The Lord’s Second Speech: Terrifying Evil [Job 40:6-42:6]

[Pray]

Evil frightens me. This sermon series has been the hardest series I’ve ever preached. As I’ve gone through it I have struggled with painful and perplexing evil. I’ve struggled with my own evil thoughts, struggled with thoughts of sickness and death, stubborn self-centeredness. Looking out into the world I see destruction, hatred, abuse, senseless acts of murder and it frightens me.

Many things can elicit fear in us today, not only in reality but also in stories and fiction. I recall as a kid I use to love reading Sherlock Holmes stories, The hound of Baskervilles, was my favorite Holmes story. The story conjures up a vision of a dog with supernatural overtones that inspires terror in its victim and in his readers. As this hound breaks out of the fog upon them, for a moment all the powers of Hell seem to be unleashed. The story is meant to elicit a visceral fear and it did for me when I was a kid reading it.

It is these kinds of visions that confront us as we hear God’s second and final speech. How are we to respond when mind-numbing, terrifying, supernatural evil breaks into our ordered and domesticated life, the world in which we exercise some reassuring measure of control, where life seems to dominate rather than death, and where there is a predictability that makes normal life possible and sustainable?

What do we do when we hear an unexpected diagnosis of a terminal disease for ourselves or for one we love?

How are we to think when violent crime is visited upon us or a trauma leaves us paralyzed with post-traumatic stress disorder?

Where do we turn when the stability of our mind is overturned by the onset of dementia?

What do we do when infidelity is revealed in a spouse?

What do we say when an 18 year old kid walks into a school and kills multiple children and teachers?

These things are full of dread; they are the realities in our lives of which storybook monsters can only begin to convey the fear and numbing terror.

Before we get into the second speech of the Lord’s let’s familiarize ourselves with it’s structure…the structure is simple.

Introduction: The accusation [40:6-8]; The challenge [40:9-14]

Two Portraits: The Behemoth [40:15-24]; The Leviathan [41:1-34]

Job’s response [42:1-6]

Differences between the Second Speech and the First

We must note that the second speech addresses a different issue from the first and elicits a different response from Job. Where the first speech focused on God’s running of the world, his “counsel” (38:2), the second is concerned with his justice (40:8).

And while the first speech ended with a sobered and silenced Job (40:3–5), the second ends with Job affirming very strongly a truth about God (that he can do anything, 42:2) and a much deeper experience of God (42:5, “seeing” rather than just “hearing”), before humbling himself in explicit repentance (42:6). It is a radically deeper and stronger response.

We will see that where the first speech spoke of the natural created order in ways that hinted at supernatural forces and agencies, the second speech portrays these supernatural agencies in vivid forms.

Introduction

The Accusation: You must not call God unjust [Job 40:6-8]

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

“Dress for action like a man;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?” (vv. 6–8)

Verses 6, 7 are a repetition of 38:1, 3. But whereas at the very start of the Lord’s first speech he accused Job of darkening his “counsel” (38:2), here he makes a different and sharper accusation. In verse 8 he accuses Job not just of failing to understand God’s wise ways of governing the universe but of seeking to put God on trial, to condemn God in order to justify himself. Job has attacked God’s justice, and it is this accusation that God addresses now. But he does it in what is, to us, a most surprising manner.

The Challenge: Can you judge the world? [Job 40:9-14]

Have you an arm like God,

and can you thunder with a voice like his?

Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity;

clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

Pour out the overflowings of your anger,

and look on everyone who is proud and abase him.

Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low

and tread down the wicked where they stand.

Hide them all in the dust together;

bind their faces in the world below.

Then will I also acknowledge to you

that your own right hand can save you. (vv. 9–14)

Instead of going over aspects of the way God rules the world, defending himself point by point, explaining his judgments and actions, as we might expect, God challenges Job to have a go at himself. Job you be judge of the earth, give it a try. God asks Job, “are you able to take my place Job and rule?”

It would be easy to misunderstand this challenge, as if God were throwing up his hands and saying, “Look, mate, you give it a try. It’s not as easy as you think, this governing the world. I’m doing my best. Don’t get all bent out of shape when I don’t get it right all of the time; you couldn’t do any better.”

But as we shall see, he is not saying this. He’s basically saying Job you can’t run the world.

I want us to now consider the two word portraits with not much explanation, we’ll then look at Job’s response and come back to these two portraits of Behemoth and Leviathan.

