Yahweh answers Job
1 Then Yahweh answered Job out of the storm:
2 Who is this that obscures divine plans
with ignorant words?
3 Gird up your loins like a man;
I will question you and you must answer.
4 Where were you when I founded the earth?
Answer, and show me your knowledge.
5 Do you know who determined its size,
who stretched out its measuring line?
6 On what were its bases set?
Who laid its cornerstone,
7 while the morning stars sang together
and the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
8 Who shut the sea behind closed doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling clothes;
10 when I set its limits
with doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, “You will not go beyond these bounds;
here is where your proud waves must halt?”
12 Have you ever commanded the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might grasp the earth by its edges
and shake the wicked out of it,
14 when it takes a clay color
and changes its tint like a garment;
15 when the wicked are denied their own light,
and their proud arm is shattered?
16 Have you journeyed to where the sea begins
or walked in its deepest recesses?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of Shadow?
18 Have you an idea of the breadth of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
19 Where is the way to the home of light,
and where does darkness dwell?
20 Can you take them to their own regions,
and set them on their homeward paths?
21 You know, for you were born before them,
and great is the number of your years!
22 Have you entered the storehouse of the snow
or seen the storehouse of the hail,
23 which I reserve for times of woe,
for days of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the place
where lightning is dispersed,
or the place whence the east wind
begins spreading over the earth?
25 Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
26 to bring rain to no-man’s-land
and to the unpeopled wilderness,
27 to enrich the wasted and desolate ground,
to make the desert bloom with green?
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice,
and who gives birth to the frost from the skies,
30 when the waters lie as hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
31 Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades,
or loosen the bonds of Orion?
32 Can you guide the morning star in its season,
or lead the Bear with its train?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens,
and can you establish their rule on earth?
34 Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and order their waters to pour down?
35 Will lightnings flash at your command
and report to you, “Here we are?”
36 Who has given the ibis foresight
or endowed the cock with foreknowledge?
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who tilts the water jars of heaven
38 so that the dust cakes into a mass
and clods of earth stick together?
39 Can you hunt the woods to appease
the hunger of the lioness and her whelps,
40 as they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in the thicket?
41 Who provides prey for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and roam about desperate for food?
------------------------------------------------------------
Comments Job, Chapter 38
• 38.1 Yahweh answers Job from with in the storm clouds, as on Mount Sinai. He does not explain or justify; rather he does the questioning. He does not show off his own wisdom, but forces humans to admit that they do not know anything.
Here the author seems to be digressing somewhat from his theme. Carried away by his admiration, he forgets that, first of all he intended to show us God exceeds our ability to understand and to judge. What do our protests and scandals mean: “if God existed...” They are mere childishness, idle words of those who have no idea of what the word “God” encompasses. If the entire universe is just the expression or the irradiation of divine Wisdom, who will dare tell God that his way is not reasonable?