40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 38:39-40:5 (Episode 418)

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

God continues to speak to Job. What does Job know about all the animals God has created? From the ostrich to the war horse God knows them all. And Job has little to say in response. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Available Now: Encouragement for Motherhood Edited by Katie Koplin Pre-order: Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament by Chad Bird 30 Minutes in the NT on Youtube Remembering Rod Rosenbladt Available Now: Be Thou My Song by Kerri Tom More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing, all the articles, all the videos, all the academies that you can sign up for free to watch. You can learn about all kinds of things. We have a lot of academies now, Chad, so we're covering a lot of stuff. And if you've never went over to the academies page and checked out what we're offering over there,

you should do so. Also, hey, have you ordered Chad Bird's book? Have you ordered the new book? I mean, you can pre-order it right now. I mean, he's holding it up right there. Hitchhiking with Prophets by Chad Bird. There's a link for that in the show notes. Make sure that you pre-order that so that you can get your hands on a copy as soon as it comes out.

You're going to want to do that because, you know, we haven't got to the Prophets yet, so you get to get a little sneak peek. It's like if you're listening to the podcast, you get to go jump probably years ahead, Chad, years ahead and see what Chad has to say about the prophets, so make sure you do that. Chad, we are still in Job. The Lord is speaking. We are in Job 38 at the end of it. We were just discussing how the chapter break here is weird. This probably feels like it should be the start of 39, but nonetheless, it's the last three verses of 38, as the Lord is asking Job a lot of questions that uh job knows the answer to so the lord's not kind of waiting for a response he

they're kind of rhetorical questions here yeah a whole long list of rhetorical questions uh no no no no pretty much could be job's response but as we'll see he's gonna he's gonna maintain his silence at least for uh at least for a while so yeah in that opening section uh had a lot of talk about this kind of creation in general, storehouses of snow, wind, rain, constellations, all kinds of things that God is questioning Job about. Do you know this? Do you know that? And then he's going to shift really for the remainder of his speeches, two speeches, but for the remainder of what God has to say to Job outside of some like very direct questions to Job with regard to him trying to annul God's world order. Besides that, he's going to talk

about animals so i didn't count them up but i think around eight animals he's going to talk about in this this coming section everything from lions to mountain goats to wild oxen to horses and then when he finishes that he's going to job is going to have something to say just briefly and then he's going to god's going to shift again to talk about uh well some other things we'll get there how if job can bring judgment on the wicked and then we'll have this two very well-known sections at the very end where you have two animals discussed, Behemoth

and Leviathan. We will get to those. First of all, beginning here at the end of chapter 38, he shifts to the animal world. I'll read just those last three verses of Job 38. Can you

hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of young lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in their thicket? Who provides for the raven its prey when its young ones cry to God for help and wonder about for lack of food? So two animals so far. We got the lion with her cubs. They're crouching in their dens. They're in their thicket. And then you have the ravens also. Interesting, I just noticed this this morning. This hadn't caught my eye until i was going back over the section this morning but very often in in these

parts where god's talking to the animals he talks about not just the animals but they're young there's a there's a kind of a back and forth here so he'll talk about you know the the adult lions or oxen or whatever it might be or the ostrich you'll get to in just a second but then he also accents the gestation period or how they care for their young or things like that i i suppose this is god's way of speaking in an all-encompassing sort of way you know not just the animals but what they eat how they care for their young do you know all of these things job so can you uh i love the way it begins job can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lions that you just kind of pause and think about that like wait

that doesn't make sense shouldn't it say something like can you explain how the lion hunts her prey right yeah he said it this is like god telling job hey uh are you out there hunting for the lion like i do yeah it is a weird thing because like you could answer back like wait who hunts the the for food for uh young animals like okay the the parent animals like do i suppose isn't that the way this works and uh yeah god instead is saying that i'm responsible for that yeah yes yeah this is a this it's a theme that you see in the in the psalms as well so a parallel here is psalm 147 verse 9 uh which is talking about god it says he gives to the beast their food and he gives to the young ravens that cry so this is a biblical theme that you know on the on our on

