Job 38:37

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?] i.e. The clouds, fitly compared to bottles, as those vessels that hold the rain, and pour it out on the earth, when God pleaseth to turn the mouths of those bottles downward. This is a great miracle, saith Lavater, that whereas water is fluid, and beareth downward, yet it abideth in the lofty and soft air, nor can fall but where and when God appointeth.

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 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.

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

That is, the clouds wherein the water is contained as in bottles.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Who appoints by his wisdom the due measure of the clouds?

stay--rather, "empty"; literally, "lay down" or "incline" so as to pour out.

bottles of heaven--rain-filled clouds.

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 37. Who can number the clouds] Perhaps the word ספר 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.

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

(37) Who can stay the bottles of heaven?—This is understood in two opposite senses—of 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.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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?

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.

When they couch in their dens, and abide in the covert to lie in wait? Which some understand of old lions, who, for want of strength, lie couchant in their dens, or in some covert place, waiting for any prey that passes by, to seize upon it. But the same pasture and places are used by younger lions, as well as old ones; who are emblems of wicked men, cruel persecutors, and bloodthirsty tyrants, who fill their palaces and kingdoms with murder and rapine; see Psa 10:8, Nah 2:11.

Job 38:41

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

Who can number the clouds? - The word here rendered “clouds” (שׁחקים 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.

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

Sleep. The ancients have celebrated this harmony. (Cic.[Cicero?] Somn. Scip.) --- Septuagint, "Who numbereth the clouds in wisdom, or hath bent the sky down to the earth?" Protestants, "or who can stay the bottles of heaven?" (Haydock) --- Canst thou cause it to rain, or to be fair? (Calmet) or make the celestial bodies (Haydock) rest from motion? (Worthington)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

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.

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

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 ‘mid the warring sky.

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.”

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

Who can number the clouds in wisdom? i.e. Who is wise enough to number the clouds, and say how many they are? Or who can stay the bottles of heaven! rather, Who can pour out? (see the Revised Version). The "bottles," or "water-skins," of heaven are the dense clouds heavy with rain, which alternately hold the moisture like a reservoir, and pour it out upon the earth. God alone can determine when the rain shall fall.

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

charges Heb. יספר, will speak and charge with their mission.

the bottles Made like bottles in which the rains are collected, as in (I Sam. 1:24), “and an earthenware jug (ונבל) of wine.”

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.