Job 36:27

Job 36:27, to end of the next chapter. Elihu concludes his discourse with observations and improvements of God's wondrous works in the clouds - rain, lightning, and thunder. It appears to me probable that the occasion of it was the appearance, at a distance, of the clouds and lightning and thunder of the storm that was then approaching, out of which God spake to Job. There was nothing in Elihu's foregoing discourse that seemed to lead him to it. It is true that he was, in the foregoing verses, speaking of the greatness of God and His works; but there seems nothing that led him thus suddenly to begin about the clouds and rain in this 27th verse. But if there then appeared to them a thunder-storm arising, that will easily account for it why he, when speaking of God's greatness, should insist on this rather than any other of God's works. The 30th verse of the 36th chapter seems to confirm this - ["Behold," etc.] The manner of expression, his calling on Job to 'behold,' agrees with the supposition that the thing was then appearing that he was speaking of, and the description here given, "He spreadeth His light upon it, and covereth the roots of the sea,' as it is in the original, agrees exactly with the appearance of a thunderstorm appearing as arising above the horizon; for the top of the clouds, in such cases, is commonly all spread over with an exceeding bright light. Thus God spreads His light upon it; and the lower part of a storm that appears thus rising, seems to cover the utmost confines and extreme parts of the sea that are next the horizon, that are here called the "roots of the sea," which may elegantly be so called according to the notion they then had of the world as being a flat, and that there was first the land and after that the sea, which they supposed was bounded by the horizon, or at the meeting of the firmament with the waters. He certainly here speaks of a thunderstorm as it is [seen] when rising and approaching, whether there was then one approaching or no. By the 30th and also the 32d and 33d verses, having first observed how the cloud appears on the top of it covered with light, and how the bottom covers the roots of the sea, he next observes how it is, as it advances higher and comes nearer, how the cloud interposes between the sun and the earth and hides its light, and how the thunder-storm grows louder, and the notice the cattle seem to shew of it; and in the beginning of the next chapter, Elihu seems to speak of what then appeared - "At this also my heart trembleth, and is moved out of its place," etc.; and it was not the only instance of God's speaking out of a storm of thunder, for so he did at Mount Sinai (Psalms 68:8) Pool, synop. on Job 38:1.