“Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place,
God speaks to Job out of the storm. Instead of explaining his suffering, He asks questions about the world — the earth's foundations, the sea's limits, and now the daily arrival of light. The question is simple and unanswerable: has Job ever once given the order that started a morning?
Questions Instead of Answers
Job had set himself up to judge God's ways, and this is the answer he gets. The questions are not for information. They are meant to expose how little he knows about the ordinary workings of the world he lives in.
William KellyThis is the man who claimed to sit in judgment on God's moral ways. The first thing done is to overwhelm him with the sense of his utter ignorance and powerlessness in the smallest things of divine energy, even in creation. Where was Job when Jehovah founded the earth? ... He whose understanding stood baffled at such a question was not in a position to judge of His deep things.
Beyond Human Command
The sunrise is the most familiar event there is. No one has ever caused one or delayed one.
Samuel RidoutHas Job ever commanded a single morning to appear, or caused the dawn to know the place of its appearing? With all his supposed knowledge and power, man cannot command the forces of nature to do his bidding. Day by day the light appears in its appointed place. It floods the earth with light, and the guilty flee from it. Evening falls, and no word of man can stop or hurry this constant action. Only One gave His command at the beginning: "Let there be light." Since that time evening and morning have known their appointed time and place.
Ridout notes two exceptions. Joshua halted the day, and the shadow moved back on King Hezekiah's sundial. Both happened at God's word, not man's.
Job's Own Night
The question lands hard because Job had been sitting in darkness, longing for relief. If commanding the morning were in his power, his troubles would already be over.
Leslie M. GrantDid Job decide when the morning was to dawn? What a question for the man who thought he could in effect make God accountable to him! The morning always follows the night, and what man can change this amazing fact? Job had been feeling the darkness of night in the hard experiences he had suffered. If he could command the morning, then he could bring complete relief to the trials of darkness. But only God can cause the dawn to know its place.
Light That Uncovers
Daylight reaches the ends of the earth and ends the cover that night gives to evildoers.
William Kelly"…that it might take hold of the ends of the earth" — that is, when the sun rises to gild it — "that the wicked might be shaken out of it?" The darkness of night gives the opportunity for murder and burglary and all the other crimes of men, more than any other time. "It is turned as clay to the seal." When the earth is in darkness, you can no more make it out than clay before the seal is pressed into it. But the moment the light shines, there you find its shape and its beauty as God fixed it.
A Morning Still to Come
Commentators read the sunrise here as a picture as well as a fact.
Leslie M. GrantWhen the millennial day dawns it will embrace "the ends of the earth," and the wicked will be shaken out of it. The wicked love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. At that day the light of "the Sun of righteousness," rising with "healing in His wings," will expose them. The Lord Jesus, the true Light, will so expose the wicked as to shake them out of the earth.
Hope Hidden Inside the Rebuke
The questions humble Job, but there is kindness in the choice of subject. God picks the one thing that always ends — night.
Samuel RidoutThis appeal to day and night is most effective. Shall Job accuse One who is Light, who sees all things as they are? Shall he doubt One who knows the secrets of his heart, and the reason for these chastenings? Do not these questions give a hint that God will cause Job's night to end, and at the appointed time cause His dawn to visit the poor sufferer?
Summary
- Command. The morning comes by an order Job never gave. Only One said "Let there be light," and evening and morning have kept their appointed time ever since.
- Place. The dawn "knows its place." It rises where and when God appoints, and no human word can hurry it or hold it back.
- Exposure. Night is the cover for crime. When light takes hold of the ends of the earth, the world's shape stands out like clay under a seal, and evildoers are shaken out.
- Prospect. Writers see in that sunrise a picture of a coming day. The Sun of righteousness will rise, and the true Light will expose the wicked who loved darkness.
- Comfort. The same God who ends every night can end Job's. The question that humbles him also hints at a dawn appointed for him.