Genesis 1:9

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.

Genesis 7:11

7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month – on that day all the fountains of the great deep ³  burst open and the floodgates of the heavens ⁴  were opened.

Job 38:8-11

38:8 “Who shut up ⁵  the sea with doors

when it burst forth, ⁶  coming out of the womb,

38:9 when I made ⁷  the storm clouds its garment,

and thick darkness its swaddling band, ⁸ 

38:10 when I prescribed ⁹  its limits,

and set ¹⁰  in place its bolts and doors,

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

and no farther, ¹² 

here your proud waves will be confined’? ¹³ 

Psalms 104:8-9

104:8 as the mountains rose up,

and the valleys went down –

to the place you appointed for them. ¹⁴ 

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

so that they would not cover the earth again. ¹⁵ 

[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.

[7:11]  ³ tn The Hebrew term תְּהוֹם (tÿhom, “deep”) refers to the watery deep, the salty ocean – especially the primeval ocean that surrounds and underlies the earth (see Gen 1:2).

[7:11]  ⁴ sn On the prescientific view of the sky reflected here, see L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World (AnBib), 46.

[38:8]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ tn Dhorme suggested reversing the two verbs, making this the first, and then “shatter” for the second colon.

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

[38:11]  ¹² tn The text has תֹסִיף (tosif, “and you may not add”), which is often used idiomatically (as in verbal hendiadys constructions).

[38:11]  ¹³ 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.

[104:8]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “from your shout they fled, from the sound of your thunder they hurried off.”

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