How To Decorate The Scene Of Job From The Bible

Book of Job: God Gives Job a Virtual Tour of His Wise World

God Knows Exactly What He's Doing

by Tim Mackie 4 years ago

In this blog, we'll explore the final capacity of the book of Job, which are puzzling and profound. To gain some context for this essay, it will help to read our previous blog, where we looked at the book's introduction (Job 1-2), and the dialogue Task has with his friends near the meaning of his suffering. Eventually, Chore and his friends have nil to say to each other anymore (Task iii-27), and Job takes upward his final position before God in chapters 29-31. He laments the days of his past when his body was healthy and his life filled with family and friends (Job 29:1-11). His present suffering is no longer endurable (Job 30:24-31), and he demands that God provide an explanation (Job 31:35-37).

And so, after enduring the long-winded words of Elihu (Job 32-37), God himself speaks up and responds to Task in a series of speeches that form the climax of the book so far (Job 38-41). God offers two responses. The first offers a "virtual tour" of the cosmos (Chore 38-39). God asks Job all of these impossible questions, like:

"Where were y'all when I Iaid the foundations of the earth?" (38:4). "Have you lot ever in your days commanded the forenoon light?" (38:12). "Where does light live, or where does darkness reside?" (38:19). "Can you lead out a constellation in its season?" (38:32).

And of course, the correct response to all these questions is for Job to say, "No I don't command the universe. I don't know the answer to any of these questions. No, I've only lived a brusque time…."

God's First Point

The bespeak seems to be this: Job claimed that God has fallen asleep at the cycle in running the universe, and because of this divine neglect he'due south had to endure unjust suffering. God's response is indirect, and it shows how his attention is really on every single detail of the operations of the universe. In fact, God is privy to all kinds of perspectives and details that Task has never even imagined and never will.

Following the cosmic tour, God takes Job on a respective virtual tour of role of the world he actually does inhabit, the earth (Task 38:39-39:30). He asks Job if he'south always provided food for lions, or seen an isolated mount goat give birth? No? Well, perhaps Job understands the feeding patterns of wild donkeys that roam the hills, or ostriches and their strange ways of caring for their young. Maybe Job and God tin have a stimulating conversation about Job'south knowledge of state of war horses, and the aerodynamics of an eagle soaring on thermal air currents. Equally information technology turns out, Job doesn't know as much every bit he thought, even about the earth he lives in and should be familiar with. At the end of God's invitations to dialogue, Chore comes up short in his starting time response:

So Task answered the Lord and said,"Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to Yous? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, and I will not answer; Even twice, and I will add together nothing more than."

Job 40:three-5

God has fabricated his first point. Task's many accusations of divine fail or incompetence take failed. As information technology turns out, God is intimately familiar with every molecule and creature in his world and knows more than about them than Chore can embrace. This is an important moment in the story so far. Whatsoever reasons God has for having immune Task's suffering, neglect is not a viable option. Job never does find out why he suffered and neither does the reader. The goal of the book was never to offer us that information. Rather, the showtime divine speech makes clear that God does know everything that transpires in his world, and his perspective on the universe has a wider range than any human being will e'er have.

When Task critiqued God'south knowledge and ability, it was based on the limited horizons of his life feel. His brain has but a finite capacity to understand cause and effect from his point of view. God'southward perspective is infinitely broader, which means he may allow or orchestrate events that from one perspective look morally suspicious, or merely plain wrong. However, from a wider perspective, those same events await entirely different. It's similar to a child observing their parent throw a chair at a window to shatter information technology. From a six-year-former's bespeak of view, this is precisely the kind of behavior that would earn a time-out, grounding, or worse. Only if the parent knows there's smoke coming from the adjacent room and that this window was the only way out, of a sudden the broken window becomes a life-saving escape road. The parent has a wider range of available information that makes the same action (throwing a chair out the window) become the morally necessary thing to do.

