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Job 38: What the Passage Says

90 claims across 41 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Job 38 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD answers Job out of the whirlwind, but instead of answering Job's questions he asks his own. He questions Job about the founding of the earth, the doors set for the sea, the coming of the dawn, the storehouses of snow and hail, rain on empty land, ice and frost, the constellations, the clouds, and the feeding of lions and ravens, asking where Job was and what Job can do. This begins God's own speech after the long argument between Job and his three friends.

Claim by Claim

  1. 38:1
    • The LORD answered Job.
    • The LORD answered him out of the storm.
    • The LORD spoke.
  2. 38:2
    • The LORD asked who this is that darkens counsel.
    • The one darkening counsel does so by words without knowledge.
  3. 38:3
    • The LORD told Job to gird up his loins like a strong man.
    • The LORD said he would question Job.
    • The LORD told Job to answer him.
  4. 38:4
    • The LORD asked Job where he was when the LORD founded the earth.
    • The LORD told Job to declare it if he has understanding.
  5. 38:5
    • The LORD asked who fixed the earth's measurements.
    • The LORD said Job would know, if he knows.
    • The LORD asked who stretched a measuring line over the earth.
  6. 38:6
    • The LORD asked on what the earth's bases were sunk.
    • The LORD asked who laid the earth's cornerstone.
  7. 38:7
    • The morning stars sang together.
    • All the sons of God shouted for joy.
    • This happened when the earth's cornerstone was laid.
  8. 38:8
    • The LORD asked who shut in the sea with doors.
    • The sea burst forth.
    • The sea came out as from a womb.
  9. 38:9
    • The LORD made the cloud the sea's garment.
    • The LORD made thick darkness the sea's swaddling band.
  10. 38:10
    • The LORD fixed a decreed limit upon the sea.
    • The LORD set bars and doors for the sea.
  11. 38:11
    • The LORD said to the sea that it may come this far and no further.
    • The LORD said the sea's proud waves would be stopped there.
  12. 38:12
    • The LORD asked whether Job has ever in his days commanded the morning.
    • The LORD asked whether Job has caused the dawn to know its place.
  13. 38:13
    • The dawn takes hold of the edges of the earth.
    • The wicked are shaken out of the earth by it.
  14. 38:14
    • The earth is changed like clay under a seal.
    • Things stand out like a garment.
  15. 38:15
    • The light of the wicked is withheld from them.
    • The uplifted arm is broken.
  16. 38:16
    • The LORD asked whether Job has entered the springs of the sea.
    • The LORD asked whether Job has walked in the recesses of the deep.
  17. 38:17
    • The LORD asked whether the gates of death have been revealed to Job.
    • The LORD asked whether Job has seen the gates of deep darkness.
  18. 38:18
    • The LORD asked whether Job has comprehended the breadth of the earth.
    • The LORD told Job to declare it if he knows it all.
  19. 38:19
    • The LORD asked where the way is to the place where light dwells.
    • The LORD asked where the place of darkness is.
  20. 38:20
    • The purpose would be that Job could take light or darkness to its territory.
    • The purpose would be that Job could discern the paths to its house.
  21. 38:21
    • The LORD said Job knows, because Job was born then.
    • The LORD said the number of Job's days is great.
    • It is ambiguous whether this is a question or an ironic statement.
  22. 38:22
    • The LORD asked whether Job has entered the storehouses of the snow.
    • The LORD asked whether Job has seen the storehouses of the hail.
  23. 38:23
    • The LORD has reserved the hail for the time of trouble.
    • The LORD has reserved it for the day of battle and war.
  24. 38:24
    • The LORD asked by what way the light is distributed.
    • The LORD asked by what way the east wind is scattered over the earth.
  25. 38:25
    • The LORD asked who cut a channel for the flood of water.
    • The LORD asked who cut a way for the thunderbolt.
  26. 38:26
    • The purpose is to bring rain on a land where no man is.
    • The purpose is to bring rain on a wilderness with no human in it.
  27. 38:27
    • The purpose is to satisfy the desolate and waste ground.
    • The purpose is to make grass sprout there.
  28. 38:28
    • The LORD asked whether the rain has a father.
    • The LORD asked who has begotten the drops of dew.
  29. 38:29
    • The LORD asked out of whose womb the ice came.
    • The LORD asked who gave birth to the frost of heaven.
  30. 38:30
    • The waters become hard like stone.
    • The face of the deep is frozen solid.
  31. 38:31
    • The LORD asked whether Job can bind the bonds of the Pleiades.
    • The LORD asked whether Job can loose the cords of Orion.
  32. 38:32
    • The LORD asked whether Job can bring out the constellations in their season.
    • The LORD asked whether Job can guide the Bear with her young.
  33. 38:33
    • The LORD asked whether Job knows the ordinances of the heavens.
    • The LORD asked whether Job can establish their rule over the earth.
  34. 38:34
    • The LORD asked whether Job can lift his voice to the cloud.
    • The LORD asked whether a flood of waters would then cover Job.
  35. 38:35
    • The LORD asked whether Job can send out lightnings so that they go.
    • The LORD asked whether they say to Job, Here we are.
  36. 38:36
    • The LORD asked who put wisdom in the inward parts.
    • The LORD asked who gave understanding to the mind.
    • The two terms for the seat of wisdom and understanding are obscure and uncertain in meaning.
  37. 38:37
    • The LORD asked who can count the clouds by wisdom.
    • The LORD asked who can tip over the water jars of the heavens.
  38. 38:38
    • The dust runs together into a hardened mass.
    • The clods stick fast together.
  39. 38:39
    • The LORD asked whether Job will hunt prey for the lion.
    • The LORD asked whether Job will fill the appetite of young lions.
  40. 38:40
    • The lions crouch in their dens.
    • The lions lie in wait in the thicket.
  41. 38:41
    • The LORD asked who provides the raven its food.
    • The raven's young cry to God.
    • The raven's young wander for lack of food.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

