Where wast thou when I founded the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.
Job had defended his innocence at length and questioned God's fairness. God answers at last — not with an explanation of Job's suffering, but with a question about how the earth began.
God's reply is made of questions. They test whether Job is fit to judge God at all.
The whole address is largely in the form of questions. Job had presumed to sit in judgment on the Lord and His ways; his competence for this is tested: what does he know? What can he do? The creature is so small in power, so ignorant, and yet so full of empty pride. Shall he presume to instruct God about His duties, to point out His failures, in fact to take over what belongs to Him alone?
God speaks like a builder laying a foundation. Yet the earth hangs in space with nothing under it. One writer asks how that can be, and who was there to watch it happen.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" (v.4). Does the earth have foundations — an earth that turns in space with nothing to hold it up? Yes, it could not even exist without a basic foundation of truth, but could Job explain this? Can anyone today explain it? No! For one thing, none of us was present when God laid these foundations. And who can understand how creation came into existence? "For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm" (Psalm 33:9). The earth's foundations and the earth itself were created at the same instant, simply by the word of God.
Many readers expect God's speech to explain why Job suffered. One writer notes it does not — not even to finish what Elihu, the last man to speak before God, had started.
When, in the end, all the cloud of words had died away, the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind. What will He say? How will He explain the things that Job's friends have failed to explain? How will He complete the explanations that Elihu began? He didn't do it! God did not utter one word of explanation about Himself. Not one word to answer the questions Job had asked. His words were entirely about the things of this earth and of nature.
Some assume science has now answered what Job could not. One writer replies that naming a law is not the same as naming the Law-giver.
Present-day knowledge can talk in a learned way about nebulae and the solar system, about attraction and the laws of gravitation. It can explain how these laws work together to give the earth its shape and its stable place among the heavenly bodies. It can explain how the particles of the earth hold together, by the laws of cohesion and chemical affinity. But law means a Law-giver. Who established these laws? How do they act without ever failing? Revelation, and revelation alone, gives the answer — "in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17). Where was Job, where was man, when the Lord established and set these laws in motion?
God's questions stay on the outward world. One writer weighs that world against something far greater.
In these words God takes up only a small part of His wisdom and power in the outward world. He does so because that part is so small a thing compared with the ways of His grace. They are no more than what, so to speak, His fingers have formed... Do you suppose that His ways with us are merely the product of such skill? They speak of incomparably more. His heart, His thoughts, His plan of love and goodness — all that God is — has come out in the blessing of His saints.
Job already believed God existed. The verse still asks him to answer "if you have understanding" — and one writer points to what his faith was missing.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God." This is where faith begins. So is the truth that whoever comes to God must believe that He is. Job did believe in God as existing, but his faith was not simple and settled in the might of God, in His greatness. He is now called to consider whether he could explain or know the origin of any of God's works.
- Absent — Job was not there when the earth was founded. He judged how God runs a world whose first moment he never saw.
- Unanswerable — Neither Job nor modern science can say who laid the earth's foundation. Describing a law is not the same as naming the Law-giver.
- Unexplained — God never tells Job why he suffered. He answers a demand for reasons by displaying Himself instead.
- Outer edge — Creation is only the fringe of God's wisdom. If the fringe silences us, His deeper ways in grace are far beyond our judgment.
- Faith — Job's need was not more facts but settled trust in God's greatness. That trust is where real understanding begins.
Who set the measures thereof -- if thou knowest? or who stretched a line upon it?
At last God speaks to Job, and He answers with questions instead of explanations. They start with the earth: who measured it, and who stretched the line across it — and the aside "surely you know!" shows he cannot say.
Job had spent chapter after chapter demanding that God explain Himself. When God answers, He reverses the roles and puts Job in the witness box.
