“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38:4)
After hearing Job’s questions as well as the false wisdom of his friends, Yahweh spoke out. He ignored the empty eloquence of Job’s friends completely and addressed Job directly. The Lord asked him a rhetorical question that demonstrated that neither Job or his counselors were in any position to offer an opinion or assessment on how He should manage and run the universe He had created. Job cannot because he does not see things from the Lord’s perspective nor does he have access to or knowledge of all the Lord knows. He hasn’t a clue has to how Yahweh runs things or why. The Lord proceeded to demonstrate to Job how small his knowledge was, to teach him that he really had no business to question God or call Him unjust or unfair. The Lord did this through a series of powerful and graphic yet unanswerable questions that ought to make each one of us keep our mouths quiet and never again boast of our “wisdom”.
The Lord begins with the origin of the world. Since Job was not there to see this, he lacks the understanding to accuse God of wrongdoing or mismanagement. Job, indeed all men, stand helpless before these aspects of creation that the Lord speaks of especially the chaos of the raging sea, the rushing torrents of rivers and the awesome power of wind, rain, thunder, and snow storms. All these have their origin in the mind of Yahweh. These all seem to us to occur with random unpredictability and without reason or logic; but the Lord uses all such things for His own purposes. He controls them and sets their limits, things which man attempts to do but with extremely limited and merely temporary success. Yahweh’s power is so great that even these are within His sovereign grasp. We pride ourselves on the worldly wisdom of science and academia but we haven’t got a clue as to the origins of life on earth let alone how things work or why except why God has chosen to reveal.