comfort. Job is brought to see the extent of the order and care he cannot see.
Step 2: Behemoth and Leviathan
Near the end God describes two great creatures. Behemoth is a mighty land beast (Job 40:15-24). Leviathan is a sea monster that no human can subdue (Job 41). In other parts of the Old Testament, Leviathan is a figure of the forces of chaos that God defeats (Psalm 74:14; Isaiah 27:1). Some interpreters read the passage as a statement that God holds in check powers of evil that Job cannot even face. Others read the creatures as wonders of nature.
The reading matters for the problem of evil. If the monsters represent evil, God’s speech says that the world contains forces of disorder, that God is master of them, and that Job cannot be. If they represent nature’s wildness, it says that creation includes the dangerous as well as the gentle. The text does not choose.
Step 3: How readers interpret the answer
One reading is that God defends his wisdom and power. Job’s complaint presumed that he could judge the justice of God’s rule, and God shows that Job knows too little of the whole. This is close to skeptical theism in the previous module. A second reading stresses that God appears. Job asked for a meeting, and he gets it. Eleonore Stump argues that the main point is the personal presence of God, which is a greater good than an explanation. A third reading, favored by some liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez, stresses that God’s speech shows that the world is not ordered by retribution alone and that God’s justice is bound up with grace, and calls for faith in the God of the poor.
A critic’s reading is that God changes the subject. Job asked why the innocent suffer, and God replies with a show of power. Some find this the book’s most troubling feature. Defenders reply that the speech does answer something: it says that the order of the world is not as the friends said, and it does not accuse Job. The text allows both reactions, and a student should state each fairly.
Step 4: Job’s reply
Job answers in two short speeches. First: “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth” (Job 40:4). Then, after God’s second speech: “I know that thou canst do every thing... I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:2-6).
The last verse is hard to translate. The Hebrew words rendered I abhor myself have no stated object, and many scholars prefer something like I withdraw what I said, or I am consoled concerning dust and ashes. Some read the verse as repentance for sin. Others read it as Job’s yielding of his case. The change that matters is the contrast between hearing and seeing. Job has met the God he had only heard of, and that changes what he demands.
Step 5: The epilogue
In the epilogue God speaks to Eliphaz: “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath” (Job 42:7). The friends are to offer sacrifices, and Job is to pray for them, which he does. Then Job’s fortunes are restored, with twice his former property, new children and a long life (Job 42:10-17).
Readers disagree about the epilogue. Some say it betrays the book’s lesson, because it seems to confirm retribution after all: the righteous are rewarded in the end. Others say it shows God’s gracious generosity, and not a payment. Many note that the new children do not replace the old, and that the book does not suggest otherwise. For Christians, the ending prompts the reflection that God vindicates the righteous sufferer, and points to Christ’s resurrection. The book leaves the reader with an unresolved sorrow and a gracious conclusion at once.
- What do God’s questions to Job suggest about the world and about Job’s place in it?
- Why do you think God does not tell Job about the scene in heaven?
- Is the divine speech an answer to Job’s question, a refusal, or something else? Argue your view.
- How does the change from hearing to seeing in Job 42:5 affect the meaning of the book?
- What does it mean that God says Job has spoken rightly, when Job accused God of injustice?
- Does the restoration in the epilogue strengthen or weaken the book’s message?
Examples
Rain where no one lives
In Job 38:25-27 God asks who sends rain to satisfy the desolate wasteland where no human lives. The image shows a God who cares for creation for its own sake. A reader who has suffered may find in it a surprising comfort: Job is not the center of the universe, and yet is addressed by name.
A letter from an author
A woman tells how her friend lost a child, and at the funeral nobody could explain. Later the friend said that what helped was not an answer but the feeling of being met, as if God had come near. This is a common report, and it fits the reading that the whirlwind speech gives presence in place of a solution. (A constructed example.)
Two endings
A student reads Job and feels that the restoration ruins it, since the dead children cannot be replaced. Another student feels that it is the only fitting ending, since God’s grace answers Job’s loss. The disagreement is the kind scholars have as well.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic commentators from Gregory the Great to modern scholars read God’s speech as a call to humility and faith, and the epilogue as a sign of God’s reward. The Catechism cites Job as one who, despite his suffering, held that God is just. Modern Catholic scholars such as Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest, read it in light of the cry of the poor.
