Job Chapter 41



Well now, in Job 41, comes a still longer description of "leviathan," and I understand that to be the crocodile. The crocodile is a very formidable beast. It is not so shy of the human kind; on the contrary, it preys upon men, women, and children, if it can get hold of them. It is not therefore at all so strange as the "behemoth" that we have been reading about.

"Canst thou draw out leviathan* with an hook?" You that can do such wonders; you can talk about God; and you can judge for God, and you can find fault with God! Well, can you catch leviathan with an hook? You ought to be able to do that. "Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?" (vers. 1 - -8). Be off with you! Do not you fight him. "Behold, the hope of him is in vain." Spears or arrows are nothing to him and even a musket ball has no power to pierce the skin of a crocodile. "His scales are his pride," because it is not only his enormous strength, and his practical invulnerability to any ordinary weapon, but there he is so confident in it himself.

* "The leviathan here described seems to be, beyond doubt, not the dolphin or the whale, as some learned men have argued, but the crocodile. So most have been convinced since Bochart (Hieroz. iii. 705, &c., 737, &c.)."

So that here we may stop tonight. It suffices to show what God uttered to overwhelm Job in his self-confidence, and to show that his ignorance was so great, his powerlessness was evident; his lack of wisdom to enter into even the outer works of God. And, after all, what was God speaking about? Earthly things. Everyone of these things is merely of a natural kind, and has to do with what is visible, with what is seen and temporal And if Job is so utterly unable to answer one of these questions - and in point of fact they are not answered to this day with all the brag of science - still, if that is the case about earthly things, what about the heavenly? What about the eternal things? There we are entirely and absolutely dependent upon God. We know nothing but what He tells us, and this is all our blessing - this is what we are waiting for - the unseen and the eternal, and, consequently, we of all people ought to be thoroughly dependent, looking up, confiding, and believing.

If the Lord will, next Wednesday evening I hope to conclude the Book, and to say a little of its general character also, besides saying what is necessary upon the particular chapter itself - the 42nd.