This seems to exist the point of God's first speech. At that place may be evil and suffering in God's good earth that from i perspective may seem needless, tragic, and unjust. Only from a wider vantage point, in that location may be a vast network of factors that make the same tragedy fit into a larger cause-effect pattern that brings well-nigh the saving of many lives. It'southward impossible for any human to know such things or take such a perspective. This means all of our claims to evaluate God's rule over homo history are always limited, and volition therefore fall short. I don't accept a wide enough vantage indicate to accuse God of incompetence, and I never volition.

This isn't a particularly pleasant fact to realize, for Job or whatsoever of us. It'due south an inescapable reality of existence human. We are finite, and our brains and sensory abilities are not designed to have in the information necessary to make evaluations of God's choices. We're not God. We're human.

God's Second Point

Subsequently Job confesses his airs, God responds again, this time inviting Job to take up the divine throne and run the universe for a day. Let Job enforce the strict "retribution principle" he thinks God ought to use in directing the cosmos:

"Clothe yourself with honor and majesty. Pour out your anger to overflowing, And look on everyone who is proud, and make him low. Wait on anybody who is proud, and humble him, and tread down the wicked where they stand up."

Job xl:ten-12

Chore will observe the task impossible. It would crave a second-by-2d micromanagement approach that would essentially consequence in no more human beings on the planet. Chore doesn't know what he's request for when he demands that God uses the strict principle of retribution to reward every expert deed and punish every bad one. In theory it sounds right, but in execution, it would create a universe where no man would always have a chance for trial and error or, more chiefly, for growth and change.

This leads to God'south final response. He introduces Job to two fantastic creatures, one called "behemoth" (Task 40:15), and the other "Leviathan" (Job 41:ane). Both are Hebrew words spelled with English messages. Behemoth is a common discussion for domesticated animals, like cows (Deuteronomy 5:14), goats (Lev 1:two), or fifty-fifty horses (Nehemiah 2:12). But in this instance, the word describes a river animate being who lives in the reeds with a gigantic tail and thick bones. It sounds similar a hippo with a dinosaur tail, and since the mid-1600s, this has been a common estimation. It probable refers to an animal that was little-known to the author, and so was able to take on mythical proportions. Perchance it refers to a now-extinct mammal. We'll simply never know for certain.

Knowing the specific animal volition not get u.s.a. closer to God's point in bringing up Behemoth in the first place! God's purpose in mentioning this animal is its meaning. Here is a gigantic and dangerous beast that lives in splendid isolation from whatever human being interference. God loves it. It'due south called "the chief of God'southward ways" in the globe (Task 40:19). It'south only the set up-upwards animate being, leading us to an even more fantastic and powerful beast, Leviathan. God loves to brag about Leviathan ("I cannot keep silent about its limbs!" Job 41:12). We know from the many other biblical and ancient near eastern texts that Leviathan was a common figure in the people's imaginations of that day. It lived in the deep oceans, leaving a huge wake of churning froth (Task 41:31-32). Its skin was impenetrable to human weapons (Task 41:xv-17), and it breathed burn (Task 41:18-20). Like Behemoth, we know the Leviathan was a creature living inside the boundaries of the existent and mythical for ancient people. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Babylonian literature, Leviathan is a mythical symbol of violence and chaos in God's world (see Ps 74:14 and Isa 27:1). This concept certainly emerged from the sporadic contact aboriginal sailors had with immense, dangerous ocean creatures that were petty-known and profoundly feared. The biblical authors, including the author of Job, had done deep theological reflection on the existence of such creatures in God'due south world. Leviathan poses no threat to God and is certainly not a rival god, as the Egyptians believed (come across the docile Leviathan in Ps 104:26). All of this background helps united states of america understand God'south bespeak in bringing up Leviathan.

God asks Task if he is able to pull in Leviathan with a angling pole, or have information technology habitation as a pet (Job 41:1-vii). God counsels Job to do no such thing considering Leviathan is the kind of beast that will bite off your arm without a second thought (Chore 41:8). And, notice this important point, Leviathan is non evil or bad. Nowhere in this voice communication is Leviathan called wicked or unfortunate or described as a sad outcome of sin or the autumn (referring to Gen iii). Just the reverse, Leviathan is love by God, a wonderful fauna of great power and might. God is proud of this beast, and apparently, thinks it belongs in this globe. Merely don't touch it or it will annihilate you.

