Job 38:28

For thirty-seven chapters Job has grieved, and he and his friends have argued about why he suffers. Then the LORD answers him out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1), and he begins by asking who it is that darkens counsel with words that lack knowledge (Job 38:2). What follows, through Job 38–41, is a long run of questions about the world God made and keeps. He has already asked about the laying of the earth’s foundations (Job 38:4–7), the shutting in of the sea (Job 38:8–11) and the dwelling places of light and darkness (Job 38:19–21). Now the questions rise into the sky. The weather holds his attention through the whole of Job 38:22–38, and the stars stand in the middle of it.

Job lived among the men of the east, in the land of Uz, probably in Edom or northern Arabia. It is dry country, where a wadi can lie empty and then run as a torrent after one sudden storm, and where everyone’s life hung on rain and dew. Drought was a constant threat and good rain an unmistakable blessing. The nations round about gave the storm to gods of their own, and Baal of the Canaanites was honoured as the giver of rain and pictured with lightning as his weapon. In this speech one God speaks for all of it. Snow, hail, wind, flood, rain, dew, frost, stars, clouds and lightning are his, and each answers to him.

“Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail” (verse 22). The word for treasures, ʼôwtsâr, means a treasure or the place where one is kept, such as a storehouse, a treasury, a granary or an armory. It is plural here, and it pictures God holding great reserves of snow and hail that he brings out when he chooses. Scripture uses the same picture for the wind, which God brings out of his treasuries (Psalm 135:7, Jeremiah 10:13), and a psalm praises him as the one who sends the snow, the frost and the ice and then melts them by his word (Psalm 147:16–18).

The two verbs are about going in and looking. “Entered” is bā’tā, from bôwʼ, to go or come, and “seen” is tir’eh, from râʼâh, to see. God is asking whether Job has ever walked through these stores and looked them over, as their owner has.

Snow, sheleg, is the gentle one of the pair. Elsewhere it pictures a sinner made clean, “whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7), but here it is simply part of God’s store. Hail, bârâd, is the destructive one, the weapon of the seventh plague on Egypt (Exodus 9:23–24). The soft snowfall and the ruinous hailstorm are kept by the same hand.

Verse 23 says what the hail is kept for: “Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?” The verb châsak means to hold back, to withhold or to reserve, and “which” looks back to the stores of verse 22. “Trouble” is tsar, a narrow or tight place and so distress, and the word can also mean an adversary. “War” is milchâmâh, from a root meaning to fight, and it covers a single battle or warfare in general. Israel saw this reserve opened when the LORD cast great hailstones on the Amorites, and more died from the hail than from the sword (Joshua 10:11). The LORD fights for his people and judges his enemies with what he has stored, and he prepared it before the day came, for he declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).

“By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?” (verse 24). “Way” is derek, a road or path, and so also a course or manner of acting. God is asking about the route these things travel, and the question assumes that there is one. “Light” is ʼôwr, illumination, which here may be the daylight spreading at dawn or the flash of lightning. “Parted” is châlaq, to divide, share out or allot, so the light is something God apportions. “Scattereth” is pûwts, to dash in pieces, to disperse or to spread abroad.

The east wind, qâdîym, takes its name from its direction. It blew in from the desert, hot and dry, and it was feared. An east wind carried the locusts into Egypt (Exodus 10:13), beat on Jonah’s head until he fainted (Jonah 4:8) and broke the ships of Tyre in Ezekiel’s lament (Ezekiel 27:26). The pleasant light and the scorching wind are named side by side because God spreads them both. As Agur asks, who else has gathered the wind in his fists? (Proverbs 30:4).

Verse 25 turns to the thunderstorm: “Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder.” “Divided” is pâlag, to split, and “watercourse” is tᵉʻâlâh, a channel, conduit or trench of the kind dug to carry water. The “overflowing of waters” is sheṭeph, a flood or sudden deluge. So God is pictured as an engineer who has cut a channel in the sky for the cloudburst to run down. The lightning has its “way” too, and it is derek again, the same word as in verse 24. Even the bolt that looks wild to us travels a road God has marked. “Thunder” is qôwl, the ordinary word for a voice or a sound, which is why David can sing of the voice of the LORD upon the waters, when the God of glory thunders (Psalm 29:3–9).

Verses 26 and 27 say where that channelled rain is going: “To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; to satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth?”

“To cause it to rain” is one Hebrew verb, mâṭar, in the causative form, so God is the one who makes the rain fall. The “wilderness” is midbâr, open country that is uninhabited and unfarmed, fit at best for pasture. “Man” is ʼîysh, a man as an individual, and the KJV’s phrase “no man” comes twice in verse 26 to press the point that this rain falls where there is nobody to use it or even to see it.

People in Job’s world thought of rain mostly as God’s gift to their fields, and so do we. God tells Job that he also sends it to places that give us no return at all, because his care is for everything he has made. He delights in his own works and waters them for their own sake and for his glory. The Psalms rejoice in this. Psalm 104 surveys the whole creation living on what God provides, and says he waters the hills from his chambers and makes the grass grow (Psalm 104:13–14). He covers the heaven with clouds, prepares rain, makes grass grow on the mountains and feeds the beasts and the young ravens (Psalm 147:8–9), and the eyes of all wait on him for food in due season (Psalm 145:15–16). Jesus says the Father sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45), and Paul tells the people of Lystra that rain and fruitful seasons are God’s witness to himself (Acts 14:17). His unseen power and Godhead are clearly seen in the things he has made (Romans 1:20).

