38:3 answer thou me. God finally answers Job, but He does so with about seventy-seven rhetorical questions, not one of which has anything to do with the sufferings of Job, or the sufferings of anyone else! Evidently the purpose of the book of Job, in spite of the opinions of most commentators, is not to answer the question as to why righteous people suffer. Although this is the burning theme throughout the entire dialogue between Job and his critics (and a very important question it is!), God never answers it at all in His four-chapter monologue.

Instead, His questions all have to do with His great creation and man’s responsibility thereto. That, evidently, is God’s great concern. He is rebuking Job (and all men, indirectly), not for sinning or for lack of faith (Job had passed those tests perfectly), but for his inability to answer His questions about the creation. Adam and his descendants had been given dominion over the creation (Genesis 1:26-28), which certainly entailed learning to understand it and to care for its creatures, but it had now been about two thousand years since this first great commission was given, and little had been accomplished, with even the most righteous of men more concerned about their own affairs than about God’s creation.