Job 12:15

Job 12:15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

Ver. 15. Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up] He not only, when he pleaseth, imprisoneth men, but waters also, that they cannot get out of the clouds, those bottles of rain, those airy sponges, vessels as thin as the liquor that is contained in them; it is from the power of God that they dissolve not upon us at once, and overwhelm us. Bartholinus reports that in the year of grace 1551 a great number of men and cattle were drowned by the sudden breaking of a cloud; various vineyards, stone walls, strong houses, were destroyed and ruined. At sea, sometimes, ships are by the same means sunk; seamen call it a water spout. Again, it is by the anger and judgments of God that the clouds are sometimes so closed up, that they yield no more water than iron or adamant. "If I shut up heaven," saith he, "that there be no rain," 2Ch 7:13 Deu 28:23-24. God threateneth, as a punishment of men’s sins, that the heavens over their heads shall be brass, and the earth under them shall be iron; that the rain of their land shall be made powder and dust; from heaven shall it come down upon them, &c., by exceeding great drought, grains of dust shall ascend into the air with the wind, and come down as the drops of rain in a shower when it is kindly weather. Thus it was in Ahab’s days, 1Ki 18:1; {See Trapp on "Joe 1:20"}

And they dry up] The rivers, fruits of the earth, roots of trees, all dry up, languish, and perish; fevers also, and other acute diseases, abound.

Also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth] They did so with an accent in the general deluge, and in Deucalion’s flood in Thessaly, besides many other great tracts and parts of the earth overturned by water. Pliny and Seneca give us sundry instances of towns and countries laid waste by water (Plin. Nat. Hist., lib. ii. cap. 90, 92; Sen. Nat. Quaest., lib. vi. cap. 23). What great damage was lately done about Amsterdam by water, and what breaking down of bridges, mills, and other houses, by excessive rain and floods thereupon, besides marring of grounds and rotting of cattle in many places among us, needeth not here to be related.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Job 12:15. He withholdeth the waters — Which are reserved in the clouds, that they may not fall upon the earth; and they dry up — Namely, the waters upon the earth, springs, brooks, and rivers dry up, as after the general deluge, to which here is a manifest allusion.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Probably alluding to the flood.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 15. He withholdeth the waters] This is, I think, an allusion to the third day's work of the creation, Ge 1:9: And God said, Let the waters be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. Thus the earth was drained, and the waters collected into seas, and bound to their particular places.

Also he sendeth them out] Here is also an allusion to the flood, for when he broke up the fountains of the great deep, then the earth was overturned.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

15. withholdeth the waters] In droughts. The second half of the verse refers to floods and cataclysms.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

With him is strength and wisdom,.... Which is repeated from Job 12:13; though different words are used but expressive of the same things; of the greatest strength might, and power of God, as the above instances show and of his most consummate, solid and substantial wisdom, as appears by what follows:

