Job 38:16 | KingComments | STEP | God asks Job if he knows anything of “the springs of the sea” and “the recesses of the deep” ( ). Has he seen and searched the recesses of the deep, so that he has discovered the springs from which the sea springs? And is he so at home at the recesses of the deep that he has walked there? The sea contains unprecedented depths where it is completely dark, where man cannot come, and if he could come there he could see nothing. But to God these inaccessible depths hold no secrets. He walks there in perfectly familiar territory ( ). Man lacks the knowledge of those depths, because he cannot get there. If he doesn’t know the natural depths, what does he know about God’s way in his life with the depths He sometimes leads him through? It may be enough that God knows his path of life and purpose, right through the sea and great waters of trials. In God asks Job about an even greater and darker depth than that of the sea, the depths of the realm of the dead. As long as someone is in the land of the living, it remains a mystery what exactly “the gates of death” are, how he should imagine them. He has no view or insight into them. By also speaking of “the gates of deep darkness” God adds to the state of death the aspect of darkness. To be able to answer these questions, a person must first experience it. But once he has experienced it, he cannot go back to tell about it because he is dead. Man doesn’t know from experience what death is or how he leaves life and how it feels. For God, however, death knows no secrets ( ). He knows exactly how death works. The New Testament believer also does not know exactly how death works. What he is allowed to know is that death no longer has authority over him. It can happen that he dies. He doesn’t know how it goes, but he does know where he is going, namely to his Lord and Savior in paradise ( ; ). The believer belongs to the church of which the Lord Jesus said, “and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” ( ). After the depths it is about the widths. God asks Job whether he has “understood the expanse of the earth” ( ). The meaning of the question is whether Job gave special attention to the widths of the earth, i.e. the surface of the earth (as opposed to the sea), so that as a result he gained a thorough and extensive knowledge of them. Job had no knowledge of the fact that the earth is a globe and that the widest place on earth is the equator. For him the widths of the earth were what he saw around him. It should bring Job to understand that man’s field of vision is limited to the horizon, but that God oversees everything. God concludes this series of questions with an invitation, or perhaps more of a challenge, to Job to make it known to Him if he knows “all this”. To Him it is not about the concrete answer to the individual questions, but about the answer to all questions, about their coherence, for all questions are interrelated. Job is silent and does not answer. In the light of what God asks of him, it begins to dawn on him that he has spoken “words without knowledge” ( ).

‏ Job 38:16

Unprecedented Depths and Widths

God asks Job if he knows anything of “the springs of the sea” and “the recesses of the deep” (Job 38:16). Has he seen and searched the recesses of the deep, so that he has discovered the springs from which the sea springs? And is he so at home at the recesses of the deep that he has walked there? The sea contains unprecedented depths where it is completely dark, where man cannot come, and if he could come there he could see nothing.

But to God these inaccessible depths hold no secrets. He walks there in perfectly familiar territory (Psa 77:19). Man lacks the knowledge of those depths, because he cannot get there. If he doesn’t know the natural depths, what does he know about God’s way in his life with the depths He sometimes leads him through? It may be enough that God knows his path of life and purpose, right through the sea and great waters of trials.

In Job 38:17 God asks Job about an even greater and darker depth than that of the sea, the depths of the realm of the dead. As long as someone is in the land of the living, it remains a mystery what exactly “the gates of death” are, how he should imagine them. He has no view or insight into them. By also speaking of “the gates of deep darkness” God adds to the state of death the aspect of darkness.

To be able to answer these questions, a person must first experience it. But once he has experienced it, he cannot go back to tell about it because he is dead. Man doesn’t know from experience what death is or how he leaves life and how it feels. For God, however, death knows no secrets (Job 26:6). He knows exactly how death works.

The New Testament believer also does not know exactly how death works. What he is allowed to know is that death no longer has authority over him. It can happen that he dies. He doesn’t know how it goes, but he does know where he is going, namely to his Lord and Savior in paradise (Lk 23:43; Phil 1:23). The believer belongs to the church of which the Lord Jesus said, “and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Mt 16:18b).

After the depths it is about the widths. God asks Job whether he has “understood the expanse of the earth” (Job 38:18). The meaning of the question is whether Job gave special attention to the widths of the earth, i.e. the surface of the earth (as opposed to the sea), so that as a result he gained a thorough and extensive knowledge of them. Job had no knowledge of the fact that the earth is a globe and that the widest place on earth is the equator. For him the widths of the earth were what he saw around him. It should bring Job to understand that man’s field of vision is limited to the horizon, but that God oversees everything.

God concludes this series of questions with an invitation, or perhaps more of a challenge, to Job to make it known to Him if he knows “all this”. To Him it is not about the concrete answer to the individual questions, but about the answer to all questions, about their coherence, for all questions are interrelated. Job is silent and does not answer. In the light of what God asks of him, it begins to dawn on him that he has spoken “words without knowledge” (Job 38:2).