"Oh no, Job. Something happened to me in the last twenty-four hours that may affect the way I look at the last chapter of the book. Oh, to set your mind at rest, it was nothing dramatic in my life. Kids are still ok, dog still barks at passersby, life is seemingly "intact." I want to relieve your mind on that score. But I re-read Job 38, where God begins to talk to you, Job, and I think my perspective is changing. And when the perspective began to change, you know what literary image darted into my mind? Nope, wrong. It was Sophocles. Yep. Oedipus Rex. You see, Oedipus was the conscientious king, the one who was going to "get to the bottom" of the reason why the town languished [just like I was going to "get to the bottom" of your book, Job]. I don't have time, Job, to go through all the rich language of the play here, but I want to say that there was a time about 3/4 of the way into the play where it gradually dawns on Oedipus that all is not right in his interpretation of things. He doesn't yet see with the clarity that will cause him to blind himself, but he sees something; he starts to feels a sense of lack of control.
It is like the feeling you have when you have gone over a "problem" dozens of times in your mind, a problem you need to solve, and you have come to such an airtight explanation of things where YOU KNOW you are right, that you are utterly unshakable in your beliefs, and then, presto, you get this inkling that you are wrong, that you have ignored a factor that is utterly crucial, and that your whole nicely-constructed intellectual edifice is going to crumble, trapping you inside it, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid this fate. That is a little of what I have been feeling, Job.
I re-read part of ch.38 and the language began to hit me in a different place than it did previously, Job, and it has detabilized my intellectual world a bit. I need to tell you what about my reading of 38 has done this to me, Job. Well, it began to happen even with v.2. Don't get me wrong. I still see God in 38:2 being the one who is like the disturbed householder in the middle of the night, sort of like Bassanio in Othello, who stumbles to the window and wants to know what all the commotion is about. God is perturbed by your impertinent words, by your untimely calling him up from his world. But God uses an interesting phrase. He wonders who it is who "darkens counsel." Ah, darkens. Darkens will hearken someplace, won't it, Job? Yes, it takes us back to ch.3. That is where you learned the word dark and its several variations. Hm. God may be saying, by a clever use of this one work "darkens," that what you brought in your interpretive work in general, Job was more darkness than light. Wow, if that is what God might be hinting at, he is not so much bludgeoning you at this point as suggesting that your insights were not particularly illuminating. In other words, I might begin to see God's words as advancing an alternative explanation, sort of filling out the Elihu-approach of 36:15-16, rather than simply blowing you away.
The point would be, then, to try to see 38-41 as God's attempt to "woo" you, Job, through asking you a series of questions. Elihu asked questions but really wanted to give a series of statements about how God communicates to us (33) or what your pain actually meant (36). But God will just ask questions, with very few observations in between. And, God's observations are not really interpretive observations, as if God is trying to "apply" his insights to your life, Job. He just states at the outset that your way of going about things has "darkened" matters rather than brought light to the situation.
And, indeed, you have sort of asked for it, haven't you, Job? That is, you gave God the option earlier in the book about how to proceed in this legal encounter. God could make his case or he could "call" and you would answer. God chose the latter. Like any good attorney, then, God would state his general approach right at the outset. Attorneys want to leave no doubt with the court regarding where they are going in their argument. Attorneys want to win the case, and they win the case by laying out their bottom line as soon as they can. Hasn't God done that here, Job? God says that you have "darkened" counsel, that your words have brought obscurity rather than clarity to the issue. And, he then will proceed to show you how that is the case.
Oh, my, Job, this happened to me at a bad time. I just about had my conclusions all wrapped up in my mind about how to disentangle everything in ch.42, and now this comes upon me. I have to follow a few of God's words in ch.38, then, before returning to 42, don't you think?
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