Job 26
Job opens his reply to Bildad (and Eliphaz and Zophar) with biting sarcasm. How you have helped him who has no power! How you have saved the arm that has no strength! How you have counseled him who has no wisdom, and plentifully declared sound knowledge! (vv. 2-3) I guess Job is not particularly satisfied with what they have said!
Job then proceeds to describe God’s magnificence. Before God, even Sheol is laid bare. (v. 6) God has dominion over the heavens, and He controls the weather. (vv. 8-11) He hangs the earth on nothing (v. 7) and stills the seas. (v. 12) Yet, Behold, these are but the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand? (v. 14) With all of nature proclaiming God’s power and greatness, it amounts to only a whisper. We cannot begin to comprehend Him.
In some respects, Job’s descriptions of God’s power reflect Bildad’s comments in Job 25 — God is high, and we are not. But Job is clearly not throwing in the towel and agreeing with Bildad. Instead, I think he is proclaiming to his friends that God is far beyond their view of Him, that God does not fit nicely within their tidy framework, that they basically know nothing at all.
Regardless of Job’s relationship with his friends, it is well worth our time to meditate daily on God’s greatness. Turn off the TV or the phone or whatever device you are addicted to. Look up at the starry sky and wonder at the God who created the vast universe. Sit in awe at the power of a (mere) thunderstorm. Consider a raging sea, calmed by the voice of the Master. And remember that this God loves you.
Study Bibles are good. No, they don’t necessarily provide answers, especially to questions where multiple responses can be considered. But they often provide prompts that can help us dig deeper into an issue. So, yes, one of my study Bibles provided such a prompt. They mentioned “divine omnipotence”, which we can easily see has been discussed by Job and his three friends in previous chapters. They also covered, but did not mention divine power – John covers that in his comments. But the other item that they mentioned that triggered my thinking was “divine indifference”, the idea that God in all His glory and majesty could just be watching what’s going on in the world and not stepping in to right wrongs in the face of clear injustice. Naturally we can ask that about the Holocaust or even right now with Russia invading Ukraine. How can God stand back when evil takes over? That’s a forever question. Fundamentally I do not believe in “divine indifference”. I believe that God knows all that is going on everywhere in the world, and He chooses to intervene exactly where He chooses to intervene – and who are we to question His authority to act whenever and wherever He chooses? But it’s probably the case that He wants us to come to Him asking for His intervention, wherever. Pope Francis has called the world to prayer and fasting this coming Ash Wednesday. Let’s join our Catholic brothers and sisters and believers of all faiths and make our corporate requests known to God in a big, big way!