Today, I am reading and commenting on Job 38-42.

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Today’s passage begins with God responding to Job’s entreaties. He begins by asking Job questions which indicate that Job, and no other human, can know enough to expect to be able to understand the reasons why God does what He does.  We were not there when God created the world, nor do we have power over the oceans or the spinning of the earth.  There are so many things which we do not know, which we cannot know, that we do not have the ability to judge God’s actions.  When God speaks to him, Job responds by saying that he spoke out of turn and will now be silent, but that was not the response which God desired.  So God goes on to show Job further that he did not know enough to ask the right questions.  After God speaks a second time, Job realized that he was talking about things which were beyond his understanding.  He had not truly known God, Job had been speaking while only knowing about God from hearsay.  When God made Himself known to Job, Job repented and listened.  Yet, even though Job needed to repent of his questioning of God, God said that he had spoken what was right and his friends, excluding Elihu, had not.  Job was not wrong to question God and his friends were wrong to condemn him.

I want to take a moment and think about the description given of Behemoth and Leviathan.  I have read, and heard, that scholars think these represent chaos and the power of nature and of evil that only God can control.  I do think that they do represent that here in the Book of Job, but the initial description of each seems to describe a creature which the writer has seen (or, perhaps, heard described).  The more I read the Book of Job the more I am convinced that Behemoth and Leviathan, as described here, are both actual creatures and mythological monsters.  Perhaps the description comes from bones uncovered or perhaps from witnessing a creature which we are unaware was alive at that time.  To me, the description of Behemoth seems too detailed, and not fantastical enough, to not be based on a real creature.  Leviathan is less so, but still seems to be about a real creature.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.