The Book of Job: Chapters 37-42

Job claims he knows too much about God, such as the reason why men fear him:

"Men do therefore fear him: he respecteth not any that are wise of heart." (37:24)

This is also subtly claiming that Job knows more than God about people who are wise or idiotic, and that he understands God.

Then God appears and tells him the numerous reason why He is wiser and more knowledgeable than Job ("Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" 38:2, it then goes on to explain all the things that God did and saw while Job's Great-Great-times a thousand Grandmother still wasn't born), and asks him what right he has to judge God's decisions and motives.

Job is humbled, and agrees he had no right to speak:

"Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore I have uttered that I understood not; things to wonderful for me, which I knew not." (42:3)

God forgives him, though He gets mad at his three friends, and makes him twice as rich as before, with lots of kids, thousands of camels, sheep, oxen, and she asses, as well as the renewed respect of his neighbors.

One thing that intrigued me about the appearance of God was how similar it was to the myths. In them, a human would always be presumptuous and claim to be equal to/as good at something than some god or another. That god would always show up and prove him/her wrong. The difference is that the humans were rarely ever forgiven in the myths, much less made very wealthy once they realized that they were wrong, yet that's what God did.

Also. we were talking about the "God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh," part of Exodus a couple days ago. I also wondered about that at first, but then I interpreted it in two ways.

Maybe it was just the idea of God that hardened the heart of the Pharaoh. God didn't do anything personally, the Pharaoh just thought about God and he became annoyed.

Or else God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh so that he could show all the Hebrew people how powerful he was, so that they would obey him.

At least that's how I saw it.