Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1751



Verses 4-7
Job 38:4-7  4  Where wast thou when I established the earth? Say, if thou art capable of judging! 5 Who hath determined its measure, if thou knowest it, Or who hath stretched the measuring line over it? 6 Upon what are the bases of its pillars sunk in, Or who hath laid its corner-stone,  7  When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy? The examination begins similarly to Job 15:7. In opposition to the censurer of God as such the friends were right, although only negatively, since their conduct was based on self-delusion, as though they were in possession of the key to the mystery of the divine government of the world. ידע בּינה signifies to understand how to judge, to possess a competent understanding, 1Ch 12:32; 2Ch 2:12, or (ידע taken not in the sense of novisse, but cognoscere) to appropriate to one's self, Pro 4:1; Isa 29:24. כּי, Job 38:5, interchanges with אם (comp. Job 38:18), for כּי תדע signifies: suppose that thou knowest it, and this si forte scias is almost equivalent to an forte scis, Pro 30:4. The founding of the earth is likened altogether to that of a building constructed by man. The question: upon what are the bases of its pillars or foundations sunk (טבע, Arab. ṭb‛, according to its radical signification, to press with something flat upon something, comp. Arab. ṭbq, to lay two flat things on one another, then both to form or stamp by pressure, and to press into soft pliant stuff, or let down into, immergere, or to sink into, immergi), points to the fact of the earth hanging free in space, Job 26:7. Then no human being was present, for man was not yet created; the angels, however, beheld with rejoicing the founding of the place of the future human family, and the mighty acts of God in accordance with the decree of His love (as at the building of