This is fascinating. Here is a beast that will ruin your life if y'all happen upon it, but God loves it. Why does God even bring this upwards at all? Apparently, God's world is ordered plenty for the man project to flourish, simply chaos has not been eradicated entirely from God's world. The tohu-va-vohu (Hebrew for "formless and void" in Gen one:2) wilderness wasteland of Genesis 1 wasn't eliminated when God made the world. Rather, a infinite for garden-order was carved out and given over to humans who were deputed to spread that divine social club farther out. Leviathan is out there, raw and dangerous, and yous simply might meet it. It has the ability to wreak havoc on your life, just what you cannot conclude from a run-in with Leviathan is that God is punishing you, or that this animate being is evil. Neither is the case. Yous simply bumped into Leviathan, and it unleashed chaos, tooth, and claw into your life, and your body.

The Overall Point

Hebrew Bible scholar John Walton puts it this fashion in his commentary on Job:

God's respond to Job does non explain why righteous people suffer, because the creation is non designed to foreclose righteous people from suffering. Job questioned God'south design, and God responded that Job had insufficient cognition to practise then. Task questioned God's justice, and God responded that Job needs to trust him, and that he should not arrogantly think that God can be domesticated to conform to Job'southward feeble perceptions of how the cosmos should run. God asks for trust, not agreement, and states the cosmos is founded on his wisdom, non his justice. [adjusted quote]

Human pain and suffering does not ever happen every bit a clear event of anyone's sin. There may be a reason, but at that place may not be. God himself said that Job'due south suffering was not warranted for "any reason" (Job two:3). The conversation with the satan certainly did non provide a reason. That dialogue simply prepare the stage for the real question of the volume: Does God operate the universe according to the principle of retribution?

The respond to this story is no. Sometimes terrible things happen for no reason discernible to any human. The point is that God's globe is very good, but information technology'south non perfect, or ever condom. It has social club and beauty, but it's also wild and sometimes unsafe, like the two fantastic creatures he avows. So back to the big question of Job's or anyone'south suffering: why is there suffering in the earth? Whether from earthquakes, or wild fauna, or from 1 some other? God doesn't explain why. He says we live in an incredibly complex, amazing world that at this phase at least, is not designed to prevent suffering.

That's God's response. Job challenged God's justice, and God responded that Job doesn't have sufficient cognition about our complex universe to make such a merits. Job demanded a total explanation from God, and what God asks Job for is trust in his wisdom and character. And then Job responds with humility and repentance. He apologizes for accusing God of injustice and acknowledges that he's overstepped his bounds.

All of a sudden, the volume concludes with a brusk epilogue (Job 42). Commencement, God says that the friends were wrong; their ideas about God'southward justice were too simple, not truthful to the complication of the world or God's wisdom. And so God says that Chore has spoken rightly about him. This is surprising, simply it tin can't apply to everything Chore said. Even though Chore drew hasty and incorrect conclusions, God still approves of Job'due south wrestling. God approves of how Task approached him honestly with all his emotion, only wanting to talk to God himself. God says that the right style to process through these issues is through the struggle of prayer. The book concludes with Job having his health, family, and wealth restored, not as a advantage for expert behavior, but but as a generous gift from God. And that'southward the end.

So, the book doesn't unlock the puzzle of why bad things happen to good people. Rather, it does invite us to trust God's wisdom when we run into suffering rather than trying to figure out the "reasons" for it.

When we search for reasons, we tend to either simplify God like the friends or, like Chore, charge God based on limited prove. The book invites us to honestly bring our pain and grief to God and to trust that he cares, realizing that he knows exactly what he's doing.

Source: https://bibleproject.com/blog/gods-gives-job-tour-wise-world/

Posted by: hernandezforegly.blogspot.com