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" He does not mean that Job did not know Him at all. But He did mean that his knowledge was limited, and that he had no adequate knowledge of the dealings of God. Job had been questioning the dealings of God. Now God turns it back on him; now He says, I am going to ask you, and answer Me like a man if you can. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" What an overwhelming question! What did Job know about it? "Who determined its measurements — surely you know!" He did not know. "Or who stretched the line upon it?"
The words "surely you know" invite an answer Job cannot give. He knows only that God could have done it.
"Who determined its measurements — surely you know!" (v.5). Of course Job knew that only God could do this. "Who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened?" (v.6). Certainly the foundations of the earth are not fastened to anything visible to us. Whether Job knew this at that time or not, he could not answer God's question.
One writer hears an echo of this verse in Paul's own talk of measure.
It almost looks as if Paul were alluding to God's work in creation, as stated in Job 38:5, where God Himself asks, of the earth, "Who determined its measurements — surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?" He is a God who works by measure and by line, whether in creation or in the administration connected with His grace.
Later generations can describe how the earth holds together far better than Job could. Describing is not the same as answering.
Present day knowledge can speak in detail about nebulae and the solar system, about attraction and the laws of gravitation. It can explain that the working together of these laws has given the earth its shape and its steady relation to the heavenly bodies. It can explain that the particles of the earth cling together by the laws of cohesion and chemical affinity. But law means a Law-giver. Who has established these laws? How do they act unfailingly? Revelation, and that alone, gives the answer — "By Him all things consist" (Col. 1:17). Where was Job, where was man, when the Lord established and set in motion these laws and principles? The form of the question met Job's knowledge at that time; it equally meets man's advanced knowledge at the present.
One writer hears in God's "who?" a hint of Someone else present at creation.
Who, Jehovah further asks, has laid down the measures of this great fabric and set His line upon it? The question suggests the possibility of another Presence. It points to One who was with Him, and who acted for Him in laying down and carrying out the whole vast plan. Who was this? "The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old… Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth" (Prov. 8:22, 25). Or in the language of the New Testament, "All things were made by Him" (John 1:3).
The tone sounds crushing. The aim is not.
And yet Jehovah is not seeking to crush Job. He is seeking to bring him to a true knowledge of himself and of God… The very fact that Jehovah addresses Job in this way shows His purposes of mercy for him. His appeal is to reason, and so to conscience. He leads Job through the vast, and yet familiar, scenes of creation. Can he solve one of ten thousand of its riddles?
The questions do their work. By the end Job is not better informed; he is changed.
Though Job had heard something about the Lord, it was not enough to meet Job's actual need. Now the Lord brought him face to face with His own greatness and glory. The result was, "I abhor myself." It was not simply a matter of what he had done that he abhorred, but himself. This was the root of what he may have done, and God was dealing with that root: the pride of Job's very character. Every believer needs to be brought down to this very point.
- Reversal. Job demanded answers from God; God answers by asking, and the first question is one Job cannot touch.
- Silence. "Surely you know" asks for an answer Job cannot give. He knows only that God did it.
- Measure. The line and the measurements show a God who works by exact proportion, in creation and in His dealings of grace alike.
- Law-giver. Science can describe the laws that hold the earth together. It still cannot say who set them, so the question meets today's reader as it met Job.
- Mercy. The questions are not meant to crush, but to bring a man to know himself and God. They end not in information but in "I abhor myself."
Whereupon were the foundations thereof sunken? or who laid its corner-stone,
God finally answers Job out of the storm, and He begins not with Job's suffering but with the making of the world. The verse reads like a builder's challenge — footings, a cornerstone, a site no human being ever saw.
These questions are not curiosity. God aims them at a man who had argued with Him about His government. They show how little Job knows of even the outer edge of God's power.
God appears on the scene for the express purpose of flattening the pretensions of man. He does it in the most magnificent language, as far as I know, that was ever spoken on such subjects — language worthy of Him who is said to have spoken it. Jehovah appears to put Job in his true place, and that place was dust and ashes. Jehovah only touches the skirts of His power, the outer edge of His glory; yet what had man to say? And did he who could not explain God's least things presume to judge the deepest part of His ways and designs?
