Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 38

Then the Lord answered Job. —This chapter brings the grand climax and catastrophe of the poem. Unless all was to remain hopelessly uncertain and dark, there could be no solution of the questions so fiercely and obstinately debated but by the intervention of Him whose government was the matter in dispute. And so the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, or tempest: that is to say, the tempest which had been long gathering, and which had been the subject of Elihu’s remarks.

The one argument which is developed in the remaining chapters is drawn from man’s ignorance. There is so much in nature that man does not know and cannot understand, that it is absurd for him to suppose that he can judge rightly in matters concerning God’s moral government of the world. Though Job is afterwards (Job 42:8) justified by God, yet the tone of all that God says to him is more or less mingled with reproach.

Who is this? —The question may be answered by Job’s own words (Job 14:1). It is a man as thus described, a dying and enfeebled man, like Job himself, not even a man in his best condition, but one so persecuted and exhausted as Job: one, therefore, altogether unequal to the task he has undertaken.

That darkens counsel. —That is, probably, my counsel, which was the matter under debate. The words, however, are often used proverbially in a general sense. Such discussions, carried on, as they inevitably are, in entire ignorance by blind mortals, must seem so to God’s omniscience, and can only be the darkening of counsel by words without knowledge.

Where wast thou? —The comparison of the creation of the world to the building of an edifice is such a concession to the feebleness of man as in itself serves to heighten the effect of the inevitable answer to the question posed.

The morning stars. —The context seems to suggest that by the stars are meant the angels entrusted with their guardianship, from where Milton has borrowed his conceptions. The magnificent sublimity of the expression and the thought needs no comment.

And brake up for it my decreed place. —Rather, And prescribed for it my decree: that is to say, determined the boundaries of its dwelling. When we bear in mind the vast forces and unstable nature of the sea, it seems a marvel that it acknowledges any limits, and is held in restraint by them.