Can I Get a Witness? (Part 2)

To jump to the end of the Book of Job for a moment, I believe that God honors Job’s request for acknowledgment before the conversation is over.  Of course, God makes a face to face appearance—and Job doesn’t die!  That is perhaps impressive enough.  Look closely at Job, chapter 38, for the details of that arrival.  Notice that the same words are repeated at the beginning of the Lord’s second speech in Job 40:6.

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…”  The whirlwind is a sign that God has “shown up.”  In technical terms, the whirlwind is a sign of “theophany,” a word that means “God-manifestation.”  This isn’t the mighty wind that Elijah hears in 1 Kings 19.  No, this is the tornado—the maelstrom, the gale, the edge of the Chaos—that Ezekiel experiences when he envisions the fiery wheels within wheels.  This is the “storm of the Lord” that Jeremiah declares in chapter 23:18-20.

For who has stood in the council of the Lord

so as to see and to hear his word?

Who has given heed to his word so as to proclaim it?

Look, the storm of the Lord!

Wrath has gone forth,

a whirling tempest;

it will burst upon the head of the wicked.

The anger of the Lord will not turn back

until he has executed and accomplished

the intents of his mind.

In the latter days you will understand it clearly.

God comes as a “whirling tempest.”  A few verses later, the Lord reminds Jeremiah that it is in the Lord’s nature to “show up” and not to remain distant.  “Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.”  The Lord answers Job’s demand to make an appearance and does so in the way that the prophets have come to expect when the Lord plans to speak a word of judgment.  The verbal form of this Hebrew noun has to do with violent outbursts and passionate responses.  This is God’s hurricane that might blow us off the course we have set for ourselves and on to a new and different path.

Out of the raging and whirling tornado, the Lord “answers” Job.  The Lord does more than merely to speak.  The word for “answer” is the word for giving testimony.  This is the translation for that word in a number of Old Testament texts, including Job 15:6.  Job has demanded that God would appear for questioning, or at least to deliver a deposition.  The Hebrew word indicates that the Lord has consented to do exactly that.  Let me say immediately that the Lord doesn’t give the kind of testimony that Job wants.  The Lord does, however, answer the summons and acknowledge Job’s demand that the Lord would speak to Job’s suffering in some way.

I want to speculate a bit now.  The Hebrew word for “answer” has the same root consonants as the Hebrew word for “bend down” or “be humbled.”  It is not unusual for quite different Hebrew words to have the same letters in their dictionary entries.  Translators do not suggest that we have alternative possibilities for translation at this moment.  However, most of the book of Job is poetry.  Poets love to play not only with ideas and images but with the sounds of the words themselves.  Could it be that the writer of Job is telling us that when God shows up, God agrees to bow down to the human level?  Could it be that the real “gospel” of the book of Job is that the Lord kneels to the human condition in answering Job’s plea?

Could it be that the Lord’s answer to Job vibrates at the same frequency as a critical New Testament text?  In Philippians 2, Paul quotes a hymn that he and the Philippian Christians sang together in their worship:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Here is the God who shows up and takes on humility as the task of salvation.  In answering Job’s charges, the Lord stoops down and enters the human fray.  This is a god who is far off, but one who is near at all times—even to the point of death on a cross.  This is indeed part of the “gospel according to Job.”  The Lord enters into human suffering, not to explain it, but to redeem it.  And it is in that humble descent that the greatest glory is revealed.  Paul finishes off the hymn with these words:

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

The Lord comes to testify and Job hears the good news.  The Lord enters human suffering and death in Jesus, and every tongue testifies to God’s glory.