Footings for the earth raise an obvious problem. What could they rest on? One writer, whose translation reads "foundations" where the ESV has "bases," finds two truths here. He notes that Scripture stated the second long before anyone else did.
"To what were its foundations fastened?" Two things are true of the earth. Stability for the time — that is the point here, and that is why the verse speaks of foundations. But this same book of Job gives another view: the earth hangs on nothing. That never entered anyone's mind until recent times. Even scientists have only just arrived at it. But there it was in Scripture before them.
Ordinary builders sink footings into rock or sand. God had neither.
Jehovah begins with the earth, the home of man. Does Job know the history of his own dwelling place? Where was he when the great Architect laid its foundations? They were sunk not in shifting sand, nor on lasting rock, but in the empty space of apparent nothingness.
The measuring line of the previous verse hints at more than one worker on the project, and commentators trace that hint through the rest of Scripture.
Who, Jehovah further asks, has laid down the measures of this great structure and set His line upon it? The question suggests the possibility of another Presence, of One who was with Him, His agent in laying down and carrying out the whole vast plan. Who was this? "The LORD possessed Me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old… Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth" (Prov. 8:22, 25). Or in the language of the New Testament, "All things were made through Him" (John 1:3). Here was a truth more wonderful even than creation.
Job could not answer. Neither, says one writer, can the laboratory — and the search for the bottom-most law drives the reader past nature to Christ.
The corner stone, the foundation of the earth — who laid it? Where is it? What is the basic law of physics or of chemistry? Does science know any more now than Job did then? Atoms and ions are grouped together, clasped and unclasped, as other great laws are brought to bear on them. Where is the foundational law? "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 3:11). To be brought to God, to know Him, is the object of all facts.
Job was absent, but the site was not empty. The singing of verse 7 tells us who stood there.
God is speaking here to Job, a man on earth. He names sons of God who were present, and who showed their delight, when He made the foundation of the earth firm and laid the corner-stone. Intelligent creatures, heavenly beings, already existed then, and they watched God prepare the earth for man.
- Who asks — God meets Job's complaints with questions. They put a man who judged His deepest ways back where he belongs: dust and ashes.
- Who founded — the earth stands firm, yet hangs on nothing. Scripture said so long before science caught up.
- Who else was there — the question hints at Another present at the work, spoken of in Proverbs 8 and in "All things were made through Him."
- Who laid the cornerstone — no chemistry or physics reaches the foundational law. The only foundation anyone can build on is Jesus Christ.
- Who watched — heavenly beings already existed. They showed their delight as God prepared the earth for man, and man himself was nowhere on the scene.
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
God answers Job by asking about the day He laid the earth's foundations. Job was not there to see it, but others were — and they sang.
Job had spoken and murmured against God. God's reply strips away every claim man makes for himself.
God appears on the scene for the express purpose of destroying the pretensions of man. Here the Lord uses the most magnificent language I know of on such subjects. He appears to put Job in his true place, and that place was dust and ashes. Who and what was Job to speak or murmur against God? The Lord only touches the skirts of His power, the outer edge of His glory; yet what had man to say? And did the man who could not explain God's least things presume to judge the deepest part of His ways and designs?
The verse names two choirs. One is named "sons of God." Who they are answers another question: when did angels come into being?
There is no doubt the sons of God are angels (Job 1:6), who were therefore created before the earth was. If "the morning stars" are literal stars, then the stars too were created before the earth was. Some may object that Genesis 1:16 seems to place the making of the stars on the fourth day, when the earth was made over. But that notice is likely not in time order. It records a creation earlier than the history of the fourth day. We may question whether literal stars can sing, but science tells us a harmony of sound comes from the stars. At the very least there was a great celebration among God's creatures when He created the earth.
Commentators differ here. The next writer reads the stars' song as poetry, and the angels' shout as a sound truly heard.
