The book of Job presents us with many different lessons and truths. We tend to focus on the topic of suffering, but there is more here than just that. We recall that the Lord allows Satan to test His servant Job with great loss and suffering. Job’s three friends come to offer consolation but provide little and, in fact, speak wrongly of God in the process. Job laments his situation, disagrees with his friends’ assessment of things, and questions God about His purposes in it all. Finally, God Himself shows up with questions for Job for which he has no answers. He can only humble himself and acknowledge God as Sovereign. In the end, Job is vindicated.
God asks questions of two persons in the story: of Satan and of Job.When Job needs to see the reality of God in his world, the Lord questions him about dozens of things in creation (Job 38-41):
•What do you know about the foundations of the earth?
•What do you know of the sea and its boundaries?
•Have you “commanded the morning”?
•What of the “springs of the sea”?
•Where is the place of darkness?
•What about the “storehouses of the snow”?
•Do you know the way of the thunderbolt?
•“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?”
•“Can you hunt prey for the lion?”
•What do you know of Behemoth?
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?”
These are all questions about the physical world. However, when God speaks with Satan and asks a question of him, He speaks of a different realm - a different reality if you will. “Have you considered My servant Job?” It is most telling that when God and Satan “have a conversation” it is not about the wonders and glories of creation, but about the “blameless and upright” conduct of a man who fears God. What truth is this telling us?