Chapter 11 Summary

Commentators on the Book of Job remark that God reduced Job to silence, but miss the fact that Job silences God thereafter: the whirlwind speech is the last time God speaks in the Tanakh. The two books of Chronicles will quote some of his earlier speeches; he will be mentioned and even prayed to fervently in Nehemiah, but will never again himself speak. God rebukes Job's erstwhile friends and refrains from treating them vilely only after Job intercedes for them as God asks. Then he restores Job's wealth and falls silent, continuing to be I Am Who I Am. The big loser is Israel, which certainly does not want God to remain silent. Already in Ezekiel 20, God refused to answer the "elders of Israel," and claims that he gave them "laws that were not good and rules by which they could not live...