Job 40

Job 40:1

40:1, 2 Again the LORD rebukes Job for his impertinence in finding fault with the Almighty. If he is so wise and powerful, surely he should be able to answer the catalog of questions that he has just heard!

Job 40:3

B. Job’s Response (40:3-5)The LORD asks Job if he has any right to correct or rebuke Him in the realm of providence when he knows so little about the natural creation. With this, Job at last takes his proper place, saying, “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth.” Overwhelmed by the wide-ranging knowledge of the Lord, he determines to say no more.

Job 40:6

C. The Lord’s Second Challenge to Job (40:641:34)1. Job Challenged to Respond Like a Man (40:6-14)But Job’s response comes somewhat short of repentance, so the LORD continues to remonstrate with him out of the whirlwind. He challenges Job to speak up like a man. After all, Job had accused God of injustice, and condemned Him in order to justify himself. Now then, let him play the part of deity by displaying omnipotence and by speaking in thunder. Let him take the throne, clothing himself with majesty, splendor, glory, and beauty. Let him pour out his wrath on the guilty and humble the proud. If he can do all these things, then the Lord will acknowledge his power to be his own deliverer.

Job 40:15

2. Job Challenged to Consider Behemoth (40:15-24)Next the Lord challenges Job to consider behemoth, which He made along with Job. This rules out the notion of some commentators that behemoth and leviathan are mythological creatures well known in ancient time. What challenge can a non-existent creature be to a created being such as man? The word behemoth is simply the plural form of the common Hebrew word for cattle (behmah). Meredith Kline explains: The designation behemoth, taken as a plural intensive, “the beast par excellence,” would be an epithet like chief of the ways of God (v. 19a). Note the similar supreme claims made for leviathan (Job_41:33-34). God presents the behemoth as the first of His ways, that is, as Exhibit A in the animal kingdom. Although we cannot identify it with certainty, we know that it is herbivorous, amphibian, and exceedingly powerful. It rests in shady, marshy areas and is not easily intimidated. The lesson is that if Job can’t even control this brute, how can he control the world? The behemoth is sometimes identified with the hippopotamus, and some translations, such as the Louis Segond translation in French, actually put that animal in the text. But by no stretch of the imagination can the hippopotamus be called “the first of the ways of God"an elephant or a mammoth might merit that epithet perhaps, but hardly a hippo! When children go to the zoo they squeal with glee at the cute, stubby tail of the hippohardly a tail like a cedar! Some Christian scientists are now convinced that the behemoth must be an animal now extinct, or perhaps found in some remote parts of the African jungle. In fact, a reptile of the dinosaur type does fit the description very closely.