The other day I was reading Job 38 with my daughter. This is the point when God finally answers Job with a blast of poetic rhetorical supremacy from on high. God includes with the verbal dressing down of Job lines like this:
“What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
20 Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
21 Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
“Ahhh,” I pointed out, “Look at that. God being sarcastic.”
Initially my daughter was indignant at the suggestion.”What?” she retorted. “God can’t be sarcastic!”
But he was. Job knew nothing about the abodes of light. God knew that Job didn’t know. And Job knew that Job didn’t know. (And Job knew that God knew that Job didn’t know!) Sarcasm is a sharp or cutting statement, often associated with irony. Clearly God is being sharp and cutting here, reprimanding Job for the absurd irony of questioning the creator from his extraordinarily limited perspective.
And now for our subversive moral for today. “Sarcasm. If it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for me.”
