Job 38:8

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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.