Job 37:10-20

10 God's breath produces ice, and the seas freeze over.
11 Yes, he loads the thick clouds with moisture and scatters his lightning from the clouds.
12 He guides the clouds as they churn round and round over the face of the inhabited earth to do everything he orders them.
13 Whether for discipline, or for [the good of] his earth, or out of mercy, he makes the storm appear.
14 "Open your ears to this, Job. Stop and consider God's miracles.
15 Do you know how God controls them and makes the lightning flash from his clouds?
16 Do you know how the clouds drift (these are the miracles of the one who knows everything),
17 you whose clothes are hot and sweaty, when the earth is calm under a south wind?
18 Can you stretch out the skies with him and make them as firm as a mirror made of metal?
19 Teach us what we should say to him. We are unable to prepare [a case] because of darkness.
20 Should he be told that I want to speak? Can a person speak when he is confused?

Job 37:10-20 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 37

Elihu in this chapter proceeds to show the greatness of God as it appears in other of his works of nature, which greatly affected him, and to an attention to which he exhorts others, Job 37:1,2; particularly thunder and lightning, the direction, extent, and order of which he observes, Job 37:3,4; and then suggests that besides these there are other great things done by him, incomprehensible and unknown in various respects; as the snow, and rain, lesser and greater, which come on the earth at his command, and have such effect on men as to seal up their hands, and on the beasts of the field as to cause them to retire to their dens, and there remain, Job 37:5-8; and then he goes on to take notice of wind, and frost, and the clouds, and dispersion of them; their use and ends, whether in judgment or mercy, Job 37:9-13; and then calls on Job to consider these wondrous works of God, and remark how ignorant men are of the disposition of clouds for the rainbow; of the balancing of them; of the heat and quietness that come by the south wind, and of the firmness of the sky, Job 37:14-21; and from all this he concludes the terrible majesty, unsearchable nature of God, the excellency of his power and justice; and that men therefore should and do fear him, who is no respecter of persons, Job 37:21-23.

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