John Gill's Exposition on Job 38:8

A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.

Exposition of the Old and New Testament
John Gill (1697–1771) · 18th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.

Or [who] shut up the sea with doors, etc.] From the earth the transition is to the sea, according to the order of the creation; and this refers not to the state and case of the sea as at the flood, of which some interpret it, but as at its first creation; and it is throughout this account represented as an infant, and here first as in embryo, shut up in the bowels of the earth, where it was when first created with it, as an infant shut up in its mother’s womb, and with the doors of it; (see <180310>Job 3:10); the bowels of the earth being the storehouses where God first laid up the deep waters, (<193307>Psalm 33:7); and when the chaos, the misshapen earth, was like a woman big with child; when it brake forth out of the abyss, as the Targum, with force and violence, as Pharez broke out of his mother’s womb; for which reason he had his name given, which signifies a breach, (<013829>Genesis 38:29); so it follows, [as if] it had issued out of the womb; as a child out of its mother’s womb; so the sea burst forth and issued out of the bowels of the earth, and covered it all around, as in (<19A406>Psalm 104:6); and now it was that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, before they were drained off the earth; this was the first open visible production of the sea, and nay be called the birth of it; (see <010102>Genesis 1:2). Something like this the Heathen philosopher Archelaus had a notion of, who says f1301, the sea was shut up in hollow places, and was as it were strained through the earth.

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