Zophar wished the deity would reveal to Job the source of his suffering (11:5–6), assuming there must be a just cause. Job has made repeated appeals for such a disclosure, insisting that his apparent punishments manifest divine injustice. Job’s strategy for compelling the deity to appear and justify what he believes to be the divine charges against him (see especially 13:13–23) was to initiate a lawsuit against the deity and swear that he did not commit any crime that would warrant his extreme afflictions (see Job’s Closing Discourse). According to ancient jurisprudence, an oath by one party compels the other party to testify and present the evidence supporting that party’s position. Job’s strategy succeeds, and the deity appears.
The deity assumes a hostile persona—that of the storm god. Storm gods of the ancient Near East and the storm god persona of the biblical God (see for example Nahum 1:3–6) entail the role of warrior: thunder is a battle cry, lightning bolts are arrows, and so forth (see for example Psalm 18:8–16). Instead of explaining to Job the circumstances of his suffering, as represented in the prologue, the deity addresses Job aggressively, asserting his superiority by demonstrating Job’s ignorance. His point is that Job had been making statements about him and his conduct without having direct knowledge of them. Such esoteric knowledge was revealed at the time of creation (compare Proverbs 8:22–31), and, as Eliphaz has already intimated (15:7), Job was not then present. Accordingly, the deity is able to dismiss Job’s testimony about him pro forma—Job lacks the firsthand knowledge of a witness that is required in order to make the claims in his lawsuit. God extricates himself from the lawsuit without having to explain Job’s suffering to him or to his companions.
Most interpreters regard the panorama of creation that the deity displays as an appropriate response to Job. On the one hand, divine providence is implied; on the other, Job, like other humans, has an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that Job, acknowledged as a righteous person, is treated here in bullying fashion. God barely touches on anything connected to justice or to the providential care of humanity. To the contrary: he makes rain, which is ordinarily regarded as a divine reward for good behavior, where no humans can enjoy it; he provides food to predatory animals like the lion and the raven. The exquisite imagery of the divine discourse portrays a fundamentally amoral world.
[38:1] Up speaks YHWH to Job from the windstorm, and he says:
[2] Who is this who obscures good counsel,
(Using) words without knowledge?
[3] Bind up your loins like a man!1
I will ask you—and you help me know!
[4–6] Where were you when I laid earth’s foundations?
Tell me—if you truly know wisdom!
Who set its dimensions? Do you know?
Who stretched the measuring line?
Into what were its foundations sunk?
Who laid its cornerstone?—
[38] Molding the dirt into solid,
As the clods are stuck together?2
[7] When the stars of daybreak sang out,
And the sons of Elohim3 cheered;4
[8–11] He5 hedged with double-doors Yamm,6
As he was gushing out of the womb;
When I gave him cloud as a garment,
Raincloud as his swaddling clothes;
And imposed7 upon him my boundary,
Setting a bolt ’cross double-doors.8
And I said, “This far you may come, but no more!
Here’s where I fix9 the surge of your waves!”
[12–15] Have you ever in your days summoned daybreak,
Made known to the dawning its place?
Holding the earth by its corners,
So the wicked would from it be shaken?10
The earth11 is upturned like the clay in a seal,12
And the wicked13 stand there like a garment;14
That the wicked be shed of their “light,”15
And the upraised arm be broken.
[16–18] Have you ever reached the sources of Sea,16
And walked on the bottom of Ocean?17
Were you ever shown the gates of Death,18
Or seen the gates of Deathly Shade?
Have you scanned the expanses of earth?
Tell—if you know all of this!
[19–21] On what path dwells the light?
And the darkness—where is its place?
Can you take it to its domain?
Do you know the route to its home?
You must know, for you were born then;
Your number of days is so many!19
[22–23] Have you reached the storerooms of snow?
Have you seen the storerooms of hail?—
I’ve been saving for a time of distress,
For a day of combat and battle.
[24] By what path is lightning dispensed,
Spreading east winds o’er the land?20
[25–27] Who cleaves a downpour’s channel,
And a path for the thunderstorm;
To rain down on land without people,
On wilderness with no human in it;21
Drenching utter wasteland,
And sprouting grassy growth?
[28–30] Has the rain a progenitor?
Who begot the pools22 of dew?
From whose womb did ice emerge?
And frost from the sky—who gave it birth?
So water congeals23 like stone;
The surface of Ocean24 hardens.
