The final chapter of the book of Job consists of Job’s second response to God (vv. 1–6) and his restoration from suffering to blessing (vv. 7–17). It is a short chapter, but contains a number of exegetical problems that have a significant impact on how we read the entire book, as well as the way in which we articulate Job’s contribution to theodicy and the problem of evil. In the light of this, we will first work our way through chapter 42 and the questions it raises before turning to focus more broadly on what the book of Job has to say about suffering and evil.
Job’s final speech falls into two parts, both showing a quotation from God’s speeches and Job’s response to it (vv. 2–3, 4–6). Against the background of God’s happy victory in chapters 40–41, each verse is redolent of a profound joy in God.
Job begins with God’s irresistible and incomparable power (v. 2). This is not merely a general statement of omnipotence – something Job never denied during the debate – but should be read in the light of God’s coming battle with Leviathan (41:8). If God can defeat even that evil, then truly no purpose of his can be thwarted by anything in creation – and more specifically, no purpose to do good to his saints can be stopped. ‘You can do all things’ means there is no tragedy God’s unstoppable goodness cannot redeem. Formerly, Job was certain God’s purposes for him were only sinister (10:13) and that all creation taught divine injustice (12:9; the verb yd ʿ , ‘to know’, repeats in 10:13, 12:9 and 42:2). Now he is convinced of a better truth.
In verse 3, Job quotes yhwh ’s first question against himself (38:3), admitting he had no idea what he was talking about in his criticisms of God. (Note how yhwh ’s second speech prompts Job to respond more submissively to the first.) I have argued throughout this book that Job’s mistaken conclusions about God are understandable, even though they miss the mark, because Job is never granted the larger perspective on his tragedy that the reader receives in chapters 1–2. Job remains ignorant of that larger perspective. He can, however, infer from yhwh ’s speeches how wrong he was to rail against God as an enemy when, all this time, God has stood as Job’s champion against the chaos and darkness that invaded Job’s life. The ‘wonders’ too great for Job (niplā ʾ ôt ) frequently elsewhere in the Old Testament speak of yhwh ’s great acts of salvation for his oppressed and needy people (Exod. 3:20; Josh. 3:5; Pss 72:18; 77:12; 86:10; 98:1; 131:1; 136:4; etc.). Job is mortified that he has been protesting against the only person both able and happy to save him – that he portrayed God as a sinister enemy when he is really Job’s deepest friend.
In verses 4–5, Job moves on from God’s claim about Job’s ignorance to God’s challenge for Job to respond. Job meets this challenge in an especially poignant and broken way. He confesses that all of his former knowledge of God – and it was not slight (1:1) – has become like vague hearsay and second-hand information (‘the hearing of the ear’) compared with what he now knows. But Job can express this new knowledge only with the phrase ‘now my eye sees you’. Job is so taken up with God he can speak of nothing else but seeing him. In other words, the only response Job can make to God’s rebuttal of his criticisms is to say, ‘Now I see who you really are.’ This obviously includes an admission that he has been wrong and God is right, but also far transcends it. Job is not merely intellectually convinced about some new idea having to do with God; he is entirely taken up with God himself. In fact, he repeats the word ‘to hear’ (šm ʿ ) twice at the beginning of verse 5, echoing its use at the start of verse 4, as if to say, ‘You wanted me to listen to your speech and make an answer, Lord? All I can answer is: I see you.’ Samuel Rutherford once wrote to another pastor from prison, ‘[A]ll was but children’s play between Christ and me, till now. If one would have sworn unto me, I would not have believed what may be found in Christ.’1 Job has reached the same blessed place.
Job’s new vision of God is significant for another reason. The original terms of the ordeal in chapter 1 concerned whether Job loved God with any ulterior motive – for any reason other than God himself. Job is just about to be released from his suffering and return to the blessing of chapter 1, but almost the last thing he says exactly fulfils the conditions set up (without Job’s knowledge) in the book’s first chapter. To borrow Pauline language, Job is experiencing the all-surpassing worth of knowing yhwh , and is entirely content, even while still on the ash heap. Job never asked for the blessed life of chapter 1 back in any of the debates and does not do so now; he does not even know of the return to blessed normality about to meet him in verse 10. All Job gains from his suffering is God, and more of God; his restoration to blessing remains for ever secondary to this.
Job’s final statement in verse 6 deepens the beauty and poignancy of his worship. I would translate it in the following way:
Therefore I despise myself (ʿ al-kēn ʾ em ʾ as )
and I am comforted about dust and ashes (wĕni ḥ amtî ʿ al- ʿ āpār wā ʾ ēper ).
I interpret this verse to advance upon Job’s first response and withdrawal of his criticism in 40:3–5 in two ways. First, Job, going far beyond his prior admission that God is right, now expresses utter self-loathing over his former criticisms of God. The word he uses (mā ʾ as ) elsewhere speaks of a disgust close to nausea (Lev. 26:43–44; Judg. 9:38; Ps. 15:4).2 This is quite a change from the appropriate but guarded statement in 40:3–5. Second, Job expresses his comfort in his suffering. For reasons discussed more fully below, I take ‘dust and ashes’ as a synecdoche for all of Job’s suffering (see Job 30:19). This means that, without anything in his life improving, Job now says he is comforted over the same suffering that drove him to such desperate extremes before.
Taken in this way, verse 6 is a beautiful affirmation of trust and comfort in God while Job is still on the ash heap. This interpretation is not inevitable, however, for the verse’s wording generates exegetical questions that are not easy to resolve and that lead to widely varying interpretations. Many verses in the book are similarly difficult to interpret, of course, but the climactic position of Job’s final statement gives it a weight out of all proportion to its short length. In fact, some go so far as to read the verse as showing not repentance on Job’s part, but further criticism of God, who allows extreme suffering. Doing so creates a significant domino effect that greatly influences how the divine speeches and even the entire book is read in a way that substantiates the ‘anti-theodicy’ interpretation discussed above. How one resolves the interpretation of Job’s final statement in verse 6 depends in particular on three exegetical issues in the verse.
The first has to do with the lack of an explicit object for the first verb (‘despise’ or ‘reject’). Job says only, ‘Therefore I despise’, leaving us to infer what he despises.3 (The verb almost always takes a direct object elsewhere, even in Job; but strikingly, the only four exceptions to this in the Old Testament all occur in this book, in the present verse and in 7:16, 34:33 and 36:5.4 )
The second question has to do with the exact nuance of the niphal5 of the verb n ḥ m with the preposition ʿ al . In the niphal, this verb has three meanings: ‘to regret/change one’s mind’, ‘to be sorry’ or ‘to console oneself’ (HALOT 688). The preposition ʿ al is very flexible, with possible meanings including ‘on’, ‘on top of’, ‘about’, ‘concerning’, ‘against’, ‘in accordance with’, ‘because’, and so on (see further WOC 11.2.13). As a result, a wide variety of translations are hypothetically possible for this verb with this preposition.
