Job 38:30

30 The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.

Job 38:30 Meaning and Commentary

Job 38:30

The waters are hid as [with] a stone
The surface of the waters by frost become as hard as a stone, and will bear great burdens, and admit of carriages to pass over them F3 where ships went before; so that the waters under them are hid and quite out of sight: an emblem of the hard heart of man, which can only be thawed by the power and grace of God, by the south wind of the Spirit blowing, and the "sun of righteousness" rising on it;

and the face of the deep is frozen;
or bound together by the frost, as the Targum; it is taken, laid hold on, and kept together, as the word signifies, so that it cannot flow. Historians speak of seas being frozen up, as some parts of the Scythian sea, reported by Mela F4, and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, by Herodotus F5, and the northern seas by Olaus Magnus F6; as that men might travel over them on foot or on horseback, from one country to another; and Strabo relates F7, that where a sea fight has been in the summer time, armies and hosts have met and fought in the winter. In Muscovy the ice is to six and ten feet deep F8; in the year 401 the Euxine sea F9 was frozen over for the space of twenty days; and in the year 763 the seas at Constantinople were frozen one hundred miles from the shore, so thick as to bear the heaviest carriages F11.


FOOTNOTES:

F3 "Nunc hospita plaustris" Virg. Georgic. l. 3. v. 362.
F4 De Situ Orbis, l. 3. c. 5.
F5 Melpomene, sive, l. 4. c. 20. Vid. Macrob. Saturnal. l. 7. c. 12.
F6 De Ritu Gent. Septent. l. 1. c. 13.
F7 Geograph. l. 7. p. 211. Vid. Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 1. c. 22.
F8 Scheuchzer. Phys. Sacr. vol 4. p. 810.
F9 Universal History, vol. 16. p. 489.
F11 Universal History, vol. 17. p. 45.

Job 38:30 In-Context

28 "Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven?
30 The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.
31 "Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?
32 Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children?
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.