The Bible Says
Job 38:25-30 Meaning

In Job 38:25-30, God continues His response to Job’s request for a hearing (Job 23:3-7) by highlighting His mastery over nature. He proclaims Who has cleft a channel for the flood, Or a way for the thunderbolt, To bring rain on a land without people, On a desert without a man in it, To satisfy the waste and desolate land And to make the seeds of grass to sprout? (vv. 25-27).

To cleft a channel for a flood refers to the power of water runoff from a rain. This vast power is awesome to behold. It creates valleys in short periods of time. It erodes and displaces. Similarly, a thunderbolt is a massive charge of power. In modern times we have been able to develop a semblance of such power, but not at the scale God routinely displays in nature.

God points out that He cares for areas that are uninhabited. He brings rain on a land without people. Like a landowner watering his grass, God makes seeds of grass to sprout in the wilderness. These areas that are so inhospitable that people cannot survive are like a garden to God. This again shows God’s vast superiority. God continues to drive home the point to Job that He knows vastly more that Job can even conceive. Therefore, God does not need to hear Job’s perspective in order to know what is good and right. In particular, God does not need Job’s input to know what is in Job’s best interest. God is pursuing Job’s best interest, including giving Job a private tutorial on the nature and realities concerning knowledge itself.

The Lord expands the picture further: Has the rain a father? Or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb has come the ice? And the frost of heaven, who has given it birth? (vv. 28-29).

These verses contain pairs of cause-effect, or source-result using a parent child relationship. The first two pairs are father-child and the second two mother-child:

• Who is the father of rain?
• What parent has begotten the dew?
• What womb birthed the ice?
• What mother gave birth to the frost of heaven?

The implied answer to all these is “God, not Job.” Humans can experience and describe these things. But they are not the creators or sustainers of any of these.

Finally, God points to the formidable power behind frozen waters: Water becomes hard like stone, And the surface of the deep is imprisoned (v. 30).

When the surface of a body of water freezes solid (hard like stone), it locks life beneath it (deep is imprisoned), illustrating how God shapes the realm of winter. A great miracle of creation is that the solid form of water (ice) is less dense than the liquid form, and therefore floats. If solid water followed the usual pattern and was heavier than liquid water, then ice would sink to the bottom of lakes and oceans and disrupt many of the processes that make earth ideal for life. Did Job think of this? Did Job even understand it?

God did. And His observed design for the universe should make it clear to us that we are creatures made by a Creator (Romans 1:20). Given that, we should learn this lesson God gave to Job and seek to see and know God’s perspective rather than believing God needs to know more of our perspective.