The third question in this verse has to do with the exact nuance of the phrase ‘dust and ashes’, which occurs only two other times in the Old Testament: in Genesis 18:27 and Job 30:19. In the former, Abraham uses it to express humility as a mere mortal in his arbitration with the Almighty over Sodom’s fate. The second usage is found in Job’s mouth as a synecdoche for his suffering: ‘God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.’ The ash heap Job sits on in 2:8 after being struck with sores should also be remembered when considering this phrase (the same word ʾ ēper in 2:8, ‘ash’, is found also in 42:6).
These exegetical problems mean it is possible to translate this verse in multiple ways that, even if not all equally plausible in context, nevertheless do not violate the Hebrew.6 Just with regard to the second verb, one could arguably translate as, ‘I regret dust and ashes,’ ‘I am sorry for dust and ashes,’ ‘I console myself for dust and ashes,’ ‘I change my mind about dust and ashes,’ ‘I repent in dust and ashes’ or ‘I repent because of dust and ashes,’ and so on. Furthermore, although most commentators plausibly assume the first verb refers to Job’s rejection of his prior arguments against God or his very self, some understand Job to be rejecting God in this verse. Strange as this sounds to many Christian readers of the book, there is no direct object of the verb, and so this reading is not grammatically impossible. If one takes this option, the second clause could be taken as, ‘I am sorry for dust and ashes,’ understanding ‘dust and ashes’ to refer to humanity as a whole (in relation to Gen. 18:27). It is thus possible, without doing violence to the Hebrew, to understand Job to use his final speech to reject God and express sorrow for human beings, who have to put up with such an unfair deity: ‘Therefore I despise you (God), and I feel sorry for dust and ashes (i.e., humanity in general).’7 If this is correct, it colours everything that has come before: the wonders of verse 3 become ironic, as if Job is implying God is even more of a bully than Job thought;8 God’s unstoppable purposes (v. 2) are only sinister; the Leviathan speech either shows God’s pride in the monster in a morally ugly way or reveals a dark side of God;9 and the high point of the book becomes Job’s protests, which turn out to be the truth about God.
As already stated, this rendering of Job’s final statement does not violate the Hebrew of verse 6. What vitiates the cynical interpretation the translation generates is not the grammar or semantics of the verse itself but the context in which it is found. Job’s restoration is soon to begin: he is just about to be vindicated in relation to his tormentors (vv. 7–9) and then restored in his family (vv. 10–17). If we interpret verse 6 as criticism of God, then God responds to continued criticism from Job by restoring him anyway – an act of kindness that contradicts Job’s supposed characterization of God as unfair and bullying.10 (If one argues that Job cloaked his criticism in the ambiguities of the verse such that God misunderstood him, one has the problem of the speaker of the beautiful and subtle poetry of chs. 38–41 missing a double entendre apparent to later critics.) The cynical reading of 42:6 also contradicts Job’s custom elsewhere of openly and unambiguously protesting against God: Why would he cloak his putative criticism in ambiguous Hebrew when he was so unambiguous before?11 And surely a rejection of God here would count as failing the Accuser’s test from chapter 1 – a point the Accuser would not fail to bring to the Almighty’s attention?
We are on firmer ground if we understand Job to be rejecting or despising his own words against God or his very self or both, in parallel with Job’s first response. Furthermore, although the meaning of ‘dust and ashes’ is not immediately transparent, it is surely no great leap to see a reference in these two words to Job’s tragedy from chapters 1–2. This fits perfectly with the phrase’s other use in Job 30:19 and the reference to ashes in 2:8 as a kind of externalization of Job’s inward grief.12 The first and third exegetical issue are thus plausibly resolved. But what about the second? What is Job saying about dust and ashes?
Attention to the thirteen other examples of the verb n ḥ m in combination with the preposition ʿ al is helpful. Two main patterns emerge: niphal n ḥ m with ʿ al expresses either relenting from or repenting of some decision, or being comforted over some loss. The former occurs when God is asked either to relent from some promised disaster or does relent (see Exod. 32:12, 14; 1 Chr. 21:15; Ps. 90:13; Jer. 18:8, 10; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2) or when human beings repent of their sin (Jer. 8:6). The latter is seen when David is comforted over Amnon’s death (2 Sam. 13:39), Rachel refuses to be comforted over her children (Jer. 31:15), the survivors of exile are comforted over their losses (Ezek. 14:22) or Pharaoh is imagined to be comforted over his lost armies (Ezek. 32:31). There are no examples of the meaning ‘to be sorry’ (as in Gen. 6:6) occurring with niphal n ḥ m and the preposition ʿ al ; only the first and third definitions listed above are in evidence elsewhere in the Old Testament. It is also significant that the preposition ʿ al is not elsewhere used spatially with niphal n ḥ m . It rather consistently shows the object in relation to which the relenting or comforting occurs.13 This means that if Job is repenting ‘on’ dust and ashes (cf. esv ), he is using the phrase in an exceptional way in the Old Testament – which is possible in the subtle poetry of the book, but perhaps should not be our first exegetical choice.
We are left with two possibilities: consistent with the other uses of niphal n ḥ m with ʿ al , Job is either relenting in the sense of changing his mind about dust and ashes, or he is being comforted about them. If ‘dust and ashes’ stand as a synecdoche for Job’s suffering (consonant with 30:19), either sense fits so perfectly one suspects both are intended: Job is changing his mind about his suffering and what it means in such a way that he is comforted about it.14 The scars and losses Job thought testified against him about God’s irrational anger (16:8) no longer have that meaning.15 Although Job still does not know why he suffered, he knows God is not angry with him and there is no sin that can explain his pain. The losses are still every bit as real, but his reconciliation with his divine friend means they do not pain him as they used to. Thus is Job comforted.
