Job 38:1-41

38:1-41:6 | As Elihu “lost his patience” and broke into the interchange between his elders, so now the Lord “loses His patience” and breaks in as well.

38:1-40:2 | Job’s complaints that he had no mediator between himself and God are met in Yahweh’s first speech as the Lord counters with the truth of Job’s comparable insignificance. The glory of the story is that God Himself did prepare the very Mediator that Job requested – in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

38:1-3 | Job received his audience with God, and now he would be subject to divine cross-examination. The tempest he feared in 9:17 had appeared, but rather than an object of judgment, it was God answering Job’s questions out of the whirlwind – just as He spoke to Moses (Ex. 19:16-17). Likewise, Ezekiel saw the glory of God in the storm (Ezekiel 1-2).

38:4-11 | God challenged Job’s wisdom immediately with an inquiry about Job’s lack of omnipotence and omnipresence. Proverbs 3:19-20 and 8:22-31 reveal the connection between God’s wisdom and creation.

38:8-9 | God constrains and clothes even the most powerful forces of the sea – far beyond anything a mere mortal can do.

38:12-41 | The steady flow of questions has obvious answers, exposing Job’s folly in presuming he could set God straight. The Creator-creature distinction is undisputable.

38:22-30 | The earlier logic of Job and his friends suggested that weather occurs in direct relationship to good or evil actions. God exposed the flawed thinking of the retribution principle by asking about rain in places that are uninhabited.

38:32-33 | The Great Bear with its cubs refers to the constellation Ursa Major. God questioned Job’s knowledge of the operations of the heavens, further exposing Job’s inability to speak to how the world operates.

38:33 | God is not speaking of astrology, but astronomy. Astronomy is an evidence-based study of the stars and the planets, but unlike astrology, it does not seek to interpret world events in light of their placement or alignment.

38:39-39:30 | God switches His discourse from His control of the cosmos to His provision for even the wild animals (Matt. 6:26).

39:13-18 | In His description of the ostrich, God emphasized that He distributes different traits to various animals – giving wisdom to some and withholding it from others. The Lord is the source of wisdom within all creation.

39:30 | Eleven of God’s creatures – six beasts and five birds – are presented for Job to explain. God cycled through all of these subjects, and when He finished, Job had not answered one question.