Job 38:4–18

⁴Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if you have understanding.

⁵Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know!

Or who stretched a measuring line across it?

⁶On what were its foundations set,

or who laid its cornerstone,^d

⁷while the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

⁸Who enclosed the sea behind doors

when it burst forth from the womb,

⁹when I made the clouds its garment

and thick darkness its blanket,

¹⁰when I fixed its boundaries

and set in place its bars and doors,

¹¹and I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther;

here your proud waves must stop’?

¹²In your days, have you commanded the morning

or assigned the dawn its place,

¹³that it might spread to the ends of the earth

and shake the wicked out of it?

¹⁴The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;

its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.

¹⁵Light is withheld from the wicked,

and their upraised arm is broken.

¹⁶Have you journeyed to the vents of the sea

or walked in the trenches of the deep?

¹⁷Have the gates of death been revealed to you?

Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?

¹⁸Have you surveyed the extent of the earth?

Tell Me, if you know all this.