Job 41:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 41:5

Comments

Can you play with him like a pet bird? – some birds can be trained to do antics, to imitate human speech, and turned into objects of amusement, or even teased and taunted. Can you make sport of him? Go ahead and try, Job, and you will learn the hard way that this is not the sort of animal that responds to that sort of treatment. Or can you bind him? Can you put him on a leash and give him to one of your children or to some little girl to safely walk him around as a pet or an accessory to her beauty? Or perhaps, can you tie his jaws and let the young girls ride around on his back? Can you so control him that all fear of him is removed, and he becomes a mere plaything to you? To entertain such an idea is to know how ridiculous it is. You know that this creature would never allow itself to be subjected to this treatment. The suggestion is that Job has allowed himself to become an object of entertainment to others. They were playing games with him, and he allowed himself to go along with it.Using another deliberately absurd picture (Hartley), God asks Job whether this monster of the deep could become an object of barter for the merchants. ‘Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants [literally Canaanites, who became a byword for merchants]?’ Is he just one more beast that man can kill and buy and sell as he wishes? Job had put himself in the power of his opponents, not by his suffering, but by his response to suffering. He had allowed his hold on God to slip, so that his enemies came between him and his God. He ought, even in these trials, to have remained certain about the goodness of God towards him that his enemies could not undermine. Think of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even in the midst of his suffering, no one came between him and his Father. He remained master of every event, and it was between him and his heavenly Father what happened to him. He knew the explanation for it, and the taunts of the Pharisees and of the crowds that God had deserted him did not penetrate his shield of faith. Job’s worldly friends had won him with a mixture of flattery, the offer of relief through illegitimate means, and false charges of hypocrisy. He had certainly resisted their speeches, but in doing so he had not kept his sights fixed on the lovingkindness and faithfulness of God.

Application

Some Christians and some churches have been oversensitive to accusations of being impractical in their religion. They are charged with being concerned only about the souls of men and not about their physical needs. Under the pressure of these charges they have diverted to social programs and have toned down the preaching of the gospel. We must care for the poor and needy as the example of Christ shows, especially in our one-to-one interaction with the world, but the great commission is about the preaching of the gospel, not about making the world a better place. Whatever this world thinks, the church does not exist to remedy society’s largely self-imposed ills. Our work is to serve the Lord, to worship him and to publish his message in the world.

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Job 41:5 Commentary and Bible Study