Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!

So it is with Job. It is more than a physical storm. It is a symbol for his personal storm and the approaching appearance of God. He has come to the end of his wits and his arguments with God but now sits speechless waiting for death to take him.

And then Elihu, the young man standing by all this time waiting to talk says,

Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice,

    to the rumbling that comes from his mouth.

He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven

    and sends it to the ends of the earth.

After that comes the sound of his roar;

    he thunders with his majestic voice.

When his voice resounds,

    he holds nothing back.

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;

    he does great things beyond our understanding.

He brings the clouds to punish people,

    or to water his earth and show his love.

“Listen to this, Job;

    stop and consider God’s wonders.

The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power;

    in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.

Therefore, people revere him,

    for does he not have regard for all the wise in heart?”

And Elihu, like many before and after him, are partially right about God. Yes, men revere him but God is no respecter of persons. He does not necessarily have regard for all the wise in heart. In fact, it may sometimes appear to be just the opposite. We are all incapable of understanding Him and his ways. We are less than angels. We are but creatures after all.

And this is when God speaks out of the tempest and says,

Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

I have always before read that to mean, “Stand up straight, Job! Get off the ground and act like a real man!” As if God was commanding Job to stop whining and cowering in the face of suffering and should be more like John Wayne. “Have some respect for yourself, you weasel.”  But, I’ve been thinking it may not mean that at all.  It may mean you are only a man, a created and limited being who can never fully understand the deepest things in the world God has created. What seems unfair to you is such a small part of the bigger picture and if you could understand it all then you would be God yourself. “Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty…Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.” Stop acting like more than a man in judging the intentions of God.

That is what it means to brace yourself like a man – a mere mortal. “You are not a god. You are not an angel. You are but a man and I will now question you about things you cannot understand so that you will remember you are but a man and stop these petty quarrels about theology and the nature of good and evil – as if you could understand as much as a grain of sand.”

That must be how God looks at so many of our tempests in a teacup. Maybe we need to say to each other it’s beyond all of our understanding and time to admit we are but mere men and these things are but distractions to what God’s clearly stated intentions for us are.  “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  (Micah 6:8) Could it be that simple? Could it be that is what we are to brace ourselves to do and not to act as if we are capable of understanding the deepest ways of God?

So, it is in Chapter 39 that we get a taste of that.

Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?

    Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?

Do you count the months till they bear?

    Do you know the time they give birth?

They crouch down and bring forth their young;

    their labor pains are ended.

Their young thrive and grow strong in the wilds;

    they leave and do not return.

Of course, we know so much more now about the world of nature than the author of Job did. We actually do know when the mountain goats give birth and we have whole documentaries about when the doe bears her fawn. We have organizations and disciplines devoted to the observation and study of the wild donkey, wild ox, wild ostrich, wild horses, wild hawks and eagles. It’s true that we learn something new every day but these things are not the mysteries they were then.

But there is something in this passage that we may not yet understand and it is in that word “wild” that is repeated several times in this chapter.  What does wild mean here? Does it mean evil or harmful? Does it mean vicious? Not really. It is more like untamed, undomesticated and free from control. Where does the notion of wildness in this sense come from? I think it comes from the Creator himself. That might be difficult for us to imagine as we have spent centuries making God into a decent gentleman who comes alongside us as a friend and gentle companion whose greatest interest is our comfort and happiness. There is very little that is wild about our God. But, I think that is part of what he is saying to Job. There is an unconstrained wildness in nature that you will never understand and that wildness comes from God himself.

Do you remember the scene in “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” where Mr. Beaver is telling Susan about Aslan?

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”…”Safe?” said Mr Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

The wild creatures in this chapter are exactly that. The wild donkey is free and ranges the hills for his pasture. “He laughs at commotion in the town and does not hear a driver’s shout.”

The ostrich while not endowed with wisdom or even good sense still laughs at the horse and rider while she outruns them both.

The horse paws fiercely, rejoices in his strength, and charges into the fray. He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;

We are mere men and often afraid of everything. We are caught up in the commotions and petty conflicts of our towns. We listen to the shout of the driver that pushes us. We are not wild enough, are we?

So we come to Chapter 40 and our introduction to the Behemoth. This is the only place in Scripture where this word is used in this way. While a form of the word is used often to describe cattle – “the cattle on a thousand hills are his” – this is the only place it is used to describe a monster or at least a monstrously large creature.  Let’s read the description:

Look at Behemoth,

    which I made along with you

    and which feeds on grass like an ox.

What strength it has in its loins,

    what power in the muscles of its belly!

Its tail sways like a cedar;

    the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.

Its bones are tubes of bronze,

    its limbs like rods of iron.

It ranks first among the works of God,

    yet its Maker can approach it with his sword.

The hills bring it their produce,

    and all the wild animals play nearby.

Under the lotus plants it lies,

    hidden among the reeds in the marsh.