the deceived and the deceiver are his: the wisdom, knowledge, sagacity and penetration into affairs, which the one has not, and the other has are from him; he withholds them from the one, who are simple and void of understanding, and so are easily imposed upon and deceived, and he given them to others, who make as ill use of them, deceive their fellow creatures some are deceivers in civil things, in the business and affairs of life, who circumvent, trick, cheat, and defraud their neighbours in buying and selling, using deceitful weights and measures, and by many other artful methods; others are deceivers in religious affairs, such are false teachers, deceitful workers, that lie in wait deceive; their intention into deceive, they do it knowingly, and on purpose; they walk in craftiness, and handle the word of God deceitfully; there were many of these in the times of the apostles that had then entered into the world, but never more than now; the great impostor and deceiver of all is. Satan, to whom Jarchi restrains the words, who beguiled Eve, and indeed deceives the whole world, Rev 12:9. Multitudes are deceived by him, as well as by, his emissaries, false teachers, and by their own hearts lusts; and even God's elect themselves, while in a state of unregeneracy, bear this character of "deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures", Tit 3:3. Now these are "his", the Lord's; which Mr. Broughton interprets, "from him", "by him", and "for him"; the wit, wisdom, subtlety, and sagacity of deceivers, are from him; gifts of nature, in themselves good, bestowed on them by him; the ill use they make of it is from themselves, and owing to the vitiosity of their nature; nay, it is not only by his permission, but according to his ordination and will, that there are such persons in the world: in some cases they appear not only to have leave or permission, but an order to seduce, as to the, lying spirit sent forth to seduce Ahab, Kg1 22:20; yea, the princes of Noph being deceived, and they seducing Egypt, it is ascribed to the Lord's mingling a perverse spirit in the midst thereof, Isa 19:13; nay, when a prophet is deceived, God himself is said to deceive that prophet, Eze 14:9; so much is there of the permissive and efficacious will of God in this matter; not that he is the author of error and deceit, or infuses these into men, only the orderer, disposer, and, overruler of these things to some purposes orb is; he has power over them, and counterworks them, when he pleases; he can and does restrain them, and stops them, that they shall proceed no further, than he wills; false teachers would, if possible, deceive the very elect, Mat 24:24, but they cannot, and the reason is, God hinders them; Satan can go on no longer deceiving the world than it is the pleasure of God; a notorious instance of, hindering and, restraining him may be seen in Rev 20:3; and all the deceptions that are suffered to be among men they are all, wisely ordered, and overruled to good purposes, so as to issue well; the deception of our first parents was suffered and willed, that the grace of God might be displayed in the salvation of, men; errors and heresies are and must be for the trial and discovery of sound believers that they which are approved might be manifest; and men that like not to retain God in their knowledge reject both the light of nature and revelation, are left in righteous judgment to a reprobate mind, to give heed to seducing spirits, and are given up to strong delusions to believe a lie, that they might be damned, see Co1 11:19, Rom 1:28. Now all this shows the infinite and consummate wisdom of God; it is brought to prove, not only that he "knows" deceivers, and all their arts and tricks, through which men are deceived by them, as Aben Ezra interprets it, and so the Vulgate Latin version renders it; but he is the fountain of all that wisdom and knowledge in them, superior to others, which they abuse, nor can they use it without his leave; and he can and does counterwork them, and restrains them as he pleases, and makes all to work for and issue in his own glory.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

He withholdeth the waters - From the clouds and springs. He has control over the rains and the fountains; and when these are withheld, rivers and lakes become dry. The Syriac renders this, - “if he rebuke the waters,” supposing that there might perhaps be an allusion to the drying up of the Red Sea, or the formation of a passage for the Israelites. But it is remarkable that in the argument here there is no allusion to any historical fact, not to the flood, or to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or to the passage through the Red Sea, though these occurrences would have furnished so appropriate illustrations of the points under discussion. Is it to be inferred that Job had never heard of any of those events? Or may it have been that the lessons which they were adapted to teach had been actually embodied in the proverbs which he was using, and furnished well-known illustrations or the basis of such apothegms?

He sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth - Such inundations may have occurred in the swollen torrents of Arabia, and indeed are so common everywhere as to furnish a striking illustration of the power and sovereign agency of God.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

He withholdeth the waters; which are reserved in the clouds, that they may not fall upon the earth.

They dry up, i.e. the waters upon the earth, ponds, and springs, and brooks, and rivers.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

15. Is thought by some to refer to the deluge. Compare Psa_104:29-30.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up. God, at his pleasure, causes great droughts, which are among the worst calamities that can happen. He withholds the blessed rain from heaven, (Deu_11:17 1Ki_8:35 1Ki_17:1) and the springs shrink, and the rivers dry up, and a fruitful land is turned into a desert, and famine stalks through the land, and men perish by thousands. Also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth; i.e. he causes floods and inundations. Once upon a time he overwhelmed the whole earth, and destroyed almost the entire race of mankind, by a deluge of an extraordinary character, which so fixed itself in the human consciousness, that traces of it are to be found in the traditions of almost all the various races of men. But, beside this great occasion, he also in ten thousand other cases, causes, by means of floods, tremendous ruin and devastation, sweeping away crops and cattle, and even villages and cities, sometimes even "overturning the earth," causing lakes to burst, rivers to change their course, vast tracts of land to be permanently submerged, and the contour of coasts to be altered.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The waters - Which are reserved its the clouds, that they may not fall upon the earth. They - The waters upon the earth, springs, and brooks, and rivers. As at the time of the general deluge, to which here is a manifest allusion.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

He sends it away and it overturns the earth As His agents, as He did to the generation of Enosh, when He inundated a third of the world.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.