38:1
"The LORD" in capitals stands for the personal name of God in Hebrew (YHWH), which Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing; the translators substituted "the LORD" wherever it occurs. The "whirlwind" is a violent storm wind rather than a tornado specifically; in Hebrew writing, God speaking out of a storm is a standard way of describing his appearing.
38:2
"Darkens" here means obscures or muddies, the opposite of making something clear. "Counsel" in 1611 English meant a plan or design, not advice given to someone.
38:3
Men wore long robes; to work hard, run, or fight, they pulled the hem up and tucked it into their belt. "Gird up your loins" was the ordinary way of saying "get ready for something demanding."
38:4
The earth is pictured throughout this section as a building under construction, with foundations, measurements, a marking line, and a cornerstone.
38:5
A measuring line was a builder's cord, stretched across the ground to lay out the dimensions of a structure before digging.
38:6
The cornerstone was the first stone set in place at a corner of a building; every other stone was aligned to it, so laying it was the decisive moment of construction.
38:7
"Sons of God" (Hebrew *bene elohim*) is the standard phrase for the heavenly beings who make up God's court, the same group that appears in Job 1 and 2. "Morning stars" stands in parallel with it; the two lines describe the same singers.
38:8
The sea is described as a newborn: bursting out of a womb, then shut behind doors. Ancient Near Eastern poetry regularly pictured the sea as an unruly force that had to be confined.
38:9
A newborn was wrapped tightly in long strips of cloth ("swaddling bands") to hold its limbs still. Here the storm clouds and darkness are that wrapping.
38:10
"Bars" are the heavy beams laid across the inside of city gates to hold them shut. The sea's shoreline is imagined as a barred gate.
38:11
"Hitherto" means up to this point and no further. In the King James, "stayed" means stopped, not remained.
38:12
"Dayspring" is the King James word for dawn, the moment daylight springs up over the horizon.
38:13
Two images run together: the dawn light grips the earth like the edge of a cloth, and shaking it dislodges the wicked the way shaking a garment dislodges vermin. Thieves and murderers were assumed to work at night, so daybreak drives them out.
38:14
A seal was a carved stone stamp or roller pressed into soft clay, leaving a raised design. As low dawn light rakes across the land, hills and folds of ground stand out the way a seal's impression stands out of clay.
38:15
"Their light" is darkness, night is the working light of those who do wrong, and dawn takes it away. The "high" or raised arm is the arm lifted to strike; breaking it means stripping away power to harm.
38:16
The sea was thought to be fed by springs on the ocean floor, connected to a vast body of water beneath the earth. "The deep" (Hebrew *tehom*) is that primeval water, the same word used of the waters at creation in Genesis 1.
38:17
The realm of the dead was pictured as a walled city underground, entered through gates that only open one way. "The shadow of death" translates a Hebrew word meaning deepest darkness, with the sense of death's gloom.
38:19
Light and darkness are treated as things that live somewhere and travel out from home each day and return, so knowing "the way" to their houses would mean controlling when they come and go.
38:21
These two lines are sarcasm. The sense is: of course you know all this: you were there at the beginning, and you are that old.
