Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 281 · October 8
Where Wast Thou
“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.”
I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not. That is Job in the middle of the book, describing a God who has gone quiet on him.
The silence ends in person, out of a whirlwind, and it goes on for four chapters. It opens with where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. And later: who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? Question after question, about weather and wild animals and the ostrich and the horse, most of them impossible and some close to teasing. And he never answers the one Job asked. You were told in chapter one about the wager in heaven. Job never is, and he dies without knowing.
Whether that is enough the book will not close, and Job's own answer is worth reading slowly, because it reports a change in the kind of knowing rather than the amount. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. What is on offer to you is the same: his presence, and a very long answer that never touches the point. Bring the question anyway and keep bringing it. Job did, at volume, and God's complaint at the end of the book falls on the friends who defended him, never on the man who shouted.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 281 is Grace Upon Grace (John 1:16).