Where were you when I established the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said:

while the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Who provides the raven’s food
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?

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when they crouch in their dens
and lie in wait within their lairs?

Can you fasten the chains of the Pleiades
or loosen the belt of Orion?

Can you hunt prey for a lioness
or satisfy the appetite of young lions

Have you entered the place where the snow is stored?
Or have you seen the storehouses of hail,

Who is this who obscures My counsel
with ignorant words?

Who enclosed the sea behind doors
when it burst from the womb,

What supports its foundations?
Or who laid its cornerstone

Have you ever in your life commanded the morning
or assigned the dawn its place,

Have you traveled to the sources of the sea
or walked in the depths of the oceans?

when I declared: “You may come this far, but no farther;
your proud waves stop here”?

Can you bring out the constellations in their season
and lead the Bear and her cubs?

Where is the road to the home of light?
Do you know where darkness lives,

Get ready to answer Me like a man;
when I question you, you will inform Me.

Do you know the laws of heaven?
Can you impose its authority on earth?

Who put wisdom in the heart
or gave the mind understanding?

Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain
or clears the way for lightning,

when I determined its boundaries
and put its bars and doors in place,

Have the gates of death been revealed to you?
Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

when I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its blanket,

so it may seize the edges of the earth
and shake the wicked out of it?

The earth is changed as clay is by a seal;
its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.

Does the rain have a father?
Who fathered the drops of dew?

Whose womb did the ice come from?
Who gave birth to the frost of heaven

Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go?
Do they report to you: “Here we are”?

What road leads to the place where light is dispersed?
Where is the source of the east wind that spreads across the earth?

Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?

Light is withheld from the wicked,
and the arm raised in violence is broken.

to bring rain on an uninhabited land,
on a desert with no human life,

Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
Or who can tilt the water jars of heaven

Can you command the clouds
so that a flood of water covers you?

when water becomes as hard as stone,
and the surface of the watery depths is frozen?

Have you comprehended the extent of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know all this.

when the dust hardens like cast metal
and the clods of dirt stick together?

which I hold in reserve for times of trouble,
for the day of warfare and battle?

to satisfy the parched wasteland
and cause the grass to sprout?

so you can lead it back to its border?
Are you familiar with the paths to its home?

Don’t you know? You were already born;
you have lived so long!