Job 38:8

Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Job 38:8-10. Who shut up the sea with doors? — Who was it that set bounds to the vast and raging ocean, and shut it up, as it were, with doors within its proper place, that it might not overflow the earth? When it brake forth, &c. — From the womb or bowels of the earth, within which the waters were for the most part contained, and out of which they were by God’s command brought forth into the channel which God had appointed for them. When I made the cloud the garment thereof — When I covered it with vapours and clouds which rise out of the sea, and hover above it, and cover it like a garment. And thick darkness — Black and dark clouds; a swaddling-band for it — Having compared the sea to a new-born infant, he continues the metaphor, and makes the clouds as swaddling-bands, to keep it within its bounds; though indeed neither clouds, nor air, nor sands, nor shores, can bound the sea, but God alone. And brake up for it my decreed place — Made those hollow places in the earth, which might serve for a cradle to receive and hold this great and goodly infant when it came out of the womb. And set bars and doors — Fixed its bounds as strongly as if they were fortified with bars and doors.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

38:4-11 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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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 real description of what took place at the creation, it is not easy to determine. Nothing forbids the idea that something like this may have occurred when the waters in the earth were pouring forth tumultuously, and when they were restrained by obstructions placed there by the hand of God, as if he had made gates through which they could pass only when he should open them. This supposition also would accord well with the account of the flood in Genesis 7:11, where it is said that "the fountains of the great deep were broken up," as if those flood-gates had been opened, or the obstructions which God had placed there had been suffered to be broken through, and the waters of their own accord flowed over the world. We know as yet too little of the interior of the earth, to ascertain whether this is to be understood as a literal description of what actually occurred.

When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb - All the images here are taken from child-birth. The ocean is represented as being born, and then as invested with clouds and darkness as its covering and its swaddling-bands. The image is a bold one, and I do not know that it is any where else applied to the formation of the ocean.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8. doors—floodgates; these when opened caused the flood (Ge 8:2); or else, the shores.

womb—of chaos. The bowels of the earth. Image from childbirth (Job 38:8, 9; Eze 32:2; Mic 4:10). Ocean at its birth was wrapped in clouds as its swaddling bands.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Who was it, thou or I, that did set bounds to the vast and raging ocean, and shut it up as it were with doors within its proper place and storehouse, that it might not overflow the earth; which without God’s powerful restraint it would do? See Psalm 33:7 104:9. This sense seems most proper, and to be confirmed by the following verses.

When it brake forth, or, after it had broken forth, to wit, from the womb or bowels of the earth, within which the waters were for the most part contained, Genesis 1:2; compare 2 Peter 3:5; and out of which they were by God’s command brought forth into the proper place or channel which God had appointed for them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

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, Psalm 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 reason he had his name given, which signifies a breach, Genesis 38:29; so it follows,

as if it had issued out of the womb; as a child out of its mother's womb; so the sea burst forth and issued out of the bowels of the earth, and covered it all around, as in Psalm 104:6; and now it was that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, before they were drained off the earth; this was the first open visible production of the sea, and nay be called the birth of it; see Genesis 1:2. Something like this the Heathen philosopher Archelaus had a notion of, who says (g), the sea was shut up in hollow places, and was as it were strained through the earth.

(g) Laert. Vit. Philosoph. l. 2. p. 99.

Geneva Study Bible

Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

8. as if it had issued] Rather, and issued out of the womb.

8–10. The sea.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8. - Or who shut up the sea with doors? From the earth a transition is made to the sea, as the second great wonder in creation (comp. Genesis 1:9, 10; Exodus 20:11; Psalm 104:24, 25). God's might is especially shown in his power to control and confine the sea, which rages so terribly and seems so utterly uncontrollable. God has blocked it in "with doors" - i.e. with "bounds that it cannot pass, neither turn again to cover the earth" (Psalm 145:9). Sometimes the barrier is one of lofty and solid rock, which seems well suited to confine and restrain; but sometimes it is no more than a thin streak of sliver sand or a bank of loose, shifting pebbles. Yet, in both cases alike, the restraint suffices. "The sand is placed for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it" (Jeremiah 5:22); the beach of shifting pebbles remains as firm as the rock itself, and never recedes or advances more than a few feet. When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb; i.e. at its birth, when it was first formed, by the gathering together of the waters into one place (see Genesis 1:9). Job 38:8

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

8 And who shut up the sea with doors,

When it broke through, issued from the womb,

9 When I put clouds round it as a garment,

And thick mist as its swaddling clothes,

10 And I broke for it my bound,

And set bars and doors,

11 And said: Hitherto come, and no further,

And here be thy proud waves stayed!?

The state of תהו ובהו was the first half, and the state of תהום the second half of the primeval condition of the forming earth. The question does not, however, refer to the תהום, in which the waters of the sky and the waters of the earth were as yet not separated, but, passing over this intermediate condition of the forming earth, to the sea, the waters of which God shut up as by means of a door and bolt, when, first enshrouded in thick mist (which has remained from that time one of its natural peculiarities), and again and again manifesting its individuality, it broke forth (גּיח of the foetus, as Psalm 22:10) from the bowels of the, as yet, chaotic earth. That the sea, in spite of the flatness of its banks, does not flow over the land, is a work of omnipotence which broke over it, i.e., restraining it, a fixed bound (חק as Job 26:10; Proverbs 8:29; Jeremiah 5:22, equals גּבוּל, Psalm 104:9), viz., the steep and rugged walls of the basin of the sea, and which thereby established a firm barrier behind which it should be kept. Instead of וּפה, Joshua 18:8, Job 38:11 has the Chethib וּפא. חק is to be understood with ישׁית, and "one set" is equivalent to the passive (Ges. 137*): let a bound be set (comp. שׁת, Hosea 6:11, which is used directly so) against the proud rising of thy waves.