our sensory level if we're just watching maybe we're watching it you know live we're on a safari or something or watching on on tvs or we're scrolling through the social media and some clip comes up and we see you know there's a lion on its prey that's what we see of course that's just the way this works right but from god's perspective he's like no no i actually i'm providing the food for these animals right you know i'm hunting for them i'm giving the raven its prey and there's this picture of the young ravens crying to god for help so this is a i love sections like this because you know we're in such a scientific age and we'd like to base all of our knowledge upon you know discovery and research and all these sorts of things which is fine but from biblical

perspective god is the one who provides all this food he's feeding the animals he's taking care taking care of us for sure i mean we pray that in the lord's prayer give us this day our daily bread but there is a sense in which all the animals have their own lord's prayer in which they're saying to the Lord, give us this day our daily gazelle or something like that. Give us our food, O Lord, because God is doing that. So they're crying out to God for food, and He is taking care of even the young ravens or the lions that are prowling about looking for their food. Well, you kind of get to make this claim if you're the one that created everything. so if you created the the predator and the prey uh i suppose you could just take responsibility

for that like you're like yeah that's my that's the way i set it up yeah yeah so this is uh this is god saying listen i made all this and i'm still taking care of it uh i didn't just like i'm not the deist god who made the universe wound it up like a clock and step back and let it run i'm still intimately involved in all these various aspects of creation all the way down to putting food inside the young ravens when they're crying for help. So that's the end of 38. And then as we mentioned, that really should have been the beginning of chapter 39, but for whatever reason, that got put in the wrong place. So now, Job 39. I'll read these first four verses. Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? Can you

number the months that they fulfill and do you know the time when they give birth when they crouch bring forth their offspring and are delivered of their young their young ones become strong they grow up in the open they go out and do not return to them so you may have picked up on the fact that so far we're we're talking about wild animals so you know we got the ravens we got the lions and here we have the uh the mountain goats these aren't goats that you would have in your herd that you're taking care of if you're uh a goat herd these are the these are the wild goats and we'll see the same theme in the rest of these animals as well the only one that's different is when we get to the very to the end where you have the horse but as we'll see even

there the horse as it's described is uh he's a domesticated animal but not super domesticated because as the war horse will be described you'll see that he acts pretty pretty wild still but here we have the mountain goats and this is this is more of a focus you have the young included here but this is more focused upon the uh intricacies of you know the gestation period and the birth birthing process and all that kind of stuff here so it's a little bit of a shift he's not talking so much about you know are you the one who feeds these animals job this is more of hey these wild animals do you know the details of how they produce their young do you can you can you point to a gestation period or are you there when these animals are are born and of course implication of

the the answer is no god knows though he's he's the one who created these animals he placed within them their natural instincts he placed within them all the biological realities that are part of conception and giving birth and all of these things that Job is not privy to. And of course, the import of all of this speech of God is basically telling Job, listen, I'm God, I set up this world, all the way down to these animals that are out in the wild.

So if I set everything up and I created the animal world, if this part of creation is something i know and you don't know job just imagine how much you don't know yeah just imagine the the the amount of knowledge that that you don't have because you're you're not me and therefore if you can't even understand it's kind of an argument from lesser to greater so if you can't understand this if you're lacking in knowledge with regard to these particulars of the animal world just stop and try and try and fathom all the things that you don't know in fact all the things you don't even know that you don't know and then you'll have an just an inkling at least of how of how much there is about our world that you don't and

cannot understand yeah i mean the implication here is i mean think about this how many animals are being born right now all over the world. I mean, I don't know how many, but I'm sure it's a lot. I mean, there's babies being born right now. There's a lot of animals out there. Animals are having children, young ones, all the time. And the implication here is God's like, I know about all of them. You know about none of them. I know about all of them, right? So there's no goat on mountain somewhere giving birth that God doesn't know about. I mean, and so, yeah, when you think about it like that, I mean, that's an insane thing to think about. Like, I don't know, there's a squirrel and a llama and a goat and a horse and a whale, and they're all giving birth at the same

time, and God knows about all of it, and you know about none of it, and so this tells, this show is there to show you, like, the vast difference between your knowledge. Yeah, it's kind of funny that this is the way that God chose to speak to Job. I mean, there's any number of things, right, that he could have used in his argument to demonstrate to Job the things he doesn't know, but instead, throughout this whole section, he really is mainly focusing upon the animals.

