Old Testament · Poetry and wisdom

Job chapter 37

At that, my own heart and jumps clean out of its place. — to the roar of his voice, to the growl coming out of his mouth.He turns it loose under the whole sky, his lightning out to the corners of the earth.Behind it a voice roars. He thunders in that voice, and he holds nothing back once it is heard.God thunders in his voice and it is past belief. we cannot begin to know.He says to the snow, “Fall on the earth,” and to the shower, and to the hammering rain, “Come down hard.”He , so that everyone he made has to stop and look at his work.The wild animals slip into cover and stay put in their dens.Out of its chamber comes , and the cold out of the driving winds. hands over the ice, and the wide water goes hard as metal.He loads the thunderhead with water and scatters his lightning through the cloud.They wheel around wherever he , doing whatever he orders them to do across the face of the whole inhabited world.He brings it for a beating, or for his own land, or — and it lands.Listen to this, Job. Stand still. Think hard about the things God does that nobody can explain.Do you know how God gives them their orders, how he makes the light flash out of his cloud?Do you know how the clouds hang balanced, the wonders of the one who is ?You, with your clothes sticking to you when the land goes still under —can you the way he does, hard as ?Tell us what we are supposed to say to him. We cannot — it is too dark in here.Should anyone tell him that I want to speak? Did a man ever ask to be swallowed alive?And now nobody can look at the light — it is blinding up there — then a wind comes through and sweeps the sky clean. comes a gold glare. Around God there is . — we cannot reach him. He is past us in strength. And justice, and doing right in full measure, he will never crush.So people hold him in awe. He does not so much as glance at .