The […] great fact which […] makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical is that […] great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable.
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God, in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained. He insists on the inexplicableness of everything. "Hath the rain a father?. . . Out of whose womb came the ice?" (38:28f). He goes farther, and insists on the positive and palpable unreason of things; "Hast thou sent the rain upon the desert where no man is, and upon the wilderness wherein there is no man?" (38:26). God will make man see things, if it is only against the black background of nonentity. God will make Job see a startling universe if He can only do it by making Job see an idiotic universe. To startle man, God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist. He unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun.
The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder.
The maker of all things is astonished at the things he has Himself made.
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For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue, their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.
Job [is] tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best. It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes.
PS. The above is an extract from G.K. Chesterton's commentary on The Book of Job... it’s a dear fav. of mine. The full text is available at:
http://chesterton.org/gkc/theologian/job.htm
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