Discovery BoxGenesis 1:9-10
Context1:9 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.
Joshua 10:12-14
Context10:12 The day the Lord delivered the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua prayed to the Lord before Israel: 4
“O sun, stand still over Gibeon!
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon!”
10:13 The sun stood still and the moon stood motionless while the nation took vengeance on its enemies. The event is recorded in the Scroll of the Upright One. 5 The sun stood motionless in the middle of the sky and did not set for about a full day. 6 10:14 There has not been a day like it before or since. The Lord obeyed 7 a man, for the Lord fought for Israel!
Job 38:8-10
Context38:8 “Who shut up 8 the sea with doors
when it burst forth, 9 coming out of the womb,
38:9 when I made 10 the storm clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band, 11
38:10 when I prescribed 12 its limits,
and set 13 in place its bolts and doors,
Proverbs 8:29
Context8:29 when he gave the sea his decree
that the waters should not pass over his command, 14
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
Proverbs 30:4
Context30:4 Who has ascended into heaven, and then descended? 15
Who has gathered up the winds in his fists? 16
Who has bound up the waters in his cloak? 17
Who has established all the ends of the earth? 18
What is his name, and what is his son’s name? 19 – if you know!
[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.
[10:12] 4 tn Heb “Then Joshua spoke to the
[10:13] 5 tn Heb “Is it not written down in the Scroll of the Upright One.” Many modern translations render, “the Scroll [or Book] of Jashar,” leaving the Hebrew name “Jashar” (which means “Upright One”) untranslated.
[10:13] 6 tn Heb “and did not hurry to set [for] about a full day.”
[10:14] 7 tn Heb “listened to the voice of.”
[38:8] 8 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] 9 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] 10 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] 11 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] 12 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] 13 tn Dhorme suggested reversing the two verbs, making this the first, and then “shatter” for the second colon.
[30:4] 15 sn To make his point Agur includes five questions. These, like Job 38–41, or Proverbs 8:24-29, focus on the divine acts to show that it is absurd for a mere mortal to think that he can explain God’s work or compare himself to God. These questions display mankind’s limitations and God’s incomparable nature. The first question could be open to include humans, but may refer to God alone (as the other questions do).
[30:4] 16 sn The questions are filled with anthropomorphic language. The questioner is asking what humans have ever done this, but the meaning is that only God has done this. “Gathering the wind in his fists” is a way of expressing absolute sovereign control over the forces of nature.
[30:4] 17 sn The question is comparing the clouds of the heavens to garments (e.g., Job 26:8). T. T. Perowne writes, “Men bind up water in skins or bottles; God binds up the rain-floods in the thin, gauzy texture of the changing clouds, which yet by his power does not rend under its burden of waters.”
[30:4] 18 sn The ends of the earth is an expression often used in scripture as a metonymy of subject referring to the people who live in the ends of the earth, the far off and remote lands and islands. While that is possible here as well, this may simply be a synecdoche saying that God created the whole world, even the most remote and distant places.
[30:4] 19 sn The reference to “son” in this passage has prompted many suggestions down through the years: It was identified as Israel in the Jewish Midrashim, the Logos or demiurge by some of the philosophers and allegorical writers, as simple poetic parallelism without a separate identity by some critical scholars, and as Jesus by Christian commentators. Parallels with Ugaritic are interesting, because Baal is referred to as a son; but that is bound up within the pantheon where there was a father god. Some of the Jewish commentators exhibit a strange logic in expressing what Christians would say is only their blindness to the full revelation: There is little cogency in this being a reference to Jesus because if there had been such a person at any time in the past he would have left some tradition about it through his descendants (J. H. Greenstone, Proverbs, 317). But Judaism has taught from the earliest times that Messiah was preexistent (especially in view of Micah 5 and Daniel 7); and the claims of Jesus in the Gospels bear this out. It seems best to say that there is a hint here of the nature of the Messiah as Son, a hint that will later be revealed in full through the incarnation.