Job 38:7 seems to express in poetry the joy of the heavenly bodies when God first brought them in as the hosts of heaven. With it came the audible shout of the angels, whom this book, like Genesis, calls God's sons.
The name given to these beings says something about their character. Their joy also stands in contrast with a confession that is forced.
The expression "sons of God" seems to suggest not merely a spirit-nature, but moral likeness to God as well. The mention of "Satan" in contrast underlines this further. "Sons of God" shouted for joy when God founded the material universe. We know too that infernal beings will also own that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). But that is by compulsion; the worship of the "sons of God" flows out of their hearts.
That first chorus did not last. One writer follows what became of creation's music, and what will become of it.
There has been a creation song, when the earth came fresh from the hands of God and "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." But sin spoiled that beautiful creation, and singing gave way to weeping, and songs to groans. In the thousand-year day to come, earth will become new. Creation's groan will stop, and heaven and earth will unite in a new song.
The song here answers a question God asks just before it: who laid the earth's corner stone? Science still has no answer.
The corner stone, the foundation of the earth — who laid it? Where is it? What is the basic law of physics or of chemistry? Does science know now any more than Job did then? Other great laws come to bear on atoms and ions, grouping them, clasping and unclasping them. Where is the foundation law? "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). To be brought to God, to know Him, is the object of all facts, and nature is only in harmony with the great mediatorial law when it leads us to Him. Only when seen this way do we hear the morning stars sing together. Only then do the sons of God shout aloud for joy.
- Foundation. God answers Job's complaint by pointing back to the day He founded the earth. Job never saw it, and he was in no place to judge the One who did.
- Witnesses. The "sons of God" are angels, so angels existed before the earth did. Some take the "morning stars" as literal stars; others as poetry for the same heavenly host.
- Worship. Their shout was not forced. Evil powers will one day confess Christ because they must; these sang out of their hearts.
- Silence. Sin broke the song: singing gave way to weeping, and songs to groans.
- New song. The corner stone question points past physics to Christ. The earth that lost its music will join heaven in a new song.
And who shut up the sea with doors, when it burst forth, issuing out of the womb?
God answers Job out of the storm with questions, turning from the earth's foundations to the birth of the sea. The sea bursts out like a newborn, and God shuts the doors on it — so why ask a man crushed by suffering about waves?
Job wanted an answer about his suffering. What he gets is an examination paper on creation he cannot begin to fill in.
What questions these are. They cover every field of what man calls "natural sciences" — geology, meteorology, geography, oceanography, astronomy, and so on. Job had not a single answer to these questions, and if he had spoken his words would have been folly... But what is the aim of the Lord in putting these questions? To show that God is greater than man and to humble man, to bring Job to the needed true knowledge of himself and to deliver him from the pride of his heart.
The imagery of the verse is birth. Something enormous and untamed bursts into being, and God treats it the way a mother treats an infant.
Well, it was a very bold child, this new ungovernable creature that came into existence! And so He speaks about covering it up and swaddling it. "And prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed." For who can control the ocean?
One writer traces the same scene back to a world with no dry land.
Jehovah passes from the earth to "that great and wide sea." He describes it not in its original creation, as part of the heavens and the earth, but as gushing out from its mother's womb. It covered the whole face of the world, and "darkness was over the face of the deep." Left to itself it would have swallowed everything. But its Maker was its Master. He set bounds to it, breaking the land, as it were, into great mountain chains to make a place for it, barred and closed so it could not escape. Its storms and fury in His almighty hands are only the wailings of a newborn baby. He wraps it in the swaddling clothes of clouds and thick darkness, and hushes it to rest.
Job faces a force he can sail on but never command.
Man gazes on it with awe, but cannot control its power. His "thousand fleets sweep over it in vain"; he "marks the earth with ruin," but his control stops at the shore.
The God who set limits on the water sets limits on wickedness too.