Two Portraits

The Behemoth (40:15–24)

Behold, Behemoth,

which I made as I made you;

he eats grass like an ox.

Behold, his strength in his loins,

and his power in the muscles of his belly.

He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;

the sinews of his thighs are knit together.

His bones are tubes of bronze,

his limbs like bars of iron.

He is the first of the works of God;

let him who made him bring near his sword!

For the mountains yield food for him

where all the wild beasts play.

Under the lotus plants he lies,

in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.

For his shade the lotus trees cover him;

the willows of the brook surround him.

Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened;

he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.

Can one take him by his eyes,

or pierce his nose with a snare? (vv. 15–24)

The first portrait is of the Behemoth.

So here is a powerful, hungry superbeast, untamable by human beings, who is yet made by God and can be tamed by God. We shall ask later who or what he may be. But first let us fill our minds and hearts with the second portrait.

The Leviathan [Job 41:1-34]

The Leviathan is given a long and climactic description. Thirty-four unbroken verses paint a picture of this terrifying creature, with no explanation at the end. Clearly we are meant first to see, hear, imagine, and feel this creature in all his majesty.

Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook

or press down his tongue with a cord?

Can you put a rope in his nose

or pierce his jaw with a hook?

Will he make many pleas to you?

Will he speak to you soft words?

Will he make a covenant with you

to take him for your servant forever?

Will you play with him as with a bird,

or will you put him on a leash for your girls?

Will traders bargain over him?

Will they divide him up among the merchants?

Can you fill his skin with harpoons

or his head with fishing spears? (vv. 1–7)

Lay your hands on him;

remember the battle—you will not do it again!

Behold, the hope of a man is false;

he is laid low even at the sight of him.

No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.

Who then is he who can stand before me?

Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?

Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. (vv. 8–11)

I will not keep silence concerning his limbs,

or his mighty strength, or his goodly frame.

Who can strip off his outer garment?

Who would come near him with a bridle?

Who can open the doors of his face?

Around his teeth is terror.

His back is made of rows of shields,

shut up closely as with a seal.

One is so near to another

that no air can come between them.

They are joined one to another;

they clasp each other and cannot be separated.

His sneezings flash forth light,

and his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn.

Out of his mouth go flaming torches;

sparks of fire leap forth.

Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke,

as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

His breath kindles coals,

and a flame comes forth from his mouth.

In his neck abides strength,

and terror dances before him.

The folds of his flesh stick together,

firmly cast on him and immovable.

His heart is hard as a stone,

hard as the lower millstone. (vv. 12–24)

When he raises himself up the mighty are afraid;

at the crashing they are beside themselves.

Though the sword reaches him, it does not avail,

nor the spear, the dart, or the javelin.

He counts iron as straw,

and bronze as rotten wood.

The arrow cannot make him flee;

for him sling stones are turned to stubble.

Clubs are counted as stubble;

he laughs at the rattle of javelins. (vv. 25–29)

His underparts are like sharp potsherds;

he spreads himself like a threshing sledge on the mire.

He makes the deep boil like a pot;

he makes the sea like a pot of ointment.

Behind him he leaves a shining wake;

one would think the deep to be white-haired. (vv. 30–32)

On earth there is not his like,

a creature without fear.

He sees everything that is high;

he is king over all the sons of pride. (vv. 33, 34)

The description ends with his uniqueness (v. 33a: “On earth there is not his like”); he is unlike all other creatures. He fears nothing and no one in the created world (v. 33). “He is king” (v. 34). The world is full of proud and arrogant people, but he is the proudest, the strongest, the ruler of them all. He is the one who can really say, “I am the greatest.”

So who is the Leviathan? And who is the Behemoth? Before we consider this vital question, we must listen to Job’s response.

Job’s Response [Job 42:1-6]

Then Job answered the LORD and said:

“I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

‘Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.’

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes.” (vv. 1–6)

Job’s response is in three parts. He speaks of something he now knows, of things he did not know, and supremely of one he has now seen.

First, he now knows that God “can do all things” and that “no purpose” of his “can be thwarted” (v. 2). This is a very strong statement. At one level Job has never doubted this. He has repeatedly called God “the Almighty” and has echoed the confidence of the comforters that the Almighty really is omnipotent. But it seems that he now knows this truth in a deeper and fuller way. We will have to ask why and what this means.

