Job 40:5

I will proceed no further Or, but I will not again. The words "once", "twice", that is, sundry times, refer to what Job had often said in his speeches concerning the Almighty.

The purpose of making these wonders of creation pass before Job's eyes was to display God before him, and to heal the presumption of his heart. Every one of these wonders utters the name of Godwith a louder emphasis in Job's ears. It is not any attribute of God that is dwelt upon, it is God in all the manifoldness of His being that passes before Job's mind. It is entirely to misinterpret the design of these visions of creation presented to Job when we suppose that what is aimed at is to impress on Job the incomprehensibility of the Creator's works, or the mysterythat lies in them all; as if he was bidden consider that not in his own life alone, but everywhere, beneath his feet and around him, there lay unfathomable mysteries. The Lord does not reason with Job after the manner of the author of the Analogy of Religion. He does not say "you complain of darkness in your own history, look into the world and behold darkness everywhere". This would have been sorry reasoning on the part of the Father of lights. On the contrary, He bids Job look away from his own darkness to the world which is luminous with God; and the exceeding light about God there, breaking on Job, swallows up his own darkness.

It is scarcely just to say that what Jehovah demands of Job here is simple submission, that he should bow absolutely and unconditionally under God. If this had been the meaning of Jehovah's speeches out of the storm there was no reason for His speaking. Silence would have been more effective; or if He had spoken, it should have been with the voice of the thunder, terrifying Job into the dust. That the Lord speaks at all implies that He says something that may be understood by the creature of His hand. His speaking may be indirect, and in parables, but it will contain meaning. It is true that the object of the Divine speeches is, partly at least, to bring Job's heart to submission and cause him to assume his right place before the Creator. And this was necessary, for Job, as he acknowledges, had sinned against the majesty of God. But the Lord does not command Job to take this place; He induces him. And he does so by the only means that will ever induce any human spirit to put itself right with God, the revelation of Himself. This revelation given to Job was patient, broad, and manifold. It was anything but a categorical command. We, indeed, may feel now that the revelation might have been different, that it might have contained other traits. The traits which we desiderate could hardly, perhaps, have been exhibited on an Old Testament stage. It was not the design of the revelation, if it ever was the design of revelation, to communicate new truths to Job, but to make him feel the truth which he knew, and enable him to live aright before God.