Job 36:29

36:29 Who can understand the spreading of the clouds,

the thunderings of his pavilion? ¹ 

Job 38:9

38:9 when I made ²  the storm clouds its garment,

and thick darkness its swaddling band, ³ 

Job 38:37

38:37 Who by wisdom can count the clouds,

and who can tip over ⁴  the water jars of heaven,

Genesis 1:6-7

1:6 God said, “Let there be an expanse ⁵  in the midst of the waters and let it separate water ⁶  from water. 1:7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. ⁷  It was so. ⁸ 

Psalms 135:7

135:7 He causes the clouds to arise from the end of the earth,

makes lightning bolts accompany the rain,

and brings the wind out of his storehouses.

Proverbs 30:4

30:4 Who has ascended into heaven, and then descended? ⁹ 

Who has gathered up the winds in his fists? ¹⁰ 

Who has bound up the waters in his cloak? ¹¹ 

Who has established all the ends of the earth? ¹² 

What is his name, and what is his son’s name? ¹³  – if you know!

Jeremiah 10:13

10:13 When his voice thunders, ¹⁴  the heavenly ocean roars.

He makes the clouds rise from the far-off horizons. ¹⁵ 

He makes the lightning flash out in the midst of the rain.

He unleashes the wind from the places where he stores it. ¹⁶ 

[36:29]  ¹ tn Heb “his booth.”

[38:9]  ² 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]  ³ tn This noun is found only here. The verb is in Ezek 16:4, and a related noun is in Ezek 30:21.

[38:37]  ⁴ tn The word actually means “to cause to lie down.”

[1:6]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew word refers to an expanse of air pressure between the surface of the sea and the clouds, separating water below from water above. In v. 8 it is called “sky.”

[1:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “the waters from the waters.”

[1:7]  ⁷ tn Heb “the expanse.”

[1:7]  ⁸ tn This statement indicates that it happened the way God designed it, underscoring the connection between word and event.

[30:4]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ 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.

[10:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “At the voice of his giving.” The idiom “to give the voice” is often used for thunder (cf. BDB 679 s.v. נָתַן Qal.1.x).

[10:13]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “from the ends of the earth.”

[10:13]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “he brings out the winds from his storehouses.”