Job 41

Most people believe that Job got to the end of his life without ever understanding why he went through all that he did. They don’t believe God gave His friend any explanation for his sufferings. I disagree. I think God’s explanation to Job is contained in this chapter, and it’s stunning, considering that a general knowledge of Satan didn’t enter Israelite thinking until close to the end of the Old Testament time period.

This chapter is all about Leviathan. Now, most commentaries treat this chapter as if Leviathan was an actual sea creature that is now extinct. That’s certainly a possibility, but there is much more going on in this chapter than making reference to a literal creature. Here are the characteristics attributed to Leviathan in this chapter:

It is strong. (vs 22)
It is cruel, delighted by sorrow. (vs 22)
It has strong defenses. (vs 23)
It is hard-hearted and has no feeling. (vs 24)
It causes great fear—even among the mighty. (vs 25)
It cannot be overcome by weapons. (vs 26-29)
It is not vulnerable. (vs 30)
It has no worthy rivals on Earth. (vs 33)
It is filled with pride—the king of pride. (vs 34)

Perhaps this last verse gives it away—more than all the others. God is not talking about a sea creature, here. Oh, He may be referencing an actual animal, but I believe He is using it as a metaphor for Satan. He is trying to help Job understand just what he (along with everyone else) is up against. We all share the Earth with this dreadful, fearsome creature.

The Greek version of the Old Testament translates the Hebrew word for Leviathan as dragon. So it seems that they understood that God was talking to Job about the same creature described in the Book of Revelation—the great dragon that rules the sea: “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan” (Rev 20:2). So he’s there at the end, and you’ll remember that humanity also encountered a serpent at the very beginning… when all Earth’s troubles began. It is this serpent, this dragon, that God has been contending with, and He is trying to help Job understand the enormity of the problem.

In this chapter, the description of Leviathan is terrifying. As Mike Mason wrote, it “seems so endlessly sprawling, gargantuan, invincible.” I imagine that’s just how Job’s suffering felt—sprawling and invincible. And though Scripture doesn’t explicitly tell us so, I like to think that Job understood what God was trying to tell him. I like to think that he thought about that sea creature (whether it was a real or mythical figure to him) and realized that, if he ever met one, he’d be up against more than he could handle. I like to think it helped Job understand just how much more was going on behind the scenes in God’s world.

God wants to tell us more. The story of Job is memorialized in Scripture for exactly that purpose. When we encounter suffering, He wants us to know where it has come from. And He wants us to know—as Job found out—that despite how bad it feels at the moment, He has the last word on suffering. Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!” (Jn 16:33)

We tend to think we know it all. But there is so much we don’t know. There is still so much we have to learn, so much that God wants to tell us. And this chapter of Job gives me great comfort—that God is able to teach us in ways we can understand. I want to be a friend of God like Job was. I want to be willing to learn, to have my vision enlarged, to see from God’s perspective. And I want to do that, even when the path to knowing God better is fraught with suffering. For I believe that whether the education comes from experiences of happiness or sorrow, there can be no greater privilege than to sit at the feet of the Master Teacher.