Job 38:30 kjv
The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.
Job 38:30 nkjv
The waters harden like stone, And the surface of the deep is frozen.
Job 38:30 niv
when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?
Job 38:30 esv
The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.
Job 38:30 nlt
For the water turns to ice as hard as rock,
and the surface of the water freezes.
Job 38 30 Cross References
| Verse | Text | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Job 38:2-4 | "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?... I will ask you..." | God's challenge to human understanding |
| Job 38:22 | "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow...?" | God controls atmospheric elements |
| Job 38:28-29 | "Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice...?" | God is the source of all precipitation |
| Ps 147:16 | "He gives snow like wool; He scatters frost like ashes." | God commands frost and ice |
| Ps 147:17 | "He casts forth His ice as fragments; Who can stand before His cold?" | God's powerful ice |
| Ps 78:47 | "He destroyed their vines with hail, And their sycamore trees with frost." | God uses frost as judgment |
| Ps 148:8 | "Fire and hail, snow and cloud, Stormy wind, fulfilling His word." | Elements obey God's command |
| Prov 3:19 | "The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens." | God's wisdom in creation |
| Jer 10:12 | "It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom..." | God's creative wisdom and power |
| Gen 1:2 | "...darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering..." | The "deep" at creation |
| Ps 33:7 | "He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses." | God controls large bodies of water |
| Isa 40:12 | "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand...?" | God's supreme power over waters |
| Nah 1:4 | "He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers." | God's command over water bodies |
| Ex 14:21 | "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD drove the sea back..." | God controls large bodies of water (Red Sea) |
| Jos 3:16 | "...the waters coming down from upstream stood still... into a heap..." | God controls large bodies of water (Jordan) |
| Ps 107:29 | "He caused the storm to be still, So that the waves of the sea were hushed." | God calms chaotic waters |
| Mk 4:39 | "He woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!'..." | Jesus' power over nature (New Covenant) |
| Lk 8:24 | "...and they were afraid and marveled, saying to one another, 'Who then is this...'" | Disciples' awe at Jesus' power |
| Rom 11:33 | "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable..." | God's unfathomable wisdom and judgments |
| Col 1:16-17 | "For by Him all things were created... all things hold together in Him." | God sustains creation |
| Heb 1:3 | "He upholds the universe by the word of His power." | Christ's active sustaining power |
| Amos 4:13 | "For behold, He who forms mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought..." | God's omnipotence and knowledge |
| Ps 104:6-7 | "You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled..." | God controls the deep at creation |
Job 38 verses
Job 38 30 Meaning
Job 38:30 reveals God's omnipotence and control over creation, specifically His ability to transform liquid water into solid ice. It is part of God's rhetorical challenge to Job, demonstrating that divine power and wisdom extend to the most formidable and inexplicable natural phenomena. The verse portrays water becoming as unyielding as stone, with the vast, chaotic "deep" becoming immobile under God's command, asserting His absolute sovereignty over all elements of the created order.
Job 38 30 Context
Job 38:30 is embedded within God's dramatic address to Job from the whirlwind, commencing in Job 38:1. For chapters, Job and his friends have debated the cause of Job's suffering, primarily questioning God's justice. Here, God asserts His absolute sovereignty and wisdom, silencing the human discourse by challenging Job with a series of unanswerable questions about the creation and maintenance of the universe. God uses phenomena like light, darkness, oceans, rain, snow, and ice, all of which Job has no understanding of or control over, to highlight the vast chasm between human knowledge and divine omniscience. The verse specifically underscores God's dominion over powerful and transformative natural elements, implicitly demonstrating that if He can control the most profound natural processes like water turning to stone-hard ice, He certainly comprehends and governs Job's individual suffering, however mysterious it may seem.
Job 38 30 Word analysis
- The waters: Hebrew: מַיִם (mayim). Refers to water, a fundamental element in creation, often associated with both life and potential chaos. Here, it signifies a vast quantity.
