slimboyfat.....It is an interesting idea, but I have trouble reconciling it with what is in the text.
When God asks his rhetorical questions to Job, which highlight Job's lack of knowledge (cf. especially 38:2-5, 12, 18, 21, etc.), the point of which is to emphasize that Job cannot comprehend these things, the implication is not that God likewise cannot comprehend these things but that, in fact, he does. When Yahweh asks "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation, tell me since you are so well-informed!" (v. 4), this sets up a chasm between Yahweh and man; Yahweh was there, and it was his own work that he performed, whereas man was not there and does not know what he did. God's work in creation is purposeful and emphasizes God's knowledge and wisdom. Yahweh goes on to say: "Who decided the dimensions of it, do you know?" (v. 5). God knows because he was the one who laid the foundations and he was the one who decided what the dimensions should be, whereas it is implied that Job does not know what God knows. When God asks: "Who pent up the sea behind closed doors?" in v. 8, God is not saying "I don't know" because he goes on to say: "...when I marked the bounds it was not to cross and made it fast with a bolted gate. 'Come thus far,' I said, 'and no farther, here your proud waves shall break' " (v. 10-11). Yahweh answers his own question by saying that he was the one who did this and he did it purposefully with divine command which the waters obeyed. In light of what is said in v. 11, the point to the next question in v. 12 should be obvious: "Have you ever in your life given orders to the morning, or sent the dawn to its post, telling it to grasp the earth by its edges?" The answer that Job would give is, "No, I cannot do this," but if God gives orders to the oceans to not cross their boundaries, then God is also the one who gives orders to the daylight to seize the earth by its boundaries (cf. 9:7). God is not saying, "I cannot make sense of it too" but that he is the one influencing and sustaining nature. When God says "Surely you know, for you were already born, you have lived so many years" (v. 21), this can only highlight the differences between man and God, that God is eternal and man is not. When Yahweh asks Job if he "ever visited the place where the snow is kept" (v. 22) the idea isn't that God is no wiser than Job on this matter, because he goes on to say that he is the one who "keeps" the snow and hail stored up for use in times of battle and war (v. 23). Yahweh asks Job: "Do you know the laws of the heavens" regarding the movements of the stars and binding them into constellations (v. 31-33), whereas Job already acknowledged that "on the stars he [God] sets a seal ... The Bear, Orion too, are of his making, the Pleiades and the Mansions of the South" (9:7, 9). To the question "Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind?", the answer has to be: "God" (v. 36). When Yahweh asks Job: "Who let the wild donkey go free, who untied his ropes?" (39:5), Yahweh is not implying that he doesn't know either. He goes on to say: "I gave him the wasteland as his home, the salt flats as his habitat" (v. 6). It was God's doing. The passage discussing the ostrich (v. 13-18) emphasizes the bird's stupidity, but God knows why this is the case: "God did not endow her with wisdom or give her a share of good sense" (v. 17). This repeats the idea from 38:36 that God is the source of wisdom, and it hints at an answer to Job's theodicean predicament: God did not similarly endow man with the wisdom to understand the reason why evil exists. The contrast between man and God is emphasized again in 40:9: "Do you have an arm like God's, and can your voice thunder like his?" It is God who "robes himself in majesty and splendor" and who can "cast one look at the proud and bring them low" (v. 10-11). The question of might is now relevant because Yahweh points out that Job has made himself "Shaddai's adversary" and "God's critic" (v. 2). God's might is depicted by describing how it is greater than the might of the two mightiest creatures formed by God. With respect to the behemoth, "he ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with his sword" (v. 19). With regard to the leviathan, "nothing on earth is his equal" (41:33), and if "no one is fierce enough to rouse him, who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me" (v. 10-11), and that includes the leviathan. This last sentence is probably the clearest statement on the lack of parity between God and man. So I think the majority opinion is probably there for a reason. I would be quite interested to see how Zizek interprets the force of the statements that emphasize the disparity between man's knowledge and power rather than compare God's own ignorance and helplessness with that of man.
