Job 38 · Clearspring

The LORD Challenges Job

¹And the Lord made answer to Job out of the storm-wind, and said,+ ²Who is this who makes the purpose of God dark by words without knowledge?+ ³Get your strength together like a man of war; I will put questions to you, and you will give me the answers.+ ⁴Where were you when I put the earth on its base? Say, if you have knowledge.+ ⁵By whom were its measures fixed? Say, if you have wisdom; or by whom was the line stretched out over it?+ ⁶On what were its pillars based, or who put down its angle-stone,+ ⁷When the morning stars made songs together, and all the sons of the gods gave cries of joy?+ ⁸Or where were you when the sea came to birth, pushing out from its secret place;+ ⁹When I made the cloud its robe, and put thick clouds as bands round it,+ ¹⁰Ordering a fixed limit for it, with locks and doors;+ ¹¹And said, So far you may come, and no farther; and here the pride of your waves will be stopped?+ ¹²Have you, from your earliest days, given orders to the morning, or made the dawn conscious of its place;+ ¹³So that it might take a grip of the skirts of the earth, shaking all the evil-doers out of it?+ ¹⁴It is changed like wet earth under a stamp, and is coloured like a robe;+ ¹⁵And from the evil-doers their light is kept back, and the arm of pride is broken.+ ¹⁶Have you come into the springs of the sea, walking in the secret places of the deep?+ ¹⁷Have the doors of death been open to you, or have the door-keepers of the dark ever seen you?+ ¹⁸Have you taken note of the wide limits of the earth? Say, if you have knowledge of it all.+ ¹⁹Which is the way to the resting-place of the light, and where is the store-house of the dark;+ ²⁰So that you might take it to its limit, guiding it to its house?+ ²¹No doubt you have knowledge of it, for then you had come to birth, and the number of your days is great.+ ²²Have you come into the secret place of snow, or have you seen the store-houses of the ice-drops,+ ²³Which I have kept for the time of trouble, for the day of war and fighting?+ ²⁴Which is the way to the place where the wind is measured out, and the east wind sent out over the earth?+ ²⁵By whom has the way been cut for the flowing of the rain, and the flaming of the thunder;+ ²⁶Causing rain to come on a land where no man is living, on the waste land which has no people;+ ²⁷To give water to the land where there is waste and destruction, and to make the dry land green with young grass?+ ²⁸Has the rain a father? or who gave birth to the drops of night mist?+ ²⁹Out of whose body came the ice? and who gave birth to the cold mist of heaven?+ ³⁰The waters are joined together, hard as a stone, and the face of the deep is covered.+ ³¹Are the bands of the Pleiades fixed by you, or are the cords of Orion made loose?+ ³²Do you make Mazzaroth come out in its right time, or are the Bear and its children guided by you?+ ³³Have you knowledge of the laws of the heavens? did you give them rule over the earth?+ ³⁴Is your voice sent up to the cloud, so that you may be covered by the weight of waters?+ ³⁵Do you send out the thunder-flames, so that they may go, and say to you, Here we are?+ ³⁶Who has put wisdom in the high clouds, or given knowledge to the lights of the north?+ ³⁷By whose wisdom are the clouds numbered, or the water-skins of the heavens turned to the earth,+ ³⁸When the earth becomes hard as metal, and is joined together in masses? ³⁹Do you go after food for the she-lion, or get meat so that the young lions may have enough,+ ⁴⁰When they are stretched out in their holes, and are waiting in the brushwood?+ ⁴¹Who gives in the evening the meat he is searching for, when his young ones are crying to God; when the young lions with loud noise go wandering after their food?+

The LORD Challenges Job

Study Job 38