So too in the ocean of evil — the pride of Satan which burst out in rebellion against God, when the angels did not keep their first position. God's restraining hand holds it all in check. The wicked, like the foaming sea, seem to rise higher and higher in their violence and pride. But God says to them, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther." In this way He shows His power to restrain evil. Job watched evil seem to win. He looked into the dark surging of his own self-willed heart. He might well have been appalled. Who but God can control evil?
The same restraint protects God's people when the world threatens to overwhelm them.
The great Sea is a picture of the Gentile nations (Rev. 17:15). It is so often in a state of upheaval and unrest, seeking to push into the land, but the power of God holds it in check... Though the world may threaten to swamp the testimony of the people of God, yet God is greater than the world, and will preserve His people.
Commentators differ on how far to press these images. One writer keeps the chapter to one theme — the greatness of God in nature. He writes: "Some see something typical in them but I do not believe there is the slightest justification for this" (Truth & Testimony). Another hears in the wrapping of the sea an echo of a later birth.
Creation itself is, we would reverently say, a divine humbling... The swaddling bands of Ocean are only a figure of those bands which He who made all things took upon Himself, when He became flesh. The whole universe, immense and boundless, forms the garments of the infinite God, who reveals Himself in this way.
- Birth. God pictures the sea bursting out like a child from the womb — not a rival power, but a creature with a beginning.
- Doors. The One who made it wrapped it in cloud and darkness and set bars around it; its fury is only an infant's crying in His hands.
- Limits. Man sails the ocean but cannot govern it. His control stops at the shore, and so does his knowledge.
- Evil. The same hand that bounds the water bounds wickedness and Satan's pride: thus far, and no farther.
- Aim. God asks it all to humble a suffering man into true knowledge of himself — the reply Job needed, not the one he asked for.
When I made the cloud its garment, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it;
God answers Job's complaint with questions about the ocean: where it came from, and who dressed it. Here the sea, the one thing no man can control, is a newborn baby, and God wraps it in cloud.
The verse belongs to a birth scene. The sea bursts out "from the womb" in verse 8. A swaddling band is the strip of cloth wrapped tightly round a newborn, and that is what God reaches for.
"Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst out from the womb? When I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band." Well, it was a very bold child, this new creature that came into existence and would not be controlled! And so He speaks about covering it up and swaddling it. "And I marked out for it the limit I had decreed, and set bars and doors, and said, Thus far shall you come, and no farther; and here shall your proud waves be stayed" — for who can control the ocean?
The same image explains why the sea has never swallowed the land.
Left to itself it would have covered everything. But its Maker was its Master, and He set bounds to it. He broke the land, as it were, into great mountain chains to make a place for the sea, barred and closed so nothing could escape. In His almighty hands its storms and fury are only the wailing of a newborn baby. He wraps it in the swaddling clothes of clouds and thick darkness, and hushes it to rest.
One writer places this moment in the creation account. It is not the first act of creation, he says, but the day God divided the waters and dry land appeared.
"Who shut in the sea with doors?" (v. 8). God is not speaking here of the original creation. He is speaking of His separating the waters above from the waters beneath (Gen. 1:6-7). At first the earth was covered with water. Then He separated the waters and the dry land appeared. As the Word of God caused the appearance of the land, so His Word caused the waters to be gathered "into one place" (Gen. 1:9).
Job had set himself up as judge of how God runs the world. The question about the sea answers him by asking where he was.
God's first move is to overwhelm the man who claimed to sit in judgment on His moral ways. He makes Job feel his complete ignorance and powerlessness in the smallest works of divine power, even in creation. Where was Job when Jehovah founded the earth?… And where when He set limits to the sea? A man left baffled by such a question was in no position to judge God's deep things. Angels were there to shout for joy when the sea was born and wrapped in clouds and thick darkness. Its wild lawlessness fought to rise against God's restraint, but He set bars and doors.