And maybe that's because it's something we can all relate to. Yeah, it's such an earthy thing, because you could know about an animal giving birth. You might know if your dog gives birth to a litter, because you're there, and you might witness it happen. So you're like, it's one of those things where it's like, you know that this is something that does happen. Maybe you even witnessed it happen, probably have witnessed it.

Job had a lot of flocks and herds and all this other stuff. He's probably witnessed animals giving birth to other animals. But then God's like, yeah, there's no animals giving birth that I don't know about. Now, compare that to what you know, uh and you'll see like the the huge chasm between our knowledge yeah and even uh even when you think you're going to be there say you you own cattle or horses or dogs whatever and you know that the mother's about to give birth doesn't mean that it's going to work out for you to actually see that i i think of a story that my dad would tell me uh my dad was my dad raised horses and uh he

had a mare that was was about to foal and he wanted to be there just in case something went wrong you know so he like stayed all night out at the the barns waiting for the mare to to finally have the the foal and you know she's pacing she's you could tell she's ready but she's not she's not she's not and finally he's got he like i'm gonna run to town to get some breakfast and come right back out so when he gets back gets back to the barn she's had but she's had the cold it's like She waited for him to leave, and then she's like, okay, now I'm ready. So even our human plans, I'm going to be there when my dog has puppies or when the cow has the calf or the horse has the foal.

It doesn't always work out, but God's there. He knows all these things. Nothing is going to bypass his knowledge. Yeah, he's not just aware of every mountain goat that gives birth, but he knows when they're going to give birth he's not like oh better oh it looks like it's gonna happen now i'll get over there uh he already he knows well in advance exactly the moment that's going to happen yes so uh moving next to uh to the wild donkey so this is five through eight who has let the wild donkey go free who has loosed the bonds of the swift donkey

i don't really think i use not an adjective i would ordinarily place with donkey swift donkey but it's what god says who is loose the bonds of the swift donkey to whom i have given the arid plain for his home and the salt land for his dwelling place he scorns the tumult of the city he hears not the shouts of the driver he ranges the mountains as his pasture and he searches after every green thing so that this this wild donkey you'll see references to uh this animal actually quite a few places in the Old Testament. They talk about it's, you know, it's looking for food or it's sometimes it's speed. It's independence, like it avoids human society. In fact, I think this was kind of proverbial in some of the ancient Near Eastern literature about roaming the desert

like a wild donkey. So that's kind of what they were known for doing. So here, I mean, you don't have again emphasis on the young but you do have this idea of the the wild donkey being liberated by god right and given a home basically in the middle of nowhere right he's got the arid plain this is home dwells in this salt land because he's verse seven he scorns the tumult of the city he hears not the shouts of the driver so unlike domesticated animals the domesticated donkey who is going to hear the shouts of the driver if it's pulling something you know maybe it's going to be in a city uh but not the wild donkey and this is emphasized because of course if you have a domesticated donkey then yeah you're going to know a lot more about it and you're going to have it

close to you maybe not in the city but wherever you wherever you live but not this animal this animal is one of god's animals that he's made and given its own place and even though it's the of nowhere no man's land then god's there and he knows exactly where this animal goes every morning where it lays down every evening because well that's who he is this is his creation yeah the idea is that not every uh wild donkey is like an escaped domesticated donkey i think they were out there like in fact the opposite is true like um domesticated donkeys like came from people going out there and capturing some wild donkeys and then they might have young and they might sell

them and all this kind of stuff, but who was putting the first donkeys out there? It wasn't you. It wasn't like you guys all got together and decided to let some donkeys go free. These aren't feral donkeys. No. Yeah, so

