Job 38:1–18

THE LORD SPEAKS

38Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind.ⁿ He said:

²Who is this who obscures my counsel

with ignorant words?^o

³Get ready to answer me like a man;

when I question^p you, you will inform me.

⁴Where were you when I established^q the earth?

Tell me, if you have^A understanding.

⁵Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

⁶What supports its foundations?

Or who laid its cornerstone

⁷while the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God^a shouted for joy?

⁸Who enclosed the sea behind doors

when it burst from the womb,

⁹when I made the clouds its garment

and total darkness its blanket,^Bb

¹⁰when I determined its boundaries^C

and put its bars and doors in place,

¹¹when I declared, “You may come this far, but no farther;

your proud waves stop here”?

¹²Have you ever in your life commanded the morning

or assigned the dawn its place,

¹³so it may seize the edges of the earth

and shake the wicked out of it?

¹⁴The earth is changed as clay is by a seal;

its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.

¹⁵Light^D is withheld from the wicked,

and the arm raised in violence is broken.

¹⁶Have you traveled to the sources of the sea

or walked in the depths of the oceans?

¹⁷Have the gates^c of death been revealed to you?

Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

¹⁸Have you comprehended the extent of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.