Thomas Aquinas Commentary Job 28:1-11

"Surely there is a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine. Iron is taken out of the earth, And copper is molten out of the stone. [Man] setteth an end to darkness, And searcheth out, to the furthest bound, The stones of obscurity and of thick darkness. He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; They are forgotten of the foot; They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread; And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. The stones thereof are the place of sapphires, And it hath dust of gold. That path no bird of prey knoweth, Neither hath the falcon`s eye seen it: The proud beasts have not trodden it, Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out channels among the rocks; And his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light." — Job 28:1-11 (ASV)

Previously, Job had shown how frail and perishable the lot is that the wicked receive from God (Job 27:13). Now, he intends to show, on the contrary, the dignity of the spiritual good that righteous people receive from God even in this world. He understands this spiritual good to be categorized under wisdom. He therefore intends to show that wisdom is preferable to all physical things, both in its origin and in its precious worth (Job 28:15). He begins by showing that everything that seems precious in the physical world has its origin in specific places, starting with metals, which are considered precious in human opinion.

Metals are generated from moist vapors, released from the earth by the power of the sun and other stars and then trapped within it. This process is the origin of the pliability and fusibility of metals. In contrast, stones and similar things that are not pliable or fusible are generated from dry vapors trapped in the earth. Metals are classified according to the greater or lesser purity of the released vapor and the difference in their heat of fusion. Among these, gold seems to be the most pure, followed by silver, then bronze, and finally iron. Because gold is the most pure, it is generally found in its pure state in the sand of rivers, due to significant evaporation and the warmth of the sand. Silver is generally found in certain veins, either in the earth or in rocks. Bronze is found incorporated into rocks. Iron is found in muddy earth that has not yet been perfectly integrated, meaning it has not yet reached the stage of becoming stone.

Commenting on the various locations of the metals, he says, Silver has its origins in veins—that is, in certain specific places from which vapors suitable for the generation of silver are released. Thus, as soon as these vapors mix with either earth or stone, veins of silver are produced there. Regarding gold, he then says, and for gold there is a place in which it is refined, because nuggets of gold are collected from a great quantity of sand and then melted into one mass. This does not happen everywhere, but only in some specific place where a proper proportion of active power coincides with matter suitable for producing such a substance. Regarding iron, he says, Iron is taken from the earth, because it is found in the earth, as it were, not yet refined. Regarding bronze, he says, and stone, with which a vapor proportioned to its nature is mixed, released by heat of great intensity, is changed to bronze when the bronze-like substance found there is liquefied by the heat of fire.

He then proceeds to examine other things that have a specific time and place by divine arrangement and are therefore subject to divine knowledge. Most of these are hidden from humanity. The darkness of night hides the sun and many other things from us, but this happens by divine arrangement. Thus, he says, He placed a time for the darkness. Also, some things are hidden from us by their decay when they are broken down into their basic elements. These are known to God but hidden from us, and so he says, and he considers the end of the universe—that is, the end of the resolution of things.

Some things are also hidden from people because of the inaccessibility of their location. For example, some mountains are at times inaccessible, and on them are things removed from human sight. Expressing this, he says, and also the stone of the dark—which is the cliff of some high mountain always covered by clouds like darkness—and the shadow of death—some shadowy place in the mountain canyons that the life-giving heat of the sun never touches. A torrent divides them from people traveling. For torrents often flow down in the foothills of certain mountains that cannot be crossed, so that the road for travelers is on one bank of the river, with no access to the other bank. Sometimes, it happens that some people live here and there in such inaccessible places. Even the beggars who go everywhere do not dare to go to these places because of the difficult approach. And so he says, and the torrent divides from the people traveling, those men, whom—living in inaccessible places—the step of the poor man has forgotten, so that they do not go there, and those trackless, because there is no road open to them.

There are also some places that are inaccessible, not because of their location, but because of some extraordinary event, such as being ruined by a physical change like Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24). And so he says, The earth from which bread arose in its place (as was proper and fitting) has been destroyed by fire, for the cause of its destruction proceeds from a very great heat. When there is a great abundance of heat, the dissolutions of both dry and wet elements attain a high degree of integration, which generates certain precious things like rocks or metals from them. Regarding the precious stones that are formed from dry evaporation, he says, Places whose stones are sapphires, in the land ruined by fire. Regarding the precious metals that are generated from moist evaporation, he says, whose dust is gold. Because these places release a harmful air from an abundance of sulfur, not only humans but also brute animals avoid them. First, regarding the birds, about which there is less to consider, he says, Land—that kind of earth—does not know the path of the bird. That is, the bird does not dare to fly over it or even approach it because of the harmful air. Thus he says, nor has the eye of the vulture looked on it, which can normally see things from far away. Alternatively, one can interpret the text in another way: This land has not known the path of a bird. The bird has no experience of that land, because the bird does not pass through it, nor has he—that is, anyone—in that land, looked upon the eye of the vulture. Next, he treats of humans, saying, The sons of peddlers have not trodden it (meaning the merchants who are accustomed to going to hard-to-reach places for profit). Then he treats of the four-footed animals, saying, nor will the lioness, who lives in wild places, cross it.

Although these places are hidden from humans, they are not hidden from God, who exercises His power in both the mountains and the rivers. And so he says, To the flinty rock—the mountains made of rock—he extends his hand—His power. He demonstrates this in two ways. First, by the fact that mountains are sometimes completely leveled to the ground, which he expresses by saying, he overturns the mountains from their foothills. Second is the fact that waters cross through the middle of the mountains , as though a way were carved for them by divine power through the rocks. And so he says, He hollows out watercourses in the rocks, in the courses of streams.

Just as His power extends to do all splendid deeds, so His wisdom is extended to know every precious thing, and so he says, his eye has seen every precious thing. For if He can lay the mountains low, cut through rocks, and exercise the same power over all the earth, He can consequently see the precious things hidden there, although the eye of man cannot see them. His eye not only sees those things that lie hidden in the earth, but he also searches fully the depths of rivers. That is, He knows what lies hidden in the depths of rivers so perfectly that He seems to carefully inspect them. The sign of this is that he has brought hidden things to light to reveal them to humanity.