When God Answered from the Whirlwind

Job's friends went on talking. Eliphaz made a speech, then Bildad, then Zophar, and then they started again from the top.

"God only punishes wicked people," they told him again. "So what did you do?"

"Nothing!" Job cried. "I want God himself to answer me!"

One day a wind came roaring and spinning across the sand. Job knew what wind could do. But out of the middle of this one came the voice of God.

"Who is this, talking about things he does not understand? Tuck in your robe and get ready. I will ask the questions, and you will answer me."

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth, while the morning stars sang together? Tell me, if you know so much! Who shut the sea behind doors and said, 'This far you may come, and no farther'?"

The questions filled up with animals. Who feeds the lion cubs? Then God described the ostrich, who leaves her eggs lying in the sand, where anybody might step on them, because God did not give her much sense. Yet when she runs, she laughs at the fastest horse.

Job put his hand over his mouth. "I am too small to answer you," he said. God kept going.

"Can you catch Leviathan with a fishhook?" God asked. "Will you put him on a leash for your daughters to play with?" (Leviathan was a sea monster no spear could pierce. The answer was no.)

Job answered, "You can do anything. I talked about things too wonderful for me. I had heard about you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you."

God never told Job why it had all happened. He gave Job himself instead.

Then God turned to Job's friends. "I am angry with you," he said to Eliphaz, "because you have not said what is true about me, as my servant Job has. Take seven bulls and seven rams to Job and offer them up. He will pray for you."

So Job prayed for the friends who had hurt him with their words, and God listened to him.

Afterward God gave Job twice what he had before: fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, and enough oxen and donkeys to make a very noisy farm. Job had seven more sons and three daughters, Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-happuch, the most beautiful girls in the land. Job lived another hundred and forty years, and he died old and full of days.

But new children could not bring back the ten who died, and God's voice had stayed inside the storm, out of reach. Once, in the ashes, Job had wished for someone to stand between God and him and lay a hand on them both.

The wish waited a long time. Then one night a storm screamed down onto a lake, and a boat began to sink. "Teacher, don't you care that we are drowning?" the fishermen shouted. The man asleep in the back stood up and told the wind, "Peace! Be still!" The wind stopped.

The one who shut the sea behind doors stood in a wet boat. Later this man, with no wrong in him, was nailed to a cross and prayed, "Father, forgive them," for the people hurting him, as Job had prayed for his friends. In Jesus, God had come close enough to touch.