Job 38:4–41

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.

¹⁹Where is the way to the home of light?

Do you know where darkness resides,

²⁰so you can lead it back to its border?

Do you know the paths to its home?

²¹Surely you know, for you were already born!

And the number of your days is great!

²²Have you entered the storehouses of snow

or observed the storehouses of hail,

²³which I hold in reserve for times of trouble,

for the day of war and battle?

²⁴In which direction is the lightning dispersed,

or the east wind scattered over the earth?

²⁵Who cuts a channel for the flood

or clears a path for the thunderbolt,

²⁶to bring rain on a barren land,

on a desert where no man lives,

²⁷to satisfy the parched wasteland

and make it sprout with tender grass?

²⁸Does the rain have a father?

Who has begotten the drops of dew?

²⁹From whose womb does the ice emerge?

Who gives birth to the frost from heaven,

³⁰when the waters become hard as stone

and the surface of the deep is frozen?

³¹Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades

or loosen the belt of Orion?

³²Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons^e

or lead out the Bear^f and her cubs?

³³Do you know the laws of the heavens?

Can you set their dominion over the earth?

³⁴Can you command the clouds

so that a flood of water covers you?

³⁵Can you send the lightning bolts on their way?

Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

³⁶Who has put wisdom in the heart^g

or given understanding to the mind?

³⁷Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?

Or who can tilt the water jars of the heavens

³⁸when the dust hardens into a mass

and the clods of earth stick together?

³⁹Can you hunt the prey for a lioness

or satisfy the hunger of young lions

⁴⁰when they crouch in their dens

and lie in wait in the thicket?

⁴¹Who provides food for the raven

when its young cry out to God

as they wander about for lack of food?’’