Job: Chapters 36 to 42

Last time, Job contended with Scrappy Doo Elihu.  In this section, he finally meets his match - God, himself. 

CHAPTER 36

Wanna know why I think Elihu is a young punk asshole?  Check out this opening line to Chapter 36: “Wait a little and I will instruct you.”  Gee – thanks, Junior!  Feel free to instructor your elders on how the life works, now that you have it all figured out.  He tells Job that God is great but not disdainful – yeah, kid, but you are disdainful. 

Elihu’s got-it-all-figured-out answer continued to be primarily the same tired argument we heard from the friends.  God looks after the just and when he punishes someone, it is to instruct them and improve them.  Yeah, guess what?  That argument has nothing to do with Job.  God punished Job to win a bet with Satan, and only then found out that his test of Job’s morality turned into a test of God’s morality.  Oops. 

I will say this much, near the end Elihu begins making a legitimate point: “See, God is great beyond our knowledge, the number of his years past searching out.” OK, if you want to say that God is beyond our comprehension and that we can never fully understand him – there’s a legitimate argument.  It certainly sounds better than claiming that earth is a moral wonderland where everyone gets what they deserve.  That’s clearly bunk.

CHAPTER 37

Scrappy Doo finally draws to a close.  Some of this goes along with the decent point he made at the end: “Do you know how God lays his command upon them, and makes the light shine forth from his clouds?”  God is so beyond you, chump.  And you get some of his attitude problem: “Listen to this, Job!”  The exclamation point isn’t because he’s exciting, but because he’s a shouting, better-than-you twerp. 

Finally, Scrappy Doo shuts up.  And that sets us up for the main event – God himself versus Job.

CHAPTER 38

Now God shows up.  It’s his big speech from the whirlwind – and it’s one of the greatest, most awesome speeches ever.  It’s awesome in the literal definition of the word: marked by or inspiring a feeling of reverence and dread mingled with wonder.  Yeah, that’s this speech all right.

God bursts out of the whirlwind and immediately challenges Job.  No pussyfooting around when you’re the Lord: “Who is this who darkens counsel with words of ignorance?”  You know, when one of the friends says something like that, they come off like jerks.  When Scrappy Doo says something like this, you comes off like an insolent punk.  But this is God.  And when God talks down to you …yeah, OK.  God should be talking down to you.  Because he’s God and you’re not.  What other direction what he talk to in order to reach you?

God lays into Job: “I will question you, and you tell me the answers!”  Then them come: “Where were you when I founded the earth?”  Yeah, Job – where were you then?  Job is the punk here, isn’t he? 

And God continues – who determined the size of the earth?  Who measured it? Hey Mr. Thinks-He-Can-Judge-Me, have you ever commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?  Have you ever walked the oceans deep or been in charged of the gates of death? 

God takes to open mocking of Job: “You know, because you were born then, and the number of your days is great!”  - Oh, wait – that’s right – you weren’t there!  Your life is a but a fleeting instant of My Almighty existence.  Fool! 

The stars, the sky, the clouds, the everything – that’s all God.  It ain’t any Job. 

God is going so completely off on Job, you half-expect him to say, “Where were you when I fucked your mother?  And your wife?  And your daughters?”  Hell, the only reason he probably doesn’t say that is because that would be so incredibly beneath God.  He doesn’t need to do that – he made the dawn. 

CHAPTER 39

God continued.  Do you know when mountain goats are born?  Do you watch over deer in their birth pangs?  It’s an animal-centric section in which God tells Job of all the things Job couldn’t even dream of doing, that are such second-nature stuff to God. 

God goes off about an ostrich for a second, and how they abandon their eggs once their hatched.  You know why they do that, Job?  Because I didn’t give them any wisdom, that’s why.  So what’s your excused for being such a dipshit?

This all comes from Me, Job.  It’s all Me, motherfucker!

I’ll note one thing – as impressive and amazing as God’s statement is, it never really contradicts Job’s main argument throughout.   God never does get into a moral argument about what has happened to Job.  His argument is much simpler: who the flying fuck do you think you are to question me?  Please remember, Job never questioned God’s power; just his morality.  And now God is bringing his full power to completely blow away Job’s moral qualms. 

CHAPTER 40

Job finally gets in a word edgewise at the outset of this chapter.  And he’s respond about how you’d expect: he all but wets his pants.  “Look, I am of little account; what can I answer you?  I put my hand over my moth.  I have spoken once, I will not reply twice, but I will do so no more.”  He’s immediately giving in.  Can you blame him?  It’s one thing to rail against God in the abstract – but what happens when he shows up in your backyard and dares you to talk shit about him to his face? 

