Job 38

The Hebrew word is sara, a descriptive name for a loud baby girl. The word can mean: windstorm, gale, violent wind, whirlwind, tornado, cyclone, storm.

Taken literally, this would seem to suggest that God created the earth in the morning, before daybreak, when the stars that come into view shortly before dawn finally rise high enough to be seen. “Morning star” later became Jewish code for the Messiah. The idea seems to have come from Numbers 24:17 and the promise that a star will rise from among the Jewish people. Some associate the morning star with Venus, which rises in the sky a few hours before the sun. Some Roman armies carried emblems of Venus on their banners to symbolize their strength. Julius Caesar claimed to descend from the goddess Venus. His banners called her the goddess “who conquers.”

Some scholars say this is talking about light again. Others say it’s about lightning or heat. Who knows, the writer may have been thinking about all of them.

Literally “east wind,” the same wind that blew over Job’s oldest son’s house and killed his family (Job 1:19). This was presumably the sirocco wind that blasts in from the Arabian Desert, east of what is now Israel and Palestine.

Pleiades and Orion are the largest and brightest constellations of stars in the night sky.

Orion was known in ancient mythology as Orion the Hunter. With two dogs, Canis Major and Minor, he chased animals in the sky such as Taurus, the bull, and Lepus, the rabbit. But Orion dies every night. Scorpius, the scorpion chases and kills him.

Aldebaran is sometimes identified as the star that serves as the eye of Taurus, the bull. In Job 38:31-32, God seems to be asking Job if he can control the stars: tell them when to appear, where to go, and how to arrange themselves in the sky.

Some scholars say that in ancient times, some people taught that the stars affected some events on earth, such as the arrival of the rainy season—an important time of renewal in the dry Middle Eastern lands. Scholars say that’s not like astrology today, in which some people say the planets and stars and affect people and nations. The prophet Isaiah made fun of that. He told people to go ahead and look “for signs and power in the sky lights of the night…Then let them offer their predictions of what will happen to the Lady [Babylon]” (Isaiah 47:13).

There are different ways to translate this verse. The writer might be quoting God talking about giving wisdom to the ibis (a bird) and understanding to a rooster. Or we can translate the verse to say it’s talking about the natural instincts people and many creatures seem to have—survival instinct of a human, mating seasons of wild animals, and where a calf can find food on mommy’s tummy. With either translation, the writer is identifying God as the creator. Job is not the creator.

People in Bible times people often made wineskins from the hide of goats. They scraped off the hair and tanned the hide to make it pliable so it wouldn’t crack or break. Wineskin makers laced the pieces together and sealed the seams with resin from pine trees or juniper. Then they turned the skin inside out so what would have been the smooth inside of the goat was facing the outside. Thirsty people drank by tipping the wineskin bags to their mouths and gently squeezing the wineskins.