What is the meaning of Job 38:21? Surely you know • God’s opening words in Job 38:21 drip with gentle irony. After asking Job about the storehouses of snow and hail (Job 38:22–23), the Lord mockingly assumes Job must already grasp such mysteries. • The statement highlights the vast gap between divine and human understanding, echoing earlier confessions that “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28) and that God’s thoughts are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9). • Similar divine challenges appear in Job 38:2, “Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge?” and in Romans 11:33, where Paul marvels, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”—all underscoring that true knowledge begins with acknowledging God’s supremacy. for you were already born! • The Lord’s sarcasm underlines that Job was not present at creation. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4) confronts Job with his temporal limits. • Bildad had earlier asked, “Are you the first man ever born?” (Job 8:8–9), and Eliphaz quipped, “Were you the first man ever born? Were you brought forth before the hills?” (Job 15:7). God now makes the same point: only the Creator witnessed the dawn of creation (Psalm 90:2; John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16). • By exposing Job’s absence at creation, the Lord reminds every reader that all human insight is secondhand and derivative. And the number of your days is great! • The phrase keeps the ironic tone: compared to the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9; Psalm 102:25–27), our lives are fleeting. “For we are but of yesterday and know nothing” (Job 8:9) and “You have made my days a few handbreadths” (Psalm 39:4–5) echo this brevity. • God contrasts His eternal existence with Job’s finite lifespan: while human days might reach “seventy years, or eighty if we have strength” (Psalm 90:10), the Lord remains “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2). • Recognizing our mortality fuels humility and dependence on the God whose “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). summary Job 38:21 delivers a three–fold rhetorical sting: “Surely you know,” “for you were already born,” and “the number of your days is great.” Each phrase exposes the limitations of human knowledge, presence, and longevity when set beside the omniscience, omnipresence, and eternality of God. The verse calls believers to humble awe, trusting the Creator whose wisdom towers above every human insight and whose purposes—though often mysterious—are always righteous and true. |
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