On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
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.
Why God asks instead of explains
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.
William KellyGod 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?
Foundations for a world that hangs on nothing
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.
William Kelly"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.
The Architect and His building site
Ordinary builders sink footings into rock or sand. God had neither.
Samuel RidoutJehovah 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.
Who stretched the line?
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.
Samuel RidoutWho, 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.
The cornerstone modern knowledge still cannot locate
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.
Samuel RidoutThe 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.
Someone was watching
Job was absent, but the site was not empty. The singing of verse 7 tells us who stood there.
G. V. WigramGod 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.
Summary
- 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.