He who has been listening a long time, though unseen, now enters and answers His servant's questions, and presently leads poor Job to say (chapter 40:4) "Behold I am vile, what shall I answer Thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth;" and (chapter 42:1-6) his final confession:
"Now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
Job had the best of the argument in all his talks with his three friends, but Elihu told him he was wrong, and pointed him to the One he was misjudging, and the poor afflicted man could not answer him. It is then that God speaks to Job; there is no voice like His, to set poor Job or any other saint right. It will be seen that it is here "the LORD," but the name "God" is used all through the book of Job after chapter 2, except chapter 12:9. "The LORD," or properly "Jehovah," tells of God in relation to man on the earth.
There are several names by which God makes Himself known in His Word, but "El," commonly translated "God,"—the Mighty, or Strong One, and. Jehovah," generally translated "the LORD," meaning "to exist" or The Eternal One, He who was and is and is to come, are the most frequently used.
Magnificent language is found in the chapters which follow; it is the voice of divine majesty that speaks here before His poor, self-occupied servant. Was it not "darkening counsel by words without knowledge," that Job had been doing?
What did he know of God, really? Where was Job when God founded the earth? Who set the measures of it, if he knew, or who stretched a line upon it? Whereupon were the foundations of it sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job knew more than many men of science who lived after him, in regard to the world when he said:
"He stretched out the north over empty space; He hangeth the earth upon nothing," (chapter 26:7), but he knew not how to answer the Lord's questions.
The earth's "foundations" and "cornerstone" speak of its steadiness, its stability and regularity in its course from day to day and year to year, and the morning stars are here shown to have been formed before the world, as were also the "sons of God,"—the angels.
"Singing," here said of the stars, is thought by many to be a poetical expression, but it may be as some have thought, that the starry light is really musical, though we of the earth cannot hear it.
Then God turns to the restless, resistless sea; He had shut it up with doors, made its boundaries and said, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther."
Next, Job is asked of the morning, the dawn of day, when the wicked (most evil, most of the crimes are committed in the night) are "shaken out" of the earth; their "light" (verse 15), is the darkness. The sea is again considered, only to turn (verse 17) to something more powerful—death, or rather the place of the departed spirits, Sheol, or Hades.
The earth's great surface,—did Job's understanding take it all in? And where does light dwell, and the place of darkness, where?
So Job is carried on to consider in turn the wonders of God's creation, including the things without life. We shall stop today at verse 38.
Verses 31-33 refer to the stars.
Verse 31 should be read, "the bands of Pleiades," rather than "sweet influences."
"Mazzaroth" (verse 32), is not exactly understood today; it is thought to mean the constellations.
"Arcturus" is apparently the Great Bear or Dipper.