The Role of Satan in the Book of Job: Sermon 2

Lesson 7, Job's Need For a Mediator--Book of Job

So far in the Book of Job, we have learned that God ordains the existence of evil and regulates it with the use of hedges. When the hedges around Job are removed, Satan creates so much calamity that it leads Job’s friends to believe that he committed evil. In the meantime, Job is tempted to curse God, which thankfully he refuses to do even though he questions God’s justice.

We have been making the case that “the endurance of Job” that James speaks of refers to his faithfulness in trial. Throughout Job’s responses we see something that looks like a glimmer of hope. At times, the sparks of faith burst into a fire.



Job’s faith in Christ is not explicit. Rather, he has a vague notion of there being a mediator between him and God. As well will find out later, this mediator also IS God, which reflects upon the fact that Job was not a unitarian.



The first mention of the mediator is in Job 9. Ironically, the translators of the NASB name the chapter, “Job says there is no mediator between God and man.” This comes from Job 9:32-33 where he says:



“For He is not a man as I am that I may answer Him,

That we may go to court together.

“There is no umpire between us,

Who may lay his hand upon us both.



Job is exasperated and giving up on hope only for a moment, because as we will find later he speaks explicitly of his hope in there being a mediator.



Job’s exasperation and frustration prove to be the embers of his hope. Job's makes the following appeal in chapter 10:



Is it right for You indeed to oppress, to reject the labor of Your hands?…Your hands fashioned and made me altogether, and would You destroy me? Remember now, that You have made me as clay. And would You turn me into dust again? You have granted me life and lovingkindness and Your care has preserved my spirit. (Job 10:3, 8, 9 12)



Here, Job is passing comment on the fact that he knows God cares for him. God's creation testifies to His glory and goodness. In the same way, Job looks at how God fashioned him and reminds God of His love towards him.



This feeling of frustration, mixed with a knowledge of God’s love for him, results in Job wishing to debate with God and set everything right. “I desire to argue with God,” he says (Job 13:3). Yet, he pleads his case willing to deal with the consequences if he is found in the wrong (Job 13:13): “[L]et come on me what may.”

In this, Job is confident that he would win his case: “Behold now, I have prepared my case; I know that I will be vindicated” (Job 13:18). Why is he so confident that he is right and won’t be punished, like his friends? Our interpretation is that deep down, Job is a man of faith. We can see this in Job 13:15-16, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him. This also will be my salvation, for a godless man may not come before His presence.”

His Godliness is proven by the fact that like Jacob, he is wrestling with God in faith (Gen 32:28). God does not wrestle with unbelievers, because they are not allowed into the presence of God anymore than someone can be in the presence of the Persian king apart from being summoned (Esther 4:16). Those not imputed Christ’s righteousness cannot even be looked upon by God whose “eyes are too pure to look at evil and You can not look on wickedness” (Hab 1:13, literal rendering, italics removed).

David, another man of faith, expressed similar confidence after he was brought low by divine chastening:

For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning…O Lord, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong; You hid Your face, I was dismayed…You have turned for me my mourning into dancing, You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, that my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever (Ps 30:5, 7, 11, 12).

So, why shouldn’t Job hope in the one who slays him, for His anger is but for a moment while His favor is assured forever? Again, the doctrine of assurance gives the believer real comfort in times of trial. Without assurance, there is positively no reason to hope that God’s anger will ever cease. Thus, the doctrine gives the believer confidence in God’s righteousness, even when suffering is present.

God does not forsake His people, because it is His promise He will lose none of them (John 6:39). “For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake His godly ones. They are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off” (Ps 37:28).

Throughout the Book of Job, there are indications that there is both a judgment on the wicked and a resurrection of the righteous. Let’s take Job 14:13--

Oh that You would hide me in Sheol,

That You would conceal me until Your wrath returns to You,

That You would set a limit for me and remember me!

Job asks to be hidden in death so his pain may cease. However, this state is not eternal, as he expects that God would remember and restore him after His wrath returns upon Himself. When did God’s wrath return upon Himself? When Christ became a curse for us!

The resurrection looms in the background of the next verse, Job 14:14--

If a man dies, will he live again (Job 14:14a)?

Yes.

All the days of my struggle I will wait

Until my change comes (Job 14:14b).

Here, Job reflects his faith that though God slay him now, he will be restored because of his faith. The “change” is his resurrection after death.

You will call, and I will answer You;

You will long for the work of Your hands (Job 14:15).

It appears that Job understand was Jesus taught much later: “[A]n hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live...all who are in the tombs will hear His voice (John 5:25, 29).

For now You number my steps,

You do not observe my sin (Job 14:16).

This is why Job is confident in his restoration: by faith, God has forgiven him for his sins nor his imputed sin of Adam (Rom 5:12).

My transgression is sealed up in a bag,

And You wrap up my iniquity (Job 14:17).

Job understood what the Holy Spirit said in Micah:

He will again have compassion on us;

He will tread our iniquities under foot.

Yes, You will cast all their sins

Into the depths of the sea (Mic 7:19).

After these lofty words of faith, Job returns to despair (Job 14:18-22, i.e. “You destroy man’s hope.20 “You forever overpower him and he departs.”). Why? It is not because he lost his faith in God. Rather, because Job does not understand why God slays him, so he cannot make sense of the present suffering.

In the middle of his complaints, Job again returns to his hope for a mediator.

Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven and my Advocate is on high. My friends are my scoffers, my eye weeps to God. O that a man might plead with God as a man with his neighbor (Job 16:19-21)!

Did you catch that? Who is Job’s mediator? He weeps to God!

Joseph Caryl points out further that: “[Job] calls who is in Heaven to witness, that is God” (An Exposition on the Book of Job Chaps. 15-17, p. 361).

Why God Himself? Why not an angel or someone less divine than God?

‘My witness is in heaven, my record is on high.’ Who is Heaven, who is on high? You may know whom he means when he saith, ‘He that is in heaven, he that is on high,’ though His name may not be expressed. There are Angels in heaven, but they are nothing compared to God…there is no name in heaven but God, God is all in all in heaven….Again that which Job calls heaven in one part of the verse, he calls high in the other… (Caryl, An Exposition on the Book of Job Chaps. 15-17, p. 369, 371).

Or, in plain 21st century english, because the witness is in heaven and on high, there is no higher authority in which can be appealed to. So, Job is appealing to the highest possible authority, which can only be God and no other. Because God slays him, Job is calling upon a heavenly mediator, that is God Himself to stand as judge between him and God. Because Christ is at the right hand of God the Father continually making intercession for us as our High Priest (Heb 7:25), then the only conclusion we can draw is that God intercedes for us on behalf of God. There is no other possible interpretation aside from laying aside trinitarian theology and adopting a historically heretical view.

Unitarianism is inconsistent with this often glossed over passage in Job. So, though God (the Father) slay Job now, he will trust in Him (Christ). Further, he knows his Redeemer (Christ) lives. Who else, other than Christ, can be Job’s Witness and Advocate, and be weeped to as his God?

As we move into chapter 17 when Job falls from hope to despair, the spark of hope lights back up. “Where now is my hope?,” he asks in Job 17:15. His hope is within him, because it is his faith in God. “And who regards my hope?” The Lord does.

“Will it [my hope] go down with me to Sheol? Shall we [my hope and I] together go down into the dust?,” Job asks concerning his hope in verse 16. It is a rhetorical question. His hope will follow him to Sheol, because he anticipates his own resurrection in chapter 14.

How do we know we are justified in this interpretation? After Bildad gives his piece Job laments his suffering and then picks up where he left off:

“Shall we [my hope and I] together go down into the dust?” (Job 17:16)

25 “As for me, I know that my [f]Redeemer lives,

And [g]at the last He will take His stand on the [h]earth.

26 “Even after my skin is destroyed,

Yet from my flesh I shall see God;

27 Whom I [j]myself shall behold,

And whom my eyes will see and not another (Job 19:25-27).

So be it! I so look forward to beholding God and not another, for there is nothing else that can satisfy us for an eternity other than the eternal!

Job knows that in the Last Day, though his body is destroyed, he will be resurrected in the flesh. He will see God, face to face, and in this beatific vision he will see no other. The greatest blessing is that “the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you” (Num 6:25).

However, his hope does not match his present condition. So after defending God from the false teaching of the friends that God always crushes the wicked in this life he returns to questioning God’s justice, hoping that the Mediator would side with him.

“Oh that I knew where I might find Him,

That I might come to His seat!

4 “I would present my case before Him

And fill my mouth with arguments [such as those in a few verses].

5 “I would learn the words which He would [c]answer,

And perceive what He would say to me.

6 “Would He contend with me by the greatness of His power?

No, surely He would pay attention to me.

7 “There the upright would reason with Him;

And I [d]would be delivered forever from my Judge…

“But He knows the [e]way I take;

When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

11 “My foot has held fast to His path;

I have kept His way and not turned aside.

12 “I have not departed from the command of His lips;

I have treasured the words of His mouth [f]more than my [g]necessary food.

13 “But He is unique and who can turn Him? [Only the Mediator]

And what His soul desires, that He does.

14 “For He performs what is appointed for me,

And many such decrees are with Him. [In reference to the Father]

15 “Therefore, I would be dismayed at His presence;

When I consider, I am terrified of Him.

16 “It is God who has made my heart faint,

And the Almighty who has dismayed me (Job 23:3-7, 10-16).

Job in fact starts questioning the Father’s justice again in the next chapter. The most egregious example is Job 24:21--”“He wrongs the [m]barren woman And does no good for the widow.”



In short, it appears that Job’s hope is the Mediator, that is God the Son, will be reasonable. At the same time, he fears the Father, that is God, who apparently creates disorder, allows the wicked to prosper, and wrongs the barren woman.



Job has His merciful Mediator correct. He has his righteous God all wrong.



Before we end our lesson for today, it is worth touching on what the Book of Job teaches about the afterlife.



