Job 38
The LORD Challenges Job
¹ Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
² “Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge?1
³ Now brace yourself 2 like a man; I will question you, and you shall inform Me.3
⁴ Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched a measuring line across it?
⁶ On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone,4
⁷ while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
⁸ Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its blanket,
¹⁰ when I fixed its boundaries and set in place its bars and doors,
¹¹ and I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther; here your proud waves must stop’?
¹² In your days, have you commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place,
¹³ that it might spread to the ends of the earth and shake the wicked out of it?
¹⁴ The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.
¹⁵ Light is withheld from the wicked, and their upraised arm is broken.
¹⁶ Have you journeyed to the vents of the sea or walked in the trenches of the deep?
¹⁷ Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?
¹⁸ Have you surveyed the extent of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this.
¹⁹ Where is the way to the home of light? Do you know where darkness resides,
²⁰ so you can lead it back to its border? Do you know the paths to its home?
²¹ Surely you know, for you were already born! And the number of your days is great!
²² Have you entered the storehouses of snow or observed the storehouses of hail,
²³ which I hold in reserve for times of trouble, for the day of war and battle?
²⁴ In which direction is the lightning dispersed, or the east wind scattered over the earth?
²⁵ Who cuts a channel for the flood or clears a path for the thunderbolt,
²⁶ to bring rain on a barren land, on a desert where no man lives,
²⁷ to satisfy the parched wasteland and make it sprout with tender grass?
²⁸ Does the rain have a father? Who has begotten the drops of dew?
²⁹ From whose womb does the ice emerge? Who gives birth to the frost from heaven,
³⁰ when the waters become hard as stone and the surface of the deep is frozen?
³¹ Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?
³² Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons 5 or lead out the Bear 6 and her cubs?
³³ Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?
³⁴ Can you command the clouds so that a flood of water covers you?
³⁵ Can you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
³⁶ Who has put wisdom in the heart 7 or given understanding to the mind?
³⁷ Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Or who can tilt the water jars of the heavens
³⁸ when the dust hardens into a mass and the clods of earth stick together?
³⁹ Can you hunt the prey for a lioness or satisfy the hunger of young lions
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait in the thicket?
⁴¹ Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God as they wander about for lack of food?