Job 38:2

For most of the book of Job, God has been silent. Job lost everything (Job 1), and through chapters 3 to 31 he argued with his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. They held to the belief, common among the men of the east, that prosperity is a sign of God’s favour and suffering a sign of his displeasure, so they insisted that Job’s suffering must be punishment for sin. Job kept to his innocence and rejected their explanations, and again and again he asked to stand before God and plead his case: “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!” (Job 23:3). He even set out the terms of the meeting: “Then call thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer thou me” (Job 13:22). His final defence ends with the cry, “my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me” (Job 31:35). A younger man, Elihu, then spoke through chapters 32 to 37 and described suffering as God’s discipline and refining, a fuller view, though still a human one.

Then “the LORD answered Job.” The verb ʻânâh is the ordinary word for answering or responding, whether to words or to a situation, and it is the very word Job had been longing to hear. God had heard him all along, and he answers in his own time and in his own way. Job receives the meeting he asked for, in a form far beyond anything he expected. What God gives him is himself, a direct and personal encounter that shows Job who his Creator is, while the reasons for his suffering, which the reader learns in chapter 1, stay hidden from Job.

The whirlwind, çaʻar, is a violent storm or tempest. In Scripture God often makes himself known through storm, thunder, lightning and cloud. At Sinai there were “thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount” (Exodus 19:16–19). Ezekiel’s vision opened with “a whirlwind” coming “out of the north” (Ezekiel 1:4), Elijah “went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings 2:11), and Nahum says that “the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm” (Nahum 1:3). A psalm hears his voice in the storm itself: “The voice of the LORD is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth” (Psalm 29:3–4).

Coming this way, God shows Job his power, his majesty and his holiness before he says a word. Job had pictured something like a courtroom, where he could set out his case. The storm tells him that the one he has summoned is the Creator, whose wisdom is far beyond human grasp, and it calls for awe and humility. The storm is also part of the creation God is about to question Job about, so the setting already shows the power and order that the speech goes on to describe.

The verse closes with “and said”. God comes in power, and he comes to speak. Job hears words from God, and those words fill chapters 38 to 41.

God’s first words to Job are a question: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” God knows exactly who stands before him. The question asks Job to see what he has been doing and to feel the folly of speaking boldly about matters beyond him. It is the first of the many questions in these chapters, each asked to make a point and to humble Job.

To darken, châshak, means to make dark, to dim or to hide, as when light is withheld. Counsel, ʻêtsâh, means advice, and by extension a plan or purpose. Here it is God’s own purpose, the wise design by which he governs the world, which ought to stand in clear light. Knowledge, daʻath, is knowing, including skill and discernment. Job’s words, spoken in anguish, cast a shadow over God’s plan, because he was judging God’s government of the world from the little he could see. He was unaware of what had passed in heaven in chapter 1, and he had spoken as though his own view were the whole of it.

The rest of Scripture says the same about God’s counsel. Isaiah asks, “Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him?” (Isaiah 40:13–14). Paul answers with praise: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33–36). And Proverbs shows where real knowledge starts: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7).

Next God gives Job a command: “Gird up now thy loins like a man.” In Israel people wore long, flowing garments, and before running, hard work or battle a man gathered up his robe and tucked it into his belt so that he could move freely. To gird, ʼâzar, means to belt or to bind something about. The loins, châlâts, a word used in the dual form, were thought of as the seat of vigour and strength. So the phrase is a call to get ready, to be alert and to gather all one’s strength for a serious task. Peter uses the same picture for the mind: “gird up the loins of your mind” (1 Peter 1:13).

The word for man, geber, properly means a valiant man, and more generally a person. In the poetry of Scripture it often names a human being in his weakness and mortality, which fits a man about to be questioned by his Maker. “Like a man” calls Job to stand firm, to find his courage and to give this meeting his full attention. God is taking Job seriously, and the command honours him with a summons to meet the moment.

“For I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.” Job had wanted to put his questions to God, and now God takes the questioner’s place. The verb shâʼal means to ask, inquire, request or require. Spoken by the Creator to a man who has challenged his justice, the asking becomes a test of what Job truly knows. Job had once said to God, “let me speak, and answer thou me” (Job 13:22), and now God speaks those same words back to him.

The questions that follow ask Job about the vastness and order of creation, things he could never comprehend or manage. This first speech runs through chapters 38 and 39, and God repeats the same challenge when he begins again: “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me” (Job 40:7). Through it all God leaves the cause of Job’s suffering unexplained. He shows Job his majesty, his goodness, power and justice, and that brings Job to repentance and a deeper faith: “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1–6). True wisdom begins with humble trust in God’s authority, as Proverbs says: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5–6).

The God who spoke to Job out of the storm has spoken to us most fully in his Son. Hebrews says that God, who spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets in many ways, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, who is “the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:1–3). Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and in him the God of the whirlwind became Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), who entered into human suffering himself. Job longed for someone to stand between him and God: “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33). That longing is answered in “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), who reconciles us to the holy God.

Job spoke without knowledge, and Christ is “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), the one in whom “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He carried out the Father’s plan perfectly, even to the cross, which human wisdom counts foolishness and which was God’s counsel for our salvation (1 Corinthians 1:18). Through him God has made known “the mystery of his will” (Ephesians 1:9–10), and the Spirit, who searches “the deep things of God”, reveals them to us (1 Corinthians 2:10–16). The counsel that Job’s words darkened is brought into full light in Christ.

Job was told to brace himself and answer. Through Christ’s sacrifice we come before the same God as his children, for we “have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15), and we are called to know “the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19).

God hears the cries of his people, and he answers them. His answer may come as a deeper knowledge of himself, his presence, power and wisdom, more than as an account of why things happened, and that meets our deepest need, which is to know our Creator truly. When we speak of his ways, especially in hard times, we can speak with reverence and care, remembering how small our view is beside his wisdom. And when he speaks through his word, we can do what Job was told to do: make ready, listen closely, and trust his character where his reasons stay hidden.