It is important to remember where Job is when he says this: still on the ash heap (2:8), the place of uncleanness, still missing his dead children, still alienated from his wife, still covered in loathsome sores, still close to death, all without any idea that all this suffering is about to end. The only hopeful change that has occurred so far is Job’s relationship to God – but while Job’s external circumstances remain just as miserable, he is comforted over all his losses in his new vision of God. Job’s comfort has nothing to do with explanations or improved circumstances, but only in seeing and knowing God in a deeper way. Without understanding his own predicament any better, Job repents not of any sin, but only of not knowing God well enough.16
All in all, it is difficult to find words adequate to express how profound and moving Job’s utter disgust with himself and ecstatic worship of God are.17 At the same time, without lessening the happy resolution Job enjoys here, some questions inevitably surface. Is it necessary to keep Job in the dark about what caused his suffering in the first place? And why is the Accuser apparently absent from the end of the book when he plays so crucial a role in its beginning?
We noted above how Job’s trust and worship in continued suffering are even more moving because he remains completely ignorant of the cause of that suffering, or that it will very soon end. But at this point in the story, Job has proved beyond all doubt he serves and loves God simply for God’s own sake, irrespective of any blessing he may gain or loss he may incur because of it. This was hardly in doubt in chapters 1–2 and is absolutely obvious by the end of the book, since Job finds comfort only in God himself (42:5), without saying anything about any possible return to the blessings of chapters 1–2. Whatever unwise and untrue things Job said about God during the debate, Job never cut off his relationship with God by cursing him; indeed, Job would not have agonized so deeply in those chapters if God had not meant so much to him.18 Job has learned, of course, that his suffering was not due to some irrational and sinister change in God’s character, nor because of any sin in himself. But what harm could there be in revealing to Job why God allowed this tragedy, now that the ordeal has been successfully passed? Two considerations suggest themselves.
First, if the machinations of the Accuser in the divine council were revealed to Job, the book would speak less directly to later readers who suffer without ever knowing why.19 But, more importantly, there is a sense in which Job must remain for ever ignorant of what is revealed to the reader in chapters 1–2 or the validity of the outcome of the test might be jeopardized. Were Job to learn about the accusation that he really loves only the secondary blessings loyalty to God brings, it would be possible for the Accuser to renew his allegations in a slightly different form, claiming that Job endures suffering and says what he does in chapter 42 only in hope of being blessed as a result. As Christopher Seitz writes, ‘if Job had known the gambit, the accuser could still argue that such love was mechanistic, based upon defense of God’s honour in hope of ultimate reward’.20 Job’s continued ignorance is the only way to demonstrate beyond all doubt the purity of his motives in remaining faithful to God.
An analogy with human relationships is helpful at this point. If a human friend were to allow the death of one of my children by (say) failing to protect the child in some way, but never gave me an explanation or apologized, I would not stay friends with that person – I would break our relationship. But when God allows that kind of suffering, without explanation or apology, and the sufferer struggles, says foolish things of which he or she later repents, but endures in a relationship with God, that sufferer proves the validity of the worship of God as God, and how different his or her relationship with him is from other human relationships that involve some give and take. This means that Job’s perpetual ignorance proves he is relating to God as God , in a way far transcending every other relationship of Job’s, and seals him in that God-honouring relationship. ‘Now my eye sees you.’
At the same time, however, the fact that the narrator does reveal the larger circumstances surrounding Job’s agony in chapters 1–2 to the reader is no ambiguous hint to us that when God allows inexplicable pain to ruin our lives, there are larger factors involved that we will never fully understand. We are assured, despite all appearances to the contrary, that God remains for ever our friend and defender, but are also warned that, like Job, we will never know why our suffering happened, even though there were reasons behind it. This is the only way the reality of our relationship with God can be proved – our faithful ignorance is the only means to demonstrate that we are relating to God as God and Lord and honouring him as such. As a result, Christopher Ash is surely correct when he writes that ‘[e]very morning we ought to wake up and say to ourselves, “There is a vicious, dark, spiritual battle being waged over me today,”’21 one that we will sense dimly but never fully understand. In fact, faithful readers of the book of Job ‘ought to expect that the normal Christian life will be full of unresolved waiting and yearning for God’, such that we will often be asking, ‘What is God doing? Where is he? Oh, that I might meet with him!’22 This unresolved waiting is not at all a sign of failure in discipleship but ‘the integrating arrow of hope that holds together the authentic Christian life’.23 But just as the readers cannot expect some transcendent perspective that explains their own Joblike experiences of suffering, so the comforts Job receives become ours when we suffer without explanation and endure in our relationship with God anyway. Job is not the only one to receive a new vision of God that reduces all prior knowledge of him to child’s play, mere rumours and hearsay. Nor is he the only saint to be utterly and infinitely comforted even while sitting on the ash heap.
But what about the Accuser? Does the supernatural opponent who caused so much trouble at the book’s beginning ever receive his due?
Readers who follow the faith of Job but have the benefit of a completed canon can trace an implied answer to this question of which the book’s characters would have been unaware. When John writes of ‘the great dragon . . . that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan’, who is thrown out of heaven in Revelation 12:9, he helps his readers connect the serpent symbolism of the Old Testament with the Christian’s great adversary in the New Testament. As a result, when we read of the coming defeat of the twisting serpent Leviathan in Job 41, we receive an implicit assurance that the accusations which brought such suffering on Job will one day be silenced for ever, for Leviathan’s defeat is also Satan’s.
This promise may, in fact, be hinted at in the text itself in 41:4:24
I will not keep silence concerning his limbs (lô ʾ ʾ a ḥ ărîš badāyw ),
his mighty strength, or his goodly frame (ûdĕbar gĕbûrôt wĕ ḥ în ʿ erkô ).
The initial clause ‘I will not keep silence’ is unambiguous. Every other word God uses, however, is susceptible to double meanings in such a way that one suspects a double entendre is intentional. To begin with, the use of the word bad in the first clause can mean ‘parts’ or ‘limbs’ (Job 18:13), but a homonym means ‘foolish talk’ or ‘boasting’ (as in Job 11:3; see also Isa. 16:6; Jer. 48:30; HALOT 109). It is thus perfectly defensible to translate the first clause as, ‘Will I not silence his foolish talk?’ The word dābār begins the second clause, which means either ‘word’ or ‘thing’; as a result, one might easily translate the phrase as either ‘the matter of his strength’ or ‘his strong word’. Finally, the last word in the verse means something like ‘arrangement’ (Exod. 40:4) or ‘value’ (Job 28:13). Since everything that follows 41:12 describes Leviathan’s physical characteristics, it is plausible to understand Leviathan’s physical ‘arrangement’ to be in view in this verse and translate as ‘goodly frame’ (esv ). At the same time, the verb from which the noun is derived is used elsewhere in the book to speak of arranging or preparing an argument (Job 13:18; 23:4; 33:5).25 A derived noun is also used one other time to refer to those musings before one speaks (Prov. 16:1). Additionally, the noun ḥ ēn can elsewhere describe speech (Ps. 45:3; Prov. 22:11; Eccl. 10:12). As a result, ‘persuasive case’ is defensible as a translation. Taken all together, this yields the following alternative translation: ‘Will I not silence his boastings, his mighty word, or his persuasive case?’26 If taken in this way, the verse is saying that whatever accusations the Satan brings against God’s saints will be defeated. That the verb ʿ rk can also refer to an army arranging itself for battle (Judg. 20:22)27 helps to seal the overlap between this translation and that found in most modern versions, according to which Leviathan’s physical prowess is being described.