Many liberal critics believe that there is not a resurrection from the dead taught in the Old Testament. This is hardly new, as the Sadducees thought the very same thing. Disproving the critics, I want to argue that the Book of Job contains several references to an afterlife which are not immediately obvious.



We already covered that in Job 14 and 19 there are references to Job expecting to be resurrected.



In addition to this there appear to be several references to Hell and the judgement. The language of the proceeding indicates that much of this is metaphorical. However, as John Piper said about metaphors, metaphors generally describe things because they are so bad, regular language cannot describe them.



“For the company of the godless is barren, And fire consumes the tents of the corrupt” (Eliphaz, Job 15:34).



Terrors come upon him,

26 Complete darkness is held in reserve for his treasures,

And unfanned fire will devour him;

It will consume the survivor in his tent.

27 “The heavens will reveal his iniquity,

And the earth will rise up against him.

28 “The increase of his house will depart;

His possessions will flow away in the day of His anger (Zophar, Job 20-25-28).



He lies down rich, but never [l]again;

He opens his eyes, and it is no longer.

20 “Terrors overtake him like a flood;

A tempest steals him away in the night...

22 “For it will hurl at him without sparing;

He will surely try to flee from its [m]power (Job, in place of Zophar, Job 27:19-20, 22).



For that would be a lustful crime;

Moreover, it would be an iniquity punishable by judges.

For it would be fire that consumes to Abaddon,

And would uproot all my increase (Job, Job 31:11-12).



“All around terrors frighten him,

And harry him at every step.

12 “His strength is famished,

And calamity is ready at his side.

13 “[e]His skin is devoured by disease,

The firstborn of death devours his [f]limbs.

14 “He is torn from [g]the security of his tent,

And [h]they march him before the king of terrors.

15 “There dwells in his tent nothing of his;

Brimstone is scattered on his habitation.

16 “His roots are dried below,

And his branch is cut off above. (Bildad, Job 18:11-16)



Is Bildad referring to Satan when he speaks of the “firstborn of death” and the “king of terrors” (Job 18:13 and 14)? Yes. However, how does this make sense with the fact that Job elsewhere describes Sheol as a place of eternal rest and essentially nothingness?

Sadly, the Scripture does not give us too much detail. We do know that ancient religions did have Satan-like figures and hell-like places, such as Hades. For example, within Hades in Greek mythology Elysian Fields was essentially heaven and Tartarus (see 2 Peter 2:4) was hell, and both were separate compartments. So, when one spoke of being in Hades, sometimes it was the common abode of the dead and other times it was a Greek God specifically tasked with punishing those in Tartarus.



It is worth noting that the Greek word “Apollyon” in the Scripture is similar to Hades. Abaddon, translated into Greek as “Apollyon,” is both a place in Job 31:12 (i.e. “the pit,” a euphemism for Hades/Sheol) and “the Destroyer” in Rev 9:11 (i.e. the King of Terrors/the Satan). The fact that Hebrew words such as Sheol and Abaddon have been translated into Greek words such as Hades and Apollyon, and that the way these words are applied in the Scripture is identical to how Hades is in Greek mythology, adds credibility that Sheol may be very similar to what the Greeks called Hades.



Christ’s parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus might add credibility to this notion: “In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me...’” (Luke 16:23-24). The fact Abraham in this parable hears the Rich Man shows that there is some sort of relatively close proximity between the two. We may infer from the picture drawn in the parable that Sheol has two compartments similar to Hades.



Now, whether we are supposed to take the idea totally literally is open for debate and ultimately not answerable this side of heaven. The Jewish interpreters such as the Sadducees did not even believe in an afterlife and many other ancients did not seem to take it that seriously (the wealthy or powerful would hope to make their mark on history so that their names might live forever, because there might have been a lack of confidence in any life after death).



Does Bildad’s remark reveal that he rejects such eschatology? Not exactly. More likely, his “king of terrors” remark was likely just a passing comment which had to do more with contemporary mythology than a serious belief.



We might not get a serious portrayal of the afterlife from any of the men in this book. Yet, we can make a few firm conclusions.



First, when Job speaks of Sheol, he believes that fetuses attain to the same afterlife that dead kings and others go to (see Job 3:11-19). This accords a level of dignity to the unborn that is lost in the modern day. Further, it is suggestive of infant salvationism as Job does not take the stance that infants, born with original sin, will be subjected to the king of terrors.



Second, we can infer from Job speaking of Sheol positively and that he is confident that the king of terrors, the pre-eminent one (“firstborn”) among the dead, is not going to be lord over him. In fact, his faith leads him to believe that even eternal rest is not the abode of the faithful, but rather resurrection.



This helps make sense of both Job’s current frustration and unwavering trust in God. He disagrees with God’s meting out of justice on Earth, but he never accuses God of being unfair in an eschatological sense. Instead, as Job speaks of in the 27th chapter, Job takes issue with the wicked often prospering during their earthly lives before meeting their doom. Job, like many of us, wants everything to be made right, right now! He does not understand that God has purposes for the wicked: “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov 16:4).



Lastly, because Job does not believe that the righteous are subject to “terrors” such as that which awaits the wicked in Job 27:20, we can infer that Job believes in a differentiated abode of the dead. This means that Job shares an understanding with his friends that the part of Sheol the wicked go to is different from where the righteous, and perhaps miscarried infants, go to.



Let me make this clear--Job does not speak inscrutable truth every time he opens his mouth. That being said, neither does Bildad! Because we know this to be the case, we do not have a good reason to take the speculations about the afterlife drawn from their comments overly seriously.



For example, just because Job thinks fetuses join kings in Sheol does not mean we have strong Scriptural support for the salvation of unbelieving infants. In addition, one may argue in favor of a differentiated abode of the dead that would have existed before the resurrection of Christ from such texts as those found in this book. Nonetheless, such conjecture can hardly proved without a shadow of a doubt. Nonetheless, we may concede that the evidence is highly suggestive. The fact that Christ our Lord God felt it necessary to invoke the same picture of Sheol in one of His parables means that there is benefit in at the very least being acquainted with these things and their possible ramifications. We just cannot draw any firm conclusions about the matter.



Why cover this? It makes sense of what Job and his friends are really disagreeing about. Job and his friends shared the same idea of the afterlife, but a different idea of the plight of the wicked on Earth. Job’s friends conclude that the wicked are crushed “before their day,” while Job concludes that God is being unjust and smiling upon the wicked and wronging the widow, even if it is temporarily.



This is why Job 20 is about Zophar saying the triumph of the wicked is short while Job 21 is about Job saying that God doesn’t deal with the wicked soon enough (‘Why do the wicked still live, Continue on, also become very powerful” 21:7; “They spend their days in prosperity, And [g]suddenly they go down to [h]Sheol” v. 13, “Behold, their prosperity is not in their hand; The counsel of the wicked is far from me,” v. 16”). This is why Eliphaz responds in Job 22 that the wicked “are snatched away before their time” yet God “filled their houses with good things; But the counsel of the wicked is far from me” (Job 22:15, 18).



The repeating of “the counsel of the wicked is far from me” shows that they are affirming one point (the judgement) but fundamentally disagreeing about another, the plight of the wicked on earth. Eliphaz is mimicking Job in order to imply that Job’s idea that the wicked don’t get punished in this life is as wicked as the idea that the wicked are not judged after death.



Next week we will be covering Job 28 in detail, and then we are on to Elihu. I just want to review in short Job’s final response so that we can make sense of it and understand it’s place in the book.





Job 20: Zophar says that the triumph of the wicked is short and unfanned fire will devour him.
Job 25: Bildad says man is like a worm and is absolutely nothing compared to God.
Job 26: Job responds to Bildad and shows him that he has a profound understanding of who God is and what He does, so he refuses to be intellectually cowed by talk of what goes on in the heavens.
Job 27: Job responds to Zophar by mimicking his point, but focuses only on their death and judgment. This implies that it is not right that they triumph for more than a short time.
Job 28: Job speaks about how he truly understands Godly wisdom, revealed to Him by God.
Job 29: Job speaks about how he really lived by that wisdom and God blessed him.
Job 30: Job speaks of how these blessings have been suddenly pulled away, though he is righteous.
Job 31: Job makes his final defense of his righteousness, taking care to show that he was not a hypocrite as a judge and even in his thought life.

One final note: Some people may take issue with Job impugning God’s justice on one hand, yet on the other trusting in the Mediator, Jesus Christ. Do not let this trouble you, for our Mediator forgives us of all sorts of sin, even the sin of not honoring God as we ought or worshipping as we ought. This is a sin we commit every single day. Thanks be to God that mercy triumphs over judgement. Amen.

He watches all my paths (“I know that this is within You: If I sin, then You would take note of me and would not acquit me of my guilt…if I am righteous, I dare not lift up my head,” Job 10:13-15).

As we can see, Elihu sums up Job extremely accurately. It is common in the Bible to restate something someone said in slightly different words.So, when he criticizes Job on a point, it is important that we take what he says seriously, unlike the friends who appear to be making it up as the go along.

Job’s complaints amount to saying that “I did nothing wrong, so He is not right in allowing my suffering.” Elihu’s response to this is telling: “Behold, let me tell you, you are not right in this, for God is greater than man” (Job 33:12). It would be as if he was saying, “Don’t even try to say that you can be right and God can be wrong in this or any situation, God is always greater than man!”

Elihu then gives two accounts to prove this. In one, God teaches a believer through revelation to prevent a man from sinning and the other where God brings suffering upon the man to turn away man from sin. It is in this way Elihu’s words ring true and are summed up elsewhere in the Scripture, “the Lord disciplines those He loves” (Heb 12:6).

“Why do you complain against Him that He does not give an account of all His doings,?” (Job 33:13) Elihu questions Job. “Indeed God speaks once,or twice, yet no one notices it” (Job 33:14).

Elihu differentiates between being corrected by God’s revelation withoutsuffering and then experiencing suffering, if necessary, in order to strengthen our faith in Christ.

Elihu first speaks of how God corrects the sins of man using revelation.

