Albert Barnes Commentary Job 41:34

"He beholdeth everything that is high: He is king over all the sons of pride." — Job 41:34 (ASV)

He beholds all high things—that is, he looks down on everything as inferior to him.

He is a king over all the children of pride—referring, by “the children of pride,” to the animals that are bold, proud, courageous—as the lion, the panther, etc. The lion is often spoken of as “the king of the forest,” or “the king of beasts,” and in a similar sense the leviathan is here spoken of as the head of the animal creation. He is afraid of none of them; he is subdued by none of them; he is the prey of none of them.

The whole argument, therefore, closes with this statement, that he is at the head of the animal creation. It was by this magnificent description of the power of the creatures which God had made that it was intended to impress the mind of Job with a sense of the majesty and power of the Creator. He was overawed with a conviction of the greatness of God, and he saw how wrong it had been for him to presume to question the justice, or sit in judgment on the actions, of such a Being.

God did not, indeed, go into an examination of the various points that had been the subject of controversy; he did not explain the nature of his moral administration to relieve the mind from perplexity. But he evidently meant to leave the impression that he was vast and incomprehensible in his government, infinite in power, and had a right to dispose of his creation as he pleased.

No one can doubt that God could with infinite ease have so explained the nature of his administration as to free the mind from perplexity, and to resolve the difficulties that hung over the various subjects which had come into debate between Job and his friends. Why he did not do this is nowhere stated and can only be the subject of conjecture. It is possible, however, that the following suggestions may do something to show the reasons why this was not done:

1. We should remember the early period of the world when these transactions occurred, and when this book was composed. It was in the infancy of society, and when little light had gleamed on the human mind regarding questions of morals and religion.

2. In that state of things, it is not probable that either Job or his friends would have been able to comprehend the principles according to which the wicked are permitted to flourish and the righteous are so much afflicted, even if those principles had been stated. Much greater knowledge of the future world than they then possessed was necessary to understand the subject that agitated their minds. Such understanding could not have been achieved without a very clear reference to the future state, where all these inequalities are to be removed.

3. It has been the general plan of God to communicate knowledge by degrees: to impart it when people have had full demonstration of their own weakness and when they feel their need of divine teaching, and to reserve the great truths of religion for an advanced period of the world. In accordance with this arrangement, God has been pleased to keep in reserve, from age to age, certain great and momentous truths—truths particularly adapted to throw light on the subjects of discussion between Job and his friends. These are the truths pertaining to the resurrection of the body; the retributions of the day of judgment; the glories of heaven and the woes of hell, where all the inequalities of the present state may receive their final and equal adjustment.

   These great truths were reserved for the triumph and glory of Christianity; and to have stated them in the time of Job would have been to anticipate the most important revelations of that system. The truths that we now possess would have relieved much of the perplexity felt at that time and solved most of those questions; but the world was not then in the proper state for their revelation.

4. It was a very important lesson for people to learn: to bow with submission to a sovereign God, without knowing the reason for his actions. Perhaps no lesson of higher value could be learned than this. To a proud, self-confident, philosophical mind—a mind prone to rely on its own resources and trust its own deductions—it was of the highest importance to inculcate the duty of submission to will and to sovereignty. This is a lesson that we often have to learn in life, and which almost all the trying dispensations of Providence are fitted to teach us.

   It is not because God has no reason for what he does; it is not because he intends for us never to know the reason. Rather, it is because it is our duty to bow with submission to his will and to acquiesce in his right to reign, even when we cannot see the reason for his actions. If we could reason it out and then submit because we saw the reason, our submission would not be to our Maker’s pleasure, but to the deductions of our own minds.

   Hence, all along, he deals with humanity by concealing the reason for his actions, so as to bring them to submission to his authority and to humble all human pride. All the reasonings of the Almighty in this book lead to this conclusion. After the exhibition of his power in the tempest, after his sublime description of his own works, after his appeal to the numerous things that are in fact incomprehensible by humanity, we feel that God is great—that it is presumptuous for a person to sit in judgment on his works—and that the mind, no matter what he does, should bow before him with profound veneration and silence.

These are the great lessons that we are called to learn every day in the actual dispensations of his providence; and the arguments for these lessons were never elsewhere stated with so much power and sublimity as in the closing chapters of the book of Job. We have the light of the Christian religion; we can look into eternity and see how the inequalities of the present order of things can be adjusted there; and we have sources of consolation that neither Job nor his friends enjoyed; but still, with all this light, there are numerous cases where we are required to bow, not because we see the reason of the divine dealings, but because such is the will of God. To us, in such circumstances, this argument of the Almighty is adapted to teach the most salutary lessons.