From our perspective today, it’s easy to look at the questions that God had asked Job and realize how little a man like Job, living thousands of years ago, could understand about the created world. It wasn’t until the A.D. 1500s, for instance, that humans (at least some of them) finally understood that the motion … Continue reading –>
Read Job 38:4–41. What questions does God ask Job, and what is the purpose of those questions? If Job expected some detailed explanation about why all these calamities happened to him, he didn’t get it. Instead, what he got was a flow of rhetorical questions contrasting the Lord in His creative might to the transience … Continue reading –>
After what must have seemed to Job like a very long silence, God finally speaks to him, even if what He first said might not have been what Job wanted to hear. What was the first question that God asked Job, and what was implied in that question? Job 38:2. All through the Bible we … Continue reading –>
Read Job 38:1. What happens here that is different from everything else in all the other dialogues? Suddenly and unexpectedly, the Lord now appears in the book of Job, the first time since Job 2:6—“And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life’ ” (NKJV). Nothing really prepares … Continue reading –>
Read for This Week’s Study: Job 38-39, John 1:29, Matt. 16:13, 1 Cor. 1:18–27, Job 40:1–4, Job 42:1–6, Luke 5:1–8. Memory Text: “ ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding’ ” (Job 38:4, NKJV). Whatever their differences, the characters in the book of Job had one … Continue reading –>
Further Thought: In a discussion concerning the question of faith and reason, author John Hedley Brooke wrote about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and his attempt to understand the limits of human knowledge, especially when it came to the working of God. For Kant, “the question of justifying the ways of God to man … Continue reading –>
Certainly the primary characters in the book of Job, as mere mortals seeing “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12), were working from a very limited perspective, a very limited understanding of the nature of the physical world, much less the spiritual one. Interesting, too, that in all these debates about the evil that befell … Continue reading –>
All four of these men, believers in God, believers in a God of justice, found themselves in a dilemma: how to explain Job’s situation in a rational and logical manner that was consistent with their understanding of the character of God. Unfortunately, they ended up taking a position that turned out basically wrong in their … Continue reading –>
A lot of commentary has been written over the ages about Elihu and his speech, some seeing it a major turning point in the direction of the dialogue. Yet, it’s really not that easy to see where Elihu adds anything so new or so groundbreaking that it changes the dynamic of the dialogue. Instead, he … Continue reading –>
From Job chapters 26 to 31, the tragic hero of this story, Job, gives his final speech to the three men. Though eloquent and passionate, he basically repeats the argument he has been making all along: I do not deserve what has been happening to me. Period. Again, Job represents so much of humanity in … Continue reading –>