In a dream, a vision of the night,

When sound sleep falls on men…

He opens the ears of men,

And seals their instruction,

That He may turn man aside,

And keep man from pride;

He keeps back his soul…from passing over into Sheol (Job 33:15-18).

In a time before we had the written revelation of the Scripture, God spoke directly to some men like Abraham or through prophets. Even when the Old Testament was finished, God still spoke through prophets such as those mentioned in Acts of the Apostles and 1 Corinthians. No revelation from God ever contradicts the prophetic Biblical Canon.

Certainly in a time before the Scripture, God reserved the right to speak through prophecy.

Perhaps Job 33:17 is speaking about Job. It says, “That He may turn man aside, And keep man from pride” (Job 33;17). God teaches a man in His revelation not to always turn us from pride, but to keep us from pride!

So, if we were to suffer and we were not committing any specific sin just like Job, take confidence! It isn’t always punishment, sometimes it is a roud-about way of protecting you!

I remember this time I lost my keys and I was running late for work. I was agonizing and if you have ever seen me when something is lost, I was suffering! Noch told me that maybe God was doing this because if I went on the road, I would have got into a car accident. I then said, “Why didn’t God make him lose his keys instead?”

In the same way, God can keep a man from pride and turn his conduct before a man like Job, left to himself, might have taken the wrong path. We can see this in 1 Cor 11 when God made those who took the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner become sick and even die. Sometimes, it is better to be sick or die before staying on the same path and end up sinning against God. As John Piper said, “God gave you cancer at 65 in order to save you from wasting 20 more years on the golf course,” presumably loving the world and implicitly hating God.

How does this apply to Job specifically? We will have to wait until chapter 36!

After speaking of how God uses revelation to prevent a man from sinning, Elihu points out that God also uses suffering to turn us from sin and MORE IMPORTANTLY show us the Savior!

“Man is also chastened with pain on his bed,” Elihu says (Job 33:19). From the word “also” we may infer that the man in question did not respond to revelation. “Then,” as the illness gets worse, “his soul draws near to the pit and his life to those who bring death” (Job 33:22).

Who are those who bring death? Probably demons. Who else is trying to drag you to the “pit,” i.e. Hell?

The point that Elihu is trying to convey is that God ordains for men painful terminal illnesses. Why?

If there is an angel [i.e. messenger] as mediator for him, (This angel is not Christ, it points to Christ)

One out of a thousand, (Christ is not one out of a thousand, the term would not be special enough for Him)

To remind a man what is right for him, (What is “right?” According to Peter,“Even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed…anctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you,” 1 Peter 3:14-15. So, use the suffering to remind yourself and others what is right, that being your hope in Christ! Job only did this in part.)

Then let him [the angel] be gracious to him, and say,

‘Deliver him from going down to the pit,

I have found a ransom;’ (Here, the Ransom is Jesus Christ, Mark 10:45.Christ is our Ransom that delivers us from those who bring death in verse 22. So, the man is reminded of “what is right for him,” that is to put his faith in his Ransom.)

Let his flesh become fresher than in youth,

Let him return to the days of his youthful vigor; (The one who once suffered terminal illness is totally restored. Those of us, in Christ benefitting from the Ransom, have had restored to us Adam’s state before the fall. We are no longer terminally ill with sin where we may die.)

Then he will pray to God, and He will accept him, (The one who sufferednow pleads the blood of his Ransom to God the Father. This is the only way He will accept us.)

That he may see His face with joy, (God is pleased when we are joyful in knowing Him)

And He may restore His righteousness to man (When we become complacent in the faith, the only remedy is to plead the blood of our Savior. God will “restore” in us our right standing before Him, He restoresHis righteousness because the righteousness is not ours it is His!; Job 33:23-26). We are not talking about someone who lost his salvation and then regained it. Rather, we are talking about someone who has backslid and God has restored the fire he had for the Lord.

Now, can we see that Elihu surely does not answer like his friends? “Behold, God does all these oftentimes with men,” says Elihu, “To bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life” (Job 33:29-30) So, God does not cause us to suffer to punish us. He is enlightening us with the light of life, perfecting our faith, He is teaching us, He is disciplining the ones He loves!

In Job 34 and 35, Elihu defends God against Job’s accusations of being unjust by correctly applying the doctrine of total depravity and God’s inscrutability.

First, Elihu responds to specific things Job has said:

I am righteous, (“I am righteous,” Job 9:20)

But God has taken away my right; (“Though I am guiltless, He will declare me guilty,” Job 9:21, “Know then that God has wronged me,” Job 19:6)

Should I lie concerning my right? (“My lips certainly will not speak unjustly, Nor will my tongue mutter deceit. Far be it from me that I should declare you right…I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go,” Job 27:4-6)

My wound is incurable, (“For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,” Job 6:4; God “multiplies my wounds without cause” Job 9:17, “Without mercy He splits my kidneys open; He pours out my gall on the ground,” Job 16:13, “For I know that You will bring me to death,” Job 30:23)

Though I am without transgression (Job refers to himself as “just and blameless,” Job 12:4)

“What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?” (Job 35:3, “I am accounted wicked. Why then should I toil in vain” (Job 9:29)?)

Job does not appear to understand like Asaph that serving God is its own reward and obviously views himself as undeserving of suffering. In response to this Elihu makes a very strong accusation: “What man is like Job, who drinks up derision like water, who…walks with wicked men for he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing

When he is pleased with God.’” (Job 34:7-9)?

Some people jump. “Look, there’s proof that Elihu answers wrong just like Job’s other friends!”

Two reasons why this is not true.

First, Elihu did not say Job lived wickedly. He said Job walks with wicked men, because “he has said” (Job 35:9) the things he did. He takes issue not with Job’s prior life, but his responses. Job’s other friends accused Job of suffering as recompense for wickedness.

Second, there is a telling similarity between Job 34:17-19 and Job 40:11-12:

[W]ill you condemn the righteous mighty One,

Who says to a king, ‘Worthless one,’

To nobles, ‘Wicked ones’;

Who shows no partiality to princes

Nor regards the rich above the poor (Job 34:17-19)?

Pour out the overflowings of your anger,

And look on everyone who is proud, and make him low.

Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him,

And tread down the wicked where they stand (Job 40:11-12).

Elihu is not parroting the friends’ wrong teachings, unless God is wrong!

Elihu then moves onto clarifying the correct doctrines the friends misapplied: total depravity and inscrutability. Concerning Total Depravity Elihu says, “Far be it from God to do wickedness and from the Almighty to do wrong” (Job 34:10). Why? “For He pays a man according to his work and makes him find it according to his way” (Job 34:11).

We know this to be correct, for even man’s righteous deeds are like filthy rags (Is 64:6). So, in the words of Elihu:

If you are righteous, what do you give to Him,

Or what does He receive from your hand? (Job 35:7)

What is he saying? In the words of the Church Father Ruffinus:

I can scarcely persuade myself that there can exist any work which may demand the remuneration of God as a debt (Ruffinus, Orig Comment in Epist ad Rom iii).

“If He should determine to do so, If He should gather to Himself His spirit and His breath, All flesh would perish together, And man would return to dust” (Job 34:14-15).

Hello Job, you aren’t owed anything, not even your next breath! How could God be in the wrong to make Job suffer when God does not owe man anything? In the words of God Himself, “Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine” (Job 41:11).

So, Elihu applies total depravity different from the friends because instead of impugning the nature of the heavens and angels, he focuses on the issue of debt. If man were not totally depraved, he could earn his way into right standing with God…something implicitly the friends allow for.Elihu, does not allow for this.

This brings us to Elihu’s other point: God is inscrutable, not because His will is unknowable but because man is morally and intellectually deficient to question Him. So, inscrutability is specifically connected to our depravity, not the other way around.

In other words, here is the difference between Elihu and the friends. The friends said man is totally depraved so he can be arbitrarily punished and that God’s ways are too mysterious to understand. Elihu says that God is in the right because man morally and intellectually is not in the position to question God. So, it is not that God has been deficient in communicating His will to us, but we have been deficient in doing His will.

This is how Elihu frames the issue: While Job says that God is just because there is no higher court to appeal to, Elihu turns the tables by saying, “Shall one who hates justice rule? And will you condemn the righteous mighty One” (Job 34:17)?

Bam! Did you catch that? He just destroyed Job’s argument. How can man, who hates justice, question God who IS just? Man doesn’t exactly have a great track record. The holocaust, stealing from their own mothers, false preachers, false religions, bad science, bad philosophy…How exactly is man qualified to question God?

Further Elihu says to Job, “Teach us what we shall say to Him; We cannot arrange our case because of darkness” (Job 37:19).

Who is man to question the creator of justice as if he knows better? Man cannot do it because he is in the dark, not God. God can see the end from the beginning, unlike man.

God is not accountable to some outside idea of justice. For one, He Himself created righteousness and so whatever He wills is just. There are two proof texts for this:

Drip down, O heavens, from above,

And let the clouds pour down righteousness;

Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit,

And righteousness spring up with it.

I, the Lord, have created it (Is 45:8).

The Lord is righteous within her;

He will do no injustice.

Every morning He brings His justice to light;

He does not fail.

But the unjust knows no shame (Zeph 3:5).

If He wills anything, it is right. Yes, this is tautology, but it only makes sense because we are talking about the Creator of everything. The Creator of justice, by definition, wills what is just. Further, His superior wisdom and creative purpose holds within themselves a superior understanding of what righteousness is. We cannot question such a superiority from our vantage point.

Unlike man, God is not a partial judge who is swayed by the status of individuals as it says in Job 34:18-20. Further, God “sees all the steps” of a man (Job 34:21-22) and has the knowledge that he does not to mete justice.

So who is man that hates justice, who is in the dark concerning all the details, and is given to partiality to judge what is just?

The message is clear: God is uniquely qualified to mete out justice, man is woefully lacking. “When He keeps quiet, who then can condemn? And when He hides His face, who then can behold Him, that is, in regard to both nation and man” (Job 34:29)?