Orthodox
The Orthodox read Job as a type of Christ and a figure of patient faith, and the vision of God as a foretaste of the knowledge of God given in Christ. The Septuagint addition that Job will rise with those whom the Lord raises is in keeping with this. The apophatic tradition reads God’s speech as a lesson in the limits of speech about God.
Protestant
Calvin read the speech as teaching that God’s judgments are righteous though hidden, and that the proper response is humility. Many modern Protestant interpreters stress God’s presence and care, and the verdict on the friends as a warning against glib explanations. Evangelical and mainline scholars differ in how they read the epilogue.
Jewish and critical readings
Jewish interpreters, from the Talmud to modern writers, have read the speech as God’s assertion of a creation not centered on humanity, as a rebuke or as a comfort. Some critics, including skeptical ones, say that God’s answer is an evasion and that Job’s submission shows the weakness of the book’s solution. Others admire its refusal to offer a formula.
Why it matters
The divine speeches model both how to take the problem of evil seriously and how not to claim too much. The book tells the sufferer that complaint is permitted, that God hears, and that no tidy explanation is promised. It also warns the comforter. For a student of the problem of evil, Job is a text to return to again and again.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: God answers Job by saying that he sinned.
Correction: God does not accuse Job of sin. He says Job spoke rightly of him, in contrast to the friends. The question is how to read Job’s repentance in 42:6, which is itself disputed.
Misunderstanding: The whirlwind speech proves that might makes right.
Correction: That is the critic’s reading. Defenders say that the speech stresses God’s wisdom and care as well as power, and that the point is not to silence Job but to bring him into a larger vision.
Misunderstanding: Job’s restoration shows that good people are always rewarded.
Correction: The epilogue is a story of grace to one person. The book as a whole has just refuted the view that reward and punishment follow goodness and sin in this life, so the ending should not be read as restoring it.
Knowledge check
What does God say to Job from the whirlwind?
God asks him a series of questions about creation: where he was when the earth was founded, who commands the sea, the stars and the animals. He describes Behemoth and Leviathan. He does not explain Job’s suffering or accuse him of sin. The effect is to show Job the vastness of God’s wisdom and care.
What are the main interpretations of the speeches?
One reading sees a defense of God’s wisdom and a limit on human judgment. A second sees the gift of God’s presence as more than an explanation. A third sees a reordering of the world beyond retribution and anthropocentrism. Critics see an evasion. The text supports several of these, and none excludes the others entirely.
Why is Job 42:6 difficult?
The Hebrew has no clear object for the verb that the King James renders I abhor myself, and the verb for repent can also mean be consoled or change one’s mind. Scholars therefore translate it in different ways, from repentance for sin to withdrawal of the complaint. The main change in Job is from hearing about God to seeing him.
How should the epilogue be read?
God declares that the friends have not spoken rightly and that Job has, and restores Job’s fortunes. Some think this undoes the book’s rejection of retribution. Others think it shows grace and not payment, and that the book has already refuted retribution. The new children do not erase the loss of the old, and the text does not claim they do.
Think it through
- Would you prefer to receive an explanation for your suffering or the presence of God? Why?
- What do you make of God’s saying that Job spoke rightly although Job accused him?
- How might the epilogue sound to someone who has lost a child and had no restoration?
Independent assignment
Reading the whirlwind
In your own notebook, write about 450 words. Read Job 38 and Job 42 in the King James Version. List five questions God asks. Say what each shows about the world. Then write three or four sentences on which interpretation of the speech from this lesson you find most convincing, and one on the interpretation you find hardest to accept. Keep the work private and read as slowly as you like.
Further study
- Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering Read the chapters on Job and the divine speeches.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Problem of Evil Look for discussion of Job in the section on responses to evil.
- Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection Read sayings on trial and patience for the monastic use of Job.
- Job 38:1 The LORD answers Job out of the whirlwind.
- Job 42:7 God says the friends have not spoken of him rightly, as Job has.
- Psalm 74:14 God breaking the heads of Leviathan, as an image of victory over chaos.