Then Job replied:
How you have helped the powerless!
How you have saved the arm that is feeble!
What advice you have offered to one without wisdom!
And what great insight you have displayed!
Who has helped you utter these words?
And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?
Job took Bildad to the woodshed here saying what he said was simply not helpful.
After dismissing Bildad, Job turned to the existential reality of all human beings.
The dead are in deep anguish,
those beneath the waters and all that live in them.
Death is naked before God;
Destruction lies uncovered.
Is this a hint of afterlife theology?
If the dead have no existence (i.e. the body dies there is nothing left) then would they feel anguish?
And the construction of these lines of poetry paints a picture of a collection of those who have died who "live" (exist?) "beneath the waters" in a nether world?
Job, for a guy who had been ranting at God, extols God's power.
He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.
image source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap971026.html
Only a few hundred astronauts have seen the Earth suspended over nothing!
He wraps up the waters in his clouds,
yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
He covers the face of the full moon,
spreading his clouds over it.
He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters
for a boundary between light and darkness.
The pillars of the heavens quake,
aghast at his rebuke.
By his power he churned up the sea;
by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.
By his breath the skies became fair;
his hand pierced the gliding serpent.
Huh? Cut Rahab to pieces?
Turns out Job has used this imagery before in Job 9:13. The text notes in the NIV Study Bible says that it is a reference to an ancient mythological sea monster! The Jewish online encyclopedia offered this information about Rahab.
And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power?
Our ability to understand God and the things of God are limited!
We are so busy with our lives that we occasionally note his whisper. What would we comprehend if God raised the volume? It would be like trying to drink from a fire hose.
Lord, have mercy. Great are your works we can see in the creation a reflection of your glory. Thank you that you whisper so I can understand some things. Help me to submit to you in humility knowing you know far more about the ways of the universe. And what faint whispers in my frailty I manage to hear, help me to act upon. Amen.
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