Job 38:12

“Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; etc.] Job had lived to see many a morning, but it never was in his power to command one; he had been in such circumstances as to wish for morning light before it was, but was obliged to wait for it, could not hasten it, or cause it to spring before its time; (see <180703>Job 7:3,4); one of the Targums is, “wast thou in the days of the first creation, and commandedst the morning to be?” he was not, God was; he was before the first morning, and commanded it into being, (<010103>Genesis 1:3-5 <234313>Isaiah 43:13); [and] caused the dayspring to know his place; the first spring of light or dawn of day; which though it has a different place every…”

“Passing from creation to phenomena in the existing inanimate world. Hast thou--as God daily does. commanded the morning--to rise. since thy days--since thou hast come into being. his place--It varies in its place of rising from day to day, and yet it has its place each day according to fixed laws.”

“Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days - That is, in thy lifetime hast thou ordered the light of the morning to shine, and directed its beams over the world? God appeals to this as one of the proofs of his majesty and power - and who can look upon the spreading light of the morning and be insensible to the force and beauty of the appeal? The transition from the ocean to the morning may have been partly because the light of the morning is one of the striking exhibitions of the power of God, and partly because in the creation of the world the light of the sun was made to dawn soon after the gathering together of the waters into seas; see Genesis 1:10, Genesis 1:14. The phrase “since…”

“Morning - Didst thou create the sun, and appoint the order and succession of day and night. Since - Since thou wast born: this work was done long before thou wast born. To know - To observe the punctual time when, and the point of the heavens where it should arise; which varies every day. Job 38:13”

“commanded: Gen 1:5; Psa 74:16, Psa 136:7, Psa 136:8, Psa 148:3-5 since: Job 38:4, Job 38:21, Job 8:9, Job 15:7 the dayspring: Luk 1:78; Pe2 1:19 Job 38:13”

“12 Hast thou in thy life commanded a morning, Caused the dawn to know its place, 13 That it may take hold of the ends of the earth, So that the evil-doers are shaken under it? 14 That it changeth like the clay of a signet-ring, And everything fashioneth itself as a garment. 15 Their light is removed from the evil-doers, And the out-stretched arm is broken. The dawn of the morning, spreading out from one point, takes hold of the carpet of the earth as it were by the edges, and shakes off from it the evil-doers, who had laid themselves to rest upon it the night before. נער, combining in itself the significations to thrust and to shake, has the latter here, as in the Arab. nâ‛ûra, a…”