we got three animals, four animals so far, right? We got the lion, we got the raven, we got the mountain goats, and we got the wild donkeys now we come to uh the wild ox which in hebrew is the aim is the this is 9 to 12 is the wild ox willing to serve you will he spend the night at your manger can you bind him in the furrow with ropes or will he harrow the valleys after you will you depend on him because his strength is great would you leave him to your labor do you have faith in him that he will return

your grain and gather it to your your threshing floor so actually this is a good pairing because we just talked about the wild donkey now we're talking about the wild ox and and pretty frequently in the old testament you'll have the domesticated ox and the domesticated donkey used together you know paired together to talk about whatever whatever it might be and so here in job you have that same pairing except these are not the domesticated variety these are this is the wild donkey and this is the this is the the wild ox so uh most people most scholars that i've looked at on this will uh identify this as the uh aurochs i think i hope i'm saying that right a-u-r-o-c-h-s and um this was evidently uh i mean you can look up pictures of this online just

enormous animal so one one uh commentary is looking at said that it was exceeded in size the most powerful of all hoofed beast this guy says exceeded in size only by the hippopotamus and the elephant so this isn't your you know you picture a cow or a bull or an ox in the field this is so take that and double it you know this is a big animal and if this identification is right then the last one uh became extinct in 1627 so this but this was a these this animal is mentioned pretty frequently in in the old testament as uh symbols of you know strength or sometimes of of danger and uh here you know it's just it's it's kind of like the the the wild donkey except here he's talking about how you are you gonna like put uh a a yoke on this animal you know like use him

to plow your fields and gathering gathering your grain well of course you're not going to because that's he's he's not the kind of animal that you do that that way that's not the way that i made him to be yeah it seems it seems like a tough animal to tame yeah it seems like it seems like he can resist yeah this by the way this is just kind of a uh a trivial detail but interesting nonetheless so if you if you happen to be one of those that likes the king james version and you uh you look up job 39 verse 9 it translates this is unicorn right there you go yeah so yeah uh and they actually got that from the the greek translation the septuagint which translated this this animal as the monoceros, which means one horn, or, of course, unicorn.

So, slight misidentification back when that was translated. Well, you know the scientific name for the rhinoceros is the bicorn, which is... Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. So, the scientific name for rhinoceros is a bicorn. Bi as in, you know, more than one. Yeah, sure. yeah so uh and so that where you get unicorn from is uh one and then rhinoceros is two

and uh perhaps you had some some confusion there in here yeah probably so yeah uh speaking of names of animals always thought it was funny that hippopotamus literally from you know from its word origins means water horse which is not would would never think a hippopotamus is like oh yeah look it's a it's a water horse water yeah but the horse no hippopotamuses hippopotami uh don't don't resemble horses but anyway that's that's the uh origin of that that name i was actually on a rec league basketball team called uh the fighting bicorns and they uh we had this logo which was like a rhinoceros like dunking a basketball and like nobody knew everyone was like what is it going on that's how i know that that's pretty uh what a great what a great mascot

uh all right so uh yeah that's that's got the wild ox in here now uh we we go from the uh you know this great magnificent beast that is now extinct to uh a humorous animal the ostrich which I think is, like, one of the strangest animals that God has made. And this section about the ostrich is just—it's actually, I think, designed to be humorous. I mean, we've had the companion of ostriches come up. We have, that's right. Yeah, companion of ostriches. And so it does seem like the ostrich is, like, this sort of animal that is not, like, ridiculed, But, like, there's not a lot of esteem for the ostrich, and you can kind of tell why, where you're like, what is going on with this bird?

