Job 40:1-14

Divine Irony. The passage opens with a challenge to Job (Job 40:2) in which God drives home the lesson of the previous speech.

Job 40:1 is wanting in LXX and is a gloss.

Job 40:3 contains Job's reply, in which he humbles himself before God. Peake and Strahan, however, both think that these verses are properly to be taken immediately before Job 42:1; so that there is only one reply from Job. If Job had already humbled himself, there seems no need of a second Divine speech. If, however, Job 40:3 are part of Job's one and only reply then Job 40:6 f. is a gloss (Job 40:7 is repeated from Job 38:3), and Job 40:2; Job 40:8 are to be read continuously; Job 40:8 joins on well to Job 40:2. Disannul my judgment means deny my justice. Job, in order to demonstrate his own innocence, has been led to challenge the moral order of the universe. He has not, however, taken a sufficiently wide point of view.

Job 40:9 explains why Job has failed. He cannot put himself in the place of God, and govern the world: thus neither can he understand the method of its government. In Job 40:13 c the hidden place seems to mean Sheol.

Job 40:14. Then will I praise thee, that thy right hand getteth thee victory. Duhm explains this: Thou hast so much care for my government of the world, thou wouldest no doubt maintain it better than I can do, for thou wouldst straightway smite down everyone who in any way seemed to thee dangerous or made himself displeasing to thee by arrogance. Man would, if he had God's power, in his zeal for righteousness and for his own honour become a tyrant. God because of His true superiority is patient, His apparent equanimity is therefore no proof of want of feeling for the right.