Morning Bible Study: Job 38:1-11

The Lord Speaks

38:1 Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said:

2 Who is this who obscures my counsel

with ignorant words?

3 Get ready to answer me like a man;

when I question you, you will inform me.

4 Where were you when I established the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

5 Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 What supports its foundations?

Or who laid its cornerstone

7 while the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8 Who enclosed the sea behind doors

when it burst from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment

and total darkness its blanket,

10 when I determined its boundaries

and put its bars and doors in place,

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

your proud waves stop here”?

Commentary

(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com) 

"Job had silenced, but had not convinced his friends. Elihu had silenced Job, but had not brought him to admit his guilt before God. It pleased the Lord to interpose. 

The Lord, in this discourse, humbles Job, and brings him to repent of his passionate expressions concerning God's providential dealings with him; and this he does, by calling upon Job to compare God's being from everlasting to everlasting, with his own time; God's knowledge of all things, with his own ignorance; and God's almighty power, with his own weakness. 

Our darkening the counsels of God's wisdom with our folly, is a great provocation to God. Humble faith and sincere obedience see farthest and best into the will of the Lord.

For the humbling of Job, God here shows him his ignorance, even concerning the earth and the sea. As we cannot find fault with God's work, so we need not fear concerning it. The works of his providence, as well as the work of creation, never can be broken; and the work of redemption is no less firm, of which Christ himself is both the Foundation and the Cornerstone. The church stands as firm as the earth."