Job 38:1–38

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.

¹⁹Where is the road to the home of light?

Do you know where darkness lives,

²⁰so you can lead it back to its border?

Are you familiar with the paths to its home?

²¹Don’t you know? You were already born;^d

you have lived so long!^A

²²Have you entered the place where the snow is stored?

Or have you seen the storehouses of hail,^e

²³which I hold in reserve for times of trouble,

for the day of warfare and battle?^f

²⁴What road leads to the place where light is dispersed?^B

Where is the source of the east wind that spreads across the earth?

²⁵Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain

or clears the way for lightning,

²⁶to bring rain on an uninhabited land,

on a desert with no human life,^C

²⁷to satisfy the parched wasteland

and cause the grass to sprout?^g

²⁸Does the rain have a father?

Who fathered the drops of dew?^h

²⁹Whose womb did the ice come from?

Who gave birth to the frost of heaven

³⁰when water becomes as hard as stone,^D

and the surface of the watery depths is frozen?ⁱ

³¹Can you fasten the chains of the Pleiades

or loosen the belt of Orion?

³²Can you bring out the constellations^E in their season

and lead the Bear^F and her cubs?^j

³³Do you know the laws^k of heaven?

Can you impose its^G authority on earth?

³⁴Can you command^H the clouds

so that a flood of water covers you?^l

³⁵Can you send out lightning^m bolts, and they go?

Do they report to you, “Here we are”?

³⁶Who put wisdomⁿ in the heart

or gave the mind understanding?

³⁷Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?

Or who can tilt the water jars of heaven

³⁸when the dust hardens like cast metal

and the clods of dirt stick together?