Job 39

Job, who was so wise in the knowledge of the divine ways, and rashly ready to measure himself with God, is still plied with questions, now drawn from the animate creation, about which, on account of its nearness to himself, it might be presumed that he would know something at least. He is questioned concerning the laws that govern gestation; the secret of the difference between wild and tame animals of the same genus; the strangely dissimilar affections of birds, which, in structure, are like; the martial fury that leads the horse, like man, to rejoice in the battle-field; the migratory instincts of rapacious birds; also concerning the widely extended law of creation that the life of one animal should be nourished by the death of another. Not one of the commonest questions which God asks can Job answer. “He finds that the nature with which he is acquainted as the herald of the creative and governing power of God is also the preacher of humility; and, exalted as God the Creator and Ruler of the natural world is above Job’s censure, so is he also as the author of his affliction.” Delitzsch. Job, the instructor of Eloah, humbled to the dust, sees that the mystery of suffering is but one of the many mysteries of nature, and that he who cannot comprehend the natural world is a presumable fool for supposing that he can understand the laws that govern the spiritual world. The same flash of truth that discloses the meagerness of Job’s mind helps to make manifest the wickedness of his soul. The scheme is fast opening for the revealment of the deep truth that suffering is the path of glory, that via crucis, via lucis, “the way of the cross is the way of light.”