This is why when we think God is unfair and we think God is not righteous in kind in all His ways as the Scripture is, the problem is not with God or what the Bible says about Him. The problem is with us. We are either misunderstanding the Bible or misinterpreting events in our lives. As Augustine said, “[When] I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth [in the Scripture], I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it” (Letter 82).

In Chapter 35, Elihu cautions Job to be patient. In response to where Job said, “Were He to pass by me, I would not see Him” (Job 9:11) Elihu warns, “How much less [will God regard you] when you say you do not behold Him,” (Job 35:14). “The case is before Him, and you must wait for Him!” So, don’t question God’s justice and pretend you don’t recognize Him if He doesn’t act the way you want.

Why? “we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance” (Rom 5:3). Be patient and trust in the Mediator!This is something Job did, but imperfectly.

JM is an Elihu fan


they got to get rid of the ads here, it kills my posting

In this lesson, we show how Elihu introduces God’s speech in which the Lord shows how we are not only too insignificant, but too ignorant of His purposes to question His righteousness.


In chapter 36, Elihu gives us his explanation as to how God worked all things for good, even for Job.

Before speaking specifically about Job, Elihu recapitulates what he said previously about God’s reasons for using suffering in Job 36:8-10:

And if they are bound in fetters, (See Job 13:27.)

And are caught in the cords of affliction,

Then He declares to them their work (By causing them suffering, Job 33:19)

And their transgressions, that they have magnified themselves. (The sin is rooted in pride.)

He opens their ear to instruction, (See Job 33:16.)

And commands that they return from evil. (See Job 33:17.)

Here, he appears to be talking about other, more Godless men: “[T]he godless in heart lay up anger, they do not cry for help when He binds them…and their life perishes among the cult prostitutes” says Elihu in Job 36:13-14.

How about Job specifically?

Let’s read Job 36:16-21–

16 Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress,

Instead of it, a broad place with no constraint;

And that which was set on your table was full of fatness.



First, now that Elihu says “Then indeed He enticed you” shows that the preceding was not necessarily about Job but the proceeding is!

Second, This is tough because the NASB has bungled the verse badly. A literal translation from the Hebrew conveys the point much more simply:

And also He moved thee from a strait place, [To] a broad place — no straitness under it, And the sitting beyond of thy table Hath been full of fatness (Job 36:16, YLT).

God has taken Job from a “strait” place, or a narrow difficult place to navigate, to a broad and easy place. The point is that God took Job from humble origins (we already covered how he likely had orphans as brethren in Job 31:18) and raised him up. Job was given the opportunity to live the easy life, with health and wealth.

17 “But you were full of judgment on the wicked;

Judgment and justice take hold of you.



Job was a judge and he rightly judged the wicked. Was he too judgmental? Maybe yes and maybe no. He did not have kind words for those vagrants he would not trust with his dogs. But the point is just as he judged men for their faults, God is in the right to judge totally depraved Job and he should not complain but rather continually plead for mercy.

It sometimes makes me wonder, if I died right now and appeared before God, would I be happy? I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I would be fearful. Behold, I am a man of unclean lips from a race of men who all have unclean lips, woe is me, have mercy on me for Your Name’s sake! I do not have righteousness to plead, even if my life is relatively righteous, I know I am deserving of punishment every single day.



18 “Beware that wrath does not entice you to scoffing;

And do not let the greatness of the ransom turn you aside.

Raise of hands, how many of you let the greatness of the ransom sometimes turn you aside? I do! Everytime I have a proud thought, every time I lie (which might be once or twice a year), every time I am not the husband or son, employee or brother I should be. We often say, “God forgives me. Thanks be to God for the blood of His precious Son he forgives me.” There is a real danger that we take this so for granted, that our sinfulness does not pain us any more.

Now imagine blameless Job judging a bunch of wicked men! How many of you would perhaps not scoff, but thank God like the Pharisee you are not like that tax collector? How many of you might not feel pride, but start taking the ransom for granted? How often do we forget that our salvation is something we work out with fear and trembling. Fear and trembling! We should be trembling just like the guilty trembled before Job when he judged, because we are just as guilty!

I remember when I was first saved I felt this way. I feel this way right now, but boy, for how long in between did I not…



19 “Will your riches keep you from distress,

Or all the forces of your strength?



God has blessed all of us with riches compared to most people for all time. Is it a sin that we have taken comfort in our wealth? No. Can such comfort lead to sin? Yes! The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Wealth is not evil, but loving money can be a root of it.

God ripped that poisonous weed out of Job’s life. He destroyed his wealth, his family, his health because make no mistake. Our hearts are idol making factories. Even righteous Job, left to himself, can make an idol out of these things.

My interpretation is that God took them away before these things became a snare, just like John Piper’s golf example.



20 “Do not long for the night,

When people vanish in their place. ( Simply, do not long for death, long for God.)

21 “Be careful, do not turn to evil,

For you have preferred this to affliction. (Do not impugn God’s motives, it is better to suffer pain and just trust God then to question Him.)

Unlike the friends, Elihu just gave us a valid defense of God’s inscrutability and how it relates to man’s total depravity (man is morally and intellectually incapable of questioning God); and he gives us a satisfying answer as to why we suffer and why Job suffered (to keep us from sin or lead us into repentance).

In doing so, he corrected both Job’s friends for their misuse of correct doctrines and Job for impugning God’s justice wrongly. Elihu’s advice? In your suffering look to your Ransom, do not let His greatness turn you aside. Be grateful every single day, every single moment, for every breath is not your own and no man can stand before God apart from His mediating work.

Now, we move onto Chapter 37.

Generally, I believe that Chapter 37 serves as an introduction to God’s speech. It ascribes to God as working all-in-all in the weather, which is where God starts His speech. A few things merit some additional attention.



Throughout this chapter, Elihu sticks with the imagery of lightning. For example, “God thunders with His voice wondrously, doing great things which we cannot comprehend” (Job 37:5). What he discusses therein would not be anything that would rock Job’s world, because it is in many ways very similar to what he asserted in chapter 26:7, 10-14.

“He stretches out the north over empty space

And hangs the earth on nothing…

10 “He has inscribed a circle on the surface of the waters

At the boundary of light and darkness.

11 “The pillars of heaven tremble

And are amazed at His rebuke.

12 “He quieted the sea with His power,

And by His understanding He shattered Rahab.

13 “By His breath the heavens are [j]cleared;

His hand has pierced the fleeing serpent.

14 “Behold, these are the fringes of His ways;

And how faint a word we hear of Him!

But His mighty thunder, who can understand?”

It appears that Elihu, like Job, invoke thunder when they hit the limits of human knowledge. “Shall it be told Him that I would speak? Or should a man say that he would be swallowed up” (Job 37:20)? This sets the stage for direct revelation from God.

In the Scripture, God’s voice many times is described as sounding like thunder (Ex 19:19, Ex 20:18, Job 40:9, and Ps 18:13). This is not because God literally speaks the language of thunder or something, but just as light obscures a clear view of God due to His greatness (Ex 33:18-23 and Ex 34:17), unimaginable thundering obscures the voice of the divine because when He speaks it is ineffable.

With God’s thundering voice comes creative power He so wills and says it, and it is so (Gen 1:3). And so, God works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph 1:11), because “[t]he counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation” (Ps 33:11). This includes the weather (Job 37:6), the actions of men who tout the lie of their autonomy (Job 37:7), and the beasts who appear to be operated purely by instinct (Job 37:8). Hence, God controls everything.

Men react to the weather God has ordained using their reason, and so unlike the beasts do not react instinctually (perhaps rushing to the supermarket and grabbing as much break, milks, and eggs left aside). However, God has put a “seal” on “the hand of every man” (Job 37:7).

The hand of the man connotes his power to exercise his will (Gen 9:2, Deut 20:13, John 3:35). So, the seal on every man’s hand shows that God has inhibited man in some way. In modern vernacular we may say that a man’s “hands are tied” or he cannot “operate with a free hand.” The man indeed has a will of his own, but he is not autonomous.

Even with the weather, the man makes a decision but it is predicated upon conditions God totally controls and is sovereign over, which by extension, makes Him sovereign over the man as well. A man “with his hands tied” may desire to make a different decision, but due to the circumstances, finds himself unable. This is not a foreign concept to us.

To quote an unpopular source in Reformed circles: “For the God of all must be held to work in all, so as to incite, protect, and strengthen, but not to take away the freedom of the will which He Himself has once given…God works all things in us and yet everything can be ascribed to free will, [and this] cannot be fully grasped by the mind and reason of man” (John Cassian, Conference 13, Chapter 18).

As it pertains to a Reformed understanding to how we are saved by God’s grace, man can react to grace and respond freely to it, but he cannot control it. The Scripture is abundantly clear that within the will of man, apart from grace, is a desire not to do good (Rom 3:10) and never to seek God (Rom 3:11).

This is why Christ teaches, “nless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). In response Christ is asked whether man can bring about this process by his own power by climbing back into his mother’s womb (John 3:4). To this Jesus gives a rather lengthy response:

nless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:5-8).

The Spirit goes where He wishes, which means it is a matter of God’s prerogative, not man’s. For a natural man cannot accept things pertaining to the Spirit for nothing good dwells in the flesh (1 Cor 2:14, Rom 7:18). Without the Spirit a man cannot confess Christ is Lord (1 Cor 12:3) and cannot be born again.

A man therefore is always saved by the divine initiative of God, who gives man the Holy Spirit to tug on his heart. By doing this and hedging Satan, God can cause a man to accept Christ according to his free will, when apart from God’s grace he would never seek God nor be righteous in faith. In this way, God is totally responsible and sovereign over the salvation of the man, having so sealed his hand, but not chopping his hand off.

This is why the Scripture says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord, He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov 21:1). Indeed God can turn the heart of man however He wants, but He does not rip the heart of man (here meaning a man’s “free will”) out and turn man into a robot.

Why is a man’s hand sealed by God? So ”that all men may know His work” (Job 37:7). Man feels like an awfully big deal until some sort of weather event forces him to stay home, or start running for the hills! Awareness of our own limitations, like our inability to fulfill the Law, show us our God, point us to Him, and make clear our complete and utter reliance upon Him. Indeed, the fringes of God’s way as revealed in thunder are deeper than the depths of the oceans!

