unanswerable questions

August 1, 2015

Yahweh questions Job about the clouds (Job 38:34-38:38)

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds?

Will a flood of water cover you?

Can you send forth lightning?

Thus they may go and say to you.

‘Here we are!’

Who has put wisdom in the inward parts?

Who has given understanding to the mind?

Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?

Who can tilt the water skins of the heavens?

When the dust runs into a mass

And the clods cling together.”

Yahweh wanted to know if Job could control the waters in the clouds. Did he have anything to do with lightning? Could he speak to the clouds? Where did wisdom come from? Who put wisdom in your mind? Who was smart enough to count all the clouds? How did they tilt the water out of the water skins to make it come to earth? Why did water turn dust to clods? These were some of the unanswerable questions that Yahweh posed to Job.

July 31, 2015

Yahweh questions Job about frost (Job 38:28-38:30)

“Has the rain a father?

Who has begotten the drops of dew?

From whose womb did the ice come forth?

Who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven?

The waters become hard like stone.

The face of the deep is frozen.”

Rain is once again considered in anthropomorphic terms. Who is the father of rain? Whose womb did the light morning dew come from? Whose womb did the ice come from? How did the waters become like stone, frozen in place? These continuing poetic expressions about rain and ice pose the unanswerable questions about weather and its changing face. Certainly these poetic terms appear again and again in encyclical Laudato Si of Pope Francis I.