Verse 27 gives the result. “Satisfy” is sâbaʻ, to sate or fill to the full, so this is a soaking and a generous one. “Desolate” is shôwʼ, a word for a tempest and so for the devastation one leaves behind, and with “waste” it describes ground that is utterly empty. Out of that ground comes “the bud of the tender herb”. “Bud” is môwtsâʼ, a going forth or a source, here the place where the first grass comes out. It is a noun from the verb yâtsâʼ, to go out, which God will use of the constellations in verse 32. The God who brings life out of the unformed earth in Genesis 1 is still bringing green shoots out of barren land. Isaiah uses this very picture for God’s word, which comes down like the rain and the snow and makes the earth bring forth and bud (Isaiah 55:10–11).

For Job, this is quiet comfort inside the rebuke. A God who gives this much attention to empty desert knows about Job’s suffering and rules over it, even while Job is unable to see his reasons.

God alone is the father of the rain. The question in verse 28 is put so that Job will reach that answer himself: “Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?” “Hath” is yêsh, the Hebrew word for “there is”, so the question runs, “Is there a father to the rain?” “Father” is ʼâb, the one from whom something comes. “Begotten” is yâlad, to bear or bring forth a child. The rain has no source in human effort, in a nature that runs by itself, or in Baal. It comes from God, and so does the dew, which mattered as much as rain in that country because it kept plants alive through the dry months.

Verse 29 carries the family language further: “Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?” “Womb” is beṭen, the belly and especially the womb. “Gendered” is yâlad again, the same verb as “begotten” in verse 28. “Hoary frost” is kᵉphôwr, from a root meaning to cover, the white frost that covers the ground, and it is called the frost “of heaven” because it comes from above. God speaks in human terms, of fathers and mothers and births, so that we understand how personally and deliberately these things come from him. In Job’s warm country frost would have been a rare and striking sight, which gives the question more force.

These verses also show God as present and at work in his world now. He made it in the beginning and he has gone on ever since giving each fall of rain, each night’s dew and each morning’s frost.

From the frozen ground God lifts Job’s eyes to the night sky. In Israel the heavens were looked on with awe as God’s handiwork, and people read the stars for the farming year, for travel and for the calendar. The nations round about treated the stars as divine powers. God’s questions in verses 31 to 33 leave room for only one ruler of them.

The last two questions come back down to the storm, and they are about command. “Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee?” (verse 34). “Voice” is qôwl, the same word that was “thunder” in verse 25. God’s voice is the thunder, and Job is asked whether his own voice carries any authority up there. “Clouds” is ʻâb, from a root meaning to envelop, a thick, dark cloud. “Abundance of waters” is shiphʻâh mayim, a great quantity of water, a drenching flood and far more than a shower. Job could shout at the sky all day in a drought and stay dry. Jeremiah asks whether any of the idols of the nations can cause rain, or whether the heavens give showers on their own, and answers that it is the LORD who does it (Jeremiah 14:22).

“Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?” (verse 35). “Lightnings” is bârâq, lightning, a word also used for the flash of a polished weapon. “Send” is shâlach, to send out, as a master sends a messenger. “Say” is ʼâmar, the everyday verb for speaking. The lightnings are pictured as servants or soldiers who go where they are sent and then report in for the next order with the words “Here we are.” That is how readily the most violent thing in the sky obeys God. Scripture often joins his coming with storm. Sinai was wrapped in thunders and lightnings when he came down on it (Exodus 19:16–19), and David describes his rescue as the LORD thundering from heaven and shooting out lightnings (Psalm 18:7–15). Here he speaks to Job out of a whirlwind about the storm that is his own servant.

The New Testament tells us through whom God does all this. All things were made by the Word (John 1:3), who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). By the Son all things in heaven and earth were created, and by him they hold together (Colossians 1:16–17), and he upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). The storehouses of snow, the fathering of the rain and the leading of the stars are therefore the work of Christ.

When he walked the earth, he did what Job was asked whether he could do. He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still,” and the disciples asked what manner of man this was, that even the wind and the sea obey him (Mark 4:39–41). The storm answered him as the lightnings answer God. He walked on the sea (Matthew 14:25) and fed a multitude from a few loaves (John 6:11). All power in heaven and in earth is given to him (Matthew 28:18).

The wisdom that humbled Job is found in him as well. Christ is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). He is the light of the world (John 8:12). The God who satisfies the waste ground with rain offers living water through his Son (John 4:10–14, John 7:38).

The “day of battle and war” has its deepest meaning in him too. At the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15), and God made peace through the blood of that cross to reconcile all things to himself (Colossians 1:20). His rising from the tomb is the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:54–57), like the tender shoot coming up out of waste ground, and those who are joined to him walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). He will come again as the rider on the white horse to judge and make war in righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16), and that will be the end of all trouble and war. Until then the same Lord who governs every drop of dew works all things together for good to them that love God (Romans 8:28), and he tells us that a sparrow’s fall and the hairs of our head are known to the Father (Matthew 10:29–31).

These verses give us a God who is busy in places we will never see. He sends rain on land “where no man is” and brings up grass that only he will look at. If he gives that care to an empty wilderness, the details of our lives are well within his attention, including the ones we are unable to explain. Job was given no reason for his suffering. He was shown who governs the world, and it was enough to bring him to worship.

The passage also takes a weight off us. The clouds answer a voice greater than ours, and the seasons turn at God’s word. There is real freedom in leaving to God the things that only God can do. The winters of a life, its losses and its long barren stretches, lie in the hand that binds Pleiades and looses Orion, and the God who makes “the bud of the tender herb to spring forth” from desolate ground is able to bring new growth after them.

And the ordinary weather becomes a reason for praise. A snowfall, the dew on the grass, frost on a cold morning and thunder in the hills each have a Father. The world they belong to is a witness to his glory and is in his care, and so are we.