“But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.”
But God is one, and who can turn God back; whatever God's soul desires, God does, asserting the absolute sovereignty and willfulness of divine action beyond human influence or comprehension. The affirmation that God is one emphasizes undivided divine nature and unified will, suggesting that if God has chosen Job's suffering, that choice flows from an absolute and unchangeable divine determination. The rhetorical question about who can turn God back establishes the futility of human protest or pleading, yet Job continues to plead, embodying the paradox of addressing an unchangeable will with desperate petition. This acknowledgment of divine sovereignty within Job's complaint reveals that Job's real struggle is not whether God has power but why God exercises that power to permit such injustice.
Church Fathers on Job 23:13
O that one would grant me that I might know and find Him, that I might come even to His seat! An elect person if he did not know God, assuredly would not love Him. But it is one thing to ‘know’ by faith, and another to know by His own Form, one thing to find by trustfulness, another to find Him by contemplation. In consequence whereof it is brought to pass that Him Whom they know by faith, all of the Elect long to see by His own Form as well. With the love of Whom they burn…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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