Bible Commentaries
Job 40

Verses 1-24

Job 40:4

All through the book of Job the question, how this can be, is over and over again asked, and never answered; inadequate solutions are offered and repelled, but an adequate solution is never reached. The only solution reached is that of silence before the insoluble: 'I will lay my hand upon my mouth'.

Matthew Arnold.

Job 40:11-12

This, says Lucretius (v. 1231 f), is Nature's prerogative and function: 'So doth some hidden power trample ever on things human, seeming to tread under foot and mock at the fine forces and cruel axes of men.

Job 40:15

'Humility,' says Ruskin in the third volume of Stones of Venice, 'is the principal lesson we are intended to be taught by the book of Job; for there God has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except humility. For this he is tried, and we are shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, when the Deity Himself has willed to end the temptation and to accomplish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him, still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or confound him by laying open before his eyes the book of his iniquities. He opens before him only the arch of the dayspring, and the fountains of the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds, and on the heaving waves, He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride 'Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee? And the work is done.'