Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 38:37
Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven,
37. The verse carries on the thought of the preceding.
who can number ] Or, who numbereth in wisdom? Who musters or counts off the clouds, that they be sufficient and not in excess for the purpose required of them?
The second clause means,
Or who poureth out the bottles of the heavens?
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Who can number the clouds? – The word here rendered clouds ( shachaqiym) is applied to the clouds as made up of small particles – as if they were composed of fine dust, and hence, the word number is applied to them, not as meaning that the clouds themselves were innumerable, but that no one could estimate the number of particles which enter into their formation.
In wisdom – By his wisdom. Who has sufficient intelligence to do it?
Or who can stay the bottles of heaven? – Margin, as in Hebrew cause to lie down. The clouds are here compared with bottles, as if they held the water in the same manner; compare the notes at Job 26:8. The word rendered stay in the text, and in the margin cause to lie down, is rendered by Umbreit, pour out, from an Arabic signification of the word. Gesenius supposes that the meaning to pour out is derived from the idea of causing to lie down, from the fact that a bottle or vessel was made to lie down or was inclined to one side when its contents were poured out. This explanation seems probable, though there is no other place in the Hebrew where the word is used in this signification. The sense of pouring out agrees well with the connection.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 37. Who can number the clouds] Perhaps the word saphar, which is commonly rendered to number, may here mean, as in Arabic, to irradiate, as Mr. Good contends; and may refer to those celestial and inimitable tinges which we sometimes behold in the sky.
Bottles of heaven] The clouds: it is an allusion to the girbahs, or bottles made of skin, in which they are accustomed to carry their water from wells and tanks.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Who can wisely search out and exactly find the number of the clouds? They are numberless, and filled with water, as the next clause implies.
Who can stay the bottles of heaven, to wit, the clouds? in which the rain is kept as in bottles, out of which God poureth it when he sees fit.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
37. Who appoints by his wisdomthe due measure of the clouds?
stayrather, “empty”;literally, “lay down” or “incline” so as to pourout.
bottles of heavenrain-filledclouds.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Who can number the clouds in wisdom?…. Or has such wisdom as to be able to count them when the heavens are full of them; hence they are used to denote a great multitude, Isa 55:8; or “declare” them t, set forth and explain the nature of them, their matter, motion, and use; none can do this perfectly or completely. Aben Ezra interprets it, who can make them as sapphire? in which he is followed by Mr. Broughton and others u; the sapphire is a precious stone, very clear and lucid, of a sky colour. And then the sense is, who can make a clear and serene sky, when it is cloudy? None but the Lord; see Job 37:11;
or who can stay the bottles of heaven? or “barrels”, as Mr. Broughton; the clouds in which the rain is bottled or barrelled up; and when it is the pleasure of God to pour them out, who can stay, stop, or restrain them? or who can “cause [them] to lie down” w? that is, on the earth; to descend or “distil” on it, as the same translator. Who can do this, when it is the will of God to withhold them? To stop or unstop, those bottles, to restrain rain, or pour it forth, is entirely at his dispose, and not man’s; see Job 38:34.
t “enarrabit”, V. L. “vel explicabit”, Mercerus, Schmidt. u Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Vid. Ravii Orthograph. Ebr. p. 22. w “cubare faciet”, Drusius, Schmidt “quiescere”, Montanus; “descendere”, Pagninus, so Aben Ezra; “effundit humi”, Schultens.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(37) Who can stay the bottles of heaven?This is understood in two opposite sensesof pouring out the bottles or of laying them up in store. It is not easy to decide which is most in accordance with the context, for the context also is somewhat uncertain, according as we interpret the solid mass of thick mud or of hard, dry soil. The survey of physical phenomena ends with this verse.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
37. Number the clouds A metaphor taken from a military enrolment same word as in 2Sa 24:10.
Who can stay the bottles of heaven Rather, the bottles of heaven, who inclines them? as in the margin, with the meaning, “As water is poured from a bottle when inclined, so when the clouds are full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth.”
Ecc 11:3. Sir J. Herschel’s explanation of the formation and descent of rain is as good, perhaps, as any yet proposed. “In whatever part of a cloud the original ascensional movement of the vapour ceases, the elementary globules of which it consists being abandoned to the action of gravity, begin to fall. By the theory of the resistance of fluids, the velocity of descent in air of a given density is as the square root of the diameter of the globule. The larger globules, therefore, fall fastest, and if (as must happen) they overtake the slower ones they incorporate, and, the diameter being thereby increased, the descent becomes more rapid, and the encounters more frequent, till at length the globule emerges from the lower surface of the cloud at the ‘ vapour plain,’ as a drop of rain; the size of the drops depending on the thickness of the cloud stratum and its density.” Meteorology, s.v.
Bottles of heaven “This phrase,” says Dr. Good, “is a direct Arabism for the clouds, and is to be found in every poet.” Among the citations Schultens makes from the Arabic poets is the following translation:
A broad, deep cloud, that fed the rest, was nigh,
And burst its bottle
A figure of the south wind adorns the Temple of Winds at Athens, holding a kind of pitcher (a swelling urceus) in his bared arms, as if it would deluge the earth. (See Wordsworth’s Athens and Attica, p. 153.) Scott observes that this image is similar to the inclined urn which the heathen poets place in the hand of a river god; the urn represents the fountain from which the river flows, and what fountains are to rivers the clouds are to rain. Dr. Hutchinson thinks that there is an allusion to the working of a Persian wheel, “the pitchers or bottles of which, as they come up, lie down or along, and so discharge their contents. As this discharge can only take place at a particular moment, and in consequence of the proper working of the wheel, so the discharge from the clouds can only take place at the proper moment, when allowed by the Creator.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 38:37 Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven,
Ver. 37. Who can number the clouds in wisdom? ] Quis sapphirinas efficit nubes? Who can make the clouds like sapphire, that is bright and clear? so some read it. Others, Who can declare the clouds? sc. their number, nature, and uses?
Or who can stay the bottles of heaven?
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
number: Gen 15:5, Psa 147:4
or who: Gen 8:1, Gen 9:15
stay: Heb. cause to lie down
Reciprocal: Gen 8:2 – the rain Job 26:8 – bindeth up Job 36:29 – the spreadings Job 37:13 – whether Psa 104:13 – watereth Jer 5:24 – that giveth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 38:37-38. Who can number the clouds in wisdom? Who can wisely search, and exactly find out, the number of the clouds? which are indeed numberless, and filled with water as the next clause implies. Or who can stay the bottles of heaven? Can prevent the rain from being poured upon the earth out of the clouds, in which it is kept as in bottles; when the dust groweth into hardness When the earth grows very hard, in the time of a great drought; and the clods cleave fast together Become close and compact. Or the condition of the earth may be intended presently after a fall of rain, when the ground, which in the time of drought was much of it dissolved into dust, is now, by the rain, cemented or united together.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
38:37 Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the {y} bottles of heaven,
(y) That is, the clouds in which the water is contained as in bottles.