[31–32] Can you tie the bands25 of the Pleiades,
Or loosen the cords of Orion?26
Can you bring the Mazarot27 out in its season,
Or lead the Hyades with its little ones?
[33–35] Do you know the sky’s regularities?
Can you impose their regimen on earth?28
Can you raise your voice toward a cloud,
And be covered by a downpour?
Can you send forth lightning bolts,
As they say to you, “Yes, my lord!”?29
[36] Who endowed the ibis bird30 with wisdom,
And gave understanding to the cock?31
[37] Who can fill32 the heavens with wisdom,
And tip the waterskins of the sky?
[39–41] Do you hunt down prey for the lion,
And quell the hunger of beasts,
As they crouch in their lairs,
Or wait in the thicket to ambush?33
Who provides rations to ravens,
When their children cry out to El,
As they wander without food?
The deity questions Job concerning animals that are powerful and wild, while continuing to remind him of his inferiority.
[39:1–3] Do you know the season that wild goats give birth?
Or observe the calving of hinds?
Count the months that they gestate?34
Know the season they give birth—
As they crouch and deliver their young,
Sending forth their offspring?35
[4] Their children gain strength and grow up in the wild;
Once they’ve gone out, they never return.
[5–8] Who sends forth free the wild ass?
The onager—who cuts36 its cords?
Whose home I made the steppe,
Its habitat the barren land.
Hears not the shouts of a driver.37
He surveys38 the hills for his pasture;
Searches for some vegetation.39
[9–12] Will the wild ox40 want to serve you?
Will he bed down in your crib?
Can you tie the wild ox by rope to a furrow?
Will it harrow the lowland behind you?
Would you rely on him for a full yield,41
Leaving your efforts to him?
Would you trust him to bring back42 your seed,
And collect (the grain) from your threshing-floor?43
[13–18] Does44 the wing of the ostrich45 flutter?
Does she fly46 (like the) stork and the falcon?47
She abandons her eggs on the ground,48
Letting them warm49 in the dirt;
Forgetful of feet that can trample them,50
Of animals that can squash them.
She treats her young harshly as though they’re not hers;
She frets not that her effort’s for nothing.
For Eloah put wisdom out of her mind,
And gave her no share of perception.
And yet she can speed in a run,51
Scorning the horse and its rider.52
[19–25] Do you give the horse its bravery?53
Do you clothe its neck with a mane?54
Do you make it noisy as locusts?
The blare55 of his snorting is fright!
He paws56 (the ground) with power,57
Eager (to ply) his strength,
As he enters into the fray.
He scorns the fearsome, does not flinch;
He does not recoil from the sword;
Even as a quiver58 whirs by him;
Or the blade of a dagger or spear.
With thunder and tremor he laps up the land;59
He swerves not at the blast of the horn.
To60 the horn he answers “hurrah!”
He can smell battle from a distance—
The thunder of captains and battle cries.
[26–30] Does the falcon take flight through your wisdom,
As it spreads its wings toward the south?61
Does the eagle fly high at your command,62
Or when it nests at an elevation—
Dwelling and bedding in rock,
Protected beneath a cliff?63
From there it searches its food;
Its eyes can see from a distance.
Its fledglings swill blood;
Where there is carrion, it is there.
1. Preparation for combat.
2. This verse clearly belongs here. The copyist overlooked it and wrote it when he noticed, after verse 37 (compare Kahana).
3. The angels; see 1:6.
4. The verse echoes a couplet in a version of Deuteronomy 32:43 preserved in a Qumran scroll: “Sing of his people, all you heavens; pay homage to him, all you divine beings!”
5. The third-person unusually replaces the first-person discourse in this verse; but see 39:17. Some read wa-mi sak “Who hedged … ?”
6. The Canaanite sea god; see 3:8; 7:12; 26:13.
7. Reading wa’eshmor “I set as a guard,” in keeping with the image and language in 7:12.
8. See 3:10. Note the irony: Job wished he could have been locked in the womb.
9. Reading u-po ’ashit for po’ yashit “here (spelled unusually with aleph) he fixes.”
10. The earth under cover of darkness is here figured as a blanket, and the wicked are here figured as bugs that infest one’s bedding at night (Newsom).
11. Literally, “it.”
12. Literally, “a clay seal.” When a seal is removed from clay, an image appears.
13. Literally, “they.”
14. These lines are difficult, and this particular one is usually emended. For “garment” as an outer skin, see Job 41:5. In the daylight the wicked are visible, like one’s outer garment.
