The Sea (vv. 8-11)
8 Who shut in
the sea with doors?-
when it broke forth from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 when I prescribed bounds for it,
and set up a bar and doors,
11 and said, Thus far shall you come, and no further,
and there your proud waves must stop!
The creation of the world does not
leave it habitable: the dry land must yet be separated from the seas. We have
left behind the building image of the first strophe, and the image now is of
the sea as a violent brawling infant, which has begun its life of aggression by
‘breaking out’ (גיח) of the womb, a verb used elsewhere of a raiding party
(Judg. 20.33) and of the rushing o the Jordan (Job 40.23). The ‘swaddling bands’
(חֲתֻלָּתֹֽו) in which it is wrapped are not for the child’s protection but are
probably restraints to prevent the limbs from moving about.
The sea is prevented from encroaching
on the land by the bounds of a divine decree (חק), which is at the same time a
law of nature, and of which is supported by a physical barrier of a double door
(dual דלתים) with a bar across it, the usual defense of a city. (David J. A. Clines, “One or Two Things
You May Now Know about the Universe: The Cosmology of the Divine Speeches in
Job,” in Joban Papers [Hebrew Bible Monographs 102; Sheffield: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2023], 331-32)
