The Untamed God Who Feeds the Ravens Text: Job 38:39-41
Introduction: The Courtroom of the Whirlwind
We come now to the climax of the book of Job. After thirty-seven chapters of agonizing silence from Heaven, of Job's raw and sometimes impudent laments, and of the tidy, miserable, and wrong-headed counsel of his friends, God finally speaks. But when He speaks, He does not do what we, in our modern therapeutic age, would expect Him to do. He does not put a gentle arm around Job's shoulder. He does not say, "There, there, let me explain the celestial chess game with Satan that led to all your troubles." He does not answer a single one of Job's "why" questions. Instead, He shows up in a whirlwind and puts Job on trial.
God's response to Job is a cross-examination. It is an overwhelming, glorious, and terrifying deposition. For four chapters, God interrogates Job with questions that are designed to do one thing: reveal the utter chasm between the mind of God and the mind of man. Job had demanded his day in court. He wanted to present his case before the Almighty. And now God says, "Very well. You want a trial? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall make it known to me." But the questions are not about Job's suffering. They are about the running of the cosmos. They are about the foundations of the earth, the storehouses of the snow, the constellations of the heavens, and, in our text, the feeding schedule of lions and ravens.
The modern reader, much like Job's friends, wants to reduce the problem of suffering to a manageable formula. We want a God who fits into our flowcharts. We want a tidy explanation that we can file away. But God will not be managed. He will not be domesticated. The point of God's speech from the whirlwind is not to explain suffering, but to reveal Himself. The answer to the problem of evil is not a proposition; it is a Person. And that Person is untamed, sovereign, and glorious beyond all our categories. He is not safe, but He is good. And in these three verses, He directs Job's attention away from his own ash heap to the wild, bloody, and providential world of predators and scavengers, a world that operates entirely without Job's permission or understanding.
The Text
"Can you hunt the prey for the lion, Or fulfill the appetite of the young lions, When they crouch in their dens And lie in wait in their lair? Who prepares for the raven its provision When its young cry for help to God And wander about without food?"
(Job 38:39-41 LSB)
The Lion's Portion (v. 39-40)
God begins His tour of the untamed creation with the king of beasts.
"Can you hunt the prey for the lion, Or fulfill the appetite of the young lions, When they crouch in their dens And lie in wait in their lair?" (Job 38:39-40)
The question is rhetorical, and its force is meant to land like a physical blow. "Job, you who have been questioning my governance of your life, let's start with something simple. Let's talk about lunch. Not your lunch, but the lion's. Are you the one who provides for him?" The force of this is to yank Job out of his self-referential universe. Job's world had shrunk to the size of his own suffering, his own boils, his own grief. God radically expands the frame.
Notice the specific creature God chooses. The lion is not a farm animal. It is not a creature that serves man in any direct way. In fact, it is a direct threat to man and his livestock. The lion is a picture of raw, terrifying power. It is violent. It rips its prey apart. And God says, "I feed him. I satisfy his hunger. The bloody business of the savannah is my business." This is a profound polemic against any sentimental, sanitized view of nature. Our modern environmentalism often wants a "Bambi" creation, where everything is soft and fuzzy. God reveals a world that is "red in tooth and claw," and He claims it all as His own good work.
God is not just sovereign over the gentle lambs; He is sovereign over the ravenous lions. He is the one who designed the intricate system of predator and prey. He is the one who hardwired the lion to crouch, to wait, to ambush. This is not chaos. This is a divinely ordered economy. And Job has absolutely nothing to do with it. He cannot command the lion, he cannot provide for it, and he cannot comprehend its place in the grand scheme of things. How then can he stand and question the God who runs this entire operation with meticulous, sovereign care?
This is what we might call the "hard sovereignty" of God. It is not just a doctrine for the seminary classroom; it is a pastoral comfort for the ash heap. If God's attention to detail is so precise that He manages the feeding of every lion cub in its den, then His attention to your life, your suffering, your trial, is no less precise. The problem is not that God is distant or uninvolved. The problem is that we are small, and He is immense. His purposes are vast and intricate, and we see only our tiny, painful corner. The God who feeds the lion has not forgotten you. He is simply asking you to trust the wisdom of the hunter, even when you feel like the prey.
The Raven's Cry (v. 41)
From the terrifying lion, God moves to the unclean raven, a creature of the sky.
"Who prepares for the raven its provision When its young cry for help to God And wander about without food?" (Job 38:41 LSB)
If the lion represents terrifying power, the raven represents the common, the overlooked, and even the unclean. According to Levitical law, the raven was an abomination, an unclean bird (Lev. 11:15). It was a scavenger. And yet, God holds it up as an object of His personal, providential care. He does not just feed the majestic lions; He feeds the noisy, black, carrion-eating birds that men despise.
But look at the language here. It is intensely personal. The young ravens "cry for help to God." This is astonishing. God presents the squawking of hungry baby birds as a form of prayer directed to Him. This is not to say that ravens are regenerate believers, but it is to say that the entire created order is dependent upon God for its every breath and every meal, and God interprets the cry of need as a cry to Him. He is the universal landlord, and all His tenants, from the greatest to the least, look to Him for their daily bread.
This is precisely the point Jesus makes in the New Testament. He takes this very illustration and applies it directly to our anxieties. "Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!" (Luke 12:24). The logic is inescapable. If God's providence extends to the meticulous care of an unclean bird, how can you, His child, bought with the blood of His Son, believe for one moment that He has forgotten you? If the cry of a baby raven reaches the ears of the Almighty, does not the cry of His suffering saint?
The purpose of God's speech is to humble Job, yes, but it is not to crush him. It is to humble him in order to exalt him in faith. It is to teach him to argue from the raven to himself. It is to say, "Job, look at the world around you. It is wild, it is violent, it is strange, and it is entirely in my hand. From the greatest predator to the lowliest scavenger, nothing escapes my notice or my care. Trust me. You do not understand my ways, but you can trust my character, a character on full display in the world I have made and sustain."
Conclusion: From Creation to the Cross
Job wanted an explanation. God gave him a revelation. Job wanted a reason. God gave him Himself. This is always God's way. The ultimate answer to suffering is not found in a syllogism, but in a Savior. The God who speaks from the whirlwind is the same God who hung upon the cross.
Think of it. The God who feeds the lions allowed Himself to be surrounded by roaring lions on Golgotha. The Psalmist prophesied it: "Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They open wide their mouth at me, as a ravening and a roaring lion" (Psalm 22:12-13). He who provides for all became destitute for us.
And consider the raven. At the climax of God's judgment on the old world, Noah sent out a raven from the ark. It flew back and forth over the dark waters of God's wrath. On the cross, Jesus Christ, our true Ark, endured the ultimate flood of God's wrath against our sin, and He was cast out into that darkness for us. He cried out to God, and unlike the raven's young, His cry was met with silence, so that our cries would never be.
The point of Job 38 is to crush our intellectual pride so that we might rest in simple faith. You cannot run the universe. You cannot even run the zoo. You do not know why one man suffers and another prospers. You do not know why the lion gets his meal and the gazelle loses its life. But you can know the One who holds all of it in His hand. The same God who meticulously governs the wild places of the earth is the one who has meticulously governed every moment of your life, including your deepest pain, for your ultimate good and for His eternal glory.
Therefore, when you are tempted to demand answers from God, when you feel you are entitled to an explanation, remember the lion and the raven. Look at the sheer, untamed majesty of the God who runs the world without your advice. And then look to the cross, where that same God demonstrated that His sovereign power is matched only by His self-sacrificing love. The answer to your suffering is not a piece of information. The answer is a Person. And His name is Jesus.