Job 38: Verse-by-Verse Commentary (with Videos)

¹Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

²“Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge?

³Now brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall inform Me.

⁴Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.

⁵Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched a measuring line across it?

⁶On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone,

⁷while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

⁸Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,

⁹when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its blanket,

¹⁰when I fixed its boundaries and set in place its bars and doors,

¹¹and I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther; here your proud waves must stop’?

¹²In your days, have you commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place,

¹³that it might spread to the ends of the earth and shake the wicked out of it?

¹⁴The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.

¹⁵Light is withheld from the wicked, and their upraised arm is broken.

¹⁶Have you journeyed to the vents of the sea or walked in the trenches of the deep?

¹⁷Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?

¹⁸Have you surveyed the extent of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this.

¹⁹Where is the way to the home of light? Do you know where darkness resides,

²⁰so you can lead it back to its border? Do you know the paths to its home?

²¹Surely you know, for you were already born! And the number of your days is great!

²²Have you entered the storehouses of snow or observed the storehouses of hail,

²³which I hold in reserve for times of trouble, for the day of war and battle?

²⁴In which direction is the lightning dispersed, or the east wind scattered over the earth?

²⁵Who cuts a channel for the flood or clears a path for the thunderbolt,

²⁶to bring rain on a barren land, on a desert where no man lives,

²⁷to satisfy the parched wasteland and make it sprout with tender grass?

²⁸Does the rain have a father? Who has begotten the drops of dew?

²⁹From whose womb does the ice emerge? Who gives birth to the frost from heaven,

³⁰when the waters become hard as stone and the surface of the deep is frozen?

³¹Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?

³²Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear and her cubs?

³³Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?

³⁴Can you command the clouds so that a flood of water covers you?

³⁵Can you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

³⁶Who has put wisdom in the heart or given understanding to the mind?

³⁷Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Or who can tilt the water jars of the heavens

³⁸when the dust hardens into a mass and the clods of earth stick together?

³⁹Can you hunt the prey for a lioness or satisfy the hunger of young lions

⁴⁰when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait in the thicket?

⁴¹Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God as they wander about for lack of food?