Job 38:1-30

The LORD Speaks 1Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2“Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?

3Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

4“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.

5Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—

7while the morning stars sang together and all the angels Hebrew the sons of God shouted for joy?

8“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,

9when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place,

11when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

12“Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place,

13that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?

14The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment.

15The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken.

16“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?

17Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?

18Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.

19“What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?

20Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?

21Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!

22“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail,

23which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?

24What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?

25Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm,

26to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert,

27to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?

28Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew?

29From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens

30when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?