Day 325: Job 40-42 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) Family, welcome to day 325. It's our last day in the book of Job. We're looking at Job chapters 41 and 42 today. I mean, bars, gods, butts, spit hot fire, okay? And I'm super, super excited about it. What amazing chapters of the Bible. I mean, God's gonna describe two chaos creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan. These, this is just, this is peak mythological language in the Bible. This image is actually derived from God's Yahweh's description of Leviathan that we are gonna find here at the end of the book of Job, Job 41 to be precise. And I've got an interpretation on these chapters that I think is gonna be helpful. This is the thematic climax of the book. God is about to instill tons of wisdom. And unlike the end of speech one where Job's response is, let me cover my mouth, I gotta stop talking. The end of speech two, Job actually recants his position, repents and acknowledges that what he had said about the Lord was incorrect, okay? And then Yahweh is going to vindicate him and say that the, his friends are wrong, okay?

So a lot of things are gonna happen in these couple of chapters. I'm super, super excited about it. And big, big idea, okay, 30,000 feet idea is that the book of Job is not designed for us to get to know Job. The book of Job is actually designed for us to get to know Yahweh, to get to know God. And what God is about to do in these very last chapters is reveal himself in a serious way to Job that he wants Job to understand him. And by proxy we get to understand God because God is revealing himself to Job. And so these are just invaluable chapters of the Bible and who doesn't want, you know, really long description on a fire-breathing dragon. Like if anyone doubts whether or not the Bible in Game of Thrones has a lot in common, just read Job chapter 41, okay? Read Yahweh's description of Leviathan. And there's a lot of people that would suggest that Behemoth is a hippopotamus and Leviathan is an alligator. That is absolutely ridiculous. There's also a lot of people who would kind of maybe come from an exegetical perspective that this is a description of Yahweh conquering Leviathan and conquering Behemoth. But the text does not say that. Actually, I'm going to give an interpretative

or an exegetical interpretation that lines up with Dr. John Walton. He's a hero in the faith to me. I've read almost all of his books. I think that he's one of my favorite scholars. And so I'm gonna really, I'm gonna take Dr. John Walton's position here and I'll kind of outline what that looks like in a little bit. Now, if you haven't done today's reading, shame on you, not as joking. I'm just joking, shame off you. But shame on you. Now, if you haven't done today's reading, then I want you to stop the video, pause the audio, go read Job chapter 40, 41 and 42. If you've been reading Job this whole way and don't wanna read these last chapters, that's kind of crazy. So get the reading done. For the rest of us who have done the reading, let's dive in. All right, now behemoth and Leviathan are chaos creatures. This is deeply mythological language, which makes most modern people really, really uncomfortable. But if you've been rocking with us on this podcast, for any later time, you know, that the Bible was written for us, but not to us. In the ancient world, mythological creatures are normal. Whether it's Mesopotamian or Babylonian or Canaanite,

creation content, the creator figure is always having to subdue or conquer chaos creatures, namely Rahab, Leviathan, all types of chaos dragons and chaos monsters in order to start the creation process, okay? Genesis is different. Yahweh doesn't have to do any of that. Yahweh doesn't have to tame anything in order to start creating, okay? Actually, Genesis chapter one is gonna throw the biggest curveball, the mind-blown line, which says that God created the great sea creatures, like God created Leviathan. Then have to conquer Leviathan, he creates Leviathan. And it's a good part of his creation, okay? That is the curveball. Now, the hemat is a land animal, Leviathan is a sea animal, but hemat is going to take up most of Job chapter 40, specifically versus 15 to 24. And the Leviathan, we're going to start the description of Leviathan in Job chapter 41. Okay, I'm going to mix in all, that's all the context that you need. Okay, now let's dive into some nerdy nuggets. Let's actually get into the text. Job chapter 40, verse 15, it says this. "Family, the weight is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally, today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So, you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy if you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective.

