Job vs God (Job 38-42)

Time to say goodbye to the book of Job. In the last 5 chapters, God himself takes the stage and begins his reply to Job. Unfortunately God’s line of argument is pretty much the same as Elihu’s one from the previous section, so not much new. As is appropriate for a divine figure, however, God speaks in better poetry than Elihu [at least in my English translation].

God the Mafia Boss

Just like Elihu, God employs the “who are you to question my authority, piteous worm?” defence. He begins saying “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4) and continues through a large array of natural phenomena that Job cannot control — and therefore presumably therefore has no basis to complain that God had his kids killed.

Defenders of the Bible often say it has good poetry. This applies especially to the book of Job. This is certainly true, much of the poetry is wonderful. But this misses the fact that some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible is there to illustrate a horrible, cruel or ugly point. You can feel the majesty of God’s line when he says “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” (38:31) But then you might remember that this line is the crux of his might-makes-right argument…

The awesome Matt Dillahunty often compares God to a mafia boss — do what I say or I’ll break your legs. This is also mocked in a very funny pamphlet called Kissing Hank’s Ass (a must read!). Both are perfect illustrations of this section of Job. And like a good mob boss, God is quite subtle about it, but the message is the same.

The Euthyphro dilemma says that either God is moral because morality is something outside God, or God is moral by definition in which case any arbitrary caprice of his becomes moral. Apologists sometimes say that this is a false dilemma because according to their theology, God IS the independent, perfect moral standard personified. Even if it is a false dilemma, the mobster God of Job seems to be openly advocating the 2nd option of Euthyphro: Job, whatever I say IS moral because I can kick your ass. Even if I’m being capricious, for instance in killing your kids to test you.

Can We Question God Today?

An interesting aside is that God often mentions Job’s ignorance as if that’s what disqualifies him from questioning God. “Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?” (39:1) However, thanks to a few millenia of science, we now DO know most of these things. Does this mean according to God we are now in a position to question him?

Animal Suffering

God also takes it upon himself to introduce the problem of animal suffering, just as the book of Job draws to a close. God asks Job:

Gavest thou…wings and feathers unto the ostrich? Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. [...]Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding. (39:13-17)

Forget that God is referring to himself in the third person (maybe he learned this from Sylvia Brown?), here God specifically points out that he is also making his non-human animals suffer needlessly too. I mean, it would have worked so much better if he said to Job “Canst thou provide each beast with her daily meal?” That would have made sense — but for some reason he says the opposite!

The Drama Concludes

In chapters 40-41, God starts getting to be a real bore, monologuing away like there’s no tomorrow. Then Job capitulates: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (42:5-6) To the religious reader it seems that he has accepted God’s (and Elihu’s) argument as a result of seeing God’s majesty. To me, he has seen that God really can kick his ass and has therefore given up the goods. I guess the book of Job has something to teach us about the current torture “debate” — that under the threat of torture, people WILL go against their prior convictions and give up the goods!

God then says that Job has spoken “right” whilst his friends were in the wrong. I can’t make sense of it even from the perspective of the authors, unless it was God who changed his mind and is praising Job for his sincerity and righteousness? In any case, the ending is laughable to a modern reader since God gives Job some “replacement” children.

Rather than pontificating about some grand over-reaching thing the whole book teaches us, I think the main thing I got out of reading it this time is this: Pretty much all the arguments in the problem of evil have already been hashed out thousands of years ago. There’s been very little that’s new and the answers given now can’t be too different to the answer given by the book of Job: God’s caprice is our command, since He has the ability to torture us.