Genesis 1:9-10

1:9 God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place ¹  and let dry ground appear.” ²  It was so. 1:10 God called the dry ground “land” ³  and the gathered waters he called “seas.” God saw that it was good.

Job 38:8-11

38:8 “Who shut up ⁴  the sea with doors

when it burst forth, ⁵  coming out of the womb,

38:9 when I made ⁶  the storm clouds its garment,

and thick darkness its swaddling band, ⁷ 

38:10 when I prescribed ⁸  its limits,

and set ⁹  in place its bolts and doors,

38:11 when I said, ‘To here you may come ¹⁰ 

and no farther, ¹¹ 

here your proud waves will be confined’? ¹² 

Psalms 33:7

33:7 He piles up the water of the sea; ¹³ 

he puts the oceans ¹⁴  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. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 5:22

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

“You should tremble in awe before me! ¹⁶ 

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.” ¹⁷ 

[1:9]  ¹ 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.

[1:9]  ² tn When the waters are collected to one place, dry land emerges above the surface of the receding water.

[1:10]  ³ tn Heb “earth,” but here the term refers to the dry ground as opposed to the sea.

[38:8]  ⁴ tn The MT has “and he shut up.” The Vulgate has “Who?” and so many commentaries and editions adopt this reading, if not from the Vulgate, then from the sense of the sequence in the text itself.

[38:8]  ⁵ tn The line uses two expressions, first the temporal clause with גִּיחַ (giakh, “when it burst forth”) and then the finite verb יֵצֵא (yetse’, “go out”) to mark the concomitance of the two actions.

[38:9]  ⁶ tn The temporal clause here uses the infinitive from שִׂים (sim, “to place; to put; to make”). It underscores the sovereign placing of things.

[38:9]  ⁷ tn This noun is found only here. The verb is in Ezek 16:4, and a related noun is in Ezek 30:21.

[38:10]  ⁸ 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).

[38:10]  ⁹ tn Dhorme suggested reversing the two verbs, making this the first, and then “shatter” for the second colon.

[38:11]  ¹⁰ tn The imperfect verb receives the permission nuance here.

[38:11]  ¹¹ tn The text has תֹסִיף (tosif, “and you may not add”), which is often used idiomatically (as in verbal hendiadys constructions).

[38:11]  ¹² tn The MT literally says, “here he will put on the pride of your waves.” The verb has no expressed subject and so is made a passive voice. But there has to be some object for the verb “put,” such as “limit” or “boundary”; the translations “confined; halted; stopped” all serve to paraphrase such an idea. The LXX has “broken” at this point, suggesting the verse might have been confused – but “breaking the pride” of the waves would mean controlling them. Some commentators have followed this, exchanging the verb in v. 11 with this one.

[33:7]  ¹³ 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.

[33:7]  ¹⁴ tn Or “watery depths.” The form תְּהוֹמוֹת (tÿhomot, “watery depths”) is the plural form of תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “great deep”; see Gen 1:2).

[104:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “a boundary you set up, they will not cross, they will not return to cover the earth.”

[5:22]  ¹⁶ 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.

[5:22]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “it.” The referent is made explicit to avoid any possible confusion.