That said, you do have to wonder what would’ve happened if Job had insisted in pressing his case to God as he’d done with everyone else?  If he insisted that God justify what had happened on moral grounds, then what?  God would probably just continue to overwhelm Job, but it’s worth noting God’s winning this argument with his power, not by arguing Job’s moral questions.

God goes on with more questions designed to badger Job into silence.  Sure, Job is already been badgered into silence, but there is nothing preventing the all mighty from running up the score.

Then it gets a little weird.  Throughout Job, there have references to sea monsters like the Leviathan and the Behemoth.  Now you get an extended description of the Behemoth from God.  The point is – this thing is really freaky for humans, but it’s just a spec to God. 

Still, it’s weird to see an impressive tour de force smackdown get sidetracked by a description of a fictional monster.

CHAPTER 41

A lot of this is also about God’s favorite monster, the Behemoth.  Uh, OK.  God notes: “No one is fierce enough to arouse him; who then dares stand before me?”  God is so beyond you, that he won’t even bother comparing himself to you.  He’ll compare you to this other thing that’s so much greater than you – and remember, it ain’t shit compared to God.

So that’s it.  God basically drops the mike and walks off the stage.  He’s said his piece, and silences the opponents.  Fear, wonder and dread are all rolled together – God is awesome.  Compared to him, nothing else is awesome.

CHAPTER 42

So Job – what do you have to say for yourself now?  Well, once he’s done wetting his pants, he completely caves, withdraws all his complaints and accepts God’s will.

Again, at no point has Job’s moral arguments been rebutted.  They’ve just been swept aside, because something as impressive as God is too high for the rest of us to deal with.  Earlier he’d sworn that he’d make his moral case to God himself.  That’s easy to do when it’s all theoretical, now isn’t it?  And Job probably imagined the meeting happening on his schedule.  That isn’t what happened here. 

Mostly though, God’s big timing of Job is so effective because really – if God can’t big time someone, then who can?

Job immediately repents and then God does something rather fascinating.  He not only lets Job back into his good graces, but then starts talking smack to Job’s trio of dogshit friends.  God says, “You have not spoken rightly concerning me” to Job. 

OK, that’s fascinating.  Because they were the ones justifying God’s ways to Job on purely moral grounds, and here God is saying that’s wrong.  God never did deny Job’s moral claims.  While it’s concerning that God never answered those claims, it sure is nice of him to clearly refute the notion that this world works perfectly according to moral laws.  That’s clearly not the case, and even God now admits it.  This admission might be problematic if you’re a believer, but for me it’s just a nice honest assessment from God.  And since it’s come right after he’s already won the battle, he doesn’t have to do it.  But he wants to.

So the friends repent to Job.  Then God gives Job twice the wealth he had before.  Oh, and he also gives Job 10 new kids.  Yeah, I have a real problem with this.  Want to replace cattle with new cattle?  Fine by me.  But aren’t people supposed to be unique and special?  Aren’t we all made in God’s image?  Shouldn’t the death of 10 kids be something more than a broken glass window that is still under warranty?  This is one part of the morality tale that really bugs me.

But that’s it.  God wins the argument over Job not on points but just on sheer awesomeness.  Because he’s so incredibly God like that.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Wow.  What can I say?  It’s too long and far too repetitive.  There is barely any action – and essentially none in the last 40 chapters.  But this book sure is something.

On the one hand, it’s easy to attack.  This is supposed to be the Bible book that explains why bad things happen to good people.  That is, after all, the central question within it.  But the book doesn't answer it.  The main moral argument against God is just swatted aside.

So you can call the book a cop out.  You can malign it like that. 

But I find myself having a very different reaction.  Rather than boo it for copping out, I’m impressed by it for facing reality.  You want an easy answer to why bad things happen to good people who don’t deserve them?  Well guess what – there is no answer.  How can there be an answer?  The world doesn’t work according to the laws of morality.  And attempt to argue that it is just insults the reader and the believer.  The friends and Scrappy Doo try to argue that, and that’s why they are so hard to like.  In fact, the Bible has God side against the friends at the end.

We’d like the world to work according to moral laws.  And if God is supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and moral, you’d think it would.  Yet the Bible acknowledges that this isn’t the case.  That takes guts for the Bible to do it.  That took guts for the author to write it and it takes guts for the Bible compilers to deem this book worthy of inclusion.  They admit that this question is ultimately unanswerable.

So they fall back on the best reply they have.  No, the world isn’t perfectly morally righteous – but who are we to tell God how to do his job?  Who are we to claim that we know better than God?  He’s just so beyond us, that questioning him is laughable.  So you should just accept God.  You have reasons not to, but that’s why it’s called faith – you need to trust God out of faith.

It’s a very powerful Bible book.  It might be the deepest book in the entire Bible.  Though it’s flawed, it sure is something.

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