If you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book and if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right. Back to the episode. Job chapter 40, verse 15, look at Behemoth, which I made. Here we go. Keywords, along with you, along with you, that means he's a land animal and it means that you and Behemoth were both made on day six of the creation account. Okay, so if you just take the creation and then you want God to kind of like zoom in on moments, okay, that's what happens all through the Psalms that there are these moments where we know what God did in the 70s of creation, but then God is going to zoom in on a particular moment of the creation and then give tons and tons and tons of details and we get that in all kinds of places throughout the Bible. Here's one. Okay. Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you. So there's now a correlation between Job and Behemoth, okay. God is using Behemoth to teach Job about what Job needs to be like. Okay. So let's keep going. Okay. Which, which, in which feeds on grass like an ox, okay, that means at the beginning of the story, Job was well fed. What strength it has in its loins, what power in the muscles of its belly, its tail sways like a cedar, the sinews of its thighs are close knit, its bones are tubes of bronze,

its limbs like rods of iron. It ranks first among the works of God, yet its maker can approach it with his sword. Okay. So, Job, you're righteous, you're blameless, I'm proud of you. And guess what? I should be able to approach you. Okay. The hills bring it their produce and all the wild animals play nearby. Okay. This is, essentially, a description of Job prior to the Satan figure being able to take Job's wealth under the lotus plant, it lies hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal it in their shadows, the poplars by the stream surrounded. A raging river does not alarm it. This is what Yahweh is saying to Job. You have now received or encountered a raging river that threatens to drown you, but you shouldn't be alarmed. Job, be like Behemoth, be strong. Okay. The raging river does not alarm it. It is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth. Can anyone capture it by the eyes or trap it and pierce its nose? The word nose in the ancient world is synonymous with anger. Okay. Can anyone make it angry? Can anyone and piercing the nose is a symbol of like slavery? Okay. It's saying these friends of yours shouldn't be able to get you this hot tempered. I need you to be like Behemoth. Now here's the next chapter 41, it's going to start. Can you pull in Leviathan with a fish hook or tie down its tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Okay. So, and then we're going to talk you, you, you, you, you. Can you make a pet of it like a bird is verse five, verse seven, can you fill its hide with harpoons? If you lay a hand on it, you'll remember the struggle and never do it again. Nine, any hope of subduing it is false. The mere sight of it is overpowering. No one is fierce enough to rouse it, who then is able to Me, verse 10, we get a curve ball. Everything has been you, you, you, you, you, you. From Joe Child of 41, verses one, all the way to verse eight. Everything is you, you, you, you, you. Look at all the, look at all the pronouns. Okay, from verse one, all the way to verse eight. Can you, can you, can you, will you? Okay, can you? And then all of a sudden in verse 10 and 11, things shift. No one is fierce enough to rouse Leviathan who then is able to stand against me, Yahweh. Verse 11, who has a claim against me that I must pay. Everything under heaven belongs to me. So what is happening in the text? Yahweh is saying Joe is behemoth and he is Leviathan. Yahweh is comparing himself to Leviathan. We have to conclude that because everything from verse one to verse eight of chapter 41 is you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. And then verse 10, no one is fierce enough to rouse Leviathan who then is able to stand against me.

God is saying to Joe is if you can't even contend with Leviathan, the strongest thing I've made, you definitely can't contend with me. So here is the point, Leviathan cannot be tamed. Leviathan cannot be domesticated. Leviathan cannot be controlled. Leviathan cannot be controlled. Subdude, harnessed, wounded, cannot be forced. His mouth cannot be forced open. Leviathan is wild. Leviathan cannot be tamed. Domesticated controlled, subdued, wounded, or harnessed. And anyway, and guess what the truth of the Bible is describing. It's saying Yahweh in the same way cannot be tamed. Yahweh cannot be tamed. Yahweh cannot be domesticated. Yahweh cannot be controlled. Yahweh cannot be subdued. Yahweh cannot be wounded. Yahweh cannot be harnessed. Yahweh's mouth cannot be forced open. Yahweh is wild. This is what Yahweh wants Job to understand. You cannot act righteous and think that your righteousness then manipulates me into blessing you. I will not be manipulated. I will not be controlled. I will not be, there's no formula to figure me out. I will not be tamed.

