38:1–41:34; 40:3–5; 42:1–6 Review · God’s Speeches with Job’s Responses:The polyphony in the words and ideas that have cut across the respective characters’ monologic points of view grinds nearly to a halt with God’s thunderous voice. Job finally gets to stand before God. The wish is granted. But, teasingly, this will be no dialogic interchange. This is monologue. God has a different set of values, other premises than those held by Job. God’s barrage of questions, though in the form of an invitation to dialogue, are here rhetorical and meant to silence, the outgrowth of confronting one whose words are “without knowledge” (38:2).
Commentator upon commentator explores the conundrum of whether God’s speeches engage Job’s arguments, and if so, how. Has God really answered? If he has answere…