Since none of the human characters in the book are aware of the Accuser’s role in the story, this wordplay about Leviathan’s speech would have remained undetectable to them. But readers with access to the completed biblical story can find in the double meanings of 41:12 yet one more promise when they find themselves in a situation similar to Job’s: not only will the evil power at loose in God’s world one day be destroyed, but also the accusations he brings against God’s saints will be silenced.
Since Job has beyond all doubt proved the sincerity of his love for God, there is no reason for the suffering that would demonstrate and seal this sincerity to continue. Although he remains for ever ignorant of the larger theatre on which his story played out, God’s normal policy of giving his saints both knowledge of himself and being generous in earthly things can be reinstated, so that Job returns to his blessed life. The book’s final passage and denouement unfolds in two movements: having been restored spiritually (42:1–6), Job is restored socially by being vindicated in relation to his friends (vv. 7–9) and then being comforted by his family (vv. 10–17). As with verses 1–6, however, multiple exegetical difficulties meet us that will need some discussion as we read of Job’s moving into his happy future.
Job’s restoration begins with one of the most shocking statements in the entire book: God’s anger burns against Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, because they did not speak rightly about God – the way Job did (v. 7)! If the last phrase were not present, of course, the verse would be unremarkable, for the friends obviously completely misunderstood God’s role in Job’s agony. As the verse is written, however, God apparently prefers Job’s speech to that of the friends – Job, who spoke of God as some vicious tyrant who destroys innocent lives for fun (9:22–24). Commentators naturally struggle to explain this shocking verse. A number of possible solutions immediately suggest themselves that, on further reflection, fail to explain the verse as it stands.29 The central issue is found in the comparison between the friends’ speech and Job’s, for this suggests God is referring to the debate between them from chapter 3 onwards. For this reason, it will not do to turn to Job’s beautiful confessions before the debate in 1:21 and 2:10 to explain this preference, for the friends were not present until 2:11. (Furthermore, Job’s statements in 1:21 and 2:10 are already obviously right and already confirmed as such by the narrator in 1:22 and 2:10.) We cannot turn to 42:1–6 to explain God’s approval of Job’s speech for the same reason, for the friends are not addressed by God in that part of the book (38:2–3; 40:7–8). Job also speaks more about himself than God in his final speech, but God commends Job for his speech about God. Nor is it sufficient to point to the way Job continues to address God directly in the course of chapters 3–31 while the friends speak only about God, for then there would be no need to qualify Job’s speech as ‘right’ or ‘correct’; God need only say that Job spoke to him, unlike the friends.
At the same time, however, God’s vindication of Job and his speech to the detriment of the friends need not be taken as an undiscriminating and total approval of every last thing Job said during the debate, for it is surely significant that God says this about Job only after Job repents of his criticisms of God’s putative injustice.30 As Rick Moore writes, ‘Job says, “I have been wrong,” whereupon God says, “You have been right.”’31 Within the framework of this qualification, it is possible to find statements Job makes in the course of the debate that accurately reflect who God is – even if only in a negative form. It was stated above that what drives the vociferousness of Job’s protests is just exactly how much he values God and a right relationship with him; if this did not matter so much to Job, it would not cause him such agony when he thought he had lost it for no reason. This love for God shows itself in specific passages in significant ways. For example, Job’s curse on creation in chapter 3 implies that without God’s smile and friendship, Job does not see any point to his existence, blessed or otherwise – indeed, without God’s friendship, Job sees no point for creation itself to exist. And were Job to have lost God’s friendship, this is a correct conclusion to draw; Job is wrong only about God’s heart towards him, not the value of a relationship with God. The same kind of ironic valuation of God is seen in 9:21. As argued above, Job’s confusion about himself (‘I do not know myself’, my tr.) reflects an accurate and admirable view of how God’s moral judgment of a person is the most real thing about that person. Despite the fact that Job knows he has done nothing to deserve the ‘punishment’ of chapters 1–2, all self-generated certainty melts before the unassailable judgment of God. This is a true thing to say about God; Job has mistaken only what judgment God has made of him. Job also speaks rightly about God in the sense that, from Job’s perspective during the debate, the friends are bowing to a bully only in order to get nice treatment from him; Job, by contrast, refuses to bow to a God in whom goodness is separate from power. Job refuses to accept something is right just because God did it – and in so doing, he is saying something true about God, for ‘power separated from goodness is . . . just satanic’.32 It is not for nothing that Job says God abhors special pleading on his behalf (13:7–9).33
Of course, these correct statements by Job during the debate are all in addition to his continued assertions of faith (such as in 19:25–27 and ch. 26) and his admirable desire to meet with God and speak with him, exposing himself to God’s scrutiny (13:20–24), all of which doubtless also falls under God’s approval. Despite all this, however, verse 7 remains shocking and is probably intended to be so. But the surprise of this verse is comforting as well. God is being very gracious to Job, giving him as much credit as he can. He also calls Job his ‘servant’ (v. 7), a privileged role from 1:8 he has not lost.34 Apparently yhwh would rather have someone struggle and endure in a relationship with him than take refuge in perfect theories that reduce God to more familiar dimensions.