I mean, this bird can't fly. This bird's sticking its head in the sand or whatever. And, like, it's just a—the ostrich seems like a part of God's creation where he was, like, maybe being a little playful. Perhaps the platypus is like that, too, where you're just like, what are you doing, man? like that where you just kind of having fun and make it just making this thing and it makes you wonder yeah because it seems like when job says he's the companion of ostriches like it seems like he's saying like that this is a laughable thing right like yeah it's not obviously not a positive thing no it's almost like now that you brought that up maybe it means

like i'm a companion of fools yeah you know i'm everybody around me just laughable you know and Not really in a good humor sort of way. Yeah, because the ostrich seems foolish. You're like, well, what does this thing do? What is this thing contributing exactly? Yeah. Well, let me read it, then I'll go from there. So this is 13 through 16.

The wings of the ostrich wave proudly. I guess. For no reason. Yeah. they're not like they're they're flying but are they the pinions and plumage of love for she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground forgetting and here you have the foolishness part forgetting that a foot may crush them and that the wild beast may trample them she deals cruelly cruelly with her young as if they were not hers though her labor be in vain

yet she has no fear and then you almost have a why why is that in verse 17 tells us because god has made her forget wisdom ostrich is too dumb to be afraid yeah and he's given her no share and understanding when she rouses herself to flee she laughs at the horse and his his rider so uh yeah i mean it's just kind of a humorous humorous depiction of this ostrich proudly waving her her wing even though of course she can't fly and then because god has given her no share in uh wisdom or understanding she just lays her eggs on the ground and it's like yeah whatever walks away they get crushed they get crushed i don't i'm not even wise enough to be concerned about what might happen to them.

Yeah, if they do hatch and the young come out, she's like, who are you? Where'd you come from? So get this, that last part about when she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider.

That's because, man, these things are fast. Maybe there's an ostrich expert out there listening to 40 Minutes of the Old Testament who's probably going to contact us and tell us we've, you know, We don't understand the glory of the ostrich. But get this. The reason she laughs at the horse and his rider is because she can outrun them.

So this is from a National Zoo website. I just copied this this morning. It says that no birds can match their speed on land. They're the fastest running birds in the world. Scientists have seen ostriches run continuously at speeds of 30 to 37 miles per hour and sprint up to 43 miles per hour. And they can have like a 10, covered 10 to 15 feet in a single stride.

Yeah, well, I saw, it's funny. Pretty impressive. I just saw a video shot by a mutual friend of ours who was out in Africa and they were in these like Jeeps. Now they're like in the, you know, out in the middle of the desert or wherever they are. So they can't drive like super fast,

but they're driving pretty fast and they're chasing the ostriches, and they can't catch them. I mean, they're running crazy fast. Yeah, I had no idea until I just, yeah, out of curiosity more or less, was looking that up, that they could, I mean, 40 miles an hour? Yeah. Good grief, that's crazy. So, yeah, they can run fast.

It makes you wonder why they're proudly spreading their wings, though. It does. Show off those legs, man. You got some good legs there. I don't know, but those wings aren't doing a lot for you. Show those legs. Yeah, I don't think the wings are anything to be that proud of. I mean, maybe they think they look cool,

but they're not going to get you off the ground. Yeah, it does seem like this does, I don't know, maybe this helps make a little bit of sense of the Companion of Ostriches because, yeah, the ostrich does seem just a little dumb and naive and foolish, but it's fast. But it is fast. It has that going for it, for sure. It's almost like God is saying,

hey, explain the ostrich to me. And, of course, no one can. They're just like, I have no idea. What's up with the ostrich? And God's like, I do. This is the part that really stumped Job. He's like, oh, man, I thought maybe I could say something about wild donkeys.

But the ostrich, I'm clueless. I got nothing. I got nothing on that one. All right, so then he shifts in verse 19 to, I think, one of the just more kind of beautiful poetic sections of this whole, all the animals he talks about. Maybe it's just because I love horses, but this is a great, great section. This is 19.