The reason God controls the weather the way He does reflects why He acts in all situations: “Whether for correction, or for His world, or for lovingkindness, He causes it to happen” (Job 37:13). So, sometimes the weather or whatever else is ordained to correct man. Other times, God causes things to happen the way they do to show His love. Further, God oftentimes does things “for His world,” which we take to mean as His general will to sustain His creation.

The remainder of the chapter, Elihu is graced by God with the opportunity to announce His coming on the scene to definitively settle the matter of Theodicy.

Now men do not see the light which is bright in the skies;

But the wind has passed and cleared them.

22 “Out of the north comes golden splendor;

Around God is awesome majesty (Job 37:21-22).

God comes from the north appearing “golden” (Job 37:22), because His face has the appearance of lightning (Dan 10:6). This connotes His power and justifies the use of the name El Shaddai, God Almighty.

The Almighty—we cannot find Him (We cannot find him for we cannot know the unknowable nor do we desire to seek Him apart from His grace.)

He is exalted in power (Unlike us, there is nothing in us to exalt.)

And He will not do violence to justice and abundant righteousness (For all His ways are right and kind, He does no wrong, because He created righteousness; Job 37:23).

Therefore men fear Him, [because] He does not regard any who are wise of heart, warns Elihu in Job 37:24.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind [the wind that blew away the clouds in the north] and said,

2 “Who is this that darkens counsel

By words without knowledge?

3 “Now gird up your loins like a man,

And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!

(Job 38:1-3)

In order to teach Job humility and convey man’s insignificant role in the universe when compared to God’s, He asks Job what role man had in making the foundations of the world (Job 38:4-7) and slaying Leviathan (Job 38:8-11). The significance of this is that man cannot question God’s creative purposes, because he was not there.

Further, man does nothing to sustain the universe, which God does by controlling the daylight (Job 38:12-15), the Earth’s waters (Job 38:16-18), the seasons and weather (Job 38:19-38), and the animal kingdom (Job 38:39-41, Job 39).

In response to seeing his insignificance, Job says, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You” (Job 40:4)? As we will see later, merely being insignificant compared to God does not make us unable to question God’s purposes. Instead, when we fully understand how God works His righteousness and goodness in both sustaining creation and regulating evil (Job 40-41), we realize that He is totally in the right and knows what He is doing.

So, GOd’s two replies dwell upon man’s insignificance (Job 38-39) and that God can do all things (Job 40-41).

Let’s bring out a few things in more detail from chapter 38:

When God says, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth” (Job 38:4) we do not want to gloss over the detail that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4). Where was Job when God, in His counsel, predestined those who would be saved from their own sin? God’s justice, goodness, and love started BEFORE the beginning! Yet, we who are unjust question the one who is eternally so.

Pardon my allegorizing of the following:

When the morning stars sang together

And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8 “Or who enclosed the sea with doors

When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;

9 When I made a cloud its garment

And thick darkness its swaddling band,

10 And I placed boundaries on it

And set a bolt and doors,

11 And I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no farther;

And here shall your proud waves stop’ (Job 38:7-11)?

If you simply interpret the preceding to be, “Job were you there when I separated the waters,” you do fine. However, here is another interpretation:

The “morning stars” are angels whose rejoicing was cut short by a rebellion in heaven by the “star of the morning” who we know as Lucifer (Is 14:12). In response, God “enclosed the sea” of chaos as personified in the dragon Leviathan with doors (Job 38:8). God’s mastery of this evil force is profound (Job 38:11). He made for this evil force a “garment” of a cloud and a “swaddling band” of darkness (Job 38:9). This points to the separating of the waters, and light from darkness, in Gen 1.

The gentle choice of wording shows that God is working His purposes lovingly, yet it shows His exerting of control. The swaddling band restricts Leviathan’s movement. He can only meet the boundaries that God permits for him (Job 38:10). God therefore controls the forces of evil for good and with a spirit of love.

Have the gates of death been revealed to you,

Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness (38:17)?

The reference to the “gates of death” (Job 38:17) is the finishing touch of God’s mastery over Satan. Evil will be thrown into an eternal lake of fire. In the meantime, Satan is hedged in by “gates.” This is why the Scripture says, “pon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt 16:18). How could what is enclosed by God overpower whom God has set His love upon? Job is questioning the One who will totally defeat wickedness and has mastered the evil one since the beginning. Job has not seen “the gates” and thereby does not appreciate that God regulates evil.

In reference to the seasons, a discussion that begins in verse 19, God says:

Where is the way that the light is divided,

Or the east wind scattered on the earth (38:24)?

What does this discussion about light mean? Why is it in the middle of a discussion on the seasons? We know now that the seasons are dictated by the tilt of the Earth, affecting the directness of sunlight going through the atmosphere. The more direct the sunlight is, the warmer it is. The less direct, the colder it is. Scientists would not figure this out until the 1600s, yet we have an accurate description of it in the Scripture.

There are also references to God caring for lands not inhabited by man (i.e. Job 38:26-27) and the animals (Job 38:39-41). The significance of these is that God’s cares for all of creation. We may infer that the creation is not anthropocentric, man-centered, because man is just another cog in the whole system. God is taking care of it all.

“Can you hunt the prey for the lion, Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions” (Job 38:39). What is evil for the prey is good for the one who survives off of it. Just as those destined for destruction are made for a purpose, the day of evil, so that those destined for glory may benefit from seeing God’s forbearance and grace. God seems to be saying here that His goodness is something more than that meets the eye in the immediate situation. God can ordain wickedness, i.e. being prey, but actually be bringing good out of evil, as Augustine said.

In closing, why is it important for us to get a little more out of Chapter 38 that, “God’s all big and stuff, He can do all sorts of big stuff you can’t do?” The answer to this can be found if we answer how the response of God differs from Job in chapter 26, but agrees with Elihu in chapter 37.

In chapter 26, Job simply wowed Bildad with his knowledge of nature. However, in Job 37:13 weather exists for “correction, or for His world, or for lovingkindness.” So, Elihu and God are saying something more than God is simply bigger than you. They are actually making references to divine purposes being worked out in the ordering of creation. When we can see the divine, holy, righteous, and good purposes for the evils that befall us, we can take confidence and consider our trials pure joy because the testing of our faith produces endurance and all of our suffering is under our heavenly Father’s control.

SOme of it is annoying pop up crap for the site itself

Lesson 13, Behemoth and Leviathan in the Book of Job


The last time we touched on this issue back when we were discussing the third chapter, there was a great deal of controversy. Let me say this from the on-set. I am not worthy to teach through this response that God gives to Job. In fact, no one in all of history has been or ever will be worthy of exegeting words straight from God’s mouth addressing this most mysterious response in the book.

However, God works through the unworthy people who make up His Church. The historical testimony of the Church can be wrong, or off, on many issues. Why? We are fallible. However, His Church is given His Holy Spirit. It is very unlikely that we only figured something out the last two centuries that the Church was unaware of for the previous 18. We think highly of Thomas C. Oden when he said that he hopes his tombstone says, “He made no new contribution to theology.”

So, I seek to make no new contribution here. We are about to unwrap God’s final response to Job where He dwells upon His sovereignty over two beasts: Behemoth and Leviathan. Who exactly are they? The following brothers in the faith all concluded that both are analogues for Satan: Gregory the Great, the first commentator on Job; Thomas Aquinas, the greatest raw genius in Church History; John Calvin, the greatest systematic theologian in Church History, Joseph Caryl, writer of the longest commentary on Job in Church History, Matthew Henry, Jonathan Edwards, Silas Durand, and A.W. Pink.

Many will point out that God’s description of Leviathan sounds an awful lot like a real, living breathing beast. Even if this is the case, John Calvin writes in his commentary on Isaiah:

“The word ‘leviathan’ is variously interpreted; but in general it simply denotes either a large serpent, or whales and sea-fishes, which approach the character of monsters on account of their huge size…For my part, I have no doubt that he speaks allegorically of Satan and his whole kingdom, describing him under the figure of some monstrous animal…”

So, for our intents and purposes here we will presume great beasts of some sort are being described. However, the interpretation I will present here will explore the significance of what these beasts represent–the imposing nature of the prince of darkness and our inability to resist him.

First, let’s discuss chapter 40. Now that Job has been “put in his place,” God essentially asks Job to repent by reproving Him (Job 40:2). Job answers, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You?…I will add nothing more” (Job 40:5-6).

If the book ended here, Job’s repentance would be sufficient. He understood that he was not fit to question God, because he did not have the power or intellect to control all of creation’s minutia as we saw in chapters 38 and 39. However, God wants him to add something more… God wants him to know that He works all-in-all in the heavens and the Earth.

Liberal commentators are not very big fans of Job’s response. J. Gerald Janzen writes, “Job’s response at first glance seems disappointingly submissive…a retreat from the honesty of the dialogues” (Interpretation of Job, p. 242). He then posits that the term “behold” in Hebrew means “if.” So, Job would actually be responding to God like a sarcastic child: “If I am so insignificant, like you say, why should I bother even talking to you?”

Without an expertise in Hebrew, context alone rules out such a conclusion. First, God’s response in the next two chapters would make no sense. Why would God respond to Job saying he’s supposedly too insignificant to take part in this dialogue with Him with a response that revolves around His mastery over Satan? Perhaps if we held to a completely literal view, God might be saying, “If being sovereign over those little animals does not make you feel insignificant, then I am going to really wow you now with the big ones!” Again, I just think this interpretation is found too wanting.

Second, Job repents again in chapter 42 displaying an explicit understanding of God’s sovereignty over the forces of evil. The traditional interpretation, that the responses reflect a humbling of Job, therefore make the most sense. So much for the liberal interpretation.

Before God gets into Behemoth and Leviathan, God gives a very strongly worded repudiation of Job’s questioning of His justice in verses 7 to 14. It appears that God uses the opportunity of Job’s repentance to correct him in the strongest possible terms. Job’s increased humility has put him in the position to accept what God has to say.

Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me (Job 40:7).

Here, God begins correcting Job for questioning His righteousness by implying that Job is too insignificant to instruct Him. He had already done this in Job 38:3. God is being sarcastic, because He is not in man’s debt and in want of knowledge. We are not in the position to teach God what is just.

“Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified” (Job 40:8)?

This question is God’s “comeback” to Job’s questioning of His motives and methods throughout the book. This should undo all of those who think Job was not condemning God. “Why does God allow the wicked to thrive? Why does he take people who are living faithfully and thrust them into suffering?” God’s response is, “Does your dissatisfaction make Me any less right? Will you condemn me in order to justify yourself?” Looking at history, man does not have the track record to begin questioning God. Nor does he have the foresight or understanding to do better.

Or do you have an arm like God and can you thunder with a voice like His (Job 40:9)?

Job cannot snap his fingers and make things happen. God can. This is what He means when He speaks of His arm and voice. God creates with His spoken word in Gen 1. Further, God redeems with an “outstretched arm” (Ex 6:6). So, Job cannot create or redeem like God, so how can he be in the right?

Adorn yourself with eminence and dignity and clothe yourself with honor and majesty (Job 40:10).

What is God saying? Job might be dignified and righteous by men’s standards but by Job’s own admission, “I put on [God’s] righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban” (Job 29:14). He had to put God’s righteousness on, so he could not clothe himself with his own honor and majesty.

Therefore, if man is not righteous apart from the grace of God, how can a depraved being know how the world ought to be if he cannot make himself what he ought to be?

Man is impotent. Like a 12 year old back seat driver, he likes to tell the man at the wheel what to do but knows nothing about what he speaks of. Man is totally depraved and cannot even do good (Rom 3:10). If Job can show this is not the case, God says, “Then I will also confess to you that your own right hand can save you” (Job 40:14).

Pour out the overflowings of your anger and look on everyone who is proud, and make him low. Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him and tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them in the dust together, bind them in the hidden place (Job 40:11-13).

The point is simple. God can and does exact justice. Men, like Job, can only do so much. By Job’s admission the wicked prosper. Job’s a judge and he can’t stop it. But God can.

Now, onto Behemoth and Leviathan! First, let’s introduce ourselves to what these beasts are all about. Interpreters conflate the two, so the following two descriptions of Leviathan give us an idea concerning how we should approach reading about them.

Concerning Leviathan Silas Durand writes:

If this wonderful description were applied merely to the whale [i.e. Leviathan], some parts of it would hardly seem appropriate, though the fearful admiration with which he inspires the mind is fully expressed through this highly figurative language. But there is more than a literal fish or serpent, be he never so great, presented here. This is “that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan,” whose abode is in the deep; the great source of all the various manifestations of evil; “the prince of darkness.” Here is innate wickedness, considered in its own essential being, as a separate thing, unaffected by human interests or affections, which seems to soften or partially cover its hideous fearfulness as it is manifested in the world.

Aquinas writes:

[T]o preclude one from believing that man by his own power can overcome the devil…[God uses]…the image of Leviathan…ecause he has such great power that he cannot be held by a fishhook, and to show this he says, “and will you bind his tongue with cord?” For fish which are caught with a hook are bound by the line which is attached to the hook. This means that no man can take the devil away from his malice or even bind him to keep him from doing this evil (Commentary on Job, Chapter 40).

Behemoth may be an elephant and Leviathan may be a dragon. These different beasts are supposed to offer us a picture of our inability to combat Satan apart from God’s grace. This is why Behemoth is an Elephant that man cannot hunt, but God can. Leviathan cannot be caught by a fisherman, for no man can bind him from doing evil. However, God can bind the strongman (Matt 12:29).

Therefore, man cannot defend himself against Satan. This means, apart from God’s grace and protective hedge, we are goners! So, the logic goes, God is righteous because He actually actively thwarts evil while man cannot.

Concerning Behemoth, the word literally means “beasts” (yes, it is a plural) in Hebrew. The term only occurs once in Scripture (Job 40:15), while its singular form beast or “behema” occurs 172 times. Usually the term in its singular form refers to a beast or “cattle.” This makes the plural usage somewhat odd and in context of the chapter where the beast is referred to singularly.

Why? My interpretation is that Behemoth is a personification for demons while Leviathan is the Satan himself. Remember, Satan is not omnipresent. So, he must work with other demons to cover more ground.

While the term “Beasts” (i.e. Behemoth) is referred to in the singular throughout the remainder of the chapter, it would not be the only time in Scripture a plurality of demons is personified in the singular. When Christ spoke to the Gerasene Demoniac he asked for the demon’s name. The possessed man responded, “My [singular] name is Legion, for we [plural] are many” (Mark 5:9).

What does the existence of Behemoth teach us?

First, Behemoth does not exist by accident, because he is first among the creative acts of God (Job 40:15, 19). Demons exist because God made them. Gen 3:1 says, “[T]he serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” God created Leviathan and Behemoth, this we can know.

Second, Behemoth “eats grass like an ox” (Job 40:15). The wicked are conflated with grass throughout the Scripture such as in Ps 90:5, Ps 92:7, Is 40:6-7, Luke 12:28, and James 1:10. Just as sinful people wither and fade into death like the grass according to the Psalmist (Ps 37:2), demons feed upon sinful men leading the by the hand to eternal death. Like an ox that can eat almost limitless grass for hours, so do the demons work away at devouring wicked men.

Third, Behemoth is powerful and seemingly impervious to attack (Job 40:16-18). Man cannot stop himself from being devoured.

Fourth, God is the master of Him because only “his maker bring near his sword” (Job 40:19). This means, as Aquinas observes:

To preclude one from thinking that he[, that is man,] is the first of the ways of God…[God] says, “He (God) who made him will direct his sword,” that is, his injurious act. The will to do harm comes from the devil in himself, and because of this he is called “his sword.” But the effect of harming can only come from the divine will or divine permission (Commentary on the Book of Job, Chapter 40).

The Lord minces no meat about it. Behemoth’s power to wield his sword and sow discord in the world comes from God. Behemoth does it from his own desire to effect harm, but just as God has a purpose for the light /darkness and fortune/calamity He has created (Is 45:7), so does God for the existence of evil.

Fifth, the world is in the hands of this beast. “Surely the mountains bring him food, And all the beasts of the field play there” (Job 40:20). The world pays homage to Behemoth and men (here called “hay-yat,” or “animals”) in their sin rejoice in it. According to Brown-Driver-Briggs’ Hebrew dictionary, the related Hebrew term saw-khak’, here translated “play,” has a primary meaning of “to laugh (usually in contempt or scorn)” i.e. evil laughing. It is not hard to imagine, men in an orgy of violence, alcohol, and sex paying homage to Satan laughing in pride enjoying their sin.

Sixth, the men/beasts during all of this do not notice Behemoth hiding in the Jordan River (Job 40:21-23). Just as the Jordan borders the promised land and beyond awaited Israel’s enemies, demons crouch right across the border, the hedge, looking to pounce on us.

Now onto Leviathan.

First, when God asks Job whether he can “draw out Leviathan with a fish hook” or “put a rope in his nose” (Job 41:1-2), we can infer that God can draw out Satan and put him to work like an ox with a rope in its nose.

How does God put him to work? “He governs the deceiver and sets bounds to his deceits, to whom, and when, and how far they shall extend” (Matthew Poole, Comments on Job 12:6).

Second, doesn’t the following sounds an awful lot like someone we know?

Will he make many supplications to you,

Or will he speak to you soft words?

4 “Will he make a covenant with you?

Will you take him for a servant forever? (Job 41:3-4)

Do we remember a conversation that went a little like this?

Oh Mr. God, what have I been up to…um….just walking around the world and stuff. Mr. God, I think you’re wrong but I can’t just go out and say it and I am not strong enough to actually prove you wrong, I cannot get past the protective hedge!

This is why God says that He “play with him like a bird” in a cage in verse 5. Satan is a mere play thing to God, Satan does not like it but he knows it.

Third, just like Behemoth, man can’t beat him in battle but God can:

Can you fill his skin with harpoons,

Or his head with fishing spears?

8 “Lay your hand on him;

Remember the battle; [f]you will not do it again (Job 41:7-8)!

Fourth, Job is wrong when he said that if God turned his “gaze” away he would be better off.

Behold, your expectation is false;

Will you be laid low even at the sight of him?

No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse him;

Who then is he that can stand before Me (Job 41:9-10)?

Job thought during his speeches that if it were not for God, left to himself he could have avoided the consequential suffering. God’s response is that any expectation Job has of going out on his own and confronting evil all alone is foolish. The sight of Satan alone would be enough to subdue Job. Job, left to himself, experiences precisely the types of calamities he is presently experiencing.

Yet, God can rouse Leviathan and easily make mincemeat of him. If nothing under the sun can boast of this, than who can stand before God? No one.

Fifth, God is in the right to ordain evil and work it for His purposes:

Who has given to Me that I should repay him?

Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine (Job 41:11).

It seems like just now, God is answering a question Job mumbled under his breath: “Why make such a thing?!?!”

We have given nothing to God in which He owes us and He would be liable to listen to our demands upon Him. People do not like that answer, but if we really meant “not our will, but your will be done” it intuitively makes the most sense. If God wills that Leviathan and the attendant evils along with him exist, then God knows best. Everything under heaven belongs to Him.

God in His wisdom reserves the right to use something evil, like Leviathan, and use him against his will to work good. Concerning the God using evil to work good Augustine writes:

For what could be said more plainly than what is actually said, “As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sakes?” [Rom 11:28] It is, therefore, in the power of the wicked to sin; but that in sinning they should do this or that by that wickedness is not in their power, but in God’s, who divides the darkness and regulates it; so that hence even what they do contrary to God’s will is not fulfilled except it be God’s will (On Predestination of the Saints, Chapter 33).

