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Job_28:3 He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death.
Ver. 3. He setteth an end to darkness] i.e. He (viz. the miner) brings light down into the dark entrails of the earth, and fetches out those metals that had long lain hid there, and that else would never have been beheld. Though Nature hath taken pleasure, as one speaketh, to hide all these metals, yet industry provideth man of certain marks for to discover them, and infallible conjectures to know the time when they must be drawn out of their darkness. Habent metallici suas virgas metallicas, Metal workers have their metal rods, whereby they search into and distinguish between metals and minerals.
Quasque recondiderat, Stygiisque admoverat undis,
Effodiuntur opes irritamenta malorum (Ovid. Metam.).
And searcheth out all perfection] sc. That is to be found in those subterraneous cells, in that bosom and bottom of the earth; the utmost that is there to be had he thoroughly eviscerateth, digging many yards underground, where nothing is to be seen but a deadly shade; Ex cuius horrore mori quis posset; enough to frighten one to death; beside the deadly damps, which suddenly breaking out of the veins of the earth, do sometimes choke the workmen.
The stones of darkness, &c.] That is, the darkest stones that lie lowest of all in the earth’s bowels, whither one would wonder how any man should ever come; and especially how the sun and stars should come by their influences to make those metals, and the precious stones, that are engendered and bred in the darksome and deadly vaults of the earth.