In fact, to speak of yhwh ’s ‘preferring’ Job’s imperfect but faithful speech is far too weak a term, for God is terribly angry with the friends. This is seen in the sevenfold sacrifice that must be offered for God’s anger to be pacified (v. 8). Normally, only one animal is sufficient (Lev. 1:1 – 6:7), but in this case it takes no fewer than fourteen to appease God’s wrath against these well-intentioned men (2:11), who tormented Job so egregiously (19:22). But in a sense, not even sacrifice is enough, for verse 8 implies that God’s anger against the friends will be expiated only when Job himself intercedes on their behalf. This accomplishes several things at once. First of all, it breaks the theology of the friends. This is seen in the simple fact that God treats the friends here better than they deserve, restoring them to his own favour not on the basis of their prior repentance but because of the intercession of their better.35 In fact, the exact wording of verse 8 implies a profound rejection of the friends’ retribution theology: while most modern translations have God saying he will not treat the friends ‘according to their folly’, the Hebrew has only ‘folly’: ‘so as not to commit some folly’. Although the reading of modern translations may be correct, God may in fact be saying that treating the friends according to their own theology would be deeply foolish of him! It is also striking that God, despite being angry, takes the initiative in the friends’ restoration before it even occurs to them to repent. God wants the friends to be restored along with Job. But they are clearly being demoted and Job vindicated in this process. Bruce Waltke rightly points out that ‘[t]he restoration of the community demands public confession of the public wrong done to one of its members’.36 Since part of Job’s pain was the ‘help’ offered by his friends, his restoration involves his vindication in relation to them. At the same time, Job’s intercession prevents any further anger or criticism from Job against them in the future. After all, lingering resentment on Job’s part towards his friends would have spoiled God’s renewed goodness to him. In fact, the wording of verse 10 (perfect verb with an infinitive construct) implies that God’s restoration of Job and Job’s intercession for his friends are concomitant actions; that is, the restoration of verse 10 will not happen until Job intercedes.
The book of Job is frightening to read and tiring to finish, but Job’s ordeal does not last for ever. The book’s final passage shows the nightmare at last ending and Job’s re-entering that blessing and fullness God intends as the normal course of things for his children. This is consistent with the rest of the Old Testament, which elsewhere teaches our journeys through the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ are journeys, not our destination. Overwhelming as these experiences sometimes are, they are always temporary. Job’s was as well (v. 10). This is significant in ways that go beyond simply giving a literary resolution to the story.
First, we see that the book of Job nuances the law of retribution without rejecting it. Only the friends’ shallow and mechanistic articulation of retribution is denied. It still holds true, by the book’s end, that obedience is rewarded with blessing and that God’s world is ultimately a fair and just place. Indeed, Michael Fox insightfully points out that when the Accuser complains of how God has ‘put a hedge around’ Job’s life so that everything he touches prospers (1:10), Satan assumes that the normal course of events in God’s world is for obedience and loyalty to be rewarded; while exceptions or ‘local disturbances’ are possible, they are only exceptions to God’s standard policy.37 Perhaps we might say the book of Job relativizes the law of retribution around God himself, subordinating it to his own prerogative to administer his creation according to his own will and not according to mechanistic principles, thereby reserving God’s right to interrupt blessing when necessary. This nuancing of retribution is not in disagreement with other parts of the Old Testament. For example, both 1 Kings 21 and 2 Kings 14:24–27 show neither righteous Naboth nor sinful Israel getting what each deserves in an immediate or obvious way. Proverbs similarly understands that the best lives are sometimes the most difficult and repeatedly encourages the son that such difficulty is by no means too high a price to pay in loyalty to God (see e.g. Prov. 15:16–17; 16:8, 19; 17:1; 22:1). In other words, the theology of Job’s friends is at variance with the rest of the Old Testament. But this nuancing of the Old Testament’s theology of retribution that occurs in Job and elsewhere is not really surprising, for if the law of retribution worked mechanically and quickly, with an always clear connection between good behaviour and reward, a relationship with God himself would become impossible. Love of God for his own sake would be reduced to a kind of transaction, hardly different from pulling the lever on a slot machine.38 Michael Fox gets to the heart of the issue: ‘[i]nexplicable suffering has a role in the divine economy, for it makes true piety possible.’39 The contribution of the book of Job is to explore more fully these tragic interruptions in such a way that faith in the God who allows them is not shattered but deepened.
The book of Job’s last passage is significant in a second way that its unadorned and unemphatic expression may hide. These last verses enact and, in a sense, enflesh the victory over chaos and evil hinted at in chapter 41. If the book were to end with Job’s beautiful confession in 42:1–6, the book would remain tragic to some extent, for although the most important issue of the rift between Job and God would have been healed, nothing else in Job’s life has been restored at this point. By analogy, when Lear holds his beloved Cordelia in his arms as she dies and then dies himself, his kingdom in ruins and his friends scattered, the dramatic impact of the play as a tragedy is sealed, but it remains for ever a tragedy. God has something better for Job. Although Leviathan has not been finally defeated, Job’s return to comfort and joy stands as a token and sign of God’s promise of that final victory.40 The book’s epilogue shows God making good on his claims in chapters 38–41 in a provisional but real way that shows the normal course of creation is to be safety and blessing.41
Job experiences this safety and blessing at multiple levels, both directly from God (as he confirms in vv. 5–6) and from his family and friends (v. 11). No part of Job’s tragedy is left untouched: his family succeeds in the comfort his three friends intended but completely failed to deliver (2:11). The contrast between Job’s family and friends in this verse and the earlier debate is sharpened as we notice that no words are recorded spoken to Job, only sympathy and comfort, as well as gifts. These gifts might have been a sign of honour to one formerly shamed (30:1) and might also have been intended to help Job rebuild his ruined estate.42
When a member of the covenant community is in trouble, his family gives him ‘practical gifts’ to help rebuild him, not head-shaking advice. In this way too they restrain evil, including eliminating the evil of words harshly spoken to one another.43
It gets better: God not only gives Job a return to the blessed life of chapter 1, but makes his life better than ever (vv. 12–15). One significant detail in Job’s restoration deserves special attention. In Pentateuchal legislation, wives normally received whatever inheritance waited for them in their husbands’ families; they were economically ‘disinherited’ from their family of origin. This naturally made widows terribly vulnerable, prompting exceptions to be made in their favour (e.g. Num. 27:1–11; 36:1–12). Without any outside prompting, however, Job sets aside funds for his three daughters in case they are widowed. This small detail reveals how profoundly Job has been reconciled to God’s present administration of creation, in which the normal order of things is safety and blessing, but not every tragedy is prevented ahead of time. Job, knowing his own daughters may suffer widowhood, has turned from protesting against a God who allows such things to doing what he can to care for those who may suffer. And surely the readers are being nudged at this point to ask themselves how they can imitate Job’s concern and action for vulnerable people in God’s good but still sometimes dangerous world. In other words, the revelation of Leviathan as a force humans can barely comprehend, much less contain, leads the readers of Job not to quietism or despair but to renewed action on behalf of those suffering. As Bruce Waltke writes, the book of Job teaches that God’s people ‘establish God’s rule with a chastened humility that only God rules the whole, that they cannot impose God’s rule as kings themselves, and with a chastened confession that only God is sovereign’.44 Only with ‘a chastened awareness of [our] own limitations and dependence on the God who allows wickedness’45 do we ‘become wise and persevere in spite of the inexplicable chaotic energy that threatens’ human life.46
God has even further joys waiting for Job. Given the tragically high infant mortality rates in the ANE and low life expectancy, Job’s enjoyment not just of his grandchildren but his great-grandchildren (v. 16) would have been a joy very few in that time and place received. The ending to Job’s story is like a fairy tale in its perfection. This ending does not erase Job’s former tragedy, of course; Job’s first ten children still lie in their graves. But God gives his faithful servant every blessing a saint can receive within this present age.
