Job 41: A briefing on spiritual warfare

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Context: In Job 38 and 39, the readers were invited with Job to trust God simply because He is God, even though His judgments are beyond us to understand. We cannot understand them since we are not god. God is. Chapter 40 then zoomed on Job’s motive why he instead suspected God of injustice: Job’s accusers and his own theology required that he had to ‘justify himself’ by his godliness (40:8). However, the disappointment that such piety is not rewarded with lasting prosperity increasingly estranged Job from God. The vision about Behemoth illustrated with a parable how to instead behold Christ. What then is left now to complete God’s answer? Why add yet another chapter?

Sons of pride and their king

In 3:8, Job himself referred to Leviathan as the occult power that shamans call upon. Chapter 41 now adds that this sea dragon is ‘the king of the sons of pride’ (41:34). So who are the subjects of this king? 

  • In an earlier chapter, they were already described by Elihu as people who cry to God, but who do so in vain and for the wrong reasons (35:12). According to Jesus, they are those who exalt themselves (Lk 18:14) and thereby do the devil’s bidding (Jn 8:44): They think that they surely have not fallen so deep, thereby proving the point by their sense of superiority (Jn 9:41).
  • For those who relegate gods and devils to fairy tales, ultimate good or evil have no place but in the human imagination: The pride by which we call ourselves ‘enlightened’ cannot bear the thought that it was begotten by the devil.
  • Nevertheless, mankind experiences the occult in various forms, from fortune telling to spells, curses, and mass hysteria in totalitarian organizations. Accordingly, a sea serpent already occurs in Sumerian mythology and then across the Near East and beyond.
  • Thus, whenever the Bible spoke of this sea serpent and its habitat, people understood that these are metaphors for Satan and the world (e.g. 1:7; Isa 27:1; Rev 12:9). Surely the Bible didn’t claim that a literal dragon was ever sighted ‘in heaven’, 2:1-2, or literally spits smoke and fire, 41:19-20, or that any literal beast rules over anyone, 41:34!

Why did God want Job to understand that all ‘sons of pride’ are governed by this snake?

  • The metaphor teaches that Satan is the god of this world (Jn 14:30; 2Cor 4:4), with ‘retribution theology’ suiting him just fine as world religion: Let men dress up as defenders of morality – what disguise could be more deceptive than such sheep’s clothing? What will deceive them more powerfully than a sense of worthiness and superiority nourished by how they condemn the vices of others?
  • Whoever believes in Christ and wants to walk by faith in Him needs to understand this scheme of Satan to deceive us: To make us think too highly of ourselves and too little of God and of fellow men, nothing is more effective than a sense of good and evil. Nothing else is equally powerful to deceive us into thinking that we who make an effort to be good are good and hence superior to those who don’t, cf Ro 7:11. What can make people submit more willingly to the wrong master than if they regard their submission as proof that they are children of God, cf Jn 8:41?
  • Deriving their sense of entitlement from their own effort, they equally expect others to be ‘good’ people for the same self-seeking motive of self-justification, and without even noticing how enslaved they are to only do their king’s bidding, cf Jn 8:32-34; 44.
  • Secondly, recognizing pride as the root of self-justification is necessary to be freed of it through repentance. After Job heard and understood this, we read that now and only now, he could say “…but now my eye sees you” (42:5). For as Elihu said, to be a slave of sin was the last thing Job wanted: “You chose watchfulness, rather than to be a slave of sin” (36:21, transliterated).

Satan is the instigator of Job’s trials, is he not?

  •  But then why did Satan afflict Job in the first place? Why wreck Job’s prosperity only to risk discovery of the whole scheme how our natural sense of ‘justice’ derived from God’s laws deceives us? The short of it is that Satan can rely on our pride and on the spiritual blindness that it produced. Not only did Job become miserable as predicted, he nearly lost the confidence in God that made him persist so far. Left to his own wits, Job thus would have broken with God like anybody else, were it not for the God of grace and mercy who declared: “He is mine!” (2:3)
  • God’s plan how to save Job outsmarted Satan. In fact, Job did not even spontaneously become a target: None but God himself put him in Satan’s cross hair (2:3). Though the whole world considers it outrageous, this is Job’s testimony of what it means to be chosen by God’s prevenient grace to be saved:
    • Prevenient, because it all happened before Job even had a clue;
    • Grace, because Job was chosen not for what he brought to the table, but despite of it (cf Mk 10:20-21);
    • To be saved: First by unmasking the evil of self-justifying moralism and of its advocates. And then by sending Elihu as an able evangelist to open Job’s ears until he could eventually hear God himself and believe Him.
  • In order to believe, we need to hear and understand no less than Job what can be known of God. Unintelligible ‘mystery’ is not the power of God; intelligible revelation of the eternal gospel is (Ro 1:16-17): Revelation that awakens and blesses with saving faith, first Job himself and (through him) his adversaries and all those after them for whom they became a source of uncounted blessings.

Spiritual attack is inevitable: The prophecy about Leviathan 

So why was Job asked to think about this sea dragon, and why now? In the face of suffering and its apparent injustice, how can a close look at the devil help anyone to trust God? 