Second, in verse 3 he speaks of something he “did not know.” He echoes God’s rebuke to him at the start of the first speech: “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge” (cf. 38:2). He now admits clearly and explicitly that he has done exactly that of which the Lord accused him. He has indeed spoken of “what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

The word translated “wonderful” speaks of matters that only God can do (referring to his power) and that only God can understand (referring to his wisdom). These are things “too great and too marvelous for me,” as David will put it in Psalm 131:1. At the end of the first speech, Job admits he himself is “of small account” (Job 40:4); but his statement here is stronger. He admits clearly that he has said things he ought not to have said, he has made accusations he ought not to have made, he has spoken as if he understood things he does not understand. It is only after God’s second speech that he admits this clearly; in some way the first speech softened him without moving him to a clear surrender.

Finally, in verses 4–6 Job echoes God’s introductory challenge to both speeches: “I will question you, and you make it known to me” (see 38:3; 40:7), prefixing the echo with the words, “Hear, and I will speak” (v. 4). His focus now is on what he “heard” when God spoke. In one of the most famous verses in the book, Job contrasts a previous hearing with a new seeing (v. 5).

Before the terrible events of this book, Job’s knowledge of God was “by the hearing of the ear” (v. 5). In the context of the book, this must refer to the framework of understanding that he had heard about God from childhood. He had heard that there was one Almighty God, that this God was righteous and all-powerful, and that therefore certain things might be expected, morally, in the world by way of crime and punishment, virtue and reward.

All this he had heard “by the hearing of the ear.” “But now my eye sees you” (v. 5). On the face of it this is a strange thing to say after God has given him word-portraits of two terrible creatures, the Behemoth and the Leviathan. He has had no mystical vision of God; no beautiful vision has been granted to him. Rather he has seen in his imagination two terrible beasts or monsters.

And yet, as he has heard the Lord’s words, he has seen the Lord with a clarity he has not approached before. And in response to this vision he repents (v. 6), for the first and only time in the book. He not only admits he has spoken what he ought not to have spoken—he turns from these words and repents in deep contrition for his sin. It is an extraordinary and surprising response from the man who has steadfastly refused to repent of the supposed sins of which the comforters have repeatedly accused him. Clearly it signals a climax in the book.

So we must come back to the question, who is the Behemoth, and who is the Leviathan, that their portraits could elicit such a response?

Who Are the Behemoth and the Leviathan?

In the history of the interpretation of Job, there have been two main approaches to understanding the Behemoth and the Leviathan.

On the one hand, some have understood them to be actual creatures, of the kind one might nowadays find in a zoo. So typically the Behemoth has been understood to be the hippopotamus and the Leviathan to be the crocodile.

The other main approach has been to understand these two creatures to be storybook creatures from the stories in the ancient Near East.

It is not difficult to see how the descriptions have called to mind features of actual creatures. The Behemoth is a powerful river and land animal, like the hippopotamus. The Leviathan has terrifying rows of teeth, like the crocodile. The techniques to be used for hunting them “correspond to the hunting techniques for the hippopotamus and the crocodile.” Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that in Egyptian mythology both the hippopotamus and the crocodile were “symbols of chaos” and needed to be subjugated.

But there are serious difficulties with understanding them to be merely natural creatures; these difficulties make it clear that they are storybook creatures.

The first difficulty is that neither portrait fits perfectly with any known creature on earth. For example, the Leviathan is described as a fire-breathing monster and an ocean-dwelling creature, neither of which is true of the crocodile. Even if we allow room for poetic hyperbole in these descriptions. But it is a problem, for there are no such hyperbolic features in the descriptions of natural creatures in the first speech.

A second difficulty is that it is hard to see how Job’s inability to catch and tame a hippo and a crocodile really addresses the question of his inability to administer cosmic justice; the issues and stakes are much higher than this.

Tied in with this difficulty is, as we have seen, the extraordinary depth and clarity of Job’s response to this second speech. A speech that was no more than a couple of afterthoughts to the first (“Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention that you haven’t managed to tame a hippo or a crocodile”) would hardly elicit such a response. It would be anticlimactic, when in fact it is a tremendous climax.

