Job 38:33

38:25-41 Hitherto God had put questions to Job to show him his ignorance; now God shows his weakness. As it is but little that he knows, he ought not to arraign the Divine counsels; it is but little he can do, therefore he ought not to oppose the ways of Providence. See the all-sufficiency of the Divine Providence; it has wherewithal to satisfy the desire of every living thing. And he that takes care of the young ravens, certainly will not be wanting to his people. This being but one instance of the Divine compassion out of many, gives us occasion to think how much good our God does, every day, beyond what we are aware of. Every view we take of his infinite perfections, should remind us of his right to our love, the evil of sinning against him, and our need of his mercy and salvation.

Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?.... Settled by the decree, purpose, and will of God, and are firm and stable; see Psalm 148:6 ; the laws and statutes respecting their situation, motion, operation, influence, and use, which are constantly observed; these are so far from being made by men, and at their direction, that they are not known by them, at least not fully and perfectly; canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? or over it; of the heavens over the earth; not such an one as judicial astrologers ascribe unto them, as to influence the bodies of men, especially the tempers and dispositions of their minds; to affect their wills and moral actions, the events and occurrences of their lives, and the fate of nations and kingdoms; their dominion is not moral and civil, but physical or natural, as to make the revolutions of night and day, and of the several seasons of the year; and to affect and influence the fruits of the earth, &c. see Genesis 1:16; but this dominion is solely under God, and at his direction, and is not of men's fixing.

Verse 33. - Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? i.e. the physical laws by which the course of nature is governed (comp. Psalm 119:90, 91 ; Psalm 148:6 ). The general prevalence of law in the material world is quite as strongly asserted by the sacred writers as by modern science. The difference is that modern science regards the laws as physical necessities, self-subsisting, while Scripture looks upon them as the ordinances of the Divine will. This latter view involves, of course, the further result that the Divine will can at any time suspend or reverse any of its enactments. Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? If Job does not even know the laws whereby the world is governed, much less can he establish such laws himself, and make them work. Job 38:33

Knowest thou? either, 1. Simply, and by speculation, dost thou understand them? Or, 2. Practically, or operatively, so as to establish or rule them, as the next clause implies. The ordinances of heaven; the laws, which are firmly established concerning their order, motion, or rest and their powerful influences upon this lower world. Didst thou give these laws? or dost thou perfectly know them? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? canst manage and overrule their influences, that they shall bring such seasons and such weather as thou wouldst have?

Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? - The laws or statutes by which the motions of the heavenly bodies are governed. These were wholly unknown in the time of Job, and the discovery of some of those laws - for only a few of them are yet known - was reserved to be the glory of the modern system of astronomy. The suggestion of the great principles of the system gave immortality to the name Copernicus; and the discovery of those laws in modern times has conferred immortality on the names of Brahe, Kepler, and Newton. The laws which control the heavenly bodies are the most sublime that are known to man, and have done more to impress the human mind with a sense of the majesty of God than any other: discoveries made in the material universe. Of course, all those laws were known to God himself, and he appeals to them in proof of his greatness and majesty. The grand and beautiful movements of the heavenly bodies in the time of Job were fitted to produce admiration; and one of the chief delights of those that dwelt under the splendor of an Oriental sky was to contemplate those movements, and to give names to those moving lights.

The discoveries of science have enlarged the conceptions of man in regard to the starry heavens far toward immensity; have shown that these twinkling lights are vast worlds and systems, and at the same time have so disclosed the laws by which they are governed as to promote, where the heart is right, intelligent piety, and elevate the mind to more glorious views of the Creator. Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? - That is, "dost thou assign the dominion of the heavens over the earth?" The reference is, undoubtedly, to the influence of the heavenly bodies upon sublunary objects. The exact extent of that cannot be supposed to have been known in the days of Job, and it is probable that much more was ascribed to the influence of the stars on human affairs than the truth would justify. Nor is its extent now known. It is known that the moon has an influence over the tides of the ocean; it may be that it has to some extent over the weather; and it is not impossible that the other heavenly bodies may have some effect on the changes observed in the earth which is not understood. Whatever it is, it was and is all known to God, and the idea here is, that it was a proof of his immense superiority over man.

31 Canst thou join the twistings of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? 32 Canst thou bring forth the signs of the Zodiac at the right time, And canst thou guide the Bear with its children? 33 Knowest thou the laws of heaven, Or dost thou define its influence on the earth? That מעדגּות here signifies bindings or twistings (from עדן equals ענד, Job 31:36) is placed beyond question by the unanimous translations of the lxx (δεσμόν) and the Targ. (שׁירי equals σειράς), the testimony of the Masora, according to which the word here has a different signification from 1 Samuel 15:32, and the language of the Talmud, in which מעדנין, Klim, c. 20, signifies the knots at the end of a mat, by loosing which it comes to pieces, and Succa, 13b, the bands (formed of rushes) with which willow-branches are fastened together above in order to form a booth (succa); but מדאני, Sabbat, 33a, signifies a bunch of myrtle (to smell on the Sabbath). מעדנות כּימה is therefore explained according to the Persian comparison of the Pleiades with a bouquet of jewels, mentioned on Job 9:9, and according to the comparison with a necklace (‛ipd-eth-thurajja), e.g., in Sadi in his Gulistan, p. 8 of Graf's translation: "as though the tops of the trees were encircled by the necklace of the Pleiades." The Arabic name thurajja (diminutive feminine of tharwân) probably signifies the richly-adorned, clustered constellation.

But כּימה signifies without doubt the clustered group, (Note: The verb כום is still in general use in the Piel (to heap up, form a heap, part. mukauwam, heaped up) and Hithpa. (to accumulate) in Syria, and kôm is any village desolated in days of yore whose stones form a desolate heap comp. Fleischer, De Glossis Habichtianis, p. 41f.]. If, according to Kamus, in old Jemanic kı̂m in the sense of mukâwim signifies a confederate (synon. chilt, gils), the כּימה would be a confederation, or a heap, assemblage (coetus) of confederates. Perhaps the כימה was regarded as a troop of camels; the Beduins at least call the star directly before the seven-starred constellation of the Pleiades the hâdi, i.e., the singer riding before the procession, who cheers the camels by the sound of the hadwa (חדוה), and thereby urges them on. - Wetzst. On πλειάδες, which perhaps also bear this name as a compressed group (figuratively γότρυς) of several stars (ὅτι πλείους ὁμοῦ κατὰ συναγωγήν εἰσι), vid., Kuhn's Zeitschr. vi. 282-285.) and Beigel (in Ideler, Sternnamen, S. 147) does not translate badly: "Canst thou not arrange together the rosette of diamonds (chain would be better) of the Pleiades?" As to כּסיל, we firmly hold that it denotes Orion (according to which the Greek versions translate Ὠρίων, the Syriac gaboro, the Targ. נפלא or נפילא, the Giant).