‘And Job died, an old man, and full of days’ (v. 17). And so the book that bears his name ends. The straightforward narration belies the great poignancy of this profound saint dying in faith, not having received the things promised, but (as it were) greeting them only from afar (Heb. 11:13). The vivid poetry of Leviathan’s prowess and danger lingers in the imagination as the reader transitions to the brief and matter-of-fact narration of Job’s end, with the promise of the monster’s defeat still in the future.
We have finished our journey through the book of Job and I have made reference at many points to what implications the book has for thinking about theodicy and the problem of evil. It is time to draw these references together in order to articulate the book’s unique contribution to these questions within the Old Testament. As we will see, the book of Job distinguishes itself from other responses in the Old Testament to evil in several important ways. Perhaps most importantly, the book of Job counts as a theodicy only in a very qualified sense. This is because a justification or explanation of God’s tolerance of and providential guidance of evil is found in the book only in a restricted and ironic form – that is to say, only in relation to the reader and not the characters of the book. At the same time, I believe the book of Job nourishes, in a way that is exceptional in the Old Testament, a radically cheerful and joyful faith in a God whose rule allows and sometimes calls for unimaginable suffering. Without at all denigrating the fact that other Old Testament books strengthen faith that is both rugged and realistic, the book of Job has something unique to teach us.
In order to appreciate the paradoxical way in which the book of Job for the most part fails as a theodicy but can produce in readers a ‘gay and mocking courage’, let me sketch the contours of theodicy in the Old Testament in a more general sense as a larger context within which to appreciate the unique contribution of the book of Job. We begin with a distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ theodicies. Laato and de Moor helpfully distinguish between Old Testament texts that count as ‘strong’ theodicies in the sense of providing an explicit justification as to why it is right for God to allow or cause suffering, and ‘weak’ theodicies that, lacking this, nevertheless attempt to make suffering intelligible in the world God rules.47 With this distinction in mind, Laato and de Moor summarize both ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ theodicies found in the Old Testament according to the following categories:48
This typology is helpful and examples from the Old Testament of each of these categories readily come to mind. A retributive theodicy that justifies suffering as a just and necessary response to sin is clearly at work when (for instance) David laments the wounds that fester and stink because of his own foolishness (Ps. 38:5). One also thinks of the exile of the people of the northern kingdom in 2 Kings 17:7–18 because of their chronic and ingrained idolatry, committed heedless of every warning and all God’s goodness in the past. Even though the exile leads to the greatest and most-lamented example of suffering in the Old Testament, it is entirely justified (cf. Jer. 5:19). An educative theodicy is perhaps easiest to see in the New Testament (Rom. 5:3; Jas 1:2–3), but is present in the Old Testament as well, such as when Joseph’s sufferings transform him from the insecure and arrogant young man boasting to his brothers (Gen. 37:1–11) to one happy to reconcile with them and use his God-given position to their benefit (50:15–21); note as well how Joseph grows from bearing tales about his brothers (37:2) to remaining silent when falsely accused (39:11–20). Daniel 7 forms an obvious Old Testament example of an eschatological theodicy, especially in its vision of the glory of the coming kingdom (v. 27) after the destruction of the rebellious powers of this age (v. 26). Some of the Preacher’s statements support both the fourth and sixth categories listed above as he acknowledges both our inability to understand God’s work in the world and our inability to change the way God has structured the human condition (life ‘under the sun’) with its varied joys and pains (see Eccl. 3:14–15; 6:10–12; 7:13–14; 8:17). While not counting as a theodicy in the strong sense of the word, Ecclesiastes still makes sense of evil and suffering with reference to human ignorance over God’s unassailable and unchangeable work in all things.
Finally, with regard to a ‘communion’ theodicy, Laato and de Moor unsurprisingly cite Job’s confession from 42:5: ‘Now my eye sees you.’49 Certain psalms of lament are also cited, in which David experiences an intimacy with God in the midst of adversity and anguish (e.g. Pss 3:5–6; 4:7–8); even if these texts do not explicitly explain evil in relation to knowing God more intimately, the association of suffering with trust implies as much. Laato and de Moor give more attention, however, to defining this category of theodicy specifically as an intimacy with God in which he suffers with humanity. Isaiah 63:9 is quoted in this connection (‘In all their affliction, he was afflicted’) as well as the substitutionary suffering of the Servant in Isaiah 53:4.50
More Old Testament examples could be given of Laato and de Moor’s typology in ways that suggest it is an accurate and helpful way of summarizing various Old Testament responses to the presence of evil and suffering in the world God rules. But we could perhaps question the extent to which the book of Job sits comfortably within their category of a ‘communion’ theodicy or any of the others they offer. The formulation Laato and de Moor give to this category of theodicy would seem to exclude the book of Job, for although God’s tone towards Job in his speech is sympathetic and gentle, no hint is given in the text that God suffers along with Job. Nor is Job’s confession of a new vision of God in 42:5, beautiful and moving as it is, presented in such a way that would count as a justification for or explanation of his prior suffering: Job speaks only of being comforted in God in the midst of his suffering (v. 6), before his miserable circumstances are changed for the better (vv. 7–17). Job does not claim that this new vision was made possible by the agonies of chapters 1–2 in such a way that explains why or justifies God’s decision to allow them. No claim is made that this new vision of God is a greater good than the evil Job suffered (a greater good which would not be possible without that suffering) in such a way as to justify or explain that evil. Job speaks only of comfort in God in the midst of suffering. This is not to deny outright that certain greater goods can be gained only by allowing some evil; I think this claim is entirely defensible on biblical and more general philosophical grounds. Nor am I denying absolutely any connection between Job’s sufferings and his final vision of God: doubtless it is true both that the new vision Job receives in 42:5 would not have been possible without the nightmare of chapters 1–2 and that this new vision outweighed all the pain of those former chapters. The only point here is that Job himself does not explicitly make these connections; I am trying to follow as closely as possible what Job does and does not say. A contrast with the Joseph story is instructive at this point. At more than one juncture in the story, Joseph makes insightful connections between his sufferings and the greater good God accomplishes through them, such as when he says that it was not his brothers and slave traders who sent him to Egypt, but God himself, to save many lives – a salvation that would have been impossible without Joseph’s suffering a great deal (Gen. 45:7; cf. Gen. 50:20). Job does not draw these connections. With this in mind, it is hard to call the book of Job a theodicy in a straightforward way.
