Job 38:8

_OR WHO SHUT UP THE SEA WITH DOORS, WHEN IT BRAKE FORTH, AS IF IT HAD ISSUED OUT OF THE WOMB?_ Doors - flood-gates; these when opened caused the flood (Genesis 7:11); or else the shores. WOMB - of chaos. The bowels of the earth. Image from child-birth (Job 38:8). Ocean at its birth was wrapped in clouds as its swaddling bands (Ezekiel 32:2; Micah 4:10)....

4-11 For the humbling of Job, God here shows him his ignorance, even concerning the earth and the sea. As we cannot find fault with God's work, so we need not fear concerning it. The works of his providence, as well as the work of creation, never can be broken; and the work of redemption is no less firm, of which Christ himself is both the Foundation and the Corner-stone. The church stands as firm as the earth....

Verse Job 38:8. WHO _SHUT UP THE SEA WITH DOORS_] Who _gathered the waters_ _together into one place_, and fixed the sea its limits, so that it cannot overpass them to inundate the earth? _WHEN IT BRAKE FORTH_, AS IF _IT HAD ISSUED OUT OF THE WOMB?_] This is a very fine metaphor. The sea is represented as a newly born infant issuing from the womb of the void and formless chaos; and the delicate circumstance of the _liquor amnii_, which bursts out previously to the birth of the foetus, alluded to. The allusion to the birth of a child is carried on in the next verse....

OR WHO SHUT UP THE SEA WITH DOORS - This refers also to the act of the creation, and to the fact that God fixed limits to the raging of the ocean. The word “doors” is used here rather to denote gates, such as are made to shut up water in a dam. The Hebrew word properly refers, in the dual form which is used here דלתים _delethiym_), to “double doors,” or to folding doors, and is also applied to the gates of a city; Deuteronomy 3:5; 1 Samuel 23:7; Isaiah 45:1. The idea is, that the floods were bursting forth from the abyss or the center of the earth, and were checked by placing gates or doors which restrained them. Whether this is designed to be a poetic or a re

CLOSE OF THE CONTROVERSY BY THE INTERFERENCE OF THE ALMIGHTY. EXPOSITION The discourse, by which the Almighty answers Job and rebukes his "friends," occupies four chapters (ch. 38-41.). It is broken into two parts by the interposition of a-short confession on Job's part (Job 40:3). Job 38:1 and Job 39:1 are closely connected, and form a single appeal—a sort of _argumentum ad verecundiam—_to_ _Job's profound ignorance of God's natural government, which incapacitates him from passing judgment upon what is far more incomprehensible and myste

OR [WHO] SHUT UP THE SEA WITH DOORS,.... From the earth the transition is to the sea, according to the order of the creation; and this refers not to the state and case of the sea as at the flood, of which some interpret it, but as at its first creation; and it is throughout this account represented as an infant, and here first as in embryo, shut up in the bowels of the earth, where it was when first created with it, as an infant shut up in its mother's womb, and with the doors of it; see Job 3:10; the bowels of the earth being the storehouses where God first laid up the deep waters, Psalms 33:7; and when the chaos, the misshapen earth, was like a woman big with child; WHEN IT BRAKE FORTH OUT OF THE ABYSS, as the Targum, with force and violence, as Pharez broke out of his mother's womb; for which rea

V. THE LORD'S TESTIMONY TO JOB AND CONTROVERSY WITH HIM CHAPTER 38:1-38 _ 1. The Lord speaks to Job (Job 38:1)_ 2. The questions of the Lord (Job 38:4) Job 38:1. The voice of man is hushed; the voice of the Lord begins to speak. The Almighty, the Creator, the Lord of All comes now upon the scene. He too, like Elihu, had been the silent listener; He heard Job's complaint and wailing and the babblings of his friends. Elihu's wonderful utterance, inspired by the Lord, was ended. The thunderstorm is on, no doubt a literal storm, the dark clouds gather-- _ Then from the North there comes a golden light._ God appears in wondrous Majesty ...

Yahweh, speaking to Job out of the storm, challenges him to the contest, which he has so often demanded....

Earth and sea....

WHEN IT BRAKE FORTH, AS IF IT HAD ISSUED OUT OF THE WOMB— _When it burst forth as an infant, that cometh out of the womb._ Heath....