² Who is this who obscures My counsel
with ignorant words?^(B)
3 Get ready to answer Me like a man;
when I question^(C) you, you will inform Me.
⁴ Where were you when I established^(D) the earth?
Tell Me, if you have^[a] understanding.
⁵ Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
⁶ What supports its foundations?
Or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ while the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God^(E) shouted for joy?

⁸ Who enclosed the sea behind doors
when it burst from the womb,
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its blanket,^[b](F)
10 when I determined its boundaries^[c]
and put its bars and doors in place,
¹¹ when I declared: “You may come this far, but no farther;
your proud waves stop here”?

¹² Have you ever in your life commanded the morning
or assigned the dawn its place,
¹³ so it may seize the edges of the earth
and shake the wicked out of it?
¹⁴ The earth is changed as clay is by a seal;
its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.
¹⁵ Light^[d] is withheld from the wicked,
and the arm raised in violence is broken.

¹⁶ Have you traveled to the sources of the sea
or walked in the depths of the oceans?
¹⁷ Have the gates^(G) of death been revealed to you?
Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
¹⁸ Have you comprehended the extent of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know all this.

¹⁹ Where is the road to the home of light?
Do you know where darkness lives,
²⁰ so you can lead it back to its border?
Are you familiar with the paths to its home?
²¹ Don’t you know? You were already born;^(H)
you have lived so long!^[e]
22 Have you entered the place where the snow is stored?
Or have you seen the storehouses of hail,^(I)
23 which I hold in reserve for times of trouble,
for the day of warfare and battle?^(J)
24 What road leads to the place where light is dispersed?^[f]
Where is the source of the east wind that spreads across the earth?

²⁵ Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain
or clears the way for lightning,
²⁶ to bring rain on an uninhabited land,
on a desert with no human life,^[g]
27 to satisfy the parched wasteland
and cause the grass to sprout?^(K)
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathered the drops of dew?^(L)
29 Whose womb did the ice come from?
Who gave birth to the frost of heaven
³⁰ when water becomes as hard as stone,^[h]
and the surface of the watery depths is frozen?^(M)

³¹ Can you fasten the chains of the Pleiades
or loosen the belt of Orion?
³² Can you bring out the constellations^[i] in their season
and lead the Bear^[j] and her cubs?^(N)
33 Do you know the laws^(O) of heaven?
Can you impose its^[k] authority on earth?
³⁴ Can you command^[l] the clouds
so that a flood of water covers you?^(P)
35 Can you send out lightning^(Q) bolts, and they go?
Do they report to you: “Here we are”?

³⁶ Who put wisdom^(R) in the heart^[m]
or gave the mind understanding?
³⁷ Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
Or who can tilt the water jars of heaven
³⁸ when the dust hardens like cast metal
and the clods of dirt stick together?

³⁹ Can you hunt prey for a lioness
or satisfy the appetite of young lions^(S)
40 when they crouch in their dens
and lie in wait within their lairs?
⁴¹ Who provides the raven’s food^(T)
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?