Job 40

God waits for Job to answer. A short, sharp question elicits from him the admission of his worthlessness, while in few and humble words he declines the attempt to answer God. Then follows the most remarkable challenge ever uttered to man: let him who, for the vindication of his own righteousness, condemns God, take upon himself the majesty and attributes of Deity. If he knows how the wicked should be punished let him take the bolts of divine vengeance into his hands let him tread down the wicked and bind them in sheol. If he can do all this, God will confess to Job that his self-righteousness rests on a proper basis, and that he has power to save himself. But, first, behold behemoth! Behold the creature before you aspire to be Creator or Saviour. He who knows the heart still sees in Job the elements of self-sufficiency and self-righteousness, both of which are implied in the idea of self-saviour. Such a one must be brought deeper down into the valley of humiliation and self-abhorrence. Two hideous monsters are brought before his view. They, as well as Job, were made by God. Herder calls behemoth and leviathan “pillars of Hercules at the end of the book, the non plus ultra of another world.” Their hidden meaning still defies our power to decipher. They may stand as carved obelisks of the purport of the preceding challenge to Job subjugate the hippopotamus and crocodile both of which Plutarch (De Iside, Sec. 50) calls “most fierce and untamable” before he essays the government of the universe. Or they may serve as representatives of evil, or the evil forces of nature, for both the hippopotamus and crocodile were regarded by the ancient Egyptian as Typhonian types of evil. ( Ibid.) See Excursus VIII, pages 279-281. Job has prided himself upon his knowledge of evil, and more especially the manner in which it should be punished. Here are monsters, types of evil; master these, comprehend these, then master and comprehend the evil of the universe. Very possibly they may be, as Zockler thinks, symbols, not merely of the power but of the justice of God. “Job is compelled to see that there cannot be and least of all in the administration of the Most High a bare omnipotence disjoined from justice and love.”