Whatever these creatures are, they’re giants to us. To God? He might consider them some of His pets.
In the battle for Job’s heart, the struggle that’s been raging since Chapter 1, this is the final round. It’s the clash of wills in the heart of every person throughout history, since the gauntlet was first thrown down in Eden: “Has God indeed said…?” (Gen 3:1). The choice that results in a life of “joy and peace in believing” (Rom 15:13) or an existence of doubts and fears is the question of trust in God. It’s the challenge taken up in another garden, this time by “the last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45) and His response, “not My will, but Yours, be done” (Lk 22:42). Is this really the mother of all battles? Listen. “Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.…Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:24-25, 28). So this is THE issue: Will Job trust God through thick and thin, through good times and bad (and they were really bad), accepting both the mysteries of life and the mercy of God, or will he insist on his own justification? Here is the knockout one-two combo. No more chirping chicks or baby fawns; no more sparkling stars or lapping waves; no more snowflakes or sunsets. This won’t read like a school report of a zoo visit, with zebras and giraffes, remarkable though they are. No, here’s the best the marginal reading comes up with: “Behemoth, A large animal, exact identity unknown” and “Leviathan, A large sea creature, exact identity unknown.” Some shepherds use sheepdogs to bring wandering sheep home. The Chief Shepherd has something else in mind.