Human Conception
“Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?”
Job is once again complaining about his state with rhetorical questioning of God. Here he is making the point that if God is going through the trouble creating life, why purposely try to subvert the essence. What is really amazing about this imagery, however, is that its literalness. The description contained within actually refers to the physical processes of human conception with the milk symbolizing ejaculation and the curdling symbolizing process of gestation within the woman’s womb.
The Thunderer
Chapter 37 of Job is almost entirely composed of imagery. And that imagery is directed toward just one thing: making a metaphorical connection between God and a thunderstorm:
“The storm bursts from its chamber, cold from the driving blast. God’s breath brings in the ice, and freezes the wide waters. God stuffs the clouds with moisture, scatters God’s lightning throughout.”
God’s Favorites?
Imagery is effectively used to called into question exactly how much this loving God actually seems to care about His creations. Keeping in mind that humans exist several levels below those that occupy the heavenly realm alongside him and God isn’t all that keen about them:
“Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly: How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth? They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish forever without any regarding it.”
The End of Hope
The bet at the center of this story is that no matter how much terror rains down upon Job, he will never give into temptation and curse God. That does not mean that he won’t spend most of the story complaining about his state and pummeling the quiet heavens with rhetorical inquiries into the what and the why of all which has befallen him. Job is not under the gun to keep from expressing a sense of hopelessness about not just his situation, but God’s utterly mysterious and inexplicably paradoxical sense of planning for mankind:
“But a mountain breaks down, a rock shifts in place, water wears stone away, rushing streams wash down the earth’s soil— so do you ruin anyone’s hope.”
