"Continuing, I would say:
10. When God spoke with you, then, he ignored your request in ch.13. You knew God had the power to blow you away, so to speak, but you hoped that God would speak to you in a friendly manner. You would have liked to get beyond all the anger that has been expressed--God's, yours, Elihu's, everyone's and go back to the reality of covenantal intimacy (cf.14:15) that characterized your earlier relationship with God. But this wasn't possible. God addressed you as if you were an impertinent and ignorant creature (38:2). God seemed to want to make this contest with you a test of manhood (38:3). I think you must have lost some respect for God when he addressed you this way. Is that true, Job?
11. God's first address to you (38-39) exposed your ignorance of meterological phenomena and the origins of light and darkness. God also showed you that you didn't know "when the mountain goats gave birth" (39:1). That is, God is trying to show that you are ignorant of the breeding habits of nature, too. I think you heard God's questions to you in these chapters as belittling questions, calculated to show that you were really very small in the ultimate scheme of things.
12. [Digression. The fact that your book survived, Job, not only fulfilled your most fond wish--19:23-24--but also tends to undercut some of the tone of God's argument in 38-39. That is, God is trying to show that you are insignificant, Job, in the scheme of things, and that your knowledge is very limited. But, actually, your book is probably the most profound reflection on loss in the Western canon. So, how insignificant really were you? Didn't you 'trump' God by having your wish come true?]
13. After God has questioned your wisdom, by exposing your ignorance in the first speech, he asks you to respond. God uses the legal language of contending in 40:2 that you had used in 9:3. God forces you to answer. Is this God's fair-play turnabout? That is, some scholars see your oath of innocence in ch.31 as a "compulsion" for God to appear and speak. If God was thus compelled, he is now compelling you to answer. He is giving you some of your own medicine, then, isn't he Job?
14. I take your answer to God in 40:3-5 as ambiguous. On the one hand you give the impression you are submitting, but, on the other hand, you refuse to say anything else. I think you realize that God is not a predictable debating partner or legal opponent at this point. God will not observe good decorum in the courtroom. God will do whatever God wants. That is why you want to shut up. But you haven't been convinced of anything as of 40:5, have you? You are probably hopping mad that God has done this to you, forcing you to answer, making you try to concede points that you think are irrelevant but which God seemingly has made central to the case. You are drawing back into your shell in 40:5, aren't you Job?
15. God perceives that you are trying to hide from him through your evasive answer. That is why he speaks again. If you were brought into submission in 40:5, we could have gone right to ch.42 and the conclusion of the book. But this wasn't possible. You gave God enough indications that you were not going to submit to his badgering. Thus, God decides he needs to obliterate you. God then rips into you in 40:7-14 in language that goes far beyond the derisive language of 38:2-3.
16. The effect of God's speech in 40-41 is to humiliate you, overcome you, and force you to give up. God does this not only by showing how he conquered other fearsome proud creatures, such as Behemoth and Leviathan, but he insults you with about the lowest blow you can imagine (41:5 in the English). The cumulative effect of God's language in 40-41 will lead you to your words in 42:1-6. The crucial question of the Book of Job is interpreting how you said 42:1-6 and what the meaning of these verses is.
17. The two options that are most strongly in my mind now for interpreting 42:1-6, Job, are these. First, in this passage you are obliterated emotionally, you collapse, and you barely can say the words. It is as if you conclude that your life is utterly worthless and that you have been, figuratively, lobotomized by God's treatment of you. Second, another option is to see you overwhelmed but by different things. You are not obliterated emotionally, but are awestruck, overcome, unsettled internally, but are able to "yield" or "give over" your pain to God. You have "seen" God, and you know your life will never be the same again, but you are patiently and pensively waiting for whatever God has to say. You are a transformed person, but a person transformed in good ways by the grace of God.
Got to stop here, Job. That brings us to 42, and now the fun really begins.
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