The line drawn for the sea is also drawn for evil.
It is the same with the ocean of evil — the pride of Satan that burst out in rebellion against God, when the angels did not keep their first place. God's restraining hand holds all in check. The wicked, like the foaming sea, seem to rise higher and higher in their violence and pride, but God says to them, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther." Job watched wickedness that seemed to be winning. He looked into the dark surging of his own self-willed heart. He might well have been appalled. Who but God can control evil?
One writer takes the verse to the disciples, alarmed by a storm at sea with their Lord in the boat.
Had they considered that He was the Creator of the universe, would they have felt a moment's alarm? Was it not He who, ages before, shut in the sea with doors and made clouds its garment? Was it not He who said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther; and here shall your proud waves be stayed"? Would, or could, the sea swallow its own Lord and God?
- Born. The sea bursts out of the womb — a new, bold creature no one can control.
- Wrapped. God's answer to that eruption is clothing, not combat: cloud for a garment, thick darkness for a swaddling band.
- Hushed. What overwhelms us is an infant's wailing in His hands; He wraps it and quiets it.
- Bounded. The same hand that dressed the ocean set bars and doors and a line it cannot cross. That restraint holds evil and the proud too, not just water.
- Silenced. Job had judged God's ways, but he was not there at the swaddling. The question leaves him no ground to judge God's deep things.
When I cut out for it my boundary, and set bars and doors,
God speaks out of the storm and turns Job's attention to the ocean — asking who fixed its limit and hung its gates. This is not a lesson in geography. God is questioning a proud man, and the answer reaches every force that rages and cannot be tamed.
The bars and doors of the verse are the coasts and mountains that hold the water in. One commentator goes back to the moment God shaped them.
The Lord turns from the earth to "that great and wide sea." He does not describe it in its original creation, as part of the heavens and the earth, but as gushing out from its mother's womb. It covered the whole face of the world, and "darkness was over the face of the deep." Left to itself it would have swallowed everything. But its Maker was its Master. He set bounds to it, breaking the land, so to speak, into great mountain chains to make a place for it, barred and shut so that it could not escape.
A modern reader may say that physics holds the tides, not a word from God. One writer answers that.
People may speak of "natural laws" as causing this phenomenon, but who is the Author of natural law?
Man can sail across the limit God set, but he cannot move it.
At the beginning God restrained this restless mighty ocean. He restrained it again when in judgment He let it swallow the earth. Man gazes at it with awe, but cannot control its power. His "thousand fleets sweep over it in vain"; he "marks the earth with ruin," but his control stops at the shore.
God's speech is a string of questions Job cannot answer. One commentator states the purpose behind them, and notes that time has not improved our position.
Job had not a single answer to these questions, and if he had spoken, his words would have been folly. And we, 3000 years or more later, with all our boasted progress and scientific discoveries of the great laws of nature, still cannot answer these questions in a satisfying way. … But what is the Lord's aim in putting these questions? To show that God is greater than man, and to humble man. To bring Job to the true knowledge of himself that he needed, and to free him from the pride of his heart.
One writer applies the same limit to something Job found far more troubling than tides.
So too in the ocean of evil — the pride of Satan that burst out in rebellion against God, when the angels did not keep their first position. God's restraining hand holds everything in check. The wicked, like the foaming sea, seem to rise higher and higher in violence and pride. But God says to them, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther." This shows His restraining power over evil. Job watched wickedness that seemed to be winning, and he looked into the dark surging of his own self-willed heart. He might well have been horrified. Who but God can control evil?
The same limit reaches Job's own suffering, and every believer's.
How striking is the spiritual meaning of God's control of the seas! Job felt as though the waves of the sea were swallowing him in a string of painful troubles that seemed out of control. Believers may pass through times of turbulent unrest and distress, as though tossed by the waves of a rolling sea. But God is in perfect control of it all, and He can quiet the sea at once, just as the Lord Jesus did when His disciples were so alarmed: "He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39).