15. Night is the wickeds’ day, the time they operate; see immediately below and 24:13–17.
16. Yamm (see verse 8).
17. Tehom, the Deep (see 28:14).
18. The realm of the dead; see 28:22; compare “the gates of Sheol” in Isaiah 38:10.
19. Returning to the point of verse 4, the deity speaks sarcastically.
20. For the conjunction of lightning and wind, see Elihu’s descriptions in chapter 37.
21. In contradiction to Eliphaz in 5:10 and Elihu in 36:27–28. For the negative connotation of such a wasteland, see Jeremiah 2:6.
22. Compare Arabic ma’jal (Kaddari).
23. From the root ḥb’ “to congeal,” cognate to ḥem’a “curds,” not the common root ḥb’ “to hide” (Dhorme).
24. Tehom, the Deep.
25. Compare 1 Samuel 15:32; derived via metathesis from ‘anad “to chain.”
26. For these two constellations, see 9:9. The stars of constellations are assumed to be held together by some kind of bond.
27. Probably a variant of mazal “constellation.” Perhaps Canis Major and Minor (Halpern).
28. Read mishtaran “their (for its) regimen,” referring to “regularities” (so Kahana).
29. Literally, “here we are”; for this usage, see for example Genesis 22:1, 7, 11; compare Akkadian anna/u and postbiblical hen “yes.”
30. There are several interpretations of these recipients of wisdom. Considering the contrast to the stupid bird in 39:17, I favor the sense of birds. The ibis is associated with the Egyptian god Thot (even if the first consonant in Hebrew is not the usual equivalent of the Egyptian; so Dhorme).
31. So in rabbinic literature. These birds exhibit intelligence; the ibis finds food underground, and the cock discerns the dawn.
32. The verb sipper ordinarily means “to relate, inform,” but it may here be associated with the term sipra “bag, container” (see at 26:13; compare Kahana), and thus “to fill (a bag).”
33. Compare Psalm 10:9.
34. For “filling months” in this sense, compare Genesis 25:24.
35. For ḥebel in this sense, and not “birth pangs,” see the cognate verb in the sense of giving birth (for example Psalm 7:15).
36. Literally, “opens, loosens.”
37. Compare 3:18: the servant is free from his driver—in death.
38. Reading yatur for yetur “excess (?).”
39. Literally, “any green.”
40. The urus; usually spelled re’em, not rem.
41. For this sense of koaḥ in Job, see 31:39 (compare Tur-Sinai).
42. Reading yashib for yashub “he comes back.”
43. Would you receive a full return on your seed if the plowing were left to him?
44. Since the following line begins with the interrogative particle ’im, the interrogative particle ha- must have dropped out by mistake.
45. Read ye‘enim (see Lamentations 4:3) for renanim (with change in vocalization) “screechers.”
46. The line is variously read. Making no alterations in the consonants, I read ’abrah “it takes wing” for ’ebrah “wing.” For this verb, see verse 26.
47. Reading nitsa (feminine of nets; see verse 26) for we-notsa “and plumage.”
48. I am omitting the particle ki “for, since” at the beginning of the line; it would seem to have been copied here by mistake. It would make better sense at the beginning of the following verse. The scribe may have skipped to the next verse, which begins without ki, and then, realizing his mistake, continued copying verse 14.
49. Incubate.
50. Literally, “it”; there are several exchanges of singular and plural in Job.
51. The verb translated “speed” may be related to an Arabic term for “prodding” a horse. For marom “up high” (the ostrich cannot fly), read merots “run, race” (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
52. An ostrich can outrun a horse at short distances.
53. Gebura may pun on “mane,” which is guparu in Akkadian.
54. Interpreted on the basis of context; ra‘ma suggests “thunder,” thereby punning on the next verse. Contrary to what is widely claimed, the word is not the Arabic term for “mane.”
55. Reading hed “reverberation” for hod “splendor.” Compare Jeremiah 8:14.
56. Literally, “digs”; reading the singular for the text’s plural.
57. Compare in Ugaritic and Akkadian emūqu. See also Jeremiah 47:5.
58. A quiver’s-full of arrows.
59. Literally, “gulps.” He keeps advancing; compare Shakespeare: “he seemed in running to devour the way” (Henry IV, Part 2, 1:1).
60. On the preposition badei, see at 11:3.
61. “South” recalls “Teiman,” the region of Eliphaz (see at 2:11).
62. Literally, “mouth.”
63. Compare Jeremiah 49:16.