As he hears God’s voice describing the vastness of creation, Job’s first response is to give in to Bildad’s God-is-so-big-and-you’re-just-a-little-maggot theory. He tells God, “I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I shall not answer; twice, but will proceed no further” (Job 40:4-5).

Many people (mistakenly) think this is where Job ends up; once he has actually seen God (42:5), he can only confess: “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). Is the bottom line then that Job was after all a self-righteous sinner in need of repentance? No. At the end God tells Eliphaz and the others that they were wrong and Job was right (42:7-8); and so far from considering Job a worm that can only squirm before the Almighty, God insists that Job must stand up straight to speak face to face with God: “Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you declare to me” (40:7).

God sets before Job a difficult problem: if Job had God’s power, could he do better than God at dealing with the human race? Would he pour out his overflowing anger, abase the proud and bring them low, tread down the wicked into the dust (40:11-13)? Or would he discover that omnipotence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, because there are some problems that cannot be solved just by applying more and more power? Sure, if you apply enough power, you can destroy all the sinners; but how much destroying do you want to do if your goal is to redeem them?

And in the end, Job gets that: but your translation might not help you see that. Consider again Job’s last line: in the NRSV, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). The NRSV, following the RSV, the KJV, and indeed the Septuagint (the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), inserts the ‘myself’ in that line; but that pronoun ‘myself’ does not occur in the Hebrew text. The line is difficult, but literally translated it would read, “I retract, I take back ‘dust and ashes.’ ” We might recall that Job had earlier bemoaned that he was only dust and ashes and therefore could not stand before God (30:19). But now something different has happened: Job has encountered God face to face (42:5) and heard God declare that part of the essence of being human is to do question and answer with the Almighty (40:6). Job is small within the splendor of God’s creation (38:4-11), yet he is not merely dust and ashes to be blown away on the wind. Instead, Job has been granted the privilege of standing before his creator, conversing and interacting (42:4). As he recognizes this, Job retracts and takes back his earlier “I am only dust and ashes” theory.

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You are great, O Lord, and we are indeed very small; yet you have shown us that we are neither despised maggots nor inconsequential dust and ashes: we are human, part of your magnificent creation, beloved by you, and invited to interact with you in real question-and-answer dialog.