Job 36:29 Commentary and Bible Study

The clouds above our heads present us with a daily display of God’s skill. How are they spread out across the skies, ever moving, ever changing, forming and reforming themselves as we watch? What shape will appear next? How do they maintain their position in the air, heavily laden with moisture? How do they obey the command of the Creator to go where he sends them? We can now explain in clinical scientific terms some of the physics involved, but this does not take do justice to the majesty and splendour of God’s display. The Scripture needs only to give one example of rain coming in answer to prayer (1 Kings 18:42-44) for us to know that every cloud is formed and sent where God pleases. In fact there are multiple testimonies to this in God’s word. ‘Or the noise of his tabernacle.’ Using poetic and very beautiful language, Elihu describes a thunderstorm and the complete control God has over it so that nothing is left to chance or happens without his direction. In this rich metaphor the clouds are pictured as the canvas of a tabernacle or tent in which God dwells. A powerful sound is heard within his tent. The reference is of course to the sound of a clap of thunder. The naturalistic explanation is a travesty. How can it not inspire awe in man’s heart to see massive convulsions of vapour as a thunder cloud rises up in stacked layers, bursting and expanding high up into the atmosphere? The scale is so enormous and the beauty is so great, ever changing before our eyes. We know that such a display is far beyond our powers. It is a grand spectacle, but as we observe we know we only see a very small part of what he is doing.‘Behold, he spreadeth his light upon it’, upon the canvas of the clouds. The flash of lightening coming forth at night, lights up the whole landscape, and for a brief instant the ceiling of the lower firmament is revealed. The rains that accompany the storm pour down vast quantities of water which is pictured as filling the deep into which the rivers run. They cover ‘the bottom [Hebrew, ‘root’] of the sea.’ ‘With clouds he covereth the light’, or as the NKJ renders it, ‘He covers his hands with lightening’ – in Hebrew, ‘on his palms or hands’ – meaning that God so governs the striking of the lightening that it is as if he has every bolt in his hands and by the merest gesture of a finger he controls infallibly where it will dart next and what it will touch. This is a remarkable image especially because lightning strike is so utterly unpredictable to human beings. God’s power and knowledge dwarfs our own for we scarcely understand the principles by which lightening operates, let alone being able to predict precisely where it will strike. But God is complete master of all he has made. It obeys him as if it were the humblest of servants, yet to us it is a force which we cannot tame.By providing or withholding the clouds and the rains that come from them, God judges the nations. The word ‘judges’ (verse 31) is not used here to indicate punishment only, but also blessing, as is clear from the second part of the verse. This marvellous power that God has to form the clouds on which we are so dependant for water, which are the means he uses to transport moisture from the oceans and bring it to the crops growing in our fields; this power is completely at his disposal and he uses it according to his purposes to bless or punish individual nations. The translation of verse 33 is difficult. ‘The noise thereof sheweth concerning it’ – the word ‘noise’ is Hebrew word meaning ‘shout’ or ‘roar’ referring to the sound of the thunder which forms the subject of the verb. The roar of the thunder declares or announces that God has sent forth a bolt of lightning and it has struck its target. Others translate the word ‘his friend’ or ‘his companion’ based on a different Hebrew word. In the second half of the verse it is also difficult to understand the connection of the word ‘cattle’. It may refer to the panic they experience at the approach of a storm, but there are alternative translations. The word for cattle comes from a word meaning ‘to get, acquire, buy’ or according to Barnes ‘gathering, collecting, assembling’. The word ‘also’ could be the Hebrew word for ‘anger’. All these alternatives have been tried by different translators with different resultant meanings.