Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 28

Surely there is a vein for the silver. — In this chapter, Job draws out a magnificent contrast between human skill and ingenuity and Divine wisdom.

The difficulty for the ordinary reader is not perceiving that the person spoken of in Job 28:3 is man, and not God. Man possesses and exercises this mastery over nature, but is still ignorant of wisdom unless God bestows it on him.

It is only natural that Job should say this, after his painful experience of the lack of wisdom in his friends.

He sets an end to darkness. —This may be read as follows: Man sets an end to darkness, and searches out to the furthest limit the stones of darkness and the shadow of death.

The flood breaketh out ... is very uncertain. We may render, Man breaketh open a shaft where none sojourneth; they are forgotten where none passeth by: i.e., the laborers in these deserted places hang far from human settlements; they flit to and fro. Or it may be, The flood breaketh out from the inhabitants, even the waters forgotten of the foot: they are dried up, they are gone away from man: that is, the very course of rivers is subject to the will and power of man. Those who walk over the place forget that it was once a river, so completely has man obliterated the marks of it.

As for the earth ... —While the ploughman and the reaper till and gather the fruits of the earth on its surface, the miner far below maintains perpetual fires, as does the volcanic mountain also, with its fields and vineyards luxuriant and fertile on its sides.

The stones of it are the place of sapphires. —So ingenious is man that he discovers a place of which the stones are sapphires and the very dust gold, and a path that no bird of prey knows, and which the falcon’s eye has not seen.