For most of the book of Job, Job wanted answers. He wanted to understand why everything he had built and loved had been taken from him, and he wanted God Himself to explain it.
By the time God answered him, Job had lost his children, his wealth and his health. He had spent chapter after chapter arguing with his friends about why this had happened and wanting an opportunity to make his case before God.
Then, in Job 38, God finally spoke. He didn’t begin by answering Job’s questions. He began asking His own. God spoke to Job from a whirlwind and asked, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Job obviously wasn’t there, and that was the point. God continued by asking Job about things that existed long before him and operated far beyond his control. “Have you ever in your life commanded the morning?” “Have you entered the springs of the sea?”
Then the questions moved into the heavens. “Can you tie up the chains of the Pleiades?” “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?”
God asked about weather, stars, animals, birth, death, light, darkness, snow, hail, rain and lightning. The questions continue for four chapters. They weren’t really a test of how much Job knew. They repeatedly showed him how much he didn’t.
Then God asked, “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty?”
Job finally answered. He said he was insignificant and had nothing to say. He put his hand over his mouth.
God wasn’t finished. He spoke again from the whirlwind and continued questioning Job, this time challenging whether Job could exercise the justice and power that belong to God. Then came Behemoth and Leviathan, two creatures Job could neither control nor overpower.
By the time God finished, He still had not given Job the explanation Job had spent so much of the book wanting. Instead, Job said something had changed in what he understood about God. He had spoken about things he didn’t understand, things too wonderful for him to know. He said, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You.”
God’s questions didn’t give Job the reason for everything that had happened to him. They changed Job’s understanding of how much he could possibly know from where he stood.
Job wanted God to explain Himself.
God showed Job just how much bigger the picture was than Job could see.
Job 38–42
God has more questions. See Let Me Ask You Something: When God Asks a Direct Question.