Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 38:8 - 38:8
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
8 And who shut up the sea with doors,
When it broke through, issued from the womb,
9 When I put clouds round it as a garment,
And thick mist as its swaddling clothes,
10 And I broke for it my bound,
And set bars and doors,
11 And said: Hitherto come, and no further,
And here be thy proud waves stayed!?
The state of תהו ובהו was the first half, and the state of תהום the second half of the primeval condition of the forming earth. The question does not, however, refer to the תהום, in which the waters of the sky and the waters of the earth were as yet not separated, but, passing over this intermediate condition of the forming earth, to the sea, the waters of which God shut up as by means of a door and bolt, when, first enshrouded in thick mist (which has remained from that time one of its natural peculiarities), and again and again manifesting its individuality, it broke forth (גִּיחַ of the foetus, as Psa 22:10) from the bowels of the, as yet, chaotic earth. That the sea, in spite of the flatness of its banks, does not flow over the land, is a work of omnipotence which broke over it, i.e., restraining it, a fixed bound (חֹק as Job 26:10; Pro 8:29; Jer 5:22, = גְּבוּל, Psa 104:9), viz., the steep and rugged walls of the basin of the sea, and which thereby established a firm barrier behind which it should be kept. Instead of וּפֹה, Jos 18:8, Job 38:11 has the Chethib וּפֹא. חֹק is to be understood with יָשִׁית, and “one set” is equivalent to the passive (Ges. §137*): let a bound be set (comp. שָׁת, Hos 6:11, which is used directly so) against the proud rising of thy waves.