Home Master Index
←Prev   Job 38 as rendered by/in  Next→ 


38:1  Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said:
38:2  Who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words?
38:3  Get ready to answer me like a man; when I question you, you will inform me.
38:4  Where were you when I established the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
38:5  Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
38:6  What supports its foundations? Or who laid its cornerstone
38:7  while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
38:8  Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb,
38:9  when I made the clouds its garment and total darkness its blanket,
38:10  when I determined its boundaries and put its bars and doors in place,
38:11  when I declared, “You may come this far, but no farther; your proud waves stop here”?
38:12  Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place,
38:13  so it may seize the edges of the earth and shake the wicked out of it?
38:14  The earth is changed as clay is by a seal; its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.
38:15  Light is withheld from the wicked, and the arm raised in violence is broken.
38:16  Have you traveled to the sources of the sea or walked in the depths of the oceans?
38:17  Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
38:18  Have you comprehended the extent of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.
38:19  Where is the road to the home of light? Do you know where darkness lives,
38:20  so you can lead it back to its border? Are you familiar with the paths to its home?
38:21  Don’t you know? You were already born; you have lived so long!
38:22  Have you entered the place where the snow is stored? Or have you seen the storehouses of hail,
38:23  which I hold in reserve for times of trouble, for the day of warfare and battle?
38:24  What road leads to the place where light is dispersed? Where is the source of the east wind that spreads across the earth?
38:25  Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain or clears the way for lightning,
38:26  to bring rain on an uninhabited land, on a desert with no human life,
38:27  to satisfy the parched wasteland and cause the grass to sprout?
38:28  Does the rain have a father? Who fathered the drops of dew?
38:29  Whose womb did the ice come from? Who gave birth to the frost of heaven
38:30  when water becomes as hard as stone, and the surface of the watery depths is frozen?
38:31  Can you fasten the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?
38:32  Can you bring out the constellations in their season and lead the Bear and her cubs?
38:33  Do you know the laws of heaven? Can you impose its authority on earth?
38:34  Can you command the clouds so that a flood of water covers you?
38:35  Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go? Do they report to you, “Here we are”?
38:36  Who put wisdom in the heart or gave the mind understanding?
38:37  Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the water jars of heaven
38:38  when the dust hardens like cast metal and the clods of dirt stick together?
38:39  Can you hunt prey for a lioness or satisfy the appetite of young lions
38:40  when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait within their lairs?
38:41  Who provides the raven’s food when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?