I am God. In the same way that you cannot even tame Leviathan, who I am astronomically stronger than, astronomically more wild than, if you can't even tame Leviathan, which is a created being, how dare you think you can contain or control me. God is using Leviathan as an image to describe himself. And we get that from verses 10 through 11. Okay, so this description of Leviathan is not really a description of Leviathan. It's a description of Yahweh. And that is what John Walton has discovered that no one else that I've read comes close to even talking about. This passage in Job chapter 41 is not a passage about how God tames Leviathan or subdues Leviathan. Nope, it's a passage about how Yahweh is a lot like Leviathan. Now he's also wholly other than Leviathan. So he's not like Leviathan in more ways than he's like Leviathan. But what God is saying is, if you can't even subdue, domesticate or tame Leviathan, how dare you think you can tame subdue or tame subdue or control or domesticate me. All the things that Job cannot do to Leviathan,

Job also cannot do any of these things to Yahweh. This is the point. And once Job hears all of this, he recants and submits and acknowledges that he had been presumptuous. He thought that his righteousness could in some way control or predict outcomes for what Yahweh would do for him and to him, which means he was not being righteous for righteous sake. He was being righteous as a means to an end. And if we're all honest, we're all the same, which means the message for Job is also a message for you and I. God cannot be manipulated. God cannot be tamed. God cannot be controlled. I want you to think about this because for a lot of us, the point of understanding someone or understanding something is so that you can manipulate it, right? A mechanic can manipulate a car. So mechanics understand cars so that they can take them apart, put them back together and the engineers manipulate things realize God cannot and anyway be controlled at all. And that thing in you that wants to control others or control God or to control your life, that's the thing that needs to die because he's Leviathan. He's untamable. He's wild. He's uncontrollable. He's uncontainable. And you cannot use your good deeds in order to try to predict how he is going to bless you in the universe. That is a recipe for being disappointed by God. If you think, "Yep, if I pull this lever, if I do this, I can get it." Yep. Nope. Wrong.

So what's our Thomas truth for the day? That's how you got Thomas truth. It's actually, I'm going to quote two passages from the line of which in the wardrobe. This is C.S. Lewis. And I don't know what C.S. Lewis' stance is on Job 41 if he thought that Yahweh was describing himself through this mythological creature that we know is Leviathan. I have no idea. But man does C.S. Lewis nail it in the line of which in the wardrobe. I'll read two quotes. Here's the first. This is C.S. Lewis describing Azlan, the lion, the god figure in the line of which in the wardrobe. It says, "He'll be coming and going. One day, you'll see him, and another you won't." He doesn't like being tied down. And of course, he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only, you must impress him. He's wild, you know, not like a tame lion. You mustn't press him. He's wild, you know, not like a tame lion. If there was a t-shirt for the book of Job, I think the t-shirt should just have Leviathan on it and it's say, "You mustn't press him. You mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. He's not a tame lion. He's not a tamed Leviathan. He's wild." There's this other quote from Lion Witch in the Wardrobe. "Mr. Beaver, famously tells the children, 'Safe?' question mark." It's like the kids are asking, "Is Azlan safe? Safe?" question mark. Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you. Most of us want a safe god. We want a tamed god. We want a god that we can control, which means we really want a genie. We really just want like a magician to like do magic tricks for us. If it's a magician or a genie, guess what? You're still in control. Aladdin is in control of the genie. That's the pole point. And now we really want a genie. We want to be in control to free the genie if we want to. We want to be Aladdin. In the book of Job is a reminder. God's wild. God's not tamed. Your righteousness doesn't get God to do anything. Now that I'm a lead pastor for the first time of my life, I now am realizing there are people, not at our church. I pray that they are not in our church. Eventually they will be who think that the more they tie, the more it will give them influence at church. Like if they tithe a lot, if they give a lot, they can determine like what I preach or they can have a say in like what I do. And there's a part of me that wants to be like, you will not tamed me. You will not domesticate me. I am wild. And guess what? You want me to stay that way because the moment you try to tame me or domesticate me, if I was tame or domesticated, I wouldn't be able to move to a city I've never lived in and live among strangers and just start a church. That's something that pioneers do. And if you try to tame me, you'll actually be