It is as if God is telling Job, “Yes, I expose you to suffering, but can’t you see that Satan is the source of it? I am master over Satan and I permit him to do his work. He will not be allowed to truly harm you. Can’t you see, though you lose everything, you did not lose your faith? In the loss of your physical blessings you may be ‘sorrowful yet always rejoicing,…poor yet making many rich,…having nothing yet possessing all things’ (2 Cor 6:10). So, ‘he who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it’ (Matt 10:39). Trust and follow me.”

Sixth, Job 41:12-34 describe Leviathan in a way that is impotent.

Some of you might say, “How can you say that, he sounds so scary! He has strong limbs (verse 12), “around his teeth there is terror” (verse 13), he is strong scales are his pride, his armor is so tight air cannot pass through it!”

Yawn! He must have some really bad gingivitis that the terrible part is around his teeth and not his teeth themselves!

“His sneezes flash forth light” (v. 18).

Having the flu sure can be scary!

“The sword that reaches him cannot avail…His underparts are like sharp potsherds.”

That’s one scary beast, hiding in his armor!

I don’t know about you guys, but this does not sound like a scary beast. None of the attributes described are aggressive. No claws, no actual teeth, no fists, no weapons. Just a cowering, sneezing, dragon hiding behind his armor scaring the weak.

Seventh, Leviathan is obviously not a beast that lived on earth abiding the laws of physics. I have heard people say, “It really sounds like God is describing a real creature that Job was acquainted with.” I really have to wonder what Discovery Channel they are watching!

“His sneezes flash forth light,

And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

19 “Out of his mouth go burning torches;

Sparks of fire leap forth.

20 “Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth

As from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

21 “His breath kindles coals,

And a flame goes forth from his mouth (Job 41:18-21).

Obviously, this is a dragon. I know that in God all things are possible, but do we really think we had a dinosaur walking around covered with sharp scales blowing fire all over the place?

It makes much more sense to interpret this beast, the dragon, as an analogue for Satan, who Revelation calls a dragon.

Here is what I think the passage is saying: Satan rules over the earth for a time and terrorizes man with his intimidating qualities.

During this time he is proud as lord over the demons and wicked men. Job 41:25 says, “When he raises himself up the gods fear.” Job 41:34 says, “He is king over the sons of pride.” He sows chaos in the sea by “making the depths a boiling pot” (Job 41:31) and “behind him he makes a wake to shine” (Job 41:32) leaving a trail of destruction in his path. Though “nothing on Earth is like” Leviathan and God has “made [him] without fear” (Job 41:33), he is destined to fail in his mission.

Leviathan and his attendant evils are part of God’s plans. Man’s own self-deception in worshiping Leviathan, the Satanic Beast, is explicitly consistent with His purposes. “For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled” (Rev 17:17). As Augustine observes, God sustains even the demons and all men who commit wickedness to fulfill His righteous purposes:

But the goodness of the Creator never fails either to supply life and vital power to the wicked angels (without which their existence would soon come to an end); or, in the case of mankind, who spring from a condemned and corrupt stock, to impart form and life to their seed, to fashion their members, and through the various seasons of their life, and in the different parts of the earth, to quicken their senses, and bestow upon them the nourishment they need. For He judged it better to bring good out of evil, than not to permit any evil to exist (The Handbook on Hope, Faith, and Love, Chapter 27).

Further:

Nor can we doubt that God does well even in the permission of what is evil. For He permits it only in the justice of His judgment. And surely all that is just is good. Although, therefore, evil, in so far as it is evil, is not a good; yet the fact that evil as well as good exists, is a good. [Looks like R.C. Sproul “borrowed” that one from Augustine.] For if it were not a good that evil should exist, its existence would not be permitted by the omnipotent Good, who without doubt can as easily refuse to permit what He does not wish, as bring about what He does wish (The Handbook on Hope, Faith, and Love, Chapter 96).

God fulfills His purposes by exploiting the wickedness and power of Leviathan and man alike. He is righteous in doing so and brings about the greatest possible good so that He may work all things for good.

We may conclude from the preceding descriptions that Behemoth and Leviathan are imposing. Man is shattered when confronted with them. However, to God they are mere playthings. He can pull out Leviathan with a fishhook as if he were nothing.

So God’s answer to Job is now clear: He is sovereign over nature to suit His purposes. We can see this in God’s description of weather and the seasons. He is sovereign over the temperaments of all different sorts of men. We can see this in God’s description of the animal kingdom. Lastly, He is sovereign over the demonic realm, including Satan himself. We can see this in God’s description of Behemoth and Leviathan. Hence, there is absolutely nothing NOT under God’s control.

It is knowing this that Job’s confession in the next chapter will make sense: “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). To Him be the glory forever. Praise be to God.

Lesson 14- Job 42 and the Allegory of Christ


Before concluding the book, let’s summarize everything we learned thus far:

We initially discussed how God can be righteous even though he permits evil. We rebutted some bad attempts to answer the question (Rabbi Kushner's "when bad things happen to good people" Open Theism, Augustine's "evil is the lacking of good and therefore does not really exist," and Pangloss' "best of all possible worlds”). Some commentators gave us better answers (Sproul ("evil is bad, but to have evil is good") and Augustine in a different book of his: "For He judged it better to bring good out of evil, than not to permit any evil to exist.")

We learned of Job's piety, that he was both a farmer and a judge, and that God viewed him a blameless man who did nothing specific to deserve his affliction

We spoke about how Satan asks God permission to sift Job like wheat and God permits Satan some freedom by removing hedges.

We covered how Job’s friends anticipated the reasoning of Epicurus. God is omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenevolent, but there is evil in the world. God is not lacking in knowledge/power/goodness where He cannot stop it. Therefore, evil is the just punishment for sin. In try to defend this false way of thinking, they accuse Job of evils, misapply the doctrines of God’s inscrutability and man’s total depravity.

There is a sense that Job's friends are correct. No man can stand before God undeserving of suffering if we already concede that all men merit their own damnation. But how does this apply to Job who is not lacking in righteousness, but is clothed in Christ's righteousness (Job 29:14)?

Job responds indignantly to his friends defending his own righteousness and questioning God’s purposes in allowing his suffering.

Yet, Job was also a man of faith. He spoke with confidence about his sins being forgiven and he placed all his faith in God: “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him. This also will be my salvation, for a godless man may not come before His presence.”

As Job finished his speech, he made a valuable comment on the nature of true wisdom. Wisdom as we know it is how an individual through much sacrifice, self-exertion, and learning achieves some sort of epiphany that radically changes her or his life. This idea really is a very old one borrowed from Book VII of Plato's Republic where the "Cave Allegory" is given. While Plato's cave allegory is so popular because it appeals to man's pride and self-righteousness, Job informs us that true wisdom comes from digesting and living by God’s revelation. It comes by walking by faith and not by sight.

Then our patient friend Elihu enters the scene. The 32nd chapter, which detailed his genealogy, gives us reason to view his contentions as credible. The rest of Elihu’s response corrects Job for his impugning of God's justice. He also points out that God disciplines those that He loves (Job 33), that man's righteousness is like filthy rags (Job 34), the intellectual incapability of man to question God's justice (Job 35), and he exalts the wisdom of God and prepares us for God’s speech in Job 36-37.

In Chapter 38 God begins His first speech of the book, essentially arguing that His sustaining of creation is proof of His goodness and greatness. In comparison, man is insignificant.

On the surface chapter 39 reads rather simplistically: God controls the animals. A reader may simply think to himself, "So what?" However, if the chapter is read allegorically a world of possibilities is opened up to us. Just as God is sovereign and works all in these beasts, the different attitudes and attributes they have can also be seen in men. Hence, there is a spiritual import to what is being said that we can apply from what is said about the animals to us.

Clearly, God is sovereign over the differing attitudes and attributes in men that can be gleaned from the beasts. How could one question God’s justice when we conform to instincts for reasons that God knows and controls?

In His final discourse God focuses on His creation of the demonic realm (Behemoth) and Satan specifically (Leviathan), and man’s complicity with evil. God shows how He is sovereign over these imposing beasts, portraying them as completely impotent in His hands. As Augustine observed, even man’s power to sin lays in God’s hands and not his own.

Being that man is portrayed as powerless in light of the imposing nature of Behemoth and Leviathan, but these beasts themselves are powerless in light of God's omnipotence, their existence shows to man that he cannot rely upon his own strength. Left to himself his situation is hopeless. Hence, the existence of such wickedness is supposed to send us fleeing to God and we are not to question the wisdom of this.

Now, we are in chapter 42. Job’s repentance is complete. He not only understands his insignificance, but also God’s role for evil and His power over it.

I know that You can do all things and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted(Job 42:2).

Here, Job acknowledges that he understands God has a purpose for suffering. It is interesting to note that God does not divulge exactly what this purpose is. He simply refers to having a purpose in mind in Job 38:2 (“Who is this that darkens counsel By words without knowledge”) and Job 41:11 (“Who has [j]given to Me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine”).

After going into some detail about His role in making the demons and His sovereignty over them, Job was content in accepting that God is aware of suffering and has a purpose behind it. Further, the choice of wording in “no purpose of yours can be thwarted” adds another element. It is an admission of God’s complete sovereignty.

This is in contradistinction to the past where Job said, “As God lives, who has taken away my right” (Job 27:2). Now, Job has totally resigned his “right” and now acknowledges God’s.

Nebuchadnezzar, when God rescinded his reason and turned him into a beast, once his reason returned summed it up like so:

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,

But He does according to His will in the host of heaven

And among the inhabitants of earth;

And no one can ward off His hand

Or say to Him, ‘What have You done’ (Dan 4:35)?

Indeed God’s purposes cannot be thwarted and His hand cannot be warded off. He glorifies His own name and works out righteousness in His way, which is superior to ours, because He is the greatest of all possible beings and has devised righteousness. For this reason we cannot say, “What have You done in allowing me to suffer?”

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3).

By quoting God in Job 38:2, Job acknowledges now he understands what He is getting at. He follows this up with a further acknowledgement of God’s hidden counsel being superior to his. It is too wonderful to understand and not something man is privy to.

‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me,’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You (Job 42:4-5).

By quoting Job 38:3 and Job 40:7 in God’s speech, Job acknowledges that he understands that in God alone there is truth. Truth cannot be found in our own speculations. Accepting God’s revelation prevents our own deception by the hands of Satan who uses suffering to encourage us to doubt the righteousness of God. Satan tried to do this with Job. God’s revelation is what turned him around.

Job’s point is pretty simple. He heard of God and was faithful to Him, but never actually heard from God, let alone seen Him. Theophanies are not common, so we may not enjoy, as Job did, such a personal encounter with God in this world. However, in some ways, we have a much greater opportunity to hear Him today.

First, we have the same speech God gave Job. So, in that we are equally blessed. Second, in addition to this, we have the whole counsel of God in the Scripture. We can hear Him speak by reading His revelation in the Scripture.

Therefore I retract and I repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).

When we find ourselves believing contrary to what we know to be the true in the Scripture, then we must recant like Job in dust and ashes. This is because the Scripture speaks authoritatively on matters that our minds cannot answer using empiricism or dialectics. We must remind ourselves that we are finite, made from the dust, and destined to burn out leaving ashes as remains.

Some liberals don’t get it. According to James L. Crenshaw, “Some scholars see irony in Job’s response, a concealing of his continued defiance in the face of divine cruelty” (Harper Collins Study Bible, 1993, p. 795). However, nothing could be farther from the truth.

What comes with Job’s repentance is ultimately a concession of finitude. It leaves to God the right to determine what role there should be for evil. In the words of Gregory the Great:

All human wisdom, however powerful in acuteness, is foolishness, when compared with Divine wisdom. For all human deeds which are just and beautiful are, when compared with the justice and beauty of God, neither just nor beautiful, nor have any existence at all (The Book of Morals, Book XXXV, Chapter 3).

In translation, in our own wisdom we might not always know what good reasons there are for our experiences. God’s wisdom is far beyond even the greatest men, God’s weakness is stronger than man’s strength (1 Cor 1:25).

It is with this in mind that God’s first move after Job’s confession is to punish Job’s friends for speaking from their false, man-made philosophies and traditions. God speaks to Eliphaz directly, likely because he was the wisest of Job’s friends, and scolds him for not speaking what was right (Job 42:7). Job knew that Eliphaz was doing this all along when he said, “Will you speak what is unjust for God and speak what is deceitful for Him?” (Job 13:7)

God also mentions that Job spoke rightly. Obviously, this does not refer to when Job was accusing God of being unjust. It refers to his repentance at the beginning of the chapter.

Some liberal interpreters take issue with this exegesis, but they do so on bad grounds. For one, Elihu points out several things that Job said wrongly and being that he is not scolded with Eliphaz and his “two friends,” this shows that he spoke rightly. Second, God Himself corrected Job specifically. Third, God says in 40:8 that Job condemned Him in order to be justified. Fourth, Job himself quoting God’s assertion that he darkened the Lord’s counsel, acknowledges that he spoke wrongly. It is not a tenable position without positing that Elihu was a later redactor, that God’s speeches were his invention, and other fantasies not based upon any evidence whatsoever from the existing manuscripts.

That being said, how can Eliphaz be made right with God? It is not enough for him to merely repent like Job. He knew God before this whole episode. Job’s sins have already been paid for by Christ on the cross because he is a faithful man. Eliphaz trusted in his own works and his sins still need atoning.

For this reason God points Eliphaz to Job as his priest. We have some foreshadowing of this in the book:

Bildad: Those who hate you will be clothed with shame,

And the tent of the wicked will be no longer (Job 8:22).

Eliphaz: He will deliver one who is not innocent,

And he will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands (Job 22:30).

Job, like his great high priest Jesus, has suffered on behalf of those he intercedes for. It is because his hands are clean, like Christ’s, that his sacrifice is efficacious for his friends. Further, Job is like Christ in that which by faith he is in union with Him.

Let’s untangle this a little bit. Did you ever wonder why women take their husband’s last name, or in weird situations you can say, “Noch is Mrs. Craig Truglia!” According to the English jurist Henry de Bracton, the practice ought to be used because when a woman gets married to a man, they become "a single person, because they are one flesh and one blood." Let’s apply this to Christianity. We as the Church are “in Christ” and are the “bride of Christ.” The bride of Christ is “one flesh” with Him. As Victorinus says of the faithful, “Now, because you are one with the reception of the Spirit from Christ, you are Christ. You are therefore sons of God in Christ.” So, Job is not only a type of Christ in our interpretation. By faith he IS Christ in a non-literal, metaphysical way. Not surprisingly, he must sacrifice so Eliphaz may live.

Eliphaz brings seven bulls and seven rams for this sacrifice (Job 42:8). The number seven suggest that this was a complete sacrifice, which points us to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross which was truly complete. For “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10).

The completion of the sacrifice is crucial. Only after Job completes it are not only the friends, but also he himself accepted by God (Job 42:9-10). This may be because Job had to faithfully do as God requested, so that his faith may not be nominal and thereby void. “You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected” (James 2:22).

However, it is more likely that this chronology of the events reflects that none of us are accepted apart from the sacrifice on the cross being finished. As Christ had said before He died, “It is finished” (John 19:30). So, God waited to accept Job’s repentance until after he completed sacrificing for his friends in order to offer to his friends and to us an accurate picture of how our sins are forgiven by an even that was finished 33 AD in April, the day before the Passover on the cross. Hence, while Job look forward to a future sacrifice until it was completed for acceptance, we look backward It just depends when you were born.

Coinciding with Job’s acceptance by God is a restoring of his fortunes (Job 42:10-17). Fortunes in the Scripture are always pictures of a spiritual reality. So, God indeed literally restored Job’s fortunes, but it is meant to point us to the spiritual wealth accessible to us by faith. For the things of this world are not real wealth at all, it is the wealth in heaven that we store that has eternal value.

Christ teaches:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:19-21)

How does the wealth Job receives reflect heavenly realities? His relationship is restored with his brothers, sisters, and wife (Job 42:11). We can infer that his wife is included, because Job has several more children with her. He has the same amount of children that he had as before (Job 42:13-14, Job 1:2).

The family bring him a Qestiah of gold. The term “qestiah” is an old, Hebrew term for money. It is used once in Genesis and once in Joshua, and by the time the prophets were writing books it would have been archaic like the term “shilling” is today.

From this we may make an observation about literary criticism. According to tradition and Jesus Christ Himself, the authorship of Genesis is ascribed to Moses. The authorship of Joshua, is also ancient, and it cites an ancient document that has been lost, the Book of Jashar. The term is not found in any other book of the Bible. This points to an ancient date of authorship for the Book of Job. It is either that or its author was very accurately peering into the past.

So not only does Job’s family bring him gold and increase his wealth, now Job’s livestock are greater in number (Job 42:12) then they were initially (Job 1:3). This increase in wealth all around obviously this points to what Christ said about those giving up families and property for His sake receiving “a hundred times as much” in heaven (Mark 10:30).

This is why there is such a strong emphasis on the beauty of Job’s daughters in which “no women were found so fair as Job’s daughters” (Job 42:15). Their names also connote beauty (Job 42:14). Jemimah means “dove,” which is a beautiful, peaceful bird. Kezziah is a kind of myrrh. Keren-Happuch means “the horn of adornment,” so she is compared to jewelry. We know that the New Jerusalem descending down from heaven is adorned like a bride. Their beauty is a reflection of God’s blessings that he lavishes on the Church, just as a husband lavishes his bride with jewelry. So, jewelry is a literary type for a blessing in the Scripture.

While money itself in the Scripture is described as both a blessing and a source of anxiety, jewelry in all of its positive mentions refers to the adorning of a bride (Gen 24:30, Est 2:12, Song 1:10-11, Is 48:18, Is 61:10, and Ezek 16:8-14). Otherwise, the actual wearing of jewelry is explicitly condemned (1 Peter 3:3-4, 1 Tim 2:9-10; see also Jer 4:30, James 2:2-4, 1 John 2:16-16, Is 3:16-24, and Prov 11:22). So, Job is being adorned with wealth and beauty in preparation for his eternity with Christ. Further, they are a picture of our blessings in Christ.

Indeed, what God gives us in heaven is far greater than what we give up for the Gospel’s sake on Earth. Heavenly riches are without equal in value and beauty.

Lastly, Job lives to a ripe old age, which from this we may infer he was satisfied with its length and quality (Job 42:16-17). Its surprisingly long duration after his body being as good as dead with disease points to our eternal life after the resurrection.

He died in peace, but not believing that he would be in Sheol and have eternal sleep. Instead, he died with the confidence he would see God again in his flesh. This is true of all Christians, who through suffering and experience bouts with evil, persevere. For “the one who endures to the end, he will be saved” (Matt 24:13).

So, many a Christian may question God in times of suffering. He may forget that God is righteous and even what man meant for evil, He means for good. The fact that He works all things for good may escape the sufferer’s notice. That God is righteous and kind in all His ways may not seem like the truth, but that is only when one measures God by His own standards found in the Scripture. We must measure God by correct standards in order to make a correct evaluation. When we do, God fulfills every perfect standard perfectly.

Indeed, the enemy will devise many crafty lies making us doubt this simple truth, all the while distracting us from the fact that it is he and the evils of our own hearts that cause our suffering. God has merely permitted it, to fulfill His righteous purpose and glorify His name.

Epicurus may argue that the mere existence of evil makes the Deity evil. Many who fall prey to this rationalization, like Job’s friends, will instead argue that every affliction that befalls us is the just desert of sin. However, the Scripture does not allow for this line of reasoning: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Ps 34:19).

Expect affliction, pray for deliverance from the evil one, implore God to incline your heart to Him, and have confidence that the Lord will sustain and save you. These are the promises of God and “God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent.” Indeed, if He promises such things, “will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good” (Num 23:19)? May honor, praise, and glory be ascribed to Him forever. Amen.

It's all over, any comments would be appreciated