THE VEIL IS TORN

“[God] unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven
and sends it to the ends of the earth.
After that comes the sound of his roar. . . .
God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;
he does great things beyond our understanding.” (37:3-5)

As the great storm of God breaks over the land of Uz, the entire story undergoes a fantastic metamorphosis before our eyes. Like a once-ungainly caterpillar emerging from its cocoon, suddenly the book sheds its ugly carapace of unrelieved suffering and something brand-new begins to emerge, something amazing and wildly beautiful. Why is it that a storm is used as the vehicle for this transformation? Because a storm splits the sky. A thunderstorm cracks the heavens wide open, blows them apart like an exploding safe—or, to use a more Biblical image, like the tearing of a veil. From the supernatural beginnings of this book, when the throne room of God was thrown open to public view and we became eyewitnesses to the goings-on in the heavenlies, we should have guessed that this story would have a supernatural ending as well. And now here it is. Now the heavens break open once again, and through the torn veil stream rays from the celestial throne, and the voice from on high is heard.

What a fitting conclusion this is to a protracted, unresolved theological debate. How better to break up the religious tension than with a sky-sundering, goose-bumping walloper of a storm? Yet more than that, what better introduction could there be to the appearance of the Lord Almighty? In the Old Testament a tempest or similar weather disturbance very often accompanied a theophany (see Ex. 19:16; Ps. 18:7-15; Ezek. 1:4). According to Nahum 1:3, “[The Lord’s] way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet.” Granted, when God spoke to Elijah it was not in wind, earthquake, or fire, but in “a still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12, KJV); and yet to Job the substance of His communication is, in a curious way, the same as that to Elijah. For what the Lord says to Job out of the whirlwind is this: “Where were you . . . while the morning stars sang together?” (38:4, 7) and, “Have you ever watched a doe give birth to her fawn?” (39:1). In the eye of this furious storm, what wondrous peace and gentleness gleam!

In many ways a storm serves as an ideal metaphor for the spiritual problems in Job. For while a storm presents all the outward appearance of chaos, of nature run amok, still throughout it all we know that the Creator remains in absolute control of every detail. As God Himself asks Job early in His speech, “Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm?” (38:25). It is right here, in the Lord’s perfect, fingertip control over the wildest primal forces, that His sovereignty is most visibly displayed. And if the Lord maintains control over the storms of nature, how much more must His hand be on the storms of emotion in the hearts of His children? The larger a body of water, the bigger are its waves, and this is true as well of the human soul. Sometimes water is calm, sometimes there are gentle lappings, and sometimes the breakers pound and rage against the restraining shore. Yet all along it remains the same body of water, and the same hand that formed it remains in charge. “Who shut up the sea behind doors?” God asks Job, and then answers, “I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’” (38:8-11).

How healing it must have been for Job to see that when the Lord finally did come to him, it was on the wings of the same sort of violent desert whirlwind that in the beginning had killed all of his children. Job’s fiercest trials had begun, remember, at the moment when “a mighty wind swept in from the desert” (1:19) and completely destroyed the house where his children had been feasting. Now the Lord takes this same whirlwind and, as it were, turns it inside out. He picks it up in His hand and uses it as a megaphone. What a fine stroke of cosmic, Heaven-hooraying irony this is! What’s more, it would be difficult to find a more glorious picture of the salvation of Christ. For in this same way Jesus mounted a cross, a vicious instrument of torture, and by riding it into battle He destroyed forever the torture of sin and death.


Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.