38:22
Snow and hail are imagined as kept in heavenly storerooms, opened when needed. The word also means an armory: hail in particular was thought of as a weapon, as in the hailstorm that routs an army in Joshua 10.
38:23
Hail is filed with the weapons. A storm breaking at the right moment could destroy an army, and Hebrew scripture describes hail killing enemy soldiers in battle (Joshua 10:11), so it is stored the way an armory stores spears.
38:24
The Hebrew word here simply means "light," and translators differ over whether it refers to lightning, daylight spreading at dawn, or the sun's heat that drives the east wind. The ambiguity is in the original.
38:25
Rain is pictured as falling through channels cut in the sky, like irrigation ditches dug for floodwater; the thunderbolt likewise travels a cut path.
38:26
In a farming society rain was valued by the crops it watered, so rain falling on empty desert, where no one gains anything by it, is the striking part of the picture.
38:27
In old English "herb" meant any small green plant. It did not only mean plants for cooking.
38:28
The questions use the language of fathering and giving birth for weather no one has ever seen born. In the religions around Israel, storm and rain were gods with fathers, mothers and family histories, so asking who fathered the dew is a question with a familiar shape and no available answer.
38:29
"Hoary" means white or gray with age; hoar frost is the white frost that forms overnight.
38:30
Ice on a lake or river is described as a stone lid laid over the water, hiding what is underneath.
38:31
The Pleiades and Orion are star groups visible through the winter sky. The Hebrew pictures the Pleiades as tied together by cords or chains, and Orion as a giant held by a belt or fetters, so binding and loosening them means governing when they appear.
38:32
"Mazzaroth" is left untranslated because its meaning is uncertain; it most likely means the constellations that rise in sequence through the year, roughly what we call the zodiac. The next star group, called Arcturus by the King James translators, is more probably the Bear, the stars of the Big Dipper, with the smaller stars around it called her children.
38:33
"Ordinances" means fixed regulations. The point is the settled order by which the heavenly bodies move and by which they govern seasons, weather, and time on earth.
38:35
Lightning bolts are pictured as servants sent on errands. "Here we are" is what a servant says when called, reporting for orders.
38:36
The two Hebrew words in this verse are among the most disputed in the book. They may mean the hidden inward parts and the mind, as rendered here; but ancient translators took them as the names of birds, the ibis and the rooster, creatures credited with sensing the Nile flood and the coming dawn. Both readings remain in print.
38:37
"Bottles" were skin bags used to carry liquid; large storage jars were used the same way. Rain is imagined as water held in such containers in the sky and tipped out.
38:38
This describes what happens when heavy rain hits dry ground: the loose dust sets into a solid crust and the lumps of soil cake together.
38:39
The Hebrew word is the lioness, which does the hunting for the pride, so the question is whether Job can do a lion's own work for her.
38:40
A "covert" is a thicket, dense cover where an animal lies hidden waiting to ambush whatever passes.
38:41
The raven was a scavenger and, under Israel's food laws, an unclean bird, the least likely creature to be fed by God's hand, which is the point of choosing it.

Read Job 38