He says more about the horse than most of these other ones. This goes 19 through 25. uh did you give job did you give the horse his might do you clothe his neck with a mane do you make him leap like the locust his majestic snorting is terrifying he paws in the valley and exalts in his strength he goes out to meet the weapons he laughs at fear there's a lot of animals laughing in this section you know the ostrich was laughing horses laughing he laughs at fear and is not dismayed he does not turn back from the sword upon him rattle the quiver the flashing spear and the javelin with fierceness and rage he swallows the ground he cannot stand still at

the sound of the trumpet when the trumpet sounds he says aha he smells the battle from afar the thunder of the captains and the shouting i uh i love that one line where'd my where'd my book go I was going to show you this book that I have here. I must have put it up. Oh, here it is. So I know you guys can't see this, but I can show it to Dan at least. It's called, the book title is Ha Ha Among the Trumpets. It's taken from the old translation of verse 25.

The ESV has when the trumpet sounds, he says, ha ha. But the old King James was when the trumpet sounds, he's like, ha ha, among the trumpets. this is a collection of sermons by uh martin franzman who was a he was a hymn writer and uh professor at uh concordia seminary in st louis many many years ago he's a great great writer but this uh that opening sermon was preached at a seminary graduation and the title was ha ha among the trumpets and he used that text from job to talk about how basically you know like this war horse is is doing what god created it to do you know he's in the middle of the battle he's ready to go and he's like laughing he's just exalting the fact that god has put him where

he's at so that he can do what what he does and uh franzman used that verse to talk about how whatever your vocation is he of course was speaking specifically there to pastors you know you do it kind of with with gusto and when the trumpet sounds you don't draw back in fear but you're like, ha ha, among the, among the trumpets. So pretty, pretty cool use of that, of, uh, that verse from Job. But I mean, this is a, I mean, quite, quite a description of, uh, of the war horse. When I was reading it, just get, you know, you get this picture in your mind of he's, you know, not just got the saddle, but he's got all the accoutrements of warfare. He's got the, the warrior on, on, on, on this back, uh, ready to go to war. And the horse is just like almost, uh,

like a wild beast just tearing up the ground and he's he's ready to go he's ready to charge into into battle and that's why i mentioned a few minutes ago that even though most of these animals or all these animals up to this point are are wild animals the the inclusion here of the horse of course is domesticated uh fits because his the description that that we have that god gives of this animal sounds more like a wild beast than you know your typical horse like you know if you go on a trail ride you go to some dude ranch and they put you on the back of a horse that that horse is not going to be like the horse in job 39 he's going to plod along and you're not going to get bucked off nothing's going to startle this horse and uh the wild the the war horse is very much

the opposite yeah there's such a contrast to when you go from the ostrich to this to this war horse and uh maybe they're both fast i guess but uh but the except for that they're very very different and and god is obviously saying like yeah i made both of them that way yeah yeah i made one to be kind of silly naive i made the other one to be powerful and majestic and the ostrich may run fast yeah got a pretty good speed there but uh there's there's nothing to compare it with when it comes to the vigor and the kind of the zeal of the war horse when the battle trumpet sounds. All right, so we got one more section here at the end of 39, and we're going to hear about the hawk and the eagle here. So once more, God is saying to Job, is it by your understanding

that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high on the rock he dwells and makes his home on the rocky crag and stronghold from there he spies out the prey his eyes behold it from far away his young ones suck up blood and where the slain are there is he reminds me of that line from the gospels uh you know where the where the carcasses there the vultures will gather where the slain are there is there is he so uh you know we go from one bird a very strange bird to a horse and now to some a bit more majestic birds the hawk and the eagle and the emphasis here of course is you know did you give understanding to these birds that allow them to soar through the heavens you know

was it did you command that the eagles mount up and make their nest on these rocky crags and strongholds? Did you, O Job, give them eyes that have this just very impressive vision that's able to see from afar and to spy out their prey and to swoop down and get that prey and then take it back to their young? Of course, no, you did not. But I did. I'm the one who did all of this, and therefore I am the one who has not only the power but the understanding to create all these things yeah dude if you i mean to me anyway like if you are i don't know out hiking or something and uh and you see like some a hawk or an eagle's uh soaring it is pretty wild uh because it's not like they're vigorously flapping or something like that they're it looks like they're floating

