¹ Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

² “Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge?¹

1. Cited in Job 42:3

³ Now brace yourself¹ like a man; I will question you, and you shall inform Me.²

1. Hebrew gird up your loins
2. Cited in Job 42:4

⁴ Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.

⁵ Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched a measuring line across it?

⁶ On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone,¹

1. Or who set its core in place

⁷ while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

⁸ Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,

⁹ when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its blanket,

¹⁰ when I fixed its boundaries and set in place its bars and doors,

¹¹ and I declared: ‘You may come this far, but no farther; here your proud waves must stop’?

¹² In your days, have you commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place,

¹³ that it might spread to the ends of the earth and shake the wicked out of it?

¹⁴ The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.

¹⁵ Light is withheld from the wicked, and their upraised arm is broken.

¹⁶ Have you journeyed to the vents of the sea or walked in the trenches of the deep?

¹⁷ Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?

¹⁸ Have you surveyed the extent of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this.

¹⁹ Where is the way to the home of light? Do you know where darkness resides,

²⁰ so you can lead it back to its border? Do you know the paths to its home?

²¹ Surely you know, for you were already born! And the number of your days is great!

²² Have you entered the storehouses of snow or observed the storehouses of hail,

²³ which I hold in reserve for times of trouble, for the day of war and battle?

²⁴ In which direction is the lightning dispersed, or the east wind scattered over the earth?

²⁵ Who cuts a channel for the flood or clears a path for the thunderbolt,

²⁶ to bring rain on a barren land, on a desert where no man lives,

²⁷ to satisfy the parched wasteland and make it sprout with tender grass?

²⁸ Does the rain have a father? Who has begotten the drops of dew?

²⁹ From whose womb does the ice emerge? Who gives birth to the frost from heaven,

³⁰ when the waters become hard as stone and the surface of the deep is frozen?

³¹ Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?

³² Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons¹ or lead out the Bear² and her cubs?

1. Or bring forth Mazzaroth in its season
2. Or Leo or Arcturus

³³ Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?

³⁴ Can you command the clouds so that a flood of water covers you?

³⁵ Can you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

³⁶ Who has put wisdom in the heart¹ or given understanding to the mind?

1. Or Who has given the ibis wisdom, that is, wisdom about the flooding of the Nile

³⁷ Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Or who can tilt the water jars of the heavens

³⁸ when the dust hardens into a mass and the clods of earth stick together?

³⁹ Can you hunt the prey for a lioness or satisfy the hunger of young lions

⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait in the thicket?

⁴¹ Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God as they wander about for lack of food?