denying the very thing that is able to get a church up off the ground. Like in a lot of us, that's what we do with God. We think if I tie, if I give or if I serve or if I this or if I that, it'll be a head of protection around me. And then you need a book like Job to come around and say, no, no, no, no. The universe is a wild place. The world is a wild place. Life is wild. God is wild. And if you're in this because you want safe, predictable, like domesticated, like, like faith, this ain't the place. I'm sorry. And so let's deal with the epilogue. A couple things about the epilogue. Elohoo is not reprimanded in the epilogue. Job repents, but his friends do not. And that is actually why Yahweh after the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz, who I think is the representative of all the friends, I am angry with you and your two friends because you have not spoken the truth about me as my servant Job has. Now let's think about this. Job has said untrue things about Yahweh in the full context of the book. But what has Job done? Job comes to a place in chapter 42 verse one where he says this, "Then Job replied to the Lord, I know that you can do all things. No purpose of yours can be thwarted." You asked, who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge? Surely I spoke of things. I did not understand things too wonderful for me to know. You said, listen now and I will speak. I will question you and you shall answer me. My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. At the end of the first speech, Job does not repent.

But at the end of the second speech, Job repents, because now what has happened? My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. He now knows something about God that he did not know before. He thought that God could be tamed by his good actions. And now he knows my righteousness is as filthy rags before the Lord. My righteousness gets me nothing. And now why does God restore everything to Job? Because Job comes to the realization that God is not obliged to do anything, but that blessing from the Lord is just that, a gift. It's not a reward for righteousness, but it's a gift. And it's unpredictable and it's wild. And when you begin to realize everything's a gift and I hold everything lightly and it could be gone tomorrow and I deserve death hell in the grave, but somehow in God's untamable, unpredictable wisdom, he decided to gift me with blessings. He decided to gift me. It's not anything I worked to achieve, but it is something that I will gladly receive. And now that Job has been transformed, now God restores everything. And the restoration is not as if the pain of losing his children is not real, but the pain of the suffering was there to transform Job into the kind of person that no longer thinks that he's entitled to the things

that he's worked for because of his righteousness. But now he can actually just receive blessing from God as a gift that is completely unpredictable, wild and untamable. And when you get there, when you get to the point of life's untamable, God's wild, he's not able to be domesticated. You will know something about God that you didn't know before. And that is what the book of Job is actually all about. I hope that you encounter the wild, untamable power of God. That you would not, through your prayers or through your actions, try to manipulate God in any way, shape or form, but that you would actually have a relationship with the God of the universe. Not a genie that does your bidding, but God. And if God sees fit to take everything away, then guess what, I trust his wisdom. And if God sees fit to open up the storehouses of the heavens and bless me in ways that I can't, I have room enough to receive, I'll receive it. And that, I think, is the entire book of Job, and that. Ooh, that gets me fired up. I don't want some neutered God. I want a God that actually has real power. And I think that if we can fall in love with the real God of the Bible and not the God of our imaginations, we could actually know him and to know him as to love him.

That's our timeless truth in the day. Tomorrow, we got a brand new book in the Bible. Time to talk about sex, baby, not just playing. We gonna all get into the book of Song of Songs. It's gonna be fantastic. We got Song of Songs chapters one, two, and three on the docket tomorrow, here on day 326 on the Bible department. Can't wait to see you. Love you guys, peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode to learn more about the show, head to thebobbledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.