JOB 38:34–35

“Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?”

God’s sudden appearance to Job prefaced a gauntlet of questions meant to challenge the overconfident wisdom of man. God asks if the wild ox will consent to Job’s service (39:9), or if Job knows the complexities of birthing goats (39:1). Of course, these are cosmically confounding questions to a Bronze Era townie; questions meant to humble the hearts of a devout society. However, the modern man has indeed tamed the wild ox and has studied the birthing behaviors of goats down to a science. Science is the snarky rebuttal to God’s rhetorical questions. The modern Job need not cover his mouth in humiliation as his namesake had in chapter 40, verse 2. He can, in fact, give the horse its strength (38:19) or the hawk its wisdom to fly south (38:26) by virtue of clever breeding and domestication. Man has, since God’s conversation with Job, taught himself to domesticate more than the wild animal. God asks, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know… Who stretched a measuring line across it?” (38:4–5). Man has since come to master the measure and shaping of the earth. God asks, “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” (38:16). And indeed, man has since journeyed to those springs and walked those deep recesses.

So, has man replaced God through these talents? God’s questioning suggests feats still beyond science’s capabilities. In chapter 40, starting with verse 15, God describes the Leviathan, a creature beyond the normal dimensions of the natural world, and claims that man could never catch or tame such a creature. Forgoing any discussion of whether or not the Leviathan is a real monster, can man assume that he will one day prove God’s word wrong? Can the Leviathan, whatever that thing may be, be domesticated like the goat or the ox? The supposition in the original telling of the Book of Job is not that man will one day match divine ability, but that he should always be humbled. After all, in chapter 40, verses 8 and 9, He says:

“Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like His?”