Job 9:10

Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) Which doeth great things.—He adopts the very words his former antagonist, Eliphaz, had used in Job 5:9.

Benson Commentary

Job 9:10. Which doeth great things, &c. — Job here says the same that Eliphaz had said Job 5:9, and in the original, in the very same words, with design to show his full agreement with him, touching the divine perfections.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

9:1-13 In this answer Job declared that he did not doubt the justice of God, when he denied himself to be a hypocrite; for how should man be just with God? Before him he pleaded guilty of sins more than could be counted; and if God should contend with him in judgment, he could not justify one out of a thousand, of all the thoughts, words, and actions of his life; therefore he deserved worse than all his present sufferings. When Job mentions the wisdom and power of God, he forgets his complaints. We are unfit to judge of God's proceedings, because we know not what he does, or what he designs. God acts with power which no creature can resist. Those who think they have strength enough to help others, will not be able to help themselves against it.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Which doeth great things - This is almost the sentiment which had been expressed by Eliphaz; see the notes, Job 5:9. It was evidently a proverb, and as such was used by both Eliphaz and Job.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. Repeated from Eliphaz (Job 5:9).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Which words were produced by Eliphaz, Job 5:9, (where they are explained,) and are here repeated by Job, to show his agreement with him therein.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Which doth great things past finding out,.... In heaven and earth; great as to quantity and quality, not to be thoroughly searched out so as to tell their numbers, nor explain and express the nature of them to the full; even what he has done, and does in creation, providence, and grace:

yea, and wonders without number; such as are amazing to men, who cannot account for them, and so many that they cannot number them. The same things are said by Eliphaz; see Gill on Job 5:9; and which Job here repeats, to show that he agreed with him, and was ready to own what was truth, whenever expressed by him or his friends, and especially such as made for the glory of the Divine Being.

Geneva Study Bible

Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. The description of the operation of God’s might in the material world concludes with a general statement that this operation surpasses all power of comprehension by the human mind. The words are exactly those of Eliphaz ch. Job 5:9, but while to Eliphaz all God’s operations have an ethical meaning and subserve one great purpose of goodness, to Job they seem the mere un-moral play of an immeasurable Force. This force was of course a Person, for an impersonal force is an idea unknown to the Shemitic mind. But this force seemed all the more tremendous to Job from his having no idea of second causes or of what we call laws of nature; the phenomena of the universe, even the most stupendous, were the immediate work of this mighty agent.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number. An almost exact repetition of the words of Eliphaz in Job 5:9. The repetition may have been conscious or unconscious. Job may have meant to say, "My view of God embraces all that you can tell me of him, and goes further;" or he may simply have used words concerning the Divine unsearch-ableness which were common in the mouths of religious men in his time (comp. Psalm 72:18; and infra, Job 11:7). Job 9:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

8 Who alone spreadeth out the heavens,

And walketh upon the heights of the sea;

9 Who made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,

And the chambers of the south;

10 Who doeth great things past finding out,

And wondrous things without number.

Ewald, Hirzel, and others, understand נטה (Job 9:8) according to Psalm 18:10 : He letteth down the clouds of heaven, and walketh on the heights of the sea of clouds, i.e., high above the towering thunder-clouds. But parallel passages, such as Isaiah 40:22; Psalm 104:2, and especially Isaiah 44:24, show that Job 9:8 is to be understood as referring to the creation of the firmament of heaven; and consequently נטה is to be taken in the sense of expandere, and is a form of expression naturally occurring in connection with the mention of the waters which are separated by means of the רקיע. The question arises, whether ים here means the sea of waters above the firmament or upon the earth. According to the idea of the ancients, the waters which descend as rain have their habitation far away in the infinite expanse of the sky; the ocean of the sky (Egyptian Nun-pa), through which the sun-god Ra sails every day, is there. It is possible that "the heights of the sea" here, and perhaps also "the roots of the sea" (Job 36:30), may mean this ocean of the sky, as Hahn and Schlottmann suppose. But it is not necessary to adopt such an explanation, and it is moreover hazardous, since this conception of the celestial θάλασσα is not found elsewhere (apart from Revelation 4:6; Revelation 15:2; Revelation 22:1). Why may not בּמתי, which is used of the heights of the clouds (Isaiah 14:14), be used also of the waves of the sea which mount up towards heaven (Psalm 107:26)? God walks over them as man walks on level ground (lxx περιπατῶν ἐπὶ θαλάσσης ὡς ἐπ ̓ ἐδάφους); they rise or lie calmly beneath His feel according to His almighty will (comp. Habakkuk 3:15).

Job next describes God as the Creator of the stars, by introducing a constellation of the northern (the Bear), one of the southern (Orion), and one of the eastern sky (the Pleiades). עשׁ, contracted from נעשׁ, Arabic na‛š, a bier, is the constellation of seven stars (septentrio or septentriones) in the northern sky. The Greater and the Lesser Bear form a square, which the Arabs regarded as a bier; the three other stars, benâth n‛asch, i.e., daughters of the bier (comp. Job 38:32), seem to be the mourners. כּסיל is Orion chained to the sky, which the ancients regarded as a powerful giant, and also as an insolent, foolish fellow

(Note: The Arabic jâhil is similar, which combines the significations, an ignorant, foolhardy, and passionate man (vid., Fleischer, Ali's hundert Sprche, S. 115f.).)

(K. O. Mller, Kleine deutsche Schriften, ii. 125). כּימה is the Pleiades, a constellation consisting of seven large and other smaller stars, Arabic turayyâ, which, like the Hebrew (comp. Arab. kûmat, cumulus), signifies the heap, cluster (vid., Job 38:31), and is compared by the Persian poets to a bouquet formed of jewels. It is the constellation of seven stars, whose rising and setting determined the commencement and end of their voyages (πλειάς, probably equals constellation of navigation), and is to be distinguished from the northern septentriones. תּימן חדרי are, according to the Targ., the chambers of the constellations on the south side of the heavens, as also most expositors explain them (Mercier: sidera quae sunt in altero hemisphaerio versus alterum polum antarcticum), according to which תּימן, or written defectively תּמן, would therefore be equivalent to תמן כוכבי; or perhaps, in a more general meaning, the regions of the southern sky (penetralia), which are veiled, or altogether lost to view (Hirzel). In v. 10, Job says, almost verbatim, what Eliphaz had said (Job 5:10). Job agrees with the friends in the recognition of the power of God, and intentionally describes those phases of it which display its terrible majesty. But while the friends deduce from this doctrine the duty of a humble deportment on the part of the sufferer, Job uses it to support the cheerless truth that human right can never be maintained in opposition to the absolute God.