How much man would have to do if he took over this work from God and how quickly he would find his ignorance exposed even now at this point in history where knowledge has increased! Let not man in his arrogance and ignorance say that because he has studied and understood some of the mechanisms by which God works, that there is no room of God anymore and that all is done by random impersonal forces without any sense of purpose or providential care. Let him rather admire God the more when he sees the skill by which God works.
Say if you know, Job, where ice and frost come from and what accounts for their formation. How would Job have explained the onset of winter, and the great transformation that it brought to his world? On a winter’s morning, we see the fields stretched out before us, and as far as the eye can see there is frost covering the ground and the ponds and lakes have been covered with a hard sheet of ice. Who could fail to notice such a great change, and yet who could account for it at that time and say how such a great change in the world had come about. To the vast majority of those who have lived in the past, this was just a phenomenon that they accepted but could not begin to explain. They were right however to conclude that God was responsible for all these changes, even though they did not know the mechanism which he used. It was as if the cold came from nowhere, yet they were used to the regular cycle of the seasons. Job could not explain this and he could therefore do nothing to assist God in the momentous work of controlling the seasons. But since he was unable to perform such familiar earthly things, how could he presume to be able to advise God concerning far more obscure heavenly things? Yet this is what he was in effect doing by criticising God for the providences he allowed in the life of his servant.
God’s decisions concerning Job’s life were governed by considerations unknown and unknowable to Job. The reader is given an insight into these things, not because God is about to explain every decision he makes, but to warn him that there will always be such goings on in heaven, the effect of which we feel on earth, but the cause of which is out of sight. Job was given no explanation by God at this time for what was happening to him but simply told to trust his Lord because he was being made an example to us. Since for the most part we have no knowledge of the transactions which take place in heaven, then we too must cope with the troubles of life without being told why every event of our lives takes place.