Big Idea: Yahweh poses questions about the physical world to demonstrate that Job’s knowledge is too limited to explain how God works in his world.

Understanding the Text

Throughout the speeches in chapters 3–37, the various human speakers claim to know what Yahweh thinks about Job’s situation, but in chapter 38 Yahweh finally breaks his silence and speaks for himself. Yahweh addresses Job in 38:1–40:2, focusing on his design for the world (38:2), and then Job replies briefly in 40:3–5. Yahweh resumes speaking in 40:6–41:34, stressing his justice in the world (40:8), and then Job utters his final response in 42:1–6. These divine speeches are the rhetorical climax of the book as Yahweh speaks in vivid and brilliant poetry.

As the master teacher, Yahweh poses more than seventy unanswerabl…