like they're just like gliding right um if you've ever seen one like an eagle or uh swoop down on a lake and like snatch a fish out and that kind of stuff it's it is wild uh you know you almost wonder like as we try to figure out how to fly and then you know invent airplanes and stuff i mean we just copy and pasted this from things that god had already created right i mean without a doubt when we decided how how could we do that we looked at hawks and eagles and said well it's got to look like that yeah that's what we can i i guess we have to have wings on this flying object yeah you know the the right brothers uh said he does he's got to have something that's going to resemble the birds otherwise this is never going to work yeah so it's we're yeah we're we're imitative

creatures and so even in our creation uh we're going to make sure that we're copying copying the animal world i've just watched and i think it's just this morning i saw this video i think it was a falcon and uh somebody captured this video but it was it was way up in the air and it was very windy so because you could see you know its feathers and its wings were were being affected by these these wind gusts and its head was pointed downward and its whole body was like moving as you would expect it to in the wind but its head was just still as could be you could tell it was like focused on what it was about to dive and and catch and watch and i was like man that's just amazing that they're able to do what they do.

But there you have understanding that God has given to these creatures. Yeah, and then God has to get real graphic and say, hey, the young ones are going to suck up that blood. Yeah, right. Yeah, he's down to the nitty gritty. So I think we can finish out this, because I would take,

so we're at the end of 40. um let's see uh at least we can begin to to see how god kind of ends this before he begins his his next speech he says to joe after all of this after all these animals he says shall a fault finder contend with the almighty he who argues with god let him answer it so this is this is this is the way that god finishes the speech to job so uh shall a fault finder of course pointing here to job are you going to be able to contend with the one who does all of these things who in his might and his understanding and his wisdom and his skill has created the world that i've just described to you all these kinds of animals and knows them

backwards and forwards, inside and out. So if you can do that as you are arguing with God, then give me an answer. So that's the way that Job, that's the way that God speaks to Job. I think kind of summing all this up.

Isn't it interesting that God would say all this stuff and says something about God that God doesn't just say put that in your pipe and smoke at Job and walk off or whatever, but actually does then pause and lets Job respond. He's going to give Job what he's been asking for and say, okay, so you think you found some fault?

You're going to contend with me? Give me your answer. Let's do it. And then Job doesn't have a lot of things to say after all that, but God does give him the opportunity to say whatever it is he wants to say yeah he oh it's right he does he he does invite a response you know which of course it has been the whole point of this god god isn't just here to shut job down you know he could have done that very easily could have just shown up in the whirlwind and said job shut up i don't want to hear anything from you but he doesn't i mean this is a as much as this a long divine speech it's also it's also a conversation now job's answer and we'll wrap up here it's interesting this is job 40 verse 3 and 3 through 5 then job answered the lord and said

behold i am of small account uh this is sometimes translated a bit more more negatively like uh vile or unworthy but i i the hebrew there is just kind of insignificant is is a good way to translate this i'm i'm insignificant i'm small i'm little so what shall i answer you i lay my hand on my mouth, which is an honorable gesture of like, I've got nothing else to say. Sometimes when we picture someone putting their hand on their mouth, it's like, you know, shock or something like that. But this is like a Hebrew expression that means I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop talking. We would say I'm going to zip my lips, right? I lay my hand on my mouth. Then Job finishes up by saying, I've spoken once and I will not answer. Twice, but I will proceed no further.

now i don't know if i'm right on this but the way this the way this reads to me is that job is is yeah he's he's admitting in his humility listen i'm i'm nothing uh so i've got no answer for you i'm gonna put my hand in my mouth and basically it's almost like i've already said my piece i've said what i what i had to say and i've got nothing more to to speak at least at this point And maybe that's the reason that we have a second speech coming from God, and Job will have more to say after that speech. But at this point, Job is putting his hand in his mouth, and he's like, well, I'm insignificant, and I really don't have anything more that I can say to you. Yeah. Yeah, and that is it, man.

That's all we got to say, too. That's it. We will leave it there. The Lord is going to say some more stuff to Job after that short response, and we'll get into that next episode. Chad, I'll see you then. See you then.