Job 38: 1-3, Stand up and answer!
Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
"Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
YHWH appears out as a storm and addresses the human beings. They have all been speaking on things they don't understand and so, like a teacher might speak to a student, they are going to be told to stand up and answer some questions.
In the throne room scenes of chapters 1 and 2, God is called YHWH, the name He revealed to the Israelites. But in the discourses between Job and his companions (with one exception), the name YHWH is not used. Now, when YHWH Himself approaches the mortals and addresses them, He is called by this precise, personal name. This is surely a deliberate choice by the author. The humans have been discussing a God they vaguely know; here, finally, YHWH shows up.
(The one exception to the absence of "YHWH" in the discourses occurs in Job 12: 9 where YHWH appears in the Masoretic Text. Hartley says that the occurrence of the divine name there "is usually evaluated as an error" by a scribe.)
Job 38: 4-7, Where were you when the morning stars sang?
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone--
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
The questions, all rhetorical, all assuming a negative answer, challenge the mortals to comprehend Creation. In the rhetoric of the ancient Near East, the creation of the earth was a dramatic act of architecture, measuring every aspect of it, setting it on a secure foundation, while all of nature worshiped. Commentators disagree as to whether the author means literal stars in the last verse, or if "morning stars" parallels "angels." (I imagine, poetically, all of Nature "singing" at Creation, even rejoicing over the Big Bang and everything that follows. In The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis, has the Great Lion, Aslan, creating Narnia:
"In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.... Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out—single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing."
Job 38: 8-11, "Who shut up the sea?"
"Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, `This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt'?
For the ancient Near East, the sea was a wild, chaotic place, a frightening place that was the abode of the dead. YHWH asks, "Did you give boundaries to the sea? Can you control Chaos?"
Job 38: 12-15, "I gave orders to the dawn"
"Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
YHWH sets up the dawn and the sunrise. The rays of the dawn reach out grab the earth and slowly structures take shape in the new light. In this stanza, setting up the dawn is identified with the power to grab the earth by its edges "shake the wicked out of it." (All of this is perfectly clear to the ANE worldview; like the rest of the Old Testament scriptures, we risk missing the beauty of these passages if we follow our modern scientific desire to measure matter and energy and explain things in material terms.) Implied in this passage (says Hartley) is a statement that only YHWH really sees the wicked; Job's complaint that God does nothing about the wicked (Job 21: 7) is false.
Job 38: 16-18, Recesses of the deep and gates of death
"Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
Again the chaotic sea -- and its association with the abode of Death-- are not places that YHWH fears but Job clearly does. Can Job control these places? Surely not! There is possibly a pause at the end of verse 18, inviting Job to speak. Since he does not reply, YHWH goes on.
Job 38: 19-21, Light and darkness
"What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
"Surely you know..." -- YHWH uses sarcasm! Of course Job is not old enough to know all the things that God knows!
Job 38: 22-30, Storehouses of snow and hail
"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no man lives,
a desert with no one in it,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
The storehouses of (or processes for making) hail and snow are beyond Job's knowledge. Even, today, if we have understanding of how hail and snow are made, we have no access to the storehouse -- we cannot make hail or snow appear as God does. (Again, this is not a scientific treatise.) Since the weather is so dramatically powerful, YHWH says He can reserve it for "days of war and battle."
Just as humans cannot control the snow or hail, they cannot control where lightning strikes. YHWH brings sudden rain to empty deserts so that the desert suddenly turns green. YHWH controls the rain, dew, ice, frost; in control of the weather He can make lakes freeze over.
Job 38: 31-33, Pleiades, Orion and the constellations
"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up [God's] dominion over the earth?
And if one looks to the skies and watches the constellations move, only YHWH can do that. (A footnote in Hartley's commentary, p. 500, suggests that there may be an allusion to an ancient myth in which an ancient giant, Orion, was transferred into the heavens and bound to the sky. Can Job reach up and untie the cords that keep Orion there?)
Job 38: 34-38, Control of lightning bolts
"Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, `Here we are'?
Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind?
Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?
Can Job control the dramatic power of the thunderstorm, flood, lightning, thunder? When YHWH says, "I want lightning" the lightning bolts quickly appear before Him, ready to do his bidding. Does Job have that power? We see again (in the ancient Near East culture) the identification of power and wisdom; the two are inseparable.
Job 38: 39-41, Lioness and ravens
"Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?
Turning to the animal kingdom: YHWH suggests that Job consider the powerful lion and the remarkable raven. Each is provided for, in their own way. (There is wordplay, says Hartley, in the lines about the lion and raven: the Hebrew word ereb is translated "lie in wait" by the NIV, while the raven (oreb) is fed in the next line. The Hebrew lines ripple: "...’ā·reḇ mî yā·ḵîn lā·‘ō·rêḇ.")
As Hartley points out, although Job and his companions are being rebuked here, Job is not being accused of sin. There is an implicit agreement that Job has indeed been righteous. The accusation of YHWH here is one of ignorance -- Job and his friends are dramatically lacking in knowledge and have no clue as to how the universe is governed. Job's challenge to the Almighty bordered on pride and arrogance (as Elihu pointed out), but Job is recognized as righteous -- his suffering is not the result of sin.
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