Job 38:10

38:10 when I prescribed ¹  its limits,

and set ²  in place its bolts and doors,

Genesis 1:9

1:9 God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place ³  and let dry ground appear.” ⁴  It was so.

Psalms 33:7

33:7 He piles up the water of the sea; ⁵ 

he puts the oceans ⁶  in storehouses.

Psalms 104:9

104:9 You set up a boundary for them that they could not cross,

so that they would not cover the earth again. ⁷ 

Proverbs 8:29

8:29 when he gave the sea his decree

that the waters should not pass over his command, ⁸ 

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

Jeremiah 5:22

5:22 “You should fear me!” says the Lord.

“You should tremble in awe before me! ⁹ 

I made the sand to be a boundary for the sea,

a permanent barrier that it can never cross.

Its waves may roll, but they can never prevail.

They may roar, but they can never cross beyond that boundary.” ¹⁰ 

¹ tc The MT has “and I broke,” which cannot mean “set, prescribed” or the like. The LXX and the Vulgate have such a meaning, suggesting a verb עֲשִׁית (’ashiyt, “plan, prescribe”). A. Guillaume finds an Arabic word with a meaning “measured it by span by my decree.” Would God give himself a decree? R. Gordis simply argues that the basic meaning “break” develops the connotation of “decide, determine” (2 Sam 5:24; Job 14:3; Dan 11:36).

² tn Dhorme suggested reversing the two verbs, making this the first, and then “shatter” for the second colon.

³ sn Let the water…be gathered to one place. In the beginning the water covered the whole earth; now the water was to be restricted to an area to form the ocean. The picture is one of the dry land as an island with the sea surrounding it. Again the sovereignty of God is revealed. Whereas the pagans saw the sea as a force to be reckoned with, God controls the boundaries of the sea. And in the judgment at the flood he will blur the boundaries so that chaos returns.

⁴ tn When the waters are collected to one place, dry land emerges above the surface of the receding water.

⁵ tn Heb “[he] gathers like a pile the waters of the sea.” Some prefer to emend נֵד (ged, “heap, pile”; cf. NASB) to נֹד (nod, “bottle”; cf. NRSV; NIV “into jars”), but “pile” is used elsewhere to describe water that the Lord confines to one place (Exod 15:8; Josh 3:13, 16; Ps 78:13). This verse appears to refer to Gen 1:9, where God decrees that the watery deep be gathered to one place so that dry land might appear. If so, the participles in this and the following line depict this action with special vividness, as if the reader were present on the occasion. Another option is that the participles picture the confinement of the sea to one place as an ongoing divine activity.

⁶ tn Or “watery depths.” The form תְּהוֹמוֹת (tÿhomot, “watery depths”) is the plural form of תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “great deep”; see Gen 1:2).

⁷ tn Heb “a boundary you set up, they will not cross, they will not return to cover the earth.”

⁸ tn Heb “his mouth.”

⁹ tn Heb “Should you not fear me? Should you not tremble in awe before me?” The rhetorical questions expect the answer explicit in the translation.

¹⁰ tn Heb “it.” The referent is made explicit to avoid any possible confusion.