- Limit. God carved out a place for the sea and barred it shut; left to itself the water would have covered everything.
- Limit set by a Person. Behind what we call natural law stands an Author — the boundary is a decree, not an accident.
- Limit man cannot move. Ships cross the ocean, but man's control stops at the shore. God's questions expose that and humble our pride.
- Limit on evil too. Satan's rebellion and human wickedness rise like foam. God says to them what He says to the surf: this far and no farther.
- Limit as comfort. The troubles that seem to be swallowing you are inside the boundary, and the One who set it can say "Peace! Be still!" and bring a great calm.
And said, Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
God answers Job out of the storm with question after question, and one is about the sea: who shut it in, and who told it where to stop? The answer is a boundary set by a voice — and Job's own life felt as wild as the surf.
The speech is not a lecture on geography. Kelly reads it as God dismantling the confidence of a man who had been arguing his own case:
God appears on the scene for the express purpose of destroying the pretensions of man. Here He uses language more magnificent than any I know of on such subjects — language worthy of Him who is said to have spoken it. The LORD appears to put Job in his true place, and that place was dust and ashes. He only touches the edges of His power, the outer border of His glory; yet what had man to say? What could Job answer? Not a word. And did the man who could not explain God's least things presume to judge the deepest part of His ways and designs?
The picture in these verses is birth. Ridout follows it through to the calm at the end:
Left to itself it would have covered everything; but its Maker was its Master, and set bounds to it, breaking the land as it were into great mountain chains to make a place for it, barred and closed so it could not escape. Its storms and fury, in His almighty hands, are only the wailing of a newborn baby; He wraps it in the swaddling clothes of clouds and thick darkness, and hushes it to rest.
The sea's limit can look like nothing more than physics. Leslie Grant asks who stands behind the physics:
This is confirmed in verses 10 and 11. God "prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors" and said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther." People may speak of "natural laws" as causing this, but who is the Author of natural law?
The Gospels record that voice again. One writer ties this line to the moment the disciples watched a storm die at a word:
The disciples marvelled as He rebuked the winds and the sea. They did not understand that with them was the same blessed Person who once said to the sea, when God formed the earth, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed" (Job 38:11).
Ridout carries the boundary from water over into the moral world, where Job's own heart lay:
So too in the ocean of evil — the pride of Satan which burst out in rebellion against God, when the angels did not keep their first position. God's restraining hand holds it all in check. The wicked, like the foaming sea, seem to rise higher and higher in their violence and pride, but God says to them, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther." Job watched wickedness appear to win. He looked into the dark surging of his own self-willed heart. He might well have been horrified. Who but God can control evil?
The same limit runs around a believer's suffering. Fereday ties the sea's fixed shore to Job's measured trial:
He who sits on the throne will never let the enemy seize the reins of government. His controlling hand measures everything that must fall upon His own, and the enemy has no power to go beyond that measure. When Satan sought Job's ruin, God allowed him to afflict Job only step by step, exactly as He prescribed.
For now the waves are held back rather than removed. Ridout looks ahead to a state where the barrier is no longer needed:
We look forward to the time when this control will be absolute, in that new heavens and new earth, when "there shall be no more sea." On that day God will banish evil to its eternal home, away from His redeemed creation. Looking ahead to it, we can own Him as supreme alone.
- A line is drawn. God shut the sea behind bars and doors and told it where to stop — the coastline is a spoken command, not a coincidence.
- The line silences pride. God touches only the edges of His power, and Job has no answer. A man who cannot explain the tide cannot judge God's ways.
- The line has a voice. The One who hushed the newborn sea in clouds and darkness is the One the disciples watched still a storm with a word.
- The line runs around evil. Wickedness and Satan rise like surf and stop at the same command; God measured Job's own trial step by step.
- The line becomes absolute. In the new heavens and new earth there is no more sea — God banishes evil, and He alone is supreme.