Allied to these evidences from within the book of Job is clear evidence from elsewhere in Scripture that the Leviathan is a well-known storybook creature. Job has implied his own understanding of this in 3:8 (“Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan”). Isaiah describes Leviathan as a “fleeing serpent … the twisting serpent … the dragon that is in the sea” in the context of God’s sovereign victory over it (Isaiah 27:1).

In Psalm 74 Asaph speaks of the exodus in terms of God breaking “the heads of the sea monsters” and having “crushed the heads of Leviathan” (Psalm 74:12–14), suggesting that Leviathan is a many-headed sea monster whose power and enmity to God are such that only the redemptive power of the exodus can subdue him. In a wonderfully ironic passage, Psalm 104 describes Leviathan as a sea creature for whom God has made the sea as his playpen (Psalm 104:25, 26).

The book of Revelation takes the imagery of beasts, dragons, serpents, and sea monsters and applies it explicitly to Satan. “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9).

“And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him” (Revelation 20:2). So we have clear Scriptural evidence that Leviathan is a strange and terrifying sea monster, a many-headed, fire-breathing dragon who conveys to us the terror and evil of Satan himself. He is “the embodiment of cosmic evil itself.”

So we are on strong Biblical ground when we identify the Leviathan at the end of the book of Job with Satan at the start. This also answers a popular objection to the integrity of the book of Job, namely, that Satan plays a critical role at the start and then disappears from view. He does not disappear from view; he appears in all his evil terror at the end.

This kind of symbolism is used for human powers that defy God as well. For example, in Ezekiel the power of Egypt is described as “the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams” (Ezekiel 29:3). This means more than that Egypt is like a dragon. It suggests that in its power used against God, Egypt takes on something of a satanic character. The same would be true of the power of Rome to which similar symbolism is applied in the book of Revelation.

But what of the Behemoth? Here we cannot be so sure and must make a more tentative suggestion based more on hints and nuances in the text. Jones sees an echo of Behemoth and Leviathan in the two beasts (one a land beast, one from the sea) in Revelation 12, 13, and this is possible. Robert Fyall has argued carefully that the Behemoth portrays death himself (with echoes of the Canaanite god Mot).

This ever-hungry superbeast is always devouring, like the grim reaper in modern cartoons, the hooded figure of death with his sickle picking off one and then another to keep feeding his insatiable appetite. This suggestion fits in terms of Biblical theology as well as expository evidence, for Scripture associates death with Satan in many places. And it will enable us to see a persuasive Christological climax to the book of Job.

Robert Fyall ties the two readings together helpfully: “It is not that they are the hippopotamus and the crocodile, but that these beasts in their size, ferocity and untameable nature are evidence of that dark power rooted in the universe itself which shadows all life.”

How Should We Respond to Behemoth and Leviathan?

G. K. Chesterton suggests that as Job listens to God’s speeches, “he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design.” What is conveyed to Job and to us in the Behemoth and Leviathan descriptions is indeed almost too good to be told. And yet it is true.

It seems that the Behemoth may be the storybook embodiment of the figure of death. And the Leviathan in Biblical imagery is the archenemy of God, the prince of the power of evil, Satan, the god of this world (as Jesus calls him), the one who holds the power of death.

And in the Leviathan we see the embodiment of beastliness, of terror, of undiluted evil. When, at the climax of his description, we read that “he is king over all the sons of pride” (41:34), we are reading of the one who in the NT is called “Beelzebul, the prince of demons” (Matthew 12:24).

This second divine speech to Job is precisely addressing the problem of supernatural evil in the created order. This is clear in Job 40:8–14. Job has questioned God’s justice (40:8). So God challenges him to do the job of the judge of all the earth (40:11)—that is, to bring low the proud and to tread down the wicked (40:12). “If you can do that,” says the Lord in essence, “then I will admit that you can save yourself. But you can’t” (40:14).

So the figures of the Behemoth and the Leviathan come not as an anticlimax but rather use the language of well-known stories to make the point that only the Lord can keep evil on a leash.

The Leviathan is “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31), “the prince of the power of the air”—that supernatural region that lies above us but below God’s Heaven (Ephesians 2:2). So here is a creature that is the ruler of all the proud. “If you can tame him, Job, then we may be sure you can tame all the proud. But you can’t, Job, can you?”