- are hidden: Hebrew: יִתְחַבָּאוּ (yitḥabbaʾū). A Hithpael imperfect verb from the root חבא (ḥabā), meaning "to hide oneself, to be hidden." In this context, it implies that the waters conceal their liquid nature by solidifying, becoming firm or fixed. The Hithpael stem often denotes a reflexive action, indicating water actively solidifying.
- as with stone: Hebrew: אָבֶן (ʾāven), "stone." This simile directly indicates the complete and unyielding transformation of the water. Water, typically fluid, becomes rigid and immovable like rock. It emphasizes the extent of God's power in altering the very properties of matter.
- and the face of the deep: Hebrew: וּפְנֵי תְהוֹם (u'pnei t'hôm).
- פְּנֵי (p'nei): "face," referring to the surface or appearance.
- תְהוֹם (t'hôm): "the deep, abyss." This term, famously used in Gen 1:2 ("face of the deep"), often signifies the primeval, vast, and often chaotic waters of creation. God's ability to control its "face" signifies His complete mastery over what was perceived as the untamable. This imagery asserts God's ultimate sovereignty even over the chaotic forces associated with pre-creation conditions.
- is frozen: Hebrew: יִתְלַכָּד (yitlakkāḏ). A Hithpael imperfect verb from לכד (lākhad), meaning "to seize, grasp, capture, bind." In this context, it depicts the deep being "caught fast" or "bound together" by ice, implying its movement is arrested and its substance solidified. The Hithpael again suggests the deep is becoming "caught" or congealed, emphasizing the strong, binding nature of the freeze. This is not merely congealing, but being powerfully gripped.
Words-group by words-group analysis
- The waters are hidden as with stone: This phrase powerfully describes the transformation of water from its fluid state into solid ice, comparing its newfound hardness to stone. It emphasizes God's astonishing power to alter fundamental properties of creation, making the fluid rigid. It implies an overwhelming and complete solidification.
- and the face of the deep is frozen: This extends the idea to the vast, perhaps primeval, waters ("the deep"). The "face" refers to its surface, indicating that even the boundless, potentially chaotic, waters become completely still and immovably solid under God's command. This directly challenges any ANE cosmologies that might portray the deep as an independent, chaotic, or powerful entity, asserting Yahweh's singular authority over it.
Job 38 30 Bonus section
The phenomenon of water turning to solid stone-like ice, especially the freezing of vast bodies of water ("the deep"), would have been an awe-inspiring and potentially terrifying display of power to ancient peoples. In a time when scientific explanations were absent, such events were unequivocally attributed to divine intervention. By presenting this specific act, God challenges Job's assumptions and highlights the sheer scale and mystery of divine power that extends even to fundamental shifts in matter's state. It is a powerful illustration of creation's responsiveness to God's command. Furthermore, in many ancient Near Eastern mythologies, "the deep" or chaotic waters (often personified) were formidable, rebellious forces. Yahweh's casual statement that He freezes "the face of the deep" subtly asserts His effortless dominion over these symbolic elements, distinguishing Himself as the unique, all-powerful Sovereign, unchallenged by any other entity, mythical or real.
Job 38 30 Commentary
Job 38:30 serves as a profound declaration of God's unchallenged supremacy over the natural world. It comes as part of a series of unanswerable questions from the Divine to Job, designed not to elicit information but to reveal Job's utter lack of comprehension regarding creation's profound mechanisms, contrasting it sharply with God's complete and intimate knowledge and control. The imagery of water becoming "hidden as with stone" and the vast "deep" being "frozen" speaks to a transformative power that humanity cannot replicate or even fully explain. This verse showcases that God controls even the most extreme and seemingly immutable natural phenomena. His power extends not just to creating, but also to dynamically altering and sustaining every aspect of the cosmos, down to the very state of water itself. This cosmic mastery implicitly validates His justice and wisdom in dealing with Job's personal plight. It illustrates that God is not just the creator of all things, but the active sustainer, whose powerful hand is evident in both the gentle dew and the formidable glacier.