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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The way; or rather, the place, as the next clause explains it, and the Hebrew phrase will bear.
Where light dwelleth, i.e. hath its constant and settled abode; for in the place where Job lived, and in most other parts of the inhabited world, it is like a traveller, that cometh and goeth continually every day. This may be referred either,
1. To the place under the two poles, where first the light, and then the darkness, continues for six months together. Or rather,
2. To the sun, the fountain of light. And as this is a poetical book, so this may be a poetical expression and question, Whither goes the sun, when it departs from this hemisphere? Where is the tabernacle and the chamber in which both sacred, as Psa_19:4,5, and profane poets suppose the sun to rest? Dost thou know the place where the sun when it sets may be found, and whence thou canst fetch it back again. For it is to be carefully observed, that he speaks not here of a bare and simple knowledge of this matter, which was plain and easy to Job, and many others, who were not ignorant that the sun was the fountain of light, from whose approach light comes, and by whose departure darkness is caused; but of an operative knowledge, even such as could and did enable him to take it to the bound thereof, as it follows, Job_38:20. And withal, he seems here to speak not only of the daily course and motion of the sun, and the vicissitude of day and night, but also and especially of the first production of the light, which was before Job was born, as is evident from Job_38:21. And this makes the question more difficult and more considerable, the sense whereof may be this: Seeing there was a time when there was nothing but gross and comfortless darkness upon the face of the earth, what way came light into the world? which was the place where light dwelt at that time, and whence it was fetched? and whence came that orderly constitution and constant succession of light and darkness? Was this thy work? or wast thou privy to it, or a counsellor or assistant in it? or was it not done by me alone long before thou hadst a being?