Job

2* “Who is this that is befogging a discussion

by phrases without knowledge?

3 Gird your loins like a man

so that I may ask you questions and you inform me.

4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of earth?

tell, if you have competent knowledge.

5 Who determined its dimensions? for you know!

or who stretched a measuring-line over it?

6 On what were its under-foundations planted?

or who laid its cornerstone

7* While the morning stars shouted together

and all the angels hurrahed?

8* Who enclosed the sea with doors

when it came bursting out of the womb,

9 When I made clouds its clothing

and thick air its wrapping

10 And broke a boundary for it

and set a bar and doors,

11 And said ‘You are to come to here but not beyond,

and here the pride of your waves shall break’?

12 Did you ever in your life command a morning,

let a dawn know its place

13 To take hold of earth’s edges

that wrong-doers may be shaken out of it?

14** It takes shape like clay printed with a stamp,

and colors like a dress,

15 And wrong-doers have their light withheld,

and a high-raised arm is broken.

16 Have you come to the sources of the sea

and gone inspecting through the deep?

17* Have the gates of death been laid open for you,

or the gatemen of gloom been afraid at sight of you?

18 Have you applied your attention to the breadths of earth?

tell, if you know it all.

19 In which direction does light have its home,

and which is the place for darkness?

20* Because you get it at its domain

and are expert in the paths to its house.

21 You know, because you were born then

and the number of your days is great!

22 Have you been into the reserves of snow,

and seen the reserves of hail

23 Which I am holding back for a day of crisis,

a day of battle and war?

24* In which direction is wind divided,

east wind scattered over earth?

25* Who laid out a system of channels for floods

and a course for the lightning of thunder,

26 To send rain on a country without a man,

a wilderness with no human being in it,

27* To satisfy the hunger of blasted and blighted places

and to make a thirsty place grow vegetation?

28 Does the rain have a father?

or who brought dewdrops to birth?

29* Out of whose body did the ice come?

and who gave birth to hoarfrost?

30* Water masks itself like a stone

and the surface of the deep coheres.

31* Shall you be tying the laces of the Pleiades

or unhitching the traces of Orion,

32** Making Mazzaroth come out at its time

and guiding Aldebaran with its sons under it?

33 Do you know the laws of the sky

or are you ordaining its supervision of the earth?

34* Will you send your voice aloft to the cloud

and have a spray of water cover you?

35 Will you send lightnings abroad, and have them go

and say to you ‘Here we are’?

36* Who implanted wisdom in the ibis?

or who gave discernment to the cock?

37 Who counts in wisdom the threads of mare’s-tail clouds,

and the water-bags of the sky who tips down

38 When loam runs into metal

and clods cling together?

39 Will you hunt prey for a lioness

and fill the need of two-year-old lions

40 When they are down in the lairs,

sitting in ambush in a covert?

41 Who gets its provision ready for the raven

when its young are clamoring to Deity,

wandering about in want of food?