The lotuses conceal it in their shadow;

    the poplars by the stream surround it.

A raging river does not alarm it;

    it is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth.

Can anyone capture it by the eyes,

    or trap it and pierce its nose?

Some have taken this to mean the author is describing an elephant or even a hippopotamus.  That word comes from a combination of two Greek words – hippo for horse and potamos for river. Anyone traveling in Africa is warned that the hippo is the world’s deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year. Contrary to the way they appear as happy creatures often dancing in cartoons they are aggressive and dangerous – especially at night. They kill with their sharp teeth as well as crushing their prey with their sheer weight. You are wise to avoid them.

Then in Chapter 41 we are introduced to the Leviathan:

Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook

    or tie down its tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through its nose

    or pierce its jaw with a hook?

Can you make a pet of it like a bird

    or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?

Can you fill its hide with harpoons

    or its head with fishing spears?

If you lay a hand on it,

    you will remember the struggle and never do it again!

Any hope of subduing it is false;

    the mere sight of it is overpowering.

No one is fierce enough to rouse it.

    Who then is able to stand against me?

Who can strip off its outer coat?

    Who can penetrate its double coat of armor[b]?

Who dares open the doors of its mouth,

    ringed about with fearsome teeth?

Its back has rows of shields

    tightly sealed together;

Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

    its eyes are like the rays of dawn.

Flames stream from its mouth;

    sparks of fire shoot out.

Smoke pours from its nostrils

    as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.

Its breath sets coals ablaze,

    and flames dart from its mouth.

Strength resides in its neck;

    dismay goes before it.

The folds of its flesh are tightly joined;

    they are firm and immovable.

Its chest is hard as rock,

    hard as a lower millstone.

When it rises up, the mighty are terrified;

    they retreat before its thrashing.

The sword that reaches it has no effect,

    nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

Iron it treats like straw

    and bronze like rotten wood.

Arrows do not make it flee;

    slingstones are like chaff to it.

A club seems to it but a piece of straw;

    it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

Its undersides are jagged potsherds,

    leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron

    and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

It leaves a glistening wake behind it;

    one would think the deep had white hair.

Nothing on earth is its equal—

    a creature without fear.

It looks down on all that are haughty;

    it is king over all that are proud.”

What does that sound like? Yes, an alligator. A very large alligator breathing smoke and fire.  We have moved from the natural wildness of animals to those that are frightening and vicious. In fact, in both Jewish and Christian literature these two creatures figure prominently in the end times of God’s judgement and the coming of the Messiah. They are more than animals. They are symbols for the presence and power of evil in the world. Both of them are beyond the power of men to control – but not God.

So, the Behemoth is dangerous and powerful but not nearly as wicked as the Leviathan.  If we thought the weight and force of evil was bad, when we come face to face with the Leviathan we realize it’s infinitely more frightening than we had thought.

I’ve been helped in understanding this by Christopher Ash at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England.

“While the Behemoth may be the storybook embodiment of the figure of death, the Leviathan in biblical imagery is the archenemy of God. In the Leviathan we see the embodiment of beastliness, of terror, of undiluted evil. When, at the climax of his description, we read “he is king over all the sons of pride” (41:34), we’re reading of the one who elsewhere is called “Beelzebul, the prince of demons” (Matt. 12:24).

“If you can tame him, Job, then we may be sure you can tame all the proud. But you can’t, Job, can you?” The point of Job 41 is to make us tremble at the awesome and full power of the prince of evil.”

And that is when we skip ahead to the New Testament when Christ conquers the Behemoth and the Leviathan in a way that we cannot. Evil ultimately cannot be conquered with force. It cannot be overpowered or altogether avoided. We cannot fight fire with fire. Christ conquers him with sacrifice. Job is righteous but not sinless. Only a sinless sacrifice will conquer the power of evil. Only a returning Messiah can destroy them once and for all.

Ash continues: “As Job suffers, his greatest and deepest fear is that the monster who attacks him is unrestrained, that the attacks will go on forever, with unrelieved ferocity, and that the monster has been given a free hand—unlimited access to Job and his life. He’s afraid there exists no sovereign God who has evil on a leash.

But there is. And when Job grasps that, he’s filled with awe. Satan, the Leviathan, is a horrible monster. But he can’t go one inch beyond the leash on which the Lord keeps him.

So God’s answer to Job is now clear: He is sovereign over nature to suit His purposes. We can see this in God’s description of weather and the seasons. He is sovereign over the temperaments of all different sorts of men. We can see this in God’s description of the animal kingdom. Lastly, He is sovereign over the demonic realm, including Satan himself. We can see this in God’s description of Behemoth and Leviathan. Hence, there is absolutely nothing NOT under God’s control.

It is knowing this that Job’s confession in the next chapter will make sense: “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). To Him be the glory forever. Praise be to God.”