There are other reasons why the book of Job qualifies as a ‘communion’ theodicy in only a limited way. It was noted above that God does defend his justice and goodness to Job in the face of the chaotic elements he allows to remain present and active in his creation, whether the churning sea of 38:8–11, or the unclean animals of chapter 39, or the more sinister powers represented by Behemoth and Leviathan. The discussion of the last chapter showed, however, that God’s argument was a ‘minimal’ one in the sense that it rebuts Job’s claim that his suffering demonstrates God’s lack of concern for what is just and counts as evidence against God’s goodness. God demonstrates to Job that his decision to allow certain elements of chaos in his world (thus making suffering an ever-present possibility) does not contradict his concern for treating people fairly or his goodness to everything he has made. But nothing in God’s speeches suggests that his decision to administer creation in this way is made because it is the only way to achieve certain kinds of good that would otherwise not be possible (e.g. punishing sin, or creating spiritual maturity in his people). This seems especially to be the case in yhwh ’s second speech. God does not defend Leviathan’s dangerous presence in the world God rules with reference to the ways God brings good out of evil that would otherwise be unachievable. Once again, it is true to say, biblically and theologically, that God does bring good out of evil that would otherwise be impossible. But this forms no part of God’s speeches to Job. God only assures Job he sees Leviathan far more clearly than Job does – that is, he is far more keenly aware of the evil at loose in his world than Job is – and will one day eradicate all chaos and evil from his world. Divine justice and goodness are defended against Job’s protests to the contrary, but God does not invoke some external calculus that would demonstrate the rightness of God’s decision to allow Leviathan some agency in his world, such that Job could independently agree with God that this is, on balance, the right decision. Job is assured only of God’s attention to the problem and his coming victory over it. For Job, that is enough.
All this is to say that Job as a character in the book does not receive a theodicy from God in the sense of an explanation or defence. As a result, to the extent that yhwh ’s speeches to Job speak to later readers, the reader does not receive an explanation in chapters 38–41 either. This is true with regard to both the strong and weak sense of the idea of theodicy; God does not justify his decision to allow evil in his administration of creation or reveal something that renders suffering intelligible to Job or to later readers. However, the book of Job does give the reader greater knowledge of Job’s predicament than Job has. We are allowed to see the greater conflict occurring in the divine council that explains God’s decision to allow Job’s nightmare – and from this perspective the book of Job does count as a theodicy, because it explains why God sometimes allows terrible evil. Once again, Michael Fox’s pithy summary, quoted above, of the moral issue of chapters 1–2 is worth remembering: ‘[i]nexplicable suffering has a role in the divine moral economy, for it makes true piety possible.’51 We saw above how God sometimes must interrupt his normal policy of generosity in both spiritual and earthly blessings by taking away the latter to prove the sincerity of the relationship. Job did not know about this, but the reader does. In this way, the reader receives an explanation for God’s toleration of evil and suffering that Job never did. This is, I believe, the only sense in which the book of Job counts as a theodicy, probably best characterized as a ‘communion’ theodicy – but not in the sense of an experience of God’s pathos in human suffering (an idea never expressed in the book of Job), but only in the more general sense of knowing God more intimately through suffering and because of it. Much later in the biblical story Peter will speak of that inexpressible faith and joy that count as ‘obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls’ (1 Pet. 1:9). Although the language is different, the same truth applies to readers of Job 1 – 2 and 42:5, for when God takes away any reason to remain in a relationship with him outside God himself, we see him as God in a new way. Our affirmations of faith and love for God for his own sake, no longer hypothetical but gaining a terrible significance in suffering and loss, grant us the outcome of our faith as we receive and relate to him in ways otherwise impossible.52
Even here, however, the explanation of Joblike suffering for the reader is somewhat ironic, for the readers are granted this explanation only in relation to Job’s ordeal, not their own. No readers finish the book of Job expecting to be granted their own version of Job 1 – 2 when that ‘dark, vicious spiritual battle’53 being fought over God’s people touches them directly. We can apply the truths learned there to our own situation, of course. We know that we should not automatically attribute suffering to some irrational change in God’s character or some hidden sin in ourselves, and we know that sometimes God confirms and seals us in a saving faith by forcing us to hold on to him when we have every earthly reason to give up on him (cf. Job 2:9). But simultaneously it is implied to the reader that we will never receive an explanation from God for our own times of suffering, even though such larger factors are involved. The reader knows more about Job’s predicament than Job did and more about the reason behind God’s policies in his rule over all things, but the reader joins Job in faithful ignorance otherwise.
The larger perspective given in chapters 1–2 of the book of Job forms the only element in the book that could be described as a theodicy. Otherwise, the book cannot be described that way, especially in relation to yhwh ’s speeches to Job that so comfort Job at the end. This generates a further irony in that it positions the argument of this present book (in one sense) surprisingly close to the sceptical and cynical interpretations of Job put forward by Newsom, Crenshaw, Clines, Greenstein and others that have been previously discussed.54 These scholars would not describe Job as a theodicy either, but in the different sense of being an ‘anti-theodicy’ because the book (according to their reading) positively demonstrates God’s amorality and injustice. Enough has already been said about why this reading is unconvincing. But in arguing that the book of Job is a theodicy only in the minimal sense that the readers are granted insight into God’s reasons for allowing inexplicable suffering in Job’s case and not their own, it is, I hope, clear that I distinguish myself sharply from others who deny the book of Job is a theodicy on very different grounds.
This may seem like an anticlimactic conclusion to draw about a book that is so long and difficult: all that work to get through Job’s 42 chapters, only to learn that no ‘justification of the ways of God to man’ is given? Fortunately, however, this does not at all mean that the book is silent or unhelpful with regard to the issue of inexplicable suffering. Tracing the shape of the answer given to Job in yhwh ’s speeches, together with Job’s second response, all against the background of the Accuser’s question in 1:9, sets the context for appreciating the unique contribution of the book of Job and that especially moving way in which the book can cultivate that happy and cheerful courage for God’s people living in a world ruled by a supremely good King, but in which Leviathan is still active.