Indeed we saw in Job 19 that it is precisely this monster who has been savaging Job and making his life such utter misery all this time. Job cannot take him on. The point of Job 41 is to make us tremble at the awesome and fell power of the prince of evil. If we thought evil was bad, when we come face-to-face with the Leviathan we realize it is infinitely more frightening than we had thought. “You cannot begin to take on the problem of evil, Job. And you know that.”

“But I can!” says the Lord. That is the point. This awesome monster is “a creature” (41:33), a created thing. “I made him too, and I can tame him. And he is on my leash, even if he cannot be on yours” (41:5). We see similar deprecating comedy in Psalm 104:26 with its calm description of Leviathan as placed in the sea to frolic, as a parent might put an unruly child in a secure playpen to play.

Now this is the point. A mailman enters a yard and is terrified by wild dogs, yapping, snarling, and snapping around his ankles. He is scared. And the question he is bound to ask is, “Are these dogs restrained in any way?

Are they on a leash? Is there an owner around who can call them off?” As Job suffers, his greatest and deepest fear is that the monster who attacks him is unrestrained, that the attacks will go on forever, with unrelieved ferocity, and that the monster has been given a free hand, unlimited access to Job and his life. He is afraid that there is no sovereign God who has evil on a leash.

But there is. And when Job grasps that, he is filled with awe (42:2). We, the readers, have already seen this in chapters 1, 2, in which it is clear that Satan is restrained (1:12; 2:6). On both occasions Satan obeys to the letter. Satan, the Leviathan, is a horrible monster. But he cannot go one millimeter beyond the leash on which the Lord keeps him.

Now this does not answer our questions. It does not give us a philosophically tidy answer that can explain the problem of suffering and evil. But it does something deeper: it opens our eyes to who God is. He is the only God, without rival.

Even the mystery of evil is his mystery. Even Satan, the Leviathan, is under God’s rule. This means that as we suffer, and as we sit with others who suffer, we may with absolute confidence bow down to this sovereign God, knowing that while evil may be terrible, it cannot and will not ever go one tiny fraction beyond the leash on which God has put it. And it will not go on forever, for the One to whom we belong is God.

It is not until the New Testament that we learn what it cost God to win this victory over the Leviathan. Neither the Behemoth nor the Leviathan can finally be defeated by a greater force of the same kind; evil cannot be defeated by evil, but only by the redemptive suffering of pure goodness.

As one commentator put it, “This was no Olympian victory won from a great height by a tyrannical and remote god. On the contrary, this victory was won, paradoxically, on the cross of Christ.”

As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews explains, the reason the Son of God became a fully human being was so “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).

The reason the Leviathan monster has a hold over human beings is that we have surrendered to his rule by rebelling against God. “The sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15:56). We owe this evil monster our dark allegiance and cannot escape his clutches until our debt is paid. That debt was paid in full at the cross.

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Colossians 2:13–15)

The One who is Lord even over Leviathan suffered on the cross. He is the Lord who deals in scars, for he bears them in person as God’s only Son. When the darkness of the Leviathan’s presence overwhelms us, we may turn with confidence to Jesus our Savior alone.

Centuries after Job, horrified people watched evil unmasked as the destructive forces within a demonized man they called “Legion” catapulted 2,000 pigs over a cliff into the sea. As they watched, they grasped in their horror the true power and disorder of evil, and at the same time they watched the man who was and is Lord over that evil exercise the authority he was to win at the cross (Mark 5:1–20).

Evil frightens me. It is meant to. I am meant to be humbled by supernatural evil so that I know—deeply know—that it is too strong for me, that I cannot resist it on my own. Death and the one who hold the power of death—that is, the devil—are too strong for me.

But my response is not meant to end in terror. For at the climax of the book of Job is this assurance that both death (the Behemoth) and the one who holds the power of death (the Leviathan) are creatures entirely under the control of the Sovereign God who is my Savior.

The assurance that he can do all things and that no purpose of his can be thwarted is the comfort I need in suffering and the encouragement I crave when terrified by evil.

He does not merely permit evil but commands it, controls it, and uses it for his good purposes. The most evil deed in the history of the human race, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the moment when the Leviathan and the Behemoth seemed ultimately victorious, was the moment that was brought about by “the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), and that was the moment when Behemoth and the Leviathan were defeated.

This God who knows how to use supernatural evil to serve his purposes of ultimate good can and will use the darkest invasions into my own life for his definite and invincible plans for my good and for His glory in Christ. And he will do the same for you. Hallelujah! What a Savior!