  • 41:1-2 starts with the futility of seeking to stand against Satan with weapons of the flesh (cf 2Cor 10:4): Why?
  • 41:3-4 The flesh can never conquer Satan, Mt 26:41, and he enters no deals except at the cost of our soul, 1Pet 5:8. Never try to appease him, Ja 4:4, or to even use his scheming for your ends, Eph 5:11.
  • 41:5 He will never be your friend:
  • 41:6 Also no ‘traders’ [lit. business partners (of yours)] can negotiate a lasting bargain (lit. dig a hole) to bind Satan (for you) with more favorable terms. Nor can he be divided (lit.) by ‘Canaanites’ (probably figurative for traders), i.e. if you try to buy him using money from his own subjects, cf Lk 11:17-18.
  • 41:7 To our own hooks and spears he is impervious:
  • 41:8-9 Battling Satan and his minions in our own strength is both hopeless and frivolous to try, cf Acts 19:16. And here is arguably the main point:

“If no one dares to stir him, who then is He who (can) stand before me?” (41:10, ESV)

  • Some modern translators take it as “no one can stand against me”. However, that makes no sense: Job never questioned that; to the contrary, this is what he himself had been saying all the time, see 9:3-12, 19-30, 32, and 40:4-5.
    • Instead, the present chapter here addresses how evil can be defeated, or rather: by whom? Who is this true High Priest who will stand before (not against!) God for this very purpose (Ps 110:4)? This is what Job questioned, i.e. whether anyone at all can take that stand (9:33). From here, the argument goes like this:
  • 41:11a “Who is before me that I should pay Him his due reward?”
  • 41:11b “I own everything in this universe”, I can do with it as I please: And I will give it all to my Son (Ps 2:7-9; 110:1)
  • 41:12 And this I will do, because contrary to your accusation, I am not withdrawn and indifferent about injustice; I am in the business of destroying the strength of Satan and his “goodly frame” (ESV), by showing how he deceives the world disguised as an angel of light, 2Cor 11:14-15
  • 41:13 For “who can…”:
    • Not in the sense that nobody at all can defeat Satan, but in the sense of a question: “Job, I want you to hear, understand and trust who can and will do it. Only my own right arm (cf 40:9), and in my time according to my own plan and in this order: By first uncovering through my word of truth Leviathan’s ‘outer garment’ (i.e. his disguise as a defender of morality and spirituality: his sheep’s clothing), and to ‘bind’ him with a bridle on his mouth.”
  • 41:14 Undeterred, my own ‘right arm’ (Messiah) will expose to the light of truth the darkness behind Leviathan’s fearsome fangs so that the lies from this mouth may no longer deceive the nations (cf. Mt 12:29; for ‘a thousand’ years, Rev 20:2-3).
  • 41:15-34 …and all this despite Satan’s appearance of invincibility (15-30), including:
  • 41:15-17 the unity of his minions in their hatred of Messiah, Ps 2:1-3; 83:5; Rev 17:13-17
  • 41:18 the fiery trials he is inflicting, cf 1Pet 4:12, and his counterfeit signs and wonders, 4:12-16 (cf Mt 24:24, Rev 13:13)
  • 41:19 Counterfeit revivals that are Christian in name (Gal 1:8; Rev 13:11-12, 15; 16:13; 17:8), but to confuse rather than enlighten because they are smoke without true light.
  • 41:20-21 Demonic spirits (putrid breath): They are God’s just judgement, cf Rev 9:2-3; 16:13-14,
  • 41:22 The serpent dragon gives its own strength to the stiffnecked (Ex 32:9; 34:9; Deut 9:6; Acts 7:51), but only to breed sorrow (of persecution, cf Acts 7:52).
  • 41:23-24 His ‘body’ are those who are uncircumcised in heart and flesh, Gen 17:14; Ezk 44:7-9, a counterfeit church, contrasted to the body of Behemoth in ch 40.
  • 41:25 When this dragon will arise (from the ‘sea’ of nations, cf Rev 13:1), potentates will yield to him with trepidation, cf Rev 13:4
  • 41:26-29 No weapons of the flesh bother him (that 10 are listed here could mean all of them are useless).
  • 41:30-32 Belly armor is neither sported by crocodiles nor by dinosaur fossils, and no known species makes the ocean boil, oily, shiny or “white-haired”. Instead, the Bible frequently compares nations metaphorically to a foamy sea stirred up by Satan, Isa 17:12; Jer 51:42; Ezk 26:3; Rev 13:1

Perhaps the least expected about the book of Job overall is how the final chord of God’s answer zooms on Leviathan’s own pride (vv33-34): “On earth there is not his like, a creature without fear…”: 

  • 41:33 This closing word contrasts the beginning in Job 1:8 “…there is none like Job on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil“. The parallel explains what is wrong with Leviathan’s lack of fear, but why did Job need to hear this?
    • He heard of Satan before (cf Gen 3:1). The serpent of Genesis was known as ‘the dragon of the sea’ of nations (Isa 27:1), and Job himself referred to Leviathan in the same way (3:8).
    • What was new to Job was the insight of this chapter how Satan builds a counterfeit church that is energized by and thrives on the attempts of unregenerate human nature to make itself acceptable.
  • 41:34 Leviathan “sees everything that is high…”:
    • The root of all evil is not irreligion, but the corruption of true religion by pride. Satan, who has set his covetous eye on God’s throne to be worshiped (Mt 3:9), knows that no bait is more alluring also to the eyes of his followers than greatness, measured by admiration and the praise from men (Gen 3:5; Rev 13:4), and that nothing is more admired than a show of virtue.

Conclusion

Behemoth and Leviathan are metaphors to describe the spiritual reality that we can only belong to one of two masters: We may trust God and His promise of eternal salvation in Messiah to live by faith in His grace, or else we are left to believe in ourselves, governed by His enemy who is our worst adversary.

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