In order to appreciate fully the unique way in which the book of Job speaks to suffering, perhaps the best place to start is by considering how Job complicates our usual explanations of suffering. The typology of different theodicies given by Laato and de Moor was recommended above, but my sense is that most English-speaking evangelicals work with an even simpler set of explanations for suffering: God is either punishing us or making us grow (Laato and de Moor’s first two categories). I remember an undergraduate class on Job in which a student put up his hand at one point and said, ‘My mother is a Job. The story we are reading about inexplicable suffering is her story.’ I asked him how other Christians had responded: ‘How often did your mother’s friends at church tell her she was doing something wrong and that as soon as she stopped, the pain would stop? Or that God was trying to teach her something? Or make her more like Jesus?’ My student confirmed that his mother had been told this repeatedly. I asked if any of these explanations sufficed: Was there some sin she needed to stop? Some lesson she needed to learn? The student thought for a moment and said, ‘No. That wasn’t it.’ The student understood the usual explanations for pain available to him were not helpful, but did not quite know how to articulate an alternative. My sense is that this kind of confusion is widespread.
Our common explanations for suffering are, of course, exactly those of Job’s friends. (We resemble Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar more than we realize.) But the book of Job helps us at just this point, for we have seen how Job is not suffering for any sin on his part, nor because God is trying to make him grow spiritually. As already argued, Job is already a mature saint (1:1), and Job cannot benefit from his ordeal in any way outside deeper intimacy with God without the Accuser’s allegation regaining its force. Strange as it may sound, the spiritual benefits listed elsewhere as the happy results of suffering (such as in Rom. 5:3–5) cannot come into play in Job’s ordeal, or the Accuser may suggest Job loves God for some reason other than God himself.55 Even if the benefits are spiritual and not material, the same issue of love for God purely for God’s sake remains. And it is significant that Job does not claim any personal benefit from his suffering: he speaks of God and God only when he comes to terms with his losses (42:5–6).
It appears we need a third category of suffering: ‘useless’ suffering, in which all that is gained from suffering is that God gives himself to us more deeply. The book of Job warns us that God will sometimes appear as if he were an enemy, as if his heart towards us had mysteriously changed. Gerard Manley Hopkins captures this perfectly in his poem ‘Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord’:
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me?
Job earlier asked the very same question (13:24). But the book of Job helps us when we find ourselves suffering and unable to think of any sin that would explain our pain, or wondering what God is trying to teach us and are unable to come up with anything. Rather than torturing ourselves or our friends with these questions, we learn that sometimes God allows us to suffer, not because he is angry, not in order to cause us to grow into deeper Christlikeness, but only as a means of giving himself to us more deeply. He is, in fact, about the business of saving our souls and fitting us for eternity in so doing, for a relationship with God in which God is loved for his own sake and not as a means to some other end is the only kind of relationship that will save us. After all, every secondary blessing will be lost in death, and our worship in the eschaton will be a worship of God when he is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor. 15:28). The book of Job also teaches us that God’s requirements of his saints when undergoing a kind of Joblike suffering are surprisingly minimal: like Job, all we have to do is hold on to our relationship with God and not ‘curse’ him. Like Job, we will doubtless say foolish things about God of which we are later deeply ashamed; but although God does confront these criticisms, he does so in an extraordinarily gentle way. God’s standard is not perfect performance in pain but faithfulness.
So far as I am aware, the book of Job is the only place in the canon where ‘useless’ suffering that issues only in a new vision of God is explored. But times of Joblike suffering (suffering that is both extreme and inexplicable) are so common that this is a deeply valuable exploration. Note further that if the book of Job could be categorized more neatly as a theodicy, it would fail to be helpful in this way, for the quality of suffering it addresses is one that makes no sense and seems to produce no tangible benefits. Although it does not necessarily lessen the sharpness of the pain itself, knowing that God’s heart has not changed towards you and that there is no mysterious lesson you are supposed to learn is no small comfort. It also prevents those horrible conversations in which well-intended Christians essentially blame their friends for their suffering. Even more comforting is the book’s assurance that, even if you do not see a whirlwind (38:1), God is able to draw near as no-one else can in order to console you with his own person, so that you are completely at peace and can bless his name whether he takes or gives (1:21), without depending on a change in your circumstances. As stated already, the book of Job is about the all-surpassing worth of knowing God (Phil. 3:8). Job was, after all, vindicated for persevering in his relationship with God, despite what it cost him; Job is not a loser by the end of the book. (The only loser is the Accuser!) Nor are those who suffer like him and endure (imperfectly but genuinely) as he did. This is perhaps the biggest flaw of the sceptical interpretations of Job surveyed in this book: their criticisms of God gain traction only to the extent that they value earthly and secondary blessings above God and the knowledge of him.56
A second unique contribution of the book of Job to the problem of evil has to do with God’s joy in his speeches. It was mentioned above how the proportions of God’s second speech seem to be skewed: whereas every other poetic description in the Old Testament of God’s warfare with chaos focuses solely on the defeat of the fleeing serpent, Job 41 hints at that defeat while focusing more on the creature’s dangerous prowess and sinister habitat, and does so in a surprisingly positive way (41:12). While recognizing the difficulty of detecting tone in written texts (especially ancient ones), I cannot help but hear the description of Leviathan as happy, and even cheerful: ‘What teeth! What scales! The glittering eyes, the fiery breath! Not a single weapon could even touch him!’ Were any human to speak in this way of the evil Leviathan symbolizes, it would be inexcusably flippant and glib; but the very length of the description assures us that God sees clearly and in detail the evil at loose in his creation that would utterly overwhelm us. After hearing God’s joy in that terrifying monster that we could not even touch, much less contain, it is impossible to see God or his world in quite the same way (remember how vv. 10–11 explicitly make this connection). If the one person who most clearly sees what is wrong with the world is simultaneously the happiest that the world should continue before it is made new, those in the service of this God can surely do the same.
This is the sort of thing easier to write about than to do. It must, however, be possible to look squarely at the brokenness of the world – human trafficking and cancer and labour camps and parents burying their children and sexual abuse – without at all diminishing in the slightest the horror of these evils, and nevertheless rejoice in God’s creation along with its creator. In fact, the momentum of the poetry of Job 41 suggests that clarity about the world’s evil and awestruck worship of God go hand in hand: we will gain an ever humbler and more hushed reverence for God only as we see Leviathan more clearly. Paradoxically, it is only as we look without flinching at the monster thrashing about in the waters that we are able to say, ‘Who then is he who can stand before [God]?’ (v. 10). Perhaps only then can we fully appreciate him as the mighty saviour and defender and friend he really is. I know of no other book in the canon that engages with us in quite this way.