Text -- Job 38:34-41 (NET)

38:34 Can you raise your voice to the clouds so that a flood of water covers you? 38:35 Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go? Will they say to you, ‘Here we are’? 38:36 Who has put wisdom in the heart, or has imparted understanding to the mind? 38:37 Who by wisdom can count the clouds, and who can tip over the water jars of heaven, 38:38 when the dust hardens into a mass, and the clumps of earth stick together? 38:39 “Do you hunt prey for the lioness, and satisfy the appetite of the lions, 38:40 when they crouch in their dens, when they wait in ambush in the thicket? 38:41 Who prepares prey for the raven, when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 38:34

¹ tc The LXX has “answer you,” and some editors have adopted this. However, the reading of the MT makes better sense in the verse.

NET Notes: Job 38:36

¹ tn This verse is difficult because of the two words, טֻחוֹת (tukhot, rendered here “heart”) and שֶׂכְוִי (sekhvi, here “mind”). They have been translated a number of ways: “meteor” and “celestial appearance”; the stars “Procyon” and “Sirius”; “inward part” and “mind”; even as birds, “ibis” and “cock.” One expects them to have something to do with nature – clouds and the like. The RSV accordingly took them to mean “meteor” (from a verb “to wander”) and “a celestial appearance.” But these meanings are not well-attested.

NET Notes: Job 38:37

¹ tn The word actually means “to cause to lie down.”

NET Notes: Job 38:38

¹ tn The word means “to flow” or “to cast” (as in casting metals). So the noun developed the sense of “hard,” as in cast metal.

NET Notes: Job 38:39

¹ tn Heb “fill up the life of.”

NET Notes: Job 38:41

¹ tn The verse is difficult, making some suspect that a line has dropped out. The little birds in the nest hardly